He met the Premier of China, the Premier of Vietnam. Their basic message to him, which dovetailed with what my thinking had been, was, ‘You are a liberation movement not a socialist party, how can you be talking about nationalisation when we leaders of the Communist Parties of Vietnam and China are talking privatisation, it doesn’t work.’ The Vietnamese fellow said, ‘Look, we have worked a lot with the ANC people over the years, they would know that in Vietnam we have a new economic policy and that means shifting away from state centred economic policies towards a mixture of state and private, and that we are moving towards market reforms and the role of the private sector.’
I think after that Madiba said ‘Nah!’ From Davos we went to Denmark, Sweden and Finland. When we were in Sweden he said, ‘When we go back home you guys must write a report to the officials, we must forget this nationalisation thing, but we must focus on the basic needs of our people.’
Return to 12.3 Economy
Return to 12.3 Economy