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- A Stuijt
- Retired South African medical journalist, ex-Sunday Times of Johannesburg.
No free lunch
20:36 | 
Posted by
A Stuijt |
Nothing is for free...
Someone must pay...
... 
That is why it is so grossly misleading to promise voters free water, free electricity and free houses.
(picture can be purchased by commercial news outlets from SAPA)
Politicians everywhere appear to labour under the delusion that there is a bottomless pit of money which they can take from those who have earned it and give it to the masses who maintain them in power and, let it be said, in comfort. Government absorbs 36% of our national output.
Taxpayers have seen Tax Freedom Day -- the day on which we start working for ourselves instead of for the state -- move from April 20 in 2001 to May 12 in 2008.
And this excludes stealth taxes levied, such as paying higher rates for water and electricity than others, carrying the interest burden of what is actually government borrowing by state corporations such as SAA and meeting the cost to state corporations of paying dividends and taxation to the very state which owns them.
No free water: no votes; no free electricity: no votes; no free houses: no votes..
Last week outside ANC headquarters, Luthuli House, in Johannesburg, protesters gathered to express their anger at what they perceive to be government's failure to provide them with free basic services, including housing. The campaign was organised by the Anti privatisation Forum: Silumko Radebe tel 0721737268 or 0113338334. http://apf.org.za/article.php3?id_article=309 
- (Our Question: Why is the Anti-Privatisation Forum sponsored by the Ford Foundation?)
Their chant was: No free water, no votes; no free electricity, no votes; no free houses, no votes...
Today in South Africa a good quarter of the population (47-m +) is living off grants paid for, not by government, but taxpayers.
Yet while government gives grants to millions, it fails to provide taxpayers who make such largesse possible with those basic services all governments are supposed to provide, such as safety and security.
A welfare state in SA threatens to breed generations of families which, as was the case with multi-generational welfarism in the US before the Reagan years, leads to increases in drug addiction, crime, unwed parents, abandoned children, domestic violence, rising rates of infant mortality and declining life expectancy.
Dependent slaves of the State:
These scourges are at loose in our society today. They will not be eliminated by giving people money thus making them dependent slaves of the state. That is the path to social destruction.
We desperately need leadership which recognises that the very foundation of a healthy society lies in people taking pride in their independence from the state, taking pride in being self-sufficient, in caring for themselves and their families.
Education is the lifeblood of any healthy society. A proper education includes the imposition of discipline and the acceptance that we are not all equal, that some of us are better at certain activities than others.
In my experience of addressing students and interacting with parents and university applicants, I have gained the impression that what is of greater importance to some educators is to produce kids with a high sense of self-esteem than with a decent grasp of what they have been studying.
What we need to do is provide children of the poor with a sound foundation in reading, writing and arithmetic.
Without it they are condemned to dependence and the quarter we now have who live that way will grow until the structure collapses.
Commentary above by:
http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=82145,1,22
Read all the provisions of the SA Gatherings Act on the Anti privatisation Forum website:
http://apf.org.za/article.php3?id_article=151&var_recherche=photographs
Ford Foundation, South Africa:
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