Unemployment Is Socialism’s Product Highlighted Letter to the Editor Opinion Politics by Duncan du Bois - 31st Mar 2022 The hand-wringing over South Africa’s unemployment “ticking time bomb” (The Mercury’s front-page headline of March 31) overlooks the most basic cause of this tragic situation: socialism is the parent of unemployment. Thanks to their promotion of disinvestment, sanctions and economic sabotage, the ANC inherited an economy in 1994 which already had four million unemployed. Ever since then the figure has ballooned to way beyond ten million. Besides fundamental incompetence exhibited at every aspect of governance, deliberate marginalisation of the only sector that creates employment – private enterprise – has been core ANC policy. Driven by inflexible labour laws, enforced demographic representivity, radical economic transformation and now outright “majority rule,” as KZN Commissar Sihle Zikalala prescribes, the economic state of the country adheres
Refinery Closure Has Negative Consequences Economy Opinion by Duncan du Bois - 23rd Feb 2022 It is a sad but well-known fact that the South Durban Basin is plagued by unemployment and impoverishment. The bright hopes of poverty alleviation which the proposed dig-out port once promised, never materialised. Yet now there are voices rejoicing at the closure of the Sapref refinery despite the obvious crushing socio-economic consequences involved. In recent press articles and in the Caxton weekly of February 25, those endorsing Sapref’s closure cite pollution and health issues. At the same time, however, they are content to suggest that Sapref relocate the refinery. Such a view suggests double standards because the same health issues they condemn would then be inflicted on some other community. It is also difficult to swallow the standard reference to negative health
