Policy conference shapes future SA

It would be easy to dismiss the ANC’s National Policy Conference (NPC), which concludes tomorrow, as just another political talkshop. But that would be a misguided, or even dangerous, attitude to adopt by anyone who cares about what this country will look like in 10 years’ time. For, make no mistake, the raft of decisions from the NPC will chart the course of South Africa over the next decade.

Those policies will, if implemented as they have been proposed and approved by the thousands of delegates to the NPC, see a radically changed country – whether or not Jacob Zuma and his family and cronies are in charge or not.

That is because the reality is that, the wishful thinking of some urban elites and minorities aside, the ANC is unlikely to be unseated as the government in the near future. If anything, the conference and the confident attitude of Zuma and his acolytes showed Number One is still large and in charge.

The debate over Zuma and his unhealthy relationship with the Gupta family has obscured the detail of the policies debated at the NPC. These will bring about far-reaching changes in health, education, mining, banking and the very social fabric of our country.

The moves towards wider re-distribution of land are likely to become more, not less, potent and some of our bastions of stability and democracy, such as the courts and the Reserve Bank, are likely to come under increasing fire from an ANC hell-bent on “radical transformation”.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that a huge amount of work and thought went into the policy documents – the ANC claims no other party has done as much, and there is nothing to contradict that claim.

That alone gives us some hope that South Africa’s future might be more than a political slogan.