Is it okay for whites to prosper at blacks' expense?

If we are selling our own people so short here at home, who is to say that we are not going to do the same with the rest of Africa?

OUR induction into the Brics economic hall of fame wasn't widely anticipated. We are, economically speaking, much weaker than Brazil, Russia, India and China, the four countries we just joined to add the "S" to Bric. There are at least 15 other countries in the world with economies that fit the Goldman Sachs criteria that created Bric in the first place better.

And it doesn't look as if we'll be catching up soon.

About 50 percent of black South Africans who constitute more than 90 percent of our population are unemployed. The laws we designed to remedy this situation work in favour of the minority whites who form less than 5 percent of the country. These laws, in fact, almost completely undermine the possibility of black economic growth.

Here's an example: black South Africans collectively named the national soccer team Bafana Bafana. Some white guy registers this name, in essence robbing black people of their very own creation, and then has the audacity to demand millions to rent it back to us.

Safa is now seriously considering this option!

When the Internet first surfaced, people registered other people's names and then sold them back to those rightful owners. The laws were changed. Unless you already owned Coca-Cola, for instance, you could not claim ownership of www.cocacola.com.

Why the hell don't we change our laws, apply the change retrospectively and say: "You cannot steal from the nation and claim that something collectively created and owned is yours."

We are economic cowards. That's why. I could register Jacob Zuma as a trademark and prevent our president from trading under that name!

That's how insane these laws are! It will take forever before black South Africans are economically free. We have stretched our desire to look civilised in the face of robbery to the point of insane economic self-mutilation.

Our president talks of first world access to the Internet for South Africans. But first world access is too expensive for those of us who need it the most! Internet access speeds up economic growth. So why not talk of free Internet access in all public spaces and force the cellphone companies and banks that rob us daily to pay for it if the government can't?

We are supposedly in Brics because we are the gateway to African markets, not because of our economic strength. But if we are selling our own people so short here at home, who is to say that we are not going to do the same with the rest of Africa?

Under former president Thabo Mbeki we had a strong, principled foreign policy, one pillar of which was the belief that we could never be a prosperous nation in a sea of poverty. Thus when we negotiated the Euro trade agreement we insisted that the benefits flow to all of the Southern African Development Community.

Today, domestically, we say that it's okay for a few whites to prosper in and at the expense of a sea of black poverty.