OPEN LETTER: President, 'Transformation' has made you stinking rich but left your people abjectly poor!!

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03 May 2025

OPEN LETTER ADDRESSING THE REFERENDUM PARTY’S ISSUES WITH THE ANC’S POLICY OF ‘TRANSFORMATION’.

Dear President Ramaphosa,

We are writing to you on the subject of ‘Transformation’ having noted your public appeal for the DA to explain their grudge against it. They of course must speak for themselves, but at the Referendum Party we believe ‘Transformation’ is a critically important subject, and one which your party has exploited and abused to the great detriment of the overwhelming majority of South Africans.

At the outset, let us be clear, the word ‘Transformation’ does not appear anywhere in the constitutional text. It is not a constitutional imperative, it is an insidious ANC policy. At its heart is not the welfare of the South African people as a whole, but the pursuit of a radical left-wing ideological utopia.

The notion that all human beings, regardless of their education, culture, aspirations, and aptitudes are inherently equally capable and motivated, and therefore that in any fair society the composition of every sector of that society will exactly reflect the demographic composition of the population as a whole is beyond ridiculous. We don’t have to argue this point because the entirety of human history evidences it. Every previous attempt to pursue this ludicrous utopia has ended in ignominious defeat, and all too often worse, human disaster.

Undeterred by the overwhelming empirical evidence that your ideological pursuit of ‘Transformation’ is doomed to failure and seemingly without any hint of introspection, your ideological obsession has led you to follow Hendrik Verwoerd down the racial classification rabbit hole. Your ideology of ‘Transformation’ and his ideology of ‘Apartheid’ use precisely the same racial building blocks.

South Africa is a deeply unequal society and one beset with many problems. It is undeniable that Apartheid played a significant role in shaping the unequal society we live in today, and no right minded person objects to anyone striving to create a better and more fair society for all South Africans. To the contrary, it is an objective which we are all morally obliged to pursue. Ultimately, however, the success of any policy is measured by its outcomes.

If we truly want to change the lives of South Africans for the better, then it is time to stop the racial bean counting whilst we push economic crumbs around an empty plate and instead to focus on the drivers of economic prosperity. This is well understood yet shamefully ignored by your party in favour of its doomed ideological crusade.

To actually transform South Africa for the better we need better schools and better teachers, where ‘better' can be measured by academic results which are then referenced against international norms. We need to create an economy which encourages growth and inward investment, and this can be measured by economic growth, our ease of doing business rankings, the level of foreign investment, and ultimately our unemployment rate. Then we need to keep our people safe, which requires a professional police service and an efficient court system, and we can measure their effectiveness by our crime and conviction rates.

If we look at every one of these measures, we will establish that your government, and the governments led by your party before you, have failed miserably. We have poorly educated children, entering an economy with nowhere near enough jobs to employ them, where the skilled entrepreneurs needed to create jobs are leaving the country in droves, and where foreign investors are no longer coming. Our crime rates are akin to those of a war zone, and our criminal justice system is highly dysfunctional.

Do you and your party really not grasp that it is your obsession with ‘Transformation’ that is destroying people's lives rather than improving them? Or is there perhaps a darker reason?

You have personally become one of the richest men in South Africa as a result of these ‘Transformation’ policies, and it is highly unlikely as a union leader that you would have achieved such an elevated status in life without them. Many of your ANC colleagues and their ‘business associates’ have been just as ‘fortunate’.

The ‘grudge’ we at the Referendum Party hold against ‘Transformation’ is that your policy of ‘Transformation’ has been an economic and social train-wreck, premised upon Apartheid era racial classifications, which, just like Apartheid, has prevented ordinary South Africans from achieving their true potential, whilst you and many of your colleagues have become exceedingly wealthy at their expense.

President Ramaphosa, now do you understand?

Yours Sincerely

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Phil Craig

For and on behalf of the Referendum Party

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