=I honestly haven’t read the various parties’ manifestos.

I simply don’t have the time nor energy to plod through even one manifesto that runs up to 60 pages. And neither did you. There is doubtless much to agree with in many of these calls to action, but most of it will only remain promises – especially if you don’t have the electoral heft to implement them.

As a citizen and voter, I would therefore issue my own manifesto based on two simple principles: Freedom and accountability. Of course, there is much more to these tenets than meets the eye, but they essentially encapsulate most of what South Africa needs at this stage. The one also serves as a check on the other, and both ensure that excesses and privations are not perpetrated while potential is realised and dependency is combated. Moreover, these principles apply in numerous ways to government, but also to individuals and any other entity. If anything, they are fair.

‘This is man’

A golden thread running through most homilies delivered about three decades since the ANC took over, is that government has failed in doing even its most basic task, which is to keep us safe. To be sure, despite all its ills, South Africa is still on many fronts a very free country (especially when compared to many countries around the world). But its many and varied challenges cannot be solved by more government or indeed by government alone. Not in terms of employment or even service-delivery.

Government dependence (which is no freedom at all) has become a way of life for millions of people. The ANC’s mishandling of the economy has further caused social grants to be a blunt instrument against poverty. Taxes have soared to assuage their voting fodder, while grant recipients have seen their employment prospects dwindle along with the purchasing power of their monthly government handout.

Minorities have been hamstrung by a raft of discriminatory legislation and policies in order to placate a black majority which is, on balance and in many senses, worse off than in 1994. This has eroded the capacity of government itself and fed the brain drain and unemployment. Freedom also entails rewarding merit and allowing the many talents and ingenuity in the country to take flight through free enterprise and private property – and ultimately less government.

Farmers and businesses, big and small, often offer the only employment available in rural areas and even in many urban areas. The government is often more an obstacle to their efforts than a boon. The news that millionaires and businesses (along with employment opportunities) are abandoning Johannesburg for Cape Town is indicative of how humans naturally gravitate towards freedom and minimal but effective government.  

As Frédéric Bastiat write in The Law: “Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

As mentioned before, South Africa is still a much freer country than most. The fact that we can criticise the government and anyone else, associate with who we want, protest, and buy property is testament to this. This is thus as much a clarion call to maintain and broaden these freedoms, as they are to effect change in other matters.

Do no harm

But along with freedom comes responsibility. This is probably the main unlearnt lesson over the last three decades. The ANC has viewed its long reign as freedom to encroach on many of our liberties in overt and subtle ways. Also, they have seen this as license to plunder and steal.

John Locke asserted in the Second Treatise of Government: “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” In other words, do unto others as you would have them do to you.  

These noble and timeless ideals – originally inspired by the Bible – run counter to the expropriation of property and corruption. Yet again, countries and provinces that respect property rights and punish corruption gain people and wealth, while the converse is true for those that do not.  

Their policies have also enabled individuals to be unnecessarily irresponsible and abuse their freedoms. A client of mine recently lamented the fact that many of his factory workers often stay away from work. This affects the productivity and profitability of his company. They offer no excuse for their truancy and according to him, they have nothing to lose. When asked about the latter part, he says they don’t fear being fired because they simply revert to the government taking care of them.

This is a perverse form of entitlement in a country with an unemployment rate as high as South Africa’s. Unemployment, needless to say, is a much more complex problem than simply people unable to find jobs. Lockean precepts – which inspired the United States’ constitution and revolution – dictate that you are entitled to property earned through your labour and effort. Not somebody else’s. And if government is not respecting your right to property, revolution is justified.    

There is no perfect legal system, but the ruling party and South Africa’s courts, prosecution authorities, law enforcement agencies and Chapter 9 institutions are failing dismally in effecting government accountability. Cadres are simply redeployed after their incompetence and venal acts cause ruin. The president conveniently appoints a new Public Protector when his own alleged misdeeds come to light, while dawdling with a state capture inquiry’s damning findings. Honest and enterprising people should not have their freedom curbed through discriminatory policies and weak crime busting, while the powerful enjoy free rein to commit crimes and exact these very policies while scapegoating those that pay their grossly inflated salaries.

South Africa probably cannot live without some form of welfare state, but more freedom (especially economic) and accountability (especially in government) will cause a shift that over time bears the appropriate fruit. Simply give us a lean but effective and clean government, while we do the rest.

Dr Brink is an entrepreneur, business consultant and analyst from the Cape Winelands.