Cry havoc and let slip another SA poll
The state may have to use its default response, the police, to keep the economy conscious
SOUTH Africa is going to be hot in more ways than one until the local government poll in the first half of 2016. If you’re not already used to our political rhythm, the stakes start rising about a year before elections. Politics becomes more threatening, social media more abusive. Usually, the economy, helpfully to all parties, is in some kind of trouble.
That economic trouble — routinely rising unemployment and low (or no) growth — is this time going to be made worse by drought. Less (or no) water means rising prices on staples such as bread and maize that the poor depend on.
It is a recipe for disaster. A responsible government would strain every fibre to not make anything worse. But the ANC is not that beast. Watch the next budget for an amazing new jobs programme, a credit amnesty, or higher personal taxes. And if you’re reading this in a R20 newspaper, that probably includes your taxes. Not long ago Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel wanted to freeze salaries of more than R500 000 a year. That’s wealthy these days.
Julius Malema and his EFF have already begun campaigning. On October 27 he led a seriously large march around Johannesburg, leaving long lists of fiendish demands to be met within a month (a deadline now just two weeks away), failing which the Chamber of Mines, the Reserve Bank and the JSE and all 400 or so of its member companies would be “targeted”.
That’s a clear signal the 2016 EFF local government election campaign will consist of occupying, or harassing, bank branches, retail stores, company HQs, distribution networks, the Reserve Bank and the mines. In the name of the “revolution” they will take their fight to the heart of the real economy.
Youth unemployment in South Africa is now 50%, so it won’t be hard to find very large and energetic crowds to make the EFF’s points. If I were running a JSE-listed company I’d be preparing hard to protect my staff and customers from what may be coming. The state could be forced to use its now default response to anything, the police, to keep the economy conscious.
The ANC, meanwhile, is running on empty, especially in the cities, where the middle classes live. Its government has hardly any spare money and spends more now paying interest on its debt than it does on education. Its leadership is widely discredited. It will concentrate on the rural vote and even then that will be in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, the Free State and the Eastern Cape.
Everywhere else it is vulnerable and more so, I’m afraid, to the EFF than to the DA.
I just don’t get the DA; it is supposed to be poised to “take” Port Elizabeth and possibly Johannesburg and Tshwane, but I just can’t see any of that happening. I understand I’m white and privileged and I may not be part of anyone’s target demographic, but the DA seems to have slipped out of sight since Mmusi Maimane became party leader.
I know he spends a lot of time talking to mainly black communities around the country in an effort to woo them away from the ANC. And that must be a good thing for a formerly white party. But I’ve lost sight of what he’s selling. It appears to be a vision of our country by 2030, and is supposed to be made more immediate by premising that vision on a theoretical victory in the 2019 general election. It all seems a bit of a stretch. What about tomorrow? Our economic crisis is extremely loud and incredibly close.
The DA should, in addition to its forward vision, have a running and prominent programme to tell people how it would turn South Africa around if it were in government next week. What would it do now for the unemployed? What would it do now about our debt? What would it do now about drought and food price inflation? What is it thinking?
For the middle classes the moment is intense, mainly because of the threat the EFF poses to the ANC. On one hand, the threat is that the ANC moves even further to the left to counter the Malema challenge. On the other, given the EFF, the votes Maimane wants from the ANC might just stay with the ruling party because it then becomes the least worst option.