Liberté, égalité, fraternité provide the core values of new party

Genesis

For many of us, there are pivotal events which trigger thought processes that lead to ideas that lead to action. For me, one of those moments came when I looked at this picture of this child. I was first devastated, then angry. I’m still angry.



This is five-year-old Lumka Mketwa on her first day of school last year. What’s not to love? Look at that face: there’s a trace of apprehension but also excitement. She has her new uniform, her jersey, her school bag, her shoes are polished. She has her whole life ahead of her.

Weeks later, almost exactly a year ago today, she was dead. She drowned in sewage after falling into a pit latrine. And I cannot stop being tearful when I picture her last moments; the fear, the struggle for breath, the inability to call out. I have daughters. It is the nightmare of every parent that something untoward might happen to their child, but this is a horror beyond nightmare.

My outrage around Lumka’s death was one of the first pieces of a puzzle that came together in June. I last voted for the ANC when I put my mark next to Thabo Mbeki’s name in 2004 as I had done in 1999. I voted for Helen Zille in 2009 and Mamphela Ramphele in 2014.

I would probably have voted for Mmusi Maimane in 2019 except he did something I found to be utterly crass — he used his own wife as an example of white privilege. And I realised that I had no party to vote for in 2019.

This got me thinking about the nature of our political superstructure — the 400 people elected to the National Assembly. And I realised that most of them are incompetent.

That’s an outrageous statement, so let me explain my thinking. If these people were competent, they would be able to step into employment in the private sector and earn as much as they do in Parliament as MPs. Ask yourself how many of our MPs are in a position to do that?

I then began thinking about the nature of problem-solving in Parliament. When asked about the school toilet scenario, the minister said it would take R10-billion to fix the toilets, and did not know when they would start, and when it could be completed.

(I’ve held down a number of high profile jobs in the private sector and had I told my board of directors that I have no idea how long it will take to fix a problem, they would have replaced me on the spot. But that’s an aside.)

Using school toilets as an example, how long would it take me to fix the problem, and at what cost? (The answer is six months and less than R1-billion.)

What other problems could we fix? The ideas came fast and furious: cash in transit heists, beneficiation of mineral wealth, policing, drugs, welfare, violence against women, tourism, transport, cost of medical care… all quick, efficient, inexpensive solutions that can be very quickly implemented by legislation at minimal cost IF there are competent imaginative people in Parliament to push those solutions.

How many competent imaginative people would it take?

Helen Suzman, whom I knew and admired, took on the entire apartheid establishment as a lone Progressive Party MP for 13 years from 1961 to 1974. In her first session alone, she made 66 speeches, moved 26 amendments and put 137 questions.

Today, 10 people in Parliament would be able to cover the most critical portfolio committees — Finance, Health, Education, Police, Trade and Industry, Public Enterprises, Energy, Public Service, Labour — while playing a watching brief over the other ministries as well.

How many votes would one need to get 10 people into Parliament? Working on an average of 43,000 votes per seat, it would require less than half a million votes.

What type of party would it be? I’m a classical liberal by and large. As core values, Liberté, égalité, fraternité resonate well with me. Those values are best fed by capitalism. Most of our political parties hate capitalism.

So on 16 June 2018, I registered the domain “capitalist.org.za”, designed a rudimentary website and brought it online. The heart of a mission statement went up:

We are South Africans who want to live in a country that works.

We believe that politics is too important to be left to politicians.

We believe that the best way to grow our country is by ensuring every citizen has the freedom to build new wealth.

I then masked the ownership of the domain, password protected the website from prying eyes, and set off to recruit co-conspirators. DM

Next instalment: Exodus.