The latest diplomatic incident involving the US cannot be solved within the family, in the confidential comfort of the kitchen. It is anything but a domestic affair.
Ambassadors are reciprocal guests in each others’ countries, afforded special privileges and immunities in the interest of serving and building relationships between two sovereign states, despite the differences in policy or practice that can clearly exist between them.
We operate, invited and with permission, in each others’ backyards, seeking out common interest and mutual benefit. This is not a place where the sword of political warfare should be drawn against the pen of executive authority.
Popularity and toeing the party line should not be the overwhelming objective here; it doesn’t achieve the desired outcome. It is no substitute for rational mandates and objectives, and the capacity and systemic motivation to execute these. Politicians would mostly be well advised to give priority to getting the job done, rather than insisting on doing it themselves.
This is not a challenge particular to SA. Throughout the democratic world (and worse still in the absence of democracy) there is a reluctance by elected politicians to get the best people for the task if they’re not card-carrying members of the governing party, in good standing.
Without them even knowing what they don’t know, we’re just dropping politicians into real world situations on the basis of their loyalty, not their ability.
If being a favoured member of the party takes precedence over your ability to get the job done, those so chosen for positions of power and influence will, in turn, use those positions of authority to put similarly chosen friends into jobs, regardless of whether they have the necessary expertise, leadership or experience to execute projects efficiently, or the financial acumen to do so at competitive fair market value. This waterfall of incompetence is perilous to future prosperity.
You can’t become an anaesthetist or a bomb disposal expert, or a municipal manager, or … anything other than a politician (or a cheerleader?), by the popular vote. Popularity is not a qualification. Political appointees, at any level, of any government official charged with getting something done, are tasked by the voters to exercise their individual and collective judgment to appoint competent executives that can actually do it.
Without them even knowing what they don’t know, we’re just dropping politicians into real world situations on the basis of their loyalty, not their ability. Worse still, their rewards come down to nothing more (or less) than reciprocal loyalty. Failure (or success, regardless) in one position (or ministry) simply results in deployment in another.
If consequences for failure were (significantly) different from rewards for success, completely different results would emerge. Outcome-based reward systems are both motivating and self-funding. By contrast, popularity-based appointments require more and more people to be included to retain this (purchased) power. This repels talent and does not attract capital into long-term growth projects. Eventually, there is less and less to go around for more and more people who have to be b(r)ought in.
Unless we can operate entirely independently of the rest of the world, over and above trade barriers increasingly being imposed by and on us, we’d also do well not to openly alienate providers of grant and other aid capital. Such funding is vital for SA to remain up to standard in education, research, health and general infrastructure capacity that qualify us and our produce to compete in world trade.
Eventually the system fails because it does not produce results and perpetuates mediocrity, while those within its benefit structure cling on. That can last only until previously built-up reserves are depleted and installed functionality fails. As we are increasingly unable to fund the gap between the makers and takers, competitive infrastructure, and then finally survival infrastructure, will collapse.
Perhaps only then, facing an impending existential crisis, will we cross our divides to embrace the solution. But that crisis is now surely close and obvious enough for us to foresee and avoid, rather than just sit, helplessly, waiting for our destruction to manifest.
• Barnes is an investment banker with more than 35 years’ experience in various capacities in the financial sector.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.