What can fold SA? Candid look at economic future, potential regrets

At a risk of being throttled, I’m going to say what many are afraid to say because it may not be “politically correct”.

In a not too distant future, we are going to regret as a country when there would be no-one (whether South African or not) interested anymore in investing in this country and therefore, no jobs would be created and those available would run dry.

We will also regret the fact that instead of creating the conducive environment for industrialisation for ourselves, through skills training and development, innovation and creativity, we concentrated our efforts on wage demands, even when we saw that jobs are diminishing by the day.

In fact, very soon, the biggest employer will be the state and the state depends on our taxes to do what has to be done.

That too, is fast diminishing.

We will regret the fact that we, those who elect political parties, chose to end our responsibilities at the ballot box and outsourced our responsibilities of keeping the politicians in check to the politicians themselves.

It is this outsourcing that allowed the grand corruption that saw the collapse of state institutions and infrastructure.

We, the electorate, have for some reason, forgotten the level of employment these institutions and infrastructure had created.

We somehow even glorified and, to this day, continue to glorify these destruction of our economy.

All we are talking about is the fact that we inherited the economy – successful or otherwise – but we are unable to point to the improvement of the successful economy of the fixing of the defective one.

We will regret too, that we have a trade union movement which has and continues to live in the past.

There was a time, during the dark days of apartheid, when beneficiation was key to our liberatory objectives.

That idea has been abandoned since 1994.

Have you ever wondered why there is more investment in warehousing as opposed to factories and machinery in this country?

This is because it is more viable and profitable for any investor to import goods and services for our economy than spend their money on factories and machinery.

By importing goods and services – and guess where from, south Asia, in the main – the investors no longer have to employ thousands of people, they no longer have to be in confrontation with the trade union movement, their running costs are reduced to the minimum.

In fact, many have just realised that they can now run their business without even being there.

They can now do their businesses in Johannesburg from the comfort of their luxurious penthouses in Cape Town.

But, too, what we don’t ask ourselves is, who are the owners or shareholders of these new importing enterprises?

If you look deeper, you will, most probably, find that our leaders, even trade union bosses, are beneficiaries of these businesses.

We will soon be yet another African failed state, if we are not one already.

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Monama is an independent commentator and a former Azapo leader