newsLeading South African commentators say it’s time to get rid of self-seeking populists
Professor William Gumede who says South Africa needs a new breed of business-minded men and women who can create national wealth and not a handful of mlti-millionaires, people like Anton Rupert.
The public intellectual and acclaimed author of ‘South Africa in Search of its Soul,’ Professor William Gumede, believes that the days of the ANC dominating politics in his country are over and done with. In an interview with BIZNEWS in Johannesburg, he told journalist Chris Steyn that his country needs a new generation of leaders, possibly fresh men and women perhaps led by a non-politician.TREVOR GRUNDY listened in and reports –
PROFESSOR WILLIAM GUMEDE told his interviewer, Chris Steyn, that the meeting between Donald Trump and Cryril Ramaphosa in Washington last month could encourage South Africans to have an open debate about national policies, especially how to create economic growth.
“It must be an honest and open debate so we can deal with growth policies, not in a revenge way but in a practical way. In a way that is in the interests of all South Africans. I’m hoping that meeting (between Trump and Ramaphosa) will really help us.”
He spoke about the pressing need in South Africa to build a black business class and said that the country’s leaders should draw lessons from countries such as Germany, Japan, Singapore, India and South Korea.
He said: “Rather than trying to create a black Anton Rupert, we need to create small business people.”
He had particular praise for the late Indian Prime Minister Manmohen Singh (1932-2024), the economist, academic and leader of the Indian National Congress who did so much to turn India into one of the worlds’ great economic powers.
Gumede said that South Africa was in need of a man like Singh to lead it.
But a national debate on where South Africa was, is now and where it’s likely to go in the future would require an initiative by the ANC.
William Gumede at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in the late 1990s. The one day seminar at Chatham House in London gave participants a chance to talk about the likely trajectory of a South Africa without Nelson Mandela as president (Picture: Trevor Grundy)
Gumede said that in order to take stock and change things that had gone wrong in the past South Africa needed a bridging period of about five years so that the country could calm down and learn to become more pragmatic.
He said there is an urgent need to get rid of “populists” who think and say people of only one colour should run South Africa.
“We need to get them out of the limelight, out of the centre of politics,” he declared” We need more dignified leaders and more women leaders – not hard, ruthless individuals who don’t care about inciting violence, blaming other communities. They will walk over the bodies of blacks as well as white South Africans to be in power.”
He said that people who received money from the state had to be accountable.
With only the hint of a smile in his voice or on his face he said: “In South Korea in the 1980s and 1970s if you mis-appropriated state money you could be executed.”
Barney Mthombothi – respected commentator who says the ANC has looted South Africa
ANC watchdogs believe that Gumede’s dismissal of the ANC and the ideologies it embraced during the struggle for independence – the Stalinist version of Marxism –is a reflection of what more and more South Africans are thinking and saying.
On June 1, 2025 Barney Mthombothi writing in the ‘Sunday Times’ said that the ANC had looted the county and destroyed its reputation in the eyes of the rest of the world.
He wrote: ”A country that in 1994 was hailed by the entire world as a paragon, a beacon of hope and which for a while punched far above its weight, has been reduced to a laughing stock and every fleck of mud thrown at it sticks.”
He went on: “Can anyone imagine Nelson Mandela or even Thabo Mbeki being summoned to the White House to be given a thorough working over by a shameless grifter, a convicted felon? Of course not.
“It couldn’t have happened, not only because of the stature of the leaders but because of the type of society we – and the world – thought we were destined to be, a fine example for other nations to follow. We could do no wrong and everybody was keen to assist or be associated with us.
“But the ANC has mis-managed the country to a point where a convicted criminal can arrogantly give us a moral lecture about crime in our own country.”