Before the parliamentary sitting where you were elected as president of South Africa, the Chief Justice of this country prayed to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit for wisdom and for this country.
During your investiture you stated that you will preserve the country’s Constitution as the person responsible to do so, and you declared this with the words: “So help me God”.
We believe that many people fully realise the scope of the responsibilities you have taken upon yourself. Firstly, you have given an undertaking before the God of Heaven and Earth and to every citizen in South Africa, including minority groups, that you desire to be president for everyone in this land.
In a democracy a government has two very heavy responsibilities – firstly to ensure safety and security for all the country’s peoples, and to protect the sovereignty of the land. Secondly, your government must establish a climate within which the economy can flourish. This means that a political environment must be created so that investors, both local and international, will feel confident and comfortable to put their money into South Africa.
Today in South Africa it is troubling to realise that any level-headed, thinking person can see that in both these areas of responsibility, you as a government have failed the country. You must now decide what your legacy will be. Will you continue along the path along which the ANC, since its coming to power, has plundered this country, has driven skills away and has turned a well-run working entity into a dysfunctional state. Under the ANC, unemployment and poverty have increased. What more must market signals do to show you that your policy direction of embracing socialism and communism – which failed world-wide – has brought about the same catastrophes here in South Africa. Everyone now realises how the economy has negatively reacted.
As part of your policy you have developed a strategy whereby land must be handed over to black people. Apart from the fact that this policy is based on lies and distortions of the history of land occupation in South Africa, you continue with this transfer of land despite a failure rate of 91%, according to your own admission. Mr. Ramaphosa, no person can empower another person. This is a choice which everyone must make for himself, to use his God given talents to the best of his ability. The tragedy is that under your administration, a culture of entitlement has developed where everyone “demands” everything. This attitude leads up a dead-end street for South Africa.
The long and the short of it is that the price of your policy approach has become too high a price for South Africa to pay. Crime is now completely out of control. Fifty-three people are murdered every day in South Africa. Farmers who provide food for the country’s fifty-four million people are disproportionately assaulted and murdered at an unacceptably high rate. The kernel of this problem lies four square at your door, Mr. Ramaphosa. You display no political will to publicly speak out about this unconscionable situation. You just move along with denial and a deafening silence. This silence gives the impression that you condone the crime in our country.
This brings us back to the responsibility that you accepted as president of this country. The fact that crime is out of control and that you do nothing about it makes you in fact an accomplice to the violence and killing. You are failing your constitutional responsibility.
How many more times must the land’s economists point out that the key bottlenecks of South Africa’s political landscape - the state parastatals - can only be properly addressed through the growth of the economy. This means that correct economic principles must be implemented and nurtured. Not you or anyone else can change the basic rules of economics. The market’s power and influence will not be tampered with. You get it right or the market throws you to the wolves. This latter locality is the resting place of many of the ANC’s “achievements”.
A FEW PRACTICAL THOUGHTS
1.Drop your policy regarding the advancement of one race group. Black Economic Empowerment has until now only benefited a few, while in the greater South Africa, poverty has grown. It is in any event a slap in the face to your own people because this policy implies that your people cannot achieve anything under their own steam.
2.Give the occupants of the RDP houses their own title deeds. At present everyone is sitting on dead capital. Give them title deeds and you will then link this action to working capital and people who are prepared to take responsibility for their future. They can use this title deed as collateral to obtain financing for a variety of things.
3.Confirm the principle of private property rights and the free market system as the premium method through which wealth can be created.
4.South Africa wants to hear from you about the country’s crime. You can’t handle this on an off the cuff basis and hope it will all go away. If you don’t get rid of this terrible scourge you should realise that there is no chance of your leaving a legacy of which people in this country can be proud.
5.With 67% of the country’s citizens living in cities you should realise that the greatest asset available to this country is its commercial farmers. These farmers produce food for every South African. A responsible president would do everything in his power to nurture these people and to ensure their safety and security.
6.Do away with your policy of expropriation without compensation. Continually talking about this step is possibly the weakest signal you can give the market, let alone taking action in this regard.
7.Your remarks that corruption will be rooted out is a positive approach. Unfortunately, it is perceived that this problem is being handled with kid gloves and there are no concrete moves in the pipeline to take action against those cadres who are in positions of power. You must now combine action with the words spoken.
8.Agricultural crime is now playing an extremely negative role in rural areas. You must condemn this verbally, using your own words. Apart from farm assaults and murders, violent racist assaults are occurring. In addition, the plundering of infrastructure on farms, the theft of produce, stock theft and the stealing of costly input elements such as seeds, fertilizer and diesel must be condemned.
9.Commercial agriculture creates employment for 834,000 workers. This means an amount of R2 919 000 000 which farmers by way of salaries for these workers deliver to the economy. Every farm which goes out of production because you as the state have earmarked that farm for land restitution, or if a farm murder has occurred on that farm, immediately negates the possibility of further work on that property. Together with a minimum wage paid which in most instances is not economically justifiable for the employer, work opportunities are also lost. The unemployment and poverty which increases every year under your watch is a ticking time bomb. Who speaks for the unemployed? Your minimum wage policy takes away their opportunities to become part of the employment market.
10.Mr. Ramaphosa – your country needs economic growth. Every policy speech and every piece of legislation should be tested on the grounds of what effect it will have on investors. Investment is the first step up the growth ladder. Investments only occur where there is confidence. You don’t have to wonder if you are doing the right thing – the market will show you immediately if you are on the right path. Reflect upon your policy directions, because your current approach doesn’t work.
Everyone is responsible for his own legacy. Carry on along the path which the ANC up until now has walked and you will be complicit in ensuring that South Africa will land on the ash heap of failure and destruction. There is so much talent in this land that is available for you to use. You have chosen rather to make a racial issue out of this – get rid of your approach to cadre deployment and use the best skills that are available, whatever the race. You will create a policy environment that nurtures confidence in our land that will attract the necessary investments we need. This will eventually guarantee growth.
This should be your main goal. Take up the responsibility to govern, and then govern! Rid yourself of the “struggle” mentality and please stop trying to save the ANC instead of saving South Africa! History will judge you on your actions. You have the choice either to build or to destroy. Whichever path you choose will stand in the annals of this country – failure or success. A Greater Power than any human being will pass the final judgment - for you and for me.
For more than 122 years, TLU SA has endeavoured to create and ensure a suitable policy environment for the farmer in order that he can successfully produce food. The skills and indeed the willingness are evident and he is eager to help make South Africa a success story. It will be your choice to utilise this knowledge and good-heartedness, or not. TLU SA would like to be a constructive force to build for the future. But this can really only happen when the correct economic principles are applied towards this effort. South Africa and the world are waiting for your statesmanship to reveal itself. Or will you go down in the annals of history as simply the leader of an outdated “struggle movement”?
The answer is in your hands.
Yours sincerely,
Louis Meintjies
