The price of liberation was the Black Soul

There is a black sadness that is slowly creeping over South Africa. Perhaps it's more than sadness. It's a gutfeel filled with shame.

It is rooted in issues such as black corruption, black crime, black incompetence and lastly, black irresponsible enrichment.

The development of the black billionaire classes post-apartheid caught our liberation victory off-guard. Their obsession with accelerated wealth accumulation was the ultimate betrayal of the political struggle.

South Africa should have implemented legislation to limit wealth accumulation through political office and political connections. That it did not do so was a fatal mistake.

Funded by foreign governments, its global agencies and corporate elites, a path was paved that would do what these foreign actors have done in every African country since colonialism: set up a wealthy elite that they will own and that will do their bidding for lucrative rewards and that they will, once they have served their usefulness, destroy.

For colonial and oppressive governments, losing political power was not an unanticipated factor in their planning. It is always anticipated. The next phase of colonialism was to build a black elite that would become the agents of political and economic power for these foreign governments. Acting like colonial masters, these black billionaires would exhibit the same wealth as their masters. Their media partners would celebrate them.

The social pages would showcase them. The talk shows would interview them. And eventually, when they wish to destroy them, they would contrast them with the horrendous conditions within their country, setting them up to fall. 

This is the final step in full ownership of these black millionaires and billionaires by foreign agents and their governments. To help these black billionaires dig themselves out of their holes, they will be told what speech to make, what project to fund and what to do to salvage themselves. The notion of their individual agency is dead.

Black millionaires and billionaires are now our new colonial masters, owned by foreign agents. By setting up bursary schemes and funding “upliftment,” they actively engage in the business of "tipping poverty" to great acclaim while continuing to live their castrated and neutralised billionaire lives. Their voices are silenced forever. And so, the vicious cycle will continue across South Africa and Africa.

These billionaires leak a poison into the national psyche that the attainment of wealth at any cost is the goal. That’s why stories like that of Hangwani Morgan Maumela’s R60m splurge on a Rolls-Royce, two Aston Martins, a Ferrari and three Lamborghinis are seen as an achievement by some, because he is acting consistent with what they know about our political classes.

That poison has leaked deep into the South African soul. Black South Africa is right to be angry at their lingering and devastating poverty. Having lost all hope in a government poverty relief programme, they now look to the billionaire classes and their associated criminal cartels to give them some of the Rands they got through corruption. This cycle won't end. Our State has been set up intentionally by foreign agents to behave in this way. 

It's not easy to talk about Black corruption in this way. It’s painful. White corruption, functioning on an identical level, is still dressed up in sanctimonious Protestantism and white exceptionalism. When corruption happens in predominantly white ecosystems, the fall guy is quickly identified, the story ends, but the system continues.

Understand that the foreign agents and their funders who built these black billionaires also invest in the media industry that will extensively report on their downfall. The corruption of money and the rise and fall of the billionaire and millionaire classes are not the issue for these foreign governments and their agents. They have lots more billionaires to create. The ownership of these billionaires is their main issue. 

What we are seeing in South Africa is the end of the first wave of deepening privatised billionaire and foreign government ownership of our State. The "political activist becoming billionaire" was the first wave. They were needed for access to our political and economic assets. But their fall was planned.

The next wave is here: the Judeo/Protestant/Humanist/Corporate model citizen who is the quiet billionaire who will be sent as the ideal candidate for political office. A saviour to the poor, loved by the media and a darling of the elite, they will appear to be different. But they will be nothing more than second-wave actors and agents of powerful governments and their global corporate and finance agencies. 

It's time for South Africa to implement the strictest legislation to limit the power of foreign governments and agencies and to track the sources of funding that create our billionaire and millionaire classes. The saddest part of our 30 years of democracy is the untold story of how our black billionaire classes became the seed that destroyed the black soul through black corruption, black crime and black incompetence. That’s a shame our liberation struggle did not deserve. 

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