ONKGOPOTSE JJ TABANE | Letter to President Ramaphosa: why are so many poor and so few opulent?

An open letter to President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa.

I have not written to you lately. Between the failure to fire police minister Senzo Mchunu and sucking up to US President Donald Trump, as well as hastily convening a mass meeting at Unisa, your calendar has truly been busy. But when I saw your bizarre monologue at the rushed national convention, I said perhaps a “love letter” was due. It's not a bad thing to take the first citizen out of his misery — especially when he comes across as confused and as usual shocked about things citizens live with, such as Joburg’s crime and grime.

In 2017, you asked us to “send you” (Thuma Mina). It's been seven years now and it is not unreasonable to expect you to be back from the mission for which you were sent. We sent you to fix an economy that was destroyed in the nine years you and Jacob Zuma wasted. Quite frankly, things have worsened under your watch if the economic indicators are anything to go by. The terrible economic growth, soaring unemployment and the badge of dishonour as the most unequal society in the world should give you a hint why so many people are poor.

However, these objective factors alone are not the only ones that can answer your impassioned question. Your subjective choices — the incompetent cadres you deployed to key ministries since your Thuma Mina days — can also explain why so many people are poor. Ministers of small businesses and other economic cluster portfolios have nothing to show for a determined programme to create an environment of economic growth. Their “send me” energy has produced zero results. Their incompetence should have already put you out of your ignorant misery.

You asked why so few are opulent. Strange that the irony doesn’t befall you a billion times. Well, you and a few others benefited from the BEE wave where you were handed a significant share of multibillion-rand companies without ever having built or run any businesses in your entire lives. The few opulent are privileged white capitalists who retained their largesse, and a handful of connected black elites who aided them to continue with their ill-gotten gains.

You also wondered why clinics run out of medicines. It’s interesting that in your monologue you never asked why so many of your comrades are so corrupt.

The first wave of BEE, for which you were both an architect and beneficiary (as the head of the BEE commission) and a beneficiary (that has made you a pseudo-billionaire) is what has made so few opulent. It was clearly not a sustainable model poised to make the BEE broad-based. The BBBEE was an afterthought, and by the time it was introduced, a lot of plunder had already taken place. You were among the first at the trough, and that is what has given BEE a bad name.

I hope I have made you understand that inequality persists because of your ANC’s failed policies over the past 31 years and the incompetent cadres you deployed, who systematically destroyed numerous parastatals and perfected state capture as corruption accused number one. Another answer that rolled off your lips.

You also wondered why clinics run out of medicines. It's interesting that in your monologue you never asked why so many of your comrades are so corrupt. So many collapsed municipalities, billions wasted in irregular expenditure, cancer patients queuing in the streets, children born into cardboard boxes. If you asked why the health system is on its knees, the answer would have occurred to you easily when provinces like North West return R30bn to the Treasury while patients die without treatment — the link should not be difficult to make.

The cocktail of incompetence and corruption is the answer to all your strange questions. And the story seems to continue if Lt-Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s allegations are anything to go by. Yet you show no curiosity. You do not ask why so many of your top cops are themselves so corrupt.

We send you. You send commissions to do the work we sent you to do.

We send you to be transparent and yet you seem to hide so much from us.

We send you to fight corruption. Instead, you joined the bandwagon of dodgy dealings.

We send you to create jobs, instead more jobs were lost under your leadership and are set to be lost after the failure to strike a deal with the US on a global stage. 

We sent you to revive the economy. Under you, every key indicator is pointing downward. The country is now greylisted and more young people are roaming the streets.

And after all this time, you emerge from the woodwork to ask us why we are poor — while you are rich.

It all, quite frankly, begs the question:

Uthumekile na? (Were you ever worthy of sending?)

Sincerely, 

Prof JJ Tabane, editor of Leadership and BBQ magazines

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