The fanfare that surrounded Wednesday’s launch of the second phase of the hitherto low-key Operation Vulindlela shows how central the project has become to the credibility of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s otherwise faltering reform programme.
Vulindlela was born out of crisis, established in October 2020 as a joint initiative of the presidency and National Treasury to fast-track the delivery of reform in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. It had long been recognised that structural change was crucial to addressing the underlying causes of low economic growth, but Covid-19 broke down political and institutional barriers to change.
Initially focused on a narrow list of priorities with the greatest impact on growth and employment, Vulindlela aimed to “modernise and transform” — in truth to salvage — network industries including electricity, water, transport and digital communications, and to remake the visa regime to attract skills and promote tourism growth.
While departments and state-owned entities would still implement structural reforms, a dedicated unit bridging the presidency and the Treasury was created to monitor progress, provide “technical support” and generate clear recommendations for political principals to endorse.
The first phase went pretty well, though slowly, with reforms to enable private operators to access the freight network and participate in container terminal operations, a re-engineered water-use licence application system, auctioned high-demand spectrum, streamlined telecommunications infrastructure regulations and an updated visa system. All this resulted in somewhat cheaper data and fewer needlessly excluded skills, and unlocked investment in several sectors.
The government’s review of the first phase observed last year that there was “still a long way to go” in the performance of ports and the rail system, an assessment that applies across most of Operation Vulindlela’s areas of focus. Vulindlela will have to drive its existing initiatives — and prevent backsliding — as it moves on to fresh problems in a second phase that presents four key challenges.
- The issues Ramaphosa has now placed on its plate include broad digital transformation, a technical quagmire that has defeated the most capable reformers in other countries.
- Operation Vulindlela’s success has always hinged on private capital mobilisation. Without credible, predictable delivery frameworks — and faster impact timelines — economic benefits will remain limited. Sceptics believe bureaucratic delays will continue to undermine investor confidence in sectors like rail, ports, energy and digitalisation.
- Operation Vulindlela can only be a supportive partner, and it will continue to be hampered by the lack of technical and managerial capacity in the wider civil service, conservative state-owned enterprises, water boards and other government agencies.
- Finally, the politics will only get rougher as Operation Vulindlela’s scope of activities embraces local government and it becomes generally more politically exposed. Reform threatens entrenched interests and so brings pushback from unions, opposition parties and monopolistic entities resisting competition. Vulindlela may not be able to depend on political protection from the incoming president — or from their senior ministers — after December 2027.
Fiscal constraints, slow growth and a rising debt burden will continue to hamper Operation Vulindlela. Reforms requiring public financing or major contingent liabilities, including infrastructure investments, water system development and a local government reboot, will be delayed or downscaled.
Politics precludes any major shift from consumption to investment spending, but SA desperately needs to invest in the future. As is so often the case, crisis has made reform possible, but it has denied reformers the resources they need to realise their goals. This means Vulindlela will remain lean and mean, and we should salute its foot soldiers as they venture across new political minefields.
• Butler teaches public policy at the University of Cape Town.
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