We need the state to panic, but it won’t

THESE are recessionary times; over the past week we have ticked the textbook definition of having two consecutive quarters of negative growth. While it was a surprise, leaving some forecasting models in the dustbin, I’d suggest that even a positive figure for the first three months of the year wouldn’t have brought much cheer.

A responsive government, led by an accountable president, would under such circumstances be expected to act in some sort of coordinated manner to deal with what is a crisis that threatens to morph into something so much larger in years to come. Policymakers should at the very least be seen to be panicking.

However, the governing party’s main focus is on a policy conference at the end of this month and an elective conference in December. Whatever policy decisions are made are of no consequence to our circumstances as it’s only the party’s newly elected president at the end of the year who will have to enact whatever emerges.

One can’t rely on opposition parties to refocus these energies; they are just as beholden to these definitive moments of the ANC. The outcomes are equally important to their prospects. In the case of DA, there’s the added distraction of Helen Zille.

An ugly divorce may come to mean so much for the party and its prospects in a matter of a couple of years.

So while our leading policymakers deal with their internal politics — as riveting as it is for the chattering classes — South Africans of all hues are going to continue to be battered by a shrinking economy.

It’s a second recession in less than a decade. Regardless of the reasons, it’s a terrible report card for any governing party along with its president.

But let me be fair, the first one can largely be blamed on New York-, London- and Frankfurtbased investment bankers. And the swift recovery after that 2009 dip was by all measures impressive, as the country could and did spend its way to health. John Maynard Keynes would have been proud.

This, the second recession in President Zuma’s decade-long party reign, is down to bad politics, governance that has triggered a crisis in confidence, and that has snowballed for more than a couple of years. Every possible opportunity to stop the rot has been missed by the party and the president. Irresponsible ministers have, on public platforms, dismissed the impact of sovereign rating downgrades.

There’ll be commentators who will remain dismissive of talk of recession, arguing that for those living in informal settlements on the periphery of society, recessionary times are like their day-to-day lives. Instead, an unclear “radical economic transformation” route is their panacea for our socioeconomic woes.

I’ll be first in line to say that there’s much to do about fixing the structural faults in this economy. And some measures will come with short-term pain in exchange for a sustainable

I am at a loss just who is going to boost confidence in the economy

future. But we know that these calls, in this environment at least, are just slogans to promote one faction over another.

There’ll be no serious introspection about the state we are in, especially as the economic strain will be dismissed as the struggle of a “black bourgeoisie” middle class with “white monopoly capital”.

With a finance minister in Malusi Gigaba unable to promise any expansionary measures to boost confidence without shedding further credibility, I am at a loss just who is going to boost confidence levels in the economy. For even to share such dreams, given revelations of recent weeks that have called into question just whom he serves, Gigaba would inspire fear. So here we go into the second half of the year, hoping to be steered out of this economic mess by autopilot.