AfriForum Youth to Ramaphosa: Your economy is built on falsehoods

6 July 2022

In a gesture of distrust, AfriForum Youth today handed the president a book on basic economic facts and fallacies; it was received by a representative of the president's office, Robert Hlongwane,  at the Union Buildings. The youngsters' distrust results from the ANC government's constant failure to create jobs.

In his letter on 13 June, the president said that the ANC's priority since 1994 is job creation. However, AfriForum Youth is concerned that the ANC hinders rather than helps the youth to get jobs. Over the past three decades, the unemployment rate among the youth kept increasing. In light of the ANC's economic failures, the youth organisation decided to give the president and the ANC a copy of Thomas Sowell's Economic facts and fallacies, in which the basic principles of the economy are set out.

“The ANC are clearly astray because it believes in economic fallacies, and this book seeks to point out such fallacies. The president said they intended to launch a new social employment fund. Such unsustainable approaches do not empower the youth but make them more dependent on the state. At AfriForum Youth, we learned that young people in South Africa must be state-proof to achieve success,” said René van der Vyver, spokesperson for AfriForum Youth.

Sowell exposes economic fallacies in a way that anyone can understand. AfriForum Youth hopes his book will help the president and the ANC government correct the course of South Africa's economy.

AfriForum Youth handed over the book along with a letter in which the organisation explained the purpose of the gesture and listed the book's most important arguments, including the importance of culture, a free-market system, and less government interference.

South Africa set two worrying records in 2022: an unemployment rate of 46%+ and a youth unemployment rate of 66%. Instead of tackling this issue, more resources are being invested in discriminatory policies such as Black Economic Empowerment that only further paralyse the economy." This kind of action tells the youth that they must achieve success despite the ANC government, and therefore they must become state-proof," Van der Vyver concludes.

Issued by Rene van der Vyver, Spokesperson, AfriForum Youth, 6 July 2022