What is your Value?

South Africa's gross domestic product (GDP) was worth US$419.02 billion in 2021. If we consider that we have a population of 61.23 million people, this equates to approximately $6900 for every man, woman, and child. At today's currency conversion, that equals R123,424 per person for a year. There are some who will look at this and see a fortune, whereas others will look at this and wonder what went wrong with their income. Of course, not everyone is created equal, and this is exactly the point I wish to make with this piece.

South Africa's unemployment rate was at 32.9 percent in the third quarter of 2022. This equates to 7.725 million people who do not have a job or a means of generating income. We have a total labour force of 23.491 million. The rest are children and the elderly. What this means, in real terms, is that 38 percent of our population needs to provide for the rest, and of those breadwinners, only 67 percent are gainfully employed.

If one considers that the South African revenue service collected R1.564 trillion to service governments 2022 budget plan, it means that, effectively, 15 766 000 people brought home the bacon at approximately R99 200 each, last year. And then, bearing in mind that not everybody pays personal income tax, some within that group paid far more than others as well. Personal income tax (PIT) was paid by just 5.2 million individuals in 2020 meaning that 9 percent of our population contribute 40 percent of South Africa's total revenue. And this number is shrinking.

South Africa today is circling the drain. It is not sustainable that so few should subsidise so many. I thought I would write this piece to propose another way forward, a new way of making the citizens of our country accountable to one another and incentivising them to do so. The African National Congress (ANC) runs our country as if it was their personal piggy bank, looting and pillaging our resources for the benefit of a few connected elite types at the expense of everyone else. These people are squirrelling away millions while millions are going to sleep hungry at night. Ironically, the Marxist model of their so-called Freedom Charter is white is primarily to blame. And it simply cannot continue.