ANC Chooses Enslavement Over Empowerment

That is of course a heavy title and I'll need to spend a few moments explaining where I'm coming from on this matter. In the ACDP's KZN administration we have a Shadow Cabinet in place where we discuss and form policies on the key issues facing the country. One of the challenges that keeps resurfacing is dealing with poverty in the province. This factors into the thinking of housing development, where to build transport infrastructure, pension support and the like.

Here's where the problem comes in. If I can use an analogy, a patient has an internal wound and is bleeding profusely. So the government comes in and continually mops up the blood without closing the wound. As usual, we keep dealing with the symptoms instead of the root cause.

The root cause of South Africa's poverty problem is the lack of an economy that provides jobs. If you have a steady income, you can buy your own food, pay your own rent and support your own children. Understandably there needs to be some support to get a community through a hard time while the employment rate climbs.

The problem is that employment has not increased, and at the ACDP we believe that much of this is down to the ANC's failed economic policies, like rigid labour legislation, lack of action on crime, heavy rates and taxes, centralised bureaucracy and silence on Zimbabwe. We believe in a free market economy with less government involvement.

We cannot maintain a medium-term welfare state - the taxpaying base will not tolerate it and it simply is not the best approach. The best approach is to empower the population rather than support them. You empower them not through handouts but by giving them the power to run their own lives with their own self-earned finances. The centralised welfare economy of the ANC creates a system where the population becomes dependent - becomes enslaved rather than empowered.