Is dealing people into the economy one of the government’s keys to recovery? If so, will excluded people have a say in how that happens?
The question is raised by the government’s recently published post-Covid-19 economic recovery plan. It is important because the exclusion of many from the economy’s benefits is not only a moral problem. SA is unlikely to achieve rapid growth unless the people in townships and shack settlements who cannot enjoy the economy’s benefits are included in its mainstream.
The government’s plan seems to agree. It talks of more involvement by “township and rural enterprises” in manufacturing. It promises more participation by black people, women and people with disabilities. It talks repeatedly of aid to small, medium and micro-enterprises (SMMEs).
All of this sounds as if it is moving away from the state of mind that assumes the economy grows only when everyone works in factories, shops and office blocks, and that it wants to unleash the energies and ideas of people who earn their living outside them.
But what does it mean when it talks of SMMEs? This could mean anything from start-ups in suburban homes to backyard township businesses. Since the suburban variety can often rely on resources built up over generations, helping them is unlikely to include anyone who is not already inside. Nor is it clear whether the black people and women to be included are outsiders or are already included.
Even if the government has got the message that the millions outside the tent must be welcomed in, there is no guarantee the plan will do this. Like most government documents, it contains many programmes, and which of them is implemented depends on who the government hears. The most important Covid-19 relief measure that reaches the excluded, the special grant, has been extended for only three months, reportedly at the request of community groups at the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac). The government knows they are not nearly as strong and organised a lobby as some others that want relief, so their concerns fall down the pecking order.
Organised groups
We also have no idea whether what the government thinks people who are excluded need is what they really do need — the only people who can judge this are the excluded themselves. This highlights one of the plan’s obvious flaws — it is highly unlikely that the opinions of excluded people played a role in shaping it.
The government is fixated on social compacts, agreements on what to do about economic and social problems. But, while “social compact” talk always sounds as if everyone is included, it almost always offers a say only to organised interest groups, usually business and labour, sometimes professional bodies. It is unclear whether the recovery plan is a compact (whether it was negotiated with the other interests). The document reads that it is, and business and labour (that part which is allowed into Nedlac) said good things about it. But their reaction suggests they are applauding politely from the sidelines, not that they see the document as, in part, theirs.
What is clear is that the views of people eking out an informal living in townships and shack settlements were not sought. They were not asked to work with the government to fight Covid-19, so why seek their opinion on how they can contribute to economic recovery? To know what they want and need, the government does not have to wait for them to set up organisations and ask for a seat at Nedlac. A government in touch with most people who vote for the governing party would hear it directly from them.
But, as Covid-19 shows, the government prefers to talk about people who are excluded than to listen to them. As long as that persists, they are unlikely to get from the recovery plan what they need.
• Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.
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