The cabinet will hold a mid-year lekgotla on Friday that is expected to focus on pressing issues such as our stuttering economy, the energy crisis and the sorry state of local government. Initiated by President Jacob Zuma to assess the progress made since the adoption last year of the medium-term strategic framework, the discussion is both timely and necessary.Unfortunately, Zuma's brains trust is unlikely to come up with the urgent programme of action South Africa so desperately needs to dig itself out of the mire.This is not because his cabinet lacks capable people - it's just that the pragmatic, sensible voices will be drowned out as the constituencies of the ruling alliance compete for the president's attention.When last, for example, did the National Development Plan - the government's blueprint for economic growth to 2030 - feature prominently in official discourse?The plan, which envisages a major role for the private sector in driving growth of 5% a year - essential if the country is to significantly reduce widening unemployment and inequality - is effectively dead and buried because of opposition from the ruling party's left-wing alliance partners.The ANC's own lekgotla this past weekend produced the usual platitudes about the importance of beneficiating our minerals in this country and reviving our ailing manufacturing sector, and there were expressions of concern about plummeting resources prices and threatened job cuts in mining.The cabinet could create the policy certainty investors need by pledging to respect property ownership by scrapping legislative amendments that infringe these rights, freeing the tourism sector from its regulation-induced funk, cutting the red tape strangling small business and recommitting to the National Development Plan.Unfortunately, it is more likely to choose to muddle through...