Person of the week: John Kane-Berman.

Beautifully accurate, unapologetic, crystallised clean article.
Balanced opinions and balanced forward view.

 

Person of the week:

South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR)

CEO John Kane-Berman.

This article was found on Moneyweb.

Mr Kane-Berman believes that reform won't come about through policy decisions but via de facto changes on the ground. "We're facing the prospect over five-15 years, of the erosion of our anachronistic and undemocratic labour conditions - its erosion is a precondition for combating unemployment which should be a national priority objective," and isn't yet.

To enable these changes Kane-Berman suggests the:

1. Civil service be professionalised.
2. Decentralise government, shrink the state and increase private sector [control].
3. Make MPs accountable to the electorate by having half of Parliament elected by the people.
4. Privatise parastatals like SAA and Eskom - selling them and limiting the amount of these companies that can be owned by one entity.
5. Social privatisation of public schooling.
6. Sell public healthcare facilities, with a limit on how many one entity can own; increase private medical insurance.
7. Repeal labour law - except for basic health and safety requirements; allow common law of private voluntary contracts to replace it.
8. Redesign affirmative action and empowerment to direct state interventions for all people irrespective of race; new interventions to liberate the poor, reducing their dependence on the state.
9. Replace the redistribution focus with a growth focus.
10. Turn SA from a welfare state into an entrepreneurial one

 

Kane-Berman also maintains that contradictions in policy need to be exposed.
Controversially, of the most dominant contradictions he said: "You can't keep on jeopardising relations with our main trading and investment partners - Europe and the UK. Undermining local companies by racial and anti-business policies and looting the state for personal or party profits, without in the end running out of the taxes that you need to provide for the free things you promised to the people to keep them in permanent bondage to your party."


He further purposes staying vigilant in defence of the constitution's sovereignty, the independence of the auditor general, judiciary, public protector, legal profession and the media; and the promotion of free trade and enterprise