What could a liberal ‘fix’ do for SA?
II don’t mean to be rude. The DA has been brilliant using the courts to stop ANC excesses
’ve been asking friends recently when they complain about the state of the country and the deep incompetence of the ANC government what their alternatives might be. Almost inevitably, they complain about the poor standards of education in the country.
It’s an unsatisfactory answer. Lots of well-educated countries have rotten governments. And anyway, even if we all agreed that if our education standards must now match, say, Italy’s, it would take at least two generations to get there, no matter who the governing party was.
The thing liberals need to ask themselves is not merely how we fix things here now, not in 30 years. “Fix education” or “fix crime” or “fix transport” or “fix energy ”— these are all incredibly difficult to do especially now that key physical inheritances of 1994 have been allowed to wither. We’ve run out of time to make thoughtful strategy as we paddle to keep our heads above water. Fascists can also fix things. But the hard question is what a liberal response to an actual emergency like ours looks like. I don’t know, but I’m confident the answer lies in us all, as individuals. Sadly, there’s only one Chris Pappas.
Nationalists like the old apartheid government and the British colonialists and, now, the ANC, have no night sweats about what to do in a crisis. They are all tactics and no strategy. They dig in, admit no wrong and throw other people’s money at their problems.
The current big problem is how to get re-elected. Liberals like the DA have developed elaborate plans to “rescue” the country. Others are going to “fix” it. But not only are they not going to be the next government, even if they were, their rescues and fixes would take decades.
I don’t mean to be rude. The DA has been brilliant in using the courts tactically to stop ANC excesses, and I hope it does well in May. But the DA and the rest of the centrist opposition are up against it. Watch how effortlessly finance minister Enoch
Godongwana announced last Wednesday a R20 increase (to R370) in the social relief of distress
(SRD) grant paid to about
9-million people every month at a cost of R34bn a year. About 26-million people are on welfare.
Godongwana could have announced the increase in his budget just last month, so why now? Well, between then and now the ANC has been on the receiving end of some alarming electoral polling and a few municipal by-elections that show it under the most severe political pressure.
So, wooosh! Here’s new money for the rural party fodder. Easy as pie. All that pious warbling about fiscal responsibility as the government reached into the Reserve Bank’s foreign exchange savings for the first time ever was a smokescreen. The space it allows for higher spending on vital political tasks such as winning votes is now glaringly obvious.
Not that you begrudge the poor the money. It is too easy to forget how utterly miserable are the lives of most South Africans. But these are our people, and education is for the moment the least of their problems.
The problem is the sheer incompetence and venality of the ANC. Having paid off the poor it will soon announce an energy bonanza for cronies and funders when it finalises the integrated resource plan. A draft shows major increases in nuclear and natural-gas-fired electricity and pathetic increases in wind and solar, which are quicker and cheaper.
But vested interests rule. There are no new renewables, they say because there is not enough grid capacity. That’s nonsense. The whole of South Africa is good for renewables and the grid we already have is enough. The problem is that renewables tenders don’t generate big backhanders.
Would a liberal alternative dismantle for scrap the existing coal plant and replace it with massive solar, wind and battery which could the job just as well? And if not, why not? The consequent boost to economic growth would be breathtaking.
It’s renewables and the private sector that are getting Eskom and the ANC off the load-shedding hook as the elections approach and there’s no way the ANC would acknowledge that. There’s no saving Eskom but surely there’s a tough liberal way to make the point that markets and individual investment choices in wind or solar are, right now, emancipating us all.
Liberals need to lead with an economic voice that can show up the nationalist path for the threat it is. We risk cutting ourselves off from the export markets that sustain us unless we clean up our act. It has nothing to do with a “just transition” today and everything with a future for our kids tomorrow.