Congratulations Mr President on your decision to courageously fulfil the mandate given to you as the President of our Constitutional Democracy. You listened to the voice of the people of South Africa who denied your party, the ANC, a mandate to govern alone after 30 years of dominance. You boldly proclaimed that the people have spoken.
Your decision to establish a government of national unity (GNU) is an expression of you heeding the voice of citizens who clearly indicated that they are no longer going to allow a one-party government given the failures of 30 years of successive ANC governments to get South Africa to attain the promises of freedom: a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist society where each individual reaches their full potential and contributes to shared prosperity.
Your very large Executive reflects the compromises between keeping your fellow party members happy to swallow the bitter pill of sharing power with people they looked down upon. You should use your newfound courage to limit and cut back on benefits for your Executive. Learn from Julius Nyerere of Tanzania who drove around in a Beetle Volkswagen. It is disgraceful to keep Mercedes Benz fleets for Cabinet Ministers and their Deputies in a country where the poorest people go to bed hungry. It would be a major signal of a more Ubuntu based values governance if you were to follow Madiba’s example of “no blue lights boys” to protect him as a leader against his fellow citizens. He said no. Are you ready to follow that example of integrity?
Mr President, you have a wonderful opportunity to do what you have been hesitant to do - Clean up the mess of State Capture that goes back to the Arms Deal of the first administration. The cancer of State Capture is a continuation of the culture of colonial public sector governance of accumulation of wealth for a few at the expense of the many. Colonial and apartheid operatives were unashamedly amassing wealth for the empire and the select few on the basis of racist classification, in favour of so-called white people. Our Constitutional Democracy must make a clean break from this injustice.
The retention of racial classification by the ANC post 1994 as a tool for redress is a cruel irony. The struggle for freedom over the more than century was for liberation from the imposition of racial categories. Indigenous people always knew from the ancestral Ubuntu philosophy that there is only one race – the human race. Modern science has confirmed this fact through genetic studies. The essence of being human is to be interconnected and interdependent within the web of life. Racism is destructive of the human potential to celebrate unity in diversity.
Social justice reflecting Ubuntu calls for the transformation of our socio-economic system from the current winner takes all capitalist system to a system that ensures dignified human settlements, the thriving of each person through high quality education and training, and the sustainable wellbeing of all, including ecosystems that sustain life on our planet, to ensure prosperity for all.
Redress using racial classification violates the values of Ubuntu. The last 30 years have demonstrated the failure of this form of redress to create the society we committed ourselves to become. By all measures those classified as white continue to dominate ownership of productive capacities of our country. Ownership of land by white people stands at 72% of privately owned land; 61% of ownership of businesses is white; black people own only 23% of JSE listed companies.
In 2023 28.6% of white people had a higher education degree, whilst only 4.8% of so-called coloured people and only 5.2% for those classified as Black were graduates. The proportion of persons with no schooling was highest in the black African population and lowest amongst white people. It is time to abandon Black Economic Empowerment policy because it is ineffective at achieving the goal of socio-economic equality. The defenders of BEE are those who have becomes fabulously rich due to political connectedness at the expense of the majority of people.
We need to acknowledge our failure to complement our globally lauded Political Settlement with transformation of our socio-economic structures inherited from colonial conquerors and the apartheid regimes that were designed to impoverish indigenous Africans to enrich a tiny minority of descendants of colonial settlers. We have an opportunity to transform our socio-economic development model to ensure greater inclusion of all in opportunities for livelihoods. Land restitution and revitalisation of neglected rural areas are critical success factors.
Fundamental transformation of our education and training systems is essential to create platforms for the cultivation of the talents of our youthful population into self-liberated critical thinking citizens of our democracy. What we teach, learn and research must reflect our rich African heritage in languages, history and culture. We must decolonise our curriculums and ways of teaching and learning away from authoritarian Western European values towards Ubuntu infused values-based empowering education.
We welcome your appointment of new Ministers of Basic Education and of Higher Education and Training. These critical portfolios have seriously underperformed over the last 30 years and thereby undermined the quality of human development in our country. We shamefully underperform poorer African countries despite our higher spending on education because of poor leadership and wrong policy choices. Kenya’s spends 5,3% of GDP on education and produces higher educational outcomes than South Africa that spends 6,6% of GDP on education. Zimbabwean students continue to outperform ours because of a more solid post-colonial foundation that has remained resilient.
State Capture is responsible for much of our educational underperformance. For example, NFSAS which was established to enable access to higher education has been severely compromised by mismanagement over the last two decades. The decision by Dr Blade Ndzimande to interpose tenderpreneurs between higher education institutions and the Treasury to provide student financial aid, is the final nail in the coffin of NFSAS. As a former Vice Chancellor of UCT 1995-2000, we had a seamless operation of administering financial aid from NFSAS to ensure that all needy students were taken care of. I know this to have been the case across all higher education institutions. Why would Ndzimande see it fit to introduce a so-called service provider who knows nothing about higher education at such high cost yet leave an estimated the 9000 students excluded from benefits? We rely on you Mr President to hold those responsible accountable.
The Sectoral and Training Authorities also need urgent cleaning up. They have little to justify the enormous resources allocated from the mandatory 1% of payroll paid by employing entities to fund training. Our country suffers from lack of skills which is driving unemployment and unemployability amongst youth with up to 70% unemployment in the poorest areas. An example of impunity is the recently reported case of the Construction SETA CEO Malusi Shezi, booking a study tour abroad for 24 days costing R4million including pocket money of R250 000 for each board member. Nzimande must account for this impunity that happened under his watch that is directly responsible for denying the majority of young, especially black people, the opportunity to develop their skills and shape the futures they desire.
Successful countries such as Germany, South Korea and Finland, directly work with private sector companies to ensure systematic training of young people post-school, post-university or in collaboration with technical institutes and colleges to produce the high levels of skilled people to drive their socio-economic development. We must completely close down these wasteful SETAs that have largely failed young people in our country. We must mandate businesses and public entities to ensure on-the-job training of young people. Cleaning up state capture in all its forms is imperative to free up resources to rebuild our country.
Mr President you have the opportunity to complete the task of enabling our country to become a united prosperous society. Only continuing courageous leadership can ensure your success in reclaiming your Thuma Mina mantle.
We the people urge you to not look back but forward to the promised land that has eluded us thus far.
Mamphela Ramphele
31/7/24
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