The South African political plateau confirms a shifting reality, yet the role of capital shows no real shaking - it defies all tremors. To fully appreciate the articulation of Rupert we must first appreciate the actual control apartheid and colonial beneficiaries have on the economy. The signpost of that constituency is none but Rupert, the face of apartheid accumulated wealth and the embodiment of a successful racist regime.
Qoheleth, in the 12th verse of the fourth chapter of Ecclesiastes, a wisdom literature book in the Holy Writ, reminds us: “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.”
I thought of this archaic sacred text as I began to crystallise the reasons for Johann Rupert’s arrogance.
Rupert, out of his fundamental control of whatever defines South Africa in an economic sense, ventured to define the ANC-led government policy of radical economic transformation with a dismissive “a code word for theft”.
With this five-word conclusive definition Rupert spat on policy which represents the hope of the masses of blacks who have still to experience true empowerment.
It all makes sense when you realise that the 1994 consensus has come full circle, the famous sunset clause and the Brenthurst agreement that protected apartheid and colonial benefit, has quadrupled white wealth in democracy.
Recently, Minister Edna Molewa, despite a sea of deafening silence on the part of many black elites, became the second senior ANC politician after presidential contender Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to take Rupert’s arrogance head-on. She described Rupert as a "beneficiary of the largesse of the interventionist apartheid state". She continued to attribute the "stellar fortunes of his late father", to that which Dan O’Meara described as "volkskapitalisme".
Her application of O’ Meara’s "volkskapitalisme" reads as follows, "By means of volkskapitalisme, the racist Nationalist Party government leveraged state power and state assets such as state-owned banks to buoy up Afrikaner businesses and turn them into the corporate behemoths of today."
Molewa, therefore, makes a pertinent assessment of the contradiction and mindset of Rupert and his ilk, who we may surmise suffer from selective amnesia as to how the state under apartheid was used to advance and develop the fallacy of an Afrikaner nationality and nationhood.
Click Here to Continue Reading the Original Article by Clyde Ramalaine on IOL
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