“Scholar Francis Fukuyama writes in The Origins of Political Order that entrenched stakeholders, often the rich, almost always frustrate much-needed reform, and prefer continuing with what he calls patrimonialism — the tendency to favour friends and family at the expense of dispensing real justice. This partly explains why blacks and women constantly find it difficult to make headway in powerful structures and the economy. In a deeply patriarchal society such as ours you sometimes get an unlikely alliance between white and black men, where the latter accept the exclusion of black women because they also feel entitled to prosper ahead of them”.
Read Songezo Zibi’s editorial Economic justice will help quiet the rage first published by Business Day in BDlive today.
Further excerpt
We talk of the wealthy and picture their material possessions, the comfortable homes, imported cars and kids off to good schools here or abroad. These are fleeting images to which we put no questions about what it all means and what these contrasts may mean for the future of our society. Avoiding the deep reflection allows most but those at the bottom rung to tell ourselves that life is generally good, quite good actually. We are able “to look on the bright side where the cup is half full rather than half empty”. This is all fine unless you don’t even have a damn cup in front of you, which is where millions of South Africans find themselves.