Let’s hope for a clearer vision of the future after the elections

As is always the case this time of the year, all eyes were on Cape Town this past week as the city hosted two events that could have far-reaching consequences for our country and the continent. While the official opening of parliament — the highlight being President Cyril Ramaphosa’s last state of the nation address for his first term — may have hogged the headlines, the phenomenal success of this year’s Investing in Africa Mining Indaba gives hope that Africa’s economic development agenda is on track. The continent is endowed with abundant natural resources and with the world transitioning from carbon-intensive economies to renewables to prevent the overheating of the planet, Africa finds itself home to some of the key metals critical for the net-zero emissions targets that have been set for 2050. Along with South America, the continent accounts for some of the largest deposits of what are now known as the metals of the future: copper, nickel, platinum and lithium, among others.

The three-day deliberations at the Indaba, attended by more than 11,000 delegates, saw top executives from mining companies around the world talking to governments, regulators and suppliers about the opportunities and threats facing our country and the continent. Those deliberations would not have been complete without tough discussions of our country’s well-known structural challenges — energy, logistics, safety and the lack of ease of doing business. While it is clear that we remain significant in the global mining equation, alarm bells are ringing due to our failure to resolve some structural issues.

On the ease of doing business, at last there has been some promising movement on the part of the government. A week before the Indaba, mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe announced that a consortium led by Canadian company Pacific GeoTech Systems is to steer the long-awaited mining resource management system, or cadastre. The system modernises the administration of exploration activities, and once in service will help clear a backlog of 2,500 mining rights applications on which Mantashe’s department is sitting. Better late than never, so we applaud this move.

There was also general consensus that coal mining remains the bedrock of the South African economy, not just providing 80% of our energy needs, but still a key export commodity.

However, those who attended the Indaba would find that the optimism expressed that levels of load-shedding would decrease significantly this year will be severely tested after Eskom’s surprise decision to take the country back to stage 6 this weekend.

It was the generally enthusiastic mood at the Indaba that would have encouraged Ramaphosa, speaking in parliament a few days later, to describe the country’s mining industry as a “sunrise industry”.

But much of its possible success, and the success of the entire economy, is dependent on good governance, political stability and a clear vision of where the country is going. This is what most citizens, the business community and other stakeholders wanted to hear about when the president addressed the joint sitting of parliament on Thursday night. But it being an election year and the 30th anniversary of South Africa attaining political freedom and democracy, it was always unlikely that the president’s speech would pay much attention to the future.

Like his predecessors before him, he chose to use the last Sona of his term to defend his track record in office — linking it to the successes of previous administrations since 1994. It is a strategy that would probably gain him and his party some votes among those who consider themselves direct beneficiaries of the post-apartheid order.

But it is a strategy that provides no comfort to South Africans who are looking to the government to come up with policies to rescue the country from excessively high unemployment, growing economic inequality, rising poverty and sociopolitical instability.

In the next few days the president will announce the date of the election, officially declaring the start of electioneering season. During that period, political parties — including the ruling party — will make a lot of promises that are meant to win the hearts and minds of the electorate, even if they do not actually help to solve the country’s problems. That is the nature of politics in a democratic system. There is little we can do about that.

What we hope for, however, is that once the elections are over and a president is chosen in parliament, he or she will use his or her first address to the new parliament to set a much clearer vision for the country than we have encountered in the last few years.