controlling approximately 30 per centof the economy in highly strategic sectors such as state banking, information technology, energy, transport, aerospace and the weapons industry, communication, among others.
In addition the state owns about 25 per cent of land, and has an array of regulatory and administrative apparatus to influence the behaviour of capital. There is also the question of pension funds and union investment funds, which currently play and could be geared to play an even more strategic role in the economy', wrote Mcebisi Jonas just last week.
And Jonas asks, 'so what are the implications of this understanding for growth and transformation?' Inequality has a lot to do with the failure, but to continue tagging the white 8% and the once white-only colonialism isn't cutting any cheese anymore.
'Africans make up 77 per cent of public sector employment compared with 66 per cent in the private sector ... In terms of the skills profile, the public sector is more skills intensive. Almost 45 per cent of all public sector employees fall into the top three occupational categories, compared to 26 per cent in the private sector.'
The ANC and its MPs are not representative of the nation or of the 80 per cent blacks - it was voted in as a party and is a party having a party with an overpaid head of state. And worst of all, those who are meant to be really representing the workers, the major union bodies, are in it.
'We need a paradigm shift, underpinned by a new consensus,' explains Jonas, 'a new bargain around which the state, business, labour and civil society can cohere - to move us out of our low growth and high inequality trap. We must not be naïve and think this will be easy to achieve.'
Capitalism, far from going away, is going to become leaner and meaner. Unless we begin to act in a moral way that is inclusive of all, fewer and fewer families are going to become richer and more in control. As we have seen with the Gupta reveleations, those with power will manipulate those that want it. There is no democracy in Western Capitalism, 'Corporations now govern society.' And there is another way. How about the emergent Asian Capitalism of strong leadership inducing Shared Capitalism? The new China not only pulled hundreds of millions of peasants out of poverty but empowered them. Their railways and etc. work. Last week they launched the 'one road one belt' initiative, a program that will possibly enable half of the world. And they are going to mine the moon.
The system can be changed without taking away the good points of Capitalism, creating something along the lines of Asian Shared Capitalism which, by the way, has for a long time had significant Western investments. US and European banks and funds have taken major shareholder positions in almost all Chinese firms of reasonable size.
To borrow from Rian Malan: 'We should rather follow the truly revolutionary path of Deng Tsaio Ping, who set forth in 1978 to "seek truth from facts" and deliver Communist China from its misery and backwardness.'And with their brand of Capitalism they have and are doing it much better - to the anger of the quite unreformed colonists of Europe and the US.
Desperately needed in South Africa is a new system led by leaders who can take the country forward beyond the legacy of Greed Capitalism. The current system demands profit that comes at the expense of the national reserve. The current system has become so profit driven, so full of dogma and impossible promises, it is a religion. It has to go and along with it all those who manipulate it to their own end, all these new colonial masters. 'Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief,' said Frantz Fanon.
I grew up in Rhodesia. The British history I learnt from Grade 3 to university entrance level taught me emphatically blacks were savages tamed by Colonial Christian Capitalists - it was that simple. I believed all the memes of the time, memes that declared unless we white Rhodesians ran the show it would collapse.
Like South Africa, Rhodesia was a White Nationalist Socialist State which, as the title infers, meant I and roughly 200,000 other whites had all privilege while the non-whites suffered. Most non-whites lived on starvation diets in Trust Lands, were deprived of a reasonable education and getting a job as a servant was to win a prize.
I knew nothing of the duplicity and theft of colonialism until I joined the government as a trainee administration officer. It took another 10 years of self-study to change my mindset, to begin to undo my biases and irrational ideas. I came to learn of alternates like the amazing community way - the support of the extended family - of the Bantu, a way us Europeans (now white South Africans) had dumped some 400 years before as we were forced from our bonded societies into the process of the Industrial Revolution.
I understand that Rhodesia was a flawed place, a place that should not be allowed to exist again. But it does, here. President Robert Mugabe, his cabinet, generals, his inner circle and provincial land-lords have replaced Smith, his cabinet, generals, his inner circle and provincial land-lords. The only difference is numbers. Perhaps 10 or 20 per cent of Mugabe's 16 million Zimbabweans live the good life, where under Smith only 200,000 of us did.
History is repeating itself. Unless we get over public posturing, learn from the past, and demand real change. To forget the lesson of Rhodesia is foolish, and so it is to miss the real intent in Zille's tweet, even if it was insensitive.
Her tweet was one in a series of reflections on her trip to Singapore where she saw a society taking the best of its past and building on it (I don't agree though, I think Singapore is benefitting from the Chinese in the same old colonial way).
Zille herself is not a leader associated with corruption. She has no legal charges against her of any kind. No lying, no extortion, no bribery, rape, theft, duplicity. If anything her crime is she is too honest and too white, qualities that it seems do not benefit a politician.
South Africa should be talking about the continued failure of the government to uplift their people, to move on from Colonialism.
South Africa should be pulling the problem out at the root. Our problem is not racism, it's the quest for personal profit and personal gain at the expense of the whole.
History repeats itself, until we learn from it.
* DOUGLAS SCHORR is a former soldier and district commissioner in then Rhodesia. He is today a committed critic of capitalism and colonial legacies, citing them as the source of poverty in Africa. His first book, The Myth of Smith, is available for sale on Amazon Kindle as are the short stories Mr Boomslang & 7 Other Rhodesian Fireside Tales. Schorr blogs at www.douglasschorr.com.
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