Hard for politicians to admit their folly
When it comes to politicians who put their egos and ideological hang-ups ahead of the national good, South Africans can often feel alone, or exceptional.
The country’s controversial visa regime and the resultant damage to tourism is one case in point. It was pushed through by the department of home affairs despite warnings that it would be catastrophic for an industry that provides more than one tenth of all employment in SA.
Even when evidence mounted — with data showing a drop in actual numbers of travellers from key markets and airlines reporting declining demand for flights — the department of home affairs, and the minister, Malusi Gigaba, stood their ground.
Four years too late, the government recognised the damage and President Cyril Ramaphosa made reversing the restrictions one of the centrepieces among the measures announced at his jobs summit to unlock growth and make a dent in the jobless crisis.
With the minister seemingly too proud to admit his folly, all Gigaba promised as a form of redress was a fudge. So now it’s not a requirement that those travelling with minors carry unabridged birth certificates or forms of consent, but they should be prepared to be asked for that anyway.
Tourism minister Derek Hanekom, at the World Travel Market in London last week, again made some promising comments. But it boggles the mind that after four years of this madness, the minister was still talking about the need to find a” . “balance between the global effort to fight child trafficking and enabling children to travel
It is important to remind the minister that this is a policy that was introduced without undertaking any research to ascertain how many, if any, children were trafficked through OR Tambo International and other airports. As far as most people are aware, the government hasn’t shared any evidence to indicate that SA has a particular problem with child trafficking.
In contrast, the tourism industry provided evidence of the damage caused, based on Statistics SA numbers that should have been available to the government.
By June 2015, tourist arrivals from China were down 27%, and arrivals from the traditionally strong markets of the UK, US and Germany had dropped between 8% and 12%. More than three years later, we are showing a reluctance to immediately undo the damage and are still talking about the need to deal with fears of what might just be an imaginary child-trafficking epidemic.
At least we are not alone. One of the more extraordinary stories in the UK press this week was an admission by the UK’s minister for Brexit — the one who is tasked with negotiating a deal to ensure that Britain exits the world’s biggest trading bloc with as little damage as possible.
So it turned out that one of the most vocal supporters of Brexit had, until recently, not realised the importance of an unhindered flow of goods between Dover in England and Calais in France.
“I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing,” he was quoted as saying, having belatedly worked out that British consumers will lose out if new border-crossing rules create delays.
This provides even more evidence that the people promoting and tasked with delivering Brexit had never taken the time to think of the basics of what it would entail and the damage it would cause. Just another case where dogma and ideology were put ahead of sensible, evidence-based leadership.
So now it has become clear that the promise of a good Brexit was bogus all along. The choice that seems to be on the table is that the UK exits the EU only in name. To avoid a disruption in trade and an economic crisis, the prime minister will have to offer her people a deal that keeps the UK in the EU customs union.
The problem is that this is inferior to what they have now, as it means following rules from Brussels while losing the seat at the table when they are being set.
The other option is to simply crash out of the EU without a deal, which the voters were told was impossible.
The latest minister to quit Theresa May’s government, Jo Johnson, the brother of Boris, the Brexit cheerleader who jumped ship so he could scream at May from the outside, characterised this as a choice between “vassalage and chaos”.
Admitting that the only option left, based on a dispassionate evaluation of the facts, is that the whole Brexit fiasco is an unworkable mess that should be dropped, seems unlikely. It does seem that admitting you were wrong is the hardest thing for all politicians to do.
‘I HADN’T QUITE UNDERSTOOD THE FULL EXTENT OF THIS, BUT … WE ARE PARTICULARLY RELIANT ON THE DOVER-CALAIS CROSSING’