ZUMA’S GRAND STAND

The MK Party manifesto offers a laundry list of big promises but nary a notion of how to fund them. That’s unsurprising, coming from the ANC’s RET spin-off

Despite promises of a manifesto launch, April 6 came and went with little to show from Jacob Zuma’s MK Party. Then, on Friday, the party quietly dropped a 24-page manifesto on its website.

It’s exactly what you’d expect from the radical economic transformation offshoot of the ANC: expropriation of all land without compensation, nationalisation (of the Reserve Bank, mines, banks, insurance companies, ArcelorMittal South Africa and Sasol), reversing privatisation, undoing the “unjust” transition, unwinding a state apparatus beholden to white monopoly capital, and ridding the country of an “alien capitalist culture”.

Then there are the big-ticket items: the introduction of a R1,558 basic income grant (the current social relief of distress grant is R370), pushing up the child support grant to R760 (from R530) and the old age grant to R4,500 (from R2,200), and providing a minimum salary of R4,500 to all who are willing and able to work.

An MK government would provide housing, cheap electricity, water and transport, as well as “developmentally priced petroleum” (go figure). It will invest in military equipment, research & development, law enforcement, education and public transport. It will subsidise taxis and recapitalise the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), Denel and Armscor. It will offer free education up to postgraduate level and fund PhDs, and provide an annual health screening for each South African. And the list goes on …

A lot of very grand promises, in other words, with nary a notion of how to fund them.

There are some random undertakings thrown in too. In the “natural resources” section, there’s a promise to ensure financial reparations for colonialism and apartheid. In the “reclaiming dignity” section, a statement about introducing a year of compulsory military service for 18-year-old South Africans. And, out of nowhere, a pledge to restructure the legal profession.

And the entirely random inclusion, to illustrate how devastating our unemployment is, of comparisons with Palestine, Djibouti and Kosovo.

There’s also a tour through the bizarre. For a manifesto so determined to break with the past, there’s a suggestion that parliament be reconstituted as a popularly elected lower house, and an upper house comprising “indigenous kings, queens and traditional leaders”. House of Lords, anyone?

And a proposed referendum on scrapping the “neoliberal” constitution because it “constrains the political power of the majority” and offers “extensive legal protections for the former oppressor”. Along with everyone else. Don’t forget a referendum on the death penalty. Dignity above all else, right?

It’s hard to take seriously a document emanating from the bowels of Nkandla. Particularly when it talks of moral degeneration and “deliberately collapsed” state-owned entities as if they’re a new thing, not the result of a sustained period of state capture under the great man himself. The multiple references to “crass materialism” obviously in no way refer to fire pools.

There are, of course, specifically Zuma-focused provisions. Like the one that will ensure the Prudential Authority “oversees banks to ensure transparent handling of reputational risks, enabling citizens critical of the state to engage in economic activities without fear of arbitrary bank account closures”. It’s unsurprising, given the recent freeze of Zuma’s accounts due to that small matter of unsettled debt and the woes his Gupta pals faced when their accounts were closed.

And promises that offer pause for thought. Like the one about accelerating Eskom’s nuclear build programme.

How are the Russians these days, anyway? And about engaging “with foreign partners to provide technical support to get locomotives moving”. Perhaps a second bite at the Prasa/ Transnet apple for state capture-implicated China South Rail?

All hat and no cattle

Mostly, though, the manifesto feels like an opportunity to yell at the administration of Zuma’s nemesis, President Cyril Ramaphosa. Using what feel like hasty Google searches for supporting evidence, it points to how the government has failed to build homes, fix transport and pay sufficient grants. It’s subservient to the white population. Schools are underfunded; poverty, inequality and unemployment are rising. BEE has failed, prisons are failing and neoliberal policies have failed. It has failed to create any corporate “unicorns” (Iqbal Survé, is that you?).

While that may all be true, MK gives scant detail on how it is going to deliver on anything. Its promises all require an economy on steroids. Yet the best it can offer is a wish list presented as statement of fact. It will end austerity and neoliberalism, it will reorientate fiscal policy to support SMMEs; “macroprudential, fiscal, monetary policies” will solve everything. It will accumulate foreign reserves and set up a sovereign wealth fund, eliminate reliance on foreign direct investment and redraft the national development plan on a “scientific” basis. It will “‘window guide’ all credit creation using revised Basel risk-weights to support productive activities, Black people, women, and youth owned businesses in tradeable sectors”. Exactly.

At least when it promises nationalisation and expropriation without compensation (which the dastardly constitution does, incidentally, provide for) it’s clear how these will be achieved. But to get the economy moving

and to fund the laundry list of promises well, there’s really nothing.

In all, the document is a bit like Zuma’s pretensions to return to the Union Buildings utterly divorced from reality.