A new appreciation of the role of the state

Vusi Mavimbela says the government has a crucial role to play in calculating, regulating and mitigating the 'madness of people'

Isaac Newton, who lived from 1642 to 1727, is arguably the world's greatest mathematician and physicist. He invested his money in the South Sea Company and by the time he sold his shares in the company in April 1720 he had doubled his money.

He decided to reinvest this fortune in the same company but in the space of a few months the share price had crashed and Newton lost his investment. Dejected and angry he declared: "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

The price of freedom

Since embracing full democracy 16 years ago, South Africa has made huge strides. But, says Diana Geddes (interviewed here), not everything has changed for the better

Sport matters in South Africa. In his new year’s address to the nation, President Jacob Zuma described 2010 as “the most important year in our country since 1994”. To outsiders, playing host to this year’s football World Cup seemed perhaps a less momentous event than holding the country’s first fully democratic elections that established a black-majority government 16 years ago—especially when the national team, Bafana Bafana, may be knocked out in the first round. But with the kick-off on June 11th, just days after the country’s 100th birthday on May 31st, the world’s eyes will be on Africa’s leading economy for the next few weeks.

Numsa on nationalisation

Numsa believes that the ANC led Alliance must now fast track the implementation of a framework within which nationalization premised on the socialization of the economic heights of the economy can be executed, the speedy implementation of an industrial strategy that would propel a developmental state to serve the needs and aspirations of the poor in our country in accordance with the Freedom Charter and alter monetary and fiscal policy such that the creation of employment and decent work could be at the centre of what the state does.

Numsa thinks that there is sufficient consensus on nationalisation within the Alliance for the ANC NEC to move beyond denial of this historically correct policy of the movement into the mechanics that would propel nationalization into action.
For Numsa nationalization was never just about the acquisition of the mines into public hands BUT as the Freedom Charter says: ‘the national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people’.
Numsa also calls on the South African state to nationalise the South African Reserve bank so that it may serve a developmental agenda that creates jobs and decent work to lift our people out of poverty and misery imposed by capitalism.

Source: Numsa National Office Bearers