Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch
I have been following Norman McFarlane’s pieces on the public protector and also the Magashule comments on the Reserve Bank. Specifically the latest piece(“About fear, favour and prejudice”, Bolander, July 10).
I think Mr McFarlane is not giving another side to the story, namely a considerable body of experience and theory about money, money creation, banks and central banks.
This body exists objectively, regardless of Ace Magashule’s and the public protector’s agendas, and their relationship to the Jacob Zuma faction.
I think the tenor of Mr McFarlane’s articles does not bring this body of experience/knowledge to your readership, instead opting for a view that the IMF/World Bank has the scientific take on economics and financing, and that Cyril Ramaphosa/Pravin Gordhan are our best bet to stay in touch with the “real world”.
It is for this reason that I would recommend that you and Mr McFarlane read the latest piece (see link below) by Ellen Brown, president of the Public Banking Institute (PBI) in America.
Democrats Can Have Their Progressive Policies and Pay for Them Too
This article provides a different view about how economies like China’s and Japan’s have been financed to produce the considerable employment and productive outputs that they have.
The question of China’s political system and lack of freedom of speech in our South African sense of the meaning of freedom, is a separate issue. I am keen to promote an open debate about economic development and the spread of its benefits. The World Bank and IMF are not showing us successful examples of their way. Without endorsing the Chinese or Japanese way, let us open the debate about educating ourselves about theories and practices of economic development and money creation these two countries have followed.
I appreciated Mr McFarlane publishing his views about our colonial history and the historical violent dispossession of the land of indigenous peoples by colonialists. It provoked a response and there were views for and against in your letter pages. This is a positive example of the dialectic of truth. Truth-seeking is always a contradictory process until we arrive at a social consensus.
Norman McFarlane responds:
Mr Hendler, it seems, completely misses the point of the two columns I have most recently written on the subject of the proxy war between Public Enterprises Minister, Pravin Gordhan, and the public protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane.
In neither piece, do I render judgment on the constitutional mandate of the SA Reserve Bank (SARB), as Mr Hendler suggests I do. Rather, I raise the question of whether or not Ms Mkhwebane is acting in a manner which satisfies the mandate of her office: to act without fear, favour or prejudice
In my opinion, she is not. In this context, I refer Mr Hendler to the following article by University of Cape Town constitutional law lecturer, Pierre de Vos, who sets out where Ms Mkhwebane has erred in law in her most recent report on the SARS rogue unit matter: https://www.biznews.com/?* =857876. I agree with Mr Hendler that the debate about the constitutional mandate of the SARB must proceed, and if and when I do choose to render comment on that matter, he is welcome to enter the fray.
