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Middle class does not care about equality, they are educated to conform: Analyst

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As the ANC National Policy Conference comes to an end, political analyst Angelo Fick says the trust in the good wishes and intentions of the middle class may be misguided. He says the hope for issues afflicting the world does not lie in the middle class or middle class education. 

One of the points discussed by the ANC at its 6th National Policy Conference in Nasrec is ways to attract the middle class into its structures. This comes on the back of ongoing debates about the middle class and the criticism it often faces being accused of being ready to complain but never ready to participate in politics.  

Adding to the criticism against the middle class, Fick has argued that the group is not interested in equality because it wouldn’t be able to live the kind of life it lives if inequality ended. 

“Much of South Africa’s middle class is very much about consumption. It’s about consuming, aspiring to and displaying a certain kind of lifestyle,” says Fick. 

Fick has put issues of class in society and the protection of those classes at the centre of the inequalities in South Africa and the rest of the world.  

He says, “When our politicians are sent into class positions much more like those who own the means of production, their interests align with the people who own the means of production, thus not serving people’s interests,” says Fick. 

Fick has lambasted the education system in the country saying it has deliberately created functionally illiterate people in order to protect the class system.

Political Analyst Susan Booysen says it is a serious indictment on the ANC that they feel the middle class is no longer in their ranks.

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