SA is threatened by the belief that complex problems can all be met by simple solutions

Jacob Zuma's rowdy supporters borrowed the rolling-hands gesture soccer spectators use to signal at the ANC's Polokwane conference in December 2007 that it was time to field a substitute for Thabo Mbeki. They got their wish and, not long after, the country got a new president.

Amid the high emotions of the Polokwane conference, the metaphor seemed harmless enough. Every soccer stadium is packed with spectators who believe at the time that they can second-guess the coach, but most know in their hearts that if they were called to the sidelines they would quickly run out of ideas and lead their team to defeat.

Many in the mob that toppled Mbeki turn out, however, to lack the wisdom of the soccer crowd and continue to believe they know as well as anyone how to reach just about every goal of government.

Their rolling hands reinforced a trend towards what Kader Asmal, the former ANC cabinet minister and ethics chief, recently called "low-level decision-making". He used the phrase in the context of the response from the new police leadership to the country's appalling crime levels, but he put his finger on one of the present threats to our society.

After he had been vilified by Fikile Mbalula, the deputy minister of police, and been told by the ANC veterans league to find a cemetery to die in, Asmal cautioned that "the atmosphere of our political life has been debased by the use of intemperate language ... symptomatic of a tainted political atmosphere in which the moral compass pointing to the core values of my movement has lost its sense of direction".

What Asmal may find difficult to acknowledge is that these low-level forces believe they are the moral compass, and there is no one of greater wisdom or intellect within the current leadership of the ANC or its allies who dares to tell them otherwise. South Africa is threatened by the belief among an apparently unstoppable mass that the country's complex problems can all be met by simple soccer crowd solutions.

In consequence of the way that post-apartheid South Africa has been structured, the pole towards which that moral compass points is now personal enrichment and no longer good governance. The job to be done is just an inconvenience that goes with access to over-priced tenders and sometimes directly to the public purse. Few who could board the gravy train will judge themselves to lack the education, intellect or skill to qualify.

Trevor Manuel's hard-won understanding of global economics has convinced him that public money should never be allocated without a sound business plan and a measurable goal that is, itself, more worthy than others competing for the same cash. But, because his knowledge now constitutes an obstacle to those not willing to put in the hours, his wisdom is put on a par with the folksy opinions of those whose instincts are tuned to village politics. When he and others who have worked hard to develop expertise in their fields deliver uncomfortable truths, they encounter opposition ranging from adolescent petulance to curses that sound disturbingly like death threats.

The tendency emerged most strongly while Jacob Zuma was on trial, first for rape and then for corruption. Crowds gathered to demand low-level outcomes in his favour with no regard for the ethics or the legalities involved. And because noone they would have acknowledged as a leader was willing to tell them off, they were allowed to believe that their judgments of the cases were of equal value to those of the courts.

And so, now, we hear that the solution to crime is to "shoot the bastards", that the solution to joblessness amid the worst global recession on record is to nationalise mines, and that the best economic strategy is to take the brakes off inflation and just print money.

The absurd notion that banning labour brokers will somehow generate quality jobs is the current cause of those who would rule by clamour rather than with consideration. There is no time even to explore the reasonable proposal that brokers should be regulated and policed because the baying crowd wants a ban and only a ban will do.

If these were polemics intended to enrich the public policy debate, they could have some value, but as the non-negotiable demands of people seeking an end by whatever means, they are dangerous. When volume trumps argument, we risk being saddled with the unintended consequences of mob rule, such as legions of unskilled people being denied the intermediary services of employment agents and not finding work because they do not know where to look.

No one in the shoot-to-kill camp matches the research of criminologists - who argue that the policy will fan rather than limit the violence of our crime - with research to support their own simplistic solution. Instead, proponents of the strategy cling to their assumption that the power politics of the schoolyard will work in the cauldron of organised crime.

Nor does anyone who argues that fiscal prudence is overdone present evidence of a country in which the economic theory of the non-economists has worked to the long-term advantage of ordinary people. They merely try to hobble Manuel on the grounds that he is "elitist" or "imperial".

Manuel fought back and won at least the first round: the right to head up the proposed National Planning Commission.

"I'm afraid I take a different view on this matter because I think all of us, whether you are in the executive or in parliament - whether you are in the leadership of the trade union movement or the leadership of business or even in the leadership of some of the community organisations represented in a body like Nedlac - all of us are part of the elite. You'd better get used to it," he said.

It is now widely accepted that Mbeki needed to be brought down, but the decision to topple him was never that of the crowds who roamed the Turfloop campus baying for his head. That decision was taken elsewhere. The crowds with their rolling hands were just the low-level mechanics whose job it was to do the dirty work. The problem we are now left with is that no one ever told the mechanics that that was their whole role. They were allowed to believe that the coach had listened and that they really could run the team better than he could.

And so Asmal's " low-level decision-making" is becoming the norm. No one dares to say what must be said: rocket science requires rocket scientists, economics demands economists and planning needs planners. Those who manage a country's affairs need more than low political cunning. They need intellect and education - both of which Mbeki had - as well as emotional intelligence,which he famously lacked.

"The challenge is for those who aspire to run the affairs of state in Africa to rise above mediocrity," said Nigeria's General Joseph Garba, who may have been short on commitment to democracy, but knew much about leadership.

If you put a school teacher in charge of a hospital, she will fail. If you put a mediocre matriculant in charge of the local purification plant, the water will turn sour. And if you put a golf fanatic in charge of the power utility and tell him he will be measured by how much money he fails to spend, the lights will go out.

For all his admiration for his own intellect, Mbeki planted the seed of amateurism by appointing patently incapable people to positions they could not manage, then refusing to acknowledge the damage they were doing. The difference was that Mbeki believed he could make up for the deficiencies of his ministers within the cabinet collective. He was his own minister of just about everything and never doubted his own ability. Now there is an assumption that anyone is capable of anything because intellect and education are elitist constructs employed by old money and those it has co-opted to keep control of the country's wealth.

Just as those who now decry Mbeki's criminal neglect of HIV/Aids never dared to face him down when he was in charge, so, today, many in Zuma's government maintain a shameful silence about the dumbing down of government.

Sometimes, common wisdom is no wisdom at all. Someone in government must have the courage to say so.