Zuma’s socialist fantasy
South African president, Zacob Zuma has delivered his first State of the Nation address. Well, to more accurate it was his Fantasy Nation address. Zuma is the friend of everyone – give him an audience and he’ll set out to please. Radical communists? He’ll be as Stalanist as uncle Joe himself. Capitalist businessmen? Positively Thatcherite in business-friendly assurances. Right-wing Afrikaners? They are the best (non-black) South Africans. And so on.
So, true to form, friendly Jake has set out to please everyone. Well, that’s if you like promises of goodies being dished out willy-nilly. Name the problem, and The Kangaman will dish out the goods.
How to tackle unemployment? Easy – just promise to generate 4-million jobs by 2014. And, of course, the small matter of making that 500,000 of them before December. How? Well the old socialist fall-back: public works programmes. This is so outrageously pie-in-the sky as to question if he’s not having a joke at our (great) expense. His bloated ministries aren’t even set up to deal with hiring the required armies of dead-hand bureaucrats, let alone to creating half-a-million new jobs in the next six months. Or is that… no can’t be.
And this while South Africa is in the midst of a deep recession, where jobs are being shed at a record rate.
Poverty is another focus. According to Zuma, “Social grants are the most effective form of poverty alleviation”. Great. There are already more than 13-million people – a third of the entire South African population – on social grants. He vaguely says that the able bodied should be more willing to work, but what and how remains unsaid.
And all of this is off the backs of the hard-pressed 5.3 million taxpayers. Governments do not create wealth, people do. Governments can either support individuals and companies to create more wealth (which seldom happens), or hinder them. The South African government seems to be hell-bent on destroying them in chasing their socialist dream.
Zuma made a number of other designed-to-please promises without any hint of how they will be delivered. It is no more than a grandiose wish-list – a rabble-pleasing socialist fantasy. The only certainty is that the South African taxpayer is in for a rude shock.
There is little doubt that Jake is setting himself up for failure. But he will as usual wriggle out of any blame – there is always someone conspiring against him. The saddest of all is that his supporters will buy his excuses, as they’ve always done.
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