Do you need to appear like you’re working? Or at least have your challenges brought to the attention of the country’s highest offices? Well, worry no more — simply organise a summit and invite President Cyril Ramaphosa.
If you are lucky enough, it may be called a presidential summit. This seems to be a winning formula for getting the attention of Ramaphosa who is set to address, wait for it, the presidential health summit in Ekurhuleni today.
When he’s done with this he jets off for a peace and security summit, which he prioritised over attending the coronation of King Charles (good for him), in Burundi. The ink, meanwhile, has hardly dried on commitments captains of industry made at the recently ended presidential investment summit, which raised, in Sandton, a cumulative figure of R1.5-trillion over five years. We’ve had many summits.
And there is, of course, one other summit that keeps being flighted on television where the lights go off as Ramaphosa speaks and, looking genuinely contrite, starts apologising for load-shedding. This was a presidential local government summit organised by the SA Local Government Association (Salga).
So summits are en vogue. Some joked after the appointment of the electricity minister that we seem to appoint people based on the country’s challenges and so need a minister of inequality, among others. But it appears, another presidential summit on inequality is in gestation. Or a summit on electricity or energy. The latter doesn’t sound like a bad idea, does it? Another summit, accompanied by an exhibition with various companies showcasing smart energy solutions for homes, micro and macro enterprises.
Ours is leadership by summits. Do you want the president to look like he’s resolving a major crisis? Convene a summit.
Ours is leadership by summits. Do you want the president to look like he’s resolving a major crisis? Convene a summit.
That our country faces many challenges is obvious. To lead means to do things that move the proverbial needle. Leading a country like ours is not about shiny suits, nicely designed bow ties, tailored evening dresses, speeches awash with clichés and divine food. Put differently, talk shops.
The problem with talk shops is that they create a veneer of progress. They’re breeding grounds of sycophants. And many who attend these have mastered the etiquette — it’s impolite not to clap hands for nonsense. In the end, those who convene summits end up believing they have, indeed, achieved unimaginable success.
Progress, in truth, is not a pretty sight. It’s never smooth. It’s not the neon lights and a great ball. It needs you to have the balls, as it were, to dirty your hands, get down to the detail, work numbers, reconfigure, restart until you get the results. It’s difficult, slow, frustrating but also greatly rewarding.
Not too long ago, a senior executive at one of the top four banks said at a lunch with Sunday Times editors that one of his frustrations is that they have very limited space to engage the Presidency.
He said there are opportunities to run into the president at many conferences, but what he yearns for is a structured manner-of-working that allows their bank or sector, for example, to table issues, engage on them, have decisions taken and follow-up meetings held where a review of the record of implementation is undertaken.
In other words, the financial services sector to which he belongs is spoken to by authorities but not engaged. As a consequence, there’s anaemic progress against major areas of concern.
And that is really the point: it is time to eschew meaningless summits in favour of working groups which allow sectoral issues to be raised and resolved. When industry leaders feel not engaged but spoken to, some go on crippling investment strikes. If that doesn’t explain why our investment summits could raise R1.5-trillion but our economy has ground to a halt, then what will? The IMF’s dispiriting forecast — that South Africa will grow at a heart-stopping 0.1% — is simply a vote of no confidence in our economy. It means if at all there is a smidgen of progress, that progress is incidental to our economic strategy and not occasioned by it.
Our economy is not creating jobs in spite of the summits. A working group on the specifics that need to be done to ensure job creation is not a jamboree. It needs no bow ties and shiny suits. It’s a messy, long, slow, data-driven meeting with relevant stakeholders. The health summit of today is not going to turn Tembisa Hospital into a shining example of how to run a successful public hospital. Granted, the hospital can be turned around. But you need a different meeting for that. The Salga summit referred to earlier happened months ago. Yet our municipalities resemble shipwrecks.
The summits, or call them talk shops for they resolve no major challenge facing our country, may get the attention of the president, but they are not real work. Real work must happen before and after the summits. Right now, we are just watching a show of summits as many await the 2024 general elections.
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