Honourable Members,
   
Ladies and Gentlemen,
   

   
The International Parliamentary Conference on Growth and Development hosted by this Parliament provides a powerful moment for us to reflect on what drives change in a post-liberationist South Africa.
 

At this conference today, we had the opportunity to discuss corruption and its effects on the poor. Corruption cripples the most vulnerable members of our society. The President and his party have become arrogant and corrupted by the power they have held for the last 20 years. This has lead to growing resentment of the state. In my estimation a key factor is the changing class composition of the black population and this has portentous political consequences.

Democratic South Africa has grown a significant black middle class. In 1994, there were 1.8 million black people in the middle-class category, and they have risen to 5.9 million today. The middle class place value in upward career mobility, home ownership, saving for retirement, independence from government financial assistance and access to high quality public services in policing, schooling and healthcare.

A more resourced black middle class is turning its back on the inefficient public sector and is rushing to use private sector provided services. The rejection of the public sector is profound and well-grounded. The only properly functioning part of the state is the South African Revenue Service which collects taxes relentlessly while every other department is ideologically bankrupt and politically inept.

There is growing resentment of a state that efficiently collects taxes but misspends it in such outlandish a fashion as President Jacob Zuma’s private homestead. Recently, this matter exploded in South Africa’s Parliament, resulting in an unseemly brawl symbolising the end of rational public deliberation in a body Nelson Mandela so proudly inaugurated.

At the behest of the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the state unproductively clutches all assets that - if put into ordinary citizens’ hands, could create innumerable business opportunities that would grow employment in our country. The challenge this poses for political parties is whether to follow the dwindling working class, or to embrace the emerging middle class, or both, an act that involves a complete turnaround in the political and economic agendas of political parties.

Already the middle class – white and black – is more numerous, with white- and blue-collar employees numbering 10.5 million people and 5 million respectively. Of course there is the vast sea of unemployed, numbering 7.7 million, who depend on the state’s welfare system. The black middle class will continue to grow rapidly; the forces of market liberalism that are spontaneously erupting throughout the economy, present a very favourable view of the economy’s trajectory over the coming decades.

The political party that embraces growth and nurtures entrepreneurial opportunities will be the party that can credibly offer sustainable jobs and hope for a nation battered by the ills of moral and material stagnation.