Trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau offers a glowing resume of his New York address to the SA-US Business Forum (“Message to US is that SA is open for business”, September 30).
SA is open for business. Investment is encouraged. Let’s stimulate growth for a prosperous future. Yes, minister, you sound so reasonable. Who would hesitate to invest in such a welcoming country?
But wait, where is Mr Hyde? The ANC can change in an instant from Dr Jekyll; into revolutionary mode, the national democratic revolution (NDR) and the obsession with race stratification.
Mr Hyde wants the country to be “demographically representative”. And what does that entail? A cloud gathers above the euphoria. We ultimately must have “equality”; in other words SA’s minorities must not have greater ownership and control of the economy than their numbers permit.
So if white or Asian-owned firms were to grow rapidly — at the invitation of the minister — the resulting “excess value” would be seized by the government for redistribution. Who, local or foreign, with the skills and resources, would invest in the face of this “revolution”?
Or will the magic potion of the NDR be discarded before it can wreak vengeance on the body politic? Robert Louis Stevenson’s dark novella ends with the good Dr Jekyll, distraught, in the same dead body as the destructive Mr Hyde, beside an empty bottle of potion.
Willem Cronje
Cape Town
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