Wealth redistribution is no solution to poverty, political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki told a conference on the world economy in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
”Redistribution can actually accentuate poverty and create social conflict,” he said.
”I was one of the first to oppose black economic empowerment [BEE], because if they’re going to redistribute wealth, who is going to get what? Where are you going to get that wealth from?”
Broad-based BEE has only benefited top African National Congress (ANC) leaders, Mbeki said.
”It benefits the people in power, but what about the poor? BEE is more of a problem than a solution.”
He suggested that the government looks at wealth creation rather than ”fight the ghosts of the past. The ANC expends a lot of energy with BEE in an attempt to correct the past.”
The only way to bridge the gap between rich and poor is to sort out the education system and concentrate more on the development of small and medium businesses.
”BEE stops black people from becoming entrepreneurs,” Mbeki said. ”Black people are not necessarily against capitalism,” he said, adding that it is only the model of capitalism that the apartheid National Party promoted that black South Africans did not like.
He was, however, unsure whether the ANC could market capitalism to the electorate.
”The ANC leaders are afraid of the unions — groups like Cosatu [the Congress of South African Trade Unions] and the SACP [the South African Communist Party] — they think these groups deliver a huge constituency, but they don’t.”
He said that the ANC has been ”very good” at establishing a political system and the Constitution, but has not done well in economics.
”I never expected them to because they have never run a business.”
He said that at least he and his brother, President Thabo Mbeki, had worked in the family’s spaza shop as children. ”But when my brother gets kicked out as head of government, you won’t have anyone there who has actually managed even a spaza shop.” — Sapa