South Africa is digging itself into a bigger hole of economic decay

9 June 2015

The pace of economic decay in South Africa is now so fast that one misses the corresponding time last year and at that time the economy was already doing wretchedly, Adv. Anton Alberts, the FF Plus’ parliamentary spokesperson on the economy says.

Adv. Alberts during the first reading debate on the Appropriation Bill for 2015 today said that it was impossible to get the country’s economy to grow in the midst of growing policy uncertainty, counter-productive economic growth plans and schemes that leans toward economic suicide.

According to Adv. Alberts the ANC pretended to be a modern Moses while it led the country to the brink of various precipices under the guise of well-sounding names such as transformation.

“The Pharaoh of Egypt had to give in after the ten plagues and acknowledge that his policies aren’t working. The question is how many of the plagues will the ANC still be ignoring? Because there will eventually be a price that the ANC itself will have to pay, despite the party hiding behind the skirt of the state.

“The first of these precipices is the fiscal precipice. It is the deepest and could claim its toll in 2026 when government, according to calculations will only have enough money for salaries and welfare. Eskom will however push us over the brink into the precipice long before that time. The other precipices are:

-  The power precipice: We have already reached it.

-  The water precipice: We are nearing this one fast. Prepare for water-shedding and the anarchy that it will be causing.

-  The services precipice: We are there already and it is merely getting deeper as transformation and cadre deployment poison the system. All due to the ANC.

-  The land and food precipice: It is not far-fetched anymore to say that widespread famine will be our fate with the ANC who, like a real Stalin, is chopping up and shredding land and wants to appropriate everything for itself. All due to communist thinking.

-  The corruption precipice: Every year we hear new plans to fight corruption. Yet it is just getting worse. The e-toll debt could have been paid off three times already had corruption been eradicated. Don’t however bet any money on this happening.

-  Mini precipices: There are many of them, underlying the larger ones, such as coal, where our mines cannot produce enough coal to keep Eskom going.

Adv. Alberts says many warnings have been given to the ANC by organisations such as the World Bank and the IMF with the simple advice to create policy certainty, relax labour legislation and support entrepreneurs.

“To date the advice has been ignored. The result of this will be that the IMF will itself have to intervene when the state collapses financially. Then the ANC will have no other choice but to listen,” Adv. Alberts said.

Statement issued by Adv. Anton Alberts, FF Plus parliamentary spokesperson: Economy, June 9 2015