We have no choice but to address student grievances

I learnt a new acronym this week. New to me, that is. TINA: there is no alternative. It was popularised by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to explain some of her most hard-hitting policy decisions.

She borrowed it from a Victorian philosopher named Herbert Spencer, who believed in the ability of technological and social progress to solve problems.

In South Africa, we need to take a TINA approach to economic transformation. I am not talking here about our nuclear-obsessed energy minister, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, but something far more far-reaching and fundamental.

We have to find an economic model we can all broadly agree on, otherwise the levels of political and social dissatisfaction being expressed with mounting frequency and ferocity run a high risk of boiling over.

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There is no alternative.

I have been fortunate in the past week to spend quality time in the company of two extraordinary individuals.

One was strategist Clem Sunter, whose five-year-long appeal for an economic Codesa similar to the complex political settlement achieved between the ANC and National Party government in the '90s has failed to get the high-level adoption it deserves.

The other was a man who played a pivotal role in that hard-fought deal, Roelf Meyer.

For Sunter, South Africa urgently needs to face up to its inequality demons and thrash out a plan that includes more of its people in the mainstream.

Something with which we urgently need to wrestle is to create a multitude of small businesses to provide the jobs that bring a sense of optimism for a brighter future. The problem is that we simply don't trust each other enough to liberalise the regulatory environment to make it possible.

For Meyer, nothing is possible without trust, and that has been eroded significantly throughout society, and, in our current political crisis, it is worsening.

In his experience, the only way to build trust is to talk. Really talk. In that way that your spouse says: "We need to talk." That kind of talk.

It's increasingly apparent that the standoff at universities is less about fees than it is about race-based inequality 23 years into a democracy that promised so much more than just political liberation.

Students this week redirected some of the rage used so effectively last year to force a government compromise to a zero fees increase, and again marched on the Union Buildings.

They were met with force, and tensions at the University of the Witwatersrand led to higher numbers of more serious injuries.

Police being used as the blunt instrument of state power can only take you so far when faced with determined protagonists.

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The trust deficit is enormous. The fact that this issue was allowed to fester unaddressed for so long means that neither the students, nor administrators, nor politicians can solve it themselves.

It's not clear how former public protector Thuli Madonsela planned to spend her year-long sabbatical before heading off to the law faculty at Stellenbosch University for the 2018 academic year, but after this week's appearance at Wits, she may have found a role to play.

If opposition politicians are not careful, their dog-with-a-bone obsession with President Jacob Zuma will erode any political capital they have to clean up the mess. It's time they stood up for themselves and took a serious leadership stance on the fees issue.

Unhappy youth are more prone to grow up to be unhappy adults. A disaffected younger population will challenge a system they don't believe serves their needs, and South Africa is home to growing numbers of unhappy adults who look at the political miracle of 1994 and wonder how they are still excluded from its economic benefits.

We have to tackle this problem differently. TINA.

We also have to tackle our energy shortages differently, Tina, but that's for another day.

Whitfield is a financial journalist, broadcaster and public speaker on the political economy