No billionaire will save us: Real transformation means breaking with capitalist logic

Real transformation will not come from the boardrooms of Sandton or Silicon Valley. It must come from below, from communities organising for land, water, housing, and work. From youth demanding an end to neoliberal austerity. From workers building new solidarities across the continent.

By MARIAM JOOMA CARIKCI

In a 1956 article defending the Freedom Charter, Nelson Mandela declared: ‘For the first time in the history of this country, the non-European bourgeoisie will have the opportunity to own, in their own name and right, mills and factories, and trade and private enterprise will boom and flourish as never before.’

Rather than a revolutionary break with colonial economics, this was an invitation into the capitalist order for a new Black elite. As political theorist Patrick MacDonald has argued, the early ANC position subtly repositioned the liberation struggle as one of inclusion into the economy rather than a radical restructuring of it.

This formulation laid the groundwork for today’s illusion of ‘Black capitalism’ – a political sleight of hand that offers a few Black South Africans ownership of the system while the majority remain locked in the margins. It is under this ideological fog that Moeletsi Mbeki’s recent call for South Africa to embrace capitalists like Donald Trump and Elon Musk in government must be understood. For Moeletsi Mbeki, economic leadership and political leadership are best fused in the hands of billionaires. But what he calls a solution is in fact a deepening of the problem.

Capitalism – even with a local or ‘Black’ face – is not neutral. It is a system defined by exploitation, accumulation, and inequality. Whether owned by White families or Black empowerment firms, capital seeks to extract as much value from labour and land as possible. It is not designed to heal centuries of dispossession, nor to provide housing, water, or electricity to the masses unless there is profit in it.

The AfriForum/Solidarity push for the recognition of Afrikaners as ‘refugees’ encapsulates how the idea of economic redress is seen as an affront to a minority that have and continue to benefit enormously from Apartheid. When the nestling ‘hidden hand’ of the market is recoiled how do the privileged view citizenship and ‘nation-building?’

The myth of efficiency

Capitalism has sold itself as the most ‘efficient’ way to deliver services, and politicians and financiers alike have internalised this mythology. State institutions are starved, then accused of incompetence; meanwhile, private firms – unaccountable to the public – are handed contracts, subsidies, and entire sectors under the guise of ‘public-private partnerships.’ This is not efficiency. It is elite capture.

Take Eskom. Once a national utility with public development goals, its partial liberalisation and outsourcing have led to mass inefficiencies, price gouging, and corruption. It is not the public sector that failed; it is capitalism’s internal logic – maximise profit, externalise costs, minimise accountability – that hollowed it out.

South Africa’s housing crisis, energy shortage, and crumbling education system are not the result of ‘Black failure’ or poor leadership alone. They are symptoms of a system that was never designed to deliver justice – only returns.

Racism and capitalism: A convenient blame game

Too often, the failures of government in post-apartheid South Africa are read as failures of Black leadership or proof that ‘Africans cannot govern’. This racist trope obscures the real culprit: a system whose core function is not to repair inequality but to entrench it. As Frantz Fanon warned, when colonial structures remain in place, even liberated states will reproduce colonial outcomes – only under Black management.

President Cyril Ramaphosa embodies this contradiction. Once a militant union leader who fought for mineworkers, prior to becoming the head of state, he sat among the ranks of the country’s wealthiest mine owners. Ramaphosa’s evolution is not a betrayal of principle, but rather a reflection of how capitalism absorbs, repurposes, and neutralises political actors. His rhetoric, once rooted in labour rights, is now firmly aligned with ‘investment confidence’ and ‘market stability’. He has adjusted, not abandoned, his stance to suit the system. That system, unchanged in its fundamentals, continues to kill miners in silence while praising entrepreneurs in suits.

It is exactly this hypocrisy that dictates how states like South Africa have bypassed the call for sanctions on Israel. Where there is a buck to be made, social justice rhetoric will have to be sufficient for the masses.

The rainbow illusion and the capitalist blockade

Much like the myth of the Rainbow Nation, capitalism offers an illusion of harmony while ensuring that power and wealth remain deeply skewed. It promises meritocracy, growth, and choice – but only for those who can afford it. It presents itself as non-negotiable, a fixed horizon we must all work toward. But in reality, it is a boulder standing in the way of substantive change.

It is no coincidence that corruption thrives in this context. Capitalism’s open embrace of private wealth accumulation at all costs makes it uniquely vulnerable to abuse. State tenders become feeding troughs, politicians become dealmakers, and governance becomes indistinguishable from corporate lobbying. This is not a bug in the system. It is the system.

Moeletsi Mbeki’s call to bring capitalists into government reveals how far we have drifted from the liberation vision of collective ownership, dignity, and redistribution. Rather than reimagine society, he asks us to double down on a system that has already failed the vast majority.

Toward a new political imagination

The time has come to reject the idea that billionaires – Black or White – can save us. Real transformation will not come from the boardrooms of Sandton or Silicon Valley. It must come from below, from communities organising for land, water, housing, and work. From youth demanding an end to neoliberal austerity. From workers building new solidarities across the continent.

We must abandon the fantasy that capitalism can be tamed or turned toward justice. Its foundational logic – profit over people – cannot coexist with the values of equity, solidarity, or care.

The ANC’s 1955 Freedom Charter famously declared: ‘The people shall share in the country’s wealth.’ That promise remains unfulfilled – not because Black leaders have failed to govern, but because they have governed within a system that makes justice impossible.

Mariam Jooma Carikci is a Senior Researcher at the Media Review Network (MRN) in Johannesburg, focused on the politics of Africa, Zionism in Africa, and Türkiye’s evolving role in the Middle East and Africa.