SOCIAL CONTRACT:
The people and the state must enter into one if we are to develop this country, Tshilidzi Marwala writes
Alot has been said about the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment besetting SA. The problem that is not being mentioned is that the country suffers from the erosion of the legitimacy of the state. In The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau defines a social contract as an agreement between a government and its people, whereby people give power to the government in exchange for the protection of their rights. If the government misuses that power, people should replace the government.
In SA, we have not succeeded in building a viable social contract. To get out of the social and economic quagmire that we find ourselves in, we need a new social contract.
Our people must play their part. For example, the dirty streets so ubiquitous in our towns and cities indicate that state-owned companies such as Pikitup might not be effective in picking up the garbage. However, it also means that our people — who have a duty to keep our environment clean — are not taking it seriously.
Recently, a photograph showed people destroying a highway with picks and shovels. Predictably, the root of their grievancewas a failure in service delivery.
The fact that citizens who have the power to employ and dismiss the government through democratic means are resorting to violence and anarchy to get government services means our democracy needs serious introspection.
If we do not nurture democracies by strengthening the social contract, they will disintegrate.
SA’s economic challenges require a social contract to resolve it. Our tax collection has dropped by almost R300bn. Our civil service is bloated and inefficient, and the unemployment rate is 29%. Soon enough we shall have a crisis in our balance of payments, and, consequently, our shops will become empty. This is what happened in Zimbabwe, where even if you have money, you cannot use it.
So, what is to be done? Firstly, SA needs to reform its public sector. Recently, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union demanded that a salary increase agreed upon three years ago should be honoured. This is even though there is a significant drop in tax revenue due to the Covid-19 pandemic. If the social contract was strong, would the workers not recognise that the situation is not ripe for salary increases?
Secondly, there is a call to fundamentally restructure the public sector. The real concern is that the public service is fundamentally inefficient. It is a given that reorganisation of the sector and control of public expenditure are vital in the context of low economic growth. The expected outcome of restructuring the public sector is organisational efficiency and effectiveness. This requires a careful analysis of how departments are structured, in a way that speaks to our current context. The call is not for new public management but the redefinition of the public service for the world of the fourth industrial revolution.
Thirdly, there needs to be a move to increase local production. This requires limiting the import of luxury goods in favour of imports that can be used for production.
In his maiden state of the nation address in 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa wore a locally made suit to make an impassioned argument for local
‘We need to create a culture of meritocracy, where political power is a consolidation of individuals who exhibit talent and achievement rather than wealth, nepotism or patronage’
production. Cape Town and Durban were once big hubs for textile production and clothing manufacturing for consumption by South Africans. However, with greater global availability and ease of supply chain management, cost became a significant factor, and our policies in the government put a nail in the coffin of the clothing manufacturing industry.
In the past few decades, manufacturing’s contribution to GDP has dropped significantly, effectively resulting in the deindustrialisation of SA.
Fourthly, we need to increase local agricultural production by deploying the digital technologies of the fourth industrial revolution. SA has become reliant on food imports. The fourth industrial revolution does not merely provide tools for efficiency, it presents a unique opportunity to interrogate how we can transform the industry as our natural environment deteriorates. For instance, artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to combat disease and pests, which have been made worse by climate change and pesticide use.
Fifthly, we need to remodel our parastatals, which are largely inefficient and drain the public purse. For instance, we have an almost dysfunctional Post Office, which has not moved with the times. The world has changed, and with it the post office has been assigned different functions, such as payment of licences, courier services and limited savings accounts. Locally, post offices have not been remodelled or restructured.
This is not an argument for the privatisation of these functions, which takes away from the public good. Instead, it calls for repurposing and repositioning of models in meaningful ways based on the fitness-for-purpose principle.
For instance Denel, which is the largest manufacturer of defence equipment in SA and operates in the military aerospace and landward defence environment, could start producing consumer goods, making it a viable business model.
Sixthly, we need to reduce wastage and curb corruption. The Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture and recent arrests by the Hawks provide us with insight into the billions looted from the public purse.
With newtechnology it is possible to have ironclad systems. For example, we can deploy AI systems to analyse data from multiple sources and identify irregular activities associated with third parties, employees and customers. AI is much more proficient atwading through e-mails, text messages
or audio files. The technology is premised on its ability to recognise patterns and thus to identify anomalies. It can also predict future risks and identify fault lines where corruption is possible.
Finally, to achieve this, we need to create a culture of meritocracy. In a meritocracy, political power is a consolidation of individuals who exhibit talent and achievement rather than wealth, nepotism or patronage. In other words, we hire and reward those who are the most competent rather than the most connected.
For instance, in the US, following the assassination of president James Garfield, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was passed, requiring government jobs to be awarded on merit based on competitive exams, rather than political ties. In
China, the emphasis is placed on education, examinations and political experience at lower levels of the government, which is then carried into higher levels of the government.
These are solutions that can be posited if we are to restore the legitimacy of the state in SA. For
Rousseau, the survival of the country is the only guarantee of liberty, but this requires the people to guard that liberty and not relinquish their freedoms.
As Rousseau put it: “As soon as any man says of the affairs of the state, ‘What does it matter to me?’, the state may be given up for lost.”