Medialternatives

CORPORATE South Africa has not yet transformed to the degree where we can safely say apartheid no longer exists, or racist behaviour and other forms of racism in the workplace are no longer significant issues. While empowerment deals have broadened from their original elitist and chauvinist aspirations, they have tended to be cosmetic and misrepresent the interests of those “empowered” but with no effective control over management decisions.

Corporate policies continue to reinforce segregation and racial divisions in our society instead of cutting across the colour lines separating us into various racial and ethnic groups. Equal opportunity for example, is still being subsumed under the mantra of “separate but equal” in the strange, twisted logic of the system bequeathed to us by the apartheid regime. What is more, South Africa’s conglomerates have deployed a global strategy which seeks to escape significant empowerment while ignoring the all-important debate concerning equal opportunity and local affirmative action criteria. Diversity remains an ideal spoken about only in the most progressive of boardrooms.

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IN THE beginning, the so-called dot-com economy was based upon the notion of a frictionless environment ie the internet. The idea was the massive savings created by reducing distances and communicating easily across the planet would be passed onto the consumer and everybody would win.

Then along came the robber barons of the service industry, basking in the glory of “managed complexity” and new acronyms like ICT. They were all good capitalists and saw a good opportunity at cleaning up the competition, siphoning oof all those fads and novel savings and patent banking the difference, instead of passing on the friction-freeness to the consumer.

Lets give you an idea of why Telkom is stuck in a virtual freeze, attacked by Hellkom and MyADSL — unable to provide half-a-service while charging exhorbitant rates for its “pipes”, its own network that is already paid for by our tax rands, but which invariably turns into a shopping mall for ICT engineers who think they can outsmart us, blog-rats.

The fact is once a line is installed and paid for, there is no real cost to ADSL except for the small service fee which goes towards upkeep. How much should one be paying for service? What would you charge to keep the network up and running? What would your rates be for watching the 0s and 1s go around and around?

However, since the service-side of the sector was privitised, TELKOM does not provide a service as such. What it provides is an excuse to simply fleece the consumer and siphon off profits to its shareholders who want locked in dividends and locked in clients.

This means that we are paying double for a line that must first be hooked up to a private service providing company in order to fully function. Result? ADSL is enormously expensive. Forget about those glossy ads spinning lies about R240 a pop. What you get is double-dibbing down the line as busker after busker rips off the “locked in consumer”.

For R240 one should get ADSL plus service and whatever benefit one deserves. But in order to keep service privides in business, companies like MWEB running, the South African consumer is ripped off by the only provider of ADSL lines in the country — TELKOM, the monopoly provider.

THEY SAID THEY WOULD BRING THE WORLD CLOSER, AND ALL I GOT WAS A HUGE PHONE-BILL

THE idea that SA can convert its “masses” into an incipient “middle-class” whose affiliations are with Levi’s not Lenin, Mercedes Benz instead of Marx, and consumerism instead of Fidel Castro, needs to be dispensed with along with Trevor Manual’s trickle-down economics and Thabo Mbeki’s market fascism.

Firstly while South Africans may be marginally better off than they were before 1994, inequalities in society have deepened. Instead of narrowing the gap between rich and poor, the government’s liberal trickle-down economic policies has failed to address the problem of successive “middle classes”, each following upon the creation of South Africa’s first middle class arguably under Verwoerd.

The new, mainly black, politically empowered, commercially viable and attractive second “middle class” touted by the media, is in reality nowhere near as rich as the old middle class under apartheid, comprised of mainly whites, coloured and indians. Trickle down economics coupled with market fascism can never address such vast inequalities and neither can race-based affirmative action.

In order to buy into the myth of an emerging black middle class, conforming to the Bell Curve in which the majority of SA families occupy the centre bulge, creating a new market for business, one would have to search out and discover the actuality on the ground — the stark reality, instead of pipe dreams invented by advertisors and propogandists.

The second middle class is however, just as poor relative to the old middle class as they were under apartheid, and while the first middle class still occupies the upper strata of society, the distinctions based upon race and class remain. In other words, the rich are still rich, and the poor are still poor. The only direct changes we have experienced in our economy are shifts in the form and structure of wealth — producing the so-called hour-glass effect, in which there is no “middle class” to speak of occupying the centre, but rather the insane perception of “middle class values” shared with a state brand which is in reality a vacuum of unfulfilled desires seldom realised.

The mythology of an emerging second middle class, dreamt up by market fascists, is really an attempt to prevent agrarian and peri-urban revolt caused by narrow empowerment deals and market radicalism. The new mantra of “the middle class will save us” is just another way of depriving the working class of their power as workers. Wealth as we have witnessed from BEE does not trickle down, instead it continues to accumulate at the top, as industrialists continue to extract labour.

Even with a growth rate of over 6 percent, the majority of South Africans will still be poor in comparison to the upper echelons of society. One or two black billionaires do not make an equal opportunity society and cannot persuade us that change is occuring for the better. In fact as old “middle class values” whither and the second middle class fails, the minor gains to be had from such narrow attempts at propoganda and state tinkering with enterprises will diminish.

In short, we will lose the opportunity to create a great society built upon human rights and equality instead of the marketplace. South Africa may never escape its developmental phase, without a coherent debate about citizenship, the role of diversity and the global commons, and we could be doomed to an institutional failure to address fundemental inequalities within our society as South Africa splits into two states, comprised of the haves and have-nots.

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WE’RE not asking for bread, although this used to be a rallying cry for the poor, the world over. We’re not asking for government subsidies on milk, or delivery of food parcels to those in need. No, all we are asking for is for our VAT BACK!

Giving VAT BACK to the poor, will alleviate pressure on other social services while enabling us to take control of our lives. VAT is an example of the most direct form of taxation, yet for those who spend all their income on food, clothing and shelter, VAT is just another example of big government and its hidden hand in our pockets, what economists euphemistically call “indirect taxation”.

How much tax actually reaches the poor when we are most in need? The answer is nothing or very little. More often than not, our pennys are handed over to the state to be spent on big budget items, such as military frigates, luxury airliners for presidents, and state banquets for foreign politicians.

By demanding VAT BACK — welfare in the form of a tax rebate, a leg-up rather than a hand-down — citizens are merely asking for what is rightfully theirs: How can you be 100% sure that you will never be left without a job? Homeless or without food on the table? Desperate or in need of assistance? Often dire straits coincide with other unexpected problems in life: A death in the family, a new-born child, a situation out of ones control, even marriage, separation or divorce.

Currently the only citizens to receive any welfare grants are those who qualify for assistance as a result of old-age, mental or physical disability, and children up until age 14. Which means that unless you are aged, infirm, or the legal guardian of a child, you could be left walking the street at night, seeking shelter, begging for aid, coerced into red-light employment or worse.

THE SIMPLE SOLUTION: DEMAND YOUR VAT BACK!

DEMAND your VAT back. Believe it or not, the average South African will hand over the government *R33 600 spent entirely on food and given to the exchequer in the form of VAT. This is money out of your own pocket! What do we get in return for that expense? Very little. A parliament that does nothing but pass laws. A judiciary that does nothing except complicate the law-making process, and a president who spends most of the time outside of the country, fixing other country’s problems.

Where is the government when you suffer from unemployment? Who is their to look after you when you are ill? State Hospitals in spite of their elegant sounding names, do very little and still expect you to pay for services at the end of the day. Receiving your VAT BACK could be the start to a new life. Just imagine what the money could do. Suppose for argument sake that you considered VAT not as a tax paid over to the state but as an interest-free loan given to the fiscus on the understanding that it would eventually be given back, a loan instead of the forced hand-out to big government, red-tape and bureacracy that it really is.

Over the years your stake in the South African fiscus and the economy would be enormous, pure capital given away at zero percent and used to loan out to banks and other institutions at 8%. So why not ask for your VAT BACK now? Supposing a 30 year old male went on welfare payments today, “the dole” would take thirty years of paying back R500 a month directly into his account to pay off the initial “loan” granted to the fiscus, a loan given without much thought, just via the extraction of value-added capital through the course of ones lifetime.

HOW MUCH IS YOUR PERSONAL CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIAL WELFARE REALLY WORTH?

A FIFTY year old female citizen put on the dole today would never hope to receive all her money back, private money given to the fiscus through the course of ones lifetime, considered as a loan, and would probably die before reaching the ripe old age of 100.

Whichever way one looks at the figures, even if one reduces the amount spent, say on consumption for the first ten years of life, *see figures below, the Welfare State is affordible not only in principle but in reality. Of course R500 is only an estimate — some people spend less others more. There’s also clothing and shelter to consider. The repayment of VAT spent on food alone over the course of ones lifetime does not half compensate you for the initial loans made to big government.

Ask yourself the question: how much is my personal contribution to the state’s coffers worth, ie. what would social welfare cost not just through direct income tax but via indirect taxation of goods and services ie VAT?

An impossible problem since one is always taxed, even if you receive a welfare cheque, that cheque gets taxed the minute you spend it.

South Africans are one of the most taxed nations on this planet yet receive very little in the form of social support. Think about the needy, isn’t it time we eliminated some of the worst forms of poverty such as begging? Or restored peoples dignity with the knowledge that each and every citizen is looked after, without race and class distinction, all taken care of without exception?

By demanding a direct payment of welfare in your hour of need, you will not only destroy the lie that you don’t deserve such a payment, but the illusion that this kind of money does not exist. Call your MEC, phone your political party, campaign for a welfare state that meets the needs of all its people.

(* a simple guess-timate based upon an average life expectancy of 40 years, x est R6000 pa spent on food, ie R500 per month = R240 000 spent in total, that includes a startling R33 600 or 14 % VAT handed over to government in the form of indirect taxation.)

WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?
For more proposals for a better future, send a R100 cheque or money order and a self-addressed envelope to:

D R LEWIS
(Engineer of the Imagination)
PO Box 4398,
Cape Town 8000
South Africa

Or for a short pamphlet on overcoming the master-slave-worker state, R50 cheque or money order to the same address.