<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META content=text/html;charset=iso-8859-1 http-equiv=Content-Type><!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <META content='"MSHTML 4.72.3110.7"' name=GENERATOR> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>This is from this week's <EM><STRONG>Financial Mail, </STRONG></EM>usually the voice of conservative South African business.  Are all you closet and not-so-closet Keynesians listening?</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2><B><FONT size=2> <P>New Deal, FM 12/5/00</P></B> <P>SA is drifting. The conventional market economics adopted by the ANC when it dumped nationalisation have not delivered more jobs or more investment, and the party is vulnerable to anticapitalist agitation among its core, poor, constituency. The free market is not to be taken for granted in SA. And then there is Zimbabwe, rapidly disintegrating economically as the result of an inability over 20 years to bring a union between poverty and profit to fruition. We, too, are in trouble in this country unless the wealth gap closes. Resisting the temptation to exploit the gap is beyond politicians. And the conventional policies and economics adopted by the ANC - however courageously - in government are woefully inadequate to the task. So would be the standard remedies of the business community. Here's the thing about SA: politicians, business and union leaders - in fact, all of us - draw wide circles around our own egos; then we play our own roles. The businessman is an untrammelled capitalist; the unionist is a Stalinist. To give an inch in argument is to throw away an entire reputation. Nothing is ever really up for debate. SA business is stuck with arguably the most antiquated and blatantly exploitative model of capitalism still operating on earth. Labour is led by people who cling foolishly to communism despite its catastrophic failure as an economic system. Government, trying to make headway with the rotten free enterprise system it picked up locally, and holding on for dear life to the frightened labour movement it betrays with every blink of the eye, is barely treading water. The balancing act the ANC is performing is not sustainable. Folk worried when the ANC was going to win a two-thirds majority in parliament. Watch the panic when the ANC is struggling to get 50%. Somehow a way has to be found for leaders to think our society through again. We need a new, unique and dynamic national consensus. The answer may lie in the social democratic systems that propelled Germany and Japan to such great economic heights after the World War 2. They created forms of "stakeholder capitalism" that today find favour among even conservative intellectuals in the West. We need a wide and efficient welfare net. We need to maximise the generation of profit in order to maximise the taxes that pay for good public services. Should workers sit as directors of companies? Perhaps government could simply give away its entire property portfolio, free, to the poor or the unions and then rent what it needs back from them. Why not? We are taking a risk producing this Cover Story. Any useful discussion among other South Africans about a viable future requires that they do too. The point is not to be right - there is no right - there is only what works for us. The enemy is poverty: grinding, unfair and a menace. If we fix it, we all win. </P> <P>The Editor </P> <P><STRONG>[The rest is at <A href="http://www.fm.co.za">www.fm.co.za</A>]</STRONG></P></FONT><FONT color=#800080 size=2> <H2> </H2></FONT></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>