SA economy designed to serve foreign interests: Moeletsi Mbeki

unless south africa changes its trajectory and reindustrializes the economy to accommodate the poor the angry masses are on the verge of unleashing a violent uprising against the ruling elite now these are the comments made by economist businessman and political analyst muay lithium becky addressing a zubera institute for research and development gathering in durban recently becky said from the day of the national party government the economy of south africa was designed to serve the british mining companies who make billions of rands and profits and that certainly certainly has not changed under the anc government in power now will it be deputy chairperson of the south african institute of international affairs and political analyst joins us now virtually um mr veki it's so good to see you welcome to morning live thank you it's great to be on your show sakina it almost i'm not sure if it's groundhog day or you know uh whether we are just stuck in a rut or what is going on but you know listening to you expressing these sentiments yet again you know where we are now talking once more about the anger of poverty-stricken south africans struggling to put food on the table uh you know struggling to just find the safety in their own homes and in the meantime you have executives and managers who are raking in millions of rands in sometimes undue remuneration and benefit so who designed this unequal society for us well the our and equal society many people think it was designed by apartheid that it was designed by the national party if you wish actually this unequal society was designed by the british at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century britain as you may remember was the colonial power that controlled south africa from the end of the 18th century and it set up different types of economies actually for south africa first it inherited the slave economy which had been set up by the dutch and it kept that going for for about 30 35 years and then it abandoned that and abolished slavery and and introduced a peasant economy especially in natal and in the and in the eastern cape uh amongst the black population and then it discovered diamonds and gold so it abandoned the peasant economy and dismantled started dismantling the present economy in order to force the men the african men uh to to go and work in in the diamond mines and the gold mines in fact i should make one uh modification there was that before the diamond mines about 10 years before the diamond mines they decided to grow sugar in south africa so they tried to get the people in in natal which is where the climate for sugar is to work there and and the zulus quite widely refused to go and work and so they brought in india's all the way from india to set out the sugar industry in south africa and then eventually they discovered these minerals and now the british decided we've had enough of these people we are going to force them to go and work in the mines so we're going to dismantle the zulu kingdom we're going to dismantle the poor republics and we're going to restructure the economy of south africa according to so that it serves our purpose so we get our gold and our diamonds from south africa and that's who has structured the economy of south africa and it has been running like that like that since 1910 after they restructured the economy they they looked around and said who shall we hand over the country to run on our behalf on the economic side and the africana elite said we'll do it we'll do it uh who will oppress the blacks we'll make sure they work for nothing uh and the british said that's my man so they ran the country from 1910 up until 1994 when the blacks revolted they could no longer take this as suppression so the british interestingly uh had been supporting the anc since then quietly the anc had an office in london for since the 1960s they said well these guys can't keep peace in south africa anymore can you keep peace in south africa and by the way we own the gold mines we own the diamond mines so you keep the peace carry on with the cheap labor but you deliver the gold and the diamond to us and and the anc of course has been doing that since 1994. it's a long story complex story but that in a nutshell is where south africa is that's why you were saying we've been treading water for so long we have been treading water for more than a hundred years so how much longer will we have to do this because as you say it's a long story but it's an important story uh for us to understand and contextualize what we are currently dealing with but for the longest time you know we've been talking about the struggle for liberation in this country the struggle for economic emancipation so what was all of that for if indeed we are not going to change the patterns of the economy in this country well it was for the inclusion of minorities in a nutshell you said they the the british system obviously needs certain group to run the country and these minorities get huge privileges so if you look at who were running the country uh between 1910 and 1994 it was essentially the africana nationalists and they got enormous privileges but this is a tiny which was probably four percent of the south african population if you take the whole population of south africa the africanas were only about four percent of of the whole population of south africa so these kinds of minorities can be incorporated into this a system of the british and they prosper within that system now they have incorporated the africans into the system again the african middle class which is a tiny group has been incorporated into the small elite uh so we so those benefit but the vast majority of the people i mean south africa has the highest unemployment in the world and the highest poverty in the world that just gives you an idea of how many people are left out without benefiting from the economic system that we have in this country so coming back to this ticking time bomb um mr becky you know we we've been talking about this for the longest time and are we just saying this is this about platitudes once more or is there something that we should really be concerned about at this stage well the time the ticking time bomb keeps exploding and then we because we don't know what to do or the powers that we are happy with the status quo they they soon tell us to forget that the time time bomb has had just an explosion we had an explosion in 2012 at marikana that was part of the explosion of the of this time bomb uh and so the the the powers that be suppressed the explosion with ferocious falls uh 34 people killed and many others injured and then soon thereafter they set a commission and whitewashed the whole thing all should i say blackwatch the whole thing and we elected one of the protagonists mr sulu ramaphosa to become president and of course he wanted this forgotten because he had written an email saying these people must be crushed so he wanted us to forget all about that and he has successfully done that nobody talks about americana anymore then we've had a second explosion of of the of the time bomb which was in kwazulu-natal and khaojin in july last year after the imprisonment of jacob zuma now these explosions are getting bigger if you compare marikana in americana 34 people were killed and killed by the police in in in the recent explosion in july last year more than 350 people were killed killed by the people themselves stampeding stampedes and all that and the police were just sitting there folding their arms watching the poor killing each other so that so the time bombs are going off and they're getting bigger and one day we will be where ukraine is if i can give you that example of a big time bomb that is happening in the world today but why is government not heeding these calls mr mbeki you know um just the other day and uh this is why they say comparisons are odious because it's not a good one but you look at the numbers of people who have died in ukraine in a war situation and you look at just the july unrest in south africa last year and those numbers are comparable and we are not even in a war in south africa why is this acceptable why is government not heeding the calls uh from the people on the ground well fatina you know the privileged in south africa are so privileged the privileges who run the south african government remember are so privileged that they see any change as a threat to their privilege a year or so ago the finance minister the grand finance minister titom when he pointed out that there were more than 29 000 millionaires who work for the south african governments were people who earned more than a million rents who were employed by the civil servants who and politicians were employed by the government so when these people look at this arrangement and they say my god if we change anything for example if we start investing uh in in building proper housing instead of allowing the shanty towns if we then how are we going to be paid these millions that would get paid so let's postpone it for another day and let's await maybe the time bomb it will be five years before it comes and so they wait so just going back to the economy and what it has delivered uh quite apart from the failures so it was discovered very early on mr mbeki uh during this democracy that um the policies after 1994 the uh that economy and which is still the economy that we have today only produced a handful of very rich black people just a layer that had been previously disadvantaged what about the rest and why is it seemingly so difficult to actually turn things around to the benefit of the majority of south africans well i was reading a report in the newspaper just this morning the world bank has started a new study based on south africa about inequality in in eastern and southern africa they are so alarmed by the levels of inequality that exists in south africa that they have started a new type of a report about inequality in south africa and namibi so it shows that the world is very concerned about the inability of the of the ruling party and the ruling governments in south africa to solve the question of poverty on one hand and extravagant wealth as a the other at the other end but as i say you know the the rich control the power and they use the power for their own benefit and the rich in south africa include the government official you know the south african government is the most expensive government in the world in terms of the salaries that they pay the salaries as a percentage of gross domestic products salaries of the civil service are somewhere in the region of about 14 percent of gdp similar countries to south africa are half of that and they are six or seven percent of gdp so the privilege in south africa are hugely privileged both in the private sector and in the public sector and they are not prepared to give up their privileges to build the country this is why you see it takes forever to build a road in this country because the the privilege don't want to invest they are not investing and they and then blame goes around their business blames government government blames business unions blame government and business although they are part of government and so and so there's this finger pointing that goes on in this country but no action and the crisis continues and that's it the sad reality is that um all of this speaks to the majority of south africans who have now lost confidence almost all confidence in the ability of the ruling party in south africa the anc and its leadership to provide them with a better life and where should south africans look to now in order to try and save themselves because it is clear that government year after year um term after term administration after administration is failing to do this yes i i think you know the the anc in 2004 got nearly 70 percent of the of the votes so it shows how much hope the people of south africa the voters of south africa had in the future that the nc had promised to deliver in the last election which was the local government election they say got only 45 percent uh of of the vote and it lost all the big metros in uh and in the in and most of them they ended the cape so you can see that the population has lost faith in the anc now obviously they have to look to the opposition so the opposition parties have to come up with a solution otherwise we are going to have even bigger explosions than than we had in july last year so the onus is now on the opposition parties to come up with with it with a model for a better future of south africa but one that does not uh carry on with the old economic policies that we know it inherited from the pro from the british so is that the only solution does the solution for south africa and south africans lie with political parties solely well you know sakina that's the nature of this animal called democracy democracy operates with political parties you can always have a dictator where you then have one guy who would then call calls the shots there are several of them in the world i won't mention what big countries have those and what small countries them so but the people of south africa had enough of dictators with the national party they will not entertain that so we south africans want the democratic system the democratic system up to now is not delivering the economic dividend uh but that is the only option we have is the political parties they have to find a new solution that benefits all the people of south africa otherwise our democracy is going to be dismantled then we'll be even worse off than than having a democracy we have to leave it there but thanks so much for your time this morning we're letting becky deputy chair of the south african institute of international affairs and political analyst saying that unless south africa changes its trajectory and reindustrializes the economy at the very least to accommodate the poor then the angry masses are on the verge of unleashing a violent uprising against the ruling elite

Channel: SABC News

Views: 217,895

Keywords: SABC News, actuality, world news, local news, Moeletsi Mbeki, SA Economy

Id: fmQZNaAh7AA

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2022