Thumbs down for small-enterprise plans. Check it out:
(Business Day (South Africa) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Thumbs down for small-enterprise plans Trade and Industry Correspondent GOVERNMENT's latest plans to advance small enterprises to drive industrial output and grow jobs were unlikely to deliver dividends, social commentator Moeletsi Mbeki said yesterday at the Congress of South African Trade Unions' (Cosatu's) ninth congress in Midrand.
Poverty and unemployment were central to the trade union federation's deliberations at the congress, which ended yesterday.
Mbeki, speaking on the fringes of the congress, was sceptical that the new approach by the state would have a meaningful effect. He said government was locked into a capitalist agenda dictated by the west, from which it did not want to deviate. Its elitist approach to empowerment was at the core of the discontent emanating from the labour movement, Mbeki said.
Earlier this week, the South African Communist Party's (SACP's) Blade Nzimande called for a major reorientation of economic policy in line with the Freedom Charter.
The SACP general secretary spoke harsh words about a strategic rupture in the ANC, criticising the party's partners in government for moving away from the organisation's original shared perspective in favour of a new drive to manage capitalism. He called for renewed focus in building up manufacturing capacity through the development of small enterprises. However, this drive for growth, and the development of small black business, is at the heart of government's industrial development plans.
Nzimande noted growing class disparities, marked by a consensus between the black and white elite, at the expense of the poor. Escalation in strike action over the past two years and growing working class militancy was due to their being left behind as the new elite accelerated its pursuit of wealth, he said.
Copyright 2006 Times Media Ltd.. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.
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