Precolonial South Africa consisted of numerous chiefdoms and kingdoms all of which were similarly structured as feudal societies. The serfs paid tribute to the nobility by means of livestock and labor in their fields. The highest aspiration of the majority serfs was to be promoted to the pampered noble class. Then colonialism intervened and the European settlers displaced the African aristocrats and effectively promoted some serfs into a higher class by providing them with education.
In 1912 the ANC was established as an alliance between the class of mission school-educated Africans and chiefs, the original aristocrats. It is therefore not surprising that soon after 1994 the ANC sought to re-establish the original feudal society using BEE as its principal instrument. As is well known, BEE inflates state procurement to enrich good for nothing ANC leaders in parasitical partnerships with white firms that have the capacity to provide goods and services to the state.
Ramaphosa recently passed into law the Traditional and Khoisan Leadership Bill which gives traditional leaders powers to forcefully remove people from land and to enter into self-enrichment contracts with firms, including foreign firms, to exploit the land irrespective of the concerns of the people about environmental damage. This gives traditional leaders their piece of the feudal cake. Being one of the major beneficiaries of BEE Ramaphosa could not have refused to sign the Bills.
Proper feudal systems may be unjust but they work because though the nobility are loafers there are always the majority serfs to do the work. However, the majority serfs, who are supposed to be ordinary Africans with no political connections, were fed, by the self-same ANC elites, with ‘revolutionary’
This leaves no one to do the work which explains why a lot of employers now prefer to employ foreigners. The only other avenue to make a living is to start a micro-business, for example, as a vendor. However, self-driven generation of profits involves hard work which our people associate with the lowest of classes. Few ‘self-respecting’ South African Africans aspire to that. Even small businesses such as hairdressing have been taken over by foreigners for the same reason
The economy is shedding jobs and most of the jobless are culturally just not cut out for any sort of business. In this instance, by ‘culture’ I mean the feudal worldview inculcated by the ANC. There is no other pathway to move people into the middle class. The income gap between the ‘aristocratic’ Africans, foreign Africans and other race groups on the one hand and the rest of the South African Africans, on the other hand, is widening. This is enough to fuel xenophobia and racism even if the ANC/EFF/BLF were not in the habit of promoting racist policies.
