While Ramaphosa ticks the boxes, his ministers untick SA

There are no certainties. No matter how hard you try, unless you accept what is in front of you for what it is, you ’ re in trouble.

I’ve been trying to reconcile the multitude of voices jostling to solve our country’s deepest problem poverty.

I know you’re supposed to add inequality and unemployment to that, but this column takes prioritising seriously.

Solving them all at once is impossible anyway.

The ANC has been trying for 28 years and has made all three worse, not better.

People are poor because they don’t have work. They don’t have work because there are not enough employers to hire them.

Being an employer in SA is a sea of pain. There are no incentives to start a profitable business here; there’s no shared dream of a future between business, labour and the state.

Listen to the voices just this week at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town.

Mineral resources & energy minister Gwede Mantashe tells delegates: “Our considered view is that ... universal access to energy and the just energy transition will not only enable the improvement of lives and livelihoods of African people, but it will also boost economic activity and, by extension, mining activity.”

But he doesn’t say how. Can we not just build the necessary 4,000MW of solar, wind and batteries by the end of the year and be done with the constant threat of collapse?

President Cyril Ramaphosa tells the same audience: “It is a matter of grave concern that SA has fallen into the bottom 10 of the Fraser Institute’s Investment Attractiveness Index rankings.

“We are now standing at 75th of 84, which is our worstever ranking ... we understand very clearly the need to fix the regulatory and administrative problems.”

He is at least frank. Mantashe told journalists at the indaba the Fraser ranking was “confusing” and poorly researched. Roger Baxter, CEO of the Minerals Council SA, which represents mining companies, agreed: The ranking was “unfair”.

Chris Griffith, now CEO of Goldfields and arguably SA’s most battle-hardened mining executive, also demurred, telling the indaba that once you get past all the red tape, owning and running a mine in SA is pretty easy.

Earlier this week the presidency published an update on Operation Vulindlela, a presidential effort to ensure reforms the ANC agrees to are actually implemented.

Of the 26 reforms it monitors, it said eight were done and 11 on track. Seriously?

“Procure new-generation capacity in terms of IRP 2019” is “on track”, the report said.

Mantashe talked about hydropower from the Congo River as if its appearance in the Integrated Resources Plan (for electricity) he signed off on in 2019 made it real. It is just a nonsense.

Under “Key achievements in 2021”, the Vulindlela report lists “Bid Window 5 of the renewable energy programme opened, with preferred bidders announced for 2,600MW of wind and solar PV”.

But so far none of the “preferred bidders” has been able to dig a hole in the ground: They can’t raise finance as they can’t meet localisation requirements for the kit they need to install.

Trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel’s localisation policies were always going to raise local prices, and for the bid window winners, commodity price rises have driven up the cost of equipment and made their projects unbankable.

So, sorry, task “on track” maybe, but no power.

Bid window 6 is now open and closes in August. Good luck to the winners.

It is chronically untidy, all this reform. Ramaphosa thought if he brought it all into his own office he could knock problems out of the way as they arose. But the problems are bigger than he thinks — and he is too slow.

Under “reform completed” is “Enable municipalities to procure power from independent power producers”. Tell that to Ekurhuleni or Cape Town, which are trying to do it.

Mantashe’s department insists they need regulatory permission. The presidency says they don’t.

If Ramaphosa is struggling to make sensible progress with a circle of less sensible people around him it is his own fault.

The biggest problem of all is unemployment and that he persists with the same answer each year even as it returns worse and worse results.

The answer is to keep Patel minister of trade, industry & competition and, basically, put him in operational control of the working economy.

The same minister has been trying one version or another of re-industrialisation as a job creator since he became minister nearly 13 years ago.

The result is ever more destruction. Manufacturing in 2009 was worth $40.3bn, or 13.6% of GDP. In 2019, before Covid, it had reached just $41.4bn and fallen to just 11.76% of GDP.

But by now Ramaphosa should have learnt he cannot regulate or box-tick his way into growth and prosperity.

Trying the same thing over and over again and still being surprised by the results is called insanity.

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