The nation is in a state! That was one of the more amusing responses I had to the question of what to expect, or even wish for, in President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address.
Unsurprisingly, journalists and analysts are struggling to say much that is particularly about this event. In keeping with SA’s tradition of kicking the can down the road and having unending consultations, a look at the editions of recent years reveals a litany of pipedreams and broken promises.
In truth, some of those promises are best not kept, such as the idea of a state bank that was heavily promoted by former finance minister Tito Mboweni as a potential “disrupter” to the existing sector’s “discriminatory” nature. Now that he is back on the lucrative corporate board scene, wouldn’t it be funny if he ends up being signed up by one of them?
In the real world, SA is acknowledged as having one of the most sophisticated banking systems in the world. In fact, this is often cited as one of the few things going for us. On the other hand, from Eskom to your local council everything the ANC has tried to run is broken. The idea that the same party could form a bank that could disrupt the business model of a FirstRand or Standard Bank is truly laughable.
That’s not the point here. I read about this in an article by the latest addition to our impressive roll call of columnists, Jabulani Sikhakhane, who ironically enough was once a spokesperson for Mboweni when he was finance minister
“We are also proceeding with the establishment of a state bank as part of our effort to extend access to financial services to all South Africans,” Sikhakhane quoted Ramaphosa saying in his 2020 state of the nation address. I’m no fan of the idea, and am interested more in what the failure to act on the promise says about the government.
One can go back to any one of the speeches over the past four years and pick your own favourite unfulfilled promise. And that’s where the problem lies for Ramaphosa. Presiding over these ceremonial events each year is denuding him of credibility.
It's ironic as well that in the build-up to the speech the debate is dominated by a BIG (basic income grant) idea. I would argue that SA needs to do the opposite and say really small. Forget about reading Mariana Mazzucato and the ideas of an entrepreneurial state, and concentrate on the basics. Rather than dreaming of inventing the next Tesla, I’d rather the government took lessons in doing the more simple things.
In a recent interview with Business Day Growthpoint CEO Norbert Sasse bemoaned that property companies have to provide their own infrastructure and services, to the point where they are reading their own meters and picking up rubbish in the vicinity. If you drive in my own neighbourhood of Killarney in Johannesburg the main road has a gaping hole that runs across it. My assumption is that it was dug up to install broadband cables.
More than a week later there’s no sign of it being fixed. If you don’t notice it and hit it at speed there is a good chance of doing serious damage to your car. And if you do, you may have to suddenly hit the brakes and risk the person behind doing the same to you. One of my predecessors as editor, Songezo Zibi, wrote about the tragic state of infrastructure in the former Transkei. Well, Johannesburg, the richest city in Africa, isn’t much better.
One of the strangest things to observe in SA is how the people who are at times the most vocal critics of the government and its failures often also argue that it’s the solution. The government must spend and borrow more, they say, despite the country having what can only be described as a reverse multiplier effect from policies that have led to an explosion in debt.
It’s assumed that the government can competently take over private healthcare despite the state of the public system it runs indicating otherwise. With the opening up of the economy and having physical meetings, one gets a lot of insights that wouldn’t be there over Zoom.
During such a meeting with one CEO, he wondered aloud if one of the consequences of the bad behaviour by international consultancies Bain, McKinsey and others, as exposed by the Zondo commission, was that it would mean the idea of the private sector helping with delivery will be rendered toxic forever, to the detriment of the country.
You might wonder how many credit cards banks print every day. Yet until two weeks ago the government couldn’t print driving licence cards because the one machine it has for doing this had to be sent to Germany for repairs back in November. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry at transport minister Fikile Mbalula hailing the return of the machine as a “hallelujah” moment of celebration, instead of being an indictment on his government.
To this you could add any kind of “simple” service government can’t provide competently, from registering house sales to providing accurate rates and taxes bills. On one of my rare forays into Twitter I spotted former FNB CEO Michael Jordaan detailing his troubles trying to get a passport — something I could write a whole column about based on my own experiences — and it reinforced the point.
His conclusion that private competition in the issuing of passports would sort out the problems is of course seriously flawed. From Australia to Japan, countries have monopolies on issuing passports and they do so competently. The big problem in SA is more likely a lack of political competition.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Ramaphosa used the state of the nation address to acknowledge that the government not only acknowledges its weakness and will seek help, but that from now on it’s going to be about getting the simple things right?
I started writing thinking I was going to add my voice to the debate on the BIG. Perhaps sometimes, Mr President, to achieve big things you need to say small.
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