"The State of the Nation Address that president Cyril Ramaphosa delivered in Parliament yesterday afternoon was exactly nothing else but the continuation of the ANC government's destructive socialist ideology with the same totally unattainable prospects and promises as before which had already resulted in a total bankrupt government and a failed state, says Fanie Brink, an independent agricultural economist.
He says the ANC government's previous six purely socialist economic plans since 1994 have in fact always been successfully implemented and were the main reason why we have a totally destructive economy today that could never have created sustainable economic growth. The chance that Ramaphosa's new "Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan" can create growth is zero! All the plans were based on the socialist "radical economic transformation" ideology that arose long before 1994 from the "Freedom Charter" of the ANC.
This ideology has in fact already "radically transformed" the economy because of the ANC's and its social partners' economic illiteracy and incompetence without ever realising how destructive each successive plan was. The ANC government is still not able to understand its new plan will not be able to repair the economic destruction that took place long before the outbreak of the pandemic. It will consequently continue to constantly look for a next "Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan" with the same dramatic devastating consequences!
The so-called "highlights" on power generation, digital migration and larger local manufacturing that we have been hearing about for many years will not be implemented, while the investment of billions of Rands in Ramaphosa's infrastructure project will not create any economic growth if it does not yield positive returns on this capital investment as all its other state own enterprises.
However, the black economic empowerment and greater corruption will continue as in the past.
The country has also become accustomed to the failure of all the special policy announcements that need to be implemented urgently during an election year, such as the establishment of thousands of subsistence farmers who will be plunged into a poverty trap and become permanently financially dependent on the government, as well as the agri-economic disaster that would result from land expropriation without compensation which will only increase government spending and debt further.
The apparent objectives of the so-called "master plans", as in the case of the poultry industry in which "R800 million has been invested and now produces a million more chickens every week" for which there is no local market, are purely aimed at lowering agricultural producers and food prices that are not sustainable and this can cause many producers to be forced out of the industry. The local buyers and traders will then walk away with the profits that can be realised in the foreign market due to the lower domestic chicken prices and the weak exchange rate, while the local processors will still adjust their profit margins in their consumer prices accordingly. Just as in the case of the low maize prices that they can buy on the SA Futures Exchange (SAFEX), which is the agricultural division of the Johannesburg Stock Market, due to surplus production and export at great profits
"The master plans will have the same consequences for all the other agricultural industries, which, together with the other policy statements that emerged from the State of the Nation Address that also reaffirmed the "policy certainty" of the ANC government's further destruction of the economy," Brink said.
Fanie Brink, Onafhanklike Landbou-ekonoom
