{"id":172209,"date":"2017-04-25T10:57:57","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T08:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=172209"},"modified":"2017-04-25T10:57:57","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T08:57:57","slug":"white-people-need-to-apologise-for-the-wealth-they-have-acquired-ramphele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/172209\/white-people-need-to-apologise-for-the-wealth-they-have-acquired-ramphele\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;White people need to apologise for the wealth they have acquired&#8217; &#8211; Ramphele"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former politician, and vice-chancellor at the University of Cape Town, Mamphela Ramphele says that white South Africans should apologise for the wealth they have acquired.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacarandafm.com\/shows\/the-complimentary-breakfast-with-rian-van-heerden\/mamphela-ramphele-white-people-need-apologise-wealth-they-have-acquired\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">JacarandaFM<\/a> on Tuesday (25 April), the former activist said: &#8220;White people have to acknowledge that the colour coded system of the past, privileged them, gave them advantages which the majority of the people don&#8217;t have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now the issue is not to take away what&#8217;s there, but to acknowledge, and then to work together to deal with the consequences of a country where the majority of people are unskilled.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to Ramphele, 60% &#8211; 65% of the country&#8217;s wealth is currently in the hands of 10% of the population. &#8220;And 80% of that 10% is white,&#8221; the former politician said. &#8220;We need to start with the fact base, and then we say, how do we bring that down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ramphele founded political party Agang South Africa in February 2013, but withdrew from politics in July 2014.<\/p>\n<p>The businesswoman also defended her own wealth accumulation &#8211; reported at R55 million. &#8220;I have spent 50 years working in this country. That R55 million is nothing compared to what you collectively have.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When interviewer Rian van Heerden said that Ramphele was a beneficiary of Black Economic Empowerment, she said: &#8220;So, what&#8217;s wrong with that? I worked for it and I don&#8217;t have any guilt.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Wealth distribution is not about people who have worked hard like me, being asked to distribute, when people who inherited wealth just simply aren&#8217;t making a contribution.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;White people need to apologise for the wealth they have acquired without having to work for it,&#8221; Ramphele said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/general\/172203\/white-people-in-south-africa-still-hold-the-lions-share-of-all-forms-of-capital\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">White people in South Africa still hold the lion\u2019s share of all forms of capital<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former politician, and vice-chancellor at the University of Cape Town, Mamphela Ramphele says that white South Africans should apologise for the wealth they have acquired.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":172213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-172209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172209"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172231,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172209\/revisions\/172231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}