One of the things I most admire about Archbishop Desmond Tutu is that he is an equal opportunities offender. A few years ago he offended then President Thabo Mbeki for saying that there was a lack of debate inside the ANC, given that it was verboten to talk about succession inside the ANC or to question the President’s views on any number of topics without expecting some serious, flame-throwing, nuclear slap-down in return. Mbeki then, as was his wont, wrote a rather sarcastic letter in response, which I would summarise (only somewhat in jest) as telling the Arch: “You know f#k-all, and I know everything”.
Now the former Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chairperson and Archbishop has caused another stir by dusting off a recommendation of the TRC which proposed the imposition of a “prosperity tax” to raise money for redress. Addressing an audience in Stellenbosch, the former Archbishop stated that white people should campaign for the imposition of such a tax as reconciliation gesture. He explained that although today’s white population was not necessarily directly involved in apartheid, they nevertheless derived benefits from an unjust system through opportunities, lifestyles and access to services. “South Africa is infamous as one of the worst examples of inequality between the rich and poor,” he said.
The FW de Klerk Foundation, doing what it does best, jumped to defend the economic interests of white people and shot down this idea. In doing so, it made statements that are so obviously wrong — as a matter of Constitutional Law - it made me wonder whether the Foundation is not being advised by the Chief State Law Advisor or by those clever lawyers who told the President that section 8(a) of the Judges’ Remuneration and Conditions of Employment Act is constitutional. The Foundation, predictably but depressingly, rejected the idea of a reparations tax imposed on white South Africans and then made the following quite astonishing set of claims:
One of the principles [on which the post-apartheid society is based] is non-racialism and the idea that we should no longer adopt laws that are aimed at one or another racial group. It would accordingly be unconstitutional to impose a wealth tax only on one of South Africa’s racial groups. It would require the reintroduction of racial classification and of many of the other demeaning racial distinctions that were associated with apartheid. It would also be unfair. Would whites who opposed apartheid be expected to pay the same as those who supported it? Would there be different tax scales for whites who supported the ANC, the DP and the old National Party? And what about the many blacks who held well-paid positions in homeland governments? To be constitutional, a wealth tax would have to be applied to all South Africans regardless of their race.
As any second year Constitutional Law student (as well as any regular reader of this Blog) knows, the statement on the unconstitutionality of a wealth tax imposed on white South Africans is pure nonsense. Maybe the folks at the FW de Klerk Foundation have been reading too many of Ken Owens’ letters in Business Day and forgot to read either the text of the Constitution or the applicable Constitutional Court judgment on affirmative action. If they had read section 9(2) of the Constitution as well as the judgment in Minister of Finance v Van Heerden they would surely have avoided embarrassing themselves by making false statements about South African (as opposed to American) Constitutional Law.
In that judgment the Constitutional Court, (in a judgment written by Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke) held that equality is something that must still be achieved in South Africa and that section 9 of the Constitution places a duty on all organs of state ”to protect and promote the achievement of equality” by implementing corrective measures that target groups disadvantaged by past discrimination. We cannot merely pretend we now live in a non-racial society and therefore ban all references to race in our law because if we do we will merely be entrenching white privilege — which is what the FW de Klerk Foundation’s position essentially boils down to.
The Court pointed out that “when our Constitution took root a decade ago our society was deeply divided, vastly unequal and uncaring of human worth”. Many of these “stark social and economic disparities” (much of it linked to a person’s race) will persist for a long to come. According to the Constitutional Court, corrective measures which target specific race groups are therefore constitutionally valid and in many cases even constitutionally required in order to “start a credible and abiding process of reparation for past exclusion, dispossession, and indignity within the discipline of our constitutional framework”.
The implementation of race-based measures (like the imposition of a once-off wealth tax on white South Africans to advance reconciliation and make token reparation for the wrongs of the past) is therefore not an exception to the general guarantee of equality or to a general endorsement of non-racialism. Such measures are not “reverse discrimination” or “positive discrimination” but are rather “integral to the reach of our equality protection”.
For race-based corrective measures to comply with the constitution, one must ask whether “an overwhelming majority of members of the favoured class are persons designated as disadvantaged by unfair exclusion” and whether the measures “constitute an abuse of power or impose such substantial and undue harm on those excluded from its benefits that our long-term constitutional goal [of the achievement of equality] would be threatened”.
In the Van Heerden case the Constitutional Court had to decide whether a Parliamentary pension scheme, which — for a period of five years — provided better benefits to parliamentarians who first joined parliament in 1994, was constitutionally valid. Mr Van Heerden, an old apartheid era parliamentarian, complained that the scheme discriminated against whites because the vast majority of new parliamentarians in 1994 were black and those who served before 1994 were mostly white. The court rejected this argument, pointing out that Mr Van Heerden was still going to be far better off in terms of his pension than any parliamentarian who entered parliament in 1994 for the first time.
One question was whether the affirmative action scheme might not comply with section 9(2) because some white people also first joined parliament in 1994 and was benefiting from the scheme. Moseneke stated that as long as the overwhelming majority of those targeted are from the disadvantaged group (or, by implication and conversely, as long as the overwhelming majority of those disadvantaged are from the former or continuing privileged group) the scheme would meet the criteria for a valid scheme. So while placing a wealth tax on all people earning a certain amount would be constitutionally valid, so would a tax only aimed at white South Africans who earned a certain amount every year.
A once-off wealth tax imposed on white South Africans who earn more than a certain amount as a small gesture towards reconciliation and redress would almost certainly pass the Van Heerden threshold because whether one supported apartheid or struggled against it, one invariably benefited from it if one is a white South African (whether born before or after 1994). If I had been born black and poor, I almost certainly would not have gone to University and I would almost certainly never have been a Law Professor at UCT, earning quite a nice salary, thank you.
This does not make me feel guilty, but it does make me feel humble and aware of the injustices of the past which I benefited from. It also spurs me on to do my small bit (no matter how small) for reconciliation and redress, not out of a misplaced sense of moral superiority (how can I be morally superior if I am just another human being with my own faults, petty and probably unexamined prejudices and any number of other foibles), but this is the only way I can make sense of living as a white person in this strange place in which our apartheid past lingers like a bad smell — despite all the denials of many who benefited from it.
The fact that some whites were too lazy or stupid to get rich during the days when affirmative action only benefited white people, is of course irrelevant for this argument. (Of course today we still get affirmative action for whites in the form of rules that require children to live in the area which serves as the feeding area of certain schools who happen to be well resourced and well run or the rules of schools which say that if one’s parents or siblings went to that school one would get special treatment in admission to that school.)
But not only is a wealth tax on white South Africans who earn a minimum amount of money constitutionally valid. It is also an important and welcome idea that must be supported by all right-thinking South Africans with even a smidgen of a conscience or common sense. (By saying this I am not claiming to be better than, or morally superior to, anyone else – I am merely suggesting that whether for reasons of conscience or for pragmatic reasons, it is the right thing to do.)
Why not impose such a tax of — say — 2% or 3% of one’s annual income for a period of a year or two and then divert that tax into a special fund, administered by a respected panel of experts with the brief of funding and administering projects that would begin to address the shockingly bad facilities at many government schools frequented by the poorest of our citizens — a state of affairs indisputable caused by apartheid.
How many school libraries could be built with that money? How many fully stocked laboratories could be built with that money? How many soccer fields and pavilions could be erected with that money? How many new computer labs with internet access could be provided to students who now can only dream of having access to computers and the internet? To avoid the argument, offered by some white people, that such a scheme would be a waste of money ”because ‘they’ (always wondered who ’they’ were and if ‘they’ included white businessmen who rake in obscene bonuses paid out of the profits made possible by exploiting workers) will only steal the money”, the money could be administered separately by a well-respected panel or independent institution, headed by Mamphele Ramphele, for example.
The problem is, of course, that some white people — out of shame or ignorance or maybe a bit of both — do not want to admit that white South Africans almost all benefited from apartheid vis-à-vis black South Africans. (I have always thought that many of those who attack me and charge that I am ashamed of being white, are projecting their own sense of suppressed racial shame onto me.)
Some benefited directly through affirmative action for whites which reserved most government and many private sector jobs for whites and boosted the education of white children by spending vastly disproportionate amounts of money on the education of white children. Others benefited indirectly, by living in a society where cheap black labour was always available to look after children and clean the toilets of even relatively poor whites or by being born white to parents who benefited from apartheid and could therefore provide a better life for their children.
Before we all accept this obvious fact, show a willingness to face up to it and begin to do something about it, and resist the temptation to want to sweep it all under the carpet because of embarrassment, misplaced anger or ignorance, we are never going to be able to embark on the true road to reconciliation. Insisting on reconciliation based on a denial of the past is not doing us any good. Such a “reconciliation” is no more than an attempt to rewrite the past in order to try and ensure that the laughable but very deeply entrenched notion so central to white identity — the idea of white moral superiority — remains intact.
I am dreaming of a world in which the notion of moral superiority based on race has no place. In this world — in which every human being has an inherent moral worth but (perhaps influenced here, against my will, by my Calvinist upbringing) where human beings are never perfect — making claims about the moral superiority OR inferiority of an individual based on their race is so absurd and immoral that anyone making such a claim, defending such a claim or implicitly relying on such an assumption has forfeited the right to be taken seriously. And in yours? Where are you going to stand in this war of ideas, my fellow white South Africans?
I was, and still are, a beneficiary of apartheid and would be prepared to donate to such a fund.
Pierre maybe you could start one – maybe an independent trust – with no government interference?
Dear Professor
After our first election in 1994 a specia ladditional tax was levied on taxpayers earning above a threshhold. The tax ran for two years. I remember this because I had to pay it.
I was under the impression that this tax was to be ringfenced and applied to address some of the injustices. I thought that this was the right thing to do.
This tax seems to be forgotten, or perhaps the years and my age have clouded my memory and confused me.
I would apprreciate it very much if you or one of the subscribers to this posting can confirm what the special tax we paid was for.
Thanks very much
Philip
Prof de Vos: I don’t think the Van Heerden matter is a particularly good example, because the change of law (whilst arguably aimed at advancing the rights of previously disadvantaged) in that case did not bring about a ‘penalty’ imposed on white persons, ‘just for being white and because they have (arguably) benefitted (are still benefiting) from apartheid. I think the comparison goes a little far. The imposition of a ‘penalty tax’ on white people might well be argued to be racist and not in line with the vision of equality in s 9 of the Constitution. Would such a law pass the requirements of s 36? I think the latest concession by the Arch in the Sunday papers, that he did not mean that only white people should be so taxed, but that he meant that all rich people should be so taxed, presents the more ‘constitutional’ view.
Then, something else:
“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of the officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome becomes bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance” – Cicero – 55BC.
What have we learnt in 2066 years?
I generally don’t have much of a problem with the idea of a once off tax for wealthy whites. However if this is implemented then all policies such as BEE must be discontinued, you can’t have your cake and eat it.
Then further to that, what guarantees do we have that this once off tax will go to where it is meant to go? We’ve seen a large proportion of our taxes go into the back pockets of our politicians.
I must point out that a lot of this stolen money could have already been used to address the wrongs of the past. We would be a in a far better place today if all money had been used for what it was intended for.
This is why white people get pissed off with suggestions like this. ANC has had 17 years to use a hell of lot of money to start making a difference. 100 million rands used for a kissing festival? That money could have been used to start a fund for helping black youth start businesses or something similar. That is just one example out of many.
Whilst this sounds very honourable, I am yet to hear the perspective/expectations of the the “To Be” beneficiaries. We must not repeat the the common mistake of deciding for the poor and voiceless. I hope this is also not an easy way out of Nationalisation or a future license to continue GREED.
I am yet to be convinced that this will serve us better than existing initiatives such as BBBEE , AA and EE if they are implemented properly with enforceable targets.
I would be happy to donate a part of my income towards a fund which would have the power to demand competent government and ensure that normal tax revenues are used for their intended purposes.
If you can figure out a way to create and administer such a fund, please let us know. Otherwise I fear that any extra revenue generated would merely go into the massive pockets of the New South Africa’s privileged overclass.
This tax already exists in the form of the 40% marginal rate income tax most whites pay. The government needs to create jobs (like most whites are doing) and to get off their corrupt asses, stop stealing and stop wasting this tax money.
Most blacks pay sweet fuckall.
You cannot build a nation by taking from one group to give to another lazy group.
The only place my money is going is overseas with me.
Pierre, this is so typical of the Jannie Jammergat that you are.
I suspect the word “DONATE” is also fuelling all the demands that are being thrown around may be some have forgotten why they have to pay in the first place.
@John Roberts
Most whites pay at 40% marginal rates? Wow, that is certainly news to me.
I think an imposed wealth tax on white South Africans will be so negatively perceived by whites that it will undermine all goodwill created.
Again, maybe an independent fund?
Also, many white South Africans have made vast contributions to NGO’s and other projects which have gone undisclosed. Does this not risk further alienating people?
It is certainly a bitter pill to be a young working person barely managing to pay a bond on a small house, a loan on a small car and then have to pay additional tax? Understandably, a small house, a car and a job in SA makes one a relatively wealthy person.
Whites and apartheid – Really?
2011-08-15 08:00
Peet van Aardt
I, as a white person, benefitted from apartheid and I still do.
There, it’s off my chest! After I declared this on my Facebook profile I put on my recently bought Springbok World Cup 2011 jacket and went for a walk down the street. I entered a restaurant and ordered a coffee. Decaf.
I expected something to happen.
I don’t know if I thought the walls would come crashing down, or the pothole in the street would widen and an army of men dressed in red would climb out and go on the rampage. Hell, maybe I thought Dan Roodt and seven men dressed in khaki would bash through the door, abduct me and drive off in two double-cab Hilux bakkies.
Nothing happened.
The waitress came and asked if everything was OK. When I yelled “Yes!” she raised an eyebrow and retreated behind the counter. She was merely enquiring if I’d like another cup of coffee – black or white?
Race debate
Desmond Tutu’s reported “attack” on whites last week erupted into another race debate. Some white people apparently lost their respect for the Emeritus Archbishop because he dared to utter the words: “Our white fellow citizens have to accept the obvious: You all benefitted from apartheid. But that does not mean that all are responsible for apartheid.”
Other commentators praised him for saying what all the blacks have supposedly been feeling all this time.
The underlying message from both sides, though, was that “the one still hates the other”.
I dare say the majority of people commenting on Tutu’s remark did not listen to his lengthy speech in its entirety. It was delivered during a book launch at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (Stias). What the white bashers who jumped on the ox wagon fail to mention in their mini revolt against Tutu is that he started his speech by first thanking everyone in Afrikaans, and even cracked a joke in Afrikaans. He also had some very harsh words for them fat cat politicians in their expensive cars.
Desmond Tutu did not express any hatred towards whites. If there was ever a man who did not hate, I think it’s safe to say it is the man from Vilakazi Street.
Nor did Tutu tell a lie about the whites.
We did all benefit from apartheid. And we still do.
Time to wipe the slate clean?
A friend of mine illustrated it perfectly: If one part of society had the opportunity to attend schools where the teachers weren’t striking most of the time, if they could study with electricity instead of next to candle light, and if they could afford to go to university (albeit with loans or extreme financial sacrifice), buy clothes in shopping malls and spend holidays at some lovely destination (some in their holiday homes), then yes, that part of society had been privileged by the system that made it possible.
And that part of the population was white.
But today, 17 years into democracy – is it not time to wipe the slate clean and regard everyone as equal, another friend of mine asked? (Enter that Microsoft advert where the people browse on their cell phones when they should be engaging in more constructive things; that one where they keep on asking: Really!?)
Thus the answer is simple: No.
Because 17 years into the New South Africa means that the first generation of “equals” haven’t even finished school yet. And the vast majority of their parents are still on an unequal level, and so too their grandparents and in some cases their great grandparents.
Three hundred and fifty years of inequality cannot be fixed in 17 years. And it should not be expected that those who were oppressed now all of a sudden forget about the past. We cannot “get over apartheid” and so we shouldn’t. It happened, fo’ sho’.
Make peace with the past
What I do believe we should do is make peace with the past: Whites did benefit from apartheid and as long as we own our second properties on the coast, as long as we occupy the majority of top positions in business, have our own alternative to public transport and as long as there are coffee shops and restaurants with almost exclusively white patrons, we still do.
I’m proud to be white. I will not apologise for what happened in the past, because it is in the past. I do, however, admit that it was wrong and that I came off better than millions of other people. I also hang my head in shame for the way us whites try to nullify the past. It happened. Admit it, accept it and get over it. Like Tutu said: It does not mean that it was all our fault.
A word to the wise though: do not interpret the criticism of one group’s way of dealing with reality as approval of how another segment is dealing with it. South Africa is not doing as well as it should. Some people in government are ridiculously incompetent and their focus seems to be on the wrong things.
And even though there’s nothing new about a corrupt person in power, we should not resort to the notion of two wrongs making a right.
‘Crippled by guilt’
I just fear that such an evil standard was set during apartheid, that it is impossible to move away from it just yet. And yes, that system of screwing over others for personal gain was implemented by us whites in the past. But some of us can’t admit to it. We keep on pointing fingers at the faults in the current regime.
Tutu said it best: “Some are crippled by shame and guilt and respond with self-justification or indifference.”
Amen, tata. We whites clearly don’t understand the consequences of apartheid.
Now, let me order another coffee and keep an eye on that pothole and the restaurant door…
- Peet van Aardt is the Community Editor of News24.com. Follow him on Twitter.
@ PdV
“… I almost certainly would not have gone to University and I would almost certainly never have been a Law Professor at UCT, earning quite a nice salary, thank you.”
It is a splendid thing to lead by example, Professor. May I suggest that you resign from your chair and re-apply therefor, insisting that the advantages you admit you obtained by virtue of white and male be discounted. You must insist that any African/and or female applicant that can be said to be qualified for the post be preferred over you, even if they are clearly less academically distinguished than you are
Having taken this brave step, you will have excellent standing to challenge the other whites who so utterly dominate SA legal academia (just look at the contributors to the current SALJ!), follow you good example.
Pierre, I am opposed in principle to the concept of reparations — in the form, for example, of the Apartheid Reparations litigation in the SDNY.
But I am fairly sure that a racially-based tax would not survive scrutiny.
Dr Mouse is correct in saying the Van Heerden is not the best analogy. One could make quite a strong argument that there are less intrusive means of achieving legitimate goals than a racially-based tax — for example, a corporate tax surcharge. Also, would not a tax, say, on the top 5% of individuals overwhelmingly fall on the shoulders of “whites” anyway?
If I were convinced that it would make a difference, I would be much more willing to support such a tax. However, I am far from convinced that an additional contribution, paid to a government body from income of white South Africans, would make a meaningful difference to the lives of the average black South African.
Further, the advantage I have over (most) black South Africans is education and experience. My father was a university academic, and I went to a good school and got free tuition at university – which I used. I could not divest myself of this advantage now, even if I wanted to.
Although I now make a good living, I don’t have the kind of money that would be a lot if spread around (according to Malema’s characterisation, I’m like Tokyo Sexwale – I owe the bank a lot of money;-).
Finally, I also take issue with the concept that I “benefited from apartheid”. As a child, for some periods in the 70s and 80s, I lived in the USA and Germany. I was probably better off there than I was in South Africa – without cheap labour/hired help. Had I stayed there, I probably would have been in a very similar or better situation to that in which I find myself here. My situation is not a result of apartheid. If the majority of South Africans were in a position to participate fully in the economy, I might have more competition, but I would also have more potential clients.
Are these also apartheid payments
http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2011/08/15/buffett-tax-me-and-my-mega-rich-friends
In the absence of a population register, how are you able to prove that I’m white? Hypothetically speaking, if I were to contest my whiteness in an attempt to avoid paying this tax, how will the state prove that I’m indeed white?
The Arch is full of it – like our esteemed blogger.
As quite often happens, Gwebecimele has the best grasp on the issue (although he cannot always act in accordance with his appreciation of an issue…)
“Gwebecimele says:
August 15, 2011 at 11:58 am
I hope this is also not an easy way out of Nationalisation or a future license to continue GREED.”
The Arch senses confrontation in the offing. Nationalisation. Redistribution of land. He is trying to intervene. Mitigate.
The Arch does not have the backbone to confront the protagonists. Just ask them the questions I have on this blog.
“What are the fruits going to be of the destruction of our agricultural sector? How much land is Sipho in Protea Glen going to get?”
“With 14 million welfare dependents in this country, who is going to ensure the grannies of Ivory Park get their pensions the second month after nationalisation of mines when capital has taken flight and many businesses closed down?”
Has anyone here seen the Arch take responsibility for the poverty and deprivation that is the result of the structural unemployment that was the consequence of sanctions and disinvestment?
@ Heywood
Home Affairs keeps a population register.
@ Philip Amos
It was called a Reparations Tax and amounted to 3% added to both PAYE and company tax. Reparations tax started in 1995 and was due to run for 5 years.
Funny thing is, after 2000, it was never dropped, because by then everyone had forgotten about it.
This is a perfect example of how practice and theory differs, let me tell you a little joke proffessor, one day little Johnny goes to his dad, says hey dad, what is the difference between theory and practice, his dad says go to your mom, ask her if she’ll sleep with the neighbour for a million bucks, Johnny comes back and confirms: mom says she’ll do it then his dad tell’s him to ask his sister the same question and again Johnny is back with the confirmation. Johnny’s dad explains to him that whilst in theory they’re millionairs in practice they’re sitting with two whores in the house.
Now I’d really hate to offend you prof with about as much caution as you yourself had placed on that sentiment when you wrote that article, but lets keep it real OK, in la-la land where you don’t smell the stench of corruption under the pretense of injustice of the past bull shit as a justification to discriminate blatantly against the only people who works every day to pay various different kinds of taxes to the government of the day to not only assist in what ever it’s cause is, but also maintain infra structure and render services.
Maybe you should do a little introspection before you come and waive your self rightious finger at white South Africans who happens to be the most taxed citizens on this planet.
Well said – and enough said, John Roberts. To “Jannie Jammergat” de Vos – stick to law; you obviously have zero understanding of economics and even less of ethics. We know your salary is being paid by govtN which is the real reason for your brown nosing. Perhaps you should make way in the spirit of EE or BBBEE?
Pierre, should I be offended at being labelled ‘stupid or lazy’ because I chose to nurse rather than make splodges of wonga during Apartheid?
What about all the thousands of stupid/lazy white people who worked for NGOs, Black Sash, the ANC underground during Apartheid? Many of them are, today, living off miniscule pensions?
Regarding AA during apartheid: It was not AA for whites, it was AA for Afrikaners like yourself.
How different is this scheme/donation from Nongqause or the mirrors, bicycle,watches that were paid for our land?? What happens after the donation??
One transaction and all is forgiven. MY FOOT.
Gwebecimele it is that exact mindset amids the countless hours that you spend blogging on this site for instance whilst your employer pays you a salary that made you so vulnerable in the first place to have been discriminated against, set yourself free, think white and get serious.
How many straws does it actually take to break a camel’s back?
I am opposed = I am NOT opposed.
Facts the Arch should consider:
There are 4.8 million caucasians (by last count) in the country.
Two million of them are children, and another half a million don’t work, or are pensioners.
So, out of 5 million taxpayers 2 million are caucasian.
Perhaps an extra half a billion, or even a billion rand could be creamed off them. But why bother, considering that, out of our 700 billion rand budget more than 2 billion is estimated to be fruitless and wasteful expenditure by the AG.
Back to the Reparations tax that commenced in 1995 … how much of that has gone to building libraries, laboratories, schools, playing fields etc, Pierre?
Pierre De Vos,
Do you hate Thabo Mbeki so much so that you choose to ignore that in 1998, he said exactly what the Arch is saying only 14 years later? Tutu has the benefit of hindsight which Mbeki did not have. I would also have you know, that what Mbeki said in 1998, is now said to have relevance even in the US.
Instead of acknowledging Mbeki’s foresight, you instead try the best you can, as you always have, to rubbish his (Mbeki) name by suggesting he directed profanities at Tutu, which he (Mbeki) never did.
Same wine in different bottle, somehow tastes better to spineless people like Pierre de Vos.
I think that you are a shameless, shall we say…. charlatan!
Playing fields
I am ambivalent so I will confine myself to some practical issues:
• The management of SARS emphasises the value attached to a viable tax regime. A tax aimed purely at whites will provoke a strong negative reaction. This will lead to an adversarial tax climate which will damage improving tax morality.
• What are the administrative implications of defining race for every tax payer because we will all have to be racially specifically re-categorised?
• How will corporate taxpayers be categorised because there cannot be a blanket exemption
• What about all those foreign white people who have immigrated to South Africa since 1994
• What about all those many whites who enjoyed the full benefits of apartheid but have died since 1994. Will their estates / successors have to cough up? They should not be exempt
• What about all those many white people who have legitimately transferred much of their wealth abroad and
• What about those who paid a heavy indemnity penalty on their foreign holdings
• I have seen a number of references to the RDP linked levy imposed in the 1990s. Will those who paid be exempt
• What about the many white South Africans living abroad with no intention of returning but who have taxable funds arising from investments locked in SA by virtue of exchange control. Reciprocal international tax treaties cannot be ignored
• What about charitable donations to needy black causes and which are on record with SARS. Would there be offsets?
Not really as simple as it seems?
Brilliant piece Prof.I am with you 100% on this one!
Excuse me you self righteous zealot
I only have my Matric. After YEARS of trying and training myself I am in a position to work in IT and take care of myself almost.
No I don’t earn enough for a new car,I drive an old skelonk that my parents had saved up for 20years to get working for the State. I stay in a Single bedroom “apartment” with mould on the tiles and discoloured paint.
I don’t earn enough to buy furniture or anything else. If I have a sudden unexpected expenditure it has to be scrounged up or put on my well overused Credit Card that I might be able to pay off in 5 years if no new surprises hit me.
You can freely take the 1-2% of my salary you wish to take and shove it up your back-end tailpipe and revel in the feeling till pigs fly. It’s shameful that men like you would support such faulty ideas just to suss your own guilty conscience.
I am not rich,I am not poor,I am BARELY scraping by and I sure as fuck will not have 6 children to support till I can righteously afford to do so. Fuck you sir
Michael Osborne says:
August 15, 2011 at 13:56 pm
Wow!
Rather a big ‘Oops’?
Dear Pierre. Your article deserves much comment. I can only add a few points:
1) I have never felt any ‘guilt’ or ‘shame’ for being white. In fact, I feel I should be called European – its where my parents come from! I may have been born here but I am not an African neither is my culture
2) The middle class white person probably pays the bulk of the taxes in the first place. Please explain why this is any different and how the funds would not be mispappropirated like so much of our tax money?
3) Yes, I benefited from apartheid, how should I have behaved differently. Emigrated as a baby?
4) My mother worked as a physio in witbank in 1965. There was a separate ward for blacks. That hospital is closed today. Run down and mismanaged. Point is South Africa is the most developed economy in Africa partly because of the expertise that the conqueror brought here. Sorry, facts are facts. Please call me a racist. History is what it is.
5) The white man here still has an enormous role to play in the future economic prosperity of this country. Remove him by one tax at a time at your peril. That = Zimbabwe.
My apologies for such a vitriloc attack but you asked where we shall stand? I think you have your answer. We are not all bad people. We just want a fair future. Please do not punish me and my children for the sins of my forefathers for 300 years. Or the contributions they made to building this country!
Cheers
Andrew
we could all have been on the playing fields right now, playing instead of debating, debating whilst looking busy at the workplace, oh they can see me, I look serious and busy, earning every cent you pay me Mr. Boss. We could be on the playfields right now, playing cricket or soccer, look at the guys there, on the field look at which ones you could type, the girls with the skip ropes, singing songs, those kicking the ball, do they look similar or does the ones with glasses on play more carefully, less dangerous games? Who is the most important, under whose supervision are they? What kind of authority is there or can they just do as they please? does anyone care about them? Does anyone but themselves choose which game they play or who they play with?
Here at the office those questions are very easy to answer, but who tells those kids? Their parents off course, their parents who just came from the office, who read the papers, who pay their income tax, UIF, PAYE, SITE, Skills development levy, provident fund then they bought groceries and paid VAT and just look at the car, import tax, VAT, green tax and various kinds of levies for fuel, the RAF and the very high taxes, not to mention service fees and maintenance, oh yes, the average working mother, sometimes the only bread winner, knows more about maintenance than any couple of government officials put together.
Maybe one day they’ll learn, or should we teach them now?
Far be it from me, an ordinary mortal, to challenge your interpretation of the Constitution, Prof., but I feel it’s important to point out that the van Heerden case was a very specific one, and that I believe the findings in that case can’t necessarily be generally extrapolated. This would, at the very least, be open to challenge on the basis of other provisions of the Constitutiton such as Section 9 (3) of the Preamble. (I therefore agree with Anonymouse’s commentary on this one).
In terms of the broader argument, as Philip Amos says, an RDP tax was, indeed, levied in the early years of the new dispensation, and I don’t know of a single white person who protested against paying that tax, which does seem to have been convenitently forgotten. Suffice it to say, this form of structural reparation did, in fact, take place.
Is it your contention that it should have continued indefinitely and that, nearly 18 years into the new dispensation, black people who have benefitted from certain provisions in that dispensation should be excluded from this proposed “wealth tax”? Would that, for argument’s sake, exclude such wealthy black people are Cyril Ramaphosa and Patrice Motsepe?
This is also very, very dangerous territory to enter into. If white people, as a group, can be taxed in this way simply for being white, where does this kind of racialised administration of state processes end?
Further, apart from the very real risk that revenue from this tax could be mismanaged on a HUGE scale by the present government (plenty of precedent), what you seem to have forgotten is the way in which income tax is structured.
Income tax is, after all, charged on a sliding scale, so that wealthier South Africans inevitably pay a greater percentage of their earnings to the fiscus than poorer South Africans do – and always have. This seems to be a fair way of ensuring that those who are wealthy enough to do so contribute proportionally to restitution and development without bringing the vexed issue of race into the equation.
Further, where do we stand on the stupendous abuses of the public purse by the current administration? If the state were being run efficiently and in accordance with the principles laid out in, for instance, the King Reports, it’s almost certain this debate wouldn’t even be necessary.
Finally, I honestly believe there are few white South Africans who don’t acknowledge that they benefitted from the structural inequalities of apartheid, even if this means nothing more than the fact that they could lead fairly normal lives compared to those of their greatly disadvantaged black compatriots. The structural inequalities argument, after all, fails to take into account the issue of class differences both within the white community and across racial barriers, even during the apartheid era – the subject for another discussion altogether.
If this is, however, acknowledged; if a reparations tax has already been implemented; if there has been an internationally-acknowledged truth and reconciliation process; if such policies as BEE, AA and EE are still in place; and if the focus of state policy is on the “development state”, where does redress end?
As a nation, we simply have to find a way to acknowlegde our past, to deal with its legacy, and then to work together to create the non-racial democracy envisaged in our Constitution. If we don’t do this, we will be dooming ourselves to be little more than hostages of our history, and will find ourselves treading the wheel of racialism indefinitely.
P.S. Oh, a little detail perhaps, but the Arch did also suggest that fat-cat parliamentarians (mainly black) return their luxury cars so that taxpayers’ money could be used for real and necessary development.
As a white South African who was but 10 years old when Nelson Mandela was freed, I can say that I benefitted from apartheid legislation….barely.
Tell me this though. How far do we go back before we’re determined NOT to have benefitted by virtue of being white?
Tens of thousands of years ago, my African ancestors left this continent to venture out into cold, inhospitable climates, while other Africans lavished themselves in the perpetual African sunshine with plentiful food growing on trees and herds of antelope running past their kraals. Early Europeans and Asians meanwhile, had to develop a culture of planning and foresight in order to grow and harvest crops, domesticate animals and build shelters in tough terrain.
With space coming at a premium (especially in Europe), wars broke out frequently, further driving the technological development of my ancestors. Science and reasoning were thrust into the forefront of advancing society so as to maximise the usage of scarce resources. Meanwhile, on the plains of idyllic Africa, blacks merely had to chase the slowest calf in a herd of several thousand wildebeest and dodge the odd lion in order to survive. By the time Jan van Riebeeck had formed a permanent colony in the Cape, blacks had yet to:
1) Invent the wheel
2) Develop a method for creating woven textiles
3) Simplify hunting with the bow and arrow (something even the Khoisan had managed)
4) Formulate a written language of any kind
5) Devised a currency of any kind
The fact of the matter, is however whites benefitted from apartheid an colonialism, the races on this patch of land at the southern tip have NEVER played on an equal footing, so how far back do we go to draw the line which denotes the point at which all of us have equal opportunity?
Why must I, as a hardworking white citizen who watches year-after-year at his taxes being either mismanaged, misappropriated or outright stolen be punished for the laziness of blacks who died smoke dope under trees all day thousands of years ago?
The wrench in the works is unfortunately the level of corruption. It seems to me that whites are dammed if they do and dammed if they don’t. Pay, pay and pay again. All the white folk I know don’t object to paying tax. They object to the flagrant abuse of these funds when it is so obvious that white tax payers actually have a stronger desire to improve the lot of the poor than our black administration. How many South African whites fail to recognize the inherent and growing danger in the present economic inequalities.
Obviously a Mamphele Ramphele would provide excellent administration, but that seems a pipe dream, that a separate entity would be able to manage such a fund with government oversight so stringent, controlling and self serving. Tell us Prof how any of us can believe its possible for such funds to be properly and productively utilized? The ANC is in no way interested in decentralizing their power or giving up on the loot. And when they fail to produce, guess who they’ll blame?
It seems you found a way, I see it now, to make me a racist, I’ve put up my hand when you asked: “who is a racist?”
Everyday I suffer from paranoia, thinking that the secret police are going to discover me being a racist, on the front page of my newspaper is the clear message that someone who are known to them just killed someone just like me and that nothing is going to happen to them, then I get to work serving those who made sure that my beliefs are in tune with it’s as a BBEEE accredited company knowing how lucky I am to have a job at all as a worth less citizen, because of my skin colour, then I stop my highly taxed vehicle to contribute more of my hard earned money towards whatever I buy at where I just parked and then there is a man there checking if I’m not too racist to give him R2 too look that no one steals my car, because I mos read on my newspaper that it is allowed to steal or break into my property? Then if I hold my pose and he doesn’t discover my ism, I could collect my payslip at work at the end of the month to see the R2591.03 deductions of R15500 salary and before you question me for earning more than what we call blacks on this site, I’ll say I got a digree with no assistance from government, except off course the subsidy it gives universities to disqualify qualified individuals from criticising it, anyway I contribute far too much to be called a measly racist, you’ll have to do better than that.
Oh yes the secret police, who discovers you then goes ahead and confiscates your future, in terms of this paranoia of mine. My mother and sister who dedicated their white skins to serve the government throughout their careers warned me of this when I was a young man, frolicing with my friends. I hope they didn’t dare benefit from it, those bad people, for their sacrifice, they must be punished. Maybe they don’t like gay people either? They know better than that prof, I’m sure they just love gays.
@ Danny Archer
“By the time Jan van Riebeeck had formed a permanent colony in the Cape, blacks had yet to:
1) Invent the wheel
2) Develop a method for creating woven textiles
3) Simplify hunting with the bow and arrow (something even the Khoisan had managed)
4) Formulate a written language of any kind
5) Devised a currency of any kind ”
Well said ! Those of you who doubt the diufferences between races should visit the ruins of Pompeii destroyed by the Vesuvius eruption in 47 AD.
Here are some of the things you will see that this white population had in 47 AD :
Hot and cold running water from their aqueducts ! Yes in 47 AD !
Flushing toilets ! Yes ! In 47 AD !
Roads ! Paved roads ! Multi-storey buildings ! Markets ! Flower and pastry shops. Swimming pools ! Wine. Ships. The list is endless.
You’d be stupid not to ask why sweet fuckall happened in Africa and some 1500 years later why even less was happening. Before apartheid and colonialism. The truth is that whites brough wealth and education with them. They’ve always had it. They stole it from nobody.
Ask yourself why.
Annonymouse and Michael Osborne, I think you are dead wrong. The test developed by the CC for whether a redress measure based on race is constitutional is NOT whether “there are less intrusive means of achieving legitimate goals than a racially-based tax”. The crux of the test is whether it will place an “undue burden” on whites and the CC has indicated that they will allow some margin for the state in this. The test is not whether those affected are going to be worse off – see also Ngcobo’s statements in the Bato Star case where he said:
“The measures that bring about transformation will inevitably affect some members of the society adversely, particularly those coming from the previously advantaged communities.”
The “less intrusive means” test apply of course to the limitation clause. But as you will know, this test can be applied differently depending on the purpose given for the distinction. If the purpose is presented not as one to “punish” whites but to provide for a grand symbolic gesture on the part of white South Africans to demonstrate acceptance of their past and ongoing benefits flowing from apartheid and achieving reconciliation I can’t see the Con Court holding that this is an unjustifiable limitation, given the values and political views of the judges on that court. I will bet you a good bottle of wine on that.
Nothing at all will improve until the rampant corruption (theft) is sincerely and intently dealt with by the government in power. Libraries, schools, parks, better services, all those things and many more which must be developed, they will all go to tender, won’t they. Some years ago the management fee for a tender was 25%. Now I gather its 40 to 50%, and the work often shoddy.
We all know, the tender is there as a cash cow, a process of self enrichment for the connected few, and not, contrary to government spin, like all their spin, to develop the country. A pity there is little government recognition that the richer the greater population is, the more equal economically, the richer all individuals will be, and the richer the country in general. They simply don’t care, with few exceptions about anybody but themselves.
I fear they are killing the goose who lays the golden eggs.
“One of the principles [on which the post-apartheid society is based] is non-racialism and the idea that we should no longer adopt laws that are aimed at one or another racial group.”
So this statement by the Foundation is wrong?
This post by the prof proves that we then don’t have a non-racial Constitution.
You can call this wealth tax whatever you want, and colour it anyway you want, or frame the issue howsoever, it will stay a racist, race-based measure, sure to be recognised by levelheaded people for exactly what it is.
This again proves that a Constitution is supposed to be an anti-majoritarian cornerstone.
Not like the South African farce, a pro-majoritarian “constitution”.
So interpreted it is exactly NOT a constitution. It then does not deserve the name “constitution”. Then it is a document to validate repression of Whites by Blacks.
This is so F##$$#G stupid it beggars belief. Sorry but I lack the finesse to state it otherwise.
This idea of a reparations tax shows the failure of the government to spend that which it has taxed already.
The Arch, as much as I dig the guy, is way off the mark as are you Prof.
The bloggers above have clearly pointed out that the tax has been in place for ages.
What happened to that money??? Answer that before making any more stupid recommendations about whites paying more.
What too about corporate social investment? What about whites who work in charities for blacks? What about those who fund rural black schools? What about BEE, AA, BBEEE?
FFS this is pathetic. Whites have time and again acknowledged that Apartheid was wrong etc. But time and again we have this plea from black people that this must be acknowledged.
So what, then?
Does this not rather show something politically incorrect? Does this not rather show that blacks are not stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility for the country?
Perhaps black South Africans should rather do some serious navel-gazing as to why township schools are in a bigger mess now than during Apartheid. Why were those schools burnt down during the struggle riots – not like any whites were attending them now were they? Who was going to get hurt except the black future?
Stupidity dressed up as heroism.
The maths on AA simply does not add up. It speaks rather to an inability to create wealth and not a focus on building wealth that AA continues to this day.
Why aren’t townships being invested in?
Perhaps the Arch should rather ask why about 15 million blacks are on social grants and having teenage pregancies to get more money. Just like a pommie yobbo if you ask me – its not racial you see but the effects of a welfare state.
We’re about to get the NHI – more tax on the rich to make up for the State’s destruction of the public health sector. The Taxman is becoming so ruthless there’ll be nothing left for the taxpayer to spend on herself. Then there’ll be no more money around for entrepreneurs to invest in new businesses to service spending power. This then has the effect of surtailing economic growth when we need it the most – talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. But I suppose that makes sense when you destroy your own schools to protest about somebody else’s.
Now you want more tax on the world’s second highest taxpayers? How much more do you think they can take before it all crumbles?
When you look at it, the continuation of Apartheid disparities 18 years on is the fault of blacks now.
Sorry. That be the inevitable conclusion.
Time to face up and take responsibility for this mess.
where to begin? i’m a “coloured” South African, belonging to that bastardised and highly misunderstood section of the population (insert “aww shame” and *nervous shuffle* here). Watched the unfolding debate with great interest. I disagree with the imposition of a white erm wealth tax.
Instead of a money tax, i would suggest “white oaks” pay lip service to reconciliation. Cos some of the comments on here are quite mean and insulting. Amazing racists: diaspora?!
some of your best friends really could be black.
It was tough growing up in a segregated world (growing up, the only time i ever saw white people was on TV – bar the times when i’d go to the Joburg Zoo, as a kid to watch the white kids eat icecream at the diner near the bears)
As a result, i grew up with strong racial prejudices and still fight hard to overcome the sense of inferiority (in the company of model c “Whites” or indians), superiority (when faced with blacks) and malaise when hanging out in the ‘hood (where the kullid diaspora were banished). Not there yet…hard not to feel angry when u go to a movie theatre on the west rand, and the white oaks treat you like a pariah (is nice to have elbow room tho, with a wide radias of seats: vacated by white patrons in the face of the “bruin” gevaar)
Also angry at the age old “white” refrain: colonialism sure sucked if u were black, but at least we brought in infrastructure”…cos erm: that imperialistic infrastructure was designed to exploit the wealth at the expense of the black “workforce” (and later, the apartheid gov weren’t very even handed in the development of critical infrastructure: ESKOM being a case in point: its “infrastructure” was never designed to cater to the wider south african/majority) AND the NP gov had its fair share of corruption scandals!
Would be great if all white south africans could just learn to put their behinds in the past (in the words of wise ol’ pumba), embrace their africanness and discover the cultural pearls of wisdom the great majority will be only to willing to share: ubuntu.
please dont give us your hard earned money. the problem is such that money can’t really buy you love. instead, open your hearts to the possibility of a rainbow nation, break down the walls of Us vs Them and lets get on with the khumbaya project!
sincerely,
your half sister from a brown mother
p.s. sorry for the spelling/grammatical errors (state schooling learnt me to speak proper english like u doesn’t)
@Pierre De Vos
“If the purpose is presented not as one to “punish” whites but to provide for a grand symbolic gesture on the part of white South Africans to demonstrate acceptance of their past and ongoing benefits flowing from apartheid and achieving reconciliation”
Of course the problem, Professor, is whether the majority of the black population will indeed see it as a “grand symbolic” gesture, and whether the gesture will be deemed to have redressed the imbalances adequately. Based on anecdotal evidence, here and in the rest of Africa, I think it’s safe to say that no matter how much good faith white people show (and I have been one of those who have sacrificed my time and finances, in HIV affected communities specifically), no amount will be big enough for us to buy their “forgiveness”.
This mentality was clearly demonstrated by the residents of one of the townships in the Western Cape (can’t remember the name of it), where residents, having voted the ANC out in 2006, and having been satisfied that the DA had delivered what they had demanded from the ANC for years, decided that they now had what they wanted, and were going to vote for the ANC again. Blacks (as a collective) are not interested in reconciling with us. We are encroaching settlers who are not wanted here.
@ Pierre, you raise interesting questions, and I am not at all sure that you are wrong as a matter of policy. I offer these observations:
1. The progressive tax system we already have already has a racially disparate impact — because, as many on this blog do not seem to grasp, white remain greatly overrepresented among high income earners. Yet no one seriously suggests that the progressive income tax offends s. 9. That, of course, supports your thesis in general.
2. But to move from a disparate impact inequality to one based exclusively and expressly on race may well be a bridge too far. In this respect, I suspect the symbolic value of which you speak may cut against, rather than in favour of the suggestion of a racially based tax, in the sense that it is more likely to be deemed “unfair.”
3. Can you think of any instances where a “symbolic gesture” has been deemed a legitimate government purpose. Rightly or wrongly, I think this test at the s. 36 stage is often interpreted rather instrumentally. But maybe you can point to some counterexamples.
4. I cannot now think of any other jurisdiction customarily cited in the CC has an overtly and directly racially-based tax. Can you?
If the purpose is presented not as one to “punish” whites but to provide for a grand symbolic gesture on the part of white South Africans to demonstrate acceptance of their past and ongoing benefits flowing from apartheid and achieving reconciliatio
I live and learn……I never realised that our Constitutional Court is supposed to rule on Grand Symbolic Gestures based on the values and political views of the presiding judges. Wonder if they would agree. Furthermore, I had no idea that one can attach tangible value to symbolism. If I were better informed I would try and further this debate in the context of possible judicial hocus-pocus.
@anton kleinschmidt
LOL. Good one.
This tax has already been paid. It was called the transitional levy and raised in 1995 (3.33%) and 1996 (1.67%).
The prof too young to remember it?
Michael, as you know the CC interpreted section 9(2) as providing an independent test not reliant on the question of whether the measures are fair or unfair (which is a section 9(3) issue. If the scheme passes muster in terms of section 9(2) one never has to ask the fairness question. Your point 2, I think, is therefore not persuasive. Yes, the CC interprets s 36 instrumentally, which I think supports my contention as it might well look at the bigger picture and conclude that a once of wealth tax on whites (or disproportionately affecting whites) aimed at redress of some sort (no matter how symbolic) is a good idea and should therefore not be declared invalid. This they might well do if it is sold as an effort to effect reconciliation.
I cannot think of another jurisdiction either where this has happened, so your point in 4 is well taken. However, this has not stopped the CC in the past to hand down judgments for which little support could be found in other jurisdictions – e.g. Grootboom.
@Victor
You’re right. Outlined on page 5. 5% for the financial year ending 31/03/1995.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:5SBku1fJ8SgJ:www.sars.gov.za/Tools/Documents/DocumentDownload.asp%3FFileID%3D63942+%22transitional+levy%22+south+africa&hl=en&gl=za&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESh_Xs8e5QCgEA6mHHscjP7ZAO6lr8ywnWnPiZ1B4G2S6sMZIukh6EwTAKSKzE42OoBd46PBcOzeJs6LTnEiVpFcnoJX2K8P_n4qQN_IEjTKP19kztRKZfuXmlLv4CDm3YWxoIbC&sig=AHIEtbRAWzGtRT08gHvIMJzFlnL_cYIb9A
@Pierre de Vos
“This they might well do if it is sold as an effort to effect reconciliation.”
I’m interested to know how it can be “sold as an effort to effect reconciliation”, when the enforcing thereof would without doubt have the opposite effect. How would you motivate from a legal standpoint?
I thought taxes were already progressive, so as to pay for services for the poor. Considering how effectively the government spends the money it already collects, rich white people could be taxed at 99% and it would make very little difference to the poor. Perhaps an interesting alternative might be that the tax gets paid into a trust fund, and the people paying the tax appoint officials to administer the fund which has to be used to better the lives of the poor. That way, the money might build houses for people who continue to suffer due to the legacy of apartheid, rather than funding the lavish lives of Cabinet Members etc.
Pierre throws this out there and then engages in an academic debate with MO ignoring all the other crit. The idea of yet another tax on the smallest segment of the population is ludicrous.
This country is waht it is because of colonial technology and investment. Instead of embracing that and using whites experties to train and learn – what do our Africanists do – get rid of them. Education – who needs that when you can get a handout or a tender.
I am with Zook on this one. Time for the majority to pull finger and take responsibility.
Pierre De Vos says:
August 15, 2011 at 15:06 pm
Novel idea. ‘Grand symbolic gesture’ that is entirely coerced. In the realm of ‘voluntarily surrender’?
WHat happens to those not into ‘grand symbolic gestures’?
‘Demonstrate acceptance’? WHat happens to those who are as a rule ‘undemonstrative’?
‘Ongoing benefits’? WHat happens to those white South Africans living in Kroon Park who must have squandered any as they appear to have little to SFA?
“a grand symbolic gesture on the part of white South Africans to demonstrate acceptance of their past and ongoing benefits flowing from apartheid and achieving reconciliation”
@ Pdv
“If the scheme passes muster in terms of section 9(2) one never has to ask the fairness question.”
No, Pierre, here you are plainly wrong; see Van Heerden para 149 (subsections (2) and (3) must be read together, not separately) (per Sachs J.)
(Incidentally, you suggestion that Mamphele Ramphele might administer the funds seems a little ironic, given the reservations she has articulated about overtly racially based measures.)
May I send you a photo of a SAAB Griffen flying over WC2010 Stadium?
I think P de Vos sees this as a largely theoretical legal exercise a bit like debating say, whether Jews were seen as human or not by the German law in WWII. The absolutely basic moral principal of any race based legislation being wrong is ignored. It is, and was, always wrong and again, on an absolutely basic level, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Of course I would gladly pay the tax if it gained me honorary black status for tender purposes or better still, reduced the crime rate.
Won’t somebody please start a taxpayers’ union? For the first time in my life I feel a burning desire to go on strike …
I need to make one point on reconciliation. The word implies that at one stage we were one and are now coming back together. Please will this country start to be honest with itself. It has never been one nation. This ‘rainbow nation’ is a myth. The idea in the beer ads that africans and europeans socialise in bars in equal numbers is absurd! Perhaps a better approach is to recognise that we are differnet cultures inhabiting and sharing ine land and that we need to work together for a better furure. Further taxing affluent minorities will onyly seek to polarise us further and lead to a bleaker future for all.
Daxk’s comment is ironic. Did SA need SAAB Gripens or WC stadiums? The billions would have been better saved by reducing corporate tax rates to attract foreign direct investments or sponsoring apprenticeship programs.
We need jobs!
Hi
Forget digging in people’s pockets. There are fundamental issues that needs redress, and fast. Mainly the issue of LAND REDISTRIBUTION.
Michael, you are wrong on s 9(2)’s relationship to s 9(3). Sachs J’s judgment is not the binding precedent. Moseneke’ DCJ’s judgment is the binding precedent as the majority of judges signed on to it. In this judgement he wrote:
“In Public Servants Association of South Africa and Others v Minister of Justice and Others,[48] Swart J, in dealing with the “affirmative action” claim of the government in that case, adopted an equivalent route in the interpretation and application of section 8(3)(a) of the interim Constitution. I am unable to agree with that approach. Legislative and other measures that properly fall within the requirements of section 9(2) are not presumptively unfair. Remedial measures are not a derogation from, but a substantive and composite part of, the equality protection envisaged by the provisions of section 9 and of the Constitution as a whole. Their primary object is to promote the achievement of equality. To that end, differentiation aimed at protecting or advancing persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination is warranted provided the measures are shown to conform to the internal test set by section 9(2). (My italics)
Yes, I am aware of the irony of mentioning Maphele Ramphele… nice touch, don’t you think?
The only way the poor (i.e black) population will get a better deal is through the vote. There is more than enough tax money for this purpose but the ANC fucks everything up through cadre deployment.
In any case if nationalisation goes ahead there won’t be any rich whites. Perhaps the government should approach the Australian government. In Sydney, South African Jews own 65% of the properties that cost more than $10 million ! That’s where the rich whites are. Not here.
And anything that Jannie Jammergat ( Pierre) thinks is a good idea can only be a crap idea in reality.
Lawyers and other advisors are laughing all the way to the bank.
http://www.thenewage.co.za/25779-9-53-Investec_BEE_deal_flops_as_shares_tank
Many options indeed.
http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page292525?oid=549833&sn=2009+Detail&pid=287226
Excuse the noms de guerre, … does the esteemed author want to specifically limit this taxation to South Africans, or do you want to include me, a German citizen who has come to your country and brings job creation and industry? How detached from reality has the intelligentsia here become?
Trying to follow the arguments about the constitution certainly illustrates why the man in the street here has no interest, nor insight, in the rights that they supposedly have. This seems limited to a select group of lawyers and judges who can bend it any way they want in order to fulfil their ideological and political wants.
Common sense and reality are not evident.
Is this a warning shot from ANCYL
http://www.thenewage.co.za/25743-1015-53-ANCYL_march_for_‘economic_freedom’
If blacks are not happy here they can always go back home to :
1. Zimbabwe where things are worse and no apartheid existed
2. Mozambique where things are worse and no apartheid existed
3.Zambiia where things are worse and no apartheid existed
4. Angola where things are worse and no apartheid existed
5. Tanzania where things are worse and no apartheid existed
6. The Congo where things are worse and no apartheid existed
7. Kenya where things are worse and no apartheid existed
8. Uganda where things are worse and no apartheid existed
9. Gabon where things are worse and no apartheid existed
10. Ethipia where things are worse and no apartheid existed
11. Sudan where things are worse and no apartheid existed
12. Nigeria where things are worse and no apartheid existed
etc etc
Blacks are poor even where no whites have been. To blame whites for their poverty is to avoid looking in the mirror.
@ Pierre
You ask “How many school libraries could be built with that money? How many fully stocked laboratories could be built with that money? How many soccer fields and pavilions could be erected with that money”
Rather you should be asking :
How long before they burn down the library ( as they have with others) ?
How long before they steal and break everything in the laboratories ?
How long before the soccer fields are destroyed ? ( Soweto used to have 36 ! Not anymore !)
You write as if black people never had any of these things such as libraries etc.
They did. They’re just in ruins now.
Ok we all agree apartheid was wrong, whites did benefit from it, BUT White people are now being oppressed under law by the majority with BEE, The young school graduate whites that were born into the new south Africa are discriminated against by law because of their race and only their race imagine that so they wll
Never have a equal opportunity even though they were born into a so called democratic equal society, sounds like another ragime oh yeah apartheid. The fact that we live in a new south Africa and this is the law of the land means we are no better off than before it’s just being justified in the same way hitler felt justified in his actions against the Jews, be afraid we are not far from the same situation here Iether. Today we are not entitled to governmen jobs because of skin, tomorrow we will not be entitled to freedom or life. Remember these words as you will recall them in your last breath.
What a complete load of tripe. Any white who contributes to such a fund is a bloody fool. Pierre would do well in the ANC as he has no clue how business, finance or the economy works.
The problem is NOT lack of money, and throwing money at the perceived problem will not fix it. That will be just throwing good money after bad.
The problem is lack of political will on the part of black government to help other blacks. So much for Ubuntu !
Will more schools make the quality and attitutude of the teachers any better ?
Why build libraries when kids graduate without being able to read properly ?
Our government is creating a generation of people that will be unemployable and without skills but they will still blame the whitey. Giving the poor handouts is a short-term band-aid solution proposed by people with their heads up their arses and will fail miserably.
The poor want jobs but the commies and Cosatu in government (who the fuck voted them into power ?) are putting obstacles in the way to suit their own agendas and not those of the poor. Direct foreign investment has fallen 70 % as a result and with it the chance of more jobs. Zuma promised jobs but can’t deliver or do anything ( Maharaj told the BBC he is just a misunderstood president !).
The poor want houses and basic services but the government can’t deliver because of cronyism, lack of experience and ability, cadre deployment, theft and corruption. Taxing whites more will not change this. RDP hopusing contracts are given to tenderpreneurs resulting in people not being able to live in the few houses that actually were built. What happened to RDP ? Destroyed by the ANC !
We need better government not more taxes. Government needs to get out of the way of the private sector and allow the natural course of economics to benefit the poor.
I would gladly pay this tax….
Just give me safety, security and get rid of BEE so people with skills like mine can make a difference and create jobs as a White businessman, Africa was built on the intelligence of Europeans and the unequaled labour force of black workers. As derogatory as this sounds it is not the intention mearly the truth of our genetics and individual strengths being combined.
Pierre,
The question whether redress of past inequities in the form you suggest, passes constitutional muster, cannot be answered with reference to reference to the Van Heerden- decision with respect. The analogy is, regretfully poor and misguided and unresearched. I have been unable in my attempts thus far to find LEGAL justification of such a specific class tax impositition with reference to precent (local/international) and I invite you to find precedent in this regard. I accept that your sentiments are based on moral principle, but moral principles are not legal principles. Now to test your “moral” viewpoint: by analogy, should the oppressed South Africans under British colonial rule in the not too distant past, not also be entitled to collect a “moral” debt from the UK? Why should the border of morality be drawn around the particular period of time when the afrikaners ruled, more particularly when segregation originated and enforced more acutely under colonial rule?
From a whitey with a sense of guilt.
The Transitionl ‘levy’ was to pay for the costs of moving to a democratic dispensation.
The RDP ‘levy’ was to provide basic amenities to our fellow South Africans ie housing, electrification, basic health care facilities, land reform and dare I say it clean water.
When have we actually paid our “sin” tax?
I must however concur that monies we hand over are not properly used and I must admit that the more things stay the same within the ANC the more I believe EVERY politician in the ANC is guilty of corruption.
Provocative but insightful Pierre!
My first problem with this is that, as most people on this blog already pointed out, our government is SO corrupt, that I really do not want to see more money going through their hands. If 2% of my salary would actually pay for some kids schooling, that would be one thing, but I’m not paying for Julius Malema’s 30th house.
The second problem I have is that I find it ironic that people who criticize white South Africans will always jump to the whole “90% of South Africa’s wealth is still in the hands of the white minority!”. Well, then it stands to reason that AT LEAST 90% of the taxes in South Africa is also paid by the white minority? And I’ll be honest, I have yet to see the government take on any housing projects that provides homes to poor whites. So, the VERY situation as it is right now, IS having white people slowly but surely paying back for the past. They might not be doing it willingly, but they ARE doing it.
I know that South Africa had a terrible past. And I would never apologize for Apartheid, or deny that I benefited from it. But one cannot change a country that has been brought to this point through 350 years of events, with one single tax or law. And that is what people like Malema and Mugabe do not understand. Whether we like it or not, there are forces at play that are larger than any of us. South Africa is very dependent on foreign investment for example (it was one of the reasons that the apartheid system fell to its knees) and every time Julius or other ANC officials mention “nationalizing the mines” I read in the New York Times of how investors are already pulling their money out of South Africa for fear of it being an unstable and risky market. Just look at what happened to Zimbabwe. Julius always screams and yells about the white Europeans and Americans and how he “isn’t scared of those white baboons” (or whatever else spews from his idiot mouth), but if Americans and Europeans suddenly decide that they are done with South Africa, just like they did with Zimbabwe, will Julius be out in the veldt eating grass with his supporters? Somehow I doubt that.
I like some of what you are saying, Pierre. White South Africans certainly ARE in denial. I run into people ALL the time going: “Apartheid really wasn’t all THAT bad!” and I just shake my head at them and hope that their rhetoric will die out with them, and so I appreciate that you are pointing this out. But a future for South Africa lies in bridging the gaps between our cultures and having people understand and respect each other more. Not by forcing one group to pay some lump some of money for their parent’s mistakes to a government that is world-renowned for the fact that it steals from its own citizens. That would only lead to more hatred.
Consider the enormous tax already paid back in 1994.
The most developed country in Africa, handed over by whites to blacks, free and for gratis and for niks: “There, it’s yours, run with it!”
They are running with it alright, they are running it into the ground.
Now they want more.
Never mind the unconstitutionality of it all, it’s down right immoral, any “white” tax.
But then, we sit in Africa. Morals, ethics, and logic play no big role.
White idiots like De Vos doesn’t help either. But then we know his brains are probably by now being fried by the consequences of his lifestyle.
@ Anthony: Spot on.
I think Prof and the Arch didn’t read the ‘climate’ for this suggestion very well..if things have been running smoothly money wise for the past 15 years.. no corruption and so on and the tax payers could all see how well their money is being spent..perhaps then..And if there were no ‘grand gestures’ of corruption and waste and all did in fact went well, would there have been even the need for such suggestion? I guess not.
@John Roberts says:
August 15, 2011 at 19:58 pm
Didn’t plan to comment but my goodness, what are you smoking man? Whatever it is, please stop it right now because it is clearly clouding your thinking. All those countries you have mentioned and, as a matter of a fact, the whole of Africa has been colonized by Whites for centuries..There has no place on earth a white person haven’t ransacked and ravaged in a typical unique way only he can….
Black people have been oppressed and denied opportunities as far back as 1300 if not earlier …Your understanding of history is the equivalent of a third grader..Civilization started in Africa my friend, long before your very rude and cruel forefathers showed their faces on African shores. For some sort of proof, Google up the pictures of old kingdoms Benin, Mali, the Greater Zimbabwe etc, which were all constructed without computer aided designs and other modern stuff…The most useful mathematical formulas useful to mankind are still scribbled at the walls of the caves in Egypt where they were stolen by you guys…The whole Christianity business and the bible were stolen in Ethiopia ( then you took it wherever, adjusted it and brought us the King James Version? Damn you).
Whites came initially as welcome friends but later took advantage of our hospitality ( hospitality being a characteristic of civilization). They stopped our natural progression and nipped our civilization in the bud. It is a miracle that Black folks survived all they had to put up with in the first place. I can’t help but think that if it was the whites who were subjected to such treatment, the white race would not only illiterate and unproductive ( the charges you leveling against Blacks at the moment) but they would be extinct altogether…
Now that apartheid has ended, for a mere 20 years and you expect everybody to be on equal terms or standing? What formula are you using? Was it developed after a few tots of Klipdrift?
Pierre de Vos
jy is deur die kak
So then de Vos, you are in favour of legislation that will take from whites and deliver the benefits only to blacks?
Who then will deliver to those that gave when they decide not to work any more as well or leave our shores.
Bottom line is that whites did, and still do, benefit from the previous dispensation but then should we not try and redress the wrongs of all previous regimes today.
Fact is that the ANC government has failed to deliver a system of government that will be an example to all in the rest of Africa. The hope created by the pact that saw our new democracies birth has been rubbished by the current crop of politicians.
First investigate whether the whites, now discriminated against, can afford to part with money before you decide for us from your lofty position. Relying on the law alone does not make for a good base to reach your, and the Arches bishop Tutu’s, idea as being the only way forward.
I was 5-6 when apartheid ended. I had nothing to do with it. Yes I am white, but I didn’t choose it. I didn’t choose for apartheid to happen.
Why must I pay?
The naked racism expressed by many contributors here is quite shocking and depressing.
Agreed Pierre. But please explain to me how the children and babies that had nothing to do with it have to pay?
How much are we talking about and when will the so called white beneficiaries be seen as equal? Are we talking 10 more years 20,50? And at what level do we say you pay this tax, i have white trainees (and black) that only earn R2000 a month, they are not and have not benefitted from the past there just kids and what about my kids in 15 years’ time when they go to work will the government ask for another one off white tax.
As for myself i emigrated hear from the UK 10 years ago what will i have to pay? will there be a sliding scale of how much you benefitted, the other equation missing hear is the amount of money WHITE people give each year to worthy causes, if people start getting taxed by force then something within a household budget has to give, now that could be charity, tips, the bonus for people we employ on a personal level. I am always amazed that the governments answer is to try and equal the playing field by making everyone proportionately poorer, i earn a good salary and am happy to pay NHI(and not use the benefit), higher tax rates higher property rates, higher electric tariffs to subsidise the free quota ect ect but when will it stop. Remember if we have less we spend less and we all know where that will end up.
Great point Nick.
I also want to know if each person will be evaluated separately?
If I pay my study fees by working two jobs and if my school fees were never paid because my parents were too poor, does that count?
Would you get taxed because you have a degree and well paying job, and you were clearly previously advantaged and those that had to struggle and pay their own way be thrown in the same category?
What if you were born in 1996?
What if you immigrated here 5 years ago?
There are many scenarios here and I would like to know how this could possibly be handled and regulated.
Cactus Joe summed up South African constitutional law neatly with this one:
“This seems limited to a select group of lawyers and judges who can bend it any way they want in order to fulfil their ideological and political wants.”
That’s the cadre-deployed Concourt’s “jurisprudence” in action for you!.
Pierre De Vos, maybe you should quit your job so that a black man can take over from you. Give all your income to the state. Ek weet nie meer of jy jouself n Afrikaner ag nie, maar dinge moes seker maar erg skeef geloop het……..
Dit is nou tyd dat jy jouself opoffer. gee alles weg dan praat ons weer. Kom ons kyk hoe skuldig voel jy werklik………………..
@ Mweneni
I think it’s you with your delusions that must be smoking something.
“By the time Jan van Riebeeck had formed a permanent colony in the Cape, blacks had yet to:
1) Invent the wheel
2) Develop a method for creating woven textiles
3) Simplify hunting with the bow and arrow (something even the Khoisan had managed)
4) Formulate a written language of any kind
5) Devised a currency of any kind ”
etc etc etc
Go Google it.
Pierre is living proof of how a whitey got his job through the colour of his skin and not on merit. To hold such a simplistic view on the solution to our problems just beggars belief. From a Professor nogal !
The plan, Pierre, should be to increase the tax base via jobs, not to take more from a shrinking tax base. Whites should not have to do the job simply because the ANC has failed at it. Since when are sports fields and pavilions (!) a priority for the poor. Libraries for people who can’t read !
You are the biggest racist Pierre ( or at least a self-hating whitey) and it clouds your thinking. It’s laughable that you can’t even offer a critical analysis of the problem and possible solutions.
@Nick
“if people start getting taxed by force then something within a household budget has to give, now that could be charity, tips, the bonus for people we employ on a personal level.”
I used to be a generous car guard tipper. In April 2009, I terminated all that. Well, for black car guards anyway.
The premise is simple. Since 75% of blacks voted for the ANC, there is a 3 in 4 chance that this car guard voted for a government that ensures that he keeps his job of car guard, not through economic growth, but by perpetuating the status quo of managing a police force which is corrupt and toothless requiring a subsector of the security industry which “employs” car guards.
Nay, I’ve had enough. I still tip poor white car guards, but I’ve not tipped a cent to black car guards for 2 and a half years.
Pierre De Vos
August 16, 2011 at 5:46 am
The naked racism expressed by many contributors here is quite shocking and depressing.
That’s because the ANC and people like you have made it all about race and polarized the country.
Can someone please tell me what happens if have both a black and a white parent? Honestly this hasn’t been thought trough has it?
“Why not impose such a tax of — say — 2% or 3% of one’s annual income for a period of a year or two and then divert that tax into a special fund, administered by a respected panel of experts with the brief of funding and administering projects that would begin to address the shockingly bad facilities at many government schools frequented by the poorest of our citizens — a state of affairs indisputable caused by apartheid.”
Kak ! Kak ! Kak !
I went to a so=called “posh” school in Randburg. Nothing posh about it at all. Bordeaux Primary School. Today it’s the same school except the kids are now all black. And the school in now a festering sore in the heart of Randburg. Litter, weeds, library books all gone, lab equipment all broken, pavilion falling down, sportsfield looks like a desert, graffiti all over, broken windows etc etc. And that’s not because of lack of money for schools. Apartheid never did that to the school. The blacks did. Money won’t fix those problems
@ Danny Archer
Danny you ignorant twat!
Perhaps the 25% who did not vote for the ANC are the car guards who have no alternative but are willing to stand in the hot sun the entire day to earn a living.
You’re exactly the type of racist shithead this country does not need.
@Steven I
“Perhaps the 25% who did not vote for the ANC are the car guards who have no alternative but are willing to stand in the hot sun the entire day to earn a living.”
Were you standing behind them in the voting booth?
@ Steven l
Steven you ignorant twat. This country does not need car guards. It’s just another form of begging.
@PdV “The naked racism expressed ……….”
Ever bothered to read commentaries in the Sowetan, or does racism only come from one race group??
The 101 comments within less than 24 hours just show what divisive factor the race berserk constitution has turned out to be.
As a 20-something year old white male in south africa its impossible for me to not notice the difference between my situation and the situation of many many many others around me.
I have a degree and a job that puts me well into the top 20% of income earners in this country. The fact that my salary is not that high only illustrates the inequality that the arch is talking about.
My problem though, is that even as a gesture, this one off tax won’t actually change much in the day to day lives of the vast majority of our people. So whats the point?
We’re saying “yeah our bad, we took all your stuff and benefited greatly for the last 30-40 years. here, have 5 grand from each of us. our bad”. And then what? Whats the next step?
A one-off payment sounds like a grand idea, but it doesn’t do anything. The amount we’re paying is too low to pay-off our guilt. The amount we’re paying is too low to fix our country’s problems all at once. The next day the masses are still going to be jobless, without water and lights, and without hope. Our one-off tax isn’t going to change that. We’re still going to be just as guilty for the way we’ve benefited.
There is no amount I can pay to change the past, or to fix things quickly. I have benefited, but I can’t change that. You can repo my car, my salary, my xbox and my tv, but its still not going to change it.
So whats stopping someone from suggesting another one-off tax in 5 years time when things still suck and we’re still benefiting and we’re all still just as guilty?
When his arguments have been ripped to pieces, De Vos uses “their” standard retort: Racism!
How far gone is the man?
@ Pierre ….I agree with you 100% that ….”The naked racism expressed by many contributors here is quite shocking and depressing.” It is quite disgusting, and some of these contributors should not enjoy a public forum to express such rabid views.
I am dismayed by the huge groundswell of anger that is building up in this country with racists on both side of the divide slinging insults at each other. Worse still there are far too many commentators who are fomenting this hatred in pursuit of their own particular commercial and ideological agendas. This is a very dangerous game which is exacerbated by a complete lack of leadership from the government. The Zuma administration should be moving to defuse tensions.
Political, academic and media commentators should take time off for some introspection and ask themselves whether they are contributing towards this racial mudslinging.
Make no mistake, there will be no winners if this culminates in racial strife
This is a tricky one, with no clear answer. I would say that to implement a tax along racial lines is not the answer. We should be taxing the rich (more). We need to get over the racial argument, as hard as that is, but practice compassion and respect for all people, particularly those who have less money.
I will pay such a tax. I wil pay it today. I don’t even really care what they use the money for or how much it is and I am even willing to do it for a good few months. I don’t even care about whether it is constitutionnaly correct. I will pay such a tax if it would make Julius Malema dissapear and if I never have to hear from You, Pierre, how guilty and ashamed we should feel. My suggestion is this: all whites should be forced to take the money from there bank accounts in cash, go to the union building in Pretoria (just saw it the other day again, what a spectacular building it is – brought tears to my eyes), at the unionn building there will be a form to complete stating that I am sorry for apartheid and that I am with this money paying for its sins. ANd then that must be it. Finish and Klaar. I never want to hear about AA or BBBEE or EE or quotas.
But you see, this will not happen. Because as soon as that money is wasted away they will come back for more and more and more….
I have said it before. All the money in the world will not solve the problems of Africa. How many years ago did they sing “heal the world” and still international money is needed to prop up Africa. I really don’t know why it is that Africa can not govern itself (well I know really it is corruption but why corruption is such a big problem here is a mystery).
Pierre, I think it has been proven that such a tax was paid after 1994 and if you want to be sincere and truthful you need to include that in your commentary.
How many a times did Tutu retire from public life? He is getting senile but still manages to cause a stir with his utterances. Zuma was once the presidential candidate who embarrassed him if compared to Obama, but then he gave Zuma a chance. Zuma is now fooling people by his omnipresence at feel good gatherings, whilst ducking and diving his constitutional duties.
It does not make sense to tax white people specifically if you want to build a post-apartheid society, unless your aim is to destroy the country.
My suggestion would therefore be: abandon this discussion and any response to what Tutu says.
I propose a wealth tax on the wealthy black “businessmen” who have for the last 17 years benefited from government tenders, nepotism and corruption, at the expense of the taxpayers of this country.
Furthermore I propose a once-off tax on any person that have benefited from the repulsive policies of Affirmative Action, BEE or any of the other policies of government-sponsored institutionalised racism.
White people in this country have had to overcome serious discrimination in order to achieve what they have, since 1994. I am not referring to the pre-1994 “old money” business people and politically well-connected that benefited directly from apartheid policies, but the young people whose only form of benefit in life was being raised correctly and instilled with the principles of work ethic and a moral compass.
The fact that so many black people have not managed to better themselves DESPITE the advantages they have enjoyed for the last 17 years is an indictment on them, and is no longer a result of apartheid.
So Mr. De Vos, stop feeling so guilty for what you have achieved. Rather focus your energy on defending this country against the threat that some in government pose to it.
@ Kleinschmidt
It is quite disgusting, and some of these contributors should not enjoy a public forum to express such rabid views.
This is not a public forum. It’s a private blog. It has so few readers it’s hardly noticeable.
You should not attempt to stop people airing their views because they differ from you and your moralistic, liberal crap. You must have learned that from apartheid, hey ?
Pierre, your whole argument needs to take into account this very uncomfortable question:
“Was apartheid beneficial to South African black people?”
Without white capital, knowledge and nation building (the Union), what would SA look like today.
I’ll take a guess – were we to have had 1 man 1 vote in 1900 – SA today would consist of independent splinter states based along tribal lines, we would have a communist style agrarian agriculture based economy. Less mining of resources, and the mining industry would be far more export based. Virtually no industrial capacity or infrastructure.
The opportunities, educational and business based would be far inferior to what some black person have available to them now.
Would it be like the DRC? Angola? Would there be war between the Zulu’s and Xhosa’s (very likely)
Would it be as good as Botswana (probably not Botswana is an homogeneous culture)?
Its not that easy to put a numerical value on what is owed, what is certain is that had white people left (post 1900 apartheid) (as they would have) they would have the same standard of life (in Aus, Europe) as they have today. Black people would not.
Unless you are arguing for a Robert Nozick libertarian style once off redress – after which AA and social welfare fall away. Then I fully support you.
Pierre could you please answer my questions if you have answers that is.
Professor De Vos,
I believe a Reparations Tax on citizens based purely on race would be highly discriminative.
I give myself as an example. In ’94 I was six years old. My Father was miner and my mother a stay at home mother. A few years later they split and my mother was left to fend for myself and my two sisters doing menial jobs such as cashiering and car guarding at a later stage. With my first job I had to pay a large portion of my own high school fees because my mother wasn’t able to. We were never on any social benefit whatsoever.
Fast forward a few years and I have managed to obtain an honours degree and now earn what puts me in a high tax bracket. I paid for my studies. I worked and studied at the same time to do this. It was my hard work and not some supposed benefit from the colour of my skin.
How exactly have I benefited from Apartheid? Why should I pay a tax justified by from events which I have cannot from which I benefited in any way?
I think to generalise purely on Race would discriminative against many South Africans.
Perhaps in 20 years times us Caucasians can propose a reperations against benefactors of black economic empowerment such as Mr Sexwale or The Motsepe family.
I believe a more friendly business environment in South Africa will be a better suggestion so that perhaps we could follow the example of Asian countries who have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty not by raising taxes but by rather by encouraging and rewarding entrepeneurship on a massive scale.
Pierre – I would appreciate it if you would comment on the fact that I and other WHITE males spent 2 years doing National Service as well as another 2 years doing camps, while being paid approximately R100 per month. Being self employed at the time I suffered great financial loss. Surely I have paid my WHITE only tax over and over again ? The non-white South African males had a 2 year advantage over me. Whatever they did during those 2 years – excluding the camps I had to attend – gave them a significant advantage.
Pierre, this is white ivory, esoteric stuff that sound absolutely wonderful in swish academic surroundings. The reality, however, is that the tax will NOT reach the people it is aimed at. The ANC has shown us over the last 17 years that due to pathological corruption, theft and fraud, the poor will continue to suffer.
As a white man I am already subjected to affirmative action, I have no problem with that. I can tell you now, I have lost out on MANY jobs because of that. My income in my field of expertise is already half of what it should be. I still have no problem with that.
In addition, I am involved in two charities that take up much of my time. I offer them time, money and expertise. I get no income from that.
Now it is mooted that I should pay extra tax, money that I know will be wasted. It is also expected of me to sit in a corner, cut-up my clothes, shut-up, pull out my hair, pour ashes over myself, and actually, just become invisible.
Ha!
Ha!
@ Pierre……here is a thought.
What would be the constitutional issues surrounding a requirement that anyone in this country who wishes to comment on a blog in cyberspace should be required to provide the full names. The Daily Maverick does this quite successfully
Have now read some of the comments on the Sowetan sites. Mind boggling and makes the worst of your troglodytes seem like bunny hugging liberals.
@Antonkleinschmidt. Will see how long your remark regarding the Sowetan comments lasts, mine did not last long.
De Vos – In Afrikaans they have a saying “Hoe geleerder, hoe verkeerder” – A saying most applicable to yourself. Are you really that naive or stupid to think you are going to buy goodwill with such a tax. Hell, turkey how long have u been in this neck of the woods?
De Vos I seriously think you should request a refund from the institution(s) that educated you. It is blatantly obvious they taught you nothing .
Wanna do good De Vos? – Start a fund for the families of slain victims of farm murders. To compensate for lost revenue, pain and suffering etc.? Are you up to the challenge De Vos, or will you disappear into insignificance?
Please keep your feelings of guilt to yourself and ask for forgiveness for your apartheid atrocities. Do not involve us who do not share the same feelings in your guilt trip.
Mike
@ PdV
”The naked racism expressed by many contributors here is quite shocking and depressing.”
Pierre, you protest to much. I cannot help thinking that your proposal for a racially-based tax is a deliberate provocation. For one thing, you mischievously nominate Ramphele – whom you are well aware is very suspicious of racially structured remedies. Second, your failure to engage with the few good political counterarguments advanced here also makes me question your seriousness. Third, you know perfectly well that a tax imposed on racist whites against their will is no grand symbolic gesture of reparation, or a practical necessity justified by s. 9(2), but more the kind of punitive measure that has been rejected by the CC.
Are you really surprised that your posting has stirred a hornets nest of racism? Consider the possibility that your redundant little experiment may actually be harmful. For the reasons suggested by Anton on this blog (and echoed by Max Du Preez in his column today), the last thing we need is more polarizing rhetoric
You, my friend, are a doe-eyed optimist.
I don’t support a tax on whites for exactly the same reason I don’t support the death penalty — I do NOT trust the state to get it right.
One trillion dollars to Africa in multi-lateral aid in the last five decades, and what has Africa to show for it? What’s 3% of my tax going to help?
Sorry I see that my comment did not disappear, there is a malfunction on the time that comments are made, seems to be 2 hours behind. Ironic.
@Andymo
Very good post, boet.
@Joe nut
Server’s probably running on GMT.
The comments by many of my white countrymen merely reinforces what I’ve always felt to be true. Many white South Africans refuse to engage on the question of Apartheid and its impact on the majority of South Africans. There is a desire to sweep it under the rug and pretend that it never happened.
I agree wholeheartedly that corruption and bad decision-making by democratically elected governments have contributed to the growing inequality between back and white. However even if the ANC had governed perfectly over the last 17 years this would not have resulted in lifting the majority of black people out of poverty. It’s therefore a red herring to bame corruption for inequality when the TRUE cause is apartheid and colonialism.
Personally I DON’T think a “white tax” is good idea either. I don’t think that it will accomplish anything except to make white people feel even more alienated and further entrench a sense of “victimhood” that many feel due to policies such as EE and AA. The “spirit” of the gesture would be lost. It would be just another tax, paid over reluctantly.
Don’t give your money, give your time and effort to help build the country. I know that MANY white people are already doing this in many ways, but we need more of it. We also need the growing black middle class to be more proactive in helping to uplift those who are less still trapped in poverty. We’ve become too content to live the middle cass life and forget where we’ve come from.
We’re all just bloody lazy. Too emotionally and intellectually lazy to deal with the effects of Apartheid and too lazy to get up and make a difference. And I include myself in that statement.
@ Kleinschmidt
“What would be the constitutional issues surrounding a requirement that anyone in this country who wishes to comment on a blog in cyberspace should be required to provide the full names. The Daily Maverick does this quite successfully”
What a fucking joker you are. What difference do real names make ? If someone breaks the law they can easily be traced via their IP address. Seems like you’re a liberal with some distinctly Nazi views. How quaint.
I and many other whites should thank the bishop. Over the last couple of years I donated money to various charities (approximately R20 000-00 pa). These charities mainly provide for black homeless, poor and starving, thanks to the bish my eyes have opened up, ALL my future donations will go to charities/institutions that exclusively provide for whites. This cow has had enough of her white milk stolen.
@ Kleinschmidt
The only thing the Daily Maverick does is require a valid email address. It’s easy to get a throwaway email and use a pseudonym.
What problem are you wanting to address ? If you disagree so strongly with the views expressed by others then either don’t read them or fuck off. Simple. But don’t try and impose your draconian views on a free society.
You remind me of the liitle old lady who used to fetch a chair, put it in the bathroom by the window, peer out with her binoculars at the neighbours down the road in their bathroom and the call the police to complain about indecency.
@Brad
“Don’t give your money, give your time and effort to help build the country.”
Been there, done that. In my mid-twenties I used to spend time in Tembisa assisting HIV affected families with food and morale support. I stopped that when I realised there was a more than likely probability that these same people were voting for a party whose President didn’t believe that HIV causes AIDS, whose Deputy President (head of the AIDS council at the time) purported during his rape trial, that a shower after sleeping with an HIV+ person is all that’s needed to prevent infection, and whose Health Minister prescribed a healthy diet of beetroot and garlic to treat the disease. At that point I decided I was wasting my time and thought to myself, “Fuck it. Let Darwin take care of the problem.”
@Danny Archer, seems to be the case, that is why I called it ironic, half the whites have already left the country due to AA, BEE, and the”white guilt due to Apartheid ghost”, now this blog/server runs on GMT for the benefit of the many Elvises who had already left.
Archer, no relation to the “ARCH” bishop I hope.
@Joe nut
Ah, I get you now.
No, the pseudonym is Leonardo di Caprio’s character from Blood Diamond.
A tax imposed on people based upon the colour of their skin, is inherently racist.
Furthermore, I did not benefit from the apartheid regime.
Firstly, because we were poor as hell, and I had to study my arse off to at least get a student loan from a bank to further my studies, and pay it back out of my own pocket, in an environment that clearly favoured black people, and 7 years since starting my first job, am I only now starting to get into the clear.
Secondly, if you are stating that whites are still benefiting from apartheid, you are wrong. The country is a mess, people fear for their lives on a daily basis, how is exactly is that beneficial??
You should stop living in the past, and live in the here and now. The ANC is a failure as government, squandering tax payer money which should have benefited the poor, but instead is funding the lavish lifestyles of the ANC elite.
Now once again, the apartheid card is drawn, and they are expecting the whites to pay up? Yeah, good luck with that.
We will fight this, and win, mark my words.
As for you Mr de Vos, why don’t you pack your bags, get your buddy Tutu, and get out of this country. Take the ANC racists with you while you’re at it. We’ll build this country ourselves, without people still stuck in the apartheid regime.
Vossie you are a disgrace to your race and an absolute moron, Now I know why this country is in such an absolute mess. White Liberal assholes are looking after the constitution!
here is a definition of where you stand.
Liberal Idiot.
Synonoum: Useful idiot (Called by Communists)
A gullible person who claims to have a political view that is liberal, but is obviously completely ignorant of the facts and or history, or will blatantly ignore them. A person that has little or no respect for anything or anyone that has contributed to their lives in practical ways. A person who has based their political view on the fact that they either want everything given to them without earning it, or want to legalize drugs, or will habitually blame others for their own mistakes. Traditionally a person with a narcissistic, holier than thou personality that is unable to face reality, and will spend more time tearing others down, rather than doing what is needed to build themselves up. Typically those who are Godless and immoral.
1. Liberals are the most hypocritical people there has ever been. They always go on about the Right to life, Human rights etc., but at the same time they support abortion and pro choice.
2. They all want to be treated fairly and justly but then claim the right for themselves to be evil and murderous. They are all pro-Abortion and pop the “Morning After pill” Levonelle, Preven or Plan B after a night of promiscuous sex and then have the audacity to call Vietnam Veterans “baby killers”.
3. Liberals are not concerned about the slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.
4. Liberal celebrities know the diamond trade is coated in corruption and blood. The diamond industry itself fuels wars and genocide on a daily basis. Yet they have no problem buying blood diamonds such as Naomi Cambell.
5. Liberals think that pouring blood on a $1,500 fur coat is a sure-fire way to get your message across, but if anyone protests outside an abortion clinic, they’re extremists!
6. Liberals are forever building houses and feeding blacks…even adopting them, yet never spend a cent to help a white orphan or a poor white family.
7. Despite the fact that liberals are celebrating homosexuality and telling us that gays can’t change, they campaign for the humane treatment and rehabilitation of amongst others, child molesting prisoners. If gays can’t change then why do liberals think child-molesters can?
8. According to liberals, individual liberty is their most important political goal. So why are they always forcing their beliefs such as multiculturalism on others? Why do they want to force integration down the throats of everyone else and get violently upset when we reject it, if they are so concerned with “Individual liberty”?.
9. When you disagree with a liberal they call you narrow-minded, crazy, racist. etc. Liberals love to believe that they are “open-minded”, but you are only open-minded if you think like them and agree with them.
10. Liberal are supposedly Anti-racist, but White people being murdered by blacks seem to be acceptable hate crimes.
11. Liberals tell us that they are religiously tolerant, but Christian bashing is another acceptable hate crime.
12. Liberals scorn at people with other political beliefs, but then claim to be tolerant of other views.
13. When the Reitz hostel video came out liberals were crying about how terrible and evil the whites were, but when whites get tortured, raped and murdered by blacks then the blacks are poor disadvantaged persons who were forced to commit such acts to survive.
14. Normal people are morally responsible, but liberals do not believe that blacks should be held morally responsible for anything. When blacks break the law, by stealing, raping and murdering, Liberals blame every failure, every atrocity of blacks on entrenched, institutional racism, colonialism and the legacies of slavery and apartheid.
15. Liberals are supposed to support equal rights, but not if you are a white male…then you need to be hogtied. Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment is acceptable racism.
16. Liberals wants to cure racism with preferential treatment policies based solely on race.
17. Liberals think only whites can be racists, yet they are the first ones with a “For sale” sign in their yards when blacks start moving in.
18. Liberals profess that all races are the same with the same intelligence, etc. and refuses hard scientific realities such as Sickel cell disease that only affects Blacks, BiDil® that only helps Black heart patients, Gaucher and Tay-Sachs disease that only affects Ashkenazi Jews, etc.
19. Liberals love mass murdering terrorist scum such as Ché Guevara and one can see it in their quasi-messianic treatment of convicted terrorist and mass murderer Nelson Mandela.
20. Liberals want gun control for normal law abiding citizens and want greater freedom for prisoners. Sorry but prisoners are exactly that…Prisoners should not have any freedom.
21. Liberals often campaign to outlaw cigarette smoke, but at the same time they want to legalize marijuana.
22. To a liberal, Nationalism and the Christian right are considered dangerous fundamentalists and extremist, but when the blacks or socialists go on a rampage as recently in England then they are “ poor victims of social problems” such as unemployment amongst the youth.
23. Liberals genuinely believe that diseases such as AIDS and cancer as well as problems like women and child abuse can be solved by actually wearing a coloured ribbon.
24. Liberals do not believe that it is possible for a white man to become successful through study and hard work. They believe that Whites can only ever be successful, because they exploited some black person.
25. Liberals call us “Racist” and “White Supremacists” when we want to protect our White, Western culture. Apartheid for instance protected other cultures and languages as well. Multiculturalism of the liberals aims to destroy those cultures and languages…All must become the same, one language one culture. Yet when it comes to poor African countries, liberals wants to build them White Western houses and White Western schools, White Western hospitals and cure them with White Western medicine and feed them White Western food. All of which Africans never had and were quite happy to be without. Liberals are the ones forcing their White Western Culture onto blacks…not us. Why? Do they believe it is superior and better? Who are the REAL “Racists” and “White Supremacists” here?
Michael Osborne
August 16, 2011 at 7:56 am
“… you know perfectly well that a tax imposed on racist whites against their will is no grand symbolic gesture of reparation, or a practical necessity justified by s. 9(2), but more the kind of punitive measure that has been rejected by the CC.”
I think it can be put even more bluntly: It will be a punishment, for the crime of being White.
How about an intelligence tax: Those with an IQ above say 130 have an unfair advantage over the less intelligent, are able to earn more money, and should therefore be subjected to an addiditional tax burden irrespective of their actual income. For me that is as stupid as the suggested tax based on race.
In 1994, I was photographed sitting on the pavement next to our domestic worker’s little girl who was roughly the same age while our parents voted – the ideal picture – the new South Africa – black and white being friends.
17 years down the line, I have two children of my own. I definitely HAVE NOT benefitted from apartheid, I went to a normal government school who had quite a number of black children in it, I am only now doing a degree through UNISA because my parents could not afford to pay for it. The salary that I earn, is through hard work. I live on a month to month basis and the last couple of days are tough to get through to say the least. Between the new “whites only tax” and the NHI medical scheme that the government want to impose I am going to be much worse off than I am now and I am already battling to make ends meet.
If you feel guilty about the apartheid era – GOOD FOR YOU – pay your fees or establish a trust like someone else suggested and maybe you will sleep better at night – HOWEVER – I do not feel guilty for being white, I do not feel guilty for apartheid because I have not benefited in any way nor do I feel guilty about what happened during that era. It somehow feels that you are living in a different world – what about BEE and Affirmative Action or Transformation and Diversity – white people are being blatantly discriminated against and black people get preference on most jobs advertised now. How do you think does that affect a white male in his early 30s who has a family to feed and he cannot get a job – NOT BECAUSE he is not suitable qualified – he is in all likelihood the best person for the job – but because he is WHITE! And then you deem it fit to have a tax imposed on white people to rectify the mistakes of the past? I say, take the mistakes that you and your fellow brothers and sisters made and stick it where the sun does not shine! What future do our white kids have in South Africa?
If you think it’s such a good idea to impose this tax – do it across the board – this is after all a “democratic South Africa” – what makes black people better than white people not to have to pay a “wealth tax” when every second black person is driving a X6 BMW and lives on Houghton Drive while the average white family struggles to make it through the month.
People like you make me sick! You want to force your own guilt onto members of the same race for mistakes that our generation did not make!
@Chris the non-right winger
“How about an intelligence tax: Those with an IQ above say 130 have an unfair advantage over the less intelligent, are able to earn more money, and should therefore be subjected to an addiditional tax burden irrespective of their actual income. For me that is as stupid as the suggested tax based on race.”
Classic.
@ J-M
“I say, take the mistakes that you and your fellow brothers and sisters made and stick it where the sun does not shine! ”
That won’t work. Someone else is sticking something in there already.
@John Roberts
ROFLLMFAO
Gosh, I thought this wealth tax idea had irritated me and that I was the only frustrated european South African left. I repeat, we may have been here 350 years but culturally we are not Africans. Ubuntu is not part of us. We look after ourselves. The opposition to this tax proves this. I don’t think its racist. I think its cultural. But what burns me the most is that apartheid really benefitted the African elite the most e.g. Tokyo Sexwale, Patrice Motsepe. This was the ultimate lottery win. I feel sorry for Mandela. He struggled so hard for justice in his own land. And so he shoulld have. But Malema is giving it all away…
The just of the debate here is all wrong, we are talking about an age old problem, the class divide between rich and poor. In this country a lot of the rich happen to be whites. Yes, the whites were able to gain education because of the past, and this has helped them. We are all aware of this, and no matter WHAT we do that cannot change the past. That is a FACT, so lets us all accept the FACT and focus on the real problems.
For me one of the biggest problems is that of turning one race against another, this is unacceptable. Why? Well it causes hate and further problems. We should not divert energy towards something which cannot be changed, we cannot change our skin colour or race. So why not STOP the race debate completely.
The problem in this country that needs to be addressed is the division between rich and poor. We all need to come up with ways to make this divide smaller.
I do not have a high school education, certainly not a degree. However here are some ideas I believe could help.
Firstly, ALL spending done by the government should be 100% transparent. Government officials are PUBLIC SERVANTS and therefore do not require a lavish lifestyle in the least. The most money possible should be put straight back into the country.
Outline the most basic of needs for an acceptable life style. The government should be able to provide this. Education, housing, health care and sanitation. These should be the core concerns for the government and override all others (especially the personal gain of politicians).
The colour of your skin means nothing when you have no skills and cannot generate an income. Education and hard work is the only real way to stop poverty.
All the whites own the current businesses, so what? Open black owned business, take the customers from the white owned business, but don’t destroy the white owned business, because the truth is, the economy is built on these.
A smart black man, with a passion to earn because he comes from poverty might just out perform anyone else. What’s the common denominator here, education and hard work.
I don’t believe any group of people are born a certain way. I think their environment plays a huge role in their behaviour. We all need to work at improving the environment of the poverty stricken so their minds can clear and they can start to learn and build.
Do not take the land from a white farmer if it is feeding your children. Get empty land, start your own farm from the ground up. Out perform the other farms and become more prosperous.
Fat cats keep getting fatter, leave the fat cats to do their thing. Instead of getting rid of the fat cats, lets all become the fat cats! Government should create the foundation.
Perhaps I am wrong but the idea of the educated whites giving a tiny piece of their huge pie to say ‘sorry’ for hundreds of years of oppression seems like more of an insult than anything else.
Let us (people with money and power) rather come together and provide the resources required to force the government of this country to live up to its mandate. Lets rather fund an organisation that can somehow curtail corruption. How many millions go to waste that could actually educate and create jobs? All while we sit here debating things we have no power to change and breeding even more hate.
If there is one criticism I have for whites in this country its our failure to see the ANC as not ‘their’ government but OUR government. Everyone in this country needs to take it upon themselves to ensure top class education for EVERYONE.
@Andrew Buttress
“I feel sorry for Mandela. He struggled so hard for justice in his own land. And so he shoulld have.”
Out of interest, what is your opinion of his support for Zuma’s campaign, and his continued silence on ANC corruption and mismanagement? I mean, he’s old, not dead…
Short answer to your question – Where are you going to stand, my fellow white South Africans?
New Zealand
@ Non-right-wing-Chris
“How about an intelligence tax”
Chris, this would be very much to the advantage of the many contributors to this blog who have been reminding us that there was no wheel in Africa before the white man brought it as a gift.
@Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder
My mistake. I should have clarified that there was no wheel in *Southern Africa*, the region under discussion, before the white man brought it as a gift. I had erroneously presumed that fellow commentors would have been able to make that deduction, but I was wrong. Seems you too would benefit from an IQ tax.
Considering how quickly everybody forgot the last wealth tax I suggest something else. In 1996 it was known as the “transitional levy” and 1.67% was added to everybody earning over R50 000′s tax bill.
@ Danny Archer
My opinion is that Mandela is so old and frail he is completely out of touch with South Africa. That said, I was unaware Zuma had a campaign? That implies he does something other than pass over the reports that the chief of police is corrupt etc. or ignore calls to discipline the ANCYL for advocating regime change in Botswana. He is quick to criticise NATO for stepping into Libya saying it is not the ‘African way’. So what is the ‘African way’? Im not wanting to sound racist but what is it??? Another massacre ala Nazi germany, Bosnia, Syria, Cambodia, Rwanda?? What?
Mandela is an attorney who filled his cabinet with wonderful intellectuals like Kade Asmal, Trevor Manuel, Ahmed Kathrada, etc. He is a lawyer. then we had Mebki the economist. Then Motlanthe the matriculant. Then Zuma the grade 5. Next up is Malema who left school at 21. We speak about education. Is it racist to expect our leaders to be educated? Oh no, that’s also racist. Because my european education does not take into account the African world view etc.. Fine, I can accept that. Just let me know what it is.
@Andrew Butress
Unfortunatley some of us will not be in a position to move to New Zealand.
The Republic of the Western Cape however now begins to sound attractive. Reminds me of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”. Do we have a John Galt?
@ Philip Amos
I’m not is a position to move there either but you know with us Europeans necessity is the mother of invention. Seriously, in a cold enviroment you need to invent shoes, weapons and tools to survive. You don’t have the luxury of communal ownership! I repeat, 1000 times on this forum, the white South African is really a European. So are the majority of people in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Love your comment about Ayn Rand’s book
Cheers
AB
If anybody thinks I’m being funny about shoes, tools and weapons please google Otzi the Iceman!
@Andrew Buttress
“That said, I was unaware Zuma had a campaign?”
I was referring specifically, to the incident in the Eastern Cape in the run-up to the elections when he agreed to be hauled onto the stage with Zuma in support of the ANC’s candidate.
Agree with your post. There’s a lot of open-endedness in SA. Few things are properly defined by the natives. This issue is one of them. When ARE we going to be deemed to have redressed the imbalance satisfactorily? How long are BBBEE and AA going to carry on for? My sober opinion, is that BEE and AA will NEVER be terminated no matter WHO is governing the country. Why? Well why would a black majority ever vote for a party that advertises the removal of these policies as policy changes on the campaign trail, no matter how equal society is when that happens? Why would they in anyway vote differently to the way whites voted during apartheid for the very same reason? The big problem of course, is that it will be a universally democratic vote, and so UNLIKE during apartheid, foreign countries will have no moral justification to sanction SA, because it will be the wishes of the majority.
@ Danny
Perhaps MDF was not quibbling about whether the wheel was to be found in Southern Africa, as opposed to Africa generally, when the white man arrived with it, plus Bibles, gunpowder etc.
Rather, the question is what moral or political weight can be attached thereto today. Look at it this way: In some sense the Assyrians bequeathed the wheel (plus writing and other technologies), to stone age Europeans. Does that entail that modern Europeans should feel some kind of gratitude to central and south west Asians? Or, more to the point, would the fact of the Asian contributions to Europe in any sense legitimate or, so to speak, preemptively compensate Europeans, had the Assyrian empire gone on to conquer Europe, enslave its inhabitants, and taken all but 13% of their land?
I think not.
@ Danny Archer
I don’t recall the incident in the Eastern Cape. Most people vote along racial lines here. I simply ignore the election rhetoric as it means little.
BEE and AA will be removed when President Malema is running the country like Saloth Sar ran Cambodia. Like Saloth he could not finish school so simply sought to eliminate all the intellectuals.
I have said it once and I will say it again – Julius Malema poses a clear and present danger to he furture economic and political survival of this country.
I must give Pierre de Vos some credit here. his article has provoked such a storm that exposes the true feelings of the European minority. The truth is that there are many people in this country, both African and European who seek a safe and prosperous future. Are there any ideas out there other than another tax that can give us a better chance?
Cheers
Andrew
I am 100% against this “white tax” scenario. I can’t however understand white thinking in this regard. The DA and Mrs. Maziboko (sorry for the spelling) are on record saying that the unbalances of the past have to be addresed. Taxes can thus be part of the solution. Why would people vote for the DA or the ANC then? Problems can’t be solved through taxes.
@Michael Osborne
I made no assertion that Africans should be grateful for our European ancesstors technological contribution. I was using the differing paces of development of the aforementioned races to demonstrate that it has been thousands of years since we were all on the same level playing field, specifically, the point at which there was maybe a global population of 2000 individuals, and even then one can argue that some were circumstantially advantaged over others. As a white I am circumstantially advantaged by thousands of years of necessary cultural evolution in order to survive in climates my ancestor’s bodies weren’t physically evolved to cope with.
My point is, how far back must we go? Blacks must just give us a line, a date, something in the past AND future, when they will be happy to say we were/all equal again.
* were/are all
“As a white I am circumstantially advantaged by thousands of years of necessary cultural evolution in order to survive in climates my ancestor’s bodies weren’t physically evolved to cope with. ”
Further, trying to suggest that 46/350 years of apartheid legislation plays a major role in that historical advantage is as short-sighted as it is ridiculous.
@Gerhard Kotze
Our current taxes should be part of the solution, but instead it funds lavish ANC lifestyles.
Pierre de Vos, I hope you take note here. I agree with John Roberts, it is due to the racial rhetoric Malema and ANC members have been spouting.
The ANC needs apartheid and racism to be alive in order to exist. Pierre de Vos on the other hand, should put his money where his mouth is, and give it all away, to live in poverty and month to month like the rest of the white population of South Africa.
I want to see this blog change, to “Suffering in racist South Africa”, because that is the truth. In fact, I demand it.
If it wasn’t for the billions and billions of rands simply stolen from government coffers, freely given to friends and family members for government contracts delivering nothing I might consider paying a white guilt tax…constitutionally speaking I think there is something wrong with the author of the article to put it nicely.
Give Chris Wells his bonus he really deserve it.
http://www.iol.co.za/business/business-news/transnet-wastes-r82m-spends-r8-3bn-irregularly-1.1118242
Look on the bright side.
No one is likely to forget both of the new CJ’s names.
Thanks.
Furthermore, white people have been paying for apartheid since 1994. Now we must pay more. Yes, put it in your pipe and smoke it, that’s all that will become of this “white”/”guilt trip” tax.
What a deluded moron.
Pierre de Vos simply wants a boarding pass for the gravy train. Watch out Mr de Vos, you will be backstabbed the moment you move within their circles.
If you want some truth with your bullshit then go here.
http://mspoliticalcommentary.blogspot.com/2011/08/blacks-should-compensate-whites-for.html
After spending the past weekend at a workshop on Race and Identity (hosted by the IJR and REOS partners) I am looking at the issue of redress differently and think this needs attention urgently. Where I differ from our retired Arch (read “I love the limelight”) Desmond, is that this tax should be imposed based on income and not race. I am a black South African that benefited from apartheid and should be repaying my debt to the greater impoverished South Africa. The growing divide between poor and rich (no longer black and white) is a time bomb that is ready to explode.
@Mike Botha: Closing the divide between rich and poor, starts with education, not free handouts.
The South African government is incompetent in this regard as they have proven over and over again, yet the poor who are the real ones suffering, are still voting them into power. So let them have their government then.
The wealth gap will always be there, it’s a simple matter of life in modern times. For the wealth gap to close, the entire world economy needs to change.
I don’t see how taxing white people will solve this.
Then of course all the ANC’s woes could be settled by giving all white families $3,000.000 each and a one way ticket out of here.
This will give them the jobs, houses, pension funds, cars et al that they have failed to deliver. A big bonus will be that they will never again have to fear the growth of an opposition party.
The idea is good. But let’s eradicate all the corruption and misappropriation of funds first.
@ Stephan vdM
The ANC needs apartheid and racism to be alive in order to exist
You must have heard of the Shirky Principle !
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” — Clay Shirky
I think this observation is brilliant. It reminds me of the clarity of the Peter Principle, which says that a person in an organization will be promoted to the level of their incompetence. At which point their past achievements will prevent them from being fired, but their incompetence at this new level will prevent them from being promoted again, so they stagnate in their incompetence.
The Shirky Principle declares that complex solutions (like a company, or an industry or a government) can become so dedicated to the problem they are the solution to, that often they inadvertently perpetuate the problem.
Unions, for example. Unions were a brilliant solution to the problem of capital management which tended to exploit uncapitalized workers. But over time as capital increased in complexity, unions complexified as well, until unions needed management. The two became one system — union/management. So now the problem with unions is that they are locked into the old framework, the old system. They inadvertently perpetuate the continuation of the problem (management) they are the solution to because as long as unions exists, companies feel they need management to offset them, and so the two became co-dependent. In effect problems and solutions tend become a single system.
Chris Vick
Money can’t buy you reconciliation
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has a heart in a right place when he proposes “white tax”. But there’s so much more to be recovered by going after the real cowboys and the real crooks.
During the struggle (although some media have recently started using a capital “S” when discussing the war against apartheid, Daily Maverick is, well, a maverick), I was part of a propaganda unit that designed a poster to highlight an often-ignored element of the apartheid regime – its corrupt, money-laundering, sanctions-busting side.
The poster was headed “Cowboys and crooks” and showed the link between apartheid’s dodgy bank-rollers and its cruel death squads through a rogues’ gallery of six men:
The Cowboys: FW de Klerk, military intelligence chief General Christoffel van der Westhuizen and police minister Adriaan Vlok, who we fingered for their roles as apartheid’s lords of war and kings of cruelty.
The Crooks: information minister Stoffel van der Merwe, Broederbond chief Gerrit Viljoen and foreign minister Pik Botha, who we singled out for their roles in sanctions-busting, money-laundering and looting the apartheid purse for the benefit of themselves and their cronies.
The poster, distributed through the South African Communist Party in the early 1990s, called on all South Africans to “Sweep the crooks and assassins out of power…”
By mid-1994 our propaganda unit was able to disperse. The war was over, it seemed, and power had begun to shift. We had indeed swept the crooks and assassins out of power and were deployed into office, even if we weren’t entirely in power ourselves. All South Africans were free to play their rightful roles in building a new democratic society. All South Africans were free to earn and hold a place in the democratic economy. No more cowboys and crooks, we thought…
But there were huge financial headaches which we were to uncover in the heady days that followed – not to mention a few potential new cowboys and crooks. And as Julius Malema and so many other economic freedom fighters have pointed out, it’s the economic struggle – the second stage of the two-stage revolution, as we described it in the SACP – where the most work still needs to be done.
Yes, the reconciliation challenge remains. But alongside it is a set of daunting economic challenges – including a much-needed war on post-apartheid corruption – which are growing by the day.
Enter the latest voice: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who has probably retired from his post more times than most people have applied for a job. He has a new, yet old idea on how to deal with both social and economic justice.
As Tutu describes it, it will be built around the Truth & Reconciliation Commission’s call for “a scheme to be put into place to enable those who benefited from apartheid policies to contribute towards the alleviation of poverty”.
Reactionaries have been quick to try to write off Tutu’s idea as a “white tax”.
It’s an interesting idea, but a rather curious one if it is intended to really address social and economic injustice. Predictably, it’s drawn heavy fire from the white people who benefited the most under apartheid – cowboy/crook FW de Klerk (who no longer has enough supporters to form a party or a government, so he runs a foundation instead), the Freedom Front Plus and soon, no doubt, Steve Hofmeyr.
As a patriot who is deeply committed to building a united and just nation, I’d love to see targeted, meaningful, effective interventions which contribute in a real way to reconciliation, social and economic justice. Tutu’s God knows these are long, long overdue – particularly as racial hatred begins to resurface alongside increasing economic injustice and threatens our social fibre.
But does the solution really lie in a new revenue stream, even if there is supposedly a reconciliatory motive? Would we not benefit more from a national effort, involving civil society, the state, people of all races, and people of all classes embracing Tutu’s own notion of a “Rainbow Nation” and making it real – rather than a new “sin tax”? Is it about money in the bank, or about behavioural change, a change of heart or an exchange of money?
After all: Can money really buy you reconciliation? Can it bring about social and economic justice? Can it bring about behavioural change?
But even if you are looking for money, shouldn’t your approach be more targeted than a race-based tax? Does the Archbishop expect Ronnie Kasrils or Derek and Trish Hanekom to pay “white tax”, for example, after decades in the ANC underground and a post-apartheid lifetime of service to the people? And what’s the “means test” for who benefited from apartheid? Do I get a tax break for five years in the ANC underground and seven years in post-apartheid government?
What complicates things is, firstly, the fact that huge portions of the current national fiscus (ie. the taxes we already pay) have been diverted away from contributing to social and economic justice – more than R70 billion, for starters, on the Arms Deal, with little or any sign of benefits to anyone, but the arms manufacturers (and Fana Hlongwane, of course. Did someone mention cowboys and crooks?).
The R70 billion has been spent, apart from kickbacks, on ships that can’t sail (defence minister Lindiwe Sisulu told Parliament last week that one of the four Corvettes we bought was damaged by rough seas and will take more than two years to repair). And on planes that can’t fly (the air force admitted in April that it can’t afford to put its new Gripen fighters into flight for the required number of hours. Instead, it is having the cockpits of 24 Hawk jet trainers “Gripenised” to make for a smoother transition for pilots).
Which begs the question: Why not save a good few billion by scrapping the Arms Deal and spending the money on service delivery instead?
But there’s more – literally, a huge pot of gold out there which is yours for the asking. It’s the R26 billion which Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has targeted in her investigation into apartheid-era corruption proceeds.
Madonsela’s investigation, buried in the bluster of the Cele Report last month, appears to be founded on a 1999 report by a UK-based company named Ciex, run by a former chief of MI6, Michael Oatley.
The report outlines what the Sunday Independent recently described as “a smorgasbord of corruption and looting of public coffers in the final years of the oppressive apartheid regime”.
The report said the South African government could retrieve:
•R3.2 billion from Absa.
•R3 billion to R6 billion from Sanlam and Rembrandt, major investors in Bankorp.
•Up to R5.5 billion from French aerospace manufacturer Aero-spatiale/Daimler-Chrysler.
Ciex also claims that Armscor, the state arms company, siphoned R14.4 billion through “Luxemborg accounts, managed through the Paris Embassy”.
ANC NEC member Billy Masetla was the South African government’s signatory to Ciex’s report, so maybe Tutu should give him a call and we could start accessing the apartheid proceeds?
The snag, however, is that Madonsela says she cannot investigate the apartheid looting because of resource constraints – despite the fact, as the Institute for Accountability’s Paul Hoffman puts it, that “the country could certainly do with the windfall money that would flow from the successful reversal of the lifeboat to banks. The building of housing for the poor could be expedited with the money collected; the banks had made provision for repayment of this ‘contingent liability’ so getting them to pay should not be too difficult”.
But, as if that pot of offshore apartheid-era gold isn’t big enough, how about taking a bite out of the debt mountain that we inherited from the apartheid cowboys and crooks?
Action for Southern Africa, successor to the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, has a colourful way of describing the scale of that mountain in a recent report on apartheid debt: “When Nelson Mandela walked out of prison, rich countries and banks handed him and the people of Southern Africa a bill for 28 billion pounds sterling.”
That’s around R330-billion, which we’ve had to pay off, as post-apartheid taxpayers, to cover the costs of the cowboys and crooks who looted the apartheid purse.
It’s debt rung up by the Van der Merwes, Viljoens, Bothas and De Klerks of this world in an attempt to prop up the apartheid regime. It is apartheid debt, plain and simple – and a healthy source of recourse for a post-apartheid state, if you’re serious about a financial intervention.
Okay, Arch, I was never that good at maths. But I figure that if it’s money you’re after you could start by leading an integrated campaign by all South Africans who care enough to:
•Cancel the Arms Deal now and save R50 billion.
•Find a way to get those nice liberal friends of yours in Europe and North America to cancel ALL Third World debt, including the R330 billion we had to pay in the early years of our democracy.
•Deploy a few pastors to the Public Protector and help her investigate how to recover the R26 billion. Alternatively, put the people who’re sniffing around Malema’s bank accounts onto the bank accounts of De Klerk, Botha, Viljoen and company.
“White tax”? There’s more than R400 billion out there waiting for all of us. So let’s start by going after the bastards who plundered the apartheid purse and built up their own offshore nest-eggs – not to mention that massive, multibillion-rand pre-apartheid debt we’ve all had to pay for. And the hugely indulgent, massively corrupt Arms Deal brokered by post-apartheid cowboys and crooks.
Let’s have a “Cowboys and Crooks Tax” first. Then we can talk about the rest.
Julle almal is vol kak.
Hou op kak praat en gaan doen julle werk.
Couldn’t have put it any better, Gwebecimele!
Hey Ockert, het jy werk vir ons.
Some lesser known has been nominated as Chief Justice:
/www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71656?oid=251048&sn=Detail&pid=71616
Gosh, I haven’t read all the comments.
In theory I wouldn’t mind paying a wealth tax, although it would be a hard financial blow. But it burns that all the damn hensoppers in Perth will get off scot-free!
@Mike Botha…….well said
Why when people point out that the black race has achieved nothing over the past 2000 years are they called racist. Is the prof not an academic and should we not look at the facts, as soon as you can’t dispute the facts then shout racism to get the attention away from the truth. The statement that the black race has always been a consumer race and not a producer race is a fact and not racism. Europe was rebuilt with one Marshal plan and look where it is now, Africa has received donations equivilent to five Marshal plans and have still achieved nothing and on the contrary are begging for more. If the white man did not land in Africa here still would be nothing and yes the white man has made many mistakes and we are not denying that but we must receive credit for our achievements and the growth and knowledge we have bought to others. Even under the Apartheid government with all its evil the black man in South Africa had the highest standard of living in all Africa, the best medical in Africa ( Baragwanath was the largest hospital in the Southern Hemisphere, built by the white man for the black man)and the highest life expectancy, which is on the decline since 1994. Why did the blacks under apartheid not pack there bags and move North and why did we have to block our borders from the influx of blacks from the North if it was so bad in South Africa?The same can be said for Australia and North America, progress only started once the white man landed. We made many mistakes and injustices were commited but we brought progress and technology. So please don’t blame one races lack of achievement against another as racism.
BRIEF PROFILE OF THE PROPOSED NEW CHIEF JUSTICE
Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng was born in Goo-Mokgatha (Koffiekraal) village, which is located north east of Zeerust, on 14 January 1961.
Education
In 1983, Justice Mogoeng graduated from the University of Zululand with a B Juris. In 1985 he completed his LLB at the University of Natal, Durban. In 1989, he completed his studies at the University of South Africa, where he studied an LLM concentrating on labour law, the law of property, the law of insurance, the law of evidence and the law of criminal procedure.
Will he also have to pay the new tax seeing as he qualified benefiting from the old regime?
I think Pierre de Vos is a complete idiot for even mentioning this
I am a UK national, granted SA permantent residence in 1995.
Pierre… You are a complete idiot
A “suspected” homophobe according to previous posts of the prof………
More taxes or not, the problem of unequal wealth will always be there. 15 M people are allready on wealthfare. The Apartheid system was a wealthfare state (i.e Hospitals and 11 Universities for non-whites were built in the homelands and other parts) and so is the new south africa.
Mr. De Vos will not give his job and wealth away and that is the problem. Ironically his individualism and liberalism will keep the peasants on the plantation as it were anyhow. We are in a catch 22 and neither the DA or the ANC can solve this problem. Mr. De vos is a liberal making socialistic noises.
@Simon Watts
“I am a UK national, granted SA permantent residence in 1995.”
Silly, silly mistake. ;o)
@Gwebecimele
These are the ideas we should be looking at
. Dare I suggest that we make all forms of corruption a very serious offence? Let’s put a few corrupt metro cops and home affairs officials AND the people that pay a R100 bribe away for 15 years. Please do not tell me that is not allowed – it is the maximum penalty currently allowed. No more stays in hospital for a year! The Shabby Shaiks of the world must do their time! Let’s downlaod a super wealth creating application – the Rule of Law. Believe me, this country will be saving so much cash it wont need to raise 1c in taxes on anybody!
Cheers
AB
@ Danny Archer
Fair enough, there are different strains and paths of cultural evolution and, as Larry Diamond posits, environmental factors likely induced certain groups to modernise more quickly than others. But I do not see the relevance of the fact one way or another that there was no sub-Saharan wheel to the question of the wealth tax. When people point invoke the fact in this debate it sounds as though they are suggesting that, since Africans were relatively underdeveloped, there is no moral or political case for a racially based tax. But that simply does not follow.
@ Danny Archer
Don’t expect Africans to give us some date in the past when we will “all be equal”. Time, is, with respect, a European concept. We invented it to know whn the winter would come and go else we would not survive. In Africa, near the equator, you simply don’t have that problem.
Maybe we should also stop giving a hoot about tomorrow. Perhaps we are aking this debate way too seriously
. Its time to find solutions and stop mulling over history!
AB
@Michael Osborne
“Since Africans were relatively underdeveloped, there is no moral or political case for a racially based tax. But that simply does not follow.”
Why?
@ Realist
people who come from countries in the northern climates come from a long line of ancestors who had to work with all four seasons in order to survive. They, by necessity, had to plan during the warmer months in order to have food and survive the colder months. It trained them to work on an efficient time schedule and to work hard at the task and make the most of what little resources they had.
They developed a work ethic that valued planning, resourcefulness, effective management of time and effort and a value system that placed self-sufficiency high on the list of core values.
Warmer climates tend to provide longer growing seasons, less harsh living conditions and a tendency to conserve energy during the heat of the day,( i.e sitting in the sun scratching one’s balls and watching the chickens look for food in the dust) thus cutting down on productivity and drive. This is turn led to a diminished mental capacity as the brain was not being used.
@Andrew Buttress
“Its time to find solutions and stop mulling over history!”
Perhaps. But all legislation, everywhere in the world, and in all forms of government, is based on and is a consequence of history. Since we are debating the merits of this legislation, I believe that mulling over history is imperative.
@ Michael Osborne
I think you miss the point. The point is that European people made an enormous impact on the world we live today and that sometimes the good we brought to Africa, even today, outweighs the bad. The ‘wheel’ is a metaphor for this. The same happened in North America and Australasia and South America. But there, the “Europeans” are the majority. The trouble is, with respect, that we run the risk of killing the goose that lays the all too small golden egg in this country – just look at what happened in Zimbabwe. Colonialism was a crime against humanity. But so is government invoked starvation under the guise of land redistribution! Let’s play roulette shall we. Let’s ‘transform’ the economy. To what? Dare I say what transformation has done to our rugby team? Ooh, I’m a racist. Again!
Cheers
AB
@John Roberts
Yup.
@ John Roberts
John, with respect you are right and wrong. I believe your anthropological reasoning to be correct but to say Africans have a ‘diminished mental capacity’. I have a black guy working with me doing a Masters in Elec Eng. Way smarter than I am mate. Not sure if I agree with what you say..
AB
@Andrew Buttress
There’s always the exception to the rule. I had the pleasure of studying my BSc Honours in Computer Science with a stupidly clever Nigerian coconut. He started his Masters at 21. Tragically he passed away at 22.
Point is, they are rare. If you take the Bell curve of black IQs and superimpose it on that of white IQs, there IS overlap, but the mean falls far to the left of the white mean.
@ Danny
I never said africans had a diminished mental capacity. I said people from warmer climes.
And yes, there are exceptions to every rule but the average still applies.
Its a pity we have to do this and that to address this and that imbalance, all in vain. Its a pity we have to adopt AA, BEE, etc to bridge the gap between so and so… a real pity…
On attaining independence, Africans seem to have opted for reconciliation all because of this noble concept of ubuntu but realistically speaking that is where they got the entire equation wrong…
Instead, some people should have been sent packing without farther ado, finish and klarr…
@John Roberts
My post was backing you up, boet. :p
Another legacy of apartheid …. blacks have no respect for authority…
Mahlangu-Nkabinde fails to show up to answer questions
Public Works minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde fails to show up to brief MPs on the damning findings against her by the Public Protector.
Now how many pavilions could we build for the poor with the money behind this corruption, Pierre ?
This De Vos character, he is remarkably silent. Perhaps spending the little retainer he received from his political bosses for punting this view as a whitey. I think the ANC is using different people to plant and spread the idea.
@ John Roberts.
Okay, let’s call it warmer climates. But this is not a genetic issue for me, its a cultural issue. Europe had to develop a culture on innovation, warmer places did not.
On the IQ debate – guys, that is a European idea too. I’m still wondering what the African view is?
I state again. I am a European, not an African
Cheers
AB
@ John Roberts
Blacks have no respect for authority…
In European culture the idea is known as the rule of law. There seems to be different rules of law applicable in SA – one for Zuma and his cohorts and the other for the rest of us?
What is the African view of the rule of law? That the chief is the ultimate authority. That is what he practises. Same as Swaziland. At least King Mswati is honestly corrupt. Oh, the SA taxpayer bailed him out too! Where is the rule of law here? Zuma thought he could simply extend the Chief Justices’ term too. Oops! And now Mac Maharaj says we don’t understand the man. Ag shame, we do. He is an African!
No wonder nobody want to pay this tax? Its just another payment to the chief in charge!
Cheers
AB
@Andrew Buttress
I’m a Euro-African.
“On the IQ debate – guys, that is a European idea too. I’m still wondering what the African view is?”
It’s racist, of course.
@ Danny Archer
That’s about right I suppose. If one can be called African American because one lives in America but whose ancestors came from Africa then I suppose we are Euro-Africans.
The point is that our culture and by that I mean the way we treat one another, our manners, religion, values we instill, belief in the individual etc. is inherently European. This farce of a ‘multiracial’ society has gone on long enough. Zuma displays inherent African cultural traits – consultation, polygamy etc. This is not MY culture. I can identify far more easily with David Cameron as a human being than I can with Zuma. I’ll freely admit I don’t have African friends because by and large I have NOTHING in common with them.
Can this country please be honest about race? Maybe then we can start to get along instead of fooling ourselves we are one nation. If we were one nation we would not need two different songs in three different langauges cruely welded together to form a national anthem. If we were one nation then one song in one language would surely do?
Cheers
AB
@ Sipho
What is racist? Our minister of Higher Education, blade nzimande, has called for a an overhaul of universities to include the African world view. IQ was deveoped in Europe as a notional numerical score of a person’s intelligence. So what is the African equivalent of IQ?
Thank-you
AB
@ Danny Archer
You ask why I said “Since Africans were relatively underdeveloped, there is no moral or political case for a racially based tax. But that simply does not follow.”
Because I do not think any credible case for reparations is based on a claim that Africans are, on balance, better off by virtue of colonialism/apartheid than they would have been had there been no colonialism/apartheid. That is a straw man.
A stronger case can be made without indulging in a game of speculative historical counterfactualism: That there is a large group of Africans who, in the relatively recent past, suffered great harm at the hands of white people, who benefitted thereby. Of course the latter claim can also be debated back and forth. But that debate is not advanced one way or another by an investigation as to whether indigenous southern Africans had the wheel.
“So what is the African equivalent of IQ?”
I dunno. Maybe spear chucking?
They really do think it is racist, because it makes them look inferior. However, so far nobody (pinko liberals included) has come up with an acceptable alternative.
So the system stands.
@ Andrew
“The point is that European people made an enormous impact on the world we live today and that sometimes the good we brought to Africa, even today, outweighs the bad”
Please see my response to Danny on this: The credible case for reparations, if one is to be made, is not based upon a weighing of the basket of benefits for colonialism against the basket of ills.
Take an example from a different context altogether. The Bolsheviks saved the Russians peasantry (90%)of the population in 1917), from near-serfdom under the Czars. Does that excuse or mitigate Stalin’s mass killings 15 years later of tens of millions of peasants.?
A similar approach would apply as a matter of law. You yourself call colonialism a “crime against humanity.” Now, accused does not get off a criminal charge by pointing out that he had earlier provided great benefit to the victim. Not would an analogous argument work in the law of delict.
@Anton – “I live and learn……I never realised that our Constitutional Court is supposed to rule on Grand Symbolic Gestures based on the values and political views of the presiding judges. Wonder if they would agree. Furthermore, I had no idea that one can attach tangible value to symbolism. If I were better informed I would try and further this debate in the context of possible judicial hocus-pocus.” Hahahahaha!!
@Paul – “I think P de Vos sees this as a largely theoretical legal exercise a bit like debating say, whether Jews were seen as human or not by the German law in WWII. The absolutely basic moral principal of any race based legislation being wrong is ignored. It is, and was, always wrong and again, on an absolutely basic level, two wrongs don’t make a right.” Agree 100%!
@Elly – There is already a national taxpayers’ union called, well, the National Taxpayers’ Union
– see http://www.nbusa.org.
@Pierre – “The naked racism expressed by many contributors here is quite shocking and depressing.” Just playing Devil’s Advocate – isn’t a tax based solely on race also naked racism?
@ Lee Cahill
Any time race is mentioned, be it in a religious debate or not, the connotation is that racisms is alive and well and living.
Pierre De Vos says:
August 15, 2011 at 15:06 pm (and lower down)
Prof de Vos: I do not think that your assertion that Michael Osborne and I are dead-wrong is totally justified. And, perhaps I should indeed wager a bottle of good red wine.
The authorization in s 9(2) to legislatively “unfairly discriminate” against previously advantaged people or groups of people, without creating an “undue burden” on whites as a kind of “punishment” (I still fail to see how a racially based tax will not amnount to a ‘punishment’ or an ‘undue burden’), clearly provides that such legislative measures must be designed to “protect or advance” previously disadvantaged people or groups. It does not authorize the imposition of a race based tax to be distributed amongst all of the other race (who were disadvantaged under apatheid). I mean, wil it be fair to provide for legislation that will “advance” guys like Tokyo Sexwale, Julius Malema, Jacob Zuma (I thik I have the hierarchy in terms of distribution of their riches right) together with poor blacks, whilst at the same time “disadvantage” all whites (including those that did not benefit under apartheid). = By the way, I think your analogy of having been able to attend university and qualify as a law professor because you have benefitted from apartheid is a sweeping generalization that cannot be supported in every respect – I, for example, had to work on the mines as a ma-laisha, shoulder to shoulder with black brothers because my father (and entire white family) was not rich, and I clearly did not benefit from apartheid in order to go to university. I think the same can be said about some of my peers who had to work as stokers on steamers for a few years (and during holidays) to go to university. = I also do not think that the democratic argument will stick (as long as the overwhelming majority benefits / does not benefit) – and I am of the opinion that s 9(3) – read with (5)- would clearly be transgressed if governemnt discriminates by imposing a whites only tax in order to “protect or advance” blacks people – as that will clearly be “unfair”. Therefore, the limitations clause (s 36) will have to be passed before such legislative measures will be regarded as constitutional. (‘Klip in die bos’ = Will the white CC judges be satisfied to be taxed, whilst their black brothers and sisters are not? Did you see what Ronny Kasrills had to say?) Once again, s 9(2) does not envisage ‘discrimination with a view to disadvantage previously advantaged’, but rather ‘discrimination with a view to advance previously disadvantaged’. Therefore, I again say that the Van Heerden matter is not a good analogy to base your argument on.’
Just to add to my hastilly prepared post above
Therefore I think BEE, affirmative action quotas, schemes like that in the van Heerden matter, payment of social grants etc will pass under s 9(2), but not a penalty tax just because one is white. One cannot, for example argue that the new medical insurance scheme should be placed on the shoulders of only white people, in order to advance the position of blacks, but one may penalize (all) rich people who can afford medical aids to help subsidize (all) the disadvantaged ones who cannot afford proper medical service.
@ PdV
Pierre, for whatever its worth, Albertyn and Goldblatt also disagree with you on reading sections 9(2) and 9(3) independently of each other. See CLOSA 35-32 (arguing that it is implicit in Van Heerden majority that “fairness remains an important principle” in 9(2.))
If I may add one more argument: s 9(2) speaks of measures “to promote the achievement of equality,” “designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons.” I wonder whether your proposed symbolic gesture, in the form of a whites-only tax, would satisfy both parts of this test.
@ Dr Mousy
Did not see your last two contributions before I posted the above. I agree with you entirely. (Pity that, on a constitutional law blog, we must wade through an avalanche of speculation about wheel invention, larded with some slightly dodgy amateur anthropology, before we get to debating the constitutional issue at stake.)
MO
“Take an example from a different context altogether. The Bolsheviks saved the Russians peasantry (90%)of the population in 1917), from near-serfdom under the Czars. Does that excuse or mitigate Stalin’s mass killings 15 years later of tens of millions of peasants.? ”
Perhaps you should get back to those history books. The Bolsheviks only saved Russia from prosperity I’m afraid – funded by Imperial Germany to get Russia out of the war as they had near zero popular support in Russia. Stalin’s murder of tens of millions of peasants was a natural continuation of Bolshevik rule. Lenin and Stalin together are histories greatest criminals. Only Mao is in their bracket. Hitler is a poor understudy by comparison – Stalin even murdered more Jews than Hitler.
@ Zookes
“Perhaps you should get back to those history books. The Bolsheviks only saved Russia from prosperity”
Obviously, Zookeeper, I will defer to you on matters of history. I have heard quite a lot about the prosperity on Russia in 1917. Please tell me more!
Prof
On the legal side I’m with the Mouse.
I too believe you will struggle to justify it. When breaking it down to what is “fair” and “unfair”, it will fail the litmus test. The courts have already found, in AA cases for example, that preferring a black candidate over a white when there is potential etc can survive because it is “fair” i.e. the white guy could still stand a chance if he was even more qualified. There has to be some kind of competition, even if weighted in one side’s favour. This is the same way the Preferential Procurement Framework Act works – to provide BEE firms with a points advantage. The white firms simply have to be more competitive – but they still have a chance. However, when the question leaves the merits of individual cases and place skin colour above all else, the fairness is lost.
It then becomes arbitrary and discrimminatory.
A tax on white people only will definitely fail a constitutional test.
You still need to grapple with the realities of post-Apartheid SA. Some strong points were raised above and you need to deal with them too. Our history is extremely grey and you cannot drop it into nice black and white packages.
As my favourite Arch says: Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument.”
MO
We’re all fed that old chestnut in school history but it couldn’t further from the truth.
In a nutshell – the Bolsheviks took a country bigger and wealthier than China is now with as much if not more economic promise and reduced it to rural Zimbabwe in less than 6 months.
For more: History’s Greatest Heist by Sean McMeekin.
Why is no-one refering to Walker & Harksen?
I can understand that a lot of whites are peeved after the ANusClowns’ election campaign which consisted solely of racial mobilisation against the white ‘other’.
It is very pleasing that a lot of whites are realising belatedly that they have been sitting on their backsides when they should have been micromanaging the modus vivendi between black and white, and that they are being far more aggressive about sending signals about what they consider to be dealbreakers now that the ANusClowns have tried to reduce that modus vivendi to tatters.
We have given the ANC a free ride for 17 years, and it is time to take back control over how your taxes are spent to prevent the ANC misspending them, enriching a few, while most black people are condemned to live lives of absolute despair.
We ought to prevent anyone who is trying to live a godly life from being driven to despair. Especially if it is this ANC ‘government’ that is driving them to despair.
A modus vivendi means finding a way to live together, not hugs & kisses, ‘reconcile’ or ‘get along’ or whatever adjective pleases dewy-eyed bemoeisiekes like Pierre and the Arch.
Please do not let these twerps make you take your eye off the ball. WHy engage in argument or racial stereotyping that would hurt innocent people if they knew about it? You let Juju and the ‘radicals’ (OK, we know their ‘radicalism’ is fueled by greed and the desire to stay out the slammer) paint you into a corner that way.
You need to learn to say ‘NO!’ nicely – and mean it.
Malema’s followers do not read this blog or Business Day – so far they have been given none of the information that we have access to about nationalisation and redistribution of land. They think they have got nothing to lose, that things cannot get worse for them.
They’re not living off rats yet, like many people in Zim had to.
One more thing, if I’d been burgled twice with no insurance and all my posessions had been stolen that I’ve collected in 26 years and nothing that I own is older than 6 years and someone stole my car without insurance, before someone calls me stupid, my property is insured, but the insurance repudiated my claim because each of the seperate incidences qualified a certain exclusion in terms of the policy, the car was driven by someone who is not the frequent driver, the house breakins, I was still a student, anyway could I say that because the police has no evidence, no clues no suspects that perhaps it justified these atrocities of the present by virtue of the same kak that you just spewed and then my cinicism gets flanked by simply pointing out that I am a racist, that is blaming the victem!
My dad tells me he worked for a little institution back in the day called Bantu sake whose task it was to look in the street for people who doesn’t have a pass, if they don’t they get thrown in jail. My mom says that her mom died because of cancer of the throught that was caused when her mom’s maid put some poison in her coffee when she was just a small grandmother, but it looks like the past, you know is a place where some stuff happened that not everyone is particularly proud about, but we have to call a spade a spade here or else we would be so sensitive about everything that the sensitivity would litterally stagnate progress. (decadence by definition) What I’m saying is if you use scare tactics to manipulate people they will revolt, just as they have. Nelson Mandela said in his inauguration speech that we must not forget our past and the second part, that we forget, is so we don’t make the same mistakes in the future.
@ Brett
“We ought to prevent anyone who is trying to live a godly life from being driven to despair.”
Brett, God knows, I am trying to live a Godly life.
Yet I find myself driven to despair by the RACIST discourse of this blog.
WDYS?
@ Michael Osborne
Dear Michael,
If the case for reparations is not based on a basket of is not based upon a weighing of the basket of benefits for colonialism against the basket of ills, then precisely on what is it based?
Secondly, the argument about charging the accused is somewhat fallacious to me. Apartheid continues to this day and has done for 350 years. A reparations tax for the current geenration is a bit like foisting the sins of the father upon the son. It would be like asking every taxpayer in Germany to pay a reparations tax to the state of Israel.
Remember that in past centuries terms like racism did not exist. Our ancestors when they came here did not have notions of crimes against humanity etc. I say apartheid was a crime against humanity but remember it was only so declared about the time I was born. We cannot change centuries of our history with a reparrtions tax nor do I feel morally or legally obliged to pay one.
Lastly, back to the analogy of the baskets of benefits vs ills. If I benefitted under apartheid and my father paid taxes that built schools in African areas and my mother treated Africans in hospital, am I somehow entitled to some sort of undue enrichment claim. After all, they could have gone back to Europe where they were born. I think not!
On the constitutional debate, I fail to understand, notwithstanding section 9, how such an idea can pass constitutional muster? The whole idea would require a return to the draconian legislation of the past. The intention of section 9 was surely to allow government some leeway in creating laws and social programs to address the legacy of apartheid. To some extent I believe that has happened and been somewhat succesful. Such a tax now would probably have dire consequences for what fragile goodwill actually does exist. With respect the rantings of the ANCYL only serve to illustrate how frustrated people all all sides of the racial spectrum are becoming. I believe the honourable Desmond Tutu is also out of touch with the enormous tax burden already placed on the middle class, many of which are middle aged ‘white’ taxpayers.
Regards
AB
Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder says:
August 16, 2011 at 18:33 pm
Really? And when last did you show your face in Schul?
And why are you not writing ‘G_d’?
come again? Stick to law, you have no clue what you are saying de vos.
Pierre
A distinct group of people dominated and ruled the Southern part of Africa. Another group of people had the same aspirations but failed to do so but were subject to the first group. Then one day the first group, in a spirit of good neighborliness decided that it would be better to share that dominion that they had shed blood to obtain and share in a common future with the people who had been subject to them and become a single people group without distinction from one another.
But some members of the previously subjected group of people were not satisfied with this change and preferred to revert to back to their original aspirations, where they would be the only people group to dominate and rule the country and preferred use this newly acquired shared position, to rather force their original rulers, to be subject to them instead.
The first people group did not understand this as they did not have to share anything, because they had originally won the war and had decided to share a common future voluntarily, as per agreement. But this agreement did not include the forced removal of the individual properties of the first people group as natural accrual would eventually take place as the common vision of the whole group evolved. All of this remained subject to the original common agreement. Should this agreement then be transgressed it would become a violation of the voluntarily vision of the shared future and thus the first people group are no longer subject to sharing their original dominion and ruler ship but are thus free to return to their prior dominion through war.
Is this what you want Pierre ?
You seems to live on a different planet. What about the estimated 2 TRILLION Rand that the anc government has swindled?? Just how many libraries, sportfield etc etc could have been built? As an example: Please tell us what happened to the R43 million that disappeared into thin air being part of the education budget of the Eartern Cape – the result feeding schemes abolished, childrens transport cancelled. Stop sucking uo to your anc chommies.
MO
On your previous post which got lost into the other thread.
Germany has paid “reparations” to Israel. How much of that is real guilt money and how much is real politik for strategic purposes is debatable.
In any event, you must also recognise that from 1994 onwards the primary tax payer is white or a majority white-owned company. All this tax is paid to a “black” government to sort out the mess. Whites no longer have any political power at all so this is how it must be done. I have no doubt that when you weigh up the taxes paid by white South Africans it will dwarf the $70bn donated to Israel since WW2.
Whites get angry because their tax money is not being employed effectively. Whites get angry at the sight of poor blacks because they should not be poor, they should be educated and skilled fellow taxpayers, employers, employees and clients.
Now with the resitution tax and RDP tax that have never left the books since 1995 more should be paid? How much do those two add up to over the last 16 years????
Shouldn’t the question only be adopted when all tax money is spent properly and with believable audit trails? At the moment its a “gimme gimme gimme” situation. “Give me tax and I’ll spend it on myself and my friends. If stuff is breaking then make the whites pay a guilt tax and let me keep my billions.”
That’s why its time for black South Africa to do some serious navel-gazing
Prof PdV – did you do proper research before shooting your mouth off?
Please comment on Belle’s statement :”It was called a Reparations Tax and amounted to 3% added to both PAYE and company tax. Reparations tax started in 1995 and was due to run for 5 years. Funny thing is, after 2000, it was never dropped, because by then everyone had forgotten about it.”
So, if this is true as stated, this really makes you look quite stupid..don’t it?
” Skoenmaker – hou jou by jou lees…”
Looks like Pierre de Vos has a serious case of foot in mouth at the moment.
@ Stephan van der Merwe
August 17, 2011 at 11:44 am
Professor’s, the ones I have met any way, live in cloud cuckoo land most of the time.
Prof. de Vos seems to do so more than most. Wonder when last he donated time to a worthy charity?
@ chris- sure buddy forward vir my jou cv dan maak ek n plan..
@ chris- sure buddy forward vir my jou cv dan maak ek n plan..ek het gereeld mense nodig wat profs moet ontmoet en saam bietjie kak praat.
ockert says:
August 17, 2011 at 12:17 pm
Pierre de Vos says:
August 17, 2011 at 11:57 am
A transitional levy of 1.67% was imposed on South Africans earning more that R50 000 to pay for the election and other costs associated with the transition. It was NOT a wealth tax per say. Go and have a look at the speeches of the then Minister of FInance before jumping down my throat. I find that it is always better tod eal with the facts, rather than making up stuff because it suits you.
Jy spel kak,redineer kak en dan post jy nog jou kak op die verkeerde thread….uit die mond van Casper de Vries… Pierre de Vos”jy is die domste drol”
@ ockert
August 17, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Stuur ‘n adres waarna die CV heen moet gaan dan maak ek so.
post jou email dan forward ek vir jou n link na myne toe-beroep?
17 Chriss potgieters in die land wat meer as 50000k per maand verdien
potgieter.christiaan@gmail.com
Skuldinvorderaar
Ek het eintlik net gejoke maar ek dink ek kan jou actually help. Ken iemand wat vir Kobus de Wet werk ( Barko Financial Solutions ). Dis die grootste ” Cash Loans ” besigheid in die land. Sal jou goeitjies vir hom stuur miskien kry ons dan so vir jou werk georganize.
In the east they say “Talking doesn’t cook rice” they act.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2011/08/17/india-protests-swell-as-anti-corruption-activist-fasts
my email is potgieter.christiaan22@gmail.com
@chris .. hou jy van bakgat en molly & wors
ockert
August 17, 2011 at 12:42 pm
Dink ons is familie as hy ‘n Oos-Kaap De Wet is?
So ver as “bakgat en molly & wors” aangaande is sal jy eers moet verduidelik wat dit is.
http://www.news24.com/Columnists/ClemSunter/Shared-sacrifice-20110817
Gwebecimele says:
August 17, 2011 at 15:22 pm
http://www.news24.com/Columnists/ClemSunter/Shared-sacrifice-20110817
Loved Clem’s ideas. They make more sense than those of the poor Arch
. We need to start growing this place!
I question that I have asked many blacks that has not been answered and maybe you can, is why the blacks and the Indian community did not rise up in support with the Afrikaner against the British during the Boer War.Indeed even the great Mahatma Gandhi joined the British forces as a stretcher bearer.
One could quite conceivably argue that apartheid was a reparations tax for a community that had to bear the brunt of the scorched earth policy and a total anihillation physically and economically while others sat on the side lines.
One must also factor in the likes of Shaka who only died in 1828 and who arguably caused the biggest displacement of blacks in South Africa.
And then of course Pierre was it not the whites who translated the black spoken language into a written language that catapulted blacks into the twentieth century.
It is all very well to be selective about history as you are being because english speaking civil service workers got the same treatment as the afrikaner has got from this black ANC goverment.
I voted for the first time in 1974, for Theo Gerdeners Democratic party and thereafter for the opposition to the Nats.The ANC and its armed struggle being in the communist camp was never an option as the Nats were showing signs of reform then, whereas the ANC communist backers were beyond redemption as has being proven.
The problem with your arguement is that you have set yourself up as a mesiah on the constituion when planely descrimination of this type clearly shows the constitution to be just a piece of paper like the Treaty of Versallies.
The second world war started because the first world could not be put to bed, something the great Jan Smuts warned about, and likewise Pierre this country is heading for disintergration for the same reason.
Very good comment with valid points. Would like to see the mesiah’s response.
Above comment addressed to Mike
Geagte Pierre.
Baie water sal hopelik in die see moet loop voor Aartsbiskop Desmond Tutu se voorstel op die wetboeke beland.
Ek is nie ‘n kenner van die grondwet nie en bemoei my nie met politiek nie. Ek kan net kommentaar lewer op dit wat ek elke dag ervaar.
Ek is in beginsel nie gekant teen ‘n “skuldbelasting” nie, mits ek seker sal wees dat die geld reg bestuur sal word. Sodanige fondse sou aangewend kan word vir sosiale opheffing en om infrastruktuur in onontwikkelde dele van ons land daar te stel.
Die probleem wat ek met so ‘n tipe belasting het, is die waarskynlikheid dat sodanige fondse wanbestuur sal word. Hoeveel ontwikkelingsprogramme wat deur die regering bestuur is, was werklik suksesvol ?
Kom ons vat die Lotto as een voorbeeld. Ek praat onder korreksie, maar is die hoofdoel van die Nasionale Lotery nie om fondse vir Maatskaplike opheffing te genereer nie ? Ek is egter van mening dat bitter min van daardie geld by die regte organisasies uitkom.
Dit is seker logies dat dit veral blankes was wat ekonomies voordeel getrek het uit apartheid, maar om die huidige sosio-ekonmosiese wanbalanse aan die nalatenskap van apartheid toe te skryf, is ‘n baie eng siening.
Die indruk word geskep dat alle blankes ‘n kans gehad het om hulself te verryk, ten koste van die meerderheid in die land. Ek wonder dan waar al die arm blankes vandaan kom ?
Bitter min mense is egter bereid om die werklike probleme aan te spreek, naamlik oorbevolking weens natuurlike aanwas (en vlugtelinge van elders), die totale ondergang van ons onderwystelsel en die regering se onbeholpenheid om die HIV pandemie hok te slaan. Dit is alles dinge wat geweldige druk plaas op ‘n baie klein groepie Suid-Afrikaners wat belasting betaal.
Regstellende aksie het ook nie veel kon uitrig om wanbalanse uit te skakel nie. Hoekom nie ? ‘n Klein groepie “well connected” mense het dit gesien as ‘n maklike en vinnige manier om hulself te verryk. Dit het dus net ‘n klein groepie “swart elite” wat dit bevoordeel.
Die Van Heerden saak in die Grondwetlike Hof is ook vir my ‘n irrelevante voorbeeld. Politici kan nie met gewone burgers vergelyk word nie. Die “eie ek” is gewoonlik hul eerste prioriteit, ongeag watter ideologie hul propageer.
Neem eerder van ons ministers se voordele soos motor- en reistoelae weg, dan sal daar meer as genoeg geld vir sosiale opheffing wees.
Dit sit nie in hierdie regering se broek om ekonomiese wanbalanse uit te skakel nie, selfs al belas hulle blankes met 100% van hul salarisse. Die antwoord le in die daarstel van private organisasies wat aan die publiek verantwoording kan doen oor die aanwending van fondse.
Blanke Afrikaanssprekendes was in die vroee 20ste eeu grootliks finansieel geruineer deur die “Verskroeide Aarde” beleid van lord Kitchener tydens die Anglo-Boereoorlog. Die Helpmekaarbeweging wat na die oorlog in die lewe geroep is, het baie gedoen om blanke Afrikaanssprekendes binne ‘n geslag weer op te hef.
Nee wat, gee my dan eerder die keuse om x % van my salaris aan ‘n goedgekeurde welsyn van my keuse te skenk, maar laat dit asseblief uit die kloue van die regering bly.
@Andrew Butress
I quote:
“Secondly, the argument about charging the accused is somewhat fallacious to me. Apartheid continues to this day and has done for 350 years.”
Every time people make this comment I stop listening to any argument they make. Statements like this shows a lack of knowledge of South African History, or you are twisting history on purpose to try and support your argument.
Let us start with the math part. If you subtract 350 from 2011 you are left with the year 1661. So you are saying that apartheid has been practised in South Affrica since 1661 ? What a joke.
Firtst of all. The first white settlement in South Africa was by the Dutch East India Company, to supply their ships en route to the east.
Jan van Riebeeck was briefed to keep good relations with the local Khoe, barter with them for cattle, but not to interfere in their culture.
Unfortunately the barter wasn’t always fair. Tobacco and alcohol for cattle didn’t seem fair. This lead to friction between the Khoe and the Dutch which escalated when the first “Vryburgers” started to settle on the Khoe’s grazing land.
Most white settlers were not free men but servants of the VOC (Dutch East India Company). They were therefore not able to make up their own laws and policies if not specifically instructd by the VOC.
Slaves were imported from Batavia and parts of Eastern Africa to help built a fort to protect against possible British invasion.
Where is your aparthied in this period of our History? The Khoe people suffered the most from early settlement, yet their descendants (Coloured people) are excluded from affirmative action to a large extend.
@Andrew Butress
Part two….Your name sounds English. I was just wondering. Did England apologise for killing 260000 Afrikaner women and children in the concentration camps during the Anglo Boer War ? Did they pay a “special tax” for destroying farms and killing livestock ?
Referring to the post left by Mike. The Difaqane was as devastating to the black people as apartheid was. Does this mean that the Zulus have to pay restitution to the other black tribes ?
Going back to your comment on 350 years of apartheid. I am of the opinion that people love to start counting from Jan van Riebeeck arrival to try and justify the decades of reversed racism that awaits us due to affirmative action.
Last point. People like you would like us to feel guilty that white people settled in South Africa. I assume you also believe that South Africa was peaceful and tranquil before the white man came with a well developed infrastructure…..
Then let us not lose sight of the fact that a moment in history is written in stone and cannot be reversed.
The story started as a proposal by de Vos that he agrees with Tutu and we, that is we whites, must all part with more cash to justify the successes we achieved in the Southern tip of Africa. The debate has degenerated into a racial issue once again. Why is this so?
Reality says that you cannot change ‘what was, was’ but what we can do is ensure that history is not repeated again. Will we do that? Not as long as we cling to a belief that only we, us personally, can be in the right.
Prof de Vos has got it wrong again, what else can I say about him?
Henro Smit says:
August 17, 2011 at 18:16 pm
Henro, ek dink daar het ‘n ekstra 0 ingesluip in jou skatting oor hoeveel vroue en kinders in die konsentrasiekampe omgekom het. (My oupa Roelofse het 2 boeties daar verloor en is in 1904 in ‘n ossewa gebore op pad terug na ‘n plaas wat tot op die grond afgebrand is. My ander grootjie, Charles Henry Nortje, was ‘n lid van die Bechuanaland Police en toe die oorlog uitgebreek het, het hy by die Cape Mounted Rifles aangesluit en vir die Engelse gescout. Hy moes teen ‘n muur gesit gewees het.)
Die Engelse het in 1904 4 miljoen in skadevergoeding betaal.
Pekkil said:
August 17, 2011 at 14:16 pm
Where are you going to stand, my fellow white South Africans?
“The debate is whether, (1) as a white person growing up, you’ve enjoyed an ‘above average’ share of public resources and (2) whether that should require some equilisation, or ‘pay-back’, in hindsight.”
And
“but surely the issue is not whether they caused it, but whether they extracted more than their fair share (ie, what we refer to as ‘fair’ now) of national resources.”
This is a huge red herring.
What is ‘above average’? What is “more than their fair share”?
Disproportionate to what their parents contributed towards the whole tax pie? Yes, then it would not be fair.
Once again Apartheid is being misrepresented as a hogging of resources rather than an attempt to ensure physical security. The motive being naked avarice, instead of desperate struggle for survival. The Cape Town City Council is at this moment trying to identify – via CCTV – Cosatu members who robbed street vendors of everything they had during a march by striking municipal ‘workers’.
The object is to identify the culprits for criminal prosecution as well as claims for damages.
If Pekkil intends to approach this blog about Apartheid reparations strictly from a point of departure of logic viewed through the filter of what is fair coupled to what an ‘above average’ share of public resources was spent on then I suggest that since the major portions of the Apartheid budget went to the police and the army the major share of any reparations to be made lies at the door of those who necessitated such a large investment in defence and policing.
@ Henro Smit
Point 1: The “350 years of apartheid” is a figure of speech to denote that there has always been racial friction and separation of racial groups since people first came here from Europe. I am not trying to write up an accurate history of SA on this site
Point 2: No, the English did not pay reparations for 26000 deaths caused during the South African War 1899 – 1902. That is why the Afrikaner excluded us in large part from the civil service from 1910 – 1994. Dare I say the English speaker in SA paid a similar price to the one all whites are paying now?With respect, even when I served in the SADF our patriotism was always questioned.
Point 3: Yes, my father is from England. But my mother is from Holland. So I am a genuine ‘draadsitter’!
Cheers
AB
There is much that can be added to this debate but let me say this only:
As much as many of the ignorant, blatantly racist and unacceptable views expressed on this page lead me to the conclusion that white South Africans are ignorant and deserve punishment for their crimes I am not so fast to make such assumptions.
I know many many South Africans such as the Professor amongst others who are committed to achieving the kind of country that we all wish to have: one in which people’s dignity is respected and social justice and equality are advanced,
With that said, Affirmative action is not ‘ reverse apartheid’ and is consitutionally justified.
However, I do have one problem with it and it is this:
“Black man you can , black man you are on your own”
Instead of cultivating a sense of yes you can! in the youth of South Africa we are cultivating a spirit of bitterness, blame and entitlement.
This ironically in my view is the wrong way ( politically not necessarily legally) to do things.
Instead of establishing this once-off wealth tax we need more innovative ideas which instill patriotism in South Africans.
For example, having compulsory national service for all university graduates in which they assist rural communities with their respective skills such as doctors, engineers etc. is one such example of investing in the future of our country.
Thats my point basically we need to invest in the future NOT the past
BEE in its current form is not sustainable. We want young black, coloured, , female etc. people to start their OWN SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSES and know that they are capable of doing what ‘advantagged’ people are capable of doing.
This is because the greatest ‘BENEFIT’ from apartheid was actually the fact that white south africans do not suffer from the inferiority complex that was imposed on the minds of black south africans.
Thus we need to start with black conciousness!
Simply adding more tax to the already bitter white south african tax-payer achieves little.
Again we need to invest in the FUTURE. this is why I sincerely hope that the majority of contributors to this page are 40 or even 50+ and soon going to the kick the bucket. Alternatively please go to Australia, this great nation does not need you.
The time for reconciliation is over as far as the old ignorant racists ppl in this country( both black and white) are concerned. The youth need to be reconciled
We need to INVEST IN THE FUTURE. now thats a positive nation-building approach.
@ Mike
“whites translated the black spoken language into a written language that catapulted blacks into the twentieth century.”
Maggs, maybe Mike has a point here. Why are blacks not more grateful for being catapulted into the 20th Century?
Hey?
Lets talk deal here: Will you guys settle for a once-off R500 million tax?
http://afrikaans.news24.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/Cele-moet-dalk-in-parlement-antwoord-20110818
Cele moet dalk in parlement antwoord
2011-08-18 07:03
Johan Brits
Parys – Genl. Bheki Cele, Suid-Afrika se polisiebaas, sal moontlik in die parlement lig moet werp op ’n ondersoek na meer as R500 miljoen se beweerde bedrog waarmee Max Moshodi, uitvoerende burgemeester van die Noord-Vrystaatse distrikmunisipaliteit Fezile Dabi, na bewering verbind kan word.
Dié polisie-ondersoek fokus op beweerde ongerymdhede in die Ngwathe-munisipaliteit met betalings aan “verskaffers” vir dienste gelewer. Volksblad verneem meer as 15 verskillende diensverskaffers het glo dieselfde bankbesonderhede.
Moshodi was tot in Mei vanjaar burgemeester van dié munisipaliteit, wat dorpe soos Parys en Heilbron bedien. Dié beweerde uitgawes is aangegaan in Moshodi se termyn as Ngwathe se burgemeester.
Papi Mafubedu, sekretaris van die PAC in die Vrystaat, het ’n strafregtelike klag by die polisie ingedien oor R500 miljoen se uitgawes in die Ngwathe-munisipaliteit waarvoor daar volgens hom geen verantwoording gedoen kan word nie. Die PAC het ook reeds ’n klag ingedien oor Ngwathe se dagboekaankope van bykans R200000 wat verniet versprei is.
Medupe Simasiku, woordvoerder van die Nasionale Vervolgingsgesag (NVG) in die Vrystaat, het aan Volksblad bevestig die dossier oor die R500 miljoen-klag is na die polisie vir verdere ondersoek terugverwys. Hy sê dit is uit die huidige polisie-ondersoek nie duidelik wie die geld (“betalings”) goedgekeur het nie.
Pieter van der Westhuizen, ’n DA-raadslid in Fezile Dabi, het Woensdag gesê dit is van uiterste belang dat Moshodi en premier Ace Magashule ’n openbare aankondiging oor die R500 miljoen-bewering maak.
Van der Westhuizen sê indien die bedrog wel ondersoek word, moet die Suid-Afrikaanse polisiediens dit “vinnig en deeglik” ondersoek.
Hy sê Theo Coetzee, DA-LP en verteenwoordiger van die Noord-Vrystaatse kiesers in die parlement, sal op versoek van die DA-koukus in Fezile Dabi Cele voor die parlement die volgende moet vra: Wat is die aard van die ondersoek, wanneer sal dit voltooi wees en watter individue (benewens Moshodi) word ook ondersoek.)’n Verdoemende verslag van die ouditeur-generaal (OG) vroeër vanjaar was die vet op die vuur op maande lange bespiegelings van beweerde bedrog (met verwysing na die betalings vir “verskaffers” en die dagboeke) in Ngwathe.
Die OG het in sy 2009-’10-verslag gesê die munisipaliteit kan nie stawende bewyse verskaf vir verskeie uitgawes van miljoene rande nie, soos voertuigtoelaes van R4,4 miljoen, reistoelaes van R1,5 miljoen, brandstofuitgawes van R2,7 miljoen, huur- en kontrakdienste van R3,3 miljoen en konsultasiegeld van R1,6 miljoen.
Kol. Motansi Makhele, Vrystaatse polisiewoordvoerder, het by navraag aan Volksblad gesê die klag oor die dagboeke is na die Thabongse kommersiële misdaadeenheid in Welkom verwys.
Volksblad het onlangs onthul hoe 200 A5-dagboeke met dié owerheid se embleem in goud op die voorblad teen R926,25 elk gekoop en gratis versprei is.
Die premier- en Moshodi se kantoor sal na verwagting Donderdag kommentaar lewer.
Pierre de Vos still has absolutely nothing to say in response to these posts. Any credibility he might have had before writing this piece of garbage is now down the drain.
I think Ohene has hit the nail squarely on the head.
Thanks Ohene.
why dear pierretjie do you post such ….. whats the word?
whats the use of writing a story on your blog if you dont answer the legitimate Q’s by people with some scruples?
Pierre:
1. You cannot coerce remorse. The result is that this is a retributive measure which is morally, if not legally, unfair.
2. No matter how much the tax raises, it will never – by itself – improve the lot of the poorest of the poor. Nor can it address the failure of service delivery in this country seventeen years after the destruction of the apartheid state.
3. Regardless of Constitutional law, any race-based provision merely entrenches and perpetuates SA’s racial illness (pathology). It should be anathema to any progressive-minded thinker. It can only serve to exacerbate the racial diatribes spouted by doctrinaire racists. It may eventually lead on to incitement and violence.
2. It was an ill-considered proposal made by an aging, if genuine, hero, who seems quite oblivious to the nuances and unintended consequences of what he says. It punishes all for the sins of some. It would be the height of naivite to believe that no people of colour benefited during the apartheid years, though all of them were subject to immoral and unjustifiable discrimination.
3. So the originial proposal – which Tutu quickly modified – would have left the billionaires of Gatesville (who certainly benefited during the apartheid years) untaxed, at the expense of the White bourgeoisie (who are finding things difficult enough in this day and age – 17 years after the destruction of the apartheid state). To that extent it was inherently disproportionate and unfair. Morally, if not legally.
4. It is immoral to tax the whites who have remained behind to face the music, seventeen years after the destruction of the apartheid state, and after the imposition of a reconstruction levy on what was, at the time, an overwhelmingly white tax base. Justice delayed, surely, is justice denied.
5. To me it strongly implies that the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Desmond Tutu, was a failure, which must now belatedly be whitewashed with giant, clumsy brustrokes, at the expense of the ever-diminishing white population still committed to living and working in South Africa.
All in all, poor stuff, unworthy of support and leading to further polarisation and possible future misery.
Oops – soory about the numbering!!
@Ohene, why dont you try and answer the question in my blog ? and why dont you actually try and prove what part of my blog is not based on fact, that is what is unaccepetable.
It is time for blacks to face some facts insteadof parading as facts the ANC propaganda dished out daily.
Did you know that there was a Boer War concentration camp in Durban at Merebank and yet there is no record of any blacks or indian providing assistance to these people who rose up against an empire that every boer black and indian was subject to.
This just in from a ‘friend’:
http://praag.co.uk/columns/mike-smith/765-blacks-should-compensate-whites-for-giving-them-south-africa.html
Wonder if the prof and the arch will comment now?
Long live the ivory tower! Without you we would have never got away with the great progress we have made in implementing our National Democratic Revolution! We have stolen your pants already and have actually managed to let you feel guilty about the fact that we didn’t also take your shirt while doing it! We have got the mineral rights, the water rights, the have the employment equity act (to squeeze all undesirables out of the economy), BEE, we have now just diluted the ownership of agricultural land, now we just have to get the constitution changed (or the right judges). Have a look at our website:
http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/National+Democratic+Revolution
What I have to say is dreadfully politically incorrect but maybe it will help clarify something we all know is out there but can’t quite put our fingers on.
It takes two to tango and yes, white policies were terrible but … blacks must take responsibility for Apartheid. It is blacks people’s fault it happened and that it lasted for 48 years – there I said it.
Now hear me out on that though. When comparisons are made to other societies that have brought themselves back from complete destruction, most notably Germany and Japan, South Korea and now just you watch Vietnam; one thing is striking, the society took responsibility for their destruction. In Germany and Japan for example it was their fault that they lost the wars and they accept that deep down. They basically failed to stop others beating them – yes, and what a fight they gave, but they are still defeated.
Once that is accepted, the society takes full responsibility for re-creating itself and coming back bigger, better and stronger. Germany tried blaming someone else and it got them the holocaust and military and social annihilation. West Germany had a Marshal plan to help it out, but then it got East Germany which erased that and more – now its back.
Here its always the white man’s fault. Nobody is taking responsibility. Not even my favourite Arch.
Once you take responsibility you stop being a victim. Once you stop being a victim you reclaim any dignity you lost.
It is so empowering its addictive!
The tough part is taking the responsibility in the first place. Its scary, but wow its liberating. That may explain the general difference in how easy white people are in their skins. They take responsibility, address the problem and move on. Black folk are angry at that, but the solution is straight forward.
Unfortunately the ANC thinks it needs a bogeymen to survive at the polls so there’s no hope in hell of any political will to address this problem.
I think if Biko were alive he may well agree with me.
@ William
“the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, … must now belatedly be whitewashed with giant, clumsy brustrokes”
Too true.
@ Maggs
Yes, the quality of HSRC opinion surveys has gone downhill very fast! Now watch the racists blame affirmative action!
Sigh … just had a look at the link posted above by Chris and have read through Zoo’s comments. This is the kind of racist cr*p that happens when irresponsible leaders and academics support race-based measures in a supposedly non-racist democracy. It has a huge polarising effect and destroys, in one quick swoop, years and years of work on reconciliation …
Pierre, thanks for a great post. We just published a cartoon and article with an alternative take on Tutu’s statement and a more pragmatic way forward than simply taxing the whites.
Check out: http://www.wonkie.com/2011/08/18/tax-the-whites-desmond-tutu/ – it would be great to hear your thoughts!
Wonkie
I was taught that when you do something without being asked shows true sincerity. Yet constantly we have to suggest to whites on how they can go about to assist in the reconciliation of our country (be it this guilt tax or solutions to the land issue), which will go a long way in closing the clear and defined economic disparity between whites and blacks. But all we get is reasons on why they can’t or won’t. We must get the message and stop pandering to their insolence and indifference.
@Harold Ferwood. “Clear and defined economic disparity between whites and blacks.”
You’re bringing it back to racial lines again. How about the clear and defined economic disparity between the filthy rich and the poor.
I remember the kids back in my school days, who always fooled around instead of paying attention in class. As a result, those same people are probably among the poor. Why should whites be made to blame for everything that’s wrong with this country. Then everyone could just make a mockery of their education, amount to nothing, and still expect to have the same luxuries of those who work hard.
You don’t have to suggest anything to me, and I’m white yes, because I worked hard, contended against BEE candidates, and still came out on top, despite the odds being against me.
Quit looking for someone to blame, as this is what the world is like. Survival of the fittest. People are not equal, and they never will be in today’s society. The entire world needs to change for everyone to be equal.
Till then, each person has to find his own way through life. Current government relies on corruption and racial tension to come out on top. How much does this say about them?
I was wondering whether the fulfillment of this “tax” obligation will affect the various pieces of legislation which aims to address the the unfair advantage whites gained from apartheid, and to some degree, colonialism.
Can this tax address the non-economic benefits whites will continue enjoy or will the “public acknowledgment or apology” resolve this?
I personally think its a bad idea – wouldn’t want Juju to be robbed of his best ammunition
LOL
No one will be able to move forward and build a future with the mentality some of these people have.
In 40 years time whites will demand reparations tax from all blacks who benefited due to BEE procedures.
No one moves forward, everyone just moves in the same circle based upon racial lines and resentment.
Pretty fucking stupid if you ask me.
@Harold Ferwood, maybe you should do a bit of enquiry as to how many and how much predominantly white churchs’do for aids orphans and the underpriviliged blacks in this country.
I dont see much support from the BEE brigade here on the East Rand and in fact there is a white farmer and his wife at Putfontein that grows food solely for the Methodist aids orphanage in Daveyton.
Now you didnt know that did you.
@ Stephan van der Merwe
I don’t know if you actually walk around with your eyes open, but in this country the filthy rich are still predominately white and the poor, black.
You don’t seem to fully understand what is being asked of you. I surmise you are saying to yourself “why must I” but the far more important question which you should be asking is, “what if I don’t”.
The Arch and the Prof are actually pleading, as they sense what is steadily growing in our country amongst the masses. And the rhetoric being used by some are simply fueling this. Survival of the fittest you say!!! You have been warned.
Dear Pierre de Vos
Please grow up ! As long as we tag people in racial context, we will be condemmed as a nation.
So, if we donate a few milliion rand of this special tax the SA reality is that it will be spend on fancy cars, parties, etc., etc. Noting goes to the needy and poor.
Our rulers must still learn (after 17 years of the new SA) to spend the tax money wisely (the examples of misappropriation of funds is too numerous to mention). They must also learn that the serve the nation – not the other way around !!
I voice my opinion load and clear that your suggestion is unwise.
Harold, threats of violence do not go down well, here. The rhetoric being used by some is a reaction to hate-speech by the ANC from ANC platforms, which includes chanting ‘Kill the boer’ in Soweto shopping malls.
Most whites have little agency to change much ANC maladministration and misgovernance but keep on doing what they did under National Party governments – fork over more than half their income in tax and do what ‘the government’ tells them.
Wild thought here.
What if each of us committed to joining our local residents’ association, a community group or another civil society group working on an issue that’s close to our hearts? And what if each of us committed to working with others in order to deal with just one problem in our immediate area of influence – with the goal of building a better life for ourselves and our fellow South Africans?
What if we simply refused to be divided by the careless rhetoric of politicians and intellectuals and just set about building the kind of functional, tolerant, caring, effective and efficient society we’d *all* like to live in? Think of what we could achieve …
The fact is that stuff happens (history, racism, corruption – you name it). It’s how we respond to it that determines the eventual outcome.
@ Harold
You write of White people’s “insolence and indifference” – which is a gross generalisation and obviously couched in the most inflammatory language possible, so I assume you are out to make points and not to apply your reason to this debate.
Which is a pity – because you pose an important question for White people, “what if I don’t?”
I’ll turn it around. What if I do?
There are about 45 million Black people in South Africa, and about 4 million White (the figures are rough and White people are leaving the country in a steady trickle, which means there are fewer of them).
How much do Whites need to contribute to make a meaningful contribution to the majority? Would a million Rand a head suffice? Say R45 million million?
Should each White person make a contribution of about R11.25 million?
Over the top? OK let’s say, every White person should contribute a healthy R100 000 (so husband, wife and two children would be assessed at R400 000). That would raise less than R9000 per head for each Black person in the country.
So at the cost of grave, perhaps irreparable, financial damage done to the vast majority of White people in the country, you could give the Black majority a windfall of less than R10 000 each (a single woman and her three children would get less than R36 000).
It doesn’t stack up. Liquidating a large slice of South Africa’s savings would damage the economy. The country would suffer enormously. Many Whites would be impoverished. The symbolic significance, however, would be sadly underwhelming. And the benefit of short duration, as inflation escalates alarmingly.
You say Tutu and de Vos can “sense what is steadily growing in our country amongst the masses. And the rhetoric being used by some are simply fueling this. … You have been warned.”
Certainly you are one whose rhetoric is violent and inflammatory.
But if there is truly a sense growing in this country that Whites are responsible for 17 years of failed service delivery, 17 years of putting Number One first, 17 years of corruption, 17 years of failure to appropriate budgets, run municipalities, government departments, schools and hospitals to the benefit of all South Africans, then it is simultaneously untrue, unfair and unfortunate.
The truth is that you can hate White people, and incite people to commit violence against them (you’re doing that already), but you cannot mend our beloved country by doing it.
You seem condemned to repeat all the failures of the past. From my grave I will laugh at your wasteland, and wish you the joy of it.
Looks like someone is actually trying to make a proper effort in order to close the wealth gap. It’ll require everyone’s co-operation though, and we all know how that will turn out.
http://www.da.org.za/newsroom.htm?action=view-news-item&id=9679
Well said William! This naïve and dangerous drivel about paying a tax for ANC incompetence, tomfoolery, theft and embezzlement and then shrouding it all in a mega mea-culpa syndrome and the fetishising of guilt – that is pathological. SA is just like a cocktail party, but no one checked the guest list… and to Gembecile, this notion of 350 years of colonial rule is historically inaccurate. Read your history. History isn’t about how nice people are, or about wishful thinking, but about what they do and don’t do, often bad and sometimes good. Besides, if you want to live in pre-Van Riebeeck bliss, you won’t need money anyway.
Pierre
With reference to my previous comment, the following:
The South African Parliament repealed the Population Registration Act of 1950 on June 17, 1991. How will the state be able to administer any race-based legislation in the absence of this “tool”? Is this not a valid question or are you ignoring me as a matter of principle?
@Harold Ferwood
If you say the Arch and de Vos are pleading, they are pleading to the wrong crowd. My generation has already moved on as we grew up in a post-apartheid era.
Trying to tax a person based upon the colour of their skin, is a racist act, and so 1970′s, get with the times.
Secondly, expecting that to actually make a difference, is absolutely idiotic, as that will just be drop in the water compared to the millions in tax that is wasted by present government.
The need for this tax, is just a testament to the 17 year failure of the current government, hence the apartheid and race cards are raised again.
Lastly, yes, it is survival of the fittest. It has been that way since the dawn of time. Would you like to have a race?
Article by Tim Cohen in BusinessDay. Unlike Pierre, this guy actually knows how to present a balanced argument
SHOULD white South Africans pay a reparations tax, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu has suggested? I feel contradictory emotions about this notion. In principle, I’m for it. It would show whites are dedicated to making amends in a real way. It would help to undermine the false notion of white complacency and callousness.
But in practice the idea borders on the absurd. It rests on a set of false notions that are impractical at best and racist at worst.
Take the widespread slogan that “all whites benefited from apartheid”. It seems so obviously true, and in some ways it is. Yet it is a fantastically crass notion. For those of us who were actually around during apartheid, it was obvious there were plenty of blacks who supported apartheid institutions such as the homeland governments, and plenty of white people who actively worked against apartheid. Assigning collective guilt is like assigning collective virtue; it only works conceptually. The real world is different.
The other problem is that apartheid was antithetical to economic growth. It prevented the economy’s full development , which is the true reason it ended. In a way, everybody suffered from apartheid just as everybody benefited from democracy.
The two other countries colonised at the same time as SA — Australia and Canada — grew much faster. Their residents are now much richer on average than even the average white South African. White South Africans can argue, as weird as it sounds, that their economic achievement was stunted because their forebears ended up here . It’s a slightly specious argument but, for what it’s worth, it’s true.
Of course, the position of black South Africans was always worse. The economy of the country was built on the sweat of miners, who were corralled into dangerous, back-breaking work mainly by having their land forcibly stripped from them.
Yet as poor as black South Africans are, do you just ignore the fact that, on average, they are richer than most people elsewhere in Africa? How does that fit into the equation? Colonialism cruelly dragged the country into the modern world and today we all benefit from that social revolution.
This is all accepting the idea that races are an accurate proxy for wealth, both now and in apartheid SA. But this is not the case. The majority of buyers of BMWs in SA today are black. Clearly, some progress is being made. And in all of this, where do you situate coloured and Indian South Africans? The average standard of living of Indian South Africans is now much the same as whites’. Yet they were also deprived of political and economic rights during apartheid. Should they be givers or takers?
This notion also works from the premise that SA’s main problem is the redistribution of wealth. But it actually is a wealth-creation problem. If we are successful in growing the size of the pie, the slices each of us gets will all increase, even without active redistribution. Shouldn’t we be concentrating on that at least as much as on how the pie is sliced? And constitutionally, how do you exact a racial tax?
There is a more trenchant argument too. In a sense, there is already a reparations tax — it is just not called that. SA’s tax system is intensely progressive. Roughly speaking, a third of SA’s taxes come from companies, a third from VAT and a third from personal taxpayers. There are only 5,5-million personal taxpayers, supporting services that provide health care, education and social welfare payments to 45- million people. It’s obvious who pays most of the tax and who gets most of the benefits. On top of that, there are also a host of government schemes intended to intervene actively to correct past distortions.
Yet I can’t help feeling there is still something missing. It has been almost two decades since apartheid ended, and it is disappointing that there has been so little change. But, in a way, this may not be as bad as it seems. People naturally want quick change but, too often it’s just not within our grasp.
Society is a big aircraft carrier. Shifts take place frustratingly slowly. Try to turn too fast and there is a danger the whole thing will just fall over. Speed and action often seem like great virtues, but they can also be great dangers.
@ Mr. Roberts
I like Tim Cohen’s article. But can I just say that you are being unfair to our host when you write “Unlike Pierre, this guy actually knows how to present a balanced argument.”
This is Pierre’s blog, we are his clients. I for one respect him and his generosity of spirit.
Let us be clear, Pierre de Vos is an important commentator on, and defender of, our constitution, which is all the defense we have against the lunatic fringe (at both ends of the political spectrum).
He has rendered great service to South Africa, and we are in duty bound to recognise his intellectual attainments – even when we disagree with his arguments.
Let us not fall into the trap of underestimating him – or Desmond Tutu, who is a giant among men in this troubled land.
@ William
Sorry mate but Pierre is not a host and nobody is a “client”. Pierre is a sensasionalist. He continually spreads the Big Lie such as “all whites benefited from apartheid” etc. and many more.
He makes sweeping generalisations about whites based on his view and not on any research.
Sure, he knows the Constitution.
But that’s about all.
He writes to antagonise people so that he can be quoted in the mainstream media.
Stephan – One of the many arguments against the neo-liberal growth myth: http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/growth-isnt-possible.
@Lee Cahill: Yes there are arguments against it, but has anything else implemented by government worked? We all know the world economy is fucked as it is.
Hence we are seeing riots like the recent one in the UK. Fact is, the wealth gap is present across the entire world. Tutu and de Vos want to blame it on the whites in South Africa though, which is complete and utter bullshit.
Stephan – point taken about government and the wealth gap worldwide, but growth targets defined within the context of the very economic system that’s faltering aren’t necessarily the solution. We need to be looking for a “third way”.
Worker share schemes in business & industry and shared ownership schemes in agriculture are already working in some parts of the country – and focusing on extending these (which could be done fairly easily) could make a HUGE difference to both unemployment and the wealth gap. So could the efficient distibution of existing Land Bank development allocations to black farmers, which are currently just sitting in the bank (due to investigations into corruption), and the creation of a more conducive and supportive environment for SMEs.
But then, schemes like these would put economic power in the hands of the people and wouldn’t enich the state – hence the call for nationalisation despite the fact that so many easily-implementable options are available.
As for the whole race “thaing” yeah, it’s bullsh*t …
Willem
Where exactly is Pierre’s ‘generosity of spirit’ when he labels whites who did not grow rich during apartheid as lazy or stupid?
Lee Cahill
Slightly off-topic, but a worthwhile view of what you call ‘neo-liberalism’ versus plain old liberalism.
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=251456&sn=Detail&pid=71616
Would be interesting to hear Tutu’s take on Thabang Makwetla’s opinion that there are “NO poor white people”
The fact that somebody in the government is blind to the sosio-economic situation in this country is a big concern.
Does this mean that our government is unwilling to look after the welfare of a minority and are only concerned with the welfare of a specific racial group ?
On the tax issue. Most salary earning citizens are expected to pay tax if I am not mistaken. The government then use this tax to manage the country.
So surely the question could be asked: What has our government been doing all these years with our tax money? Has it been spent wisely ?
How much money has this government wasted on “white elephants” ?
To list a few:
1. Weapons deal
2. Soccer world cup (you can eat stadiums and they cost money to maintain)
3. Writing off the debt of our Struggle friends (Cuba)
4. The Taxi Recapitalisation Programme
Add up the money wasted on all these crap and think what it could have been used for: It could have been invested in Education, the country’s dying infrastructure, crime prevention. All the things that could serve the to stimulate our economy.
I think that it is in South Africa’s best interest to build a strong black middle class that could support our economy. We have too many people and not enough tax payers.
Breeding less would also help. The richest countries in the world have very low birth rates.
Birth rates in South Africa is hightest amongst the lower sosio-economic group. Link that to a shrinking white population that still pays the majority of taxes and you have a problem.
A lot has been said about BEE being just and fair, blah blah blah. The only results coming from BEE is that it led to the creation of a well connected, filthy rich black elite, while the masses remain poor and uneducated.
What worries me is that a well respected archbishop and a professor can’t see what the rest of us are seeing.
Belle – thanks. Spotted that this morning, but it’s long – will check it out when I get a chance.
Lee Cahill
Did you pull out that card because you cannot address the argument?
Bottom line is have the whites got the cash to give?
To properly redress the ravages of apartheid I calculate that the whites would have to donate R600,000.00 (estimated at 1,500.000 tax payers) in order for a black (40,000,000 might be closer to the truth) recipient to receive R4,000.00 per month (8%). The R4,000.00 figure is being used purely because it appears that that is the figure most would settle for.
It is clear to me, being in the credit granting industry, that very few whites have that sort of cash lying around.
It is also not a mystery to me that Prof de Vos does not have any contact with the nasty reality of life outside of the intellectual dream world he resides in.
Here is a plan though, why do the government not default on some of the billions owed on aircraft, sub marines etc. and just deposit R600,000.00, into interesting bearing accounts, for each black person in the country. They must of course not be able to draw the capital at all.
To get the money back they can raise the VAT rate by 2% and impose an additional tax on petrol, cigarettes and booze of 2%
The Independent rags have woken up – it has only been a week….
http://www.iol.co.za/star/time-for-haves-to-help-rebuild-country-1.1121343
The one thing that keeps getting mentioned over and over is that those who are more-or-less wealthy, are required to put money into some kind of fund, which should in effect uplift the poor.
That is not sustainable, as a short-term cash injection into a poor community, is just that, short-term. Before long, everything will deteriorate once again, and then there will be another demand for such a “tax”/”donation” or whatever you want to call it.
This will build a society where the masses survive on handouts from the rich, and I can assure you that it will be abused by most of them, while the rich minority are being milked and will eventually join the poor masses.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
So once again, it boils down to education, or lack of it.
[...] Pierre de Vos het my gevoel weergegee. Ek is nie ‘n regskenner nie, maar sy konklusie dat die FW de Klerk Stigting maar net die ekonomiese belange van wittes probeer beskerm resoneer met hoekom ek die tweet geplaas het. Nie-rassigheid impliseer vir my veel meer as net ‘n paar mooi sinne wat belowe dat ons nie sal diskrimineer nie (al is die mooi sinne ook belangrik). Nie-rassigheid beteken dat my seun, en die swart kinders wat twee dae terug reg oor Suid Afrika gebore is dieselfde geleenthede, dieselfde kyke van alle mense, en dieselfde persepsies oor hoeveel waarde hulle het sal hê. Ons is nie daar nie. Ek pleit saam met julle vir ‘n wêreld waar ras nie meer sal bestaan nie, maar ek glo ook dat ons nie gaan wen deur “nie-rassigheid” te skreeu voor dit ‘n werklikheid geword het nie, en dit gaan ‘n hele paar generasies neem. [...]
Zoo – I adressed the argument rather comprehensively very early on in this debate. You’re welcome to review my comments.
P.S. Biko would agree that “it is black people’s fault that (apartheid) happened”? I, like, SO doubt that …
Lee Cahill
I saw your argument but it didn’t address my points, although I agree in principle with your argument you posted above.
I still don’t see how my post is “racist”?
Lee Cahill
Its about taking responsibility for your past. This way you take responsibility for your future.
At the moment there is no mention of blacks taking responsibility for the past. This leads to a crisis of pride.
Who burned the township schools and infrastructure? White police and army generally watched on as the townships were rendered ungovernable and destroyed, along with much social fabric. Of the recorded deaths during Apartheid, 21 000-odd, only 518 blacks were killed by whites (HRC figures as far as I know). Add in a good measure of third force, maybe a total of a thousand. Who did all that killing?
Who should take responsibility?
There is a lot to be explained about those actions. I sincerely doubt Biko would have approve for one second the destruction of one’s own infrastructure and society for gain!
Chris Potgieter’s link to the statistics of Apartheid makes for reading which undermines the nice simple conventional wisdom of our past. What happened to all that? Why has that not been built on and why was the Struggle so keen to destroy what the government was providing?
These are uncomfortable questions which must be addressed (I don’t have those answers so that’s why we debate these issues in places like these).
Read my post again without the jerky knees. Take reponsibility and you stop being a victim – almost like magic. It doesn’t make material life any easier, but it puts you in the right direction to get up and go and stop making excuses.
Societies which refuse to be victims succeed, those which don’t end up as failures.
Zoo – pushed for time right now, so can’t answer in detail. Will try to post more a bit later.
[...] ‘…an important and welcome idea that must be supported by all right-thinking South Africans with even a smidgen of a conscience or common sense… Why not impose such a tax of — say — 2% or 3% of one’s annual income for a period of a year or two and then divert that tax into a special fund, administered by a respected panel of experts with the brief of funding and administering projects that would begin to address the shockingly bad facilities at many government schools frequented by the poorest of our citizens — a state of affairs indisputable caused by apartheid.’ (full article) [...]
Lee Cahill
Cool, look forward to reading it when you have a chance
Dear commentators
Who amongst you can answer a question that Pierre is unable or unwilling to respond to?
On 17 June 1991 the South African Parliament repealed the Population Registration Act of 1950. How is the State able to administer any race-based legislation in the absence of this “tool”? How does one legally prove one’s race?
Will the court accept DNA evidence in the event that my niece, who no longer wishes to be white and can prove that she really isn’t all that white, is discovered to have enrolled at UCT as coloured?
How can the State legally determine one’s race?
@ Heywood Jubleauxme
August 19, 2011 at 15:43 pm
They have determined the racial groupings in a lot of legislation. The National Credit Act is but one of them that I am most familiar with.
I am going to ask an attorney friend of mine for the answer but I suspect you will find that the parameters used comes from the abolished legislation and is being used in conjunction with what is allowable in our new Constitution.
@ Heywood Jubleauxme
August 19, 2011 at 15:43 pm
Without time to research the matter this is the best answer so far. Watch this space.
http://ccrri.ukzn.ac.za/docs/FINAL%20REPORT%20ON%20RACE%20THINKING%2010%20NOVEMBER%202008.pdf
@Heywood Jubleauxme
I think that the second last digit in a South African Identy Number signifies the race of the person
A “Historically Disadvantaged Individual” is defined in Part I of the Preferential Procurement Regulations 2001 as “a South African citizen — (1) who, due to the apartheid policy that had been in place, had no franchise in national elections prior to the introduction of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1983 (Act No 110 of 1983) or the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993 (Act No 200 of 1993) …”
I suspect PdV has neither the time nor the inclination to respond to all of the responses. My own view is that the numerous postings animated by bilious racism warrant no response, in any case. Regarding the legitimate objections raised by bloggers, one would not expect Pierre to answer them all, given that what he intended was, I think, more of a provocation than a serious proposal.
@Michael Osborne: In other words, you’re trying to say that Pierre was just stirring shit? Little shit-stirrer he is indeedily do!
Is Michael Osborne Pierre’s PA?
LOLOL!
His Aide de camp?
@ Chris Potgieter & Philip Amos
Thank you.
It seems to me that people who had ID documents prior to 28 June 1991 are stuck with their racial classification at that time while the younger generation get to classify themselves or are arbitrarily classified by bureaucrats.
It appears as if there are currently no legal criteria upon which to base the racial classification of South Africans.
I think my niece is wise to pass herself off as coloured and I recommend that all white parents encourage their children to do the same.
Zoo – a quick explanation of my earlier comment on your post of August 18, 12:01.
My response referred to both your post and to the article posted by Chris Potgieter just before it. I’d be happy to respond to the latter because I feel it’s very premise can – and should – be challenged but, for the purposes of this post, I’ll just respond to yours.
To say “it is black people’s fault (apartheid) happened and that it lasted for 48 years” is not only politically incorrect, it’s historically inaccurate. It’s also insensitive and offensive. It’s like saying it’s a slave’s fault for being taken into slavery or a woman’s fault for being raped.
This seems to me to boil down to the heart of this entire issue.
Misguided as he may have been on this and some other occasions, I believe what the Arch was trying to say in his speech is that it is a moral obligation for white people to acknowledge that apartheid was, as the UN has rightly labelled it, a crime against humanity – and that they, at the very least, benefitted from the structural inequalities in the socio-economic and political system between 1948 and 1994.
Black anger at the general failure of white people to do this must be acute. I honestly don’t know how they can be expected to forgive what happened under apartheid (even with that kind of acknowledgement), because I’m not even sure I can. My own anger at what the apartheid regime did – and at its aftermath – remains unresolved.
Further, I feel that comparing our situation in SA to what happened in Germany, for instance, is disingenuous. Black people in South Africa were forcibly and brutally oppressed by the white regime – they didn’t start a morally inexcusable war or perpetrate the kind of humanitarian horrors that the Nazi regime did.
As for what has happened since 1994, yes, the current government must take responsibility for its failures in governance, and individuals must take responsibility for their own lives. BUT, as far as the structure of South African society is concerned, two things are worth mentioning.
Firstly, black South Africans are still playing a handicapped game and white South Africans (even “born frees”) still benefit from the momentum that has built up within the socio-economic system. This will take time to balance out and it won’t happen overnight, a fact systems theorists will undoubtedly attest to.
Secondly, anyone who has suffered long-term and, indeed, institutionaslised neglect and/or abuse isn’t going to just “get over it”. As any psychologist will tell us, that kind of healing not only takes time and an enabling environment, it requires that the suffering the individual has been through be acknowledged.
This, perhaps, is where we have failed so profoundly as a society – to acknowledge the suffering that disenfranchisement and oppression caused black people, and the after-effects that they, as a group, are still having to deal with.
Two final points.
Firstly, I believe what you said is racist because it assumes that a white person can make a judgement of this nature, and it is made against black people as a whole which, by definition almost, makes it racist.
And then, where Steve Biko *would* probably agree with you is in the fact that it’s so patently obvious: “black man, you are on your own”.
As a white person, I don’t in any way condone blatant “reverse racism” like Julius Malema saying that all whites are criminals, but I’m ashamed on behalf of my race group that we are so intractable about ackowledging the pain that the past has caused black people and the fact that apartheid has, indeed, left a legacy.
Sometimes, the sad truth is that your abuser won’t give you the closure you would like and which you feel you need. Sometimes, both individuals and groups have to find that closure for themselves and set about building a new and stronger future without outside acknowledgement of what they have been through.
Perhaps, then, the task that black people now face is to stop seeking closure from white people – so many of whom seems so reluctant to give it – and to empower themselves to find the closure they need.
I hope this shows that I’m quite willing to address arguments such as yours and will always be. I won’t have access to a computer for a few days, though, so if you’d like to take this debate further, it’ll have to be on Tuesday.
Wow Lee I think that was one of the few comments on this blog which actually provided a view that has the intention of fostering reconciliation which is what all of this is about. Which is ultimately what the aim of our Constitution is about.
Its also brilliant because it reconciles the need for blacks to embrace ideas of black consciouness wherein they take responsibility and empower themselves with the fact and I say it FACT that whites DID benefit from Apartheid regardless of arguments to the contrary and the need for them to sincerely acknowledge the hurt and pain this has left on blacks ( when I say ‘blacks’ I mean Indians, blacks and coloureds)
It also reflects the constitutional values of human dignity and ubuntu. There is a need for us to address the anger and hate which resides in our society up to today by being sincere in our actions. I commend you Lee for acknowledging the pain of your fellow south africans so that we may move on as a nation.
As for those who have left blatantly racist/ ignorant/ etc. I have nothing to say to you. One can only change those who are willing to change. and regrettably few are willing to change. However as long as there are those few, I am willing to find them and work with them to rebuild this nation.
This country must invest in its past not its future. I see a bright future for this country. There I said it!
Lee Cahill
Was the 72% vote for the dismantling of apartheid in the 1989 referendum not sufficient indication that white saffricans believed apartheid was wrong?
Did the acceptance by whites of the new Constitution and policies such as AA and BEE count for nothing?
Does the fact that (mostly white) taxpayers happily accepted the Reparations Tax imposed in 1995 not indicate a willingness to repair the damage Apartheid caused to the black majority?
Ive written before on the privileges that I gained growing up during apartheid. These privileges comprise the values that my parents gave me. I beneffited from having educated parents, who ensured that I could read, write and count before going to school. My parents encouraged the acquisition, not of money, but of a wide variety of skills, such as music lessons, star-gazing, bird-watching and a general knowlege of science and nature. I was privileged to learn that entertaiment and social fun could be had without spending a cent, with brain-training games like scrabble, chess and bridge. My parents advantaged me by teaching me to value money, to budget, save, and live in comfortable frugality. I would have gained these privileges (values) even had my parents been jews in Nazi Germany, or black in Apartheid South Africa. Apartheid did not confer these privileges on me: the luck of my birth did.
Arguably monetary wealth, the acquisition of fancy goods, expensive cars and mink & manure mansions does not equate to Privilege. Too much money, and an obsessive focus on acquiring material status can actually stunt the development of a young person’s talents, abilities, drive to succeed, and in the long run deprive them of the privilege of leading rich, full lives.
Perhaps, before we start mud-slinging about white privilege and the benefits that were derived from Apartheid, we need to define what we consider to be Privilege and Benefits.
lee, thanks for your post. To me this needs to be the starting point of the discussion.
@Pierre
That is a shame. For me at least. Because for me what Lee has written, though intelligent and sincere, is steeped in guilt. And ultimately is no more persuasive, or true, for me, than lines written by bigots in the white heat of anger.
I am older than you, Pierre (and I guess I’m older than Lee). Like any other human being, where I stand (your phrase) is shaped by age, experiences, assumptions, fears, hopes and ideals.
Mine are different to yours.
I arrived in this country in October 1970. By an accident of history I was never required to put on a uniform or carry a weapon during the struggle years.
You may not well remember the feeling of revulsion which swept through the white community at the death of Dr Melville Edelstein in Soweto in June 1976. (You were 12 years old). (Please wait before telling me about Hector Pieterson and 22 other Black South Africans killed that day.)
The point about Edelstein was that he had had devoted his life to working among blacks. He was ’n verdomde Kommunis. ’n Jood. But he was stoned to death and left with a sign around his neck proclaiming ‘Beware Afrikaaners.’ To many, it seemed, he was a martyr to his faith.
You will remember the Witdoeke, the impimpis, the necklaces, the battles – laughably described as ‘faction fights’ – between Inkatha and progressive black workers and peasants. The bravery of Desmond Tutu. The Church Street blast in May 1983.
Do you remember the heartache in white South Africa around the referendum of November 1983? Do you remember how the PFP objected to the exclusion of Blacks, and campaigned for a ‘No’ vote. And do you remember how so many of us couldn’t help but feel that it was “a step in the right direction”. And the excitement when the ‘Yes’ supporters garnered 66% of the vote?
And the dawning realisation that it was all a complete farce?
By the time of the Langa massacre in March 1985 and the abduction and murder of the Cradock Four in June 1985 I was “conscientised.”
By then I had become fully alive to the fact that terrible crimes were being committed, not only by and between people, but against the soul of this country. I was nauseated by the dirty war being waged against Black South Africans. The degradation of the SADF and the SAP. No revelation about Vlakplaas, Geoffrey Benzene, Dirk Coetzee, Eugene de Kock, Warrant Officer Leon de Villiers or Craig Williamson would come as a surprise – but each revelation was a hateful confirmation of a repulsive truth.
I was very appreciative of the precision of the cartoon which depicted White South Africans locked in a dungeon, while outside the bars stood Black South Africans, free to be fully human.
When Nelson Mandela walked out of Victor Verster prison on 11 February 1990 I was far from alone in welcoming him as the man who held the key to our cell.
Notwithstanding that we still had to endure the Magoo’s Bar blast in June 1986, Operation Vula, the St. James Church massacre in July 1993, and the Heidelberg Tavern blast on New Year’s eve 1993, we were moving out of the nightmare.
What you and Lee seem unable to grasp, Pierre, is that the races eventually landed together, locked in a negotiated settlement.
Yes, apartheid was a crime. Yes, the apartheid state was vanquished and destroyed. But you fail to recall that by April 1994 most White South Africans were on board as partners in the creation of the “new South Africa.”
Most of us felt elation on 27 April 1994. Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, and the CODESA participants had returned us to the comity of nations on the basis that we were free and welcome to live as equal citizens in a constitutional democracy. Our past was not forgotten, but we were encouraged to believe that we, too, had been liberated.
We were not “whites.” We were South Africans.
My own disillusion followed soon after when I heard Don Mattera, the South African poet, say on radio – with enormous satisfaction – that we would never again have a white president in this country.
Never.
And I realised that my ideals and hopes were irrevocably smashed. We had been betrayed by racism. Pure and simple. The whites were still in jail. We would never be truly free.
Dr. Edelstein, it seems, had died in vain.
What is left, Pierre? Where do I stand?
I stand on what I was originally promised. I stand on a constitutional democracy in which everyone – including me – is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law.
Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of ALL rights and freedoms.
I accept that to promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be taken.
But … The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth – that covers White South Africans, too.
I will oppose anything less, and anything which weakens that promise. Legally or morally.
@William
thank you for being a voice of sanity amid all the mindless hysteria on this page. With all due respect to Pierre, does he think it was fun being forced into the army, to waste two years plus for something that was inherently wrong? We bounce from one psychosis to another, and this debate about whites having to pay up for the past doesn’t help, especially when paying tax as we do merely aids and abets corruption. The only beacon of hope in this country is Tuli Madontsela, the Public Protector. I’d give her my money if I ever had to and at least my tax helps pay her salary, even though the rest goes to fancy cars, 5 star hotels, ministers visiting their drug-trafficking girlfriends in Swiss jails, paying for empty buildings, ANC officials milking off money from school feeding schemes and the like. Pierre, pity you took on this issue of a white tax, because it has thrown us all headlong into the vortex of cruel absurdity that is SA.
What exactly drove whites away from once prospering countries like mozambique and zimbabwe? Not perhaps because of, inter alia, decay in social services and structures?, absence of law and order?, landgrabs?, brutal black on white crimes, nationalisation of privately owned assets, state official corruption? Anti-white propaganda? Do you not recognize these familiar symptoms? We are becoming (if not already) a typical african ruled state and, unlike the said countries, many whites here will be damned to just pack up and leave without having their say…
@ Pierre de Vos
August 20, 2011 at 15:28 pm
A finance guru tell’s me it takes something in the order of a R600,000.00 investment to return an income of say R4000.00 per month. Then only in the event of one being able to get a guaranteed 8% on the money.
So then how much money would the white have to pay into a fund to ensure every previously disadvantaged person receives this figure monthly?
Lets do the sums:
a) R600,000 times 48 million recipients = R28,800,000,000,000
b) R28,800,000 divided by 4 million whites = R7,200.000 (per white person.)
Do you seriously believe it is possible for every white person, kids included, to have R7,200.000 in their nest egg?
Consider the reality before making statements IN SUPPORT OF A WEALTH TAX. because the minority, individually, do not have R7.200.000 to give.
If they did have it, do you really think they would continue to live in a country that continues to legislate on a racially divisive basis?
Take time out to come back to the trenches and see the reality of what is happening in our country.
First time Jan-Jan ??? has written anything worth cutting-and-pasting?
http://www.rapport.co.za/Rubrieke/JanJanJoubert/Die-woede-is-n-cul-de-sac-20110820
Jan-Jan Joubert
Dié woede is ’n cul-de-sac
2011-08-20 15:40
Prof. Willie Esterhuyse het twee weke gelede in ’n artikel in die Saterdag-publikasie By verwys na wat hy die groeiende “diskoers van woede” in Suid-Afrika noem. In sy artikel het hy dit spesifiek gehad oor Afrikaners. Ek dink mens kan dit wyer toepas.
Die diskoers van woede verwys na wanneer mense fokus op dit wat hulle na hul mening toekom, eerder as op die behoeftes van ander, en dan in bitsige taal of in uiterste gevalle selfs met geweld reageer op die persoon van diegene wat van hulle verskil, eerder as om in beskaafde debat te tree of die ander se punt te probeer insien.
In Suid-Afrika is woede dikwels die voor die hand liggende opsie.
In die bruin gemeenskap lyk maatskaplike probleme soos bendegeweld en dwelmmisbruik onoplosbaar en daar is die aanspraak dat niemand doeltreffend vir bruin belange veg nie.
Die gevolge van regstellende aksie, die verval van infrastruktuur en die regering se onvermoë om misdaad te bekamp ontlok waarskynlik die meeste wit woede.
In die swart gemeenskap heers frustrasie omdat politieke mag nie omgesit word in werklike armoedeverligting nie en omdat die Grondwet dit grootliks onmoontlik maak om die strukturele vergrype teen swart mense nou op soortgelyke wyse en skaal ten bate van swart mense toe te pas.
As mens egter aan hierdie versoeking tot selfgerigtheid toegee, is Suid-Afrika op pad na ’n Israelse werklikheid waar die twee strydende faksies so op hulself fokus dat hulle nie kyk of die ander se frustrasies dalk soms gegrond is nie.
Die geil teelaarde vir die diskoers van woede word intussen plaaslik ywerig uitgebuit. Die politieke diskoers in die regerende alliansie is op so ’n lae vlak dat die ANC-jeugliga sommer beweer sy voormalige leier, mnr. Malusi Gigaba, kon nog nooit vir homself dink nie en het nog nooit ’n eie idee gehad nie. Dit omdat Gigaba nie saamstem met die jeugliga se beleid dat myne genasionaliseer moet word nie.
Hierdie persoonlike bitsigheid volg op jare en jare van slaafse ondersteuning aan Gigaba en gebeur sonder enige sin vir ironie. As die jeugliga reg is en Gigaba is ’n onnadenkende naprater, wat het hom so geskik gemaak om die jeugliga te lei (of is dit dalk ly)?
Wit deelname aan die diskoers van woede sluit in ’n gekla om andersins lekker ruimtes soos vleisbraaivure en nou en dan ’n persoon wat, meer as ’n duisend kilometer van sy huis, iemand in sy kantoor aanrand oor iets wat hy nie eens gelees het nie. Ai.
In ons land is vooruitgang onmoontlik in ’n diskoers van woede, want almal soek dan net altyd iets om te blameer, om Battery 9 aan te haal. Terwyl mens alles in jou vermoë moet doen om jou eie probleme op te los, en dit uiteraard kritiek op die huidige en die voorstel van alternatiewe moet insluit, is dit dikwels ook bevredigend om te fokus op die oplos van ander se probleme in ’n diskoers van diensbaarheid.
Dit vereis dat mens meer luister na ander en minder na die self, uitwaarts eerder as inwaarts dink. Die afgelope week was ek bevoorreg om twee praktiese voorbeelde hiervan te beleef.
In Pretoria gesels ek met ’n vriendin wat traumaberading doen vir Zimbabwiese vlugtelinge, eerder as om oor hul teenwoordigheid rassisties te raak. Sy maak stukkende mense heel. Ek bewonder dit so. En in Bloemfontein vertel ’n vriendin van haar verrykende (en hopelik verreikende!) deelname aan die moedige, gebrekkige en tans weer stotterende versoeningsproses by die Universiteit van die Vrystaat.
Komplekse, verstommende verhale van probleme probeer oplos eerder as om daaroor te kla.
Is hierdie twee mense minder blootgestel aan regstellende aksie, misdaad en onregverdigheid?
Nee, maar hul diskoers van diensbaarheid fokus ook op die ander eerder as net die self.
Waar ons elkeen sy eie diskoers kan kies, is sulke opbouende opsies tog sekerlik verkieslik bo slegs ’n afbrekende diskoers van woede, of hoe?
15 Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.
16 And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.
17 Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
18 But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?
19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.
20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?
21 They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.
Surely the tax itself isn’t the problem and you only charging white people is racist – apartheid or not – how typical is it of a religion man who has lived a fine life, paid for by others to come with such a stupid idea. There is a perfectly good tax system in place and the government can raise whatever income it wants through that with the permission of the citizens to whom the government is accountable and therein lies the problem.
There is no shortgage of money in South Africa to provide all the services people need, the problem is the way the money that is available is spent and why.
If SA can afford to spend billions and billions on armed forces and all manner of other unwarranted things, like massive layers of government and MPs expenses and pensions, then it can afford to provide education and heatlh care for everyone and proper houses (not tin shacks) and all the social infastructure required to make a proper community where young people don’t fall into a culture of drink, drugs and domestic, sexual and casual violence.
So Mr Tutu should instead ask why the voter refuses to think about how they vote and why they refuse to hold those they have voted for to account when they fail to deliver. Why the voter doesn’t avail of the mass communication techniques now avaiilable to them to get their view heard.
We can see how much can change when people express polite anger as they did in the UK over their MPs abusing expenses and we saw how the Irish people, did not riot in the streets when their economy fell apart, but got down to making sacrifices and then when the election came, they gutted the political party which caused the mess in the first place.
Taking more money from well off people and bringing their standards down a level is not what will help those who are really poor at the bottom – why not try raise their standards instead and doing that means the government honestly accounting for how it spends money.
@ Desmond
“Only charging white people is racist”
With respect, you wrong. It is not possible in South Africa for whites to be victims of RACISM. Racism is all about power. If you need further explanation, Pierre will assist.
Thanks,
@ Lee
“I feel that comparing our situation in SA to what happened in Germany, for instance, is disingenuous.”
Lee, I am puzzled by this, because I assumed the comparison with Germany weighed in favour of reparations, not against. Until 2007, German was still paying massive amounts in reparations – despite the fact that one cannot attribute personal responsibility to the younger generations of tax payers for the Holocaust.
More generally, it seems that what is really at issue – as you very well articulate — is the lack of remorse from many whites, including many whites who were personally guilty of acts of cruelty and exploitation. Tutu (and, I suspect, Pierre), are frustrated by the denial or ignorance of these people. It is this sentiment that gives rise to the tax proposal.
The problem is that a whites only tax, does not address the source of the frustration. First, imposing a tax upon recalcitrant, oblivious whites will not elicit remorse from them. If anything, it will only harden their stony hearts. Second, as others on this blog have pointed out, the amount likely to be yielded from such a tax would not be a drop in the bucket, given the enormity of the inequality. So there is little instrumental, non-symbolic utility in the plan.
A more cynical animating reason for the tax proposal may be that, if whites can be made to feel a certain pain, it would appease the demands for nationalization, etc. But I doubt very much that those calling for nationalization care much about redistribution. And, as I have said, it would not actually bring about significant wealth transfer anyway. So I am not at all sure that any real appeasement would be achieved anyway.
@ Mikhail, no I think you are – the evidence of black racism is all around us – look at all the failed states on the continent – all down to black racism to other black people.
It is black people who attack and kill their fellow black for being from the wrong ‘tribe’ and it was black people who started the slave trade, long before a white person even thought of stepping foot in Africa, and it is black people who inflict all manner of horrors on other black people.
Be real – if you think all white people leaving Africa or paying more tax will improve the lives of black people, it won’t. Black culture and society needs to change from within and lose the chip on their shoulder and stop always blaming everyone else.
Horrific things happened to black people, but horrific things happened to lots of people all over the world. It’s not a white person’s fault today if a black South African doesn’t get a proper education or gets pregnant when they can’t financially or emotionally be a proper parent – it’s their parents fault. Stop having so many children and you’ll be better able to support a family and allow them to avil of opportunities. Change the culture that accepts so much violence as normal, give women control and stop glorifying the gangster rubbish.
Racism is not just white v black it’s white v white and black v black and all the other colours of the rainbow too.
@ Mikhail Dworkin Fassbinder
August 21, 2011 at 18:36 pm
You say “If you need further explanation, Pierre will assist.” and I say read the comments in this article and then decide if we would believe in anything Pierre will say.
Sorry Mikhail but ‘Pierre’ does not imbue confidence in anyone about any other subject but the Constitution of South Africa. A dentist does not perform an autopsy does he?
Lee Cahill says:
August 19, 2011 at 22:32 pm
Lee, do you think the castration and butchering of 9 policemen at Cato Manor or the murder of Sister Mary Quinlan whose body was then cooked over her burning car and eaten by the mob in Duncan Village might have had anything to do with extending the life of Apartheid?
Here’s a typically South African story:
http://www.beeld.com/Suid-Afrika/Nuus/Brand-lei-tot-onrus-20110821
So what has changed in 350 years?
Now the victim gets arrested!
Of course, van der Merwe does not mention the 400 000 people murdered in SA since 1994, but…
Interesting letter by MP in Beeld:
Debat oor apartheid swyg oor skuld wat die ANC het
2011-07-24 21:22
Koos van der Merwe, LP, skryf:
Die debat oor die beweerde skuld van die Afrikaner tydens die apartheidsera verswyg een hoogs belangrike faktor, naamlik watter skuld het die ANC oor daardie tydperk?
Kom ons kyk.
Oudpres. FW de Klerk het in Augustus 1996 onder meer die volgende inligting aan die Waarheid-en-versoeningskommissie voorgelê oor wreedhede wat die ANC na bewering gepleeg het:
In halssnoermoordaanvalle het 505 mense gesterf en 36 beseer in, soos dit gestel word “ … the most brutal and inhumane manner imaginable”.
Onthou gerus die woorde van Winnie Mandela op 12 April 1986: “Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country” (Business Day, 21 Februarie 1994).
Op 4 Mei 1986 saai Radio Freedom ’n ANC-berig uit wat lui: “Let us take our weapons, both rudimentary and sophisticates, our necklaces, our grenades, our machine guns, our AK47’s, our limpet mines and everything we can get, let us fight the vigilantes…together with the police and the army”. (Business Day, 21 Februarie 1994).
Die volgende skokkende inligting is op 5 Januarie verlede jaar skriftelik deur genl. Johan van der Merwe, voormalige kommissaris van polisie, aan my beskikbaar gemaak as (volgens hom) betroubare syfers vir die tydperk September 1984 tot April 1992:
1.Persone deur lede van die veiligheidsmagte tydens onluste gedood: 455
2.Persone deur opstokers gedood: 8 825
3.Persone deur die veiligheidsmagte beseer: 1 633
4.Persone deur opstokers beseer: 18 428
5.Persone deur halssnoermoorde lewendig verbrand: 406
6.Lede van die polisie wat sedert 1980 tot 1993 vermoor is: 922
Amnesty ( Business Day, 1 Desember 1992; The Citizen, 15 Januarie 1993) het in November 1992 ’n verslag gepubliseer oor toestande in ANC-kampe in Angola, Tanzanië, Uganda en Zambië.
Dit bevat verdoemende besonderhede oor die ANC se fisieke mishandeling, marteling en buitegeregtelike teregstellings van hul eie mense oor ’n tydperk van 12 jaar.
Let daarop dat die onbeskryflike wreedhede teen die ANC se eie mense gepleeg is.
Ons moet versigtig wees om nie ons verlede te beswadder sonder om ons geskiedenis in perspektief te verstaan nie – en sonder om na albei kante van die muntstuk te kyk nie.
Daar word ook nie erkenning gegee aan die goed wat tydens apartheid tot stand gekom het nie. Pres. Jacob Zuma het openlik in Beeld van 6 April 2008 erken apartheid was nie net sleg nie.
Lee
Looks like the debate has started properly now!
@ zoo keeper
August 22, 2011 at 9:31 am
Unfortunately it is no longer a debate but has descended into a mud slinging match. No solution will be found by harping back to yesterdays transgressions on both sides.
Pierre de Vos’s blind support for a taxation of whites is what this debate is all about. The fact that not too many white families could pay into a fund sufficient monies to make a difference seems to be what he, and the Arch, do not understand.
@ zoo keeper
August 22, 2011 at 9:31 am
This is no longer a debate in the true sense of debating issues. It has certainly all the hallmarks a mud slinging match. No solution will be found by harping back to yesterdays transgressions on both sides.
Pierre de Vos’s blind support for a taxation of whites is what this debate is all about. The fact that not too many white families could pay into a fund sufficient monies to make a difference seems to be what he, and the Arch, do not understand.
Unlike Chris I think this is an excellent blog.
From Pierre’s introductory sentence it showed a lot of promise and we have exposed many of the complexities of being here now which is unusual.
Michael Osborne says:
August 19, 2011 at 16:29 pm
A “Historically Disadvantaged Individual” is defined in Part I of the Preferential Procurement Regulations 2001 as “a South African citizen — (1) who, due to the apartheid policy that had been in place, had no franchise in national elections prior to the introduction of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1983 (Act No 110 of 1983) or the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1993 (Act No 200 of 1993) …”
prof De Vos – Michael Osborne: Does this mean that (black or white) citizens born after 1994 cannot claim to be calssified a ‘historically disadvantaged individual’ under these regulations? It would seem that way. If not, how many generations onwards will someone still be able to claim that he/she is a ‘historically disadvantaged individual’ and the advantages incidental thereto?
Anonymouse
Interesting question.
Nobody under the age of 18 had the franchise in 1983 – could that mean anybody born from1966 onwards, black and white, is historically disadvantaged?
Chris
Mudslinging is inevitable when a subject like this pops up. But there have been some very interesting posts that have spurred some great thoughts.
Personally I’m enjoying this!
Anonymouse
August 22, 2011 at 14:03 pm
Ah well, Anonymouse, Some of my family still hold it against the British, note not English speakers specifically but “The British”, for their invasion of the Free State. So, I would say it depends on whether you can move on or not.
zoo keeper
August 22, 2011 at 15:15 pm
Help me out here, why are you enjoying this?
zoo keeper et Chris Potgieter
Actually, I was wondering whether the scholars prof De Vos and Osborne would respond as I believe this issue has not yet been the subject of debate. Here we have ba piece of legislation that endeavours to circumscribe when it would be in order for the state to unfairly discriminate against ‘previously advantaged’ (whites) in order to advance the ‘previously disadvantaged’ (blacks). How does one interpret it. Even if one interprets it ‘grondwetconform’, at some stage or the other, so it would seem, one has to reach a point where one must say the scales are now in balance. If not, then we will have to do with ‘reverse apartheid’, which would almost certainly be unconstitutional and wrong.
zoo keeper – I did not think as far as to paste an age to the voting thing – that raises another perspective, foh sho!
Chris (the right-wing guy?) – I also still hold it against the Brits (souties). Pity the black people in society do not seem to grasp that they are the real guys to blame, even for apartheid (‘Want daardie merk word groter! En, groter by die dag!’)
In the mean time – Some scholarly response to my questions please?
Anonymouse
August 22, 2011 at 20:24 pm
Firstly “Chris (the right-wing guy?)” No chance of that foh soh. Married to a SA English speaker (whose mom was staunch old UP and banned me, early 60′s, from taking her daughter out) and that of course meant that the NG and NHK Familie disowned me.
Wonder if the world will ever figure out that the Brits murdered locals where ever they landed. Examples you ask for, well Australia, New Zealand and of course the land of the Boston Tea Party, America. On the other hand the Germanic colonisers chose to create new races.
Apartheid is alive, albeit that much of the legislations remains hidden behind description that appear to make it legal, and well and resides in all countries in the world.
So then this begs the question then, is Prof de Vos and the Arch racists? In my book they are because of their stated targets.
Will apartheid, religious, skin colour or language ever end, not a hope in hell.
Can de Vos gainsay my economic arguments? You be the judge of that.
How we rise above this thorny issue will determine whether we are capable of surviving as human beings in the future.
I read through all the posts made on this subject. Unfortunately I
am not eloquent and intelligent enough to add any value to what has
already been said.
I do want to make the following observations:
1. This IS a racial issue A comment was made by a spirutual
leader of a specific race group, and that comment was aimed at
another race group. That could be seen as racist, yet when people
used race in their post to state facts,their comments were labeled
as racist. This is a double standard. People should accept the fact
that all races are capable of racism, not only white people.
2. It is also noticeable how the people on this post that support
the opinions of Pierre and archbishop Tutu, Lee, Mikhail and
Ohene to name a few, can not support their opinions with facts
or realistic argument. Instead they prefer to stick to ideological
rhetoric that has no practical and realistic foundation.
They are however quick to label people that do support their
comments on facts and the realism of our society.
3. It is worrying that an academic like Pierre are seemingly unwilling
to engage in debate. It creates the impression that he is unwilling
to listen to other opinions other than his own.
I thank you all for the thoight provoking comments made. This
country will only move forward if we could engage each other in
healthy debate. Everyone deserves to have a voice, the poor, the
opressed and the minority !
[...] Where are you going to stand, my fellow white South Africans? Aug 15th, 2011 by Pierre De Vos. One of the things I most admire about Archbishop Desmond Tutu is that he is an equal opportunities offender. A few years ago he offended then President Thabo Mbeki for saying that there was a lack of debate inside the ANC, given that it was verboten to talk about succession inside the ANC or to question the President’s views on any number of topics without expecting some serious, flame-throwing, nuclear slap-down in return. Mbeki then, as was his wont, wrote a rather sarcastic letter in response, which I would summarise (only somewhat in jest) as telling the Arch: “You know f#k-all, and I know everything”. [...]
@ Anonymouse
“Does this mean that (black or white) citizens born after 1994 cannot claim to be calssified a ‘historically disadvantaged individual’ under [the PPR”
Yes, I wonder about this too. Literally read, the definition of a HDI would draw a line under the duration of AA, at least for purposes of preferential procurement. I suspect, though, that there are probably other definitions out there that would not embody such a cut-off. I have wondered in the past how AA provisions in the US would handle a serious racial categorisation dispute, and if such a dispute has ever arisen. It would surely be an embarrassment for AA enthusiasts everywhere if they had to defend an apartheid-style pencil-in-the-hair test, where the issue arose of whether a particular individual was entitled to some kind of racial preference.
The fact that dr. Boesak added his support to archbishop Tutu, puth this whole discussion in perspective and validates the concerns of most people that commented.
An excerpt of a news story run by The Independent, after the sentence of dr. Boesak in 1999.
“The trial, which dragged on for most of last year due to arguments over legal aid, heard that Boesak had acquired a taste for luxury during the late Eighties, leading him to abuse his high moral standing.
Boesak, whose Foundation for Peace and Justice (FPJ) was set up, in part, to help orphans and other child victims of the struggle, gained fame as a charismatic speaker.
In the days of “struggle bookkeeping” – when funds and their donors had to be concealed from the authorities – Boesak was able to attract large foreign contributions, including from Sida and Simon.
The singer gave the FPJ 682,000 rands (then pounds 130,000) from his 1987 Graceland album, famous because it was recorded in South Africa in breach, some claimed, of a United Nations cultural boycott of the apartheid regime.
The court heard that Boesak gave only 423,000 rands to the FPJ, keeping the balance for himself – which helped him to buy two houses in white Cape Town suburbs.
Despite the court evidence, many South Africans refuse to accept Boesak’s guilt or wished the court to show clemency. Archbishop Tutu, on a university fellowship in the United States, made an appeal by fax to Judge Foxcroft on Tuesday.
In the letter, written after last week’s conviction, Archbishop Tutu said: “His contribution to the country and its people outweighs overwhelmingly the consequences of those actions of which he has been convicted.”
Judge Foxcroft conceded yesterday that Boesak “played an important part in ridding South Africa of the hated system of apartheid”, but said a lenient sentence would mean “the administration of justice could fall into disrepute”.”
I rest my case !
I’ve been out of the loop for a few days and see a lot of debate has followed on my last post. I’ll try to respond to as best I can to those comments addressed to me or posted in response to what I said …
@Ohene and Pierre – thanks for your feedback – much appreciated.
@Belle – you’ll see that I did pose the question “Where does redress end?” in my very first comment (15/08 14:27). I argued against a racially-defined tax at this stage in our history for the reasons set out in that post.
As for the privileges of your upbringing, I would argue that they were, indeed, inextricably linked to you being a white child growing up in a post-colonial, apartheid society. The present simply isn’t its own explanation.
Moreover, you seem unaware of the irony that the luck of your birth was, in fact, luck, as you were born to financially secure, educated parents who had the benefit of a safe home environment, a regular income and leisure time to spend with their children. These are social constructs – circumstances like those don’t come about by accident.
Also, I wouldn’t refer to debating the structural inequalities of the past as “mud-slinging”, I’d simply refer to it as a process of trying to evaluate and understand our collective past and the way in which it has impacted on our society today.
@Willem – I’d prefer to speak for myself on the issue of so-called “white guilt”, as I don’t believe you can make the assumption that what I wrote in my post was”steeped in guilt”.
I’ve said this before in other forums and I’ll repeat it here. Personally, I feel absolutely no guilt about being a white South African, and I claim both my place and my voice in what is, on paper at least, a non-racial democracy.
I did, nevertheless, grow up in SA during the apartheid era and had already been working for 15 years by the time there was a change in dispensation. I therefore experienced apartheid first hand and saw how it impacted on those who were disenfranchised, dispossessed and oppressed by it, as well as on the white people who opposed it.
I believe this gives me solid ground for being introspective about the structural inequalities of the past, and a firm foundation on which to base the position I expressed in Friday’s post.
As for the events of the 1980′s, by then the situation was, indeed, very dire. What you fail to mention, though, is that from the time the ANC was founded shortly after the Union of South Africa was proclaimed until the events at Sharpeville in 1961, all resistance campaigns (including those led by Gandhi) were passive resistance campaigns.
It was only after these were repeatedly met by violence, intimidation and such institutionalised responses as detention without trial that the armed struggle was declared. Even then, it was specifically aimed at state installations and not at the civilian population.
I don’t deny that atrocities occurred on both sides at the height of the struggle, but we shouldn’t forget that the apartheid government had the full power of the military, the Special Branch and the police at its disposal, and that the country was essentially in a state of undeclared low-grade civil war at the time.
With regard to unfair discrimination in relation to the law and the Constitution, I agree that it can’t be condoned – hence my original argument. We must, however, find some way to acknowledge that a deeply unequal society didn’t suddenly become equal on 27 April 1994 or on the day the Constitution was ratified.
Institutional measures had to be out into place with the advent of democracy to ensure that all South Africans are, in fact, equal in terms of the law. Equality before the law assumes equal access to all of the basics of citizenship, which the country’s black people did not have until 1994 – and that imbalance had to be addressed in order to ensure that equality before the law is actually possible.
@Michael – Zoo’s argument was that after WWII, the German people admitted to being responsible for the war (under extreme pressure, it should be added) and that *black* people in SA should admit that they were similarly responsible for apartheid. It was this position I disagreed with, as I don’t believe it’s in any way possible to say that black people were responsible for apartheid.
Otherwise, I agree with the rest of your argument – as per my earlier posts.
As for nationalisation, I’ve openly argued against it as I believe nationalisation doesn’t empower the people, it enriches the state – and the small elite which is inevitably in control of it. I’ve proposed several alternatives in other forums.
@Brett – the short answer (re the Cato Manor killings): no, I don’t believe two wrongs make a right under any circumstances. But then, have you actually read the report of the TRC? A barbaric history breeds a barbaric present – and somewhere along the line we have to be brave enough to call an end to it.
@Zoo – yup, the debate is very much underway …
@Chris – As Zoo says, a bit (or a lot) of acrimony is almost inevitable in a debate like this. My feeling is that the past and its legacy is an old, festering wound in our national life that has to be brought out into the open and aired in order for us all to understand one another better, to heal and to move forward.
@Tax payer – If you’ve read all of the comments here, you’ll have seen that I argued against a racially-defined tax under our current Constitution very early on.
I do, nevertheless, also acknowledge that white people benefitted from the structural inequalities of the past and that we are still dealing with the socio-economic legacy of apartheid in everyday life. If you want examples, I can give dozens. The fact that, even now, only about 20% of the equity on the JSE is in black hands while 90% of the popultaion is black would be one case in point.
@ Lee
“only about 20% of the equity on the JSE is in black hands while 90% of the popultaion is black would be one case in point.”
Lee, I do not think this oft-cited stat recognises indirect holdings in institutional investors (pension funds, insurance companies). Nevertheless, racially defined inequality remains intolerably and unsustainably high.
The legitimacy crisis we now face is not unconnected with the ruling party’s renunciation of socialism – a system which, whatever its faults, could have reduced racially defined inequality quite dramatically. Short of radical redistribution, and as long as we retain a market-based economy, the wealth gap will be reduced only incrementally, through progressive taxation and wise investment in education. But such measures are slow to bear fruit, and will take decades to edge us towards equality. Frustration will inevitably grow in the generation that will not live to enjoy the concrete benefits of political liberation. Symbolic gestures, apologies, voluntary funds, even the discourse of ubuntu, might not appease the anger, although social welfare measures may help a bit.
In Germany a solidarity surcharge (Solidaritaetszuschlag) of up to 5.5% of the income tax payable for all higher tax payers was imposed in 1991 to pay for the rebuilding of Eastern Germany and is still being charged. This is on top of 45% maximum personal income tax rate. The money is transferred to Eastern States to help equalise the society.
Lee Cahill says:
August 23, 2011 at 18:24 pm
I respect your right and Pierre’s right to adopt any survival strategy you wish even if it appears to me akin to Stockholm Syndrome.
The reason I am somewhat hostile is that you both embrace – on a public platform – something similar to a psychodynamic approach in dealing with our country’s past (which is a tool thoroughly discredited in psychiatric circles).
It is hugely destructive in the South African context.
It justifies the patient’s mental disorder.
And is inextricably linked to the ongoing brutality which has seen 400 000 of our fellow SOuth AFricans murdered in 17 years, with a fraction of the perpetrators brought to book, and an ANC government withholding life-saving medication leading to the infection of 6000 000 people with HIV.
In short, the ANC is never held to account for precious human life squandered.
I also would like to see our barbaric history laid to rest. I will never stop hoping that this Constitution with all its flaws will provide a framework for a modus vivendi between black and white.
But, Lee, if you’d predicted to white South Africans voting in the referenda that in the year 2011 – after 17 years of ANC rule – Genocide Watch, an organisation linked to the US government, started to research and prevent genocide, would upgrade South Africa to being in Stage 6 of 8 of genocide Nelson Mandela would still be in prison and the ANC-in-exile would be bleached bones in Tanzania.
So, as a simple question of fact the Apartheid apologists appear dead on the money.
And ZooKeeper wins your argument about the ANC being responsible for a lot of what is viewed collectively as ‘Apartheid’ on the facts.
You persist in portraying Apartheid as an attempt to cartel resources rather than a desperate survival strategy.
Lee, the cannibalism – where Catholic nun Dr Quinlan was toasted – occured in Duncan Village in 1952 if memory serves.
How many people did that convince they can never be safe under a black government? Who would not be insulted at the notion of ‘equality’ with such people?
(OK, here you have to remember that neither Pierre nor the Arch have inhibitions about attributing the fault and the guilt of the few to a whole people – which I personally find abhorent. It is so like the Nats. So last century.)
The Cato Manor ‘killings’ preceded the Sharpeville massacre and probably triggered it. Every ANC ‘resistance campaign’ was accompanied by violence, contrary to your assertion.
Maggs can point you to riots in Durban which led to such loss of life he says Nehru sent in the Indian Navy.
I have given you the report from a former Commissioner of Police to a sitting Member of Parliament noting the ANC’s body count.
What you want to believe is at odds with the facts.
There is a chain of ANC conduct from the year 2011 back as far as you want to go that spells s-o-c-i-o-p-a-t-h-y. And you want to blame white South Africans for the fact that the threats they face now are little different from those they faced in 1811 or 1711 and sometimes reacting unwisely and in an unChristian manner?
Pierre de Vos says:
August 23, 2011 at 20:32 pm
Nou praat jy!
Ek is seker almal hier sal baie eerder hulle geld vir Solidariteit se ‘Helpende Hand’ gee as die ANC regering!
Despite my posting sometime ago linking to a PWC tax survey 2011 many continue to claim that SA citizens are taxed more than their equals.
Please donate.
http://www.thenewage.co.za/26668-1007-53-Housing_reports_meant_to_'embarrass'_Manyi
http://dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2011-08-23-i-sympathise-with-malemas-persecution-complex
@ Pierre de Vos
August 23, 2011 at 20:32 pm
In Germany they employ people on merit and the no one has is discriminated against.
You have not replied to the fact that each white person would have to make a payment of R7,200.000 with immediate effect to address the needs that the ANC government have failed to deliver.
Let us assume I am taxed R25,000 for this year. This amount, invested at 8%, will return R2,000 per year, or R166.67 per month. Do you seriously think that will satisfy anyone?
@Pierre De Vos, according to long time family friends in Germany the surcharge you refer to is bitterly resented by the original west German population and has been a direct cause of the resurgence of the extreme right wing.
Now that Pierre has raised his head above the bulkwark, lets move onto the recent Indian celbration of 100years in South Africa.
The original families can be easily identified by their surnames.What came out is that more than half of the Durban indian population are immigrants from East Africa during the 1950′s and 1960′s as a consequence of Uhuru.Rather than go back to India they purposely chose Apartheid South Africa.
From the middle of the 1970′s indians were employed in Durban on an equal basis by the listed JSE companies most notably the Banks, and indeed the Professions as well.
There is a particular BEE construction company called ENZA Construction who has a director who was a recipient of the Murray and Roberts training programme, (like Trevour Manuels) in the second half of the 1970′s. Thats 35 years of economic emancipation Pierre and yet you believe that only whites should targeted.
Lets bring in Jacob Zuma’s friend Vivien Reddy (mentioned in the Shaik trial), who quite happily tendered for work under the Tri-cameral system in 1985, in a recent Top Billing TV programme his house was featured and Winnie Mandela who was an obvious guest at the house warming party remarked on TV that this was not a house but Hotel.
Sorry Pierre but your article is poorly argued and is based on your perception as experienced behind the wine curtain of the Cape.
Fact is, millions of taxpayer money is lost due to corruption in the current government, and wasteful spending as they are only enriching the ANC elite and not putting that money to good use.
Most working class South Africans are already paying tax, and getting very little, to nothing back as a result considering the appalling state of the existing infrastructure, that was in good working condition when the ANC took over, but overlooked since they were in power.
We’ve seen how Eskom and SABC have falling, due to a result of direct government influence.
Pierre de Vos, Tutu and Boesak should all focus their attention on the real problem at hand, and that is the ANC government, instead of once again trying to fall back on the apartheid and race card.
In my opinion, there is nothing to debate. Trying to tax someone based upon the colour of their skin, is a racist action. Had the ANC government been competent, there would have been considerable change already.
@ Lee Cahill
August 23, 2011 at 18:24 pm
Re your comment “@Chris – As Zoo says, a bit (or a lot) of acrimony is almost inevitable in a debate like this. My feeling is that the past and its legacy is an old, festering wound in our national life that has to be brought out into the open and aired in order for us all to understand one another better, to heal and to move forward.”
Lee, you make a telling point however let me put on the table the thought that as long as the persons debating a way forward had been personally affronted, or gave the affront, we will not get to a point that will have as a result a public hand shake.
The solution lies in the process that is taking place almost unnoticed presently. Our grandchildren, post 1994, are making friends across the broad spectrum of the students at their school. Our children are, and certainly mine have been, of the mindset that they did not want to be remembered as having supported a regime that caused all this hurt to so many.
It is not only that kids seem to be forming new bonds over all the hues of South African’s, it appears that the another of the great dividers, religion, is also suffering because of the fact that it is seen by many as having, and in some cases still does, support the thinking that we must not intermarry.
Unfortunately acrimony seems to emanate from people who are in a position to act as role models. Fact is that we are all subject to two given events in our lives. The first is that we are born without inbuilt prejudices and we lose our prejudices when we die.
Lastly, yesterday we cannot change but for what is to follow tomorrow, we can decide on today. Why then is it that so many people plan to ensure that solutions are not found?
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/ANC-favours-whites-Eric-Miyeni-20110823
@Gwebecimele: Eric Miyeni is only looking for another 15min of fame considering the last racial article he wrote.
Don’t give the clown the time of day, there are more important issues to focus on.
@Michael – Yup, as far as I know the approx. 20% black ownership of JSE-listed companies accounts for shareholders only and not indirect investors (e.g. employees with pension or provident funds).
As for economic justice, employee share schemes, micro-loan schemes for SMEs and shared ownership schemes in agriculture could be very effective tools to address this issue – and could work relatively quickly. BUT they’d change power relationships, and would put more political and economic power in the hands of ordinary people, so they’re not even on the agenda …
@Pierre – the solidarity surcharge option can certainly be argued, but it’s important to note that it’s income-based and not race-based …
@ Miyeni (as quoted by Gwebs)
“Many black South Africans are worse off today than they were under apartheid.”
Brett, sounds like you have a soulmate here!
@ Lee
“employee share schemes, micro-loan schemes for SMEs and shared ownership schemes in agriculture . . . could work relatively quickly”
Even if implemented in good faith, these measures would not close the wealth gap afflicting this generation. All of them are premised, not on redistribution of existing wealth, but on channelling a larger proportion of future growth to the black poor. And since real economic growth (factoring in population increase), is pretty much zero, there is unfortunately very little to channel.
Pierre – equality is a myth otherwise zebra’s would be contesting thoroughbreds in the Met , Durban July etc . That is why the overstated concept of racism was born – to conceal the myth of equality .
Get used to it .
Whether jew or gentile , white , black , Chinese or Japanese or mixed descent , equality remains a myth .
To make the monumental error of comparing an animal skin clad tribesman to an Einstein or a Bill Gates , simply does not add up .
Stephan van der Merwe says:
August 24, 2011 at 9:42 am
Stephan , this issue is nothing short of moral nudity being painted up as enlightened purity – the only hallmark the ANC possess . (MAW institutionalized begging .) Dr Nthato Motlana warned us of blacks being condemned to penury in his “Indipe syndrome” article in the Business Times 25 August 1991 of which I kept a copy .
Someone simply has to inform this lot that we are already taxed to death and the barrel is now dry and can be scraped no further .
I would have suggested that any white , indian or coloured saffer is free to make donations to this so called reparation , but hesitate to do so because the probability exists that it is quite possible the donations would only be forthcoming in return for tenders as is the wont of the greedy and the slothful .
@Brett – with regard to your argument about psychodynamics, you’d have to explain exactly how an evolving methodology based on well-respected Jungian theory and currently being used in research projects and academic institutions all around the world has been “thoroughly discredited” because I don’t know how you can make that claim.
Further, I’ve already said quite clearly that the current government must be held to account for its profound failures in governance, so my position on that score is established. The present government’s track record doesn’t, however, discount the atrocities that happened during the apartheid years or the effects they have had on the way in which our society functions today.
With regard to the issue of white people acknowledging the fact that they benefitted from the structural inequalities of the past, it isn’t about apportioning blame, it’s about honesty and, hopefully, expressing some small modicum of empathy with the people who were disenfranchised and oppressed by the socio-economic and political system of the time.
White people seem to be able to empathise very easily with the oppression of the citizens of the Boer Republics by British Imperialist forces during the Anglo-Boer (South African) War, but seem unable to extend that empathy to other groups who were in a similar position under apartheid.
Also, as I recall, in the last apartheid-era “election”, approximately a million people voted for the Nationalist Party, a quarter of the entire white population at the time and probably well over 50% of the voting-age population. The apartheid system was an institutionalised system of racism, imposed by violent and illegal means, and supported by the majority of the country’s voters, who were able to vote simply because they belonged to a certain race group. It’s as simple as that …
As far as the murder of Dr Quinlan is concerned, I know the incident preceded Sharpeville, but we should probably also mention that it occurred the day after police had killed 13 “Africans” during a protest in Kimberley (also injuring 35) and after they’d killed eight “Africans” while breaking up an “illegal prayer meeting” earlier that day. Everything has a context.
Finally, with regard to violent incidents like these which preceded the apartheid era, it’s also worth bearing in mind that white colonists were forcibly colonising tribal lands during that period. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
@Chris – I agree that slowly but surely “born frees” are creating a new reality – and that’s how it should be. My argument is that we’re still living with unresolved issues from the past that affect many older South Africans and these need to be addressed. Moral issues aside, this needs to be done because unresolved issues are clearly having a very serious destablising influence on our public life, and also because hatred and prejudice is very easily passed from one generation to another if the cause is not addressed.
As to why so many people appear reluctnat to find solutions to present impasses, a few words spring to mind: fear, power, privilege, money …