So, time for the World Economic Forum (WEF) Africa again. The patricians, the posers, the proselytisers, the platitudes and the proletariat. Actually, not the proletariat. The security at WEF events is really a sight to behold. The blue lights and the sirens and the waving police officers weirdly give the event a sense of grandeur. The security is a mixture of high-tech card recognition, high fences and high police presence.
Durban as a venue is a novelty, but the security for the 10 heads of state, 18 South African cabinet ministers and more than 1,000 participants is a constant. The WEF Africa has started to move around instead of being locked down in Cape Town and presumably Durban was something of a nod to President Jacob Zuma’s home province.
Unlike at Davos in 2017, Zuma was in full force. He arrived looking energetic and enthused, and after making some generic comments was asked inevitably about the protests at the weekend which prevented him from addressing, of all things, a Cosatu May Day rally.
He chose, as in a sense he was forced to do, to put a positive spin on it. It’s worth reflecting his response at length, just to provide a sense of the pure chutzpah of the moment.
"People have not understood what democracy is all about. You will agree with me that dictators don’t allow protests, no booing. Protests, booing, debates is part of the culture of democracy. Unfortunately, people misunderstand this, misread this. In a typical democracy, people engage heads of state. People criticise heads of state, they call for their removal because they are expressing freely. That’s the culture of democracy," Zuma said.
"If I was one of you, I would write columns and columns and educate people about democracy, saying how is South Africa democratic. That is the moment to check whether democracy works. A country where there is no democracy, there would be an angry president challenging police to arrest these people, but democracy says, let people express themselves."
So people protesting about their president is a good thing because it illustrates that we live in a democracy? Well, that’s true, of course. Not so great for the president, however.
In the discussions around the events of the weekend, the focus was actually not on Zuma himself, whom most of the business people are now trying to see beyond, but his former wife Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. The consensus seems to be that although the booing probably won’t affect Zuma because his popularity is too low to matter, Cosatu hardening its position is probably bad news for Dlamini-Zuma’s campaign.
Cosatu is essentially the union of state employees, who make up a large proportion of the new black middle class. Anything, such as a recession, or anyone, such as an unpopular president, is a visceral threat — so in a way it’s natural that Cosatu wants to distance itself from Zuma and anyone who might continue Zuma’s legacy.
Reports galore
The WEF is a great place to release reports on one subject or another and several great reports were release on Wednesday. Ernst & Young released its Africa Attractiveness Program for 2016.
The report is sobering and, ironically, encouraging. Sub-Saharan African economic growth in 2016 was the lowest it has been in more than a decade. But signs of a turnaround are everywhere. China, it turns out, was the biggest job creator in 2016, as the UK and the US faced their own internal issues. This report always amazes me because it shows the extent of South African investment in the region: SA, the 36th-largest economy in the world, year invested twice as much in Africa as Germany, the fourth-largest. SA’s economic future is increasingly being tied to that of the continent.
Which is probably good news, medium term. Auditing firm PWC also does a regular report on the attitudes of CEOs. This one found 91% of CEOs are confident about their own companies’ growth prospects in the medium term, the highest level of confidence since the firm began its research on CEOs in Africa in 2012.
And communication company FTI Consulting does a report on, among other things, which African countries are selling themselves best. No surprise, SA is slipping on this report, but it still holds fourth place. The winner by far is Rwanda, followed by Kenya and Mauritius.
FTI_Africa_research_2017 by Times Media on Scribd
Science
I spoke briefly to Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor, who was tipped to be ousted in the Night of the Long Knives but somehow survived. Ex-Star editor Peter Sullivan described her as the "minister of the stars", a reference to the Square Kilometre Array. He told me to ask her what her star sign was. It’s Sagittarius, she told me without a pause. "The troublesome one."
She was keen to tell me the research and development tax benefit had been reformed and was now being utilised more frequently. The tax giveaway is now about R8bn, but the government is still doing more research and development than the private sector. I couldn’t help talking about immediate politics so asked Pandor if she would support a commission of inquiry into state capture. She wouldn’t commit, but it was clear she was appalled by the incessant reports of corruption. Anything to stop it would be worthy of support, she said. "It’s become a scourge."
To be continued…
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