printIn South Africa, reports The Economist, “Economic life is dominated by big business, big labour and big government.”
only an elite few ever have a place at the table. … Firms face too little competition, cushy labour laws lock the jobless out of work and the public sector provides woeful services. Many well-paid teachers barely teach. Many bureaucrats do little but slow-walk paperwork and embezzle. Most are never held accountable. A quarter of South Africans enjoy a middle- or upper-class life, while the rest struggle to get by. When a country has an insider-outsider problem, you cannot let the insiders dictate terms.
The problem, really, is that African National Congress bosses will have Ramaphosa’s head if he does anything to threaten their hold on “big business, big labour and big government.”
Ramaphosa is near-powerless before “the pro-corruption lobby within the ruling African National Congress (ANC).”
MORE: “The need for speed: Cyril Ramaphosa is running out of time to reform South Africa.”
But let’s not beat about the bush: Ramaphosa has failed to recognize—and aggressively move against—systemic crime against his white, productive minority. In fact, Ramaphosa categorically denies the ethnic cleansing of South Africa’s white farmers.