Information-age confusion blinds us to real issues — and solutions

Certainty in our age is something I am slowly beginning to let go of, even as mere possibility. The information age has come with many a blessing. But the flood of ideas, most of them untested yet still true at some point or another, has only made it more likely that we’ll get more confused. Those seeking greater chaos — such as fringe political parties — will only benefit from our vulnerability. Social media platforms have played a significant role, fuelling levels of uncertainty that I doubt any other age has experienced. That’s not to say that in bygone eras the tectonic plates in the economies and politics of any country or region have not shifted as fast as they seem to be doing now. The difference between an earlier, less information-filled age and the one we live in is that just about everyone has a courtside seat to watch even the tiniest and sometimes most inconsequential events occur in real time and to ask whether they actually are defining moments in our history.

And just as quickly as we consider these all-important questions, we are off to the next crisis. I guess it’s a global affliction, and certainly one that has found fertile ground here as we consider some hard and uncomfortable questions about our future.

For almost a decade we’ve spoken of policy uncertainty as one of the largest impediments to growth in our economy. No investor is going to put capital in the ground as long as there isn’t clear policy around mining, a situation best captured by the disagreements between business and the government over the third version of the Mining Charter.

Before this impasse there was ANC Youth League-inspired talk of nationalising the country’s mining assets because some investors had their fingers burnt by poor investments that only became apparent when the global economy went into recession. Now that’s an uncomfortable truth. In more recent times, the uncertainty around mining has been followed by that around the question of land.

In an age of uncertainty, or what I’d like to call The Great Confusion, there are groupings and perhaps individuals that have sought to benefit from such debates. They’ve found relevance and ready-made podiums to voice their views from the comfort of their living rooms, sowing seeds of discontent ensconced in their creature comforts. Differing opinions are easily swept away as the opinions of the black middle class or “clever blacks” or, in the Bell Pottinger-inspired dig at established business, “white monopoly capital”.

There’s no deeper discussion of the issues lying beneath the calls for “radical economic transformation”, which primarily focus on the redistribution of mineral wealth and land. These debates all seem rather superficial and will continue to feed the uncertainty as policymakers seem to be increasingly led by the noise.

The land debate should seek to find a final solution to the problem of collateral, and in particular, the lack of it in black hands. In South Africa’s quest to seek redress through black economic empowerment over the past two decades, there has been one fundamental problem — black investors in the main simply haven’t had collateral in the form of homes or land to back their early empowerment deals. Banks used the very shares they acquired in established companies as some sort of makeshift collateral. As soon as markets moved against these companies, as is the nature of any economic system, a large swathe of investors were left with debt and no shares.

Without something to pledge as security for repayment of a loan, the ambitious and important target of transforming corporate South Africa was always a risky bet, as risky, I guess, as unsecured lending.

It makes absolute sense that we are standing where we are now, but unfortunately in this age of “uncertainty” we are stuck in this realm of superficial argument. As long as policymakers feed into this rather unpalatable fruit of the information age, we’ll remain in an uncertain state.

Everyone has a courtside seat and the tiniest event is a defining moment