Strong government leadership needed to carry SA into future
The country needs a new breed of Cabinet ministers, and they must champion change. By
So far, this election campaign is not preparing South African voters for the shock of probable austerity budgets after 15 years of economic decline. Though people in business are well aware of the extent of decline, I found in a series of webinars I conducted for Defend our Democracy that many otherwise informed viewers were surprised to be told South Africa’s economy has a worse growth record and worse unemployment than most African states, including our small southern African neighbours.
Repeated government assurances that any apparent decline is a result of “global trends” or “jobless growth” have misled many South Africans into thinking we aren’t doing worse than our neighbours.
This reality has also been disguised by windfalls from the rise in commodity prices that brought in more tax from the mining companies. The government made cuts in important areas like the defence budget, which carried little political cost.
But interest groups continue to demand more money – teachers, state-owned enterprises, land reform, social grants, the criminal justice system, a universal basic income grant and National Health Insurance. But new money is not coming. Any expansion of one budget item will have to lead to contraction somewhere else. Adding to potential scarcity are effects of the rise in unpredicted new crises abroad.
Our ministers are not preparing us.
Competence and passion lacking
In 1994, when Nelson Mandela set out to build the rainbow nation, China was still a relative backwoods nation. Today China is a superpower, but the average individual South African is moving backwards. We weren’t focused. We got behind.
China has shown that the role of the state has been vital, and it has ignored the drumbeat from Washington for the state to get out of the way and leave everything to the free market. However, it learnt the lesson that the role of the state is not successful from its ownership of business, but from its skilled management of the best interests of its national economy. From a realistic appreciation of state capacity and prioritising what delivers the best bang for the buck.
The Chinese Communist Party appoints mayors on the basis of their track record in growing private businesses, whereas South African politicians demand more state ownership of the economy.
A better understanding of what drives growth will be vital for the next government. So many hard choices have been kicked down the road. What we need is a different kind of Cabinet that tells the unvarnished truth about how much we have to change.
We need Cabinet ministers who are relentless champions for the departments they lead. Imagine an education minister who sleeps, eats and breathes education – who explains to parents the value of stimulating their children, encourages people to get books into empty school libraries and obsesses about better teacher training.
The defence minister needs to face the fact that most of the products of the arms deal are not in working condition. Unless the defence budget gets a sudden injection, the defence minister needs to lead the process to trim back and focus on stopping illegal fishing, being ready for climate emergencies and being prepared to aid neighbouring states in stopping conflict.
We need ministers with good expert advisers on how we grow the information economy, make the internet cheaper and faster, and make it accessible to people where they live, in townships and near people’s homes.
We need only one minister in electricity and energy – a minister who sees the big picture of the green economy, getting quick progress in approving mines that mine minerals
the green economy will need, green industrial parks, updated electric car manufacture and making charging stations available – because that is where future opportunities will lie.
Historical achievements vs contemporary results
South Africa’s growing pains echo those of other African countries. Governing parties that made their reputation as liberation movements have historic legitimacy. The result is that their legitimacy is not derived from providing services and growth, as it should be.
This was true of the Congress Party in India, and even the Labour Party for the first 30 years in Israel.
These parties do not feel the pressure to earn legitimacy by delivering results. As a result, the African countries doing the best economically in the 21st century are often those whose government is not from a major ethnic group, was not key to their liberation struggle and has to fight for legitimacy day by day the only way that matters: by delivering prosperity – jobs, growth, a better standard of living and efficient services.
I don’t believe there is a secret, white counter-revolution waiting in the wings, as Thabo Mbeki sometimes suggests. The best way to secure democracy’s gains is with a government that fights to prove itself every day and fears electoral defeat.
Risk and security
China changed its rules to bring Pretoria-raised Elon Musk and his Tesla factories into the country. After two decades, China has learnt from Tesla and now produces more electric cars more cheaply than he does. We kept Musk out of South Africa when he wanted to bring cheap, fast Wi-fi through Skylink, and our Wi-fi connection remains slower and more expensive than some neighbours’.
Musk’s business dealings tell us a lot about the shifting balances of power in the world. In the US, his space technology contains many of America’s most valued secrets and he is a key factor in its defence industry. In Ukraine, his technology was critical to the country’s early battlefield victories.
The rise of Tesla and Spacex was fuelled by hundreds of millions of dollars in US government funds to help him get started. His ownership of X makes many countries nervous. Where do his loyalties lie?
But his enterprises show how technology and national security are intertwined, and how countries need to be on the ball to take advantage of opportunities and protect themselves against new kinds of harm.
South Africa’s exports to Europe face risks. Besides the war in Ukraine, most European nations are facing a potential new arms race at a time when their economies look bleaker than they have for decades.
India has a bright future, though it seems to have discarded Mahatma Gandhi’s principled determination to respect Muslims and Hindus equally. India continues to grow fast, even as China may be slowing down.
In Africa, there are serious conflicts that get little attention. Among the biggest are Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But West Africa has had a string of military coups that reject the yoke of French influence. Countries threw out democratically elected governments and brought in Russian interests that I believe they will live to regret. Ecowas, the West African regional bloc, is in tatters.
America isn’t standing still either. The days of a hands-off government are over. The team around US President Joe Biden has systematically institutionalised an expanded role for government. America won’t be able to tell countries to abandon government any more.
Biden has passed a massive programme that is rebuilding infrastructure after decades of neglect. Biden has imposed 25% tariffs on Chinese electric cars, incentivised a massive move into the green economy and placed an equally heavy bet on building America’s microchip industry to help halt the country’s deindustrialisation. America’s economy is booming.
Future challenges
To face this changing world, we need to embrace the future, or we will inevitably retreat into the past and continue to decline. And we have to strictly control any government role we lack the capacity to perform – a very severe limitation.
In southern Africa we will have our hands full. We have withdrawn troops from northern Mozambique, but the conflict is reviving nevertheless. We have soldiers in the DRC, but we took casualties immediately.
To be ready, we need Cabinet members and other leaders who are champions of South Africa’s interests, based on a broad vision, a grasp of a rapidly changing world of shifting alliances, leapfrogging technology and permanent uncertainty brought by the end of the post-world War 2 world order, as well as rapidly changing climate.
Our responsibilities will grow. Our neighbours will need our help. We have a duty to ourselves and them to be properly equipped and know how to give it.
After the 2024 election, South Africa will face a stark dilemma: do we embrace the future or retreat into the past? DM
Towards a New Vision for South Africa.