Makhaya’s voice of reason what SA needs right now

In early 2015, a former Downing Street spokesman lamented the state of the relationship between Pretoria and Westminster. In addition to historical beef, he confessed, the hostile narrative appeared to have developed a superstitious extension.

I tried to explain that it wasn’t only thugs such as the Gupta brothers who were in Jacob Zuma’s ears, but also druids such as Hlaudi Motsoeneng, and this was reducing aspects of our foreign relations to spells and trances. If you are serious about negotiating more equitable trade or aid arrangements with Whitehall, we concluded, quoting gossip about the West you heard from a talking donkey is not helpful.

But there did appear to be faint interest in diplomatically repairing a relationship Zuma had relegated in favour of other bent countries. Setting up a commons research group would have been required, but who was competent to lead or participate from the South African side?

The first person who crossed my mind was Trudi Makhaya. So I called her and we spoke broadly about the idea, but shortly after that David Cameron’s Conservatives won the 2015 poll, and Britain’s international emphasis would be absorbed by issues relating to the 2016 referendum.

It’s always wonderful when one of your own achieves the recognition they deserve, but Makhaya’s elevation as President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic adviser is especially delightful considering the Zuma era of notorious “appointments”, which he sprayed gleefully like effluent cannons across our political landscape.

For close to 10 years you could be forgiven for confusing “appointments” with the act of snatching people from tractors and shoving them into Parliament or other “advisory” roles. Mzwanele Manyi as director-general of transport, Brian Molefe, Dudu Myeni, Ben Ngubane, Chris Malikane and many other corrosive forces, who had not the faintest idea of oversight, were positioned only to accumulate.

Makhaya’s appointment coincides with the deployment of special “investment envoys”, including Phumzile Langeni, Jacko Maree, Trevor Manuel and Mcebisi Jonas. This is cute, but it’s more like a Davos member’s club than an initiative designed to keep the wolf from the door.

Makhaya’s work will be much harder than a lunch interview with the Financial Times in Southwark, and much more scrutinised. She’ll have to articulate clear answers to difficult questions, for example: how the hell do you explain, or make sense of, the obsession with land expropriation without sounding contradictory, particularly when history has not a single successful example of prosperity in “land reform”?

To prepare, Makhaya must adopt a policy of destroying any copy of Thomas Piketty that crosses her path. In addition, she must avoid “fashionable” ideas from faux “progressives”, such as the painfully whiny New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Adhern, or Canada’s Justin Trudeau, who appears to be leading a gender reassignment crusade in that country. Should she seek ideas, she could look back to Ludwig Erhard, who led the German Wirtschaftswunder post the Second World War.

Finally, someone has to be brave enough to acknowledge, publicly, without fear of insult from demented fringe militias and idealogues, that unless structural reforms have an impact at the heart of ANC economic policy, in 20 years we will still be talking about how the party aspires to a developmental state. By then SA will be flat broke.

Read her work and you will be struck by how thoughtful Makhaya is. Most people she has encountered speak of her enviably. After 10 years of mendacious violation, that is exactly the voice SA needs speaking into the ear of the country’s economy.