Fixing SA is no longer the work of a generation, but of several. Before we get into it, it’s worth remembering that this country was born broken. The brainchild of two soldiers keen on white reconciliation, the idea of SA in 1910 was the solution to a bitter imperial-settler war for resources. It excluded black people, and stayed broken until 1994.
As the thirtieth anniversary of the democratic dispensation heaves into view it is always worth keeping regard for a wider sweep of history. Be that as it may, though, our current-day crisis of everything rolls on, and it feels like a time for a reckoning. That starts with a dispassionate aerial view; we have to accept that the state is in many places non-functional, in others badly denuded, and that the direction of travel is bad.
At almost every moment when citizens interact with the state they are faced with at best incompetence and, worse, indifference. Much ink has been spilt about the 1.22-million square kilometre of lost opportunities that is this country. There is little value in adding to that dismal litany here.
President Cyril Ramaphosa seems to have missed his moment. Since he toppled Jacob Zuma at Nasrec 1, he has fought an internal battle for real control of the ANC. At Nasrec 2 in December he finally got it, but it seems his victory has come at too high a cost. His cabinet reshuffle showed that he owes too much to too many people, and he appears strangely disinterested just as his moment arrives.
If the root-and-branch renewal in the state is the work of decades, that work cannot even start without the following big changes: a credible, fast approach to fixing the energy situation; an urgent intervention on crime; and a quick plan on getting the logistics working again. These elements of our problems are all interlinked, to a degree that to me they kind of resemble the same thing. I call it the omnicrisis.
New plants
It is becoming expensive and risky to invest in this country, as seen by our recent and deserved greylisting. That’s partly due to a certain kind of crime. And then, who would invest in a greenfield project of any sort if another sort of crime (“business forums”) arrives armed with Kalashnikovs and demands 30% of the contract, and the police do nothing to protect you?
This means our electricity crisis — solutions for which some parts of the government look to the private sector — will be hard and expensive to solve. I am often told that in the short term the new coal plants (Medupi and Kusile) just need to function, and the old ones need to improve their performance.
There are two problems here; one is that I don’t think the new plants can function at their designed capacity, and the other is that to get all of them working requires the dismantling of criminal syndicates in Mpumalanga (a third flavour of crime), and I’m not convinced that can be done quickly either. I am told quite often that I’m wrong on this. I really hope I am.
A lack of electricity and policing means the failure to fix the various broken bits of Transnet’s ports and railways has the knock-on effect of denying the fiscus billions of rand, weakening the state further. People can’t get to work on trains and exporters can’t get billions of dollars of goods and materials to a functioning port.
Some in government don’t seem to understand that these exporters then fail to meet contracts, and their customers look elsewhere to protect themselves. Exports are not a tap that can be simply opened up again.
No dynamo
The solution to the omnicrisis is serious, joined-up government. What the president’s reshuffle gave us was nothing of the sort. On energy it is an absolute shambles. The mineral resources minister will continue to block the development of fast renewable energy projects while pushing for expensive, slow gas-powered infrastructure.
Trade, industry & competition minister Ibrahim Patel, who under the state of disaster will now fast-track the licensing of new energy developments, is not known for being a dynamo in his negotiations with the private sector.
The electricity minister will worry about load-shedding as though it is a distinct, ring-fenced problem. The department of public enterprises is committed to its ownership of Eskom, and soldiers on despite being obsolete according to the president himself.
The finance ministry wants the state out of energy generation altogether and is more excited about enabling the development of privately built generation and distribution. Then there are the advisory groups, panels and schemes — too numerous to mention here.
On crime in its diverse manifestations it would be naive to expect any major change. There has been no change at the top and no strategic announcements that sound interesting. Employing more poorly led police officers will not fix this.
On logistics, it’s harder to discern. Our passenger railways were gutted under the watchful eye of Fikile Mbalula. That is making it harder and far more expensive for people to get to work and — critically — to reach opportunities to find or create work. Crime (taxi-related gangsterism) is never far away from issues with rail and bus services.
On freight rail, I still don’t really understand what’s gone wrong, but wrong it most certainly has gone. Perhaps Transnet is as much a victim as a player in the omnicrisis, but its current leadership is making little visible headway on the collapse of freight capacity in crucial areas of the economy.
Ramaphosa’s government is bloated and misallocated, and hoping for short-term improvements in the omnicrisis so that we can start fixing everything else is, I fear, naive. People running businesses and households need to plan for things to stay the same or deteriorate until the election, and to hope for material change afterwards.
In the short term, no-one is coming to help you.
• Parker is Business Day editor-in-chief.
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