TOM EATON

Apartheid has been called many things, from moral and economic corruption to a crime against humanity. But this week, Helen Zille added a surprising new definition: “opportunity”.

To be fair, it was surprising to hear from her at all: she hasn’t dropped a lot of these sorts of clangers in recent years, perhaps because she knows that puppeteers aren’t supposed to talk and it would be weird to hear her voice coming out of the John Steenhuisen puppet she operates as her day job.

On Monday, however, she returned to her old ways on X with a bang as she took a potshot at the Zuma-aligned ATM party and its demands for economic freedom.

“How do they define ‘Economic Freedom’?” she tweeted. “How will we recognise it? And how does ATM propose to get there? (I'll listen on the radio.)”

I’ve never studied finance, so I don’t know the jargon, and it’s quite possible that in the business world, 'the bottom' refers to a place of legislated economic advantage plus unlimited cheap labour being kept poor by said legislation.

Luckily she didn’t need to listen for long as an X user named @LangaLikeTheSun reminded her we only have to look back 100 years to find a good precedent in South African history for lifting a group of people out of poverty.

“We can refer to the Afrikaners,” tweeted Langa. “Afrikaners Economic Empowerment programs that granted them economic freedom through protected employment skills development welfare services & a crap load of land. Companies like Sanlam, Santam, Rembrandt, Volkskas, Naspers & AVBOB are the fruits.”

At this point, you or I might have thanked Langa for his insight and moved on. But Zille’s gonna Zille, and in a flash she had reached for her historical evidence — a Broederbond fairy-tale.

“Afrikaners took all opportunities very seriously,” she replied. “Educated their children into professional skills and out of poverty. Built huge enterprises from the bottom up. Nothing is stopping everyone else from following that example.”

To be fair, she’s not totally wrong. Afrikaners did put a huge emphasis on education, partly because you never know when your new government is going to stop reserving you a job and you need to start competing on an equal footing with other people — well, not with the majority of your compatriots, obviously, because they’ve been deliberately and systemically kept out of the economy by the government you voted for, but other people, maybe when you go overseas?

She’s also right about taking opportunities seriously. I mean, just because your country has passed laws to prevent your competition from competing with you, it doesn’t mean you’re going to slack off when the government hands you your gift-wrapped opportunity. No, sir, you’re going to pick up that ball and run with it. And yes, OK, while it is true that the other team has been arrested for not carrying a pass and for resisting when your government bulldozed its house, it’s also true that you’re running as fast as your little white legs can carry you.

One thing, however, confused me: namely, that bit about building “huge enterprises from the bottom up”.

Of course, this could simply be ignorance on my part. I’ve never studied finance, so I don’t know the jargon, and it’s quite possible that in the business world, “the bottom” refers to a place of legislated economic advantage plus unlimited cheap labour being kept poor by said legislation.

But where I get very confused is where Zille seems to imply that this process was admirable and worth emulating — the same Zille who was so vocal a critic of state capture and ANC cronyism.

Again, I might be confused, but I’d love someone to explain to me why Broederbonders using their close ties to government to get contracts and wildly beneficial labour laws to build empires in the 20th century is an example impressive entrepreneurship, but ANC cadres doing the same thing but without the help of those laws is an example of gross corruption.

I’ll also listen on the radio.