It’s not just BEE, race-based affirmative action must go too

[Willie Trombone]

Of course it could be done

The Lithuanians per example did it in 12 months time after 1994. Just 1.3 million people. A country at that time much poorer than SA.
Now much much richer, indeed...

Let's see... 1.3 million vs 50 million...
So what went wrong with SA do you think?

 

[Willie Trombone]

The most prosperous country (9 million inhabitants, 21 % non-white) in the world has 4. Of which 3 are on offer in tertiary.

And all of those languages are international languages so benefit anyone taking them. Even if you speak the most used SA language, tell us, where and how would you be able to use it? If I gave you one screw driver - flat, phillips or pentacle. Which would you take?

 

[Lupus]

The most prosperous country (9 million inhabitants, 21 % non-white) in the world has 4. Of which 3 are on offer in tertiary.

Never dealt with European countries have you? I have everyone one of them speak English if they're dealing with English speaking countries.
Also do you know how many people are in South Africa? Cause you keep saying other countries population sizes like it's supposed to mean something, we have more than 9 million kids in SA.

 

[Jola]

We know this only potentially ends under two conditions 1) the last white person in SA dies or leaves, 2) SA suffers wholesale economic collapse.

Nope, will only happen under 1)

They will still apply it if 2) happens.

 

[Neuk_]

If have a feeling that there are still many people around in the thread, that seriously believe that living in a country where WHITE people are having swimming pools and blacks are living in shacks will be a sustainable model

wake up boys!!

Can we deal with facts, please bring some and we can continue the debate but please leave your biased opinion out of this.

 

[konfab]

The most prosperous country (9 million inhabitants, 21 % non-white) in the world has 4. Of which 3 are on offer in tertiary.

And curiously, they don't have any inheritance tax...

In general, capital gains of Swiss residents are tax-exempt, provided these were obtained by selling private movable assets which aren’t assets of a company. Therefore, capital gains arising from securities transactions, for example, aren’t subject to any tax. Gains derived from the sale of private immovable property aren’t subject to federal tax. However, the cantons do levy a capital gains tax on immovable property: the seller pays capital gains tax on the realised capital gains. The tax rate generally depends on two factors: (1) the period of time the seller owned the immovable property and (2) the realised capital gains. In most cases, a longer period of ownership reduces both the taxable basis and the tax rate. There’s no capital gains tax payable if the property is transferred by virtue of a gift or legacy.

https://www.nomoretax.eu/living/relocation-to-switzerland/

And most of their taxes are quite low as well. And they have a really small federal government.

 

[MrGray]

Bottom line, whenever people are chosen for any role on the basis of anything other than their ability, performance will inevitably deteriorate. And when this is applied systemically and iteratively in any organisation the effect will gradually snowball as institutional memory decays, and the preceding incompetent placements bring even more incompetents into the organisation.

This is simple, irrefutable logic. A child can understand it.

The fundamental conflict, then, is that in order to address poverty we need a prosperous and rapidly growing private sector and efficient government that supports free market principles and encourages economic growth. But we're taking the short term approach of addressing poverty by shoehorning unsuitable people into positions and increasingly regulating all aspects of the economy, measures that can only result in a declining private sector and useless public sector. The results are plain to see.

I honestly believe most politicians know this at some level, however, the crux of the issue is that they know that they will not last long at the trough if they attempt to change this status quo since the vast majority of the electorate seems hell bent on immediate transformation today at any cost, with no glimmer of understanding of the long term consequence for future generations. So the real question is, what can be done to make them to change their stance? If the answer is "nothing", then the future is very bleak for South Africa.

 

[konfab]

Fine.

That would drive down asset prices and make them more accessible for others



You are taking money from DEAD people.
Would you prefer expropriation while still alive?

Fine, put it to a popular vote then. Lets see how many people in the country would be happy with the government taking 99% of any insurance payout they get after they die. This includes all funeral cover etc. Im mean after all, you are only taking money from dead people...

 

[noxibox]

No
The Americas educate in HOME language. Even 99% of the indians speak spanish, portuguese, dutch, french or english at home

That indigenous lingo was pretty much wiped out in colonial times and doesn't matter anymore.

Yes, because they wiped out the indigenous languages those people are taught in a colonial language. So really the long term solution is to remove the myriad indigenous languages and replace them with a single colonial language.

In SA only 8% of the population speaks English at home, but 92% of education is in english medium.
Obviously this doen't work.

Yes, I stated that should not be happening at primary level. It's a misguided policy and we now know it is a bad idea. South Africa isn't the only country to have tried using non-mother tongue at primary level and failed. All subjects should be taught in home language in those years. But they definitely should be learning English during primary schooling and they should be speaking it as much as possible at school, especially if there aren't opportunities at home, because they should switch by secondary.

why not?

The Swiss, Belgians, Fins, Malaysians etc are actually doing this.

There are models to be found that make sure that the majority of pupils in SA will be schooled in native lingo

The differences are quite obvious. Besides having general wealth Switzerland uses three widespread languages and thus has access to the associated educational resources. Finland has one language that pretty much everyone speaks. Besides that they have only three spoken languages and the majority have Finnish as their first language. The other one in use in education is Swedish which means they have the associated educational resources to draw on. Malaysia has only one official language for education, Malay. Belgium again uses common languages that allow them to draw on the associated resources. Another aspect is that each language group finances and controls their own education system.

So maybe the Belgian model is good for South Africa. Let English and Afrikaans people take over the schools that use those languages. The percentage of tax that currently goes to education can then be used to calculate the reduction in their tax payments. They will then be responsible for financing and managing their own schools. Similarly the other 9 languages can pay for and run their own schools.

Show me an example of a poor country that is trying to provide primary education for 11 different languages and succeeding. Never mind a country where the national education management couldn't blow their way out of a wet paper bag with hand grenade. South Africa is already struggling to provide enough qualified, capable teachers. Adding the requirement of a certain number for each language is only going to make that harder. I don't know the solution, because a lazy, incompetent teacher who speaks the right language isn't going to improve things and neither is a really good, dedicated teacher trying to teach a child in a language they barely understand. But I do know that simply throwing more money at it or grand gestures like major overhauls aren't going to achieve anything.

 

[noxibox]

Bottom line, whenever people are chosen for any role on the basis of anything other than their ability, performance will inevitably deteriorate. And when this is applied systemically and iteratively in any organisation the effect will gradually snowball as institutional memory decays, and the preceding incompetent placements bring even more incompetents into the organisation.

If and only if they also don't have the ability to do the job.

 

[Willie Trombone]

If have a feeling that there are still many people around in the thread, that seriously believe that living in a country where WHITE people are having swimming pools and blacks are living in shacks will be a sustainable model

wake up boys!!

I see more blacks who believe that if I'm honest. Though by swimming pool, do you mean fire pool?
To be fair, there are more blacks in SA by far so that stands to reason.

 

[noxibox]

How about this, we get the government out of deciding what language people should speak and leave it up to the parents to choose what schools they send their kids to.

That has proven to be a very bad idea. Plenty of parents specifically chose to send their primary age children to English medium schools, because they wanted their children to become proficient in English. It simply doesn't work. In primary school children need to learn in their home language. If they're going to be learning in English in primary school then they need to enter school already able to understand and speak the language.

 

[MrGray]

If and only they also don't have the ability to do the job.

It's not just about whether they have the basic ability to do the job, it's whether the the people with the best available ability to do the job are selected, not just the merely capable. It's the edge that makes an organisation prosper and lead their industry as opposed to mediocre and just getting by, which ultimately leaves them dead in the water in the long run.

Effectively with BEE if you have two candidates that equally fulfil the basic job requirements but one has vastly more experience and a better track record, the inferior candidate will be chosen on race. The result is institutionalised mediocrity and stagnation.

 

[Johnatan56]

That has proven to be a very bad idea. Plenty of parents specifically chose to send their primary age children to English medium schools, because they wanted their children to become proficient in English. It simply doesn't work. In primary school children need to learn in their home language. If they're going to be learning in English in primary school then they need to enter school already able to understand and speak the language.

Define understand and speak, as in fluently or broken? My German wasn't that great when I entered primary school, plus I spoke a broken dialect rather than high German, still worked out fine after learning it for a while since everyone else in my class had "good" German.

The question is always your environment, if people in the child's environment can all speak English, then it can work out even if the parent's English isn't that great, if the only place they speak it is in school and all the other children also only speak non-English, then it won't work.

 

[noxibox]

Wow! Really?

How come all those prosperous european and asian countries still have their home languages (many of them very very small) as medium in education?

When I was considering working in Germany the companies weren't interested in whether I could speak German, but being fluent in English was a requirement. I know English is commonly used at work in The Netherlands too.

But how many small European countries are there with their own unique language? And in Asia?

 

[Willie Trombone]

When I was considering working in Germany the companies weren't interested in whether I could speak German, but being fluent in English was a requirement. I know English is commonly used at work in The Netherlands too.

As @cerebus and others can testify

 

[Knyro]

In reality Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele and Swati are just dialects of the same language. Likewise Sotho and Tswana are the same language. They are just called different languages for political reasons.

Load of BS. Those languages have dialects of their own.

Never ceases to amaze me the amount of nonsense you hear about indigenous languages around here.

 

[losta]

.... So really the long term solution is to remove the myriad indigenous languages and replace them with a single colonial language.

At least you're being honest about it

Lets not forget that this is a long and painfull process nowadays. Languages tend to be way more sticky than central governments hope for.

Look at the case of Spain where they still not managed to eradicate Bask and Catalan (on the contrary, Catalan is growing fairly quickly, replacing spanish in Catalunia)

 

[noxibox]

Define understand and speak, as in fluently or broken? My German wasn't that great when I entered primary school, plus I spoke a broken dialect rather than high German, still worked out fine after learning it for a while since everyone else in my class had "good" German.

The question is always your environment, if people in the child's environment can all speak English, then it can work out even if the parent's English isn't that great, if the only place they speak it is in school and all the other children also only speak non-English, then it won't work.

Most children entering primary school understand little, and more often no, English or Afrikaans. They're then taught a subject like science in that language, so they're trying to understand a subject new to them explained in a language they cannot comprehend. At the very least you'd have to provide that child with extraordinary levels of assistance, in an environment where many teachers are barely coping. It also matters whether the child's parents are educated and have access to resources like the internet. If someone explained something about science to my child in German they'd not have the faintest clue what was going on, but they could come home, show it to me and I'd be able to help on the topic (not the German as mine's only good for the very basics like asking for directions and ordering food).

Thus a possible intervention is to try to introduce them to the language earlier, so they at least understand well enough. But there is plenty of research on this topic and other countries have made the same mistakes.

 

[deweyzeph]

Load of BS. Those languages have dialects of their own.

Never ceases to amaze me the amount of nonsense you hear about indigenous languages around here.

The only indigenous languages in South Africa are the Khoisan languages. All other languages in South Africa either originated in Europe or in Central and Western Africa and came with the migration of their respective people.