PETER BRUCE: If you think ANC policy will begin to reflect reality, dream on

You take a break, come back, and nothing’s changed. Well, not quite. Durban is in even bigger economic trouble than it was before, and from defending Eskom’s leadership to batting away ANC Women’s League president and convicted perjurer Bathabile Dlamini, President Cyril Ramaphosa seems finally to have his ANC under control.

But a reminder that big things are still out of control is the release of a paper from the department of mineral resources & energy on new plans to reignite mining exploration, which has all but dried up in SA, a country with some of the greatest mineral deposits on earth. The last actual mine to start here was a zinc operation in the Northern Cape in 2020.

The department’s paper is all determination and even includes a special introduction by ANC chair and minerals & energy minister Gwede Mantashe. “Whereas the mining regulatory reform remains a critical intervention in pursuit of societal normalisation,” he writes, “it also constituted a path least traversed and landed the nation in an environment of uncharted territory. Since the introduction of regulatory reform in the mining industry, we now have the benefit of hindsight and a well-established jurisprudence, which highlights, amongst others, requisite capacity to implement established regulatory framework as well as incremental divergence in expectations …”

You skip past what you eventually realise is an admission of enormous mining policy failure. A few days earlier, Canada’s Fraser Institute published its latest ranking of the world’s most desirable mining investment destinations. We ranked among the 10 worst, yet it is what mining we still have that is right now saving the fiscus (and welfare to the poor) as commodity prices boom, mining profits explode and the taxes they pay to the state outperform expectations. You’d think ANC policy would begin to reflect reality.

Dream on. Undaunted, the new ANC policy paper clings to the past and is all over the place, just as was its progenitor, Ramaphosa’s mid-Covid-19 Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP).

The ERRP was at least produced under pressure, in the winter of 2020. Business made a huge contribution, not much to its advantage as Ramaphosa allowed trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel to use it to drive his localisation policies. Trade unionist that he is, Patel’s tools are regulation and demand. Still, the ERRP goals are far from being met. A much-vaunted infrastructure programme is yet to begin. Ramaphosa’s National Development Plan, his vision for 2030, targets 6% unemployment. The World Bank forecasts more than 38% by 2024.

Some reforms are in place but are too young to judge. Spectrum has been auctioned off. Transnet will invite third parties to use and manage track and ports. Industry can generate 100MW of electricity without a licence. Undaunted, the new ANC policy paper clings to the past. “To build a new, more equal society, the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) must enter a second more radical and more effective phase … During this phase, the ANC will forge ahead with interventions that seek fundamentally to change the structure, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership, management and control of the economy in favour of all South Africans … The National Development Plan: Vision 2030 remains our guiding programme.”

And that’s before the paper falls over itself. On energy policy (Mantashe territory), it says SA “needs to find its own sources of crude oil through opening its offshore acreage to international oil companies for exploration for oil and gas … it is clear that [SA] is well endowed with oil and gas, which could alleviate crises such as the one we have of high prices.” Hurry, hurry! In just one leap we could be free of the whole oil market.

A few pages later we are on the exciting opportunities for manufacturing (Patel territory) in green energy: “… there is high potential for green hydrogen due to the country’s geography and weather patterns. SA … has a good climate for solar and wind energy required for green hydrogen. This presents opportunities for the mobilisation of funding for green economic activities. Pertinent for the manufacturing sector is the need to transition the sector to a low-carbon emission especially in energy usage. Failure to do this may undermine our ability to export.”

And so it goes. Contradictions rule. To keep a promise made in his state of the nation address on February 10, Ramaphosa has just 26 days left to produce a new social and economic consensus to create the equal society the policy paper describes at its start. Two senior CEOs I call have not been spoken to yet about this. They shrug. Why would any sensible person think any arrangement made with the ANC or its government would be of any value apart from keeping the state at bay.

Ramaphosa knows this well. He got into trouble on February 10 for suggesting business, not government, created jobs. But he’d said as much in September 2021. The ERRP had literally no hope without help from the private sector, he told parliament. It still doesn’t. So why not try something new? We cannot continue to try to regulate or negotiate our way into growth. We can only trade our way to prosperity.

So facilitate that. Incentivise that. The commodities boom shows how it is done. Set business free. Dear god please, please, get out of the way.

• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.