ANC has run out of ideas
NO NEW DAWN: CONFERENCE SHOWS BLURRY POLICIES
We need to tell the ruling class that politics has proved to be unsafe in shaping our economic future.
SA’s return to stagnation, recession and continued rising unemployment can’t be reversed by the fashionable theory of radical economic transformation or “agreements on various developmental matters that would be of advantage to South Africa”, as said in a Presidency statement after the G20 Summit.
High unemployment has become chronic and almost unresponsive even in the smallest of growths. It poses the single biggest threat to the whole social order and the political survival of whatever government holds future office.
Depending on one’s perspective, it’s possible an explosion will be triggered later this year in the contagion that may follow the ANC electing new leaders in December. It’s possible President Jacob Zuma’s camp will deepen their hold on the ANC and enable Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to emerge victorious.
The recent ANC conference again showed us how those ruling SA appear to have run out of ideas and don’t quite know how to kickstart the economic machine – let alone come up with succinct policies to fuel the machine. If anything, speeches from the gathering were blurred, rhetorical and imaginary, so policy never engages with specific national conditions or variations in a specific sector. For example, I’m yet to read or hear anything convincing or realistic regarding employment policy strategy focused on the young and how it’ll deliver the said objectives.
We’re now deep in the belly of an economy that’s not only ground to a halt: it actively shrinks, government debt rises and soon it leads to the probability of seeking help from what Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba referred to as “quarters we have thus far avoided”, interpreted as the IMF.
As I see it, there’s no new dawn in sight when it comes resuscitating the economy or turning things around. They’ve done the opposite by chocking any hope of recovery through radical economic transformation rhetoric versus economic reality. An example is the policy uncertainty brought on by the new Mining Charter versus the realities of a rapidly declining industry.
Winning political wars but losing economic battles carries a heavy penalty; the “social loss” of a crumbling economy is carried by society.
When ideological blindness, vested interests and the political inertia creates policies that fail to respond to economic challenges, we pay the price.
The future requires us to boldly tell the ruling class that the not-so-invisible hand of politics has proven unsafe in shaping our economic future.
The notion that we’re all inescapably hostage to the powerful hand of politics over the experienced reality of a failing economy (retrenchments, high costs of living, poor health and education outcomes) is totally fallacious.
Against the backdrop of the ANC policy conference, we must remind them of the subtlety often missed in policy debate: there’s a difference between public decisions and collective decisions.
They’re entitled to their collective decisions but they must not subject us to ill-considered policies based on an idealised and aspirational economy instead of tackling the real challenges of our lived reality.