Alec Hogg: SA’s 12 new twenty-something MPs; and how world sees ANC’s binary choice

BizNews editor Alec Hogg shares the name (and pic) of South Africa’s youngest ever member of the National Assembly, a 20-year-old who soon joins the tiny percentage of her nation earning over R100 000 a month. He shares what the FT’s Africa editor David Pilling is telling the world about the reason the ANC is battling to decide between a road to prosperity or its Chernobyl option. We’re also reminded of the four policies Kleptocrats have used for thousands of years – eerily similar to what is applied in SA by its ANC elite.

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Read Alec Hogg’s script below ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Consequences of the way South Africans voted on May 29 are taking time to absorb. 

The top 100 members who make all the decisions at a shell-shocked ANC have thus far rallied around a leader under whose watch the party lost more than three million of 2019’s 10m voters and with it a three decade grip on power. 

Just as political scientist Frans Cronje predicted the day after the election, this ‘collective’ voice which determines the party’s direction is being torn in two.

I’ll lighten things up a little later and introduce you to the five new MPs who are all younger than the current record holder who was 25 when sworn in five years ago. But first, the serious matter of South Africa’s future.    

Its Tree People, whose grasp on economic laws and, indeed, the reality of the nation’s parlous situation, want a return to the old. They see the path to success as reinforcing socialist ideals by embracing the offshoot EFF whose leaders deify kleptocrats like Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez, and their African cousin, the late Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Cronje says this would be the road to disaster. 

The ANC’s Boat People, the well-travelled group with a better understanding of geopolitics and economics, have experienced the impact of a supportive private sector whose rapid delivery of electricity is bailing out the State-owned disaster called Eskom. They fret about economic policies that have swelled unemployment to the highest on earth and would prefer to embrace the market-friendly, business-backed Democratic Alliance. 

In all of this, as a developing country, South Africa needs foreign capital to grow its economy and create jobs. So, what the rest of the world thinks is critical for any viable path to prosperity. 

For a window into how 99.5%  of the global economy views what is happening in South Africa right now, here’s an interview broadcast by our partners at the Financial Times of London. The FT News Briefing is hosted by Marc Filippino…..

That was the FT’s Marc Filippino and David Pilling……..

Earlier this week, the names of South Africa’s 400 new MPs were released – members whose appointment depends entirely on the leadership of the political parties for whom South Africans voted in this proportional representation system. 

Their average age is a fraction over 50. No less than a dozen of them are in their 20s, and the youngest barely out of her teens……    

Read also:

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