I have a dream

1) All people be free to live their lives as they please as long as they do not unfairly infringe on the right of another to also do so.

2) Every citizen of working age has the real opportunity to exchange his labor for reward and if not possible that the state meets his basic needs for food; clothing; shelter and medical care.

3) It be unlawful to refer to or compel anyone to classify themselves by race or creed or gender or to favor anyone or to discriminate against or in favor of anyone on such grounds.

The sad thing about good dreams is that they seldom come true. We always awake to a lesser reality. My dream is different. It can be achieved if we are willing to change an important mindset. We must abandon our efforts to Redress the Past and instead commit our national effort to ensuring a significantly better future.

What is wrong with Redressing the Past

If we are honest about this policy and its two step children Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment and Black Affirmative Action we will concede that it has 2 purposes namely:

1) Retribution and Absolution

Blacks were understandably angry about the suffering caused to them by the inhuman apartheid system and wanted retribution .Whites felt contrite and accepted that some retribution was appropriate and assumed that if it was tolerated it would lead to absolution.

Have the policies worked? Has the anger of blacks been assuaged? Have whites experienced absolution for their sins? We all know the answer to this namely NO. On the contrary no one is getting adequate relief and frustrations are growing on all sides. Our nation’s wounds are festering as the policy medicines are not working. These frustrations are tearing us apart. Can such policies ever work? Can policies based on retribution and deprivation heal the wounds of our people? Is there anything which can in the short term possibly heal these wounds? The answer is obvious. If Whites give up all the benefits they received during the Apartheid regime and suffer the same humiliation and destitution which blacks

> had to suffer Black anger will be assuaged . An eye for an eye! It is however equally obvious that Whites will never accept such conditions. That being the case it must of necessity be accepted that it is pointless to pursue the policy of Redressing the Past for this purpose.

The truth is we can never redress the past and certainly can’t do so in the short term. Apartheid perpetrated cruelties which have left permanent and dreadful scars which are still fresh. We (black and white) are a damaged people and that is that. As history of other nations has taught us our nation’s wounds will ultimately be healed but only by time and newer better memories.

2) Redistribution of Wealth to Blacks

Whites had commandeered most of the wealth in our country and retarded the progress of blacks in a cruel and inhuman fashion. It was unfair for whites to keep their ill-gotten gains and it was fair to see that wealth redistributed. Is the policy achieving this end? The answer again is NO and for one very obvious reason namely that the deal which we South Africans made did not allow for this to occur! The right to keep the gains is in fact entrenched in our Constitution! Even if the Constitutional protection of these rights is removed (which is difficult) and even if Whites gave up all the wealth which they possess (which they wont) there would not be enough to go around. If it was all given equally to every black person no one would receive a meaningful amount of money. The blunt truth is that the cake is simply not big enough and we must recognize this!!

The policy therefore is restricted to benefitting a few fortunate black people to the disadvantage of a few unfortunate white people. The rest of the people namely the wealthy whites and the poor blacks are untouched by the policies and have had no change in their economic position. As the poor make up the majority of South Africans and as the majority of the poor are black by not pursuing a policy which is truly able to help them we are perpetrating an evil upon them perhaps even worse than the racist governments that came before. They have been lead to believe that the new South Africa will be much better for them and it isn’t!!!!

This is morally and politically both unacceptable and dangerous. Against this background the privileged few who are now participating in the racially based quarrel over the available wealth of our country can honestly be described as quarrelling over the right to sit in the first-class deckchairs on the Titanic.

Ensuring a significantly better future

The salvation of our nation does not lie in any aspect of the past .It lies in the future and more particularly lies in the increase of our nation’s gross domestic product (the size of the cake). Can we achieve this and if so how? I believe we can and if we all (black and white together) commit to this end we can do so very quickly. We will however have to once again

> change a mindset or two.

Work for All

It must be the obsession of all South Africans to put our whole nation to work. If we are going to increase our GDP we need to compete successfully with other nations and to do this we need everyone to participate .After all why would a football team field less than a full team if they have plenty of reserves on the side of the field? We must redefine the concept of wealth .It must be divorced from the receipt of money or things. Those who have jobs must be seen to be “wealthy”. This is in fact the truth. Giving a poor man a house or a farm

without the means to afford the costs of ownership is a cynical act. It dooms him to failure. Give a poor man, an opportunity to exchange his labor for reward, and he will buy his own house or farm, because he will be able to afford it. Money and things are accordingly the consequence of wealth and not wealth itself.

We must no longer see the unemployed as a “problem”. We must see them as an opportunity to grow our national product. Some nations are limited in their ability to compete by virtue of insufficient numbers of people .We are rich in this recourse. We must as a nation, be creative in the matter of creation of work opportunities and the process must be heavily lead by government. To achieve this, the Administration of Government must be strengthened .All policies fail if the administrative arm of government is weak. This should be

achieved by ensuring that all government posts are filled by the most competent man regardless of his color. Due to the policy of redressing the past and also out of understandable concern that whites within the government administration would sabotage the new government’s policies whites were hounded out and replaced by blacks. The whites left before

passing on to their successors the skills that had been accumulated and passed through the generations and which are vital for the proper administration of government .These skilled people must be encouraged to return. The poor can not be expected to suffer while inexperienced civil servants learn by their own mistakes.

Our creativity must be unlimited and in this regard we must explore every opportunity to create work for our people. Every decision of government and every discretion exercised by government at all levels should be measured against the creation of work. This would extend across the board from things such as mining permits to things as mundane as permissions to rezone properties. In every venture flowing from a government permit, care should be taken to ensure that jobs are promised and then given. The wealthy will have to sacrifice for a while and taxes will have to be increased to facilitate the funding of programs to support those who still have not been offered work. In this regard it is unconscionable for us as a nation to allow any citizen to go without shelter, clothing, food and health while others drive around in 4 by 4 luxury vehicles. Regardless of the cost this must be afforded. At the end of the day the cost paid will be cheap at the price and will facilitate significant savings in other areas of government not least of which is the fight against crime. Busily employed people have neither the time nor the inclination for criminal activities. The vast amount we now have to spend trying to bottle up an ever more financially desperate segment of our people will be freed for other more productive purposes.

Trade unions must be appreciated for what they are. They are no longer needed as political parties .There are more than enough politicians around. Unions speak for the employed and accordingly (in my definition of wealth) speak for the wealthy. Just as a wolf is a poor shepherd for the sheep so is a union a poor representative of the unemployed. Only a

unionist will argue that it is better to have no job than a poorly paid one .No poor unemployed person says that .When we have put our nation to work the unions will have a very important role to play but until then they are a potential obstacle. In fact trade unions for the unemployed should be created by government to speak for the unemployed and to represent them at all bargaining councils. This will ensure that the annual bargaining over the division of the cake between employers and employees results in a fair share being allocated to the unemployed by way of new jobs.

A Nonracial Society

As the majority of the poor people are black and as the majority of the rich people are white it is inevitable that the policies I have dreamed of for our nation will have positive effects on people who are predominantly black and be somewhat burdensome to people who are predominantly white. This will however not be as a result of deliberate racial discrimination and will be entirely a mere coincidence of applying a fair and honorable policy to a society which has been artificially structured by the apartheid system. It is a coincidence, which no South African need shy away from nor apologize for. It is in fact a coincidence, which all South Africans (black-and-white) can embrace with pride and enthusiasm.

Koumbatis is a highly respected legal practitioner in CT.