ANC muses scenarios, obscene and sublime

In the interregnum between the death of apartheid and the birth of democracy, South Africans developed a brief but intense enthusiasm for mass navel-gazing sessions. The scenario planners, modern equivalents of the entrail readers of yore, peddled these so-called ‘high road’ and ‘low road’ options up and down the country to packed houses.

Last week’s ANC Youth League conference, with its pledges of no-compensation nationalisation and land grabs, made a coincidental and telling counterpoint to the government’s National Planning Commission’s report of a few days earlier. Here, all over again, was the low road versus the high road, the obscene versus the sublime, the kiddies’ Gimme Charter of Julius Malema against the grownups’ Diagnostic Overview of Trevor Manuel.

Let’s set aside for a moment the ANCYL spittle-flecked pledges. Barring an internal coup d’état, the ANC’s future route map will far more evolve from the National Planning ministry’s identification of the roadblocks that the country faces.

The NPC’s Overview deserves revisiting, not only because it was overshadowed in the media by ANCYL theatrics. This is a rare government publication – a must-read because, at the least, it’s an untouched-up snapshot of the state of the nation. No Photoshopping here.

It’s also important because the government’s intentions is that the Overview will morph through public engagement into an actual national development plan. That is, if any independent assessment informed by a ‘broad, critical and researched view’ can negotiate the populist currents that make treacherous ANC waters.

Admittedly, there are creaky parts to the Overview where one can see ideology clumsily bolted onto reality. Trade union insistence on ‘decent’ jobs only is juxtaposed uneasily with the imperative to ‘build an environment for business to invest and profit’. Astonishingly, falling agricultural production and land redistribution merit only cursory references.

Mostly, however, the NPC is refreshingly honest, admitting the ‘negative unintended consequences’ of labour laws: the difficulty of firing bad employees, and the fact that high starting wages’ act as a disincentive to hiring inexperienced workers. And while the public sector can help create jobs, the ‘big and necessary’ adjustment is to ‘incentivise’ the private sector to use more labour.

Efforts to raise education quality ‘have largely failed’ and ‘the main problems lie in teacher performance and the quality of school leadership’. A fifth of teachers are absent any given Monday, rising to a third at month-end.

An ‘ailing’ public health system is in ‘institutional breakdown’, due to ‘implementation failures’, and ‘government mistakes’. In the face of rampant disease, the Overview concedes ruefully that ‘one of the only positive health outcomes in the past 17 years has been the reduction in smoking’.

Among the reasons for the ‘chronically unstable’ public service are ‘tensions in the political/administrative interface, leadership instability, skills deficits, [and] the erosion of accountability and authority’. ‘Too often new policies have been implemented in an unconsidered fashion, as new leaders seek to make their mark, or as a response to the latest international fad.’

As much as a quarter of state procurement, some R30bn annually, is wasted or stolen. The overview pointedly observes that ‘it will not be easy to eradicate corruption … if the problem is not addressed at a political level.’

The NPC notes further that political change is no guarantor of progress. ‘Throughout history many countries [including] a number of post-colonial African states, bear witness to this.’ If the threats are not tackled, ‘decline will increase, the country’s progress could be stalled … and even the foundational aspects of democracy unravelled.’

For this ‘formidable’ task the NPC envisages the kind of social compact that emerged during the transition to democracy. This demands trust, a shared analysis, a clear vision of manageable objectives, and a citizenry that accepts its responsibilities while ‘fiercely holding to account’ government.

Oh! And leaders who act not to promote the interests of one group at the cost of another, but in the national interest. Unfortunately not really what the ANCYL had in mind.

Read it, damnit: www.npconline.co.za