Speech by Hugh Glenister to the Rotary Club of South Africa on receipt of Rotary South Africa's Achiever of the Year award, Johannesburg, October 11 2011:
Where to from here?
I am honoured to be in such illustrious company tonight. Vusi Pikoli, Paul O'Sullivan and Moeletsi Mbeki, are true champions of South Africa, and have made us all proud to be firstly Africans and secondly South African.
In accepting this award tonight, I do it on behalf of a team. This team was never a formal one but a loose affiliation of purpose joined individuals. The leadership of this team was not mine, for being human meant there were times I failed. In those times these team members took the lead and made sure that our message continued and gently (sometimes not so gently) reminded me of the need to continue.
First a thanks to the 120 000 people, who voluntarily signed the petition, I posted on the web in a moment of deep anger. If it were not for you all my anger would have found another home and this journey would not have begun. The letters I received from these many petitioners, brought tears to my eyes on many a morning when I was gatvol of the whole mess, and kept me going. ‘
Second, to the media, without your constant goading, questioning and insight, none of this would have been achieved.
To those who donated, be proud for today your gifts feed and educate 120 orphans every single day and year on year. The chairman of the Hamba Phambili trust, Steyn Krige, who recently passed away, sowed his magic with your funds, as he strongly believed ,like me, in the infinite capacity of humans to love and contribute if given the freedom to act. These children and I will miss you Steyn.
This award is yours South Africa, may we move to a better society based on freedom of all its citizens, free of corruption, graft and dependency.
Where to from here?
This question when posed by the Rotary Club has given me nightmares, and my fear of being inadequate to the task has chased me from author to author in a bid to understand the self inflicted torturous question that came from the first. "To what purpose is government and given that we know so much of the right answers why has it gone so wrong."
I, like probably most of you, hung up my boxing gloves in 1994. The freedom struggle was over and every man, woman and child in the new South Africa would have the freedom to rise to the potential of their natural given talent. Liberty would be restored and we would all strive together to create a great South Africa, and that viewing ourselves as some colour or another would finally be a thing of the past.
I forgot politics and got on with my life, the land of the new free. Little did I realise that the ugly monster of nationalism and the creation of an elite class, coupled with a co-creation of a ‘dependency class' would soon tear us apart.
The dependency was driven by a number of things:
1. Gifts beyond the reach of any government, let alone the South African one, were promised to a this growing ‘dependency class'.
2. The necessary flexibility required for a growing economy was strangled by a plethora of labour laws coupled with a union movement bizarrely against business.
3. Regulations were piled on regulations that robbed the individual of acting without being co-opted by large corporations, or government officials. These regulations resulted in an ugly cementation of power in the hands of the few thugs, politicians, and those business leaders who saw no wrong in greasing the wheels in their favour as was exactly their behavior with the previous bunch of power hungry nationalists.
Why would a government purposely create a ‘dependency class' ? Could it be that the lust for power blinds it to the needs of the people? Nowhere is this more evident than when looking at the industrious nature of the Zimbabweans, who flock to our country. They have no entitlements, but do you see them bemoaning the fact?
Racial criteria were re-introduced to universities, 60% for Blacks, 70% for Asians and 80% for whites. On Friday I filled in a form to open a corporate bank account at Standard Bank. It now asks you to specify ownership based on skin colour. What next, the pencil test? I simply put a cross in each block, bring your pencil, I am waiting.
Does no-one else see the similarity between the old order and the new? How do I tell my grandchildren not to discriminate if all they get thrown at them is skin colour?
To what end? Lord Acton sums it up, - absolute power corrupts absolutely and no matter who the politicians, the result unfortunately is always going to be the same. Bullies exist and skin colour, an anathema for me, makes no difference.
The tools of the previous government were no different, - fear and guilt, a great dividing force to manipulate you and me to be at each other's throats due to some baseless difference.
Fear and guilt are the easiest things to sell and are divisive. Hope is the hardest sell, and it requires unity of purpose, but by far most politicians seem to fear our unity. Could it be that we restore them to their rightful place in society?
If we continue on this road of dividing South Africans, I can see only disaster. The math does not add up. If we divide all the wealth of South Africans by the population, all of us would earn four thousand Rand a month, but not for very long. The incentive for risk and reward would be destroyed and soon the economy would collapse.
That's exactly what I fought for, and you did too, no doubt.
I see three possible models emerging:-
1.The welfare state
The falseness of this model and its underlying fraud that it could turn stones into bread, now being revealed to all, as those countries that rushed at it, now pay the price. The most alarming of these being the United States, where an American child wakes from its mother's womb with a million dollar debt to the state.
The results speak for themselves.
2. The semi anarchistic state
Northern Italy a good example where government is only barely tolerated. At least half of the income of Northern Italians is no longer declared. They have given up and don't see the need to feather the politicians' beds and feed the dependency class of the South.
This, if my antenna is correctly tuned, has already started happening in South Africa and will lead to the erosion of the tax base and starving the politicians of the necessary funds to feed the dependency class, thus eroding their power base. If we are wise we will move rapidly to the freedom state. If not wise, then I am afraid Moeletsi Mbeki's prediction of massive unrest is inevitable, before we realise our own folly and adapt to the freedom state.
3. The freedom state
Based on liberty, where regulation is limited, and government size is drastically reduced and has less interest in trying to redistribute limited capital, but instead will encourage the formation of new capital.
Here the citizens will achieve great things by standing together arm in arm, will not allow the politicians to divide them and will stand firm in the resolve to build a great South Africa despite the politicians.
Your vote is one thing. More importantly, politicians are fickle and are swayed by public opinion. Stop them from dividing us and leap frog the tumult, angst and hate.
We are South Africans! We are proud to be South Africans and we will build a nation of winners and make the world stop and stare. The politicians can catch up if they can or if they even dare.
I believe that many of your politicians have no desire for democracy. They want supreme authority. They are no different to politicians anywhere in the world. It is up to you, each and every one of you to make sure we curb their appetite for power and have the country we all dream of.
Ludwig Von Mises had this to say about government:
"Every step the government takes beyond the fulfillment of its essential function of protecting the smooth operation of the market economy against aggression, whether on the part of a domestic or foreign disturber, is a step forward on a road that directly leads into a totalitarian system where there is no freedom at all.
If government were in a position to expand its power ad libitum, it would abolish the market economy and substitute for it an all round totalitarian socialism. In order to prevent this it is necessary to curb the power of government. This is the task of Constitutions and Bills of Rights and laws. This is the meaning of the struggles which men have fought for liberty."
I know I fought for liberty. Instead I received more of the same insanity. It is up to us to curb the government, make it accountable, and forever reduce its power to steal liberty from its citizens.
Hennie Lombard gets the last word tonight:
"A democrat does not wait for some other person, or political party, to give them permission or instruction to defend democracy. South African history has been dominated for centuries by 'big men' on all sides telling people what to fight for. Becoming a grown-up democracy will require from each of us the balls to stand up in defense of democracy without first asking permission from someone else."
Once again thank you very much.
Hugh (Bob) Glenister
October 2011
Background: Glenister a private citizen and businessman launched a court action and public campaign to halt the dissolution of the Directorate: Special Operations, better known as the Scorpions, following the decision to do so at the ANC policy conference in Polokwane in November 2007.
Using his own funds he fought right up to the Constitutional Court where his application was refused. Nonetheless the Scorpions were disbanded.
Glenister continued the legal battle. He was finally vindicated in March 2011, when the Constitutional Court handed down a judgement ruling that the legislation disbanding the Scorpions crime fighting unit is essentially invalid. The Court held that the legislation does not give the unit's successor, the Hawks, enough independence. The court gave Parliament 18 months to amend the legislation, otherwise it will be declared constitutionally invalid
Issued by Dani Cohen, F T I Consulting, October 12 2011
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
