Policymakers in South Africa should be made to frame a 125-word passage from near the end of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s televised address on Friday evening and hang it somewhere prominent, so that whenever they look up from their laptops they are reminded of the most important things to know about South Africans.
It’s a passage that, almost certainly unwittingly, shows up policymakers’ failures over the past 25 years, but, as it begins with the sobering statement that ‘(we) can no longer work in the way we have before’, it might help them understand why, and, perhaps, what they need to change.
‘As we emerge from this crisis,’ Ramaphosa said, ‘our country will need to undergo a process of fundamental reconstruction.’
The next two lines get to the heart of the matter.
‘To do so,’ the president went on, ‘we will draw on our strengths: our abundant natural resources, our advanced infrastructure, our deep financial markets, our proven capabilities in information and communication technology, and the depth of talent among our people. We will draw on our proven capacity for innovation and creativity, our ability to come together in a crisis, and our commitment to each other and our common future.’
National condition
Far from being anything like the paean to the ANC-in-state that we are accustomed to hearing in speeches offering a survey of the national condition, what we encounter here is a summary of what most of us know to be true of South African society, a sum of assets and abilities that illustrate the choices, enterprise and achievements of people in every sphere from business, science and farming to mining, banking and scholarship.
And, perhaps above all, the voluntary embrace by millions of the common good, and of the conception of a shared future.
Whether he really intended to or not, Ramaphosa’s precis of what’s best about South Africa – ‘our strengths’ ‘our proven capabilities’, ‘our proven capacity’ and ‘our commitment’ – acknowledges the very things that so many policy choices over the past quarter of a century have undermined or obstructed, rather than nurtured or stimulated.
it’s a precis that would serve very well as the preamble to the far-reaching reforms the country needs now more than at any time in recent memory
It may be too much to expect, but it’s a precis that would serve very well as the preamble to the far-reaching reforms the country needs now more than at any time in recent memory.
It is no surprise that, drawing on these very qualities, thoughtful, serious-minded South Africans are urging the government to begin that ‘process of fundamental reconstruction’ right now, even as we strive to beat down the infection curve and try our best to help the sick.
As the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) argued two weeks ago, and many others argue, too, the country confronts not just a health crisis, but a crisis of survival.
Some things can and should be done quickly, as the IRR’s detailed Covid-19 policy response, Friends In Need – Covid-19: How South Africa can save #LivesAndLivelihoods, suggests. Some of these wide-ranging proposals, particularly those aimed at protecting the vulnerable, and making the most of health and other resources, have already been adopted in one form or another.
Viability of the economy
But the now increasingly pressing issue of sustaining the viability of the economy, on which everything else must depend, calls for that ‘fundamental reconstruction’ of Ramaphosa’s phrasing, and sooner rather than later.
The coronavirus crisis coming as it does on top of South Africa’s existing economic crisis – a forecast deficit of -6.8% against an economic growth rate of just 0.9%, and an expanded unemployment rate of nearly 40% – makes it clear only decisive measures will be meaningful.
This must include, for instance, such big-picture decisions as shutting down SAA and fixing Eskom, cutting back the bloated and costly civil service, and giving real muscle to all those things Ramaphosa rightly described as ‘our strengths’.
As economist Dawie Roodt made plain in a briefing hosted by the IRR last week, ‘(it’s) not about a choice between lives and the economy’.
‘it cannot be a priority to keep a dead airline in the air’
‘The opportunity is to restructure fiscal accounts … (such as) getting rid of SAA. It cannot be a priority to keep a dead airline in the air. We need to address the size of the civil service. We cannot afford it. Everyone must take pain, and the civil service must take pain, too.’
The immediate focus, he said, should be on opening the economy ‘as quickly as we can’.
‘If not,’ he went on, ‘it will lead to poverty, and poverty is a death sentence to many people …. Poverty is the biggest killer on the planet.’
The IRR proposes, among other things, doing away with the distinction between essential and other economic activity to allow any business to operate should it be able to do so without posing a serious danger to public health, while simultaneously applying practical measures, as spelled out in the Friends in Need report, to reduce health risks to society’s most vulnerable.
Unacceptably high consequences
An approach along these lines is advanced in an article by leading academics from the University of the Witwatersrand who warn that ‘a protracted lockdown won’t necessarily have the effect of ridding the country of the virus, but it will result in unacceptably high health and economic consequences’.
South Africa, they write, ‘faces three interrelated problems … the public health threat from the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic and health effects of the lockdown, and a range of intractable economic problems not directly due to the current pandemic’, including high unemployment, low economic growth and falling per capita income.
‘Any potentially viable response to COVID-19,’ they argue, ‘needs to address all three aspects in concert. This is particularly important as the country plans for the next stage of its response after the lockdown. Focusing only on the health challenges and not paying attention to the economic issues will result in significantly higher economic costs, and will also undermine the health imperatives.’
if a greater humanitarian catastrophe is to be averted, the government must immediately begin its declared ‘fundamental reconstruction’
Looking ahead, the IRR argues that if a greater humanitarian catastrophe is to be averted, the government must immediately begin its declared ‘fundamental reconstruction’. As IRR CEO Frans Cronje has summarised it, this must include ‘removing as a matter of great urgency every policy threat to South Africa’s standing as a competitive investment destination – including repealing all race-based policy and legislation and focusing on genuinely empowering the disadvantaged; permanently abandoning threats to property rights posed by the drive towards expropriation without compensation; deepening democracy by giving communities more say over schools, police stations and clinics; and dramatically altering labour legislation to price poor people into jobs’.
It is obvious, then, that South Africa has reached a critical moment.
The future, if you like, has begun, and quite suddenly. And what happens in the next few weeks will be decisive in shaping what it turns out to be.
‘New reality’
In the paragraph immediately preceding the lines quoted earlier, Ramphosa spoke of adapting to ‘a new reality’.
‘As government, as NGOs, as political parties, as large corporations and small businesses, as financial institutions, as community organisations and as South Africans,’ the president said, ‘we will need to adapt to a new reality.’
This ‘new’ reality will of course remain the existing one – until things change.
South Africans will hope that when President Ramaphosa spoke of acknowledging that ‘(we) can no longer work in the way we have before’ and that in the ‘fundamental reconstruction’ that is now required we will ‘draw on our strengths’, he really did mean the dynamic qualities and remarkable achievements that define the best in our society, and not the impediments devised by the state he leads, which have held the country back for so long.
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