Errol Naidoo of the Rescue South Africa Civil Rights Alliance has launched South Africa's first constitutional challenge against the country's 142 race-based laws, arguing that since the Population Registration Act was repealed in 1991, there is no legal basis for race classification in South Africa's constitution, which explicitly prohibits racial discrimination. The challenge contends that Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) laws, which require 30% ownership stakes for black partners, have been corrupted to enrich politically connected individuals while 64% of black South Africans live in poverty, with 14 million people going to bed hungry. The case argues that BEE lacks measurable outcomes, has no sunset clause, and has destroyed the economy by driving away investors like Elon Musk, who refused to invest due to the requirement to give 30% of his company to ANC-connected individuals.
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Crimes Against Humanity? BEE on TRIAL!Added:
So nobody's actually challenged the race classification in the laws.
Nobody's challenged the 142 laws that is race based.
There hasn't been a legal challenge against that.
So this is the first challenge against it.
My guest is Errol Naidu from the Rescue South Africa Civil Rights Alliance, who two weeks ago launched a constitutional challenge against South Africa's race based laws.
The case takes aim at the validity of these laws, arguing they should be declared unconstitutional.
Welcome to the program, Errol.
It's great to be with you again, Johan.
Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
We spoke a couple of months ago when you launched Rescue South Africa's action against government for taking government to court for crimes against humanity.
So let's make that the first question.
Is this lawsuit that you've just started some 10 days ago, is that part of the bigger picture, part of the crimes against humanity action that you're taking, or is that separate?
I would say it's part of, it's the beginning of, because that's the first case that we have launched with the High Court, which we believe is crimes against humanity.
Because when we make the argument, every one of these cases that we take in the ANC led government to court for, that is our ultimate argument that, for example, children's rights, that children are being denied their constitutional rights, that children are dying of hunger, all those kinds of things.
It's a deliberate thing because it's a result of rampant corruption and the mismanagement, the gross mismanagement of state resources.
Yeah.
So those things are not done by accident and it's not because the ANC don't know what's going on.
Government is just, you know, they're losing their way.
No, they're doing it deliberately.
It's people in the ANC government, it's people linked to the ANC government that's responsible for the majority of the theft, the fraud, the money laundering, the racketeering.
And the destruction of state institutions, it's ANC people doing that.
So the ANC is deliberately destroying this country.
And as a result of their actions, people are dying, people are suffering, people are unemployed, people are starving.
So it's crimes against humanity, as far as we are concerned.
But this first case is obviously the case against race-based laws.
We're challenging the constitutionality of race-based laws in South Africa.
And that founding affidavit was lodged with the North Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, last week and last week, Tuesday.
And so it has been registered with the court.
It's on the roll.
The sheriff of the court will be serving the respondents with the necessary papers and the 17 respondents, starting with President Cyril Ramaphosa Aposa, several ministers of various departments, the Speaker of Parliament.
And so the process is now underway.
And we're very pleased, happy, relieved that we've got our first case on the roll.
And we are now working on the rest of the cases.
Are we to understand you're taking the government or are you taking the ANC?
Are you taking the Tuynhuys?
Are you taking the Minister of whatever to court?
Are you taking the president to court?
How does it work and who responds?
Okay, so the respondents are the president of the Republic of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa Aposa as the head of government.
The second respondent is the Speaker of Parliament because we are challenging Parliament for passing laws that contains a race classification.
Yeah.
And as far as we're concerned, it's unlawful and there's no constitutional mechanism for race classification in South Africa's constitution.
So it's unlawful.
There's 142 laws on South Africa's statute books that uses race classification to discriminate against certain people and provide other people with certain privileges.
And this was the basis of the apartheid laws.
So during apartheid, the apartheid government had a law called the Population Registration Act.
And that Population Registration Act classified people by race, black, white, colored and Indian.
So all the other laws, the apartheid laws that was made was based on that Population Registration Act.
Because, for example, you can't have the Group Areas Act without having race classification.
You can't say blacks can only live here and whites can only live there and Indians can only live there.
If you don't have race classification, the Job Reservation Act was based on the Population Registration Act.
Yeah, that's the act if I'm right, F.W. de Klerk, that's the act.
I think back in 1991 that F.W. de Klerk more or less tore up and said, this is it.
It's the end of race based laws in South Africa.
That's the act you're thinking about.
Correct. That was repealed by Parliament in 1991.
And so there's never been a law to replace it.
And so that is the constitution that rejects the racial classification.
We are non-racist, non-sexist democracy.
That's what our constitution says.
And it guarantees it says you cannot discriminate against people on the basis of race, ethnicity, language, all of those things, which the ANC government is doing.
And so we challenging the constitutionality of every law that uses race classification because there is no legal basis for race classification in our laws or our constitution.
That's the basic premise of our challenge.
I get that. I understand that.
I want to get back to that a little bit later as well.
Right now about black economic empowerment, what in your estimation is the biggest damage that black economic empowerment has done to South Africa?
Well, it's ruined our economy.
That's the biggest damage.
It's destroyed our economy because it's a farce.
What the ANC says black economic empowerment is for its reason and its rationale and what it actually produced after 32 years of democracy to completely different thing.
So black economic empowerment was supposed to have previously disadvantaged people.
People that suffered under apartheid, that were denied opportunities and jobs and education or all those kind of things.
So that sounds reasonable and it includes me, by the way.
But when you look at what black economic empowerment has done under the ANC, it has enriched a handful of people, politically, politically connected people have made them millionaires and billionaires.
While the vast majority of people that have been previously disadvantaged are still living abject poverty, we have the nation is 100 percent dependent on welfare, social welfare grants.
They eat, eat kind of barely living on R350 a month.
I don't know if you've been to South Africa and understand what R350 can buy.
Yeah, buy a hamburger here with it.
Yeah. And that's what people have to live on.
And that's what the ANC hands out to people.
And that's what they've driven.
These people, the people that depend on them, that's voting for a better life and the promises the ANC made, they've impoverished these people.
Unemployment is unofficial numbers, about 42 percent.
Youth unemployment is somewhere in the 70 percent.
Our economy is in tatters.
Our debt to GDP ratio is approaching 80 percent.
Our debt is over six trillion, we're spending about 300 billion just servicing the debt.
And the government is all loaning money left, right and center.
And is in getting generations in this country, my children's children's children is going to be paying off this debt.
Why? Because the economy is not growing and it hasn't been growing for decades.
Investors are running away from South Africa.
They don't want to come into this country because of the B.E.E. laws that says if you want to invest in this country and start a business like Elon Musk, you have to give ANC connected people 30 percent of your company.
And they say no, they see what we have the money is going.
They see what the 30 percent of companies where it's going, how it's enriching certain people while the majority of people remain poor and desperate.
So people don't want to do that anymore.
And they're not investing in this country because it's a burden with corruption.
It is it's got far worse than under the Jacob Zuma administration.
Even though Cyril Ramaphosa in 2018, when he was elected president, he said he promised a new dawn and we're going to root out corruption.
He was given the Zondo commission report, which ran for more than three years and spent one billion ran.
And he was supposed to act on that.
He didn't do a thing about it.
He's protecting the corrupt in his party.
And that's why corruption is exploded in South Africa to the extent that our entire police service, South African police service is now controlled by organized crime.
All the top police management have been suspended under investigation because they link to organized crime figures and they involve in corruption.
So the police is organized crime in South Africa.
And so crime is out of control in this country because we don't have a functioning police service.
You're laying this all at the feet of black economic empowerment, but I hear the word corruption all the time.
So my question, the obvious question is, is black economic empowerment the enemy or is corruption of how the system is applied or use or abuse?
Is that not the enemy?
Yeah, it's the way black economic empowerment is being implemented because they promising we're going to uplift people at the previous disadvantage.
And then they're using the policies of black economic empowerment to enrich a few people.
So obviously, a black economic empowerment, the system was done in a efficient, honest, humane way.
And it is and you can see the results that is helping people.
Then you can agree with it.
But it's not doing that.
It's doing the exact opposite.
So black economic empowerment is being used as a mechanism to enrich a few and impoverishing the vast majority of citizens.
Yeah.
Are you are you saying to me with that error that your fight is not against black economic empowerment?
Your fight is against the corrupt way in which the policy is functioning or being abused.
That black economic empowerment is something that that you fully support or at least support the the ideas behind it or what it's supposed to strive for and supposed to achieve conceptually.
But the real enemy here is the corruption within black economic empowerment, because there's a huge difference between just throwing throwing the whole lot out black economic empowerment or saying, no, hold on, we need black economic empowerment.
It actually has done some.
Let me ask you that question.
What are what are the good things that have been created because of black economic empowerment?
Well, I want to mention that opportunities were given to people that were denied opportunities in the past.
So jobs, you know, giving people opportunities in education, in various sectors of society.
But again, that hasn't been done properly either, because what the ANC has done as appointed people that don't have the skills and the competencies into positions.
Yeah.
And they and they destroyed the companies or the entities that they are running because they obviously they don't have the skills for it.
They believe that's, you know, black economic empowerment or advancement or affirmative action.
But it isn't.
People need the skills to do the jobs.
You can't take somebody that don't know how to run Eskom and put them in charge of it and they run the whole of Eskom into the ground.
And that's what has been happening.
The African Airways is running to the ground.
Transnet running to the ground.
Eskom, SABC.
Why?
Because they put people that are unskilled in incompetent and well, because you're black.
So they don't, I don't, I think the ANC that doesn't have a clue about what they're doing or what affirmative action and empowerment really is.
Yeah. Because what you want to do is train people, give them the opportunities to train and get the skills and then put them in the positions.
Yeah, they put the people in the positions before the skills and then they destroy everything.
And of course, if you look at South African Airways as an example, they were, because of affirmative action and all those kinds of policies, the employees of South African Airways was mostly black people, previously disadvantaged people.
And when they ran it into the ground, it was mostly black people that lost their jobs.
Tonight, now how's black economic empowerment helping anybody?
Because it's not black economic empowerment.
It's a, it's a, it's a scam.
It's a scheme that the ANC concocted to enrich themselves and their friends.
And the evidence of that is how many black people are still suffering, still living in poverty and in fact, are even worse off.
So what we need?
What we need in South Africa, we do need a policy or policies that can help people that were previously disadvantaged, but that has to be done properly.
It has to be done honestly and efficiently so that you actually see results where people are getting into positions where people are growing or getting.
For example, they've run our education into the ground.
South African education now is a joke.
Most people agree with that.
People that are not part of the ANC or the system can tell you looking at it objectively that they've destroyed it because people, young people coming through the education system.
I saw they can't read for meaning.
They're failing in so many different sectors, international organizations have rated South African education system and it consistently comes at the bottom.
Why? Because they dumb down the education so they can push people through so they can get the numbers.
Now that is a ridiculous stupid policy, just so that you can say, well, we had a high matric rate, 80 percent.
At the end of the year, the Minister of Education can make that announcement, but it's all smoke and mirrors.
It's not reality because those people are not properly educating.
They can't go onto university and get a degree and contribute to the economy.
That's what the ANC is doing.
So it's not helping people.
Yeah, it's not doing what.
So you first need a proper, a good education system to educate people so they can get through the education system, go to university, get their degrees and then into the market with no hindrances, obstacles in their way, even helping people, giving them support so that they can get ahead.
But the people must be capable.
They've got to be capable in the first place.
You see, and what the ANC is doing, they have a policy called cadre deployment policy.
So everybody that joins the ANC, they deploy into various positions and posts, whether they've got the skills or the competencies for it.
They're just deploying people.
And you see what has happened now.
They've run the entire city of Johannesburg into the ground.
They destroyed it completely.
The city's in debt of 25 billion.
They've only got 3.9 billion.
The Minister of Finance had to write to the mayor of the city of Johannesburg and said, this mayor gave the municipal workers union an increase which would cost the city 10.3 billion rent.
The Minister of Finance said to the mayor and said, you don't have the money.
Your overdraft is 25 billion.
You only got 3.9 billion.
And you're giving these union workers 10.3 and you have no money.
So it's legal because you don't have the budget for it.
And then the city is appointing people in the ANC.
They're appointing them into top position, executive positions with 3 million, 2 million rand a year, annual salaries.
And they've got no money to pay it.
Yeah, but that's all just corruption you're talking about.
There's nothing in the mechanics of black economic empowerment, the way the law is written that says that you should not take people's merits, that you should not appoint people based on merits.
There's nothing within the law that stops you from doing that.
So just for the sake of clarity for myself, just to understand what exactly you're taking the government to court for.
I've got it written down on May 9th.
You've launched this case and you're basing it on your challenging BEE saying there's no lawful way to classify people by race.
Since the old Population Act was scrapped in 1991.
Isn't that the core of what your argument is going to be?
Because the rest of what you've described here is what everybody just understands fully as just A to Z corruption.
We're challenging the constitutionality of race-based laws in South Africa.
We're saying it is unlawful and unconstitutional.
And the way it has been applied is it's not achieving any of the objectives that this government is saying.
These race-based laws is meant to achieve.
So it's unlawful, it's unconstitutional.
And people might say, okay, but at least it's empowering people.
Well, it's not doing that either.
Because the whole thing is riddled with corruption.
So we're going to have to make that case in court that these laws, 142 laws that's on our statute books, that classifies people by races firstly, unlawful.
Because racial classification died with the Population Registration Act in 1991.
And the ANC government passed 142 laws based on race classification and it's unlawful to do it.
But the reason for doing that is empowerment and the redressing injustices of the past, but they're not doing that either.
It is just stealing money.
They're stealing billions and trillions from the taxpayer.
That's what BEE is today.
ANC BEE.
It's not a black economic empowerment because there's ways to do black economic empowerment.
For example, they're chasing away investors and we can always use Elon Musk's Starlink as an example.
He won't bring it into the country because he's not going to give 30% to thieves and robbers.
So if they change the law and said the law will change it, companies want to invest inside that, start up, year and invest and all of that.
They would have to agree to a certain percentage of their turnover to invest in community development, building schools, and investing in South Africa and its people as part of the investment in South Africa to come and do business here.
And then if they agree to that, then it's up to the company, the company, they're legally required to do that and they would do that.
So they would have to put that money where it actually works and it's actually helping people, building schools, in education, in whatever.
But it's not happening that way because companies are now have to get 30% to some person connected to the ANC and they're taking that money and they're not invested in any people.
They're just buying mansions and fleets of cars, luxury cars.
And the people that are supposed to be the recipients of all this investment company in the country, they're not seeing a cent of it.
And that evidence is very clear.
So there's no uplifting of the poor is getting actually poorer and things are getting worse for people.
So that's why this whole BE system has to change because it's not working, it hasn't worked and it's complete and utter false.
And we challenge the constitutionality of it and our argument is it's not achieving what it's set out to do.
That must be scrapped.
I don't know the law and I haven't read the law.
I have a vague understanding of what the law says, but is it prescriptive that if I'm a foreign investor, I live here in Amsterdam and I've got some money saved up and I want to go and invest it in a company in South Africa.
Does the law specify specifics?
You mentioned 30% now the Starlink thing.
Is that exactly prescribed by the law itself or is that part of just negotiation processes?
Now, that's the law, the BE law.
The law says you got to give 30%.
That's specified in the law.
30% must go to a black partner.
Correct. And that's been in the media a lot now with Elon Musk and Starlink.
So that's why people know so much about it because they need Starlink here because in rural areas, they don't have internet.
And it's going to help a lot of people all over this country.
And the answer to the solution to South Africa's problem with the internet in far-flung areas is Starlink.
And Elon Musk is willing to bring it here.
But because of this law, this BE law says that he has to give 30% of his company to a black economic empowerment.
And he knows what this means and he's seen what it's done and he's seen the corruption around us.
He says, no, ways am I giving 30% to these guys because I know who they are and I know what they're doing.
It's not going to empower people.
And so that's why it's a law.
And so I've also read articles about an economist like this, Dawie Roodt, talking about the fact that in this instance, they want to come into South Africa any longer.
They don't want to come in because of this BE laws and because of the corruption that is destroying this country and our economy.
Just the policies, even the labor policies, it's restrictive.
It's suffocating this country.
And the ANC will not move.
They won't change anything even though the economy is not growing.
It's keeping on the brink of collapse.
We're getting deeper and deeper into debt and there's no end in sight, but the ANC won't change anything.
Why?
Not because it's helping people.
They would say that we're not changing this because we must empower people.
That's not what it is.
They're saying we won't change this because this is how we enriching our cronies.
And we're not going to give that up because we become millionaires and billionaires out of this.
We're not going to give this up.
So that's why they're holding onto it.
And the only way you can change this is if the ANC is voted out of power, if they lose their power and we have a coalition government, they're going to have to change the BE laws.
Find ways to really help the people that were previously disadvantaged and denied in the past, in apartheid years.
Find ways that actually works and people's lives are changed.
And one of the things is we have to grow the economy.
You can't empower people if the economy is not growing.
No matter how good your BE laws are, if the economy doesn't grow, nobody is empowered.
Nobody benefits.
And for the past 10 years, the ANC can't grow this economy because of their policies, because of the theft and the fraud and the mismanagement running everything into the ground.
So nobody is being empowered.
And so and it's an ANC problem.
Everybody knows that.
Yeah, I get that.
I fully get that. I can also confirm to you that I spoke about two weeks ago, three weeks ago to a member of parliament in in Brussels, Belgium.
Who said to me that he knows firsthand of investors who really would like to invest in South Africa, but is simply hesitant because of black economic empowerment laws in South Africa.
The question, though, remains the same a little bit.
What are you taking government to court for?
I read it down here.
You said you said we talk about the racial classification is one of the motives, that you can't do that because because we've gotten rid of the Population Registration Act.
You also said because that's the second reason I deduct from your from your press release is B.E.
lacks a set of measurable outcomes.
That was your second motivation, according to your press release.
And the third one is that you have no clear time limit.
So let's just talk about talk about that.
What do you mean when you say B.E. lacks a set of measurable outcomes?
And I guess the question would be, how do you set those outcomes?
What do you want to see in place to actually firm that up, to make that clearer?
And how do you also put a time limit to a legal structure like B.E.E?
Yeah, so measurable outcomes, it's what it says that if you're going to have a system of economic upliftment for a certain sector of the population that were previously disadvantaged and denied rights and all those kind of things.
And you put these laws and systems in place to uplift these people.
You must have a system where you can measure it to see how many people have been uplifted, how many people it has helped, so that you know that what you're implementing is working.
Because if you're just doing this and there's no results, that's insanity.
You've got to know what you're doing.
And so all the laws that the ANC government has put in place to uplift the people, and if it's not doing that, they're not measuring it, they're just carrying on.
And what we see in the media, what we see, the data and the research is showing, there's people getting poorer.
And people are living in worse and worse conditions and children are dying of hunger.
Millions of children are suffering from malnutrition, all with BEE.
And they're spending billions on this.
Hundreds of billions has been poured into these policies, this BEE policy, but there's no measurable results.
It's actually going in the opposite direction.
So that has to be insanity.
People have to say, wait a minute.
For 30 years, we've had BEE laws on our study books and reporting billions, hundreds of billions into it, but people are getting poorer.
So there's no measurable results.
There's no like we've had this now for 10 years or 20 years and we can see the improvement.
Our people are being uplifted and education is flourishing.
Our people are getting out of our going to university and getting a degree and anything that they were denied in the past.
None of that is happening.
So there's no measurable results.
So in fact, there's no results to be for 32 years.
So all it's doing is holding people back.
For example, if you apply to a university in South Africa, there's quotas.
So a certain amount, if there's a thousand places at the university, 900 of that spots must be for black people.
Then colored people, then Indian people and then white.
So what happens is there are people that have the grades and the qualifications to go to university, but they care back.
So you could say a large part of the best of South Africa's young people.
Is being denied the opportunities and others are given a chance and then they're not making it through.
People are all based not on merit, but on racial quotas and it's not working.
So that there's no measurable results.
The other thing about the sunset clause is that in international law, that if you're going to implement a policy like BEE, Black Economic Empowerment Affirmative Action, there has to be a sunset clause.
There has to be a time when you say we have achieved our objectives and now we can start going out of this thing.
But that's not happening either.
It's just going on and on and on.
There's no measurable results.
There's no evidence that it's working and there's no sunset clause.
What is happening is there are millions of hundreds of thousands of white people in South Africa that weren't alive in their apartheid years.
They weren't born during apartheid.
They're young.
They now want to go to university.
They've got nothing to do with apartheid, but they are told, "Nope.
As a result of your race, you cannot get this job.
You cannot apply for this.
You cannot get this."
And they have nothing to do with apartheid.
It's based purely on their racial classification.
But what is that?
That is apartheid in reverse now.
But apartheid was declared a crime against humanity and was evil and unjust.
Then if you do it in reverse, it's still evil and unjust.
It's still a crime against humanity.
It doesn't change.
You see, I'm considered black in South Africa.
I grew up during apartheid and I knew what happened in apartheid.
The injustices of it.
I've seen it.
I lived through it.
So I don't want it to happen now in a reverse manner because it was wrong then and it's still wrong now.
And the promise was from Nelson Mandela himself that never again will one group dominate another group.
Never again are we going to have these systems of discrimination against people on the basis of race.
It's exactly what the ANC is doing.
Yeah.
What do you say to the ANC when they say, "Well, we are."
I hear a lot of liberals saying that to me as well.
I've interviewed some people that are supposed to be on the liberal spectrum of politics in South Africa who say to me, "Well, we are growing a healthy middle class.
There is a substantial black middle class that's being developed in South Africa."
Isn't that the result of black economic empowerment or at least one of the factors that contribute to that?
Isn't that one of the positives, the benefits to society?
Yeah, look, I'm a little bit weary of this black middle class.
The last stance I've seen about social welfare, almost 50 percent of our population, we have a population of 62 million people.
We can say about 30 million people are 100 percent dependent on social welfare grants.
That's childcare grants.
That's that emergency grant that they gave for COVID that they couldn't stop because people have become dependent on it.
So that's half our population eating out a meager existence on 350 RAN or 500 RAN a month.
I don't know so much about a middle class.
Then if you look at middle class in black people, the government has employed most of these people in the public sector.
We have the largest public sector wage bill in the entire world now.
So government hasn't grown the economy and created the environment for people to get a great education, go on start businesses.
Study, get good jobs.
They haven't created the environment for that and grown the economy.
That's not what has happened.
What they've done is they've given millions of people, black people previously disadvantaged jobs in public sector like in Eskom and in TransNet and all of that and giving them large salaries.
And a lot of them maybe don't even deserve to be there, but they put them there.
That's how they building a black middle class on the taxpayer bill.
And that's not the way you grow an economy.
And that's not the way you grow a nation.
There's been more than 10 major legal challenges to black economic empowerment laws over the past two decades.
What do you think differentiate this case from all the other cases or why this specific case?
What makes it different?
They've never challenged the race classification laws.
They haven't challenged race classification that has been used in these 142 laws.
Because before you can you can give certain groups privileges and deny other groups privileges, you've got to classify them by race to be able to do that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And and it's unlawful to do that.
Nobody's actually challenged the race classification in the laws.
Nobody's challenged the 142 laws that is race based.
There hasn't been a legal challenge against that.
So this is the first challenge against it.
And so it's going to be very interesting when this case goes to trial.
We're also waiting to see there's a number of organizations that would want to join as amicus curie or friends of the court to join this application.
And so we're waiting to see that process out unfolds who is going to join.
And and, you know, obviously the state's defense, what their defense would be.
We have one of the constitutional law experts that asked to argue this case in the in the high Advocate Mark Oppenheimer SC.
And he's done a lot of work on the founding affidavit as well.
It's a it's a product of a number of senior advocates, law professors that work on this on this case from rescue SS civil rights alliance.
But Advocate Mark Oppenheimer is going to argue it in high court.
And so it's interesting to see how this thing.
But there's been a lot of your hand.
There's been a lot of interest from people across this nation and across the world.
And they say it's about time somebody challenged this.
This is wrong.
But let me just give this what you for what you're challenging.
Sorry to interrupt just to make it sharp and clear for me.
What your main your main challenge here is that the population registration act is no longer exists.
Therefore, you have no basis to actually create laws based on race.
That's what you're saying.
That's what Mark Oppenheimer is going to argue.
My question is you're saying these laws are unconstitutional because race is no longer legally defined.
But can't government or how do you rectify?
If that's supposed to be what you're doing with black economic empowerment, how do you rectify the injustices of the past without naming the group who had suffered the atrocities of the past?
Because the ANC said it over and over again.
Racist, non sexist democracy.
How do you be a non racist democracy when you have 142 laws on your statute books that is based on race and race classification?
All of that must go.
And we have to find ways of uplifting people without holding other people down.
That's what's happening currently.
And it's harming our country because people are being denied jobs and opportunities based on the race and they the best qualified people.
But because of that, sorry.
We'll take a person that doesn't have the qualifications against you and your qualifications, but you white.
So there's no place for you.
Yeah.
So you still it's still a system of discrimination.
No one how you try to argue it.
But you need to say, OK, but that's to the dress.
No, no, no, you're not really addressing anything.
You're not helping anything because you're not growing the economy.
You're holding people back.
People that wasn't even born during the party.
And you're not uplifting previously disadvantaged people because of the corruption, the mismanagement, the malice administration.
All of that is not helping anything.
I would suggest that they scrap all these laws and start over again and find a way of redressing the injustices of the past and helping previously disadvantaged people uplifting them by doing it in a way in a way you don't always.
And very easily with just that description, you can rewrite these laws by saying South African government can say, well, let's call it citizens classified as black under the apartheid laws.
There's lots and lots of ways.
So my problem is if they do that, will that fix your your your legal complaint in this instance?
If in other words, they say, well, OK, let's not use the race terminology.
Let's soften it.
Let's say citizens classified as black under the apartheid Population Registration Act and their descendants ought to be the beneficiaries of these laws.
Wouldn't that?
It's just that now it's not just the wedding of the law that is the problem, Johan.
It's the entire system.
It's the way they've implemented it and the way they structured it.
It is discriminatory, discriminatory, and it is not working.
It's destroying our economy.
That's the result.
You've just said now, again, it's the way they implemented that would suggest to me.
And the question the question that I'm trying to get is, is the ideal here to get rid of black economic empowerment as an instrument to benefit those that were in the dark in the past?
Is that is there a moral do we have or does government have a moral obligation to those people?
Or you understand what I'm trying to say?
Or is it is it is it the entire law or is it the fact that the law had become or is designed in such a way that it is easily corruptible and has actually just simply become corrupted by by the people that are supposed to apply the law?
Is that the law or the law itself?
I think it's it's a bit of both.
I think the laws are badly written and it's abused, abused to enrich certain people while leaving most South African citizens that were previously disadvantaged, still living in abject poverty and misery.
So it doesn't work at all.
So which means the law, the way it is written and the way it's implemented is not working and the evidence is there.
You've got to just look at what's happening in South Africa.
You can you can read the stats for yourself.
It's not working.
And so it needs to be scrapped and there needs to be a new way to look at this and say, we want to help people that have been previously disadvantaged.
Yeah, we want to give people a hand up, not a hand out.
That could be all people.
You're talking about black people, white people, brown people, whatever color people that doesn't matter if you were previously, if you were in some kind of a disposition, this law, if you come from a poor family, for example, there's there are these laws to assist you and to help you.
That's what you're saying.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And the one thing we cannot do and which was promised by Nelson Mandela is that no more would one group dominate another, discriminate against another, help hold people back on the basis of skin color.
And that's what the ANC is doing now.
Right.
So we can uplift previously disadvantaged people if we do it properly and there's no corruption and theft and fraud and looting and tender fraud.
Because if you look at what is happening in South Africa and what's happening right now, every day you read the news, news 24, anything, you just read it.
There's a new story about this guy, the ANC link guy or public official that sold 300 million and 2.4 billion is missing year.
And it just goes on and on and on and on.
And it's hundreds of billions that is being lost, stolen, mismanaged and going down a black hole.
People wasting money at a rate that is mind boggling.
And South Africa is not the wealthiest country in the world with the wealthiest nation in on the continent of Africa.
We have a 1.9 trillion GDP.
And so this country could be doing exceptionally well with the kind of wealth that we generate.
But most of it has been wasted and lost and stolen.
And so that's why the country looks like we're one of the poorest nations on Earth with so many poor people with children dying of hunger in the wealthiest country in Africa with eight million children suffering from malnutrition to the extent the growth is stunted.
And these are primarily black children.
Previously disadvantaged families, they come from the they are the people suffering the most.
So where's the upliftment?
Where where's all these billions and billions that have been spent on this?
Where's the results?
There is no results.
People are actually poor and worse off.
That's why there's no measurable results.
So how do we continue with this thing?
Yeah.
How can anybody with the same mind say, let's just keep on going with this?
No, we see where the money is going.
We see these people that with the mansions and the 12 cars, exotic cars that cost millions for each one, even the president's nephew.
The guy looted a hospital, 10 B.
So hospital two billion was looted from the health budget while people are lying on the floor and cannot get decent health care.
He looted two billion, build a massive mansion and he bought four Lamborghinis, not one shot to four.
And the S.I.U. went and attached all these things.
They said some of the cars were driven.
He just went crazy buying all these things.
Do you know that he hasn't been arrested?
They've attached all the goods, but he hasn't been arrested.
He's not a major.
Let me just interrupt you there again.
And I understand I am 12000 kilometers away from it all.
I'm not. And I really, really feel the pain.
Let me tell you that I really feel the pain.
What I don't understand is that what you keep on talking about the whole time over and over and over again is corruption, mismanagement.
It is it is it is the disgusting levels of stealing and robbing the country empty.
It is it is in Germany, one would say zum Kotzen.
You cannot believe how vulgar it is to see it.
But that's got nothing to do with black economic empowerment.
The essence of this idea of that.
It's got everything to do with black empowerment.
I'm saying I'm saying it's got nothing to do with the idea of black or of poor people empowerment for that matter.
Yeah, but I'm trying to say if there's a huge I know it's not what's happening.
I know exactly that it's not happening.
My question is why we're not addressing and calling the beast what it should be called thuggery, thieves, corruption, corruption, corruption over and over again.
Why is it so that in South Africa, how many years post the Zondo Commission, we don't see anybody behind bars in South Africa?
Why do we not seem to be able to tackle this massive problem of corruption on every single level of the country that has an answer to this entire question?
Yes, please.
And I'll answer that.
You know, the apartheid government made discrimination and oppression legal.
So apartheid was a legal system.
You know that, right?
And what the ANC has done, they've made corruption theft fraud legal.
They've legitimized it through BEE.
I understand that exactly.
I hear that message very clearly.
What I'm saying is there's this why we're not tackling that fact, the corruption of BEE, the corruption of the state.
We are.
And we see the result of the case.
Part of the argument.
I'm not I'm not talking about your case now.
I'm talking about in general terms.
Why don't we see people behind bars after the Zondo Commission?
Why do we see the commission after another commission?
But we don't really see any action.
But then the country is just a lot of proposals, a modus operandi.
It's the president, a lot of proposals that seems modus operandi.
That's how he protects the ANC.
His job is to protect the ANC and all its cadres as they see when they steal and they loot this country of its resources.
He was handed the three volumes from the Zondo Commission and it has all the evidence and the witnesses and everything in there.
And it has recommendations in there for the president to implement to to root out corruption.
And he promised not one, but it didn't do a thing.
And because whenever there's corruption, we look at the Madlanga Commission, everything that's happening with the police.
When anything happens, it's a permission of inquiry.
It's an investigation.
Let's have talks and everything.
He has the constitutional power to stop all of these things, to send people to prison.
He has the powers to do that, but he won't.
He's spineless. He's weak.
So he lets inquiries and let these things go on and on and on.
And then later on, they will give him a report and the report will be showered away.
Nothing will happen just like the Zondo Commission.
A lot of the people implicated in that Zondo Commission that has been pointed out, implicated in massive corruption is so in power.
They in in parliament, they ministers, they in top positions.
He's done it.
Tim B.
Somalani was the Minister of Justice.
She's implicated in that VBS bank looting, where they looted an entire bank of two billion.
And it was mostly black people's money that was stolen.
Right.
She's implicated that because money was given to her.
Instead of firing her, she's Minister of Justice.
He moves her to another portfolio, Minister of Human Settlements.
So they get rewarded for the theft and the cedar.
And that's why it is out of control in this country today.
And billions of being sold in.
Settle Maposa is sitting on the top of that protecting these people.
When he has all the power to stop it and really clam down on it, he's not doing anything about it.
Yeah, because he's too too weak because he moved on these people.
The anti-anisce will withdraw him.
They they'll they'll put him out as president.
Yeah, I guess my position, I guess my frustration lies in that that I kind of just have this feeling that we the people, and if I may allow myself to be part of that people, which I really am in my heart and in my soul, seem to be just so powerless at the end of the day.
We seem to now desperately cling to the possible outcome of a better verdict in 2029 for things for the ship to be turned around.
But in the meantime, the entire country has been destroyed.
And it is.
But it's but look, there are people to be fair.
There are people in organizations that are fighting, that are taking this government to court like every forum and others.
And now us challenging these race based laws, we're also going to be taking the case of children's rights being denied.
We're also going to be taking the socio economic issues to court crime and corruption issues.
We're going to be challenging the water crisis.
So there's there's teams of lawyers working on these different cases.
So we're doing it.
And there's other people taking government to court for all of this that's happening in our country.
But they still they still have their hands on the on the levers of power.
The ANC, they made sure that, you know, they got all the key positions in this government of national unity so they can keep control.
They've got control of the city of Johannesburg and look what they've done to it.
Incredible.
So but there are people fighting, but it's a huge fight and it's a fight.
It takes, you know, like, for example, our case that has now been launched with the Hauting High Court, according to the laws, it can take at least a year before that case starts, you know, being put on the roll and moving.
Yeah. So so justice, the will of justice and slowly.
But there are people fighting various things that the government is doing.
So thank God for these people that there are people doing something.
But in the meanwhile, all these ANC appointings and others are corrupt politicians.
They they're still all in their positions.
And while they're there, they're still they're using every opportunity to loot this country of everything they can steal because they know their time is running out as well.
The time is running out.
The ANC is losing support and they say, look, while we're here, we're going to steal as much as we can.
But of course, can the nation sustain this for another three years?
And, you know, if you just look at it so many, not really, South African needs a medical.
It needs a turnaround because of the unemployment.
The economy is weak.
It's not gross.
The corruption is chasing people away.
Crimes out of control in South Africa.
It's become a mafia state.
People like assassinated here every week.
They're walking into places and shooting people.
It's controlled by taxi mafias and construction mafia and water mafias.
You see the reports.
There's there's there's criminal groups controlling aspects of society.
It is frightening.
And this all happened under several number poses administration.
He is facilitating all of this.
And now he's going to be facing an impeachment inquiry because he stuffed five hundred and eighty thousand dollars in his couch.
That was found.
He never reported it.
And there's all kinds of questions around that.
So so the rot is from the top and it goes right down your hand.
And South Africa is really in deep trouble because we have a criminal organization running the country and organized crime network running the country.
And the evidence of that is everywhere.
And if things don't change quickly in this country, we have no country any longer.
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, I'm going to say something really and I mean it from the depth of my heart now and I'm not even a journalist now.
I'm just a South African sitting here and observing all of this.
If I look at all of this 30 years post apartheid, 30 years post apartheid, what?
Thirty one years or whatever the case might be.
Sixty two.
Thirty two years.
Thirty two years post apartheid.
Sixty four point two percent of black South Africans are living in abject poverty, meaning they can't meet basic needs for food, shelter and essential services.
While this is the cynical part of it, about one percent of white South Africans face similar poverty.
So you've got a problem with statistics in the data.
Though the white the white white families of white people that find themselves in the similar poverty as the black people have more family networks and support.
So they have that little extra to survive.
But imagine 64, two percent.
I read somewhere the other day.
Fourteen, 14, one for 14 million people in South Africa will go to bed tonight without sufficient nourishment, without sufficient food.
So so I go back to our theme is black economic empowerment, whether we have some kind of a moral obligation towards the history of South Africa and towards just South Africa and the human beings that live in our country.
The latest data on managerial positions in South Africa shows that in the top management roles, sixty one, sixty two point one percent of those positions are held by white individuals.
Now, if I if I start rattling off these statistics here to anybody that's outside the country, who is not immediately emotionally connected to the survival of the day and reacted in an emotional way, then people will say, well, there's something very wrong with that picture.
Now, we talk about since the late 90s, that black empowerment came into being or into force.
What has happened since?
It's been mismanaged just like everything else.
You know, if you have a proper, honest, capable, efficient government, the numbers could have looked very differently.
If this thing was applied properly and it wasn't, you know, the A.C. governs in the interest of the A.C., not in the people of South Africa.
So if you if you want upliftment of people, black economic empowerment, the addressing injustices of the past, you want all of those things to happen.
You got to do it properly. You got to do it honestly and efficiently.
And you have to work with all the people within the country.
I think most white people would agree that we need to uplift previously disadvantaged people, but do it in a way where the entire country gets together and say, we let all work together to make this happen.
Because we all acknowledge that apartheid was a crime against humanity and we've got to do something about it.
But let's work together, bringing the people, bringing the farmers, bringing all the people that can help and uplift people.
It's work all together as South Africans, not as different races.
Stop the race classification and dividing people through race.
The apartheid government did that and other agencies doing exactly the same thing.
It doesn't work. You can see it's not working.
But if you brought people together and you had policies that do work and say, let's all work together and uplift out previously the disadvantaged communities, let people with the skills, thank people that need the skills.
Let's mentor and mentorship programs.
Let's work together to uplift the entire nation because when we uplift everybody, we uplift the nation and it's good for everybody.
We uplift our economy.
We get our economy that way.
But that's not what the ANC has done because it's not the intention.
It's not the objective.
The objective is to enrich politically connected people.
It's to make millionaires and billionaires of a handful of people and give some welfare grants to others.
And I've even seen a clip of Cyril Ramaphosa at some rally bragging that South Africa as the biggest social welfare grant system in the world, he sees that as a great thing.
That he's got most of his population dependent on social welfare grants.
He thinks it's a wonderful thing.
And he's a BEE billionaire.
So it's obscene.
It really is disgusting to see the amount of money that is stolen.
And can you imagine stealing from health budgets where people are going to hospitals that are lying in ruins and tatters and they're black.
People that depend on public health care system and they can't get it because their fellow citizens have stolen and looted the health budgets.
Children can get nutrition, nutritious meals at schools.
They have the school nutrition feeding schemes at schools.
But that also is riddled with corruption by ANC cadence.
And so children are not even getting that because of corruption.
Now, that's a crime against humanity because we do have the money.
There are budgets.
It's not like we don't have the money to allocate towards giving children nutritious meals at schools because they're not getting it at home.
We have the money, the budgets, billions are being allocated for things.
But the people are still not getting the benefit of it because the money is redirected.
It's stolen.
That's not because of a lack of funding or lack of budget money.
It's because the money is sold and it's done so deliberately and it's facilitated by the ANC.
That's a crime in my books.
That's a crime against humanity.
Yeah. Yeah.
We're going to have to close down.
Yeah, we're really out of time.
Errol, I want to mention to you a very good girlfriend of mine is currently making a film about white poverty in South Africa.
And I sat in a viewing room about a week or so ago and I saw the face of white poverty in South Africa.
And it is shocking to the core.
And it is not anything to do with that.
White poverty is more or less pretty to see than black poverty or anything to do with race.
It's about all those millions of really people that are living in incredible, miserable circumstances in South Africa.
It is painful to watch it.
And it's somehow I feel that we somehow are just not angry enough, perhaps, for us to rise up and to do something about it.
But I know before I go too far on this, it's give us an idea back to the court case, give us an idea of what's the timeline for the court case and what are your expectations?
Yeah, I think it's going to take at least a year for this thing to get on to the role, this case to get on to the role.
There's going to be a time where a number of groups and organizations is going to apply to be join the case as amicus curiae.
And so all of that has to go happen.
A judge has to be allocated to hear the case.
So it takes time, but we're just glad that it's large, it's a registered with the court and the wheels are in motion.
The process is not happening.
And so now we're working on the second case, the children's rights case.
We've got a team, a legal team working on that, headed by a senior council.
Simultaneously, there's other cases being worked on by other groups in as part of our organization, the Civil Rights Alliance.
So so this there's a lot happening.
And so as soon as these cases are finalized, it's going to be lodged immediately.
So we might have a number of cases simultaneously running a different high courts.
But we know of other cases that other groups are bringing on other issues.
So there's a lot of people standing up and doing something.
We cannot stand by and just allow this country to collapse under the weight of this corruption.
We're going to challenge in the law courts.
There have been some good rulings by the courts, high courts, constitutional courts.
So it's like a lot of people saying that's our only hope is through the law courts.
We can't trust the politicians.
They all appear to be corrupt or just interested in their own things.
So the people, civil society has to stand up now and fight this thing.
And so I'm very grateful to the legal professionals, the lawyers, the advocates, the law professors that are part of this this civil society initiative.
It's giving off their time freely.
Some of them can do it pro bono, others can't.
And so we tried to raise money as a group.
And we asking people to donate whatever they can.
If they go to rsacra.co.za Put it on our website.
And then we got we created a badge called the Justice League.
It's the 811302 Justice League.
And we created a badge asking people if you support our initiative to hold politicians accountable for their crimes against the people, if you support that, you can purchase a badge for R10.
Only R10.
So everybody watching this video can R10 purchase this, go to out.
You can put the link in your description on your post.
Yeah. And people can click on it, go to that, buy that link, download it and put post it on their social media and say, I'm part of the Justice League.
That that number 118302 is the first case number allocated to this case, this legal challenge to the constitutionally constitutionality of race based laws.
It's our first case.
So we're saying we off, we've launched.
And and and so we're asking people to support this initiative.
So we behind, we support this initiative to hold corrupt politicians accountable for their malfeasance, for their crimes against humanity.
We support that. We stand with you.
And so every thing around is obviously going to go to our legal fund.
And so we're asking people to support that way.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd like to give you my support as well.
And I just want to remind people about what the bigger case is all about.
That's the crimes against humanity case.
It's resting on for policy.
If I'm right, perhaps, if you if you could just give me one or one or two liners on the different pillars of people have a better understanding of the overall picture here.
You're taking government to court crimes against humanity is the direction in which we're going.
And it will be based on children's rights.
Can you give us one line about that?
Children, children being denied their constitutional rights.
There's there's a number of clauses in our constitution that give children rights to nutrition, to health care, to decent education, nutritious meals, all those kind of things.
They've been denied almost all of that.
And so children are suffering very badly in South Africa.
Like I told you, there's actually children dying of hunger in our country.
There's eight million children suffering from malnutrition to the extent that their growth is stunted.
And we're going to challenge the ANC for that because it's deliberate what they have done.
This is not by accident.
It's not because of lack of funding.
There are billions allocated for these things, but it's a stolen and mismanaged.
And so children suffer as a result of it.
Yeah, then I would like to.
Yeah, I beg your pardon.
I was going to say I'd like I'd like very much if you could refer me to somebody within the organization or within your network that I can talk to specifically about these different pillars, specifically about children in this case.
The second pillar is, in fact, the race based laws that is in action right now.
The third pillar, I've got it in some order here that I've taken from your website.
The third the third one I've got is freedom and security.
Just tell us about that very briefly.
So we're looking at freedom and security.
We're looking at the breakdown of security in South Africa.
The crime is out of control.
And you look at the gang wars in the West.
And, for example, there's just no control.
Gangs are running around with automatic weapons shooting at each other and killing innocent people, children almost on a daily basis.
And our police can do nothing about it.
In fact, our police minister says we we we powerless.
They cannot do anything about it.
The police is mismanaged completely.
Yet they have a budget of one hundred and seventy odd billion.
What are they doing with all that money?
Yeah. What are the police doing?
They've got the personnel, they've got the budgets, the money, and yet they're not protecting people to the extent that South Africa has a bigger private security network than they then there is policeman police on the streets because the people do not trust the police anymore.
They're hiring their own private security, those that can afford to.
So there's no safety and security.
We look at farm murders.
Farm murders are still happening in this country.
They denied all the time.
But farm murders are happening.
A woman, woman are not safe in this country.
A gender based violence is still continues.
Women are raped and abused and exploited.
And just about five percent of these perpetrators are brought to justice.
Only five percent. The rest were free because our criminal justice system has failed, fundamentally failed.
Yet our government spends hundreds of billions on the criminal justice system, paying all kinds of people for not doing their jobs.
So this is a crime against humanity.
And we're going to be taking these cases to court.
Yeah. And the last bit is socioeconomic rights.
What do you mean by that?
Well, the government, again, because of their policies, they've destroyed our economy.
They destroyed our economy and and people are suffering.
Unemployment is off the charts in South Africa.
Most people are unemployed.
People are living on welfare.
This government has forced people onto welfare.
And and it's deliberate because the policies and they've been warned by the World Bank and all kinds of organizations have warned this government about their policies, their policies and all kinds of other policies that is destroying our economy and and deepening our crisis.
And our debt is skyrocketing.
And they've been warned about the government's been told what what they need to change to turn this thing around.
And they say, no, why?
Because there's a few people benefiting.
They're making millions out of this while 62 million people are living in in misery.
And so that is deliberate.
And we're going to challenge that in in the courts, in the high court.
Now, last question, if the court we don't know how many months ahead or years ahead, if they rule in your favor in terms of this case that you've got right now, what immediate changes would you like to see?
Or would you expect in policy or law?
We'd like to see these these race, especially race classification being ruled unconstitutional and that any kind of policy going forward to the address the injustice of the past or previously disadvantaged people would be done without race classification, would be done in a way we also have.
And we have to be able to see that in a way that we can work together to see this this happening.
So we don't want, you know, the helping people, we don't have to end uplifting people that need the upliftment.
We don't have to end.
But if you have a honest, efficient way with measurable results that doesn't discriminate against people or hold anybody back, and without millions and billions being stolen going to certain politically connected people.
So if a hundred billion is allocated for upliftment, then entire hundred billion must go to the upliftment and we must be able to measure that and see where the money is going and how people are being uplifted.
Measurable results.
And so we don't have any measurable results today.
The only measurable results we have are a few politically connected people that have become multimillionaires and billionaires of the scam called BEE.
How can people get involved?
Yeah, so not all the lawyers are working pro bono.
Some can, others can't.
Some have to be paid and the people doing the research, the teams, the junior lawyers and advocates, this is their living, they have to be paid for the work they're doing.
So we have to raise millions for these various cases that we want to take to court.
And so we're asking people go to our website, www.rsacra.co.za and you can donate or you can, this badge, you can purchase a badge for 10, 10 Rand.
Can you imagine a hundred thousand people purchasing a badge for 10 Rand?
You know, you're spreading it lots of little.
Nobody's overburdened.
A hundred thousand people.
All of a sudden you've got a large number and we can fight these cases.
So we thank you people.
Buy the badge, download it, put in your social media, 10 Rand will go towards fighting this and be a proud member of the Justice League.
So I'm fighting for justice in South Africa.
The people who do not have a voice, I want to speak up for them.
I want to add my voice and my support so that we can help the people that are being ignored.
You know, just push through the margins.
Like they don't have voices.
They can't go to court.
They can't speak for themselves.
So somebody has to do it.
And so we doing that and we asking people to stand with us so we can, we can help people that are suffering unnecessarily.
So because billions and billions is being spent on social development and all kinds of things.
And you don't see any results for it.
It will now do Director of Rescue.
South Africa Civil Rights Alliance.
Thank you very, very much for your time.
Thank you Jan for straight being with you.
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