The presidency will announce more detailed plans for the Group of 20 (G20) today. The year-long series of meetings is a quelling logistical challenge for SA and there is a risk of at least mild organisational bedlam.
We should probably try to remain phlegmatic about that. But what we absolutely cannot afford is strategic flimflammery. Everybody says hosting the G20 is an opportunity for us, but it is important to understand why.
People whose hands are on the tillers of 85% of the world’s economy will be in and out of SA over the coming year. The question is, what does winning look like? I was chatting to a friend the other day who made me laugh by saying he thought it would be a good start if “the road from OR Tambo to Joburg could look a little bit less like Mogadishu”.
One instinctively wants to agree, though I thought the comment rather harsh on Somalia’s capital city. I often fly into Joburg after dark and the drive to Rosebank is bleak. There are no street lights on that stretch of the R24, which means you’re left with the weak headlights of a rental car to cut the menacing gloom to see the shattered Armco and faded lane markings.
But my friend is wrong. I have seen some commentary that expands on this idea and draws equivalences between the G20 and the Soccer World Cup in 2010 — but it’s a bit of a stretch. There is a big difference between the finance ministers of the G20 meeting in Sandton and a horde of soccer fans losing their minds over Siphiwe Tshabalala’s (sensational) goal.
The best possible outcome from the G20 programme is that people who run important countries and institutions come away taking us more seriously than they had expected to.
The suggestion that we need to give Jozi a lick of paint and try to get the water running with some spit and duct tape is a nice thought, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. Our country is severely damaged, but we are still brilliant and bursting with opportunity.
The length of the G20 programme means we can’t hide what we are and what has happened to us. But more to the point, I don’t think we should feel the need to. The best possible outcome from the G20 programme is that people who run important countries and institutions come away taking us more seriously than they had expected to.
If we paint over the cracks they will think we believe we can hide our problems from the world. We shouldn’t do it because it’s dishonest and cringeworthy.
Imagine what it would be like if (to use the R24 as a metaphor for everything) the Armco was fixed and lines painted? Projections of 1.5% growth for next year accommodate our infrastructure and governance chaos. We want visitors to dream and invest in our potential — and that potential is at least to match average Southern African Development Community growth of about 4%, according to the IMF.
In fact, in the eyes of people running development finance and climate finance institutions, banks and foreign departments, our shattered infrastructure represents an opportunity rather than an eyesore — an opportunity for greening, for making money, for geopolitical leverage, for old-fashioned aid programmes and for the deployment of wads of deeply concessional finance.
The chaos is the opportunity. Let’s own it. What we must present very carefully indeed is our people and our ideas. I’ll always back a South African to be charming. We are far better at being lekker than we are at looking after roads and transformers. But we’re going to need to be disciplined. We are the host, and we’ve got Donald Trump and Xi Jinping coming to dinner. We absolutely must get our messages straight.
Africa first
As we report elsewhere in this paper, over the weekend Trump posted a direct threat to the Brics countries over their plan for a Brics currency. Do it and face 100% tariffs, he said. That’s not a crisis yet, but if we say the wrong thing at the wrong time it could become one. Every senior South African, be they the chair of a bank or a minister, needs to live and breathe our commitment to non-alignment or we will be crushed in the contest.
We must speak clearly for the AU too, and firmly put the continental and national interest ahead of our political instincts on highly emotive topics, such as Gaza and Ukraine. Our fellow Africans will not thank us for picking unstrategic fights.
When we talk about climate finance we need to tread carefully too. I have heard too many Western diplomats tell me they are expecting to be insulted as colonial relics and then ordered to hand over wads of cash as being “responsible for this mess”.
They are expecting inconsistency, given that of the top three polluters over time, China and Russia come in at numbers two and three. They aren’t in the mood to be shaken down. To get this right the presidency needs to keep a close watch on who gets into the room. This really is an adults-only affair.
If we can pitch this right, the goodwill will come naturally. The good thing is that all we have to do is talk ourselves up in an honest way. This country’s emergence from apartheid has been battered by international financial crises, bad luck and some spectacularly terrible governments. The Zuma administrations set us back a generation and then Covid-19 hit.
Honest partners
But we’ve just gone through a transition from one-party rule to coalition government. It’s spicy, but it’s working. Political parties that thrive on hate have been sidelined for now. The Reserve Bank has doused inflation, with rates coming down. The finance minister walks his fiscal-political tightrope. There is life in the economy and the lights are on. There is a sense that we might be OK.
We are in a window of opportunity and now is the time to invest in, lend, help and support us. G20 visitors should be left to draw this conclusion themselves. Good people and good money don’t need trimmed verges and fresh paint any more than they need postcolonial diatribes or discourses on the legacy of the Industrial Revolution. They need honest partners and straight talk. Let’s let them have it.
• Parker is Business Day editor-in-chief.
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