The 22km stretch of N2 between the Mthatha River bridge and the Viedgesville junction must be one of the most treacherous in SA to negotiate.
On a good day it takes about 35 minutes in either direction, but generally it can take up to an hour. This is due to a combination of potholes, traffic congestion, reckless driving, livestock and mountain-size speed bumps, often near the worst potholes.
Alongside the same N2 is a railway line that can no longer be used because communities have sprung up on either side of it. Transnet stopped using the line more than two decades ago. Another reason for the congestion on the N2 is long-distance trucks ferrying goods, instead of them being carried on trains.
The Viedgesville junction is mainly a turn-off to a part of the Eastern Cape Wild Coast — Coffee Bay, Hole In The Wall and other peerlessly beautiful tourism real estate. The poor state of the 75km stretch of “tarred” road has to be seen to be believed. It is the stuff of movies. In some areas it is better to leave the road entirely to avoid deep potholes that have shredded tyres and damaged cars for years.
Google Maps advises travellers to set aside an hour and 30 minutes for the trip. It can take longer and is mentally exhausting for the driver. Thousands of people are transported on this road by sometimes rickety taxis.
On either side of the treacherous road is some of the most arable land you will see anywhere. In summer it turns a deep, lush green because of generally consistent rainfall. The land has huge commercial potential for the communities that own it (though they are regarded as “landless” because of the tribal trust land tenure system), but these days even subsistence farming is declining each year.
What were large swathes of maize farmland when I was growing up in the 1980s have been become unplanned residential areas. The sale of family farmland (erven sell for between R50,000 and R70,000) has become quite common.
The sites are so poorly organised due to no town planning that it is nearly impossible for an ambulance to locate a home at night. There are no road names or house numbers. There are also no street lights, so already rampant crime is even worse at night.
The area falls under the OR Tambo district municipality, which was placed under administration last year due to political and administrative dysfunction. The evidence log of this is too long to list it here, but almost nothing worked. Corruption is also common.
The proposition here is that after almost two decades of ANC misrule and corruption we must print more money to be overseen by the same people who have stolen and misused trillions already. We must make bigger allocations to a chronically under-performing government and even worse municipalities.
After the local government elections in November, a new council and mayor were installed, but everything else is likely to remain the same, including the chronic underperformance of the Eastern Cape provincial government.
Unemployment is high. The fortunate work for government or in retail. Hardware stores belonging to local and immigrant traders, as well as big business, make money hand over fist because of the financial support residents receive from relatives in more economically prosperous metropolitan and industrial areas.
I relate all of this because there is a raging discussion about monetary and fiscal policy, and a basic income grant (BIG), which, in principle, I am in favour of, but specifically for the unemployed. Just looking for work is expensive, which means people often give up doing so because they cannot afford to.
In this discussion most anger is directed at National Treasury and the SA Reserve Bank. The former is supposed to borrow hundreds of billions of rand more a year, while the latter is supposed to print money by buying up bonds on the open market. There is apparently no limit to this sort of thing, a magical solution to all our problems.
At best we are having an incomplete discussion. At worst people are engaging in the lowest form of sophistry and manipulative, dishonest politics.
The proposition here is that after almost two decades of ANC misrule and corruption we must print more money to be overseen by the same people who have stolen and misused trillions already. We must make bigger allocations to a chronically underperforming government and even worse municipalities.
They will then conceive and implement projects designed to facilitate grand theft, such as happened with personal protective equipment (PPE) corruption. The most recent Special Investigating Unit (SIU) report on this makes the stomach turn, yet we must borrow more to give to the same people. It’s a horrifying proposition.
While I support an increase in and extension of the Covid-19 grant, a more urgent and important task is to understand the systemic nature of why people are poor and unemployed. Let me posit a potential solution to demonstrate what I mean and explain why I told that long story about the N2, the road to Coffee Bay and unemployment.
Economic policy discourse is heavily influenced by people chasing instant gratification through silver bullets and in a way that avoids the deeply political nature of why SA’s economy will never grow while the ANC continues to govern the country and municipalities.
Say we had a new government with capable MPs and clear priorities. They are ethical and have some expertise in various areas of SA life and future development. They are united by a clear social contract drawn from the underlying principles of our constitution.
The government they elect is similarly minded and capable, devising development plans that are supported by strong, capable institutions that are insulated from undue political interference. They will be run by the most capable in our society, not deployees who lobby politically powerful thugs, promising to stuff leather man bags with public cash if appointed.
Say such a government were to borrow an additional R600bn a year and use some of it to:
- Expand the N2 and, where there are bottlenecks, build arterial roads properly, within budget, on time and with no corruption involved. This would ensure that where we previously built 40km of road in three years, we could build 200km in the same period. This would vastly improve tourism, make a stronger case for eco-friendly tourism developments and improve access to basic services such as health.
- Install bulk water and sanitation infrastructure to improve access to potable water inside every homestead and enable the irrigation of communal commercial farming ventures that have access to national and global commodities markets.
- Implement an integrated food security and agri industrialisation strategy that involves capitalising on available communal and government land, skills transfer partnerships with the existing commercial agri sector, subsidised borrowing arrangements with commercial banks to enable favourable lending rates and terms, and offtake agreements with retailers and exporters.
- Finally, reorientate communal stock farming by implementing a proper rural zoning and spatial development plan that separates stock- and crop-farming areas, with the former implemented through communal feedlots, grazing land and farms that are immunised from residential expansion. These ventures would see each villager contributing their stock in exchange for a share of revenue.
Though there is much more that can be done, let me stop and explore the possible outcomes.
First, infrastructure investment would create jobs for locals and enable them to develop new ones to be used in the future. It would also create business opportunities that would create more jobs, taking thousands of people off the government grant system.
Second, better road and bulk water infrastructure lays the groundwork for more investment in agriculture and tourism, the natural assets of the area. Both sectors offer sustainable employment and revenue opportunities without, for the most part, requiring complex tertiary skills or qualifications.
Finally, it would facilitate real economic transformation by growing the economic asset base of rural families and communities, with 100% black ownership free of politically connected elites who “eat” on behalf of the poor.
Economic policy discourse is heavily influenced by people chasing instant gratification through silver bullets and in a way that avoids the deeply political nature of why SA’s economy will never grow while the ANC continues to govern the country and municipalities.
We cannot keep the ANC in power and deliver national prosperity at the same time. But change in political leadership on its own will not deliver, either. It is time for the silent, disgruntled majority to join organised civil society groups to conceive, devise and implement imaginative, systemic priorities and plans as a new form of democratic government.
Submitting memos to the same disinterested, arrogant people, asking them to solve the same problems they wanted to create for corrupt purposes cannot be a way forward.
• Zibi is former editor of Business Day and chair of the Rivonia Circle.
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