Reviving the NDP map

IN ITSELF, THE PLAN IS TOO CONTRADICTORY TO IMPLEMENT AS A WHOLE Interest groups more likely to find it useful if they identify sections they’d want implemented, then press government to act.

key economic interest groups, they would have needed to negotiate the changes.

The government has not done this and so it seems likely that what it does mean is that it will seek to implement those sections of the plan which affect it directly.

The plan might offer something to everyone on social and economic issues but it does also have a clear way to improve how government functions.

By endorsing the document, the government was surely agreeing to take the steps the plan recommended when it discussed how to build a “capable state”.

So it makes sense to hold the government to account for the degree to which it has – or has not – implemented the plan’s recommendations.

For the rest, it would make more sense to insist that the government signal clearly which other sections of the document it plans to implement than to insist that it implement (or reject) all of it.

This offers a key to the role the NDP could play in moving South Africa forward.

Business, labour and other interest groups are far more likely to find the plan useful if they identify those sections they would like to see implemented and then pressed the government to act on them, using the fact that they appear in the document as a lever.

They will obviously face opposition from those with differing interests but that is how democracy works. The NDP would then be a catalyst for debate and negotiation on details, not a take it or leave it recipe.

Five years on, the NDP could help focus attention on economic change. But only if both sides stop seeing it as a fetish rather than a way of starting a conversation.

Steven Friedman is professor of political studies at the University of Johannesburg This article was originally published on The Conversation and has been edited to accommodate space limits.