Who in government is going to steer Tito Mboweni’s turnaround plan to fruition?
Imagine this. You’re out on the town for a night with friends and you decide to order a taxi. So the taxi arrives a bit late and you get in. The vehicle could do with a good clean – but it’s a taxi, so what the hell. After a few minutes you smell alcohol and notice a bottle of brandy rolling around under the driver’s seat. ‘Have you been drinking?’ you ask. ‘No,’ he lies. ‘A passenger left it in the taxi.’ The taxi swerves onto the main road, clipping a parked car as it does so, and then the driver’s cell phone rings. He takes the call, apparently oblivious to the laws about talking on a cell phone while driving. Then, when the call is finished, he begins texting while steering the car with his knees. By this time, you’re not even sure you’re going to reach your destination alive. But it gets worse. At the intersection where he is supposed to turn right to your destination he turns left instead, and when you point out the error he becomes aggressive and tells you that the sat-nav can’t be trusted and a turn to the left was needed. You remonstrate in vain, but the driver is clearly inebriated and not prepared to listen. At that point, you would surely get out of the taxi and make other plans.
Think of South Africa as that taxi. The driver clearly hasn’t a clue where he’s supposed to be going and really shouldn’t be behind the wheel in his condition. Apart from a scant regard for the law and his general reckless attitude towards his fare-paying passengers, he decides to ignore the economic sat-nav and veer to the left when there’s nothing wrong with the sat-nav, which is clearly indicating a right turn. Is it surprising that so many fare-paying passengers are desperately trying to get out of this ‘skedonk’ to make other plans?
There was some hope on the horizon this week when Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni presented a 75-page discussion document designed to identify problem areas of the economy, rectify them and create 1 million jobs in the process. One must always be highly sceptical when politicians talk in millions because that is a figure that has lots of noughts in it and is only understood by the average voter as ‘awfully big’. Since our previous president found large numbers a stumbling block, it’s hardly surprising that many of our fellow citizens would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between ten thousand and a million. But they do know that a million is awfully big and more than ten thousand. So when a politician promises new houses, for example, it will always be a million and never nine hundred and fifty thousand. That would be a real vote loser.
Similarly, with jobs, it’s always a good ploy to stray on the generous side and promise a million new jobs, even if you know there’s not a bat’s hope in hell of achieving that. The thing is that it sounds like enough jobs to go round for everyone with a few left over probably, and your average voter is never going to quibble with that.
However, ignoring the bits that have been put in to get the masses salivating, much of Mr Mboweni’s document contains refreshing good sense and an obvious understanding of the huge problems the South African economy is facing. It’s hard to believe that a document like this has come out of the ANC, advocating, as it does, a relaxation of labour restrictions on small businesses, relaxed visa requirements and a more coherent tourism policy, investment in water-resource development, sorting out Eskom’s financial woes, kick-starting an infrastructure boom in co-ordination with government and the private sector and reviewing fuel price regulation, to name a few of the ideas.
Not surprisingly, these suggestions have gone down very well with business groups who finally see some glimmer of hope on the economic horizon. Cautious optimism seemed to be the general mood among the business community and economists.
“The ideas contained in the report are mostly pragmatic, given it is not too ambitious and at the same time not overly contentious. However, the results will depend on the successful implementation by National Treasury,” – chief economist at Old Mutual Investment Group Johann Els.
Predictably, the loony left didn’t think much of the idea at all, which they felt would hinder their plan to reduce the SA economy to a Zimbabwe-style wreck before rebuilding it again according to the tried and tested economic laws of communism. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has demanded that Mboweni withdraw his ‘incoherent, confused and unreliable plan’ immediately, seeing in it an imperialist, right-wing plot to trample the faces of the workers into the dust. Or something along those lines at any rate. What really irked them, it seems, was that they hadn’t been previously notified of the document’s existence, although why they should have been any more than anyone else is hard to fathom.
Another objection came from EFF deputy president and alleged bank robber Floyd (does my bum look big in this?) Shivambu, who also thought it smacked of ‘imperialism’ and was a bit upset that it didn’t mention the current vague ANC buzz phrase, ‘the 4th industrial revolution’. One suspects that it’s the ‘revolution’ part of that which Floyd finds attractive.
Given the fact that the ANC government is riddled with crooks and communists, it’s hard to see Mr Mboweni’s well-thought-out plans ever coming to fruition. If you’re trying to bring an entire economy to its knees, the last thing you need is some smartass coming up with a plan for growth and job creation. That would just set the glorious revolution back a few years. Maybe it really is time to get out of that taxi now.
One of Tito’s suggestions is to flog our coal-fired powered stations off for an amount of R450 billion, which is, conveniently, exactly the size of the hole in the Eskom balance sheet. On the surface this looks like a brilliant plan. You just shove the coal-fired power stations up on Gumtree and wait for the eager buyers to phone through.
I’m obviously a bit hazy on details, but I’m not immediately aware of anyone who would be in the market for a coal-fired power station (one not very careful previous owner) or what they would do with it once they had it. Do they come with a service agreement and a warranty, for example?
As Private Eye says, ‘I think we should be told’.
David Bullard is a columnist, author and celebrity public speaker known for his controversial satire.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the IRR.
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