Popping into Britain in summer always exposes one to a different take on life and politics. In 2019, Britain has been captured by the political crisis of the prime minister’s resignation.
Having inherited the poisoned chalice of Brexit from the most ill-advised referendum decision in history, Theresa May upstaged David Cameron in the most unfortunate way — by calling an even more ill-advised general election after which she ended up with less power than she inherited.
Britain’s problem in this transition is that into the void created by the Brexit mess has stepped one of the accidental architects of it all, Boris Johnson. Johnson is standing against Jeremy Hunt — and winning.
Bizarrely, what seems to be driving the Johnson momentum is the realisation that the Brits have waded so deep into Brexit territory that to retreat would be as dangerous as going on. His manifest flaws notwithstanding, the Brits are backing Johnson not because he’s the best on offer, but because it will require the champion of the mess to get the nation over the finishing line.
Across the opposition benches lies another stalemate regarding Jeremy Corbyn and his leadership of the Labour Party, and the suspicion that he simply doesn’t have the tools to lead the nation towards and beyond Brexit.
SA has a lot in common with the UK in terms of political stalemates. There’s little doubt that anyone waking up from a 25-year coma with the task of reviewing the ANC’s record in office and being asked to predict electoral outcomes would not expect them to remain so dominant.
The e-tolls saga pits the wishes of a government that has a majority in the national government against a province in which it barely hung onto power, and that has lost power in the major economic hubs
The ANC’s trump card, President Cyril Ramaphosa, is a man more comfortable leading a country rather than a party that keeps detonating suicide bombs. While tensions and contradictions are inherent in politics, finding consensus behind closed doors is vital, particularly for governing parties.
This week’s war of words between the Gauteng ANC and the finance minister in his kitchen presented yet another exhibit of the confusion that reigns across the party. Gauteng politics is an important case study of the difficulties of managing a three-tier government system.
The e-tolls saga pits the wishes of a government that has a majority in the national government against a province in which it barely hung onto power and that has lost power in the major economic hubs. To arrest the decline requires placating voters at the metropolitan level, then hoping that translates to an improved majority in the next provincial ballot. And yet since the gantries were erected, the national government has insisted they are going nowhere.
User-pay models
To change tack now risks a legitimacy crisis in which voters simply find another issue on which there is discontent and force the government to eventually yield. Such a risk haunts the finance minister, who has to find a way of keeping the funding pipeline of major government projects open by showing that when the government proposes a particular way of funding infrastructure and settling the concomitant debts, it is able to get it done.
Yet the minister seems oblivious to the fundamental thesis that user-pay models work best in a country characterised by high compliance levels, institutional efficiency and — if people want to opt out — viable alternatives. These are all things his government failed to put into place around public transport.
From the moment the SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) unleashed Vusi Mona and Nazir Alli to defend the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project such questions have been asked, and the state still doesn’t have the answers. To want to enforce the model in a country where none of the key issues has been addressed risks not just the legitimacy of the decision-making but raises the more important question of whether the government understands the dynamics of the country it governs.
• Sithole (@coruscakhaya) is a chartered accountant, academic and activist.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.