It’s a good thing that Ricardo Hausmann, the eminent economics professor and head of Harvard University’s Growth Lab, said what he said last week: South Africa will stay doggedly on the road to collapse unless it scraps the ANC’s cadre deployment and dumps BEE as we’ve practised it.
He was not saying anything new. Every South African knows that the collapse of Transnet, Eskom, SAA, our municipalities, and so much else, is because of these twin troubles. Just say “Jacob Zuma and Dudu Myeni at SAA” and you’ve told the whole story.
The problem is not the advice that this government gets. A few weeks ago, I quoted from a Centre for Development & Enterprise paper that gave excellent advice. Over the years many eminent economists have traipsed through the doors of the Union Buildings, tome upon tome in hand, to give of their best to the president and his ministers. They have come, they have enjoyed the inevitable drumsticks, and they have left. Except for the plaintive wailing of finance minister Enoch Godongwana in his budget, not a shadow of their advice can be seen anywhere in government policy and conduct.
“The deeper causes of the crisis can be traced to political gridlock, ideological choices, overburdening through preferential procurement rules, and political patronage,” says the Hausmann-led Growth Lab report.
Unless something dramatic happens at the polls next year, it will continue like this. Here’s why.
When you vote next year, there will not be a party called the SACP on the ballot paper. However, many of the ANC policy choices that have throttled this economy will be straight from the SACP’s manifesto. Over and above constantly blackmailing the ANC not to make the kinds of pivotal choices advanced by Hausmann, the SACP is unique in that its leaders make it into successive ANC cabinets and stay for, well, the rest of their lives, essentially.
Our problem is not that we don’t know what needs to be done. The problem is political will
Blade Nzimande, the former SACP secretary-general, has been in the higher education portfolio for so long he is in danger of becoming mummified. Thulas Nxesi, the employment & labour minister (don’t laugh), has survived through the Zuma years and is still in his job despite unemployment reaching crisis levels. Show me one bright idea from this man, except to wag a finger at business, and I’ll send you a copy of the FM in the post. There’s also Ebrahim Patel, the author of that great Zuma economic policy, the New Growth Path. They don’t get fired. They don’t resign. They are ministers for life.
Cosatu and its public sector affiliate, Nehawu, have for more than 10 years blackmailed the ANC into ever-higher salary increases for civil servants. Now the state is broke. And they want more. And they also want more seats in the cabinet. More ideological gridlock for you.
You may not know it, but there is a fourth member of the ANC’s alliance — the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco). This ragtag group has split into many different factions (in January this year Zuma was voted in as leader of a faction of this formation in KwaZulu-Natal). You will always, always, find a version of Sanco at construction and other “give us 30%” types of mafias in South Africa.
These groupings — and others such as the offshoots of the ANC army, Umkhonto we Sizwe — all want cadre deployment, the narrow BEE of the ANC, and other destructive policies that are failing the country, to continue. They are making a killing from these policies.
Many of our cabinet members, provincial leaders and councillors declare that their only sources of income are their salaries. They lie. Many are marshalling government contracts and largesse to their wives, children and other relatives. Just look at the recent scandal involving Deputy President Paul Mashatile. A government agency he oversaw reportedly bent over backwards to give his son and his son-in-law millions.
Our problem is not that we don’t know what needs to be done. Hausmann and many others have given us more than enough roadmaps for us to get to a prosperous South Africa. The problem is political will. Due to its complicated internal and external arrangements, and its ideological commitments, the ANC is simply incapable of adopting any of these solutions.
If it wins decisively next year, we will continue this way.
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