The leader of the United Democratic Movement (UDM), Bantu Holomisa, apparently unfazed by his punishment at the polls, has taken the opportunity of Workers Day to savage the government’s economic policies and to call for a national indaba — on the lines of the Codesa talks — to negotiate new ones.
“Now is the time to remove any doubt about our economic direction and the commitment of government to protecting South African jobs and businesses,” he said on Thursday.
“We can’t afford another economic policy experiment by the new government, nor can we tolerate more of the same because they have presided over 15 years of jobless growth when the international economy was expanding.”
Holomisa said that Workers Day is celebrated in the midst of an international financial crisis that may now be deepened by threat of a global flu epidemic.
“In such times we cannot continue with an economic policy approach that amounts to folding our arms while massive job losses occur,” he said.
There has, he said, been almost no progress in terms of black people gaining ownership and control within the economy. In the meantime the gap between the rich and poor is escalating on a daily basis, resulting in high levels of poverty.
“The majority of citizens urgently require a genuine economic liberation, not the current BEE [black economic empowerment] which is merely distributing some of the existing wealth among the new elite while the masses continue to receive only crumbs.”
The UDM leader called once more for an urgent economic indaba on the scale of Codesa, where the nation can find consensus on basic economic principles and direction.
“Such an economic indaba can define the roles of all the economic actors, specifically the role of the state in the economy,” he said. “The UDM remains convinced that government must do more.” — I-Net Bridge