A DEPRESSING impression created by Zwelinzima Vavi’s very articulate article is that so many of SA’s most able leaders, like him, are locked into an outdated — even archaic — perception of economics and politics, which is holding SA back.
All over the developed world and even in the communist and former communist countries that are liberating their economies to encourage free enterprise, growth and employment, the proportions of the national workforces in formal trade unions has declined significantly. This is an inevitable trend flowing from the growth of small businesses and the use of new technologies to generate self-employment and new investment.
In Africa, countries such as Botswana, Mauritius and Rwanda that have understood, accepted and encouraged these trends are by far the fastest-growing economies and have the highest employment rates.
They have made huge efforts to encourage small business-creation and foreign investment in their economies — by contrast with SA, which is currently one of the most hostile environments for both, and is as a result, one of the lowest-growing economies in the region.
If only the efforts of leaders like Vavi could be rerouted more productively, away from their antique preoccupation with opposing "the ruling elite and capitalist class" to focusing on improving infrastructure and encouraging small business and foreign investment in SA, our prospects for employment-creation and betterment for the poor and the "working class" would be transformed.
His, and our, enemy is not within SA — it is the other countries that compete with us.
Peter Curle
Forest Town
Zwelinzima Vavi. Picture: BLOOMBERG/NADINE HUTTON
A DEPRESSING impression created by Zwelinzima Vavi’s very articulate article is that so many of SA’s most able leaders, like him, are locked into an outdated — even archaic — perception of economics and politics, which is holding SA back.
All over the developed world and even in the communist and former communist countries that are liberating their economies to encourage free enterprise, growth and employment, the proportions of the national workforces in formal trade unions has declined significantly. This is an inevitable trend flowing from the growth of small businesses and the use of new technologies to generate self-employment and new investment.
In Africa, countries such as Botswana, Mauritius and Rwanda that have understood, accepted and encouraged these trends are by far the fastest-growing economies and have the highest employment rates.
They have made huge efforts to encourage small business-creation and foreign investment in their economies — by contrast with SA, which is currently one of the most hostile environments for both, and is as a result, one of the lowest-growing economies in the region.
If only the efforts of leaders like Vavi could be rerouted more productively, away from their antique preoccupation with opposing "the ruling elite and capitalist class" to focusing on improving infrastructure and encouraging small business and foreign investment in SA, our prospects for employment-creation and betterment for the poor and the "working class" would be transformed.
His, and our, enemy is not within SA — it is the other countries that compete with us.
Peter Curle
Forest Town
Change: 1.37%
Change: 1.32%
Change: 2.91%
Change: 0.45%
Change: 3.09%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: 1.63%
Change: 0.83%
Change: 1.37%
Change: 0.00%
Change: 0.69%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: -2.04%
Change: -1.83%
Change: -1.58%
Change: -1.79%
Change: -1.48%
Data supplied by Profile Data
Change: -1.25%
Change: 0.00%
Change: -0.85%
Change: -1.74%
Change: 2.92%
Data supplied by Profile Data