‘Power: Do Something Mr President’ read the headline of the Saturday Star. The register of this message should be painfully familiar to South Africa. A dose of despair and a hint – more than a hint – of desperation, and a plea to the President to resolve the impasse. To ‘do something’.
It’s a message that must resonate across the country, in cities and villages and on farms and in factories. The daily takedown of our power supply reminds us just how fragile and vulnerable the country is – and it is a metaphor for so much else that has either gone wrong, or which South Africa has over a longer horizon simply failed to get right. Think economic growth, unemployment, infrastructure, crime.
‘Do something’ is always the appeal, typically made to an authority figure.
Response
The President’s response to the crisis was to remain in South Africa, forsaking his sojourn at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It probably meant very little, since there was no way that he could have talked up South Africa’s attractiveness for investment while it could not provide power, to say nothing of the myriad other ‘challenges’ – another favourite South African formulation – that confront business in the country.
As Jonathan Katzenellenbogen noted in his column last week, South African executives report concerns about state collapse while their counterparts elsewhere are worried about inflation and the availability of raw materials.
So, what was it that the President should do? Perhaps a better question would be what he could be expected to do. The appeal to the President to ‘do something’ comes with the understanding that he has a unique capacity for action. It’s not that simple, neither in terms of his own powers, nor in relation to the political culture of his party.
A few days previously, the President’s Twitter account posted ‘This is the year where we showcase what our country has to offer to the world in leadership, capability, cooperation and social compacting.’ Note the use of the plural, ‘we’. This has been a hallmark of the ruling party’s approach, for despite the considerable personalisation of leadership by presidents in both party and state offices – sometimes veering into the fawning and worshipful – this is accompanied by a dogged denial of any special role or responsibilities on the part of the incumbent. Call this the idea of ‘collective leadership’.
Collective leadership presents a face of humility to the public, while turning its back on accountability. All are responsible in general, though none is responsible in specifics. This was the line taken when load-shedding first took hold.
This is the line of thinking that has prevailed under President Ramaphosa, probably more strongly in fact, than it did under his predecessors. In part, it reflects the priority he has given to keeping his fractious and deeply-divided party in a semblance of coherence. The duty to the party – whether for ideological reasons or the pragmatic imperatives of keeping an electable machine in place – trumps any sense of duty to the country.
It also aligns with the President’s political style. ‘Compacting’, as he put it, or ‘building consensus’. This was a fashionable explanation for his timidity on reform and lack of action against corruption in the early part of his presidency. He would act only when broadly supported – which meant that a lot of critically important action was deferred indefinitely.
Centrepiece
This was the centrepiece in last year’s State of the Nation Address, where he promised a breakneck hundred-days campaign to create a social compact to get growth and employment creation moving. This ran into stiff opposition from both business and labour, for reasons that were quite understandable in terms of their own interests. Precisely what the government would bring to the deal was unclear. I made the point in a column last year that it was effectively offering to do more of the same, that what it had been doing had not been particularly effective, and that its nominal commitments reflected the bare minimum for a functioning society. Fighting corruption or maintaining state owned enterprises, one would imagine, is a fundamental governance imperative even in the absence of a compact with business and labour.
Fundamentally, this is about managing the political costs of the crisis. All governments have to do this to one degree or another, though in the South African case, political considerations outweigh any others, and President Ramaphosa’s approach is particularly risk-averse and a formula for stasis.
Besides, the Eskom malaise owes a great deal to the political choices made – as indeed, does South Africa’s overall situation. The preference for consumption over investment has been one issue. A difficult choice, perhaps, given the legitimate expectations of a large, impoverished constituency, but a choice nonetheless. Thus, a large welfare system has been put in place, while the infrastructure necessary to support economic activity – and thus ultimately to underwrite welfare spending – has been allowed to atrophy.
In Eskom’s case, new power capacity was requested in the 1990s and this was ignored. New builds were initiated in the late 2000s, though these have been marred by delays, cost escalation, and design defects.
Much the same could be said of the road and rail network, the country’s ports, and its water infrastructure.
Add to that the use of the state and the public sector for patronage, whether in the form of premiums for race base ‘empowerment’ contracts, or the appointment of staff on the basis of racial targets, or the intrusion of political preferencing through the ruling party’s cadre deployment initiative. Each of these has seen avoidable costs imposed, and efficiencies subordinated to politics. The National Planning Commission memorably referred to South Africa having rejected the merit principle.
Where outright criminality has been able to leverage the openings – as in the construction mafias that demand their payoffs to allow projects to proceed (drawing inspiration, it seems, from a contentious 30% set-aside idea mooted by former President Jacob Zuma) – the costs imposed on society become exponentially heavier.
Rot across the board
Kgalema Motlanthe put it this way in 2007: ‘This rot is across the board. It’s not confined to any level or any area of the country. Almost every project is conceived because it offers opportunities for certain people to make money.’ Last year, the Special Investigating Unit reported that 29 contracts relating to the Medupi and Kusile stations, cumulatively valued at R135bn, were under investigation.
Indeed, the report of the enquiry into the civil unrest in July 2021 pointed to how this dysfunction was imperilling the country: ‘Perhaps the most significant input made, which we heard several times, was that what appear to be factional battles in the African National Congress have become a serious source of instability in the country. This is a matter of great concern, and the reasons for this need to be identified sooner rather than later. For their part, the security services are uncertain about how to effectively address this convergence of violent criminal conduct with mainstream politics, given the correct posture taken by the country to ensure that political activity stays free of state security interference.’
And all of this goes a long way towards explaining why the ‘capable state’, another of the President’s supposed objectives, remains a pipedream.
Upshot
The upshot is that the current state of affairs is a direct consequence of the political choices that the ruling party has made, choices that in turn speak directly to its ideological outlook, and strategies for apportioning benefits to its supporters. Despite the evident damage that these choices have done, they remain deeply embedded in party thinking – and in that of the President himself.
Their repertoire does not lend itself to doing anything differently.
So, while there are of course necessary technical solutions to South Africa’s problems – generating more power, staffing institutions with skilled and ethical people and so on – it will take a mindset shift for those to be implemented. Getting value for the procurement spend means focusing relentlessly on price and quality – so ‘empowerment’ policy and localisation would need to be rethought, if not abandoned outright. Acquiring the necessary skills to make institutions function effectively would mean a single-minded focus on performance and professionalism. Employment equity targets would need to be abolished and talent sourced from where it is available, domestically or abroad.
Needless to say, the interference of political parties in the staffing of state-owned enterprises and public institutions through cadre deployment would have to end, totally.
Criminality would need relentlessly to be opposed by competent and capacitated law enforcement, irrespective of the identities or connections of wrongdoers, or the possible fallout for those in power.
It will take a political solution to undo what politics has created – perhaps better said, it will take a political decision to depoliticise the country’s problems to a point where they can be addressed technically and managerially.
And the President has simply not shown himself willing to do anything of consequence in that direction. It will be up to South Africa’s people in the coming months, and in particular in the period up to the forthcoming election, to reflect on this.
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