Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 31-05-2018
The Chairperson of the South African BRICS Think Tank says South Africa is a not a poor country, but an unjust country.
Professor Ari Sitas was speaking during the 10th BRICS Academic Forum at the Sandton Convention Centre on Thursday.
Top scholars from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa met over three days to propose actionable solutions to some of the developing worlds most pressing socio-economic challenges.
Sitas says while South Africa has a healthy supply of food and wealth in the country, the distribution of these commodities is unjustified as the rich get more than the poor.
“The issue is why is every effort redistributing upwards as opposed to downwards? There are unjust mechanisms. There are deeper institutional and structural problems that we need to address if we going get at really creating a redistribution.”
Sitas also downplayed remarks by social activist Naomi Klein that a think tank is a group of people paid to think by the people who control the tanks.
Klein was quoted in The Mail & Guardian on 30 May as saying: “one of South Africa’s highest-profile intellectual vehicles appears to be a victim of drunken driving by scholars from whom we otherwise expect much stronger political navigation skills.”
Sitas says he finds the remarks a vacuous radicalism that is being articulated and is an argument by contamination.
“You know ‘so and so smells bad, therefore this must stink’. So it is tough, it needs navigating skills. You have to be clear as a country and a country can only be a balance of the kind of forces that can speak in the country.”
From 25 to 27 July Brics political rulers Michel Temer (Brazil), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Narendra Modi (India) and Xi Jinping (China) will join host president Cyril Ramaphosa, also at the Sandton Convention Centre at the 10th BRICS Summit.
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