As expected, the ANC’s 2017 policy conference has not ended particularly well.
Delegates fought over everything and by the time of writing, the only "decision" I had heard was that it would withdraw SA from the International Criminal Court. They first made that decision in 2012. They’ll probably make it again in 2022.
It is hard to think of a party with as much legitimacy, authority, history, memory and with as much time to prepare for government that has done a worse job of it than the ANC. Apparently its commissions (the working groups ANC conferences divide into) argued the notion of "white monopoly capital" until blue in the face.
It is hard to remember now that "white monopoly capital" is merely a slogan (inspired, in a way) dreamed up as part of a public relations drive by a British company Bell Pottinger, for its most recent (and catastrophic) South African client, the Guptas.
— WE ALL OWE THE PEOPLE INSIDE THE ANC WHO STAND UP FOR WHAT IS RIGHT AND SENSIBLE A GREAT DEAL OF THANKS.
Sure, white-owned capital still dominates the formal economy and that absolutely has to change. But the monopolies in SA all belong to the state.
The thing is, with the policy conference over, now what? Are we any closer to even understanding how much trouble we are in? No, we are not. Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba may have had no option but to bail South African Airways out again this week, but does he have any idea how to make it profitable? No, he doesn’t.
With every day that passes under the administration (if you can call it that) of Jacob Zuma, South Africans fall further behind. Our youth unemployment is arguably the highest in the world now and the worst implication of that isn’t that the government doesn’t know how to turn it around. It is that it isn’t possible to turn it around.
The fact is that extremely high levels of unemployment have become a permanent feature of our landscape and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Beneficiate our own minerals? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve just read a Financial Times report on Volvo announcing that from 2019, it will use electric motors in every vehicle it builds. Bye-bye catalytic converters.
Worse, Volvo is owned by the Chinese motor company Geely and the Chinese have only just got started. Today, electric cars account for just 1% of sales. By 2030, it’ll be 80%. We’re being left behind by technology so fast, we can’t even discuss it, let alone do anything about it. The batteries that run cars in 10 years’ time will be scalable to run towns and factories. The nuclear power order Zuma wants to make is already obsolete.
What the ANC needs is a commission to talk about the future. Economic transformation, understandable as an imperative, is about fixing the past. But the future is rushing at us faster than the past is receding. We need to do something about it and, as usual, we’d better be clear that it has to be done together.
I heard, for instance, the other day about the most remarkable proposal. Apparently, the mining industry is offering to place hundreds of thousands of hectares of arable land at the disposal of new black farmers. After all, miners don’t need topsoil. The thousands of potential new black farmers who would benefit from the land, training and marketing of the mining companies is incalculable. These would be South Africans who could pick perfect oranges or pears in Mpumalanga on a Thursday and have them on sale in Berlin and Tokyo by Saturday.
But hey, instead, let’s rather go stuff up the miners and show them who’s boss. Impose a new Mining Charter. Force them to spend more of their capital bringing new empowerment shareholders on board. Impose new taxes on them. Get Eskom to chase them off their investments.
All we have ever been able to do really well in this country is mine and farm. We should look for innovative ways to make sure that with the resources we have, we create as much wealth as possible. There are many millions of South Africans who will never get a job. Our task is to find a way of getting them an income, a basic grant. A life.
You do that by creating a business environment where people can invest with confidence and make huge profits. It is the profit, you see, that produces the tax you get to spend on welfare and health and education.
Without profit, without the creation of new wealth, you are nowhere. That is just how the world works and you can push back at it, but you’ll lose.
All, though, is not lost. I have faith in SA. It is hard to expect a government as corrupted as ours to be able to listen to sensible advice. Yet we all owe the people inside the ANC who stand up for what is right and sensible a great deal of thanks.
The policy conference did not amount to much. But we all know it could have been much, much worse.
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