Barbara Hogan: lone voice of reason
In the sea of irrationality that is the ANC (South Africa’s ruling party), Barbara Hogan stands out as its lone voice of reason. She is the Public Enterprises minister, which oversees the country’s state-owned enterprises. In comments to a Parliamentary oversight committee she warned unprofitable state-owned enterprises that the new administration might be prepared to sell them if they continued to under-perform as the state could not afford to bail them out indefinitely. Nothing wrong with that, you might say.
Well this has caused a furore within her own party and its allies. The ruling alliance has adopted left-wing, Marxist economic policies which favour state ownership of “strategic” business, in what is known as the “developmental state”. Certainly, privatisation is absolutely ruled out. These state-owned enterprises, rather than doing any state “development” are hopeless drains on the taxpayer. They are largely inefficiently and poorly run by unqualified managers who owe their positions the ANC. It is estimated that R100bn ($12bn) has been spent on propping up these entities between 2004 and 2008.
Yet the comrades in the government, largely educated in the Soviet block and brought up in an ideological tradition of Marxism, will not concede that loss-making, dysfunctional state-owned companies run by Party hacks are not the great drivers of the economy they say they are. This is simply ideological blindness of the obvious. Hogan is the child who exclaims that the Emperor has no clothes and that is the reason for the furious reaction. Policy and ideology override evidence and reason.
Barbara Hogan has shown herself to be a pragmatist and remains true to her principles; her sense of justice and fairness that has seen her endure horrendous treatment from the Apartheid government. She is undoubtedly an extremely brave woman. She bravely criticised the government as a cabinet minister when it denied the Dalai Lama a visa to attend a meeting in South Africa at the request of China.
Like the Dalai Lama incident, she will be slapped down and made to at least water down her comments. But that doesn’t detract from her obvious innate rationality. And bravery.
Comments
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
-
Recommended
