The National Development Plan (NDP) 2030, launched in 2011, is a brilliant policy document. It was the first holistic attempt to map out a future path for SA.
However, as with so many things South African, implementation has been our downfall. The recent admission by ANC economic transformation subcommittee head Mmamoloko Kubayi that its goals will not be met by 2030 highlights the damage done from missed opportunity.
The NDP was the first major initiative in SA policy-making driven by evidence, and it covered all spheres of society. The National Planning Commission, which drafted the plan, conducted thorough research over three phases:
- The diagnostic stage, identifying the problems in each sphere.
- The development of a comprehensive plan to address those problems and a strategy to achieve the targets in each sphere.
- Monitoring and evaluation, which was supposed to have taken place over time to assess whether the interventions were working and provide flexibility to adapt where progress was not satisfactory.
China’s incredible economic growth since it began opening and reforming its communist economy in 1978, averaging almost 10% a year, is based on a series of such meticulous plans, each of which is guided by the framework of a longer 30-year plan. This year it adopted its 14th five-year plan. About 800-million people have been lifted out of poverty by these plans.
The difference, of course, is that whereas China implements its plans, SA does not. Today we have severe problems in each of the spheres covered by the NDP, ranging from economic infrastructure and environmental sustainability to building state capacity and fighting corruption.
A great irony is that the NDP emphasised that achieving the goals in education and infrastructure is critical to the overall goal of building an inclusive economy, transforming society and uniting the country. It recognised that quality education enables individuals to fulfil their potential, while a reliable energy supply is a prerequisite for economic growth.
Yet this week we learnt that 40% of children drop out of school before matric, while the country suffers from repeated load-shedding.
How different would SA be today if we’d achieved just those two sets of targets? We’d have a reliable energy supply and 90% of pupils in grades 3, 6 and 9 would need to score at least 50% in maths, literacy and science. Instead, these are two areas of significant failure since the NDP was endorsed by the cabinet in 2012.
This is why there are so many calls from all sectors of society, including organised business, labour and civil society organisations, to accelerate implementation of the reforms that are being undertaken. The opportunity cost of the delays is enormous.
It is vital that we go back to each sphere in the plan, conduct similar diagnostic research, and set new, realistic targets for each to be achieved. This process will also identify how much progress has actually been made in each sphere — and in some departments it is extensive, because the NDP has served as a guiding document. An example is in health, where the NDP goal was to improve the infant mortality rate from 43 deaths per 1,000 infants to below 20; today it is at 24.3.
But in many other areas the government has barely paid lip service to the NDP. For example, the plan understood the developmental role state-owned enterprises could play and listed a broad set of reforms to improve their efficiency and ability to serve the public interest. Instead we got state capture looting, which gutted the state-owned enterprises and left them with crippling debt burdens that have needed enormous bailouts from the SA taxpayer. Today we’re still struggling to rejuvenate them and they’re largely incapable of serving the public interest, which is crippling economic growth.
What gives the NDP credibility is that it is purely evidence-based policy, free of any ideological influence. It needs to remain so to give the country the best chance of reaching its targets. And they’re worth striving for, including the economic and education goals, no matter how outlandish they might sound given the state of both today. These include tripling the size of the economy and bringing unemployment down to 6% (it was at 25% in 2011); and having at least 80% of pupils complete 12 years of schooling.
We had a credible vision and need to develop equally credible capacity to implement it as a matter of urgency.
• Mavuso is CEO of Business Leadership SA.
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