If Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been more confident in Europe’s leadership, his meeting with US President Donald Trump two weeks ago might have been less confrontational.
Then, in a surprising reaction, EU and German leaders announced plans to — belatedly — surge their defence budgets, and now the French and the British have even considered putting boots on the ground. Unfortunately for peace talks, Russian President Vladimir Putin is also well aware of Europe’s chronic indecisiveness.
Unlike the EU, the US government vests executive powers in one person, the president, who is elected for a four-year term. Congress makes laws and controls the finances while the judiciary has the final say on what is permitted by the constitution. Debate characterises the British parliament, yet that island nation’s oversized global impact, and the fact that its decisions can’t be overturned by its courts, helps to inculcate a problem-solving bias.
SA’s long-standing racial tensions, geographic isolation and geological wealth make our government biased towards debate and patronage. That our president can be recalled by his party compounds these biases, as does our voting for parties rather than individual candidates.
Diverse countries have more disparate interests and this encourages debate. SA’s historical inequities led to a post-1994 political imperative to balance growth with meaningful redistribution. While our debates never resolved how this balance, or adequate growth, was to be achieved, ANC leaders discovered how patronage could please their supporters.
Parliament became a stage for the performative theatre of endless debate, but who won the most debating points mattered little. The ANC governed as it saw fit until last month’s budget debacle showed that its tax-and-spend biases had become unsustainable.
Democratic forces are now exerting themselves, but 30 years of parliamentary debate never produced a credible plan. The ANC used such debates to distract attention from its serving the interests of its politically well-connected groups and individuals.
The ANC has been effective at using social justice arguments to avoid accountability. High racial inequality was used to distract from the lack of a workable growth plan. The ANC’s wings have been clipped, but it continues to benefit from a tradition of debate.
A focus on solutions should begin by identifying a top economic priority. Prioritising the reduction of inequality, unemployment and poverty stimulates debate while blocking solutions. Such debate ignores the implications of entrenching the world’s most severe youth unemployment crisis.
Pursuing ideals is admirable; exploiting them for political gain is not. Most of today’s adult black South Africans who were “born free” have never been meaningfully employed and are condemned to lifelong poverty.
The fall of the Berlin Wall, swiftly followed by Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, symbolised the beginning of decades of post-Cold War idealism. The overindulgences of that period are now being purged, with the pendulum swinging, seemingly excessively, in the opposite direction. Aid budgets are being slashed to fund rapidly rising military budgets.
Leading up to the coalition-style government that resulted from last May’s elections the solution path being pursued jointly by the ANC and business leaders was termed “investment-led growth”. This appealed to business leaders through identifying key areas to improve governance through simultaneously supporting ANC-directed patronage. But during years of pursuing investment-led growth the ranks of the long-term unemployed bulged.
In much of the world the political relevance of “what ought to be” idealism is being downgraded to pursue results-focused policies. Our fraught budget negotiations trace to the disconnect between surveys identifying jobs as voters’ top concern, and antigrowth ANC policies, which prioritise redistribution and localisation.
The way forward is through global integration. The momentum is coming not from those who debate ideals but from those on the leading edge of developing solutions. Top global IT companies are committing to training large numbers of young South Africans. Their motivation is not to deploy capital but to find workers.
• Hagedorn is an independent strategy adviser.
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