We need decisiveness to clamber out of our widening hole
Thank you, John Catsicas, for proposing that President Cyril Ramaphosa establish a government of national unity to tackle the shambles he inherited . However, in criticising the example of President Franklin Roosevelt’s decisive first 100 days in 1933, Catsicas ignores the worldwide consequences of Winston Churchill’s irrational decision in 1925 to return to the gold standard at pre-World War 1 values.
Even Churchill, as Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, later acknowledged it was the worst decision he ever made. To support Churchill’s blunder, the “Fed” and Hoover administration in the US maintained excessively low interest rates. The New York stock market first boomed and then crashed. The rich got richer, but the poor got poorer. One of many repercussions by 1933 was the rise of Adolf Hitler.
The world is in a similarly perilous situation today. Globally, the economic and political system is plainly bust and unfit for purpose in the 21stCatsicas regurgitates the capitalist fallacy that it took another war to overcome the depression. Countries were devastated and tens of millions of people were killed. Purported benefits of wars have yet again been disproved by the past 18 years since 9/11. Only a war profiteer can believe that wars are economically beneficial.
My point is that Ramaphosa, as president, must stop pandering to corrupt and vested interests within the ANC and state-owned enterprises, or the banks. Like Roosevelt, he must make decisive, even radical, decisions. These could include repudiating the “odious debt” loans from the World Bank and others for Eskom, SAA, Denel and the arms deal.
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