LETTER FROM THE DM168 EDITOR
In the land of the miserable and poor, the privileged remain blind
Unless we all commit to breaking the poverty trap, by doing much more than paying lip service to create jobs and opportunities for the upliftment of the poor beyond paltry social grants and charity while hiding wealth in tax havens and Swiss bank accounts, we will remain stuck in a festering pit of stagnation.
Dear DM168 reader,
Last week I attended a personal development course for an MBA I am doing at Henley University and there is something our lecturer Chris Dalton said that struck a chord with me. He spoke about personal responsibility and universal values – values that all of us humans hold dear, as opposed to the many irritations that pull us apart and get us to dig deep trenches around our differences to the “other”; differences that lead to polarisation, hate and, in their most extreme cases, violence and war. An example he used was how, when we are stuck in interminable traffic jams, we get flustered and blame everybody around us but never admit that “we are the traffic”. Everyone who drives a vehicle at rush hour is the traffic.
This made me think about how we always see ourselves as “us and them” in South Africa. They (the majority of South Africans) voted for the ANC, so they are to blame for the messed-up state South Africa is in. But are we not all South Africans, irrespective of whether or not we voted for the ANC? If the ANC, over 30 years, has always won the majority of votes despite years of pillaging state coffers, what does it say about us South Africans – and that includes the South Africans in opposition political parties who have been trying and failing to win votes off the ANC for the past 30 years? What is it about opposition leadership, narratives, opposition behaviour and opposition offerings to South Africans that has seen the closest percentage vote to the ANC in every election since 1994 to be the Democratic Alliance in 2014 (at 22.2%)?
There is a fascinating book titled Political Cleavages and Social Inequalities by Amory Gethin, Clara Martínez-Toledano and Thomas Piketty that analyses the links between voters’ political preferences and socioeconomic characteristics in 50 democracies around the world, including South Africa.
The graph below shows their analysis of how between 74% and 86% of the country’s bottom 20% income earners have consistently supported the ANC in every election from 1994 to 2019, while between 8% and 35% of the country’s top 10% of income earners supported the ANC. Interestingly, the top earners voted the lowest for the ANC at 8% in 1999 when Thabo Mbeki took over from Nelson Mandela, and the highest at 35% for the ANC in 2004, Mbeki’s final term, and 2009, Jacob Zuma’s first term.
Why does the official opposition, the DA, not attract as consistent a number of low-income or no-income voters, who comprise the majority of South Africans? I would argue that it is a middle-class organisation, perceived by the majority of voters as a party for the wealthy that tried race-based fronting by black leadership to lure black voters and then condescendingly called that attempt a failed experiment once its more conservative white voters moved to the Freedom Front Plus in the 2019 election. The DA analysed the 2% drop under Mmusi Maimane as a fail, but has it or any opposition party cracked the code that the ANC has long worked out through its social democratic offering to the poor to win over and woo the majority of low-income and no-income voters? Not yet. Will the DA’s stasis as a minority middle-class party open the way for the radical, communist-sounding but capitalist-living EFF to take over the gap as the ANC grapples to turn around and self-correct from its State Capture carnage? Or does the answer lie elsewhere?
A fascinating article by Carol Paton in News24 points to backroom machinations by some doyens of big business who seem to be trying to deal with the dead weight of the DA and Cyril Ramaphosa’s ANC by suggesting one of their own to take over the leadership of the DA from John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille, and to woo disaffected ANC voters to the DA. The person in question is former banker Roger Jardine, who recently launched a new party, Change Starts Now. His political credentials lie in his father Bill’s UDF history and a sojourn in 1995, at the age of 29, as the director general of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology.
What is gobsmackingly ridiculous about this (if Carol Paton is correct about these machinations) is the notion that a much wealthier and more educated, slightly more melanin-enhanced face with a tangential link to the anti-apartheid struggle would be able to woo the majority of poor and low-income South Africans to vote for the DA more than John Steenhuisen and the current DA leadership crop can.
Come on, does having too much money really make you so blind to the class and racial inequality realities of South Africa? Does money make you believe that the poor are stupid? Steenhuisen, to his credit, has admitted to Paton that he met with Jardine and the funders, and walked away when the ultimate outcome became unclear.
It appears that ANC stalwart Mavuso Msimang also managed to persuade Jardine to build Change Starts Now, even though Jardine’s funders wanted him to woo DA voters. The funders also seemed to not be interested in Jardine working with Songezo Zibi’s Rise Mzansi because the former Business Day editor and writer would not be coerced into joining the DA-led multiparty coalition. I have gained even more respect for Zibi for not bowing down to big business pressure.
For anyone who wants to know who benefitted the most from the ANC’s 30 years at the helm of government, have a look at the table below of income inequality in South Africa from the World Inequality Report from 1820 to 2022. The top 10% of the wealthiest South Africans were losing lustre under apartheid, dropping to their lowest ebb between 1976 and the mid-1980s. Life under the ANC from 1994 to 2022 has been pretty peachy, with the richest 10% almost matching the great mining heydays before the Nationalist Party took over in 1948 and the richest 1% also doing dramatically fine, thank you.
According to data by the World Inequality Lab, 3,500 adults earn more than the poorest 32 million people in South Africa and while black South Africans have outnumbered whites in the richest 10% of the population, the gap between South Africa’s richest and poorest hasn’t narrowed.
Dear 1% and 10% of the country’s wealthiest. Here, in a few words, is the secret. It’s not about them, it’s about us. We are the traffic!
Unless we all commit to breaking the poverty trap, by doing much more than paying lip service to create jobs and opportunities for the upliftment of the poor beyond paltry social grants and charity while hiding wealth in tax havens and Swiss bank accounts, we will remain stuck in a festering pit of stagnation. Every political party needs to convince voters that it will change the lives of the poor for the better. And better still, do it.
In our lead story today, associate editor Marianne Merten unpicks the performance agreements of key ministers in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Cabinet. These are the ANC head honchos who promised the majority of South Africans a better life for all. Some fared better than others but, on the whole we, the people, deserve more. Share your views with me at [email protected] and I will publish them on our letters page.
Yours in defence of truth,
Heather
This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.
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Alongside your graphs of income gap, also publish the population grown per race. That will put everything in proper context for even school children. Add to this the millions of illegal foreigners in SA and the impact it has on unemployment, even a pre school learner will grasp….as an MBA scholar you should grasp it best so hopefully you will publish another article which take all the facts into consideration….
Spot on Deon.
Amazing how “facts” are selected.
To blame the rich for getting richer and the poor for getting poorer is not the solution. If the population grows faster than the economy, as is happening in South Africa, nothing will change. If the majority of the population continue to produce children with no responsibility for their upbringing and education, they will stay poor.
China was in the same situation and did something about it by restricting childbirth. Our government does the opposite and pays child benefit for every child born, encouraging childbirth.
Get priorities right and the rest will follow.
What a disappointing take on where we are as a country, and who’s to ‘blame’ for the loss of our country’s prestige and competitiveness, the destruction of our national assets, and the failed approach to the economy that has, master plan after master plan, killed growth. Unemployment and State dependence are what follows. It’s a typical socialist playbook to ping ‘wealth’ and ‘the wealthy’ as the people who are at fault and must ‘do more’. What exactly should they do, and to be clear, Robertson is taking a swing at suburbanites and DM readers, those in the 10% (or 1%). They can’t pay more as the tax burden on individuals and households is so onerous and skewed that it very likely unsustainable. They mostly will vote against the ANC who are directly responsible for all of the mess. They will continue to push back against still more ruinous thinking and policies (consider the thousands of objections, submissions and proposals provided on and against the NHI), they will continue to push for control and responsibility to fix what the National Government can’t or won’t (consider the DA’s requests in the Western Cape to take over passenger rail), and they will continue to speak out and against ANC failings in less and less polite ways (consider Dricus du Plessis’ comments post his fight interview that called our Government the worst). The ‘wealthy’ are not passive, and are not to blame. This collectivist ‘we are the traffic’ is cute, but completely unhelpful.
It’s rare for me not to find anything to add. Heather, we love you, but seriously? This is drivel and it’s nonsense. Unadulterated.
Heather – you underestimate the massive social contribution through the NPO sector that business makes. Secondly, the gap is not the measurement that is pertinent. Rather look at the rise in income per capita of the poor during the growth economy. Zuma and his cronies destroyed that. Trying to build labour intensive businesses in SA, with Unions, labour legislation and BEE is close to impossible. The ANC has successfully produced generations of poorly educated manipulable people.
I totally agree….and definitely about not just giving charity donations and grants but creating jobs and meaningful opportunities. Many “white” priviliged South Africans think that since the end of apartheid it’s OK to be affluent and not care about “them”…and that we don’t have to feel guilty anymore…because apatheid is gone.
Very interesting facts and all par for the course on our socio- political playground.
At the risk of causing ire at the mention of what I continually see as worthy social theory, Karl Marx ( not communist please leave that old hoary alone I’m referring to his macro socio economic theory) explained how society – in this case your “traffic” – operates within the economic dispensation that they find themselves in. In other words, he explains that in a capitalist society or economic dispensation, in order for it to thrive, all the social institutions create the conditions for that thriving. So apropos to you wanting the middle class to act out of their overarching system within which they find themselves, it is structurally a big leap.
This conceptual perspective is in line with natural systems thinking and where the “complexity” lens currently lies.
His insights are gaining more traction as modern theorists realise how systemic his concepts were… and its is revealing when you know that he was hobnobbing with Darwin at the time of structuring his social theories.
Anyway- the point I make for thought here is that if we want change on the ground, we will need the chaos that creates regime change because the current neo- liberal capitalist regime requires poverty to thrive. Thats modern economics 101.
As a footnote to this, a construct used by Marx was that change will occur when the people (your ” traffic” ) become “disenchanted” with the current regime and move away from what they see as harmful. I see that happening before my eyes- people moving away ftom mainstream education, mainstream food and medicine production, mainstream thinking … . It looks to me thst we are indeed in the chaotic period where we are disenchanted with poverty, inequality, extractive economic growth. I suspect that is where change will occur. That is what Marx predicted and its looking more and more like a reality.
Thank you Heather for this excellent piece. The one factor that seems to have been overlooked and which begs investigation is the birthrate of the different economic groupings. My understanding is that the poor are the most prolific which, if true, compounds the problem of achieving greater economic parity.
Touche!
Two things Heather:
i) Is it wrong to be wealthy with a Swiss Bank account? If I believe that my government will definitely plunder my retirement funding, am I wrong to invest in economies where this won’t happen?
ii) What do you feel we, the traffic jam, should individually do to ameliorate the rapid growth in disparity under the present government (per your income inequality chart above) where most of us in the traffic jam actually vote to perpetuate the widening of the gap?
Just asking for a friend in the traffic jam.
Why use pre tax income in that graph instead of real income, and while they fix that, add social spend received. Tax is as real a deduction from income for the ‘wealthy’ as free housing, school, health, university, electricity, water and the grants are real additions to income by covering what would otherwise be a family expense.
Social spend is over R1.4 trillion so allocating that across the bottom 30 million earners, amounts to over R40,000 per man woman child per year. So R200,000 for a family of five.
Excluding that from income is incompetent, dishonest or intentional. Or all three.
Fascinating piece of writing. The suggestion that the better off are morally obliged to do more for the less economically blessed is a noble sentiment. One has to agree that the captains of industry have ensured their continued beneficent ways by playing the game of political patronage.
The unpalatable truth was Nelson Mandela’s gifts by the rich at the dawn of democracy. Was it deserved? Undoubtedly but it set the tone for the avalanche of largesse going forward.
For 30 years big business has played lip service to the need for true reform. The co-opting of government ministers onto boards and offering plum directorship roles is legion. The financial couple one being a minister of finance which eventually landed the top roles are but a easy example. Of course Cup Cake receiving “BBEE” shares in blue chip companies is another. What was the quid pro quo? Cynical me offers the narrative that we the elite welcome you to the table as long as you do not cramp our style with too much pesky structural reform that will actually benefit the formally disenfranchised and economically marginalized. Monopolies grew larger and incredibly wealthy at the expense of Joe Citizen. Corporate salaries significant whilst the wages of the workers were chump change in relation to management. Parity to world salaries to retain these supposedly gifted businessmen was the mantra. Performance bonuses are still easily manipulated by the canny corner suite occupant. These companies in public regularly complained as we initially inched toward the abyss. Crisis after crisis occurred, corruption was uncovered which was undoubtedly enabled by many of the elite either directly or with the looking the other way tactic. Financial institutions did business with these thieves and chartered accountants signed off on books. Lawyers defended the rogues with great enthusiasm whilst they shared the rarified elite spaces and establishments with no problem. No doubt unencumbered by morality or ethics. Had they been, surely a divorce both from a business and socal perspective would have been a valid response?
All the above fits into the authors narrative of a traffic jam.Yes we are part of it and grumbling with the occasional road rage outburst is chastening except for one element. The true elite are the one’s who have created the jam and remain unperturbed as to raise a metaphor are flying above the chaos, well insulated from the melee.
The insertion of Jardine’s link to the UDF brings up the role social society played in the demise of Apartheid. It also references the alliance and building of the bastion of power to ensure no real and meaningful change would ccur. Throw in the ANCs early recognition of the threat of a multiracial strong opposition , and the universal aggressive tactic of racial labels along with opportunist black leaders clamoring for the top post, and when failing using the Yes but I was dumped because I stood up to the white faction(Zille being the easy reference point) and many blacks seeing this as incontrovertible proof, and not the cut and thrust of typical party politics.
How does those not in boardrooms and at the coal face of influence make the change?Certainly not by the ballot which the proportional representational model has failed us so badly .We are milked dry by government taxes, monopolies, fuel taxes, bank policy which is almost draconian and failed state support in terms of education ,health and policing which means our ever diminishing salaries are insufficient. Once again how do we find our way out of the traffic jam not of our making?
It is fallacious to blame capitalism and the wealthy for poverty. If the ANC government created the right environment for economic activity to flourish, many of the grant recipients of today would be earning wages. Those ‘high net worth individuals’ that you castigate would use their wealth to create jobs and spread the wealth.
All good and great, the author however makes the critical error like all the authors of such articles and that is that voting is not only a right, but also a responsibility! It is not the DA’s fault that people vote for the ANC who keeps them impoverished. It is the people’s choice. From 1994, the people wanted a governmunt who increased the gap between rich and poor.
Some very naive assumptions going on here!
The income of 3500 = 32 000 000 is always a stat that will grab one’s attention.. but what is also true, the first person in SA to scrape together minimin wage also earns more than what, say some 15- 20 000 000 unemployed people? Wow, that person must be living like a king…. oh wait..
So maybe the problem is driven by the wrecked economy leading to mass unemployment. In the west Capitalism definitely has room for correction, but in SA hardly so. SA faces a trifecta of stupidity, ignorance and arrogance at every level of society.
Perhaps the 28 MILLION receiving social grants could daily go on their knees and thanks the tax-payers, some of whom break their backs to earn money where sometimes 42 percent goes to the government to (mis)spend. Some tax payers have to hold down more than one job just to make ends meet, while grant recipients simply have to register and collect once per month. So if we’re talking perspective, show some.
I would argue that in the land of the miserable and poor it is also they who are blind. Repeatedly voting for the same ANC politicians and expecting different results ranks with that famous definition of insanity.
What more evidence do they require to change their voting habits, they won’t because they are blind.
This analysis is at best naïve. However, I have to agree that the DA is really not that much more capable of seeing the reality of ordinary South African’s lives. Out of touch, and until they pack up their egos and allow one of the many, many competent black leaders to lead the party, they don’t get my vote. Why the power-hungry and incompetent losers in most societies rise to the top of politics will always be a mystery to me. And I’m also talking about just about 200 other countries in the world, starting with the USA, the UK and Europe.
I have read your very pertinent article and then below some of those not only part of the traffic but the very ones who cause major blockages by blocking an intersection as they only consider themselves first and foremost. Me first and to hell with the rest. When is enough money enough? I blame every executive and CEO who takes home millions instead of paying their employees more. And no, you are not the only ones that can do your job. There are thousands of more decent people who could.
You would be surprised at how many middle class South Africans are assisting others with education, housing and healthcare. Your analogy of the traffic jam is superficial – the reason we are part of the traffic jam is because there is no adequate public transport system because the State refuses to tackle the problem. A partnership of economic growth and social progress is needed to start reducing misery on the scale South Africa faces. You cannot lift yourself up by your own bootstraps when you don’t have shoes. Social progress, as distinct from economic growth, is about annual increases in housing the poor close to work, improving the schools they attend, reducing crime in their areas and providing better healthcare. It is all about how the economic surplus – the total net profit before tax of business and the combined tax payments of individuals – is allocated between government spending on public administration, funding capital expenditure on infrastructure, increasing human capital, handing out welfare and, not to be forgotten, fraud; business allocating its surplus to re-investment, dividends, tax and ‘social responsibility’; individuals meeting their tax liabilities. In South Africa, government spending on a bloated bureaucracy, massive welfare and extensive fraud is too high and on infrastructure and human capital is way too low. Maybe business could spend more on social progress but, under this government, social progress is a bottomless pit.
Based on the tax I pay I already work and pay for the poor. There seems to be a middleman/woman somewhere rerouting it for personal benefit. He/she sits in an ivory tower, not in a traffic jam. Ms Robertson, perhaps you should consider reading your MBA at one of the top 10 universities in SA.
The DA and John Steenhuisen forgot to relay a message of good wishes to Bafana Bafana. Perhaps they simply forgot that the national team are currently playing at a significant continental competition or they lack the political nous to read the room.
Again DA and woman Helen Zille bashing today. It is the businesses of SA who create and can create jobs, not the government because they do not value stability and investment. You are also doing a lot of capitalist bashing. Socialism will not create the type of jobs to grow the economy of the country and attrack investment.
The fact that you can write words, does not make you fit for an MBA
Woman and DA bashing going on. Why continue blaming everything on Helen Zille like Julius Malema, And promoting Rise Zansi and other new parties. It is business who has been creating jobs to grow the economy and not the state. Just look at Cuba. But it is so simple to blame capitalism out of your high chair. The country must be stable to attract investors, and the socialist state and present government is continuing with policy and practices which are destructive and not conducive to grow the economy and create jobs. Who of us have Swiss bank accounts? Whe are paying taxes amids to keep the country floating amidst financial hardship. This is disingenius
Good morning Heather …
I know you guys in the “media” are hugely busy but would appreciate you post my comment
or explain why you hesitate to do so?
Best regards
RobG.
Great data to use to support the inequality debate, are the multi-dimensional measures of inequality. Stats SA produced an excellent report in 2019, that explores the inequalities in labour, social standing, service delivery and of course, financial wealth – which is the measure that oddly dominates the narrative, but doesn’t begin to tell the full story. It is freely downloadable here, and I encourage anyone interested to give it a read: https://www.afd.fr/en/ressources/inequality-trends-south-africa-multidimensional-diagnostic-inequality