Take charge, Mr President, and do it now
In January 1979, then British prime minister Jim Callaghan arrived back in a cold London after a brief summit in the sunshine in Guadeloupe. British politics was in turmoil. Callaghan led a Labour government. The unions were on strike. There were power cuts. Garbage, I remember, piled two storeys high in Leicester Square in London as the government tried to keep the lid on pay rises.
On hearing that the press was waiting for him at Heathrow Airport, Callaghan decided to hold an impromptu press conference. This way he would show he was back to take charge of the situation.
Sadly, he underappreciated how angry the British public were. He made jokes about swimming in the Caribbean. A reporter asked him what he thought about the mounting crisis at home.
Callaghan was a jovial man, uncomfortable with hurting the feelings of others. “You’re perhaps taking rather a parochial view at the moment,” he said to the reporter. “I don’t think that other people in the world would share the view that there is a mounting crisis.”
The next morning The Sun newspaper (circulation then about 5-million) carried one of its most famous headlines: “Crisis? What crisis?” The subhead below read “Rail, lorry jobs chaos – and Jim blames Press.” Within months the Conservatives had won a general election and Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.
This morning President Cyril Ramaphosa arrives home from a summit in China, in the dying of their summer. The Chinese have a lot of time for Ramaphosa. He’s their guy. They never trusted Jacob Zuma — Vladimir Putin can have him.
Xi Jinping has Cyril’s back, which is quite something considering what Donald Trump has done to America’s standing in the world. And it’s reciprocated. Ramaphosa admires what the Chinese have done. He likes the way they run their state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and he has spent more than one visit touring them and talking about them. He is writing a master’s thesis on SOEs through Unisa and the Chinese will come out of it well, you can be sure.
And unlike 1979 Britain, some things here are going well. Commissions of inquiry into past corruption are throwing new light on our recent past and must be strengthening his position. Enemies are being taken out. Supra Mahumapelo, Tom Moyane, Shaun Abrahams. All gone. Jacob Zuma and his son face trial. The opposition is all over the place.
But like Britain in 1979, we are nevertheless in crisis. Figures confirm this week we are in recession. Not a “technical recession” as the radio keeps telling us. You’re “technically dead” when your heart stops beating but you’re also just dead. There’s nothing “technical” about it. We are in recession, period. Consumer confidence is low. The purchasing managers’ index, which measures future purchasing by companies, is off the charts low.
Unemployment is at record highs and our currency is testing lows last felt when Zuma installed the ridiculous Des van Rooyen as finance minister for a few mad days in December 2015. It now costs more than R20 to buy a British pound, more than R15 to buy a dollar. It means paying back our humungous debt will cost more rands, the import of capital goods required to kick-start some kind of recovery becomes prohibitively expensive, and we have no budget in the military, public works or public enterprises to create new demand that in turn might help local manufacturing or services.
It is a mess, and when you add to the scenario continued unease about and, frankly, complete ignorance of, the future of land ownership in the country, it is understandable that the economy’s shoulders would droop, as they have. And in a move that is just asking for real trouble down the road, we have now begun to subsidise the price of fuel. I cannot think of anything quite so stupid.
Except, perhaps, land expropriation without compensation without explanation. For how long does the president expect the country’s farmers and homeowners to wait for a convenient time for him to say what he means by making the constitution more “explicit” on expropriation without compensation? The longer he waits the more emotions will get out of control and the tougher the job he will have keeping his authority intact.
Already his pledge that there will be no land grabs under his presidency is being made hollow. There is land being grabbed in the south of Johannesburg, in Hammanskraal, in Limpopo — and it isn’t being taken back by the police. Why not, Mr President? Surely the police have standing orders on this?
And it’s not going to help telling people to wait for the medium-term budget policy statement in six weeks’ time. Six weeks is too long.
When you land today, Mr President, do what Jim Callaghan wanted to do all those years ago. Take charge. People want to see you lead. Not after an election but now, before one.
Say want you mean about land. Say what you want to do with Eskom and the SOEs.
Don’t worry about what Julius Malema might do or say. You’re boxing your own shadow. Rather give us some clarity about where our country is going.
You’d be amazed how well people respond to straight talk.
PEOPLE WANT TO SEE YOU LEAD. NOT AFTER AN ELECTION BUT NOW, BEFORE ONE. SAY WANT YOU MEAN ABOUT LAND. SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITH THE SOEs
Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.