By Zukile Majova
Political Editor
New political kid on the block – Change Starts Now (CSN) – has proposed a comprehensive plan to rebuild South Africa’s electricity system.
This is significantly different from the ANC strategy of prolonging the country’s ageing fleet of coal-fired power stations.
Roger Jardine, the former anti-apartheid activist who founded CSN in December, launched the party’s election charter in Kliptown, Johannesburg, on Monday.
“How many times have we heard that load shedding is about to be ended? How many times have we been told ‘give us a few more days’ – 12 months or 18 months now?
“Everyone who knows what’s happening will tell you, load shedding is with us for the next three or four years,” said Jardine.
The accomplished banker-turned-politician is leading a campaign for an ambitious plan to build a people-centred party with a strategy to address the country’s problems of unemployment, crime, and healthcare.
To begin the work of rebuilding South Africa, Jardine is proposing the creation of a R500-billion Reconstruction and Growth Fund.
“The way we are going to fix load shedding is through serious interventions; we need to install rooftop solar, we need to make sure that our power stations work, we need a transmission grid and we need more private power suppliers.
“These are things that need to happen for load shedding to end in our country,” said Jardine.
Unlike any other politician who aims to be popular, Jardine is calling on South Africans to sacrifice their own money and invest in the rebuilding of their country.
He proposed an increase in corporate income tax by 4.2 percentage points (from 28% to 32.2%) and a tax hike (45% to 49.5%) for those rich individuals who earn more than R1.8-million a year.
Jardine is also proposing a 1% tax on retirement funds for three years.
“We will radically restructure and reorganise our largest state-owned enterprises to make them more efficient, with the potential to unlock up to R1-trillion in finance from local and international capital markets.”
With the elections just three months away, Jardine is crisscrossing the country, trying to convince thousands of potential voters to join him in his quest to build a caring nation.
Pictured above: Former banker Roger Jardine leads a new wave of political change.
Source: X
