We were blinded by colour to one simple truth: empowerment is not about owning things. It’s about doing things.
Empowerment is about making a meaningful contribution to others because that is where our true value lies. The extension of ownership to staff suffers from the same defect. It’s what I previously called the “worker capitalist delusion”. Employee share schemes do little to enable employees in controlling their own or the company’s destiny, largely fail as productivity motivators and certainly have had little effect on labour unrest, flexibility and labour costs. In addition, a large number of people are left out of the empowerment loop.
“Monopoly capital”, whether white or black, state or private is little more than centralised economic power which is of real concern to everyone, and which is the main grievance driving the Occupy Wall Street movements worldwide. The simple fact is that market capitalism whether by Smithian default or by financial manipulation has arguably become socially inefficient.
Schuitema writes very well. I and numerous other "white" people would agree with him. It's however not convenient for the government to drop the anti-white or anti-liberal sentiment because they would need to accept that they themselves have disappointed South Africa completely. Blaming it on apartheid or white capital adequately disguises their ineptitude.
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