BNC#7: Rob Hersov - SA must win the ideological battle, reject ANC socialism and embrace capitalism

So normally what I do is come up there with some sort of prepared speech and then throw it in the air because I'm not very good at reading speeches. When I read my own speeches, I'm bored by halfway, so it doesn't really work. But what I do want to do is say right up front, this is going to be a different message to the normal ones I give. You've heard it all before from me. I've said all the rude words, I've named names, and this is going to be a different message. And it does have some hope in it. And the hope is the following: the ANC ideology has failed. And the good news is they've run out of money. The country's run out of money, but the ANC has run out of money. They cannot pursue their socialist Marxist racist ideology anymore. And that is a good thing because the time has now come for that Damascene moment, and it could go either way, but the time has now come where we actually could have real change. And the message is ideological. Socialism doesn't work. We know it, the world knows it, and yet the ANC is still pursuing a centralist socialist ideology that we know fails, and it's failing here. And the fact they've run out of money means something has to happen. If we even get a budget speech today, And thank you to the DA and thank you to the PA, FF Plus, IFP for standing hard against the budget. If we even get a budget today, it's going to have to have cost cuts in it. And this is the beginning of the end of the, of the ANC as we know it. As we know it. But I'm going to read a few pages because I promised my wife I would do it. And then the real speech comes on this page here. Yeah, good. So I've made a lot of mistakes in public speaking over the last 3 years. And the biggest mistake I've made is to say to the ordinary South African that things are worse than 30 years ago. And I spent the last month trying to imagine what it would be like to have been a black South African in 1994. And if I had been, I would've voted ANC. I would absolutely have voted ANC. And we take things for granted, such as hot showers, which I had this morning. I have 2 or 3 a day. I love hot showers. But millions of people still don't have access to hot showers in this country. 30 years ago, the vast majority of Black South Africans had zero access to electricity. So intermittent electricity and load shedding is actually better than nothing, as is some clean water and some working sewage. We've also all witnessed Soweto turning from a slum into a thriving suburb, and up until Pick your own date. Let's call it 2012, or we'll say 2009. The ANC was factually changing the lives of ordinary black South Africans in ways that you and I cannot possibly imagine because we take most of those things for granted. And as long as BEE exists, the ordinary black South African has some hope that their child could get a decent job at a company because of VEE. It was hard for me to get my head around that one. White South Africans excel at academics and competition. And what we need to therefore understand and acknowledge that competing with us on merit remains a scary prospect that most Black South Africans won't support. It's hard to say that, and it's also hard to say we seem to be surviving BEE. So we have to give the ANC some credit, or we're going to lose the ideology battle, and this is a battle about ideology. We also have to acknowledge that many black South Africans have stopped voting for the ANC already. Their heads are up and they're looking around. They're looking for an alternative, and the alternative is not MK and EFF. MK at 15% is a threat, but they're stabbing each other in the backs at the moment, and we have to take advantage of that. And the EFF is falling apart. It's going to end up being a very sad Julius going nowhere. So attacking the ANC, EFF, and MK, like I have done, only strengthens those parties. We have to fight this battle on ideology now. And they, EFF and MK in particular, have done a very good job Painting themselves as the parties whiteness fears, and therefore they are deserving of support. They've done a very good job doing that. And when we attack their parties rather than the issues, we strengthen them. And I am as much to blame as everyone else. So our fight now, which we should have started a lot earlier, needs to centre on the limits And the fallacy of Marxist socialism, which is losing everywhere in the world but here. And the fact is that the ANC has got very far with that model because they had the money to do so. But the money is running out and the country needs 5%, forget 3%, 5% year-on-year growth if we're going to keep delivering change. For too long, the ANC spent all the money on social security and nothing on building the business sector, and that's why we're bleeding jobs. The ANC's policies have run out of fuel, and not only do they not understand business, they hate business. Cyril is not a businessman and never has been. He's a union man. And the ANC realized they have to create value now, but they don't know how to do it. They're just going to keep squeezing blood from a stone. And I always say that when the ANC hit rock bottom, as they've done now, they keep digging. And there's a belief when a white guy like me says something anti-ANC, anti-EFF, or anti-MK, They think I'm actually saying something that's anti-Black. And I've noticed it, as have friends of mine. As the attacks are increasing, as America's come in swinging, some of my close Black friends have started to say some really nasty racist remarks, which is always bubbling under the surface with you and with them. And by attacking the ANC, By attacking EFF and by attacking MK vociferously, that comes to the surface. So I can understand why ordinary black South Africans did vote ANC up to and about 2012, because the ANC did improve the lives of people, but the bar was very low. It wasn't very hard to do so, and it was easy because apartheid left black South Africans with very little. But the ANC, MK, and EFF ideology has run its course and they've nothing left to offer. And their ideology has not just failed in the rest of Africa, it's failed in the rest of the world, and we're seeing it in the polls. Marxist socialism only serves a small group of elite who use state power to serve their own interests. And everybody's noticing that in this country. In fact, one of the smart things Julius Malema once said, I was at a lunch he attended in London. It was the first time he'd had a meal outside of South Africa in a European country. He said something, he said, BEE is a disaster because it only enriches the elite. What BEE should have done is given that stake in that company to the people that work there, in the company, the employees, and align their interests with yours. I agree with him. So we already see it. ANC votes are no longer being secured with new roads, new clinics, new schools. They're only being secured with food parcels and grants. A 250 a rand bag of food and a t-shirt is all it takes. We talk ideology. They depend on the social grant. And we've seen a lack of ideas from the ANC since 2012, and it hasn't improved. So just take Elon Musk and Starlink as an example. Almost every country in Africa has Starlink. Cheap data, always on. Changes your lives, opens your mind to every form of information and education that exists on the planet. And we don't have it here because the ANC are too greedy and they want one of their cadres and one of their elites to own a stake in the company. And why should Elon Musk do that? So bottom line, the ANC put themselves first. They do not put South Africa first. And it's time they chose a political party that did. The prepared speech. The unprepared. And I've got 10 more minutes. Let's talk ideology for a section. Second, in 1992 in Sweden, a hardcore socialist country, had 100% income tax for the rich people. The rich were leaving in droves. They were overregulated. They had a huge number of state-owned enterprises, and the beer company in Sweden was owned by the government. It wasn't working. Socialism failed in Sweden. And in 1992, the government looked around the table and said, this isn't working. We need to change direction. They let the currency float. They sold off the state-owned enterprises. They deregulated. They brought in capitalism and free markets. And look at Sweden today. It's the, almost the second or third top tech center in the world. People go there for jobs. People go there to open restaurants. The weather's still bad and the women are still beautiful, but the economy has changed incredibly. And look at Argentina. Almost 100 years of socialism and Peronism destroyed that country. There was a Harrods in Buenos Aires in the 1920s. It was the 5th richest country in the world. Socialism destroyed Argentina. And Javier Milei, in less than 2 years, is making that country fly. Best performing stock exchange. Inflation down from 2,000%. Um, down to 2.8% a month and improving. The country is booming in 2 years. We can do the same thing here. This country can turn around in 12 months and get to 3% economic growth. It's that easy. But here's where we have failed. I wanna talk briefly about the people of South Africa, not you. The ordinary people who we are much closer to, and they are much closer to us. They believe in faith. They believe in family. They believe in capitalism. Tell me a more capitalist person than a taxi driver going down the wrong side to get his people there in time so he can go back to pick up more. They are natural capitalists. They are not socialists. The MK and EFF message will not resonate with the masses if we do our job properly. We need to promote capitalism and free market philosophies to make this win. We are part of the problem. We live in our gated communities. We focus more on heart than head. When that doe-eyed niece of the friend of yours comes to see you to raise money for the 27th cancer charity or the 550th education charity, you give them money. But when the DA, PA, IFP, ACDP, and FF+ come calling, you end up being a New Zealander doing the haka. You can't get your hands in your pockets, which is wrong. You should feel guilty about giving so much money to charity, but very guilty about not supporting the civic society and political parties that are tackling the root cause of the problem. Put your hands in your pockets and give to the political parties. Give as much money as you can to the Free Market Foundation, the Institute of Race Relations, AfriForum, Cancel your News24 subscription, stop reading IOL, and do not donate to Daily Maverick. They are anti-business. You can tell if you've succeeded in life when you get attacked by Daily Maverick and the MK and the EFF. It means I'm bang in the center doing the right thing. So on the money side, I'm sorry to tell you, you are the problem. You need to be giving money to the political parties and civic and the right civil society so we can fight the ideological battle. I'll talk quickly about the GNU. A lot of people are complaining about the GNU. It's going sideways. They didn't stand up against BELLA, NHI, EWC. Well, as Helen correctly said, those 3 bills were well in the works before the GNU came together. But the budget wasn't. And they stood firm against the budget, and the budget may well be the breakpoint for the ANC. So get behind the GNU for two reasons. Things take time. All us business people want to fix things immediately, myself included. I wanna fix this country. I know how to do it, but it doesn't. It's not that easy. It doesn't happen that quickly. And the GNU are doing a very good job. Even though all they're focused on at the moment is keeping MK out, they will get down to safety and security. They will get around to economic growth. Get behind them. On the money side, I've talked about giving more to political parties and civic society. I've given up on the corporates in this, in South Africa. It's too tough for them. They're surrounded by PIC, BEE, unions. Employees. They've got jobs. They can get fired. I've been very tough on them for not standing up, but I'm leaving them alone now. I am going to focus on the South Africans overseas. I have a list of 200 wealthy South Africans overseas. You've heard of the billionaires. There are 35 of them. The 2 richest people in LA are South African-born. Elon Musk, Patrick Soon-Shiong. Number 1, number 2. And there are another 32 around the world, billionaires. But what you haven't heard of are the people worth $200 million to $800 million. Robert Stoffberg, Pierre Nourdaire, and I can go on and on and on and on. And they're the people that I'm gonna focus on to bring serious money behind the ideology battle that we're gonna face. And then media. Thank you. And then media. News24 is just a voice of the ANC. The Daily Maverick does a very good job on investigative journalism, but they are anti-business. And I also don't think they are particularly pro some of the Judeo-Western countries that we believe in and we should be proud of. There are about 30 podcasters in this country, from Gareth Cliff to Sithle Big Daddy, Pumulozi Madjoji, Concerned Citizen. If you've never heard of these people, MacG. If you've never heard of these people, you're in the echo chamber you shouldn't be in. And Morning Shot and Ronello Joes and Roman Kabanak. There are about 30 of these podcasters who are singing the same song sheet as the G&U and as us in the room. Get behind them. Go onto their podcasts and click the button subscribe. It's free. But then click on join. Some of them are asking for 20 rand a month. 20 rand a month. If everyone in this room gave them, each of them, 20 rand a month, how much would that cost you? 200 rand a month? Sure, most of you can afford that, but it makes them— it amplifies what they're saying enormously. And finally, in the last minute and a half, a manifesto. We need to put South Africa first, and South Africa first is the 5 Fs. It's not the ones you might be thinking. Family, flag, facts, freedom, and faith. I could turn those 4 Fs into a manifesto that says free markets, deregulation, sell off private SOEs, and run down a manifesto of 10 points. But those 10 points are already the manifesto of the DA, And much to Helen's horror, the manifesto of the PA as well, but also the IFP, FF Plus, and ACDP. Those 5 political parties need to come together in a more meaningful way and fight the fight together and promote this ideology. And wouldn't you, I certainly would, be proud of having lead our country Helen Zille, Gait McKenzie, Corné Mulder, Slibisa, and all of those great people. You can throw in Chris Pappas, you can throw in tons of other great people working together on the new ideology with the 5S and putting South Africa first. Thank you very much.

Rob, sounds like you're listening very closely to what Neil de Beer said yesterday about what they're going to do to you in jail.

I don't think so. I spent 5 years at boarding school, 2 years in the army. I think I can handle jail a lot better than most people.

You obviously didn't hear what he had to say about it.

I did.

Okay.

But you know, if you worry about those things, you might as well worry about everything and you might as well say nothing.

No, I say that because it was a rather strange prepared speech. I grew up in, not grew up, I spent a lot of my life in Mondior, you know, Mondior, south of Joburg.

I think I've flown over it a few times.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, when you live in Montbure and you work in Sandton, you drive along the Western Bypass. And for years in the early '80s, Soweto was a smog camp. By 1988, it was clear. And I checked just to make sure, because you said it all started in '94. By 1988, all the houses in Soweto were electrified. So it bothers me when people revise history in a way that gives credit where it isn't due. I'm not saying that the Nats deserve the credit, but certainly Eskom does. Eskom did some huge issues. And the other question that I have for you is BEE. It's almost like you said, no, it's a good thing. Maybe you didn't.

We survived, is what I said.

150 billion rand a year is what the legal premium of BEE is. If that, the legal premium, 150 billion rand a year. Gabriel Krass has done the numbers at the IRR. It just is difficult for somebody who's looking at our economy, looking at the wastage, to say, hang on, how can we ever justify something that has just enriched already elite people who went to really good schools, where most South Africans went to Model C at best. So it's just, it's strange for me to hear you talking on those points. What happened?

Nothing happened. In every speech I've ever given in 3 years, I've hammered the ANC, hammered all these issues, and this was time to sort of try and understand where we are and where we can go. And I'm trying to shift away from attack the ANC in every single speech. We all know they're a disaster. The MK and EFF will be even worse. We know that. We've heard all the stats. And everybody in this room has PTSD because every time you open the newspaper, it's more stealing, more corruption, more kleptocracy, more ineptocracy. It's sickening. America calls South Africa DEI as a country, and he's right. It's disgusting what the ANC has done. But we are where we are, and what we must do is take some credit as white people for the amount of work we've done since 1994 in paying trillions in tax and in all the efforts we've made to improve people's lives. Not just the DA doing it and the other political parties, but individuals. So what I'm trying to say is, where are we? We attack the ANC, MK, and EFF every day, and all it's doing, it's getting people's backs up. We need to now fight an ideological battle, and it's swinging in this direction in every country in the world. The world has woken up that socialism doesn't work, free markets work, and that's the battle we need to fight now. We need to engage the average South African who is a capitalist, who does have faith, who believes in family, who believes in the flag, and we need to engage them now and bring them over to our way of thinking. We need the political structure to form a center-right pole instead of fighting amongst themselves. Easier said than done. We need media to come together and sell this ideology. And that's where I want to go from now. I want to explain socialism doesn't work. Capitalism does. We can carry on every single day complaining about what the ANC is doing. And I will.

I don't think it's about complaining. I think, you know, South Africans and I don't know, I see South Africans as of all, because we serve everybody in, in our platform. There's no way that, that I see myself as a white South African. I see myself as a South African. And, and I guess who's we? Yeah. When you say we, who's we?

We South Africans.

But you say we must do this and we must talk to the white black people and we must do— who's we? Who do you— when you talk like that, who— who—

you know, I've never ever ever made a speech in racial terms ever. You can go back 3 years. I attack the ANC, I attack MK, I attack EFF. I don't say black or white. But the reality is, for the last month, I've been trying to put myself in a position of the average person in South Africa, the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, the hopeless, and try and see it from their perspective. Because my wife said to me, she said, why is it that it's so blatantly obvious the ANC have failed? Why is it that 41% voted ANC? 15 MK and 70 FF, that's 65% of the country still voting for a failed ideology. Why is it? She said, is it as simple as a t-shirt, a bus to get to the polling station, and a Kentucky Fried Chicken? And I said, yes, it is. Which means we're not doing the right thing. We're not fighting the ideology battle. And that's what we have to do now.

Education, education, education. If you thought education's expensive, try ignorance. And I guess that's where you're coming from. Rob, I really liked what you said about talking to foreigners, South Africans who are abroad. When we went to London and we had an event there in May, we got enormous support and interest from people saying, and Sean Pesch, who's going to be talking tomorrow, I think, Sean was saying, what can I do? How can I motivate people to come forward? What are you going to say to these guys? What's the plan with bringing all this or mobilizing all this capital for the betterment of South Africa?

Well, there are two people in particular that I sent my article that I wrote for BizNews on why charity is the wrong way to fix South Africa and why we've got to get behind the civic civil society and political parties. And they were quite upset at me for sending them that because they felt it was pointed at them, which it was. What we need to do, you know, I'm not going to mention his name, but he's a South African billionaire in Australia. He gave, I think, I think the full 10 million to Herman Mashaba. That went nowhere. The obvious parties that need support are the 5 that I've mentioned. And we need to get behind them in a meaningful way. And these people, you know, the head of a very large family office, I won't mention who I used to, I used to mention names. Now they don't call me back. I said to him, you need to step up to the Free Market Foundation IRR and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, we do our bit and left it like that. And I know what we do our bit means. It's like all the other corporates. They have huge CSR programs. They fill potholes in the Johannesburg roads. They give money to charity and they think they've done their bit, but they don't put their hands in their pockets and give the R10 million to the DA. It's inconceivable to me that that's doing their bit. So the message to the foreign South Africans, the international South Africans is, Here's the ideology. Here are the 30 podcasters which we're pulling together under the name The Truth Report. And two amazing people in this audience, Warren Wheatley, Nick French, and a few others are behind this initiative. And I'm announcing it here first. The Truth Report will go live in the next 30 days. And it's pulling together all the podcasters who are giving the same ideological message of all shapes and sizes. And that is going to be in parallel with BizNews, the ideological frontline of media, and it needs money. Not a lot, by the way. So project one for you foreigners who are listening, foreign South Africans, media. The second is civil society. Give to the IRR, give to Free Market Foundation, give to AfriForum. There's probably a list of 8 excellent, excellent organizations that are giving the ideological message. Back them. And then politics. I'm not gonna prescribe to the foreigners who they should back, but you know, there are parties that Mr. Zibi raised a huge amount of money, I think 50, 60 million rand. I don't think he got a seat in Parliament.

Did he?

One. I mean, two. I mean, what a waste of, what a waste of money that was. Complete waste of money. They should have given it to one of the five parties I mentioned. So everybody's trying to be too damn clever, myself included. And I'm gonna try and give a simple narrative. Ideology, media. Civil society, political parties, and their money should flow through all of those 5. And, you know, we have the municipal elections coming up in February 2027 and the nationals coming up in 2029, if not earlier, because if the budget keeps collapsing, there's going to be another election and we just won't have time to pull that money together.

I'm going to go to the audience questions now, Rob. Alec Hallowell wants to know, he says, in January you talked about the helpful idiots, whom I call the spineless wealthy. The answers obviously hit their wallets, but I'm hoping for a deeper answer. Assuming all action is absolute and inevitable, how do we scare the helpful idiots into action?

The corporates.

I think he's talking about the wealthy individuals, useful idiots, people, people who say, oh, well, you know, if the shit hits the fan, I've got a British passport. I'll just duck anyway. And you guys can carry on with it. Um, those people who, there was a, there was actually quite a rude Afrikaans swear word for them in years gone by. It started with soet.

Sure. You're not going to persuade everyone. The useful idiot is a more dangerous person than the one who has the passport and is just living in their gated community and ready to leave at the last moment. The useful idiots have bought into the News24 and Daily Maverick rubbish. Those are the useful idiots. The useful idiots are the ones that believe that whites own the vast majority of land in South Africa. It is not true. It's not true. The useful idiots are the ones that are sucking in the nasty narrative being pushed by MK. And EFF that whiteness is the problem. Those are the useful idiots. And the useful idiots are the leftists. The useful idiots believe in net zero. The useful idiots believe in CRT, DEI, the Democratic Party in America, the Labour Party in Britain. They are the useful idiots. And they've done more damage to Judeo-Western civilization than anyone else. A lot of my in-laws included. You know who you are.

What other countries in the world have got our expropriation without compensation laws? This is from Ant.

All the socialist Marxist communist countries that still remain have expropriation without compensation, but I think they just do it anyway. They don't even have a law. Um, none of the Western countries I know of. There's always willing buyer, willing seller. There's always expropriation in every country. You know, if they wanna build a highway, they have to expropriate part of your farm to get through your farm. But then there's market price and then they do the deal. It's the without compensation in public interest. That's the dangerous narrative here, cuz what's in public interest? What the government decides.

Mr. Alex. Rob, any change of leadership must first convince voters in the townships. From a distance, it looks like this is where the future lies. In fact, the opposition parties need an extra 10% more votes. Why are we not taking your good message to more voters?

But I think that's what I was speaking about today. You know, we've got to, we've got to, they're naturally capitalist. There are tons of people not voting because they don't think the political system works for them or for South Africa. They don't think anything's going to change. And if you live in the township, do you bother getting a license for your business?

No.

Do you pay tax? No. Do you take services, municipal services, if you can get them? And pay for them? No. You're living in a parallel society like we are in our gated communities where we pay for our own electricity, own security, own education for the kids. There are two parallel societies. There's one society, capitalist, that's just taking and not paying. Why not? And there's another parallel society that's doing it all themselves and not relying on the state. But still paying tax.

Uh, Henko wants to know which, what in your opinion are the sectors of the economy that have the foundation to generate growth in the next 5 years?

Well, nothing's growing, so it's a very low bar. You know, tech people think of AI and these, all these great tech developments, as a threat, as great disruptors. They look at the jobs that are going to be lost because of AI. But what they're not thinking of is the new jobs that are going to be developed, which are infinite. You know, these technology developments improve our lives massively and across the board. There's a moment of disruption, a time, a period of disruption. The end of the day, The businesses that are gonna explode are either tech business, tech businesses, or tech-enabled businesses. And I've seen a number of incredible businesses in South Africa, which could easily go international. And mostly these are young entrepreneurs who are using South Africa as a test market, and then we'll take it overseas. Very exciting.

That's not 5, that's 1. What are the other 4? Aviation?

Aviation's an interesting one. So we had South African Airways, one of the best, certainly the best airline in Africa and one of the best airlines in the world. Really was the pride of Africa. The ANC took it over, turned it into an employment agency and bankrupted it. I mean, dudu my eni has gotta be one of the stupidest school teachers that ever existed, was made chairman of SAA, destroyed it, but stolen to bits. It's been kept alive. I think it's been, they pay 50 billion rand a year to keep South African Airways alive so they can steal. State-owned enterprises are the biggest trough for stealing, privatize them. But what happened in aviation was South African Airways has basically disappeared. And there was privatization by default. FlySafair, Airlink, Samair stepped into the breach. And for those people who fly, nothing much has changed. So hopefully we'll have policy privatization of the other state-owned enterprises, but if not, privatization by default. Everyone's going to start their own electricity production from their homes, from their businesses. And supply energy into the grid privately. It's a good thing.

I got a feeling that, uh, people in the Union Buildings are going to be watching this conversation a lot more closely than some of your previous ones. So what advice, what insights do you have on Transnet?

So, Alec, I know you wanted to be more Sodom and Gomorrah, fire and brimstone, but I do that all the time. And if you go 4 days ago to the Hermanus Business Chamber, I did exactly that. So you can go online and listen to that. And you were mentioned 3 times. But you asked me what advice.

Transnet. No, no, my point was, it's almost like, you know, Rob's now really thinking deeply. He's reflected a lot on the country. So let's reflect a little on Transnet. What, how do you fix Transnet? How do you get all the product that we have in this country that's sitting either rotting in the fields or sitting in the ground or in stockpiles, get it to the ports and out to the rest of the world. Where would you start?

So you start by decentralizing what the DA has been saying all along. Decentralize, federalize. Take Pretoria making all the decisions and push decisions down to the provinces. In the Western Cape, Jordan Hill Lewis and Alan Windey for 2 years have put a budget aside to train rail engineers, knowing that at some point the Western Cape can take control of its railways and get the trains to run and run on time. Who benefits if the trains don't work? Taxi drivers and lorry drivers. Who benefits if Eskom's turbines are broken because the coal mafia is buying inferior coal and pumping them into the turbine to break the turbine? The diesel mafia, because they, they bring in diesel. So there's an incentive by the ANC to break so they can steal. And there was a, I think Helen was asked to comment on, you know, is the ANC malevolent or incompetent? Well, I reckon it's 80% incompetence and 20% malevolence. But the malevolence comes with these mafias. If you have a functioning economy and a functioning democracy, it's hard to steal. If things are broken down, it's much easier. So there's an incentive to break things.

There's a wonderful question here, Tobias. Thank you. There seems to be a general confusion between BEE and employment equity. And I think—

BEE and?

EE, employment equity. And I think that did come through in your, in your talk. Please, can you clarify the difference so that we have clarity on what each stands for? What is BEE? What is employment equity?

I actually don't know the difference, to be blunt.

Okay, let me help. Employment equity is leveling the playing field, giving everyone an opportunity to get in. Exactly what you were talking on the other side. Not really. Not really. Not de. It's more if you, if you can have a, a prof— if all things being equal, you have a candidate that has come from a disadvantaged background, you employ them, but it doesn't say you must employ them. That's employment equity. That's the story. BEE, on the other hand, is government tells you who to give 25%. Government says you can pay 25% more as lot of to the, to the company. You have to actually, the Treasury has to pay it to the company that has got the highest BEE credentials. So market price 100, you pay 125 up to 50 million rand. Because they have got BE credentials, which clearly is theft. And that's, that we've now just, I mean, that was theft from taxpayers.

That was an excellent interview by Business News a week ago. And it blew my mind because I didn't realize how much waste there is in the system. But anything that isn't merit-based is waste, extra cost, and lack and lowers productivity. All of these rules need to, we need to get rid of these rules and create a Equal access, but not equal result. How we should focus our lives.

Stuart Wilmington wants to know, what's your ideology? What's your endgame? Your endgame.

French.

My ideology is what you heard today. I believe in free markets, meritocracy, non-racialism, and what— and building this country into this unbelievable a country it deserves to be. I don't need to live here. I came back in 2016. I do not need to be here. I do not need to be saying what I'm saying. It has cost me friends, money. I get deplatformed all the time. I don't get invited to golf games anymore, other than by Alec Hogg. It has been a negative, negative thing. It's put pressure on my family. My daughter comes home from school scared and not knowing why, because one parent says to another, uh, surprising Rob hasn't been bumped off yet. Not fun. I don't need to be doing this.

Okay.

So my ideology is simply this country deserves to be an extraordinary, extraordinary place. I love South Africa. I don't want to leave. I don't have an endgame. I really don't. My endgame is to keep doing, keep moving the needle if I am moving the needle. And you know, my wife said to me, and she's from New Zealand, and New Zealand has to be the safest place in the world. They don't have racism. They don't have pollution. They don't have threatening neighbors. In fact, it's boring as hell. I've been there hundreds of times and I can last about 3 days. But my wife, a New Zealander, Lives in South Africa. And she said to me, I love this country. It's worth fighting for.

Mejo Meta says, what is your measure for success of capitalism? One could argue that capitalism is failing.

Capitalism's not failing. Where? The success is GDP growth. If you're growing at 5, 6, 7% a year, your people are being employed. People are investing. Foreign direct investment's coming in. There's new developments, new technology. It lifts all boats. And the ANC has no idea on how to develop economic growth. Zero. They've run out of ideas if they even had any. Don't use the word brain trust, cuz there's no brain and no trust. Um, it's the success of capitalism. There's a book that you need to read by Hannam, Freedom: Why It's So Important. Well, how we invented it and why it's so important. And we take it for granted. But what we've done in the West, the Judeo-Christian West, is extraordinary. And those freedoms came from Britain, Magna Carta, to America, the American Constitution. Those two countries, the Anglosphere, have created freedom, capitalism, democracy, and lifted people out from poverty all over the world. We need to be proud of what we've created. We, the West, need to be proud. We need to stand up and support and defend our freedom.

Which brings us to Donald Trump.

What?

Well, there are many who including Helen, including R.W. Johnson, who thinks that he's not exactly supporting our freedom. What's your view on what he is doing to the world today?

A hundred executive orders in a hundred hours. And look at most of them, we'd agree with them. It's very easy to look at the man and say whatever you want to say. He's narcissistic. He's bombastic. He shoots from the hip. But the reality is, if we had the Democrats in power still, nothing would have happened. The world would be getting worse. We would not be seeing the swing that we're seeing. And he's going to get some things wrong. He's— his style is shoot from the hip, threaten you with a tariff and see if you back down. And I'm sorry, it's a very good thing Trump got elected. A very good thing. Biden was half dead and he was an Obama sock puppet. And we were going to have more DEI, more CRT, more of that evil leftist mind woke virus. So I'm— thank you, Donald Trump. And it's tough to say heroes of mine, R.W. Johnson and Helen Ziller-Arron, But they're not wrong. We're just differing on the margin.

I remember going to a, a, a talk once by a very smart guy who said there are different levels of decision-making and they are based on the impact that your decision today has and how long it takes to get there. For instance, you go into a supermarket, uh, The teller at the supermarket can anger you and you just won't come back and there'll be an instant decision right up until the President of the United States who makes a decision today that we feel in 5 years' time. And on that area, I think it's challenging what Donald Trump's doing at the moment. Very, very challenging. But as you say, what do you mean? It is what, what do you mean? I have a lady in the front row who's heckling. I would be making a point that there are different levels of, there are different levels of decision-making. As you become an assistant manager, the decision you make today might have an impact in a week. If you become a manager, it could be 3 weeks. If you become the CEO, the decisions you make today could have an impact in a year, right up the way until the President of the United States, whose decisions today have an impact in 5 years' time. So that is the different levels of decision-making. We have a president in the United States who's making decisions that we will only feel in 5 years' time according to that theory. So that was the point I was making.

But Eric, Alec, why are you so surprised about what Donald Trump's doing? Everything he's doing, he said he was gonna do in his lead-up to the election. If you listen to the 3-hour Joe Rogan podcast, which I think you did, and I did too, he said it all there. Everything he's done, he promised to do, he's done. Why is everyone so surprised?

Well, the point that I was trying to make was that his decisions that he's taking today, we will know only whether they were great decisions or shocking decisions in 5 years' time, because the impact that is made by the person who's sitting in that chair, of what they're doing on a day-to-day basis. And if you're going to do 100 things, you got to know that some of them aren't going to be positive. But let's— it's your hour, not mine.

So if 95 are positive and 5 are negative, I think he's done a hell of a good job.

Well, let's talk in 5 years' time because that's when we'll know.

Look, what Obama did has resulted in CRT, DEI, All the horrific woke things have been a result of Obama's presidency. 8 years. 8 years. He almost destroyed the world. So.

And the consequences of his decisions were only found 5 years later.

Correct.

And that's the point. How can the GNU succeed if Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal remain outside the GNU? This is from Gert Koos.

I mean, what surprised me most of all was Cyril Ramaphosa discovering that Gauteng has fallen apart. I mean, where's he been? Where's he been? He is beyond useless. Can I go to jail for that?

Ask Neil, he's done the work. But Gerhard wants to know that if we keep the Gauteng and KZN out, we'll never ever reach 1.5% GDP growth for the country, just 1.5% if they're outside of the tent. So I guess the question really is, what is the GNU, what should the GNU do about it?

The ANC is self-destructing. You know, Gait McKenzie said a year ago, Rob, you can stop hammering the ANC all the time. They're imploding under their own weight. And I think he was right. The ANC will not run Gauteng for very much longer. Come the municipals, they will be shredded. I think the DA could have run Gauteng before now, but they would not have done so with 51%. They would have had to have formed some form of coalition. And I believe Helen can correct me if I'm wrong, that there are too many hands on too many wheels in Gauteng. So even if you are in charge of Gauteng and a coalition, it's unfixable. You have to have 51% control of Gauteng to fix it because it's such a big economic unit, but there are too many ways to steal. It's like in a business, you know, you have your good person running human resources, a good person running finance, and a crook running marketing, well, you know, there's going to be money stolen in the marketing department. And that's how it ends. You've got to control everything to fix it. But it's amazing. I've had friends who haven't been there, foreign friends, even Cape friends, haven't been there in 2, 3 years. They come back and say they cannot believe how bad it is. Traffic lights don't work, potholes in the roads, and downtown Joburg is Mogadishu, is Mogadishu, thanks to the ANC.

Rob, we're gonna give the last few minutes to Helen. She's got a response to something that you said a bit earlier.

Oh, but I'm in trouble.

You're actually not in trouble at all, Rob. It's one of your speeches that I've had more agreements than disagreements. So I'm enjoying that. I want to focus on a question that you asked that's a very, very important one, which is why are the ANC, EFF, and MK combined getting 65% with the legacy that ideology has left? And it's an issue that has been puzzling me for a long time. And Henry Kissinger came closest to explaining, and I don't want to sound as if I'm throwing names around, but he did come to see me in 2010 when he came to watch the World Cup as a soccer fanatic. And he came to ask me, because I was the leader of the DA at the time, why the DA was doing so well. He said, "The miracle is not that the DA isn't doing better. The miracle is that it's doing so well." And his argument was that he'd always told Nixon and other people that he'd advised that it was impossible in Africa to create a party based on values and principles that would draw people from a range of ethnic backgrounds. And seeing that you've used Obama as an example, he's often said he could never have been president of Kenya because his father came from a minority ethnic group, and so he could never have been elected there, but he could in the United States. And that brings me to a very, I suppose, life-changing book that I've just read by Joe Henrich. It's called The Weirdest People in the World. Weird standing for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Diverse. Now, in your speech and in our frame of reference, Weird is normal because that is our understanding of how the world works and how we believe the world works best, which is the bedrock of your speech. However, he goes on to explain why that is really weird and out of kilter with the rest of humanity. And very specifically a frame of reference that is out of kilter in Africa. And he goes on to define how the individual mindset, even though we take family and groups very seriously, the notion of individual mindset and individual progress and freedom is a fundamentally weird idea. Yeah. And that Africa in particular, but many, many, many other societies work on a kinship model. On relationships, on networks, which is why ancestors are so important. And the transition to the WEIRD mindset started with Martin Luther in Germany. It's fascinating, that history, and the role that the church played in the process. But what we have to do is shortcut 4 centuries because the fundamental psychological and cultural point of departure is the kinship network, which makes it seem as a major betrayal to work outside where your parents, their grandparents were. And I see this with the many, many young Black DA people that are coming into our party. They are seen as traitors to that network, and it is a very hard transition to make. And then they have to get there and compete on merit, as you say, and it's a major challenge. So it is quite extraordinary that as the SAIRR and Frans Cronje have said, that the DA has one-third white supporters, one-third black supporters, one-third brown supporters. And Henry Kissinger said that was impossible in Africa. So we mustn't beat ourselves up too much. We're making a transition to weirdness because we do believe that Western-educated industrialized rich and democratic is the way to be. But it is the anomaly in the world, not the norm. And especially in Africa, it is the anomaly. So you need to cut ourselves some slack because that is where we're going. Thanks.

Beware, beware. Thanks, Alec.

Thank you, Rob.

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