Lacklustre ANC leaders cannot stop the rot alone

Thanks to state capture, incompetence and mismanagement, since 1994 SA has squandered almost the equivalent of the postwar financial aid that the US, in the form of the Marshall Plan and other programmes, gave countries in Europe and Asia to rebuild their economies.

The amounts lost since 1994, which could have gone to stimulate growth and development and deliver public services, are staggering: more than R2-trillion has been swallowed up by out-and-out public corruption, and the government has given state-owned enterprises upwards of R2-trillion in bailouts.

These figures don’t take into account the value — in jobs and growth — that is lost when established companies close or new ones are stillborn and potential projects never leave the drawing board. This is the toll of patronage appointments in the public sector, of competent companies unfairly losing state contracts that go to crony companies, and of the marginalisation of competent people whose sin was to lack political connections.

Since 1994, close to R1-trillion has been transferred in BEE deals that went to a handful of politically connected politicians, trade unionists and public servants. First, very few of the recipients are entrepreneurs — they are political capitalists.

Not surprisingly very few have added value by creating new industries, opening new economic sectors or developing new technologies. Instead, they have crowded out genuine black entrepreneurs and killed the development of a mass entrepreneurial spirit in black society, because all you need to secure a BEE deal or tender is the right political connections.

SA has very little to show for the missing “development” trillions in terms of an improved public education system or new industries and infrastructure.

We have to honestly face the fact that a predominantly black post-apartheid government has done this. Coming to grips with this painful reality will mean a change in mindset about economic development.

We will have to plan an evidence-based, realistic and pragmatic national economic turnaround plan.

Black victimhood — blaming white monopoly capital and Western imperialists and doomsayers

— will not help, because it causes paralysis, dulls the imagination and misdirects energy.

There has to be more urgency among ANC supporters and everyone else to force the ANC leadership to

“get it” that it bears most responsibility for the crisis in which we find ourselves — and that outdated responses will not suffice.

Currently, the top ranks of the party appear to be bereft of leadership quality, ideas and imagination. The ANC seems to have deliberately elected or appointed the least capable members it can find to senior positions.

The small dominant group that controls the ANC and the government is just too insular, out of ideas and lacking in imagination to get us out of this crisis. There has to be cogovernance between the state, business and civil society.

Whatever development funds are mobilised, and whatever projects are initiated, should be run not by the government or party alone but in tandem with independent business, entrepreneurs and civil society.

Every skill, resource and talent available in the country must be marshalled in a national reconstruction effort. The country cannot afford to marginalise people based on skin colour, ethnicity or ANC affiliation.

Where possible, money lost through corruption should be seized from the guilty.

Corruption should be made a crime against the people. Many lives have been lost because a crooked tender meant a hospital had no medicine. Millions continue to live in squalor because the national social housing programme has long ground to a halt.

BEE in its current form should be scrapped, and businesses should divert “BEE” money away from political capitalists and into infrastructure, housing and education.

Victimhood will not help because it causes paralysis and dulls the imagination