SA has lost its standing at global gatherings like World Economic Forum
Heady optimism of Mandela's new state has given way to endless litany of lost opportunities, broken promises and unfulfilled potential
The World Economic Forum is an international platform designed to facilitate interaction between leading business, political and other global leaders with the a view to creating a more habitable planet.
In its economic forum gatherings, which take place at the beginning of each year, the forum sets the agenda for world leaders on matters that affect the environment, economic development and other related challenges. Not least of these would be geopolitics.
In its own publications, the WEF boasts of its ability to bring together “decision-makers from across society to work on projects and initiatives that make a real difference” and that “our meetings and projects bring together top leaders from all around the world in an atmosphere of trust”.
But this article is not about profiling the WEF, it is intended to trigger conversations about SA’S role and relationship with the forum.
The forum says it “engages the most experienced and the most promising, all working together...” But between the “experienced” and the “promising”, one wonders which SA attended the 2023 session.
To resolve this question, one must track the country’s standing in international relations since the birth of the democratic SA.
This journey must be traced using the periods from 1994 to 2007 as well as 2008 to 2023.
The realm of international geopolitics and the birth of democratic SA presented tantalising strategic opportunities to a variety of interest groupings.
With international icon for justice Nelson Mandela as president, everyone sought to whisper something to the ear of the great man.
Some offered assistance and support for the new project of rebuilding SA, others to lobby for the country’s endorsement of their cause and protection of their interests.
Riding on the crest of the wave of “reconciliation” and “ubuntu” that underpinned his presidency, Mandela’s SA easily fitted the WEF’S focus on the “promising”.
This SA had a very compelling story to tell, to share with the rest of the world, especially conflict-ridden parts of the world.
Mandela’s SA was an attractive guest to entertain, and a credible source to learn from on the critical subject of rebuilding, reconciling and reopening.
It would have been with this massive dose of credibility that Mandela’s SA took to the podia in the various commissions of the WEF.
Mandela’s 1999 address to the forum was a proud expression of SA’S progress since the democratic breakthrough.
He declared SA ready and willing to join hands with the world to achieve social stability based on socio-economic development, tolerance, collective wisdom and democracy.
SA was ready to join the world to provide safe communities and human rights, and all this easily resonated with international decision-makers in both politics and economics.
On the strength of the country’s leadership credibility, platforms like the WEF and participants therein embraced the “promise” that the democratic SA represented.
In no time, the country was at the centre of peace initiatives across continents.
On the back of positive human development indicators from the strict policy discipline of the mid-1990s which saw the local economy opening to international trade, international investment interest grew.
This standing among nations ran until about 2012 when unease began to set in as to the country’s readiness to deliver on the ideals of a united, prosperous society.
Addressing the OR Tambo centenary celebrations at the University of Fort Hare in 2012, Thabo Mbeki lamented an apparent slide to “directionlessness” as far as the country’s standing went as a strategic partner to world peace.
A few months before, Mbeki had warned “our country could lose its ability to defend its possibility to be an exemplar of resolute African independence, self-determination and African pride, as did Ethiopia during an earlier period of Africa’s struggle for her emancipation”.
SA had appended its signature to a UN resolution that paved the way for western forces to invade Libya and hunt down and finally murder its leader, Muammar Gaddafi.
In previous diplomatic crises, the country had propagated for “home-grown solutions to internal problems”.
Domestically, critical human development indicators have not been providing good reading.
The high rates of enrolment into the education system are trumped by qualitative indicators like the percentage rate of pupils who make it to the last grade of basic education as a fraction of those entering the system. The horrors of the corruption-riddled Gauteng healthcare system are hardly news.
From the 2021 quarterly figures of Stats SA on employment it has been apparent that the country faces a ticking time bomb.
For the second quarter of 2021 we saw more than half a million people losing employment.
The year-on-year change in full-time employment at the end of the third quarter of 2022 decreased by 0.4%.
To add to all of these other depressing statistics, the country has degenerated into a sense of uncertainty regarding energy supply.
The spates of load-shedding, the destruction these visit on small businesses, the attendant loss of certainty, loss of jobs, loss of income have become more than just embarrassing or depressing, they have become a potential source of civil distress.
All of these are to accentuate how different the 2023 message is that SA took to Davos.
Critically, one wonders if SA went to Davos as a champion of a tomorrow that would be better, or as “a piglet that used to scoff at its muddy older folks, only later to become a champion in the pigs’ mudslinging”.
Having been a doyen of democratic fundamentals and respect for human rights, the 2023 SA went to Davos with embarrassing blemishes such as inadequate schools infrastructure.
Recent cases of young children who die after falling into pit latrines make this point abundantly clear.
Albert Einstein is recorded as having counselled that, “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.”
On the basis of this counsel, we are to fathom the presence of opportunity in the midst of the everyday depressing accounts as cited above.
Where Einstein’s counsel sounds too optimistic, the Bible offers 1 Peter (1:3-6) in which the Lord reassures that, “In God’s great mercy ... rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials”.
Even as one invokes providence, the abundance of hopelessness is traceable to apparent leadership disorientation on matters like the energy crisis, youth unemployment and a crumbling infrastructure.
In the present socio-economic quagmire, the critical roleplayers have done no more than reiterate long-held positions on the likely solutions to the economic crisis the country faces as a result of which it could only have gone to Davos as a basket case seeking the sympathies of big brothers.
We have already become trusted clients of the World Bank and the IMF.
If the history of these two institutions is anything to go by, the country will soon be saddled with foreign socio-economic “solutions”, the austerity measures imposed as terms of loan repayments.
The country has lost a glorious opportunity to conceptualise a “social compact” that would invigorate all role-players to put the proverbial shoulder to the wheel.
Instead, it appears the immediate focus is on legitimising failed projects like Nedlac, whose biggest achievements saddle the state with handouts that masquerade as social interventions to avert poverty. There has been very little expression of commitment to make profound sacrifices with a view to expanding the revenue base from which the country can stimulate the desperately needed economic recovery.
While “Rome” burns, some players continue to behave like the ostrich which buries its head in the sand and conducts itself on the basis what it sees from that vantage point.
While we hide behind halfcooked ideological recitations, the enemy (social ills that breed contempt) is advancing. Youth unemployment, terrible education outcomes and a dormant civil society place the country on the precipice.
Countries that have managed to make the turn for the better have managed to get all parties to commit to make some basic sacrifices in order to grow the pie from which social interventions must come.
In the Buffalo City Metro business are making far-reaching proposals about ameliorating the effects of load-shedding.
It is such radical considerations which the country’s roleplayers must be daring enough to consider. Anything other than parties offering sacrifices will only perpetuate our economic woes. Time is simply not on our side.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s decision to skip the 2023 Davos trip is commendable, but, as the Sowetan pointed out, it is what he does in the immediate future that will make that move graduate from commendable to genius.
Part of what he needs to do is challenge all economic roleplayers to commit to a minimalist economic recovery programme.
Otherwise, we may as well close shop, throw the boiled water away because the chicken will have bolted. I hope he has a plan.
The spates of load-shedding, the destruction these visit on small businesses, the attendant loss of certainty, loss of jobs, loss of income have become more than just embarrassing or depressing, they have become a potential source of civil distress
Dispatch in Dialogue is a weekly feature where thought leaders will tackle topical issues. If you have any subject that you strongly feel must be debated, please send an e-mail to enerstm@dispatch.co.za