It is unfortunate and cruel that business is assembling a lobby to press for job cuts in the civil service (“Hard decisions needed to tackle public sector pay, says Busa”, November 10). Cutting the civil service wage bill until it reaches the correct level of GDP is the wrong approach.
Rather, GDP should be expanded until the same effect is achieved. But that would require lobbying hard against the policies that undermine investment and entrepreneurship, such as expropriation without compensation, prescribed assets and race-based empowerment laws.
Some executives might be tempted by the argument that because many civil servants voted for such destructive policies they should not complain when they have to pay with their jobs, but in the case of SA that would ignore that the business community itself has appeased, indulged and encouraged many such policies all along.
Missed in the melee is the irony of business and union activists now slugging it out over corporate tax hikes vs civil service wage cuts, when the origin of their mutual problems rests in policies they both supported.
Frans Cronje
Institute of Race Relations
