Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has clarified his call for a wealth tax to be imposed on all white South Africans, saying he had hoped the response would be one of people paying out of generosity.
Tutu’s call for a wealth tax this month unleashed a huge debate, with some saying it was unconstitutional and unfair to impose a tax on white people, while others supported his call.
Speaking at the launch of the UCT Student Representative Council’s The Change Campaign on Tuesday, which aims to foster social responsibility in Cape Town, Tutu also called on students to volunteer for national community service.
Answering a question about how to go about taxing the wealthy, Tutu said: “I was hoping that the response would be not one of responsibility of people who feel guilty, but a response of people saying it was a gesture of generosity.”
He said the call for white people to pay a wealth tax would probably have been more apt at the time of the finalisation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) report in 1998, but the government at the time “didn’t like the TRC, so they didn’t do it”.
He said the reason for what he had had in mind had been undermined.
Instead he said he was suggesting the “tax” would go into a fund administered by respected people in the community and people would be free to make that gesture (of contributing to the fund).
Tutu stopped short of calling for an end to affirmative action, but said people should be employed because of their abilities and that cadre deployment, which the ANC government has been accused of, should be done away with.
He likened the current situation in the government to the apartheid government where people were employed not because of their qualification but in terms of their affiliation.
“As an oupa (grandfather) I sit there and I look and there is a huge pain in my heart. We have many competent people of all races. If we said we are appointing according to ability we will be a scintillating success.”
He also lamented the state of health care, saying that in the 1960s Baragwanath Hospital had been clean and nurses were proud of their starched uniforms.
Now, he said, he could not believe what he saw.
“Why should we get people to say, ‘We told you when blacks take over standards would go down’? Why do we want to confirm that?”
He reminded the hundreds of UCT students gathered at the campus to hear him speak that it was students who had stood up to the US war in Vietnam and it was because of them and their demonstrations that the war ended.
It was also students who forced the Ronald Reagan administration to call for sanctions against South Africa, even though Reagan himself was against sanctions.
He reminded the students that they were privileged to be studying at UCT and called on them to do national community service.
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