With reference to the article by former MTN CEO Phuthuma Nhleko (Sunday Times, April 12) on population growth in Africa: the horse has bolted.
Academics around the world predicted during the late 1960s that high population growth rates in the developing world would lead to major unemployment, bad social conditions and high crime. Sound familiar?
The UN acted on this advice and declared family planning a human right. The apartheid government, on advice from the UN, Sweden and USAID, instituted a programme of family planning in the early 1970s. It worked. The population growth graph in South Africa shows a small dip in the 1970s.
ANC leaders then declared that with their numbers they would suffocate apartheid by encouraging people to have many children. They were right. It also suffocated the economy. If the ANC had had the foresight to support the family planning programme, we would have had a smaller population, and nearly everyone could have a job and a house today.
The good news is that the fertility rate in South Africa has come down to 2.21 from 2.4 children per woman due to urbanisation, improved education and Aids. The bad news is that millions of people in South Africa have children without enough resources. Apparently clinics provide little guidance to women on family planning. Where are the ministers of health and social development on this important issue?
- Jan Buurman, Cape Town
A question of aid and dignity
Zimbabwe’s leadership has made a bold decision by rejecting a large international health funding offer. Officials stated that the conditions tied to the funds were not acceptable, emphasising national independence and dignity. The statement quickly gained global attention, with mixed reactions from political leaders and health experts.
Supporters of the decision believe the country is protecting its sovereignty and refusing external pressure. Critics, however, worry about the impact on healthcare systems and access to essential medical resources.
This move highlights the ongoing tension between foreign aid and national control. It also raises important questions about how countries balance external support with internal priorities in times of need.
- Wandile Mtana, Uitenhage
DA’s liberalism won’t win black votes
Peter Bruce (Sunday Times, April 12) argues that the DA can grow its vote from the 21.8% of 2024 to north of 30% in 2029 by getting “black votes while remaining true to DA liberal principles”.
How Bruce thinks the DA could significantly grow its votes among the black majority without any ideological shift boggles the mind. The reason that the black majority is not voting for the DA in the numbers that the DA desires is because of its awareness of what the DA at its core stands for, which is the promotion of the interests of a few in society.
This morality finds expression in its ideology, namely, classical liberalism, which prizes free markets, individual rights and private property.
Liberalism is not one thing but a spectrum, ranging from the extreme libertarianism of Robert Nozick of the minimal state and the classical liberalism of such theorists as John Stuart Mill of limited government to the progressive liberalism of Thomas Hill Green that embraces an activist government and later John Rawls’ social justice.
There are national laws that impact 62-million South Africans — the black majority is watching. South Africa’s classical liberals tend to read the constitution selectively
— Siyabulela Tsengiwe
Progressive liberalism identifies with regulated markets, the coexistence of private and public property, and a combination of individual and group rights. This is to address the structural problem of high inequalities in market-based economies — racial, class and gender in the South African context.
What is problematic is the kind of liberalism that the DA has adopted. Classical liberalism in the South African context will fail to address what Bruce himself points out: “[T]he party has struggled to craft economic and social policy fit for an overwhelming black electorate still alive to the injuries, effortlessly preserved for it by the ANC, of apartheid and colonialism.”
The ideology of the DA finds its expression in its social and economic policy positions on matters such as affirmative action, land reform and the transformation of health care and the labour market that are not in the interest of the black majority.
It’s not a mere matter of having a black leader. The DA had Mmusi Maimane. What happened? In the end, he says, he left the DA for its ideological conundrum. Geordin Hill-Lewis thinks he can bypass the DA’s ideological conundrum by simply changing the political culture of the DA, including being present and warm towards black people as well as focusing on being the best in local government.
Well, there are national laws that impact 62-million South Africans — the black majority is watching. South Africa’s classical liberals tend to read the constitution selectively. The constitution as a whole is underpinned by progressive liberalism — call it social democratic or liberal-egalitarian.
- Siyabulela Tsengiwe, former chief commissioner of the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa
Teach democracy in preschool
The article “Teaching democracy needs more than a podcast and TV show” (Sunday Times, April 12) refers. I had the opportunity to take five township preschool teachers for training in Switzerland. We visited many early childhood development facilities and were met with the same message at each one: “We teach democracy at our preschool.”
We found that the teachers used democratic principles throughout the day, even with very small children. They were given choices such as the following: We are learning about pets today. Do you want a story about dogs or cats (or any other pet)? Or it is music time. Do you want to sing or dance today? Our lunch today will be pasta, fruit and a drink. Do you want mushroom or cheese sauce? Do you want apples or cherries? Do you want milk or water? And so on.
The children learnt very quickly that they would be expected to vote. They also understood very quickly that one vote could make a difference. Each child discovered that abstaining did not contribute towards achieving his or her own preferences, and he or she could not rely on the others’ votes to reach individual personal goals.
Obviously, this method of teaching became more complex with older learners, but it is easy to do if teachers keep it in mind every day, and it becomes a way of life.
- Lesley Satchel, Knysna
Print media should influence voters
With the overwhelming evidence on the Madlanga commission’s table, is it not about time for print media to influence voters to pin their hopes on a political party whose manifesto focuses on the local challenges of reconstructing our country economically and repairing our flawed criminal justice system by making prisons uncomfortable for prisoners?
My focus is on changing what doesn’t work for South Africa and replacing it with what has the potential to work in the upcoming local elections and the national elections in 2029.
After thirty rocky, economically stagnant years we now have a chance to change government for the better.
The articles by Lucky FM Mathebula and Itumeleng Mokoena in the Sunday Times of April 12 planted seeds of hope in my mind, and it’s the only way we can put the ANC on the opposition benches in parliament.
We need politically vocal and informative media, not media that simply tells us what happened.
- Moikwatlhai Seitisho, Phuthaditjhaba
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