Here we go again.
The ANC-led government is stepping into the boxing ring — again — with yet another key sector of the economy. This new fight underlines, for the umpteenth time, that the ANC is far too concerned with useless, outdated and self-serving ideological battles to be entrusted with breathing new life into this ailing economy. We are witnessing the ANC administer the kiss of death to an industry when it should be doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
This time the government is going up against mining companies. Last week the Minerals Council South Africa, which represents 90% of the country’s mining industry, told mineral & petroleum resources minister Gwede Mantashe that it disagreed with many provisions of the draft bill to amended the Mineral & Petroleum Resources Development Act and would challenge him on it.
Mantashe was not having it. “Don’t make subtle threats. We have experience in the mining industry; start briefing your lawyers,” he fired back.
Meanwhile, the same government is at war with the private health-care industry. Last week health minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the five court cases (three more are in the pipeline) lodged by stakeholders against National Health Insurance (NHI) will not stop implementation of the scheme in its current form. He has already spent R9m in legal fees. Last November he said, extraordinarily, that “there is an obsession with putting a price tag on the NHI’s implementation” and that the cost of the scheme will be determined once universal medical insurance is ready to be introduced.
And you wonder why government debt keeps ballooning. It’s because ministers do not even understand the concept of budgeting in the short or long term.
As all this unfolds Business Unity South Africa CEO Khulekani Mathe told sister publication Business Times that trade, industry & competition minister Parks Tau’s discussion document on the proposed R100bn transformation fund did not provide compelling evidence that a centralised fund was necessary. “While the document and the minister reference the constitutional imperative for transformation — an aim we fully support — this conflates the nobility of the objective with the appropriateness of the proposed solution. The noble intent does not rectify the inherent flaws in the concept of a centralised fund,” Mathe said.
And there’s the rub. This government seems hellbent on killing the goose that lays the golden egg — organised business — despite the fact that our country is in trouble on numerous fronts. Does President Cyril Ramaphosa know how bad our unemployment rate is? How creaky this economy is?
Does he have a clue about how terrible state hospitals are and why South Africa’s private health-care system is lauded across the globe? In May, the Pretoria high court found that Ramaphosa’s decision to sign the NHI bill into law was reviewable and ordered that he furnish the court with the record that led to the decision. He has turned to the Constitutional Court to appeal the decision.
Does he understand just how bureaucratic and unwieldy the mining regulatory and registration system has become, particularly for the artisanal black miners it’s supposed to help — thus damaging the economy?
None of the legal fights that the government is picking will solve our main problem: an economy that has ground to a halt and an explosion in unemployment. Reuters reported last week that a median forecast of 26 economists surveyed between May 22 and May 27 suggested GDP growth would be 1.2% this year. Even the National Treasury, ever the optimist, lowered its growth forecast to a mere 1.4% for 2025 and a depressing 1.6% in 2026. At this rate there will be no economy to speak of in three years.
South Africa has a government that is more concerned about the demographics of the police’s top brass than making sure that women are safe. It has a government more concerned with BEE rules than ensuring that every graduate finds a job. It does not care that patients wait all day at a state hospital for headache tablets; it just wants to take over efficient private health-care facilities and break them the way it broke Charlotte Maxeke hospital.
We have a government that would much rather have mines shut down than that they be open, providing employment to thousands of young South Africans.
The ANC’s ideological obsessions are leading us to ruin.
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