If we’re lucky, DA will strengthen ANC’s economic brain, and ANC will broaden DA’s social heart
19 June 2024 - 17:56
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The problem for the ANC up to now has been that it sees “business” (the engine of growth) as the enemy — a thing to be attacked and milked, not supported. It literally took the lights going out and the railways disappearing before the ANC could bring itself to work with citizens and organisations with the skills, organisational culture and (in some cases) capital, to make a difference.
Now the ANC has to work with “the enemy”, including in the cabinet, it is going to require a shift in its world view. This will be an unpleasant experience and will probably lead to further splits in the organisation and its alliances. That’s all excellent news.
The problem for the DA has been that it forgets (or, at least, communicates as though it forgets) that people are poor and desperate now. They are hungry now. Talking about how growth will lift all boats in future doesn’t address the people who will go to bed hungry tonight.
Free markets are the most efficient way to distribute resources in the long run and in aggregate. As economist John Maynard Keynes observed, in the long run we’ll all be dead. Aggregate growth doesn’t help people stuck in dead-end towns in the middle of the Northern Cape, for example.
Fixing education will have the biggest impact on our collective prosperity, but even if you fixed everything today it will still take 12 years for properly educated kids to make it through to matric. So what do we do with the millions of people who don’t have the skills to do something that is in economic demand today? They need support and opportunities, and that will necessarily come at the expense of economic efficiency.
If we’re lucky, the DA will strengthen the ANC’s economic brain, and the ANC will broaden the DA’s social heart.
Johan Prins Via BusinessLIVE
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: Best of both worlds
If we’re lucky, DA will strengthen ANC’s economic brain, and ANC will broaden DA’s social heart
Jabulani Sikhakhane correctly summarises the tensions within the government of national unity (“Come one, come all, to see the GNU perform high-wire act”, June 19).
The problem for the ANC up to now has been that it sees “business” (the engine of growth) as the enemy — a thing to be attacked and milked, not supported. It literally took the lights going out and the railways disappearing before the ANC could bring itself to work with citizens and organisations with the skills, organisational culture and (in some cases) capital, to make a difference.
Now the ANC has to work with “the enemy”, including in the cabinet, it is going to require a shift in its world view. This will be an unpleasant experience and will probably lead to further splits in the organisation and its alliances. That’s all excellent news.
The problem for the DA has been that it forgets (or, at least, communicates as though it forgets) that people are poor and desperate now. They are hungry now. Talking about how growth will lift all boats in future doesn’t address the people who will go to bed hungry tonight.
Free markets are the most efficient way to distribute resources in the long run and in aggregate. As economist John Maynard Keynes observed, in the long run we’ll all be dead. Aggregate growth doesn’t help people stuck in dead-end towns in the middle of the Northern Cape, for example.
Fixing education will have the biggest impact on our collective prosperity, but even if you fixed everything today it will still take 12 years for properly educated kids to make it through to matric. So what do we do with the millions of people who don’t have the skills to do something that is in economic demand today? They need support and opportunities, and that will necessarily come at the expense of economic efficiency.
If we’re lucky, the DA will strengthen the ANC’s economic brain, and the ANC will broaden the DA’s social heart.
Johan Prins
Via BusinessLIVE
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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