Xi should lend Ramaphosa some of that tiger and fly repellant
Every time I looked this week, there was President Cyril Ramaphosa in a proper bromance with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. The love-in was no surprise. Xi touched down in his Air China jet bearing gifts. He has perfected the art of Guanxi — the exchange of gifts to boost connections and networks. It is how business is done in China. He pledged targeted investments of about R200-billion, a huge boost to Ramaphosa’s target to raise R1-trillion over five years. Then, Xi threw Eskom and Transnet lifeline loans as they battle with balance sheets depleted by the years of state capture engineered by the Gupta family network, assisted by their political patron, former president Jacob Zuma.
Last week, Chinese ambassador Lin Songtian said his country had already tallied up a cumulative $25-billion (R330-billion) investment in South Africa. Which means Xi almost doubled that on a single day, although it will come in only over the medium term. Trade between China and South Africa in 2017 was worth $39.17-billion, making China South Africa’s largest trading partner. We are now big chinas. This is no bad thing despite rooigevaar (the red peril raised by apartheid apparatchiks about the liberation movement’s relationship with the Soviet Union) ricocheting across social and other media as fearful people raise old fears of South Africa’s growing relationship with China.
China is planning foreign direct investment of $750-billion over the next five years and will import $8-trillion of goods and services, and while this offers opportunities for South Africa, the country will have to ensure its own self-interest is protected in the deepening relationship with China. In addition, this country would do well to take some pages from China’s book. For one thing: it plans centrally and then executes those plans. We have a wonderful National Development Plan which, in the main, has not been implemented since launching in 2012. If it had been, South Africa would be on a better growth and employment path.
In the same week as Xi’s visit, the ANC in Gauteng returned Brian Hlongwa, a former elected politician accused of R1.2-billion in mismanagement and possibly corruption, to a senior role in the party’s provincial leadership. It also returned Qedani Mahlangu, the political head of health when 144 state patients died in a tragic transfer from formal to informal care, to its provincial leadership. The list of compromised ANC cadres returned to leadership positions is long and shameful despite the party resolving many times that these leaders would lose their positions if guilty of failing the party’s ethical code. The code sets a higher bar than a conviction, which can take years to secure because the NPA has been so denuded in the Zuma era.
Xi is the architect of the Tigers and Flies anticorruption campaign, one of the Communist Party’s plans to halt graft, which threatened to hobble the country’s development programme as cronies and party officials cashed in on China’s stratospheric growth. Six years into its implementation, the plan has netted 120 high-ranking leaders guilty of corruption — so-called “tigers” or big men. The “flies” are local leaders also targeted. Critics say that Xi is taking out political opponents; others say it is factional politics wearing an antigraft mask. But the consensus is that he is serious about tackling corruption because he understands its impact on development. In South Africa, we are witness to how stolen public funds harm development. The national balance sheet which should support antipoverty and pro-employment programmes instead props up state-owned enterprises hobbled by the Gupta-Zuma and other networks.
The ANC has taken its entire top leadership to study the Chinese model but it has failed to come home and implement two essential programmes: to plan and implement; and to be ruthless with your corrupt tigers and flies.
[Xi] has perfected the art of Guanxi — the exchange of gifts to boost connections and networks