Occasionally, a new diplomat arrives in SA and asks to see me. Diplomats have agendas and journalists need to be alive to this, but they also know a lot and talk to people in senior positions. Usually time is tight, so to give them something useful to chew over on the political milieu, I suggest something simple; take Occam’s Razor, the philosophical approach to problems that takes the fewest elements and seeks the simplest answer, and pervert it entirely.
Occam’s Razor should be natural to journalists. Brevity is best. Endless essays, long words and convoluted sentences are a performance, not a trade. In SA politics, though, understanding can often be found by seeking out the most cynical explanation you can. It’s the Mzansi Razor.
Businesses in SA have long had to put up with the accusations that they are spineless, choosing to quietly engage with a hapless government to help steer the economy away from the rocks. As things fall apart, though, and the reefs hove into view, this awkward cosiness is becoming frayed.
Consider the latest episode in the ANC. The party’s secretary-general Fikile Mbalula attacked public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan on Friday, telling him to fix Transnet. “Comrade Pravin, move faster or otherwise we’ll move you,” Mbalula said. He soon followed this up with a statement on Saturday evening about how this was merely an exhortation, not a threat, but what we saw was a crack in a system under pressure, and this makes it a useful case study.
The question is — frantic back-pedalling aside — why Mbalula picked on Gordhan and Transnet. Why not the police minister, for his oversight of criminal impunity, or the minister of minerals & energy, for his failure to provide energy, or to the trade, industry & competition minister, for his impediments to trade? It’s not as if Mbalula doesn’t know railways. He was the transport minister who presided over the obliteration of passenger rail services in SA.
The attack on Gordhan even comes at a time when things appear to be changing at Transnet. There’s a new board and a new chair who understands mining, and ought to be given a chance to make his mark. They’ve brought in a private entity to run a terminal at the Port of Durban. Logistics are key focuses of the presidency’s co-option of the private sector’s expertise and cash through the national logistics crisis committee. So, what gives?
Chaos in SA reflects dysfunction in the ANC, and the ANC is genuinely terrified about the next election. In the case of Transnet, the Mzansi Razor is useful. What Gordhan and Mbalula both know is that jobs are now on the line in mining. Kumba said the quiet bit out loud last week when it warned that because of Transnet’s inability to move ore, it had deferred R2bn of capital expenditure. Every time a miner speaks, they speak of the huge cost of Transnet’s failings. And so, inevitably, they are muttering about jobs.
The car companies have been saying the same thing for years about Transnet rail services, but their complaints haven’t mattered in terms of timing, and the government knows that any decision by automotive giants to disinvest as a result of regulatory ineptitude won’t happen before 2024.
This explains the perception of activity around Transnet. It presents a clear danger to the ANC in the coming election. A mining jobs bloodbath and the likely ensuing industrial action and social upheaval would be very poorly timed for the ANC’s hopes of re-election.
It’s not even particularly important that the interventions at Durban will probably fail. The “private” concession in Durban will be managed by Manila-based International Container Terminal Services, but the joint entity is majority owned by Transnet and the agreement requires that the employees of the entity are seconded by Transnet, under its terms and conditions of employment, rather than being employed by the new special- purpose vehicle. That’s another manifestation of the state’s fear about unions and jobs in an election year and doesn’t bode well for operational transformation.
The Mzansi Razor says that the real chance of job losses in mining because of Transnet has reached a political point and so now they care. If your industry is not in a space that is immediately politically relevant, then your problems are not on the radar. You can get onto the presidency’s committees, and you can offer cash and expertise to fix the immediate crisis. If you’re too small for that, you will have to continue to run your business despite the poor environment and rely on the courts to seek out certainty and fairness.
Political performances
The razor runs both ways. Beefed-up BEE regulations, race-based water licences and NHI are all political performances. Many corporates will keep quiet in the knowledge that they can engage after the elections. The courts will be left to sort it out after the echoes of the anti-capital rhetoric have faded and the state looks, once again, for help to fix what next threatens it from the subject of its performative ideological ire.
It’s no way to run a country. When nobody operates out of principle or for collective benefit, the concept of good faith is first to die. This is the reality of the president’s “reform agenda”. It is about fixing what has potential to hurt the ANC in 2024, and not much else.
• Parker is Business Day editor in chief.
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