ANC conference will pit Zuma’s agenda against the economy
This is not a politically correct matter to raise and I suspect I’ll be called alarmist and pessimistic by the good people who remain in our government and in the ANC, fighting to avert the slide. But it is one we must raise so that we know exactly what we are up against.
President Jacob Zuma is driving a “radical” and populist policy agenda. Until now, we’ve paid a hidden and unquantified cost for the government’s economic mismanagement. Business is not investing; companies have gone abroad for opportunities; and the economy has limped along.
The cost of a “radical” policy change would be harsh: borrowing costs would rise; government spending would shrink; land and property prices would fall; the rand would plunge; and economic and political stability would be at risk as the effects took hold.
Judging by the populist and anti-white rhetoric from quarters of the ANC, this is a growing possibility. What stands between now and then is a critically important ANC conference.
We know what Zuma wants: land expropriation without compensation; more government control over the private sector, especially the banks; a Treasury with little autonomy over the budget and fiscal framework and, more elite transformation through state procurement arrangements for black firms and a fresh round of empowerment transactions.
Most are not part of ANC policy, but it is clear this is where Zuma wants to take things. It is also obvious that, as the South African Communist Party and Cosatu point out, this is fake radicalism and a cover for looting on a grand scale.
The ANC’s economic transformation committee policy paper, which will be released to the branches this week and is the basis for discussion at the conference, contains none of this. It is as tame and market-friendly as ever, talking of stimulating inclusive growth, raising investment and reducing unemployment and poverty. Land reform would follow the just and equitable principle in the Constitution that balances historical redress and compensation.
In the past, the ANC’s economic transformation committee was usually up against Cosatu or a badly prepared ANC Youth League at conference. It occupied the middle ground and always won the day, with a smattering of radical words and terms blended into the final resolution. This time the committee will be up against a strong and reckless caucus within the ANC, which is working day and night to ensure it has the biggest numbers at the conference.
No sooner had the budget speech left Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan’s mouth than the Zuma caucus was on the attack, accusing Gordhan of being out of line with the state of the nation speech two weeks earlier.
The ANC conference’s structure makes it vulnerable to populism and a dominant faction can swing policy with relative ease. Branch delegates, who should take their political line from their branch, in fact, take it from provincial or factional caucuses.
THE ANC CONFERENCE’S STRUCTURE MAKES IT VULNERABLE TO POPULISM … IT IS POLICY MAKING THROUGH MOB RULE
For many years, there has not been real policy debate at the conference. When a faction wants a position hammered home, it packs out the commission. Its members repeat the same line endlessly to create an overwhelming sense of majority. It is policy-making through mob rule.
If Zuma drives through an anti-white, hardline exclusivist stance, it won’t be the first time nationalists in SA have committed what Harvard economist Ricardo Hausmann calls elsewhere in this newspaper “an historic mistake”. (See p5.)
In 1948, the Afrikaners thought they could go it alone — and succeeded for a while. But the human and developmental cost was ultimately enormous, and will be so again.