The African National Congress is scaring away prospective investors from South Africa with ”outlandish tirades” against so-called white capital, not seeming to realise that money knows no colour, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday.
”In the past week, ANC leaders have launched a barrage of verbal attacks against ‘white capital’, large multinational mining corporations and foreign investors,” he said in his weekly newsletter on the DA’s website.
”President Thabo Mbeki led the way in his letter in ANC Today last week with his now-infamous attack on Anglo American chief executive officer Tony Trahar.
”Also last week, the new president of the ANC Youth League, Fikile Mbalula, told his organisation it needed to attack ‘white capital’.
”’Capital is still in the hands of whites who are wealthy and stinking rich’, he said.
”This week, during a debate in the National Assembly on black economic empowerment, Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy Lulu Xingwana attacked ‘rich white cartels that are continuing even today to loot our diamonds, taking them to London, that are continuing today to monopolise the mining industry’.
”This campaign of invective against the business sector may simply be careless posturing. One cannot help but wonder, however, whether the ANC is hoping to use these attacks to ‘soften up’ the private sector in order to ensure its compliance with new empowerment charters,” Leon said.
However, the South African economy needs investors — in manufacturing, information technology, agriculture, financial services, telecommunications, retail and transport.
”It is those investors that the ruling party is scaring away with its outlandish tirades. What the ANC does not seem to understand is that money knows no colour. Investors are not interested in racial ‘transformation’. They are interested in profit, pure and simple,” Leon said.
Mbeki and the ANC have a responsibility to their voters, and to the people of South Africa, not to behave in a way that hurts the country’s economic prospects.
”We simply cannot afford to be hostile to investors, rude to foreigners, or associated with the kleptocratic policies of [Zimbabwe President] Robert Mugabe,” Leon said. — Sapa