There are two competing narratives in SA today. The first is that the government has essentially made all the main reforms business has asked for, the economy is more resilient and recovering faster than initially thought, and it’s just a matter of time before confidence returns and growth really responds.
The second holds that reform has been slow and ineffectual, and progress too little too late. What’s more, it is being undone by regression in many other areas. Unless there is a sea change, SA will be neither fiscally nor socially sustainable over the longer term.
Unfortunately, the second view — that SA is on a grim downward trajectory — is the more accurate assessment and is becoming the dominant narrative in society. What this mounting negativity means for President Cyril Ramaphosa is that he risks being written off as a lame duck. With every day that passes, he risks losing the battle for South Africans’ hearts and minds — if he has not lost it already.
But perennial bears have a duty to keep asking themselves whether they have become too negative and, indeed, whether the Sandton consensus (which largely adheres to the second narrative) has become too cynical.
My reading of that consensus is that SA is expected to muddle through with growth rates of 1.5%-2% over the next few years. If commodity prices remain elevated and the Treasury can hold the line on public expenditure, the debt ratio may even stabilise at a high level. Unfortunately, this will not be enough to earn SA any credit rating upgrades, though we should be able to avoid sliding any deeper into junk.
But SA will have to grow 3% or more each year for the next 10 years to significantly dent its sky-high rates of unemployment, inequality and poverty. Or, in other words, to become a more viable long-term proposition.
If Ramaphosa wins a second term in December and packs the ANC’s top six with loyalists, there could be a second burst of Ramaphoria in 2023. But this will only be sustained and translate into faster growth if the president overcomes his terminal indecisiveness and timidity on everything from tackling corruption to replacing inept ministers and scrapping delinquent state-owned enterprises.
A new annual report by Stellenbosch University’s Bureau for Economic Research (BER) assessing the state of play in SA shows the country has regressed in many more areas than it has improved in over the past few years.
As unemployment and poverty have deepened, there has also been a disturbing downward drift in perceptions of the effectiveness of the police, the quality of governance, and the rule of law. This is sapping confidence, eroding the sense of unity among South Africans, and damaging the social fabric.
For instance, according to the 2021 Afrobarometer, close to a third of South Africans feel more strongly about their ethnic as opposed to their national identity, and only 37% of respondents trust people from other ethnic or religious groups. Almost 50% of South Africans also believe there is more that divides us than unites us — and the figure is climbing.
Confidence in the police has deteriorated steeply, with 48% of respondents saying in 2021 that they were “not at all” confident in the police compared to just more than 40% in 2018. This reflects a steep downward trend in the detection rates of contact crimes over the past decade and the exorbitant rates of murder and aggravated robbery.
This is not to say there are no areas of improvement. The BER reckons SA’s performance improved in 24 areas and regressed in 33. Only the gains tend to be small upticks, whereas the declines are mostly multiyear negative trends.
Itis hard not to conclude that the average South African despairs of the sun ever rising on Ramaphosa’s “New Dawn”. I’m one of them, but I still believe South Africans would rally behind the president quite quickly if he could act boldly to win back their confidence. The battle is not yet lost.
• Bisseker is a Financial Mail assistant editor.
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.