New logo, same old plan
Planning Minister Jeff Radebe has vowed to revitalise the government’s hopes to achieve universal happiness in South Africa
All the National Development Plan (NDP) needed, it turns out, w a s mo r e d a n c i n g girls. Also some graffiti and, most importantly, a “memorable” logo.
Until Sunday those elements were missing from the centrepiece of government policy, the NDP that promises to bring about a new age in 2030. As a result, the citizenry — especially the youth — may have mistakenly thought the NDP moribund. That, vowed Planning Minister Jeff Radebe this week, will change.
“Our government commits to creating an awareness about the NDP and all its programmes,” Radebe said on Sunday, speaking from a flickering video screen set up right behind the real-life Radebe in an often bizarre launch of an “NDP brand identity”.
“We shall do this by uniting all of government initiatives and its programme of action under one umbrella to be seen as effective and measurable,” said video Radebe, before urging the nation to “raise awareness” of the NDP “by mobilising the nation around the NDP identity”.
Radebe was not the only one with perceptions on his mind.
“This issue of the NDP gathering dust is mainly a perception that is held, and I think it is also essentially partially because of the absence of energetic communication,” said Buti Manamela, Radebe’s deputy.
Both were speaking in front of government logos interspersed with the slogan “Together we move South Africa forward”, the ANC 2014 election slogan that in turn owed much to a prior Standard Bank advertising campaign.
Neither made use of the teleprompter screens set up and then removed again 10 minutes before they arrived for the event. Occasionally, Radebe said, plans had to change in their detail.
The NDP is about a quarter of the way in, from its launch in 2012 to its expiration in 2030, when its goals of universal happiness for all South Africans are due to be met.
The wide-ranging plan has been controversial since before its launch, with ruling alliance partners trade union federation Cosatu and the South African Communist Party among its fiercest critics. It has drawn fire from those in the inner circle of government, occasionally even on the record; a year ago, the deputy public works minister, Jeremy Cronin, decried the “cringeworthy poetry” of the document.
The section that so got Cronin’s goat, “our leaders’ wisdom is ours, because we sense our wisdom in theirs”, got a fresh airing at Sunday’s launch.
Does the NDP now have universal support? “Yes, a big yes,” said reallife Radebe to the question. The ANC has adopted it, government has adopted it, the ANC’s alliance partners are “in line” and all is well. Cue the dancing girls. In a “brand activation” of the NDP’s new look, a small group of diplomats and government staffers were treated to a poetry performance that dealt with butterflies rooted in mountains; 10 young girls dancing energetically to the Shakira 2010 Fifa World Cup theme song Waka Waka ( This Time for Africa); six older people dancing slightly less energetically to the same song; and a karaoke trio with a song about a beautiful place called South Africa. All while a gas-masked graffiti artist wielded spray paint to add white and black highlights to a purple blob above humanoid figures of different colours holding hands on a canvas just offstage.
The NDP is for everyone, Manamela had indicated earlier, before continuing a speech almost entirely about young people.
Other than the performers’ general approval of South Africa, it was not immediately clear how all this related to the NDP. However, the new NDP logo — “very modern, dynamic, yet bold and legible,” video Radebe had explained earlier — was displayed legibly on the T-shirts and caps worn by a production troupe that put on a short eduplay about the NDP, only occasionally interrupted by the distinctive sound of a spray paint can being shaken vigorously.
The NDP, the edu-performers proclaimed after some consideration, “can make us achieve economic freedom in our lifetime!”
Radebe did not flinch visibly at this broadcast, from a stage he had arranged, of a slogan the Economic Freedom Fighters appropriated