A Jacob Zuma presidency would be disastrous for South Africa’s economy and yet the business sector remained silent on the issue, Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said on Friday.
In his weekly newsletter on the DA’s website, Leon urged business leaders to speak out against the possibility of the African National Congress deputy president taking up the country’s presidency as the ”useful idiot” of the left.
With his fraud and corruption case struck off the roll, Zuma’s presidential aspirations had been given a turbo-charge, underscored by the extraordinary events at the recent Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) national congress, wrote Leon.
At the congress it had become clear that Zuma was the darling of the left, as tripartite alliance partners defied President Thabo Mbeki’s closest associates.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was booed, anti-Mbeki songs were sung on the floor, and Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi was so fiercely heckled while attempting to defend government’s economic policies that he was forced to cut short his speech.
Leon said these events confirmed what had been known for a while — the left, long left out of the ruling party’s inner councils, was on the ascendant. Those who believed in sweeping and old-style Stalinist intervention in the economy were getting a grip on policy that was in danger of becoming a stranglehold.
The widely-held perception that Zuma would be a hostage of the left was given credence by Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, who said he would remind Zuma, if he became president, ”there is no such thing as a free lunch”.
Leon said Vavi would expect the new president to nationalise ”exactly what the Freedom Charter said. The mining industry, the banks, the leading monopolies … We want the state to play a much bigger role in the economy than it does now. That is the bottom line”.
Leon said it was not unreasonable to view Zuma as hostage to the left, and as president he would be under enormous pressure to carry out their favoured policies.
This was reflected in the final declarations of Cosatu’s congress, one of which urged ”collective ownership through the state, worker control and co-ops, including nationalisation of mining and other commanding heights of the economy as provided in the Freedom Charter”.
”These resolutions restate the kind of centralised command economy which, with the collapse worldwide of the communist project, is no longer seriously pursued anywhere, besides in such isolated — and utterly unworkable — pockets as Zimbabwe and North Korea,” he said.
”What makes the declaration all the more astonishing, however, is that these arcane ideas should receive such currency from Cosatu at a time when South Africa’s economic competitiveness is waning.”
According to the 2006 Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum (WEF), South Africa dropped five places to 45th out of 127 countries surveyed — now trailing emerging markets such as India, Thailand, South Korea, Chile and even the Barbados.
”It should be obvious, then, that South Africa’s economy desperately requires a long-term drive for growth, rather than Cosatu’s short-term populism — a commitment to more labour flexibility, not less, with fewer burdens such as tax on business and a concerted drive to make our economy more, not less, attractive to overseas investors.
”In the light of these troubling developments, it is disheartening to note that the spheres of society who would be most affected by a possible shift to the left are the most silent.”
No notable private-sector leaders were raising their voices in protest. They should stop wringing their hands in private, and be outspoken in their objections in public. They should come out with all rhetorical guns blazing against this threat to South Africa’s economic future, he said. Leon said market reforms that unleashed the potential that would make South Africa a winning nation had to be encouraged.
”Given our latent wealth in human as well as material capital, we should be aiming frankly and fearlessly to be the most competitive economy in the world,” he said. – Sapa