Tag: Temba Nolutshungu

The country’s economic junk status is a direct result of policy intransigence. Current government decisions appear to be based on a lack of consideration for the lessons of history. Economies are fragile. Persistent adverse policy-making breaks down an economy, reduces productive investment and economic activity, and causes untold harm to citizens.

It is an unmitigated moral tragedy that in the year of celebrating what would have been Mandela’s 101st birthday, the incumbent government has betrayed him on an issue about which that he felt strongly. This is the resolution by parliament to make it constitutionally permissible to expropriate land without compensation (EWC). Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, the resolution does not exempt anyone, not any racial group or entity.

Freedom is the most important human right. Over the years, people of all nationalities, races and cultures have always migrated from oppressive regimes to countries where they enjoy greater freedom. The most liberal countries – like South Africa on the African continent – attract the most refugees. Liberty gives meaning to human existence; it is what we yearned for when we were under the yoke of apartheid. We sought true freedom; not only civil liberty but also economic liberty.

In February 2018, the African National Congress (ANC) government of South Africa joined with the radical left-leaning Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to approve a motion in parliament to request the Constitutional Review Committee to 'undertake a process of consultation to determine the modalities of the governing party resolution'.

The unfettered liberty for individuals to pursue their socioeconomic aspirations so long as there is no force or fraud entailed in their endeavours should be the cornerstone and point of departure for all government policies. This principle should also be the litmus test in reviewing existing policies in order to expunge bad ones from the statute books.

Researchers exhorting the South African government to implement the NMW (National Minimum Wage) reported that they could find no studies showing high job losses from the institution of minimum wages. How did they not uncover the link between the 2007 decision to impose the US Fair Minimum Wage Act on the US dependencies of Puerto Rico, American Samosa and the Mariana Islands?

The capacity and need to act in one’s own self-interest is a primordial instinct, irretrievably embedded in the DNA that prescribes human conduct. This is why the experiments of social engineers who seek to ‘create’ the selfless socialist man or woman always end in unmitigated calamity. Self-interest defines human conduct, whether individual or collective. To act in one’s own self-interest does not negate the interests of others, but enhances them.