In a few weeks SA will head into to its fifth local government elections. These were almost derailed by the pandemic, which in the eyes of some political parties has made it impossible to campaign freely and fairly in the traditional manner, which involves door-to-door visits.
For the ANC in particular, whose wide grass-roots footprint benefits from the door-to-door model, the wish to delay the elections was premised on its anxieties regarding what campaigning in this electoral cycle would look like. Ironically, its financial chaos leaves one wondering how it would have financed a national grass-roots campaign to begin with.
As things stand, political parties will have to campaign differently this time. The challenge for all is what message to sell to voters disillusioned by high levels of unemployment, increasing levels of poverty and declining levels of service delivery. The intersection of these factors provides a profile of a society desperate for solutions — and political elites bereft of ideas.
As many more citizens have fallen into income and social insecurity, old debates have taken centre stage. In a country of low employment, the citizenry is essentially made up of the few who are employed, the many on social assistance programmes, and the remaining millions who languish in limbo.
According to Stats SA’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, just 14,9-million citizens are employed in a country with a working-age population of 39,6-million and labour force of 22,8-million. The 7,8-million who are classified as unemployed are evaluated against the labour force to yield an unemployment rate of 34,4%. But another 3,3-million discouraged citizens have lost faith in the idea of finding a job — and are tragically correct in their assessment.
The dilemma of these millions is that by being classified as working age — between 15 and 64 — they are automatically excluded from the two most common social assistance programmes, child and old-age grants. The sense of being in limbo persists throughout those years, and unless a job miraculously materialises their lives are a daily dalliance with struggle. With such realities, the quest for alternatives is unavoidable.
The obvious one — creation of jobs to absorb working-age citizens — is simply beyond the capacity of SA’s leaders. The alternatives, a basic income grant and comprehensive social security, have polarised opinions in recent weeks. An income grant is acknowledged as an instrument that reduces abject poverty but is regarded as unaffordable by the bureaucrats in charge of national financial planning. Additionally, little consensus exists on the appropriate level of such a grant. That on its own renders the ability to make an informed call speculative at best.
Currently the debate pits those calling for an immediate rollout of the grant against those who argue that the creation of sustainable jobs is the type of grant citizens would prefer. While both views have their merits and limitations, they are not mutually exclusive. The problem with the government is that its ability to make difficult decisions that require trade-offs is notoriously nonexistent. Rather, policy proposals languish in terminal negotiation that soon gets overtaken by external events.
The revival of comprehensive social security reform proposals by social development minister Lindiwe Zulu even though its key variables had become outdated, is an illustration of this. Any government that has presided over this type of paralysis and economic stagnation would ordinarily be worried about which message to pass to voters in an electoral cycle.
Luckily for the ANC, its opponents are equally clueless about what and how it should happen. As a result, South Africans are once again being asked to show up at the polls not to bank on the future, but to find the least disruptive way of surviving an untenable status quo.
• Sithole (@coruscakhaya) is an accountant, academic and activist.
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