The ANC has had 28 years to put the country on a trajectory to achieve an expansive economy, a more widely shared prosperity and everyone pulling in the same direction. Now more than ever we all need to put our shoulders to the wheel.
Adjusted for our times, this means when your luxury four-wheel-drive SUV is stuck in the mud in some remote area, everyone needs to push in the same direction to get the vehicle back on solid ground. It is absolutely essential that the person with their hands on the steering wheel is able to persuade everyone to push harder and ensure that everyone agrees in which direction the car needs to go.
This person, the leader as it were, has to be unambiguous and courageous, and have the courage of their convictions to convince everyone to push or pull in the same direction. Unfortunately, there has been no SA political leader since Thabo Mbeki who was unambiguous and courageous.
I should add, in haste, that Mbeki’s froideur and HIV/Aids policies led, in part, to his downfall. The former, which was seen as aloofness and detachment from “the rank and file” — and salivating cadres who had grown impatient with waiting for their turn to eat — undoubtedly hastened Mbeki’s exit, and his HIV/Aids policies will continue to haunt him.
The challenges confronting the ANC today have been a long time coming. At some point in the life of the movement it comprised a “broad church” of nationalists, liberals, communists, capitalists, and all SA’s real or imagined races, cultural or ethnic groups and communities. Each one of the groups in this “broad church” would probably prefer to push or pull the country in a slightly different direction.
While divergent views are necessary in any healthy democracy, they can be debilitating for a governing party. Then again, it’s difficult to know whether the ANC is a political party, a social movement, a liberation movement, a bunch of buffoons dressed in polyester camouflage jumpsuits, or just a vehicle for pecuniary gain.
The biggest problem, and I am hard-pressed to identify just one, is that when it comes to economic policy the ANC speaks in fragments and seems desperately afraid to even mention the words “capitalism” or “profit”. The party and all its affiliates want domestic and foreign investors to plough money into the country to expand the economy. But an expansive economy is one that includes increases in growth, equity (ownership, or membership), productivity, distribution, maintenance and upgrade of infrastructural networks, and research & development. The aim of all these is to make the country — the people — more prosperous, healthier, better educated, and looking forward to a better future. Call it hope, but every generation should hope that a better future awaits those who come after them.
The problem, the way I see it, is that we have reached a thousand plateaus (with a nod to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari) of a similar elevation, but we never seem to take things progressively higher, and consistently. There are at least two explanations for our failure to get to a higher elevation. It has to do with fear and loathing.
The ANC fears it would lose its electoral base, and push out the communists, trade unionists and radical economic transformation (RET) faction (many of whom are hiding in plain sight), if it mentions the word “capitalism” in a favourable way — whether it’s the liberal politics of the West, the state-led variant of China, or the social democracy of countries such as Germany or Sweden. The loathing is of the idea of profit, which contradicts or undermines calls by hard nuts such as Irvin Jim and Zwelinzima Vavi, who want people to invest their money in SA but will not agree that investors may repatriate their profits.
A thorough reading of the EFF’s policies shows a brazen 1920s style Marxist-Leninist orientation peppered with a selective and myopic reading of Frantz Fanon. The EFF is simply waiting for the governing party’ RET faction to join them.
SA will go nowhere if the leader of the ANC and head of state is at the steering wheel of a car that’s stuck in the mud and is urging the communists, trade unionists and RET/EFF to put their shoulders to the wheel, because they are guaranteed to push or pull in different directions. The ANC needs to decide what it wants to be, or the proverbial centre — including the “top six” — cannot be expected to hold.
• Lagardien, a visiting professor at the Wits University School of Governance, has worked in the office of the chief economist of the World Bank, as well as the secretariat of the National Planning Commission.
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.