The way the government is implementing black economic empowerment seems like an exclusive club for card-carrying African National Congress members, United Democratic Movement president Bantu Holomisa said on Wednesday.
Addressing a joint UDM women, youth and students’ national congress in Bloemfontein, he said the government is busy ”empowering” its youth and women’s leagues to participate in business transactions.
This appears to be part of a strategy ”to implement President [Thabo] Mbeki’s obsession with creating a new middle-class elite comprised of and answerable only to the ANC,” Holomisa said.
”We see the same strategy being applied to the unions, particularly the Congress of South african Trade Unions, who have through their investment companies and political ties to the ANC sacrificed their independence and moral authority.
”On many fronts we are witnessing the ANC’s growing desire to usurp all power, at all costs. It is a hunger for power and control that has reached the level of an all-consuming obsession.”
Holomisa also called for greater government intervention in South Africa’s economy, saying the government should do more to promote local jobs and job creators.
”The root of the unemployment crisis is the ANC’s stubborn insistence on implementing an economic policy that pleases foreigners and destroys domestic jobs,” he said.
”They blindly cling to a policy that says government should not become involved in the economy. Yet countries across the world intervene in their economies to protect and promote their domestic businesses and jobs.
”From the US to India, Europe to Japan, governments practise free-market policies which recognise that government has an important role to play in the economy.”
Holomisa accused the government of having ”lopsided” priorities. It should spend less on arms and more on infrastructure and skills development, he said.
”While the ANC government scratches its head about the lack of foreign investment, it should be investing in South Africans.
”Their policies are destroying thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs because they are copycatting a neo-liberal economic model without considering South African realities.”
Holomisa said he was not preaching nationalisation, but protection of local industries.
”People tend to get scared when we talk about economic intervention. But they must remember that we inherited a state where the previous government has intervened 100%,” he said.
”The ANC has since made a turnaround of 360 degrees and plunged the country into unemployment.”
Holomisa said the country is witnessing the ANC Women’s League signing petitions for clemency for Nigerian single parent Amina Lawal, who faces a death by stoning for having a baby outside wedlock.
”A worthwhile cause, no doubt, but what about the thousands of women who are raped and murdered every year within our borders?
”We have in short a government that suffers from a staggering selective morality.” — Sapa