Analysis of Wednesday’s medium-term budget policy statement is best left to the experts who, over the next few days, will explain to us that Tito Mboweni’s plan is good, bad, both and neither, but only where applicable, depending on the aforementioned factors.
Having launched a few books in my life, however, I can speak with some authority about facing a hostile audience that doesn’t want to be there, hasn’t read what you’ve written, and wants to get out and hit the free snacks as soon as you’re done.
So while I can’t tell you anything about the contents of the finance minister’s speech, I can assure you that delivering the mini budget was much, much harder than it might have looked.
First, given the economic shitstorm Mboweni was describing, I think he did extremely well to read the speech and not, as I would have done, sing a sentimental version of Edelweiss to buy time and give my family a head start up the Alps.
He also clearly understood his job, which was to emerge from the bullet-splintered doors of the bank, carefully position himself in such a way that the townsfolk couldn’t see past him to the still-smouldering vault and reassure them that, while there had been some good-natured shenanigans in the bank that morning, those nice young men with the masks and the dynamite had moved on and everything was now fine and dandy, as long as nobody wanted to make a withdrawal right away.
Gimme a B! Gimme an A! Gimme an I! Gimme an L, O, U, T! Whadda you get? Screwed!
Then there was the heroism of doing it all without air cover from Pravin Gordhan.
At the height of his popularity, Gordhan had become a kind of Bourgeoisie Whisperer, an almost magical figure who only needed to murmur things such as “fiscal discipline” to put the outraged middle class into a sort of contented trance.
Since publicly dedicating himself to saving SAA, however, Gordhan has lost that aura and is now entirely useless to Mboweni. Even as a cheerleader for the finance minister, rooting from the sidelines, Gordhan would still be a liability, standing on a pyramid made of IOUs and ego, yelling: “Gimme a B! Gimme an A! Gimme an I! Gimme an L, O, U, T! Whadda you get? Screwed!”
But perhaps Mboweni’s greatest challenge on Wednesday would have come after the speech. Because once he was done laying out those grim facts and presenting those hedged hopes, he would have had to explain his budget to his own party.
And when I think of that ordeal – of trying to see the light of understanding in those phalanxes of glazed, unblinking eyes; of trying to explain supply and demand to people who supply nothing, but demand everything; of trying to make them understand that an economy needs to be grown rather than simply fed off – I have to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that Tito Mboweni is made of sterner stuff than most of us.
