MIKE SILUMA | The government is our prime actor, but it lacks a script

I had the privilege of spending time in the company of some of the country’s foremost thinkers and leaders from the public and private sectors last weekend. The occasion was the annual Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation (KMF) forum, held in the scenic Drakensberg.

The forum is one of several initiatives through which South African citizens, concerned about the wrong direction the country has taken in recent years, are attempting to find solutions to the growing national crisis. They include, of course, the stuttering national dialogue, which was engulfed by controversy even as it had barely commenced its activities.

The conference’s subtext this year was the sense that South Africa lacked a national plan, a strategy, to address its challenges. Opening the conference, KMF executive trustee Gugu Motlanthe noted that “South Africa seems to be running without a script”. If one existed, she said, “by now, we’d have seen the results”.

South Africa seems to be running without a script

The existence of the KMF forum, and others, might be seen in one sense as a welcome manifestation of active citizenry in a democracy. But it also speaks to public exasperation and lack of faith in the government’s ability to find appropriate solutions to our myriad problems. Some, like ANC veteran and MTN chair Mcebisi Jonas, ascribe the country’s absence of visionary leadership to the decline of the ANC as a leading political force. Speaking at the event, Jonas criticised the ANC for “not providing credible leadership on critical issues of social and economic policy, nor has it demonstrated any visible path to execution”.

This indeed may be a crucial factor in the enfeeblement of our government. But it’s equally true that the government has, for more than a year, been run not solely by the ANC, but together with other parties through the government of national unity (GNU). So any responsibility for failure would have to be a shared one.

With a formidable array of speakers, deliberations spanned nearly every major problem facing the country, both domestic and international. From economic growth (including how we manage our natural resources, where critical minerals have assumed greater importance) to corruption and the rapidly changing international trade environment.

In addition to the financialisation of health care and its implications for most South Africans, the conference discussed the state of public institutions in a context where some (such as Sars) are properly fulfilling their task, while others (like failing municipalities) remain in a perilous state.

It took UN deputy secretary-general Amina J Mohammed to highlight the danger to democracy posed by ineffective government. Delivery failures of democratically elected governments, she warned, could make military coups popular among citizens, as seen in several West African countries. This happened because military governments were deemed to deliver to citizens what their elected counterparts had failed to do.

Mohammed challenged Africans to create models of democracy that were contextually fit for purpose. She called for the strengthening of Africa’s voice globally and the rebuilding of “multilateralism for today’s reality”.

To return to the South African context, it was notable that the problems identified during the conference did not constitute new revelations. The fact that they keep arising repeatedly in different forums suggests that our discussions have largely gone in circles, with nothing done to fundamentally change the national course.

The question is whether conversations and resolutions in such gatherings can in themselves shift the needle for SA Inc if the government — including in its iteration as the GNU — lacks the vision, the will and the capacity to make the interventions necessary to grow the economy and to fight crime and corruption. Add to the list the task of reducing our high unemployment levels and fixing public services.

In Jonas’s chilling version, published in the Sunday Times last weekend, the GNU has turned out to be “only a fig leaf for the absence of central authority in government”, instead of providing the country with “a united national executive pursuing a clear programme of change”. Calling out the GNU for its lack of a “minimum programme and fiscal principles”, the president’s special envoy to the US discounted the probability of the GNU righting itself despite obvious “dysfunction” in central government.

If Jonas is right, it would raise a critical question: whether it is in the national interest for the GNU to stay in place and continue behaving, as one delegate put it, like “a couple that prefers to hang its dirty linen in public instead of focusing on fixing their marriage”. And for how long?

A corollary of that would be whether the nation should consider going to the polls again. This is despite the GNU’s sacred-cow status in some quarters and a fear of getting a “worse” result from a new election.

In different forums, the conversations about the state of our country and where it needs to go are without doubt essential to the formulation of policies and the crafting of national strategy. But for such engagements to positively impact our trajectory as a country they have to, by definition, be capable of influencing the government’s thinking and its interventions.

It is the government that has its hands on the state levers through which fundamental economic and social change can be effected, notwithstanding romantic talk in some circles of “citizen-led” change.

Ultimately, for all our talking to make a difference, South Africa needs a government — this one or its replacement — with the foresight, political resolve and ability to turn the page on our history of progressive decline and to lay the foundation for a more hopeful, equitable and prosperous tomorrow. One with an implementable “script”.