MARK BARNES: A democratic state should set policy but stay out of the engine room

Now the hard work begins. Once the politicians have stitched together a government, it will be about getting the job done.

This is not the work of politicians, it’s the work of experience and experts. It is about incremental, measurable progress towards making manifest the goals agreed to and aspirations (food, water, energy, safety, health, education, social security), and the prospects of economic dignity, cultural coexistence and peace.

It’s about bespoke, practical, urgent solution implementation and truth (like recognising that Johannesburg needs to be placed under administration — some form of tailored business rescue — with no more political pussy-footing as it sinks into the sludge). No more sucking up or showing off, no more beguiling lies, no more fanciful promises. The election is over, the people have spoken.

Get to it. Appoint the right doers, agree on the mandate, delegate authority and step aside.

In the public sector the doers in charge of the doers are the directors-general (and in some instances the entity-specific CEOs), subject respectively to the guidance and oversight (but not interference) of the ministers and boards.

If everyone knows their place and stays in their lanes, this works. We have seen what happens when they do not.

It follows that the people who fill these positions must be properly qualified and carefully selected. Unlike the rules that dictate who may be MPs, the appointment of executives is discretionary — not entirely different from the discretion that free capital has in the private sector. The owners of such capital (or power, in the case of governments) must be convinced of the strategy, the capacity of executive management to execute it, and the risk-return equation.

The providers of capital appoint a board of not only their representatives but also people with the appropriate levels of expertise and experience to judge the progress (or lack of it) being made by the executives who are paid to achieve the required returns and reach the agreed goals. Success is shared, failure is punished. Everyone signs up for that or doesn’t play.

A new government will emerge now, by whatever means, tasked with a mountain of mission-critical challenges, and very little time to set about conquering them.

Same-same for government-run businesses, if you want them to survive and prosper.

Government mandates are often more complex, requiring, for instance, the need for developmental imperatives to run side by side with commercial sustainability, but the logic, the chain of command, the separation of roles and responsibilities, should not differ from those that work in the private sector, precisely because they do work.

The system fails when logic is overruled by ideological interference in the principles of successful business. That is not to say that ideology has no place. It does, but it’s at the level of policy formulation, not at the coalface of execution.

Ideology, purpose, culture and promise are the lofty preserve of election manifestos. Democracy decides which of these prevails. It is not the role of democracy to manage implementation. You cannot become a cardiologist by way of a popular vote.

A new government will emerge now, by whatever means, tasked with a mountain of mission-critical challenges, and very little time to set about conquering them. Only fools would not look past their friends to find the people most capable for the task.

Political survival will not be assured by favour, as we have seen. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Our system of favours has been found out by failures — the evidence is stark and personal. Whatever profound political and ideological progress has been made will fall flat on its face if there is no water.

Democratically earned power is perfectly entitled to dictate policy, even to set course, but it should stay out of the engine room. If we are to emerge from the mire we find ourselves in, our appointed leaders are going to have to welcome task-specific competence into the sanctity of their deliberations and decisions. That is how the deal works, no PhD required.

• Barnes is an investment banker with more than 35 years’ experience in various capacities in the financial sector.