It’s a mess. We’ll see what next week’s budget delivers, but we’ve made a habit of looking for easy solutions and we avoid tackling difficult problems. Everybody knows it isn’t going to work, but those responsible for “stroke of a pen” remedies won’t have to be there when the ink runs out, so they don’t care.
We can’t just keep pouring cash into the sieve; we have to plug a few holes. We have to incorporate the informal economy into all the pictures and numbers we look at. That may change perspectives enough to consider more realistic, practical solutions based on the facts, beyond the unwieldy tightropes of regulatory tax and social obligation.
There’s more to our economy than meets the eye, but we can’t afford the real gaps that are there or the selective privatisation or the lip service we pay to the “withouts”, which is emerging in the absence of their incorporation.
The feeling of discontent, of disappointment, of a dream denied, is widespread and growing. Almost anyone (no, everyone) you talk to will tell you this is not what we signed up for. It hasn’t been worth the compromises that were made, it does not reflect the common purpose that emerged from Codesa, from Cyril Ramaphosa, Thabo Mbeki, Mathews Phosa, Roelf Meyer or Desmond Tutu, among others.
That deal has not been delivered and the day of reckoning has been deferred, and deferred, and deferred ... but it is now upon us. Divisions have become entrenched; wealth is protected not created. Greed has replaced purpose. There may be a new few, but it’s still just a few.
This time we may have to actually do deals, not just make promises. That’s not so easy, particularly if we’re in a hurry, which we are. The new dealmakers (not just negotiators) — whoever we send to the table — will have to deliver some early, meaningful, measurable, borderline contractual, timetabled, clear and present solutions, on key issues.
We can’t stitch. We can’t fiddle. We’re going to have to go back to the start, to reset the deal that delivered the democratic miracle in 1994. We must now demand the outcome we all sought, not only because of the dream but because of the compromises, at the noblest levels, that it extracted in its formulation.
Let’s start with land, shall we because that was one of the currencies of deal-making about 30 years ago: tribal land, homelands, state land, municipal land, not just the blunt, unworkable transferring of title but by creating productive partnership packages. That may just be too damn difficult in the time we have, but we’ve got to solve it. Maybe it’ll be easier to start with the municipalities, so that at least more people have a tolerable life?
Solutions here will be driven by common sense and business principles, not so much political ideology. Cities have to work — people live there. Nobody’s going to pay if they’re not getting value for money or if what they get comes free. At some point the debt and the outstanding payments just get too big to solve. We may be there already. We need to do a deal, not wish upon a dream.
We have to solve this ourselves. The international community has no locus standi and less real interest than we can imagine. It’s not going to help to form splinter groups and run all over the world seeking empathy from those barely interested in dialogue beyond their own self-interest.
We don’t even have a respected business interface established in the US, do we? It’s not as if international allegiances, alliances and malleable, vested self-interests aren’t big enough problems for them to deal with already, without our stuff.
If we get it right they’ll be queuing to trade with us — we bring a lot to the table. It’s win or lose now. Make space on the table for common cause. Imagine.
• Barnes is an investment banker with more than 35 years’ experience in various capacities in the financial sector.
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