Pretoria - The African National Congress will not make any economic inroads until they accept the principle of private ownership and the free market system, and adjust their statements and legislation accordingly, agricultural union the TLU SA said on Saturday.
The farmers' union gave President Cyril Ramaphosa two out of 10 for keeping promises made in the 2019 state-of-the-nation address (SONA).
The TLU SA had predicted that little would come of the promises made by Ramaphosa during last year’s SONA, the union said in a statement on Saturday.
"Sadly, the prediction became a reality." In the SONA, Ramaphosa focused on seven priorities which would have been turned around during 2019 - economic transformation and job creation; education, skills, and health; consolidating the social wage through reliable and quality basic services; spatial integration, human settlements, and local government; social cohesion and safe communities; a capable, ethical, and developmental state; and a better Africa and world.
“Unfortunately, there are little to no large-scale positive results to show for the dreams of President Ramaphosa,” TLU SA president Louis Meintjes said in the statement.
“The president should perhaps shift his racial hatred to the side and reach out to the best-skilled people, despite their colour, who know what it will take to turn the economy around and allow them to indicate the right direction forward.
“The ANC is still hooked on an ideology that has only create poverty and unemployment throughout the world. The combined impact of the ANC and its tripartite alliance partners on South Africa has become too expensive for the country. The dilemma is that the worst is yet to come unless the ANC gets to a point where they reject socialism and communism completely,” he said.
The issue of appropriation without compensation was the only promise "left for the ANC to try and stay in power”.
"It is based on lies about the history of land ownership. On the one hand they make a great fanfare of how it will help the economy grow, but on the other hand the ANC wants to take people’s land without any compensation. Why would investors want to invest in a country where the Constitution permits the government to take assets without paying for it?”
The ANC would not make any economic inroads until they accepted the principle of private ownership and the free market system, and adjusted their statements and legislation accordingly.
South Africa needed economic growth to create the much-needed capacity to solve the country’s enormous socio-economic problems. The government should go back to the drawing board and learn what was necessary to grow the economy of a nation.
It should start by repairing investors' trust. After that, they could work on a range of issues "not even visible to them at present".
“If these basic economic principles are not applied, we can expect SONA after SONA without any hope of change,” Meintjes said.