Africa-Press – South-Africa. People who want to stay in South Africa must vote the ANC out of power if they want the economy to grow and prosper.
This is the message from renowned economist Dawie Roodt in a scathing assessment of the governing party during the second BizNews Investment Conference held in Hermanus.
Roodt argued that the country cannot be fixed under the ANC, and the only way forward is to remove the former majority party from power.
“The real ideology of the ANC is ‘we line our pockets’. That’s the ideology of the ANC, and the only way that we can fix South Africa is to get rid of the ANC, and the time has come,” Roodt said.
Roodt explained that if you look at the ANC, there are four things they stand for: Marxist communism, centralisation of power, cadre deployment and corruption.
“First of all, their ideology is stuck in the 1920s. Their ideology is based on Karl Marx’s labour value theory, which simply doesn’t apply anymore.”
He noted that modern economies are driven by technology, automation, and high-skilled workforces, not blue-collar labour.
“The ANC has got stuck somewhere. They still believe in Karl Marx’s ideas and philosophies,” he said. Building on this outdated ideology, the ANC’s policies have followed suit.
“The second thing the ANC stands for is policies that flow from this ideology, policies like expropriation and centralisation of just about everything,” Roodt explained.
The third is cadre deployment. “Another word for cadre deployment is incompetence, because you employ people because they’re loyal to the party, not because they can do the job,” he said.
Finally, “the fourth thing the ANC stands for is corruption.”
According to Roodt, the evidence of these four things is visible in the collapse across South Africa. “The ANC has all but destroyed major and very important institutions in South Africa,” he said.
Roodt pointed to the collapse of municipalities, Eskom, Transnet, the Post Office, and other state-owned enterprises.
Local governments are in financial ruin, state-owned enterprises are drowning in debt, and national finances are spiralling toward crisis.
“The state is the biggest destroyer of capital in South Africa,” Roodt added.
South Africa’s ballooning debt, now running at more than R6 trillion and climbing toward 85% of GDP once SOEs are included, poses a grave risk to the economy.
The secret to economic growth
Economist Dawie Roodt
Despite the dire outlook, Roodt insisted that there is a way to turn the country around, but it requires both political change and a commitment to economic fundamentals.
“There’s only one way that we can fix the debt-to-GDP ratio, and that is through economic growth. There’s nothing else,” he said.
“And I know what the secret to economic growth is. There are three things that you need to do: protect private property rights, encourage free trade, and maintain sound money.”
“You do those three things, and I guarantee you your economy is going to grow,” he said.
For Roodt, these principles are non-negotiable. “You don’t need a PhD in economics to understand this,” he said.
“There’s a saying that there’s no free lunch, but there is one important exception, and that is free trade. If two economic agents trade with one another, both the buyer and the seller gain from this transaction,” he explained.
“However, you can only trade freely if you own the stuff – that’s why the protection of private property rights is so important.”
He praised the South African Reserve Bank for its commitment to sound monetary policy, crediting governor Lesetja Kganyago for maintaining independence and discipline.
However, he stressed that without political change, even the best economic policy framework would be undermined.
“It’s not difficult to fix South Africa,” he said. “Most economists can tell you. But the reality is that this list of things we need to do is not relevant because the ANC is not going to listen.”
Roodt still remained optimistic about the resilience of South Africans themselves. “We fixed our political problems before, and we can do it again,” he said.
Looking ahead to the next election, he argued that the country has another opportunity to set itself on the right course.
“I’ve got all the confidence in South Africans to fix our political problems. But until we remove the ANC, nothing else will change,” he said.
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