In its response to an emergency a government reveals in a flash how it understands both itself and the society it governs. In regard to the former, SA’s governors have performed better than we could have reasonably imagined. But in regard to the latter, there is trouble ahead.
To get a sense of the poise with which SA’s government understands itself, compare President Cyril Ramaphosa’s response to the onset of the pandemic with that of Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, who waved a six-leaf clover in the air, saying it would protect him from the virus, while doubling down on an austerity programme. Or compare Ramaphosa to Thabo Mbeki, who greeted the Aids pandemic by fuelling a dissident scientific paradigm.
We are fortunate to have a president of great sobriety, who understands both the limits and the possibilities of his own power and descends neither into panic nor fantasy. And we can see, too, how misleading it is to talk of the ANC as a homogeneous entity with a common set of values.
Never before has it been clearer that people from different universes have been flung together by history into the same party. Had Ramaphosa not become president we would be living through a nightmare response to the pandemic.
When it looks in the mirror, SA’s government sees a modern democratic state guided by the provisional knowledge the best science can offer. But what does it see when it takes in the society it governs? It sees, alas, an advanced industrial society in which most work is in the formal sector and levels of unemployment are tolerably low. That is the only way to understand the package of emergency steps the government has chosen.
The primary focus has been on measures to offset mass retrenchment in the formal sector. Meanwhile, informal food vendors were inexplicably forced to close, though they alone prevent the poor from travelling long distances to shop. When they were finally allowed to reopen, they were encumbered by heavy bureaucratic procedures.
More troubling, though, is the reluctance with which the government has contemplated using the jewel in its crown. SA has among the most widely accessible cash-transfer systems in the world. It is easier for us to channel help directly to those who need it than almost anywhere on earth.
The money goes straight to the households most burdened by the collapse of the informal sector and by mass unemployment. The necessary measures require no institutional innovation, no extra bureaucracy. And yet it was only on April 15, weeks after the initial package of emergency measures was announced, that the prospect of topping up grants was discussed in cabinet. Why the reluctance?
In the heat of the emergency, the government looked at the society it governs and blocked out its most singular characteristic — that widespread structural unemployment is permanent. It is a truth every postapartheid government has been unable to confront. Why so? Because policy has been powerless to change it. Unemployment has been growing since the early 1970s no matter who has been in power; it has been oblivious to policy, oblivious even to regime change. And who wants to see their own helplessness in the image of the society before them? Hence, the denial.
If this blind spot has already caused trouble now, in the early response to the pandemic, there is much more to come. When the health emergency is finally over SA will have unemployment levels never seen before. The formal sector is unlikely to reabsorb everyone it shed, even with the most generous help.
We will nonetheless be blessed with a saving grace, a cash-transfer system that can prevent mass hunger, stimulate demand and revive the small businesses that accumulate around the poor. Will we use it adequately? Or will we look this gift-horse in the mouth in a quixotic attempt to create full employment? So much about SA’s future rides on the answer to this question.
• Steinberg teaches African studies at Oxford University
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