What this election has made plain," President Cyril Ramaphosa says, "is that the people of SA expect their leaders to work together to meet their needs. They expect the parties for which they have voted to find common ground."
Indeed, Mr President. But what we don’t want to see is working together at all costs. We don’t want to see the kind of endless search for common ground and compromise and consultation and unity among conflicting factions that so hampered your administration’s performance — and is arguably one of the reasons the ANC ended up where it is now.
In coming days and months all sorts of potential permutations will emerge.
But any form in which the ANC works together with other parties must be founded on a bedrock of non-negotiable principles. They must be the basis of any coalition, alliance or agreement. Without such a commitment it will not be possible for the government to meet the needs of SA’s people, specifically the need for a growing economy that can create prosperity and a better quality of life for all.
One of those principles is a decisive commitment to the constitution and the rule of law. That is not just about upholding democracy and stamping out corruption and malfeasance. It is also about upholding those sections of the constitution that were expressly designed to ensure the independence of key institutions — from the central bank to the law enforcement authorities — as a basis for equality and prosperity.
Another of those principles must be a decisive commitment to growing the economy much faster, so that it can generate the jobs and support the public services that meet the needs of SA’s people. We need a much bigger cake. There must be no possibility of "common ground" with those parties set on eating, not enlarging, the cake, nor even those whose interest in redistributing it outweighs their commitment to growing it.
Growth during the Ramaphosa administration has averaged just 0.5%, slower even than during the state capture years, and unemployment has risen to 33%. The president deserves credit for implementing a series of economic reforms, which are starting to bear fruit. But they were far too little too late. SA doesn’t just need to stay on course with economic reforms: it needs to pick up the pace significantly. And any "common ground" must include more of the kind of constructive partnership with the private sector that has started to take off in the past couple of years.
The third principle should be a commitment to a reformed and agile public sector and a commitment to untangle red tape and enable economic growth and investment.
Those principles narrow the range of possible coalitions or alliances considerably. It’s time to make some decisions, Mr President, and those decisions will create space for progress and prosperity if they are rooted in principle, not panic.
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