Past injustices and present failures a toxic blend

THIS is my penultimate column for Business Day. In the few years I have written the column, my perspectives on macro and public policy have oscillated. This is entirely consistent with the challenges facing SA. A senior Chinese policy maker once described China’s public policy approach as like crossing a river: one feels one’s way by stepping gingerly on the river floor, shifting direction and even moving backwards if necessary. Policy making, then, is much like strategy — you figure out the terrain, audit your capabilities and competencies, plot a route and the rest is how you practically navigate it; to paraphrase John Maynard Keynes, when the terrain changes, I change my approach.

Public policy in SA is a complicated affair, made more so by the need most of us have for reductive critiques or desires. The combination of terrible past injustices and contemporary policy failures blend into toxic suboptimal outcomes that have most of us shouting for ideologically inspired and biased interventions. Education is a useful example of a public policy area where there are complex dynamics but, for most of us, simple solutions. For instance, many people believe education in SA is well funded relative to other areas. The reality is more nuanced.

Under apartheid, SA spent 20 times more on educating white children than it did on black children. In 2008, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted something that an old friend of mine used to vehemently argue: that we are not spending enough relative to apartheid’s backlog. Government spending over the past 15 years has averaged 6% of gross domestic product, which is in fact in line with the OECD recommendation. The OECD made the point that “we should not be discouraged by the fact that, thus far, there seems to be a poor correlation between education spending and learning outcomes. Major education investments and reforms need time to settle down and bear fruit.”

Of course, the real challenge of public funding is not simply allocation but quality of management, including expenditure. The manner and drivers of perverse behaviours in education are too complex for this column, or indeed my level of understanding. Suffice it to say that the real obstacle to navigating the undeniable historical fault lines is the supremacy of politics over the needs of our children and sustainable solutions to lower- ing inequality. The point, really, is that those who argue that we are overspending do not appreciate the genuine structural realities, and those who argue we should spend more are being glib about the fact that more money provided to those who are not concerned about the quality of expenditure will not result in improved outcomes.

This is the crux of our public policy in general. There are deep canyons born out of a past established on 10% of the population enjoying the leverage of 90% of the population being indentured and tactical labour and legislatively denied economic franchise. It will take more than simply normalising the situation to make up for that. However, a state that has become extractive, dismissive of the complete collapse in public-sector competencies and capabilities, and unaccountably imperious, is as much an evil as the past. This is the real cancer in our society and it will corrupt the most critical cells.

In a paper for the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation’s (IJR’s) transformation audit for last year, economist Iraj Abedian writes an incisive review of SA’s failure to invest in intergenerational equity. It makes for fascinating reading and anyone interested in such matters ought to read it. One of the real problems with SA is that transformation should be closer to how the IJR approaches and measures it, which is about how we are overcoming the socioeconomic inequalities facing SA.

While, logically, it should be predominantly about the improvement of black socioeconomic conditions through building public assets and investing in black capabilities, that is a very different matter from the present treatment of transformation as being about blackening every economic rent available. Of course, none of this is new and, indeed, I have over the past three years regurgitated it in various forms. One might ask: to what end?

I believe the health of a society is determined by the nature of its public conversation. Public conversations can and should advance human freedom and knowledge, to paraphrase Edward Said. While vociferous and evocative stances have more traction, quality public conversation needs those who would take more nuanced perspectives, driven by the desire not to be right but to add to the dimensions of a matter.

I am grateful to former editor Peter Bruce for granting me prime real estate in the country’s best intellectual location, and to editor Songezo Zibi for extending it and then releasing me from my bond. It has been a privilege for me, and I hope it has been enjoyable and illuminating for readers.

Mahabane is head of Brunswick SA.