Race obsession leading South Africa to ruin
Jimmy Manyi
I almost expressed my expresso this morning when I read that Jimmy Manyi is tipped to become director-general of South Africa’s department of labour. Manyi chairs the Employment Equity Commission and presides over the Black Management Forum, a talk-shop and pressure group to force racial quotas on firms. Manyi is totally obsessed with race and perceived racism, and I fear he will use this new post (if he gets it) to dictate to private companies exactly who and who not to employ.
I attended a talk given by Manyi some months ago and left feeling revolted by the extreme racial profiling he and his organisation promote. His ideas sound as if they come from some crazy nineteenth-century racial theorist. Employment equity is apparently not about trying to find a reasonable balance of affirmative action and scarce skills. It is about strict racial quotas, with females and disabled people also get a look-in. And it’s not only about blacks and whites either. No, every shade of skin has to be classified and have a quota.
Only race matters to Manyi. Not the content of people’s characters. Not their intelligence, or general knowledge. Nor their education or experience. Not their work ethic, presentation skills, management ability, inter-personal skills, vision, insight, creativity, diligence, energy, temperament, leadership qualities, technical skills or loyalty. No – just race. And certainly not competence. In fact competence is seen as a negative, because it reflects badly on the great majority of people who are not competent to do a specific job.
The architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, would have been proud of him.
So what if you can’t find enough suitably qualified people to fill certain jobs – simply change the definition of “skilled”. To Manyi, a skill is something you can learn on the job just so long as you show some potential. An example he gave was that of Hamilton Naki, Chris Barnard’s so-called “assistant”. This primary school-educated vivisection lab cleaner and janitor, Manyi asserts, would have been a heart surgeon the equal of Barnard but for being Black. To be sure, Naki’s story is an inspiring one – but working around a heart surgeon does not qualify you to become a learn-on-the-job surgeon – no matter what colour you are. Would you allow yourself be operated on by such a surgeon? Would you drive over a bridge designed by a kerbside welder who “learnt” engineering on the job?
Manyi’s tinkering with the definition of “skill” leads him to say that the skills shortage is “a myth”. And this is leading South African down a very dangerous path. We’ve already seen how the deployment of these types of “skills” to run government departments and state-owned enterprises has lead to full-scale failure and dysfunction of most of these institutions. It justifies the minister of labour to furiously threaten private companies with a “revolution”. It shields incompetence and inefficiency behind a protective wall of racial guilt.
It also costs a great deal of money as poor management simply squanders the nation’s wealth. Eskom has just posted a R9.7 billion loss, after making R33.5 billion in profit the five years previously. And it’s put down to sheer bad management. It is a management that is totally out of its depth and yet rewards itself with grotesquely large bonuses. And yes, rewards itself for replacing highly skilled and experienced white engineers and managers with young inexperienced poorly trained blacks. It is Manyi’s redefinition of “skill” that allows this sort of thing to happen.
But worst of all, the idea that there is no skills shortage, just racism, removes any incentive to correct the imbalances of the past by the one means that would actually work: education. Education in South Africa is in a dismal state, and getting worse. And it’s not for lack of money: South Africa spends more per capita than countries of comparable economic development. Could it because schools are run and staffed by people who don’t have the skills to do so? Mr Manyi would probably argue that’s it’s all a racist plot since there is no skill shortage.
The hard fact is that whites are generally reasonably educated and by and large have the necessary skills for the jobs they are employed to do. Generally blacks do not have those skills for both historical and cultural reasons. The way to fix this is not to deny this, but to do something about it. Like educating the kids properly. Like removing the ridiculous handbrake on the economy that is Telkom and getting inexpensive broadband into every home. And like providing incentives to companies to provide mentoring to young black people in the workplace.
These things can be done without damaging the economy and will ensure a prosperous future for all. Or we can let Jimmy Manyi and his race obsessed comrades lead us to ruin.
Update: Yes, the government confirmed that Jimmy Manyi is the new director-general of the labour department. Business: watch out for the racial jackboot.
Nationalisation: the politician’s route to money and power
I remember the sinking feeling I had when the details of the US bail-out plans dribbled out. Although the N-word wasn’t used, the bailout effectively resulted in the nationalisation of key companies in the US and later in the UK and other countries. Now I, perhaps naively, understood this was a caretaker holding, and the shares would be returned to the market when the company could once again stand on its own feet. But I also knew this would give the leftists of the world huge ammo to pursue nationalisation in their own countries.
And so it has been. The talk, from Caracas to Cape Town, has been that capitalism has failed and that big doses of socialism, “as practised” by the US and UK, are required. That fact that it was the failure of the interventionist mixed-economy and not of free enterprise matters not a jot to your wild-eyed socialist. Anything not entirely in state hands is “capitalism”. Ironically, the current recession comes after the spectacular recovery of the previous socialist countries, released from the thrall of communism. But time has dimmed those bitter memories.
In South Africa, the cry is now to nationalise the mining industry, South Africa’s largest industry. This is hardly surprising seeing that a left wing cabal of communists and radical trade unionists now runs the country. The ruling party itself is slightly reticent, presumably having been informed what a devastating effect it would have on the economy.
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Rose Blumkin, business legend
David Shapiro has written a fascinating and inspirational piece in The Times on Mrs Rose Blumkin, business legend and founder of Warren Buffet’s Nebraska Furniture Mart. For anyone who needs a bit of inspiration to overcome the odds, this is it.
Shapiro traces the story of an illiterate Russian girl who managed to find a job and a husband (who fled Russia before the outbreak of the Revolution). She somehow managed to follow him to the US where they settled in Nebraska. She built her basement used-furniture store into a multi-million dollar business, by superb mechandising and sheer hard work:
She and her son, Louis, who helped run the furniture mart,
worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week. She was once quoted as saying
that she came home only to eat and sleep and that she couldn’t wait for
daylight so that she could get back to business.
Wait. Inspirational she may be, but 12 hours a day, seven days a week! I certainly wouldn’t be able, nor even remotely willing to work those sort of hours. Certainly not for year after year. Well I guess Warren won’t come knocking any time soon.
I like Buffet’s warning of what happened to Mrs B to managers considering retiring: “She retired at 103 and died a year later.”
Read the article – it’s a gem.
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