There can be no doubt whatsoever that the euphoria around the so-called miracle of the rainbow nation, South Africa, has completely evaporated since 1994. It was killed by rampant crime, corruption, decaying infrastructure, the abuse of the judiciary and many other actions of what is still a terrorist movement, the ANC.
This should not surprise anybody who's been reading the newspapers for the past 15 years since 1994. It has gradually become clearer and clearer that Nelson Mandela was not the Messiah; that Uhuru would also not put a chicken in every pot, and that South Africa was no different from any other African country in terms of its capacity to disappoint and disillusion.
What is also becoming clearer, is that as the financial tide went out worldwide, those swimming without trunks have been exposed. Here I am specifically referring to the beneficiaries of BEE, black economic empowerment, and affirmative action, AA. BEE is a form of forced racialized distribution, in terms of which white corporate assets are forcibly transferred to empowerment beneficiaries.
There are fundamental problems with BEE. One is that it is akin to winning a lottery. People who didn't take the risk, who didn't work their butts off, who just got handed wealth on a plate, are notorious for the way in which they waste such wealth. BEE is funded by loans, and these loans depend on the share prices of the donor companies going up. Exactly the opposite is happening at present, however. Many BEE transactions are about to fail because of the stock market collapse and crashing share prices.
Another aspect is that BEE attempts to short-circuit market forces. There is no relationship to the business acumen (if any) of, say, Smuts Ngonyama, and the millions he received merely for knowing the right people. It is therefore not productive in the sense that an entrepreneur's actions are productive economically. It is rather a form of tax on corporations. BEE lowers corporate competitiveness and makes the country as a whole less competitive.
Related to BEE is affirmative action, in terms of which millions of blacks were appointed to especially government jobs, not because they had the skills or experience, but simply as a reward for being black. Predictably, the chickens have come home to roost in this regard too. Companies which are under pressure are going to look at unproductive dead wood, and guess who're going to get the ax?
The artificially created black middle class was never sustainable. It depended on parasitizing white skills, i.e. white workers carrying AA appointees, and on rising stock prices to carry BEE beneficiaries. South Africa is therefore facing a situation whereby BEE beneficiaries are going to go from instant millionaires back to instant Joe Soaps. Companies are going to start thinking twice before appointing somebody just because he is black.
The country is going to sit in a situation where millions of newly-empowered blacks (empowerment is a fallacy done this way in any event) are going to have to go back to the townships from whence they came and to hand back their luxury cars.
My prediction is that they won't accept this lying down. Revolutions are led by the bourgeoisie, not the poor. A second, more violent revolution than 1994's is becoming a real possibility in South Africa.
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