Successive ANC administrations have become increasingly like their apartheid predecessors, prolific producers of material their political opponents and the electorate can use against them. The next national and provincial elections are no longer for the ANC to lose but for the opposition to win. But that’s a story for another day.
Where the apartheid regimes passed discriminatory and oppressive laws and gave them sharper teeth through effective and brutal implementation, ANC governance failures over the past 15 years have become legend, along with the brazen theft of public funds — including the distortion of public policies to create opportunities for fraud and corruption.
Like the National Party administrations, the ANC government sees itself as a victim of a deliberate plot and misrepresentation of what’s happening in the country by those who have never believed black people can govern, especially an economy as advanced as SA’s, however skewed its benefits in terms of race. ANC chair Gwede Mantashe suggests this when he talks about conspiracies to overthrow the government.
In the 1960s and 1970s many white South Africans believed the international pressure on SA was unnecessary because all that was needed was patience among black people until a workable solution to the race problem could be found. The ANC thinks the same way when it comes to electricity.
It believes South Africans must draw upon their reserves of patience and give the government more time to deal with SA’s socio-economic problems, especially the collapse of energy generation and provision, rail infrastructure, municipal services and low economic growth.
That has certainly been the tone, if not the letter, of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s responses. Last week he announced that he had decided at the last minute not to attend the World Economic Forum’s annual meetings in Davos because of the severity of the power cuts. This raised hope — an increasingly depleted scarce resource — that his decision meant he was going to do something drastic about them.
Then, as has become standard with the man, Ramaphosa disappeared from public view, and the next word on power cuts came via his love letter to the nation on Monday: “As load-shedding continues to wreak havoc on businesses, households and communities, the last thing South Africans want to hear are excuses or unrealistic promises. The demands for an immediate end to power cuts are wholly understandable. Everyone is fed up.”
The president went into the usual excuse mode, saying “we are in the grip of an energy crisis that has been many years in the making”. In short, Ramaphosa sang his old song: time, and more time, is what it will take to deal with the energy issue.
This reminds one of the economist Cornelius de Kiewiet’s description of the apartheid government’s view in the 1960s: “SA wants all the time, delay and postponement possible; time is needed to reveal the weaknesses of its opponents, and to confirm the practical wisdom and establish the successes of SA policies.”
Though Ramaphosa admits to the devastating effects of power cuts on economic activity and the disruption to people’s lives, the core of his message too is that his government must be given time.
Where the apartheid government destroyed those who had the standing among the majority of black people to negotiate a political settlement, and in De Kiewiet’s words bred “a generation of exiles with whom it would not be able to deal”, Ramaphosa has successfully marginalised even those, black and white, who hung their hopes on him when he first won the leadership of the ANC in 2017.
The ANC also seems to think, and often behaves accordingly, that black people will fall for the argument that they are better off today than they were in 1994 and that if the party were to be voted out of power this would place at risk the freedom they have enjoyed since 1994.
Whatever one’s emotions, the reality of SA today is that the white population controls the bulk of the capital, the scientific and technical skills as well as the major institutions, through which the investment of capital and the deployment of these skills can be exercised.
Unfortunately, SA’s economic development and prosperity for all depends on making sure those who control capital and make the decisions on how and where it is used remain in the country and have confidence in its future.
Ramaphosa and his government are depleting whatever stock of understanding and patience may remain among South Africans, just like successive colonial and apartheid governments.
• Sikhakhane, a former spokesman for the finance minister, National Treasury and SA Reserve Bank, is editor of The Conversation Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
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