Former president Thabo Mbeki, who spent a few days in the Free State helping the ANC exorcise its demons, shared some choice words that could help the country confront its economic challenges.
Mbeki told ANC leaders in the Free State to desist from preoccupation with contests for positions and focus on the important work of turning the economy around.
In what appeared to be a clear rebuke of Limpopo ANC chairperson and premier Stan Chupu Mathabatha, Mbeki said: “I don’t know if people heard what I was saying because you still hear these voices. Even at the (ANC) January 8 rally in Limpopo, somebody stands up in a meeting and says: ‘Long live second term for President Cyril Ramaphosa.’ What is that?”
He called it a trap.
“The reason it’s a trap is because if we take that route then we will be preoccupied with this question: ‘Who is supporting me?’ and canvass and completely forget about this urgent national task ... (which is) time-consuming, absorbing all your energy,” Mbeki said.
He reminded us that the country is in a deep economic crisis. More than 10-million South Africans of working age roam the streets without jobs. So discouraged are many others that they not only stopped looking, they have no hope of ever finding jobs. Faced with a crisis of this nature, Mbeki reminded us that it serves no one, no less the ANC, to be focused on anything but the important task of creating jobs, building infrastructure and maintaining the networks of roads that enable economic activity. It is nigh impossible to disagree with him.
After all, he was in charge of the republic when our economy last grew at 5% and anything close. It has been a freefall since the ANC of Jacob Zuma, who we now know was entangled in state capture, forced him out of office a few months ahead of the end of his term.
Now that he is available to help, the question, given his past performance and the many challenges faced by our economy to which he refers, is whether he is best left to help with the ANC renewal programme or to offer counsel to the state on how to turn around our struggling economy?
President Cyril Ramaphosa would, of course, have us believe that he and his team of economic advisers are on top of the situation. But numbers don’t lie. The latest available figures show that unemployment, at 34.9%, is worse today than at any other time in the history of the country. Statistics SA will on Tuesday release 2021 Q4 data, but economists predict the situation has become worse.
SA is, in 2022, the world’s most unequal society with a Gini coefficient at 63, according to the World Bank, which further notes there are 13.8-million South Africans experiencing food poverty while 30.3 million are living in poverty (national upper poverty line of R992). This is a sorry saga. Not all of it could be laid at the door of Ramaphosa, of course.
The sad truth though is that the entire nation relies on him to resolve all challenges, including those that predate his arrival at the Union Buildings.
After the economic contraction we witnessed at the height of coronavirus pandemic which was followed by modest recovery, there should be no room for reinventing the economic wheel.
If Mbeki, ably assisted by his then finance minister Trevor Manuel, could get the economy growing at 5%, why must Ramaphosa keep Mbeki on the periphery, preoccupied with fancy notions of ANC renewal that many of us know will not work, while our economy that could benefit from his knowledge continue to condemn our fellow citizens to food poverty?
The point is not that whatever worked in 2005 will, ipso facto, work in 2025. It is that, for the speed we need to turn the economy around, it is important to get in the room those among us who have contributed to the best performances we have had. Mbeki is undoubtedly one of those.
His frustrations and willingness to help, we might add, are clear from what he said while in the Free State at the weekend: “We have got a country in deep crisis. The economy is in deep trouble and has been in trouble for many years …”
He further says, correctly, that ordinary people don’t care who the ANC president is but “are interested in an ANC which takes care of the matter of service delivery …” In the same vein, we must say at this point, it shouldn’t matter who the president of the country is, but we ought to care about who among us could help us make our economy more inclusive.
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