The media said he is dead. He had warned society a number of years ago not to trust social media. Noam Chomsky, at 95 years of age, continues to contribute to society.
His profound observation of the conduct of capital should be front and centre of South African society in light of the impending coalitions and government of national unity (GNU). We have seen the Just Energy Transition Trojan Horse before. This time it might just be on steroids.
Chomsky provides caution: “I don't see an enormous difference between a society in which you sell yourself to someone and a society in which you rent yourself to someone ... control over resources, and production, and investment is in the hands of a separate, rather small group of people.”
Chomsky, who is very much alive despite his exaggerated death a week ago, will always be remembered for stating: “That’s the standard technique of privatisation: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
The new leadership at Eskom has not only assured us that load-shedding is behind us, but has provided the ample evidence that reveals that the erstwhile power stations that were irreparable and on death row were a ruse aimed at implementing the privatisation standard defined by Chomsky.
As the ANC and the DA go into a GNU, Tom Peters, Marty Linsky and Warren McFarlan of the Harvard Business School come to mind. This is done from three perspectives engaged and learnt from the Executive Leadership Programme that we attended at Harvard Business School 22 years ago. In 2002, I was part of an annual cohort of South Africans consisting of civil servants, private sector and NGO employees who were on the Wits-Harvard Executive Leadership Programme.
Peters’s insights on value creation, value destruction and ethical leadership are relevant as South Africa tackles especially the GNU in the context of state-owned enterprises. McFarlan had a lesson I would never forget because I deployed it immediately in my work area. The deployment of information technology will remain a key instrument in bringing efficiencies and effectiveness in administration. The government systems, especially those of planning, are not integrated at the design thinking and systems design level. On this aspect, while predominantly in the sphere of McFarlan, Peters makes a profound point in separating automation from design thinking. Without design thinking, automation is good for nothing. Linsky’s profound input was about empathy. But the relevant part for this article is hearing the words of a leader — in this regard what the contestations over the SOEs are likely to be as typified by SAA and Eskom.
At intervals of about a week every six weeks for nine months we attended this Executive Leadership Programme. The programme created safe spaces for interrogating our different interpretations of what South Africa was about as we took the important steps in nation building. The lecturers were very provocative. A programme I benefited from immediately was one led by Prof McFarlan on information technology.
I first saw McFarlan at Wits. He was seated in an adjoining room to our lecture room. Dressed in a brown jacket, fawn trousers, grey shoes and some kind of tie, the details of which I cannot recall, he matched an image of a Boer in my mind. I was thinking we would be lectured on farming. When he opened his mouth, I realised I had misread the cover of the book completely. McFarlan had an American accent as he talked about technology and the future.
At the time, I was in the middle of processing data of the Census 2001. We had adopted the scanning technology, which has steep inflections in the size of memory required at different stages. Scanning the images and infusing extraction through optical character recognition, optical mark reading and intelligent character recognition meant there were huge transitions in the data extraction modules, and those were memory-hungry. That implied management of not only scale but scaling expertly across. I knew at that point I had to buy more storage. But memory for storage back then was extremely expensive unlike today’s dirt-cheap prices. I went for it and that helped resolve part of the horrendous challenges.
The case of Eskom and SAA and in fact all SOEs tends to resonate with the assignment that Linsky discusses. Miles Mahoney was given an assignment of housing construction by the mayor of Boston. But on technical grounds Mahoney advised the mayor that the request failed all of the technical reasons for its implementation. The mayor sent a message to Mahoney that said: “kill it, Miles — kill it quickly.” But Miles failed to hear the “quickly” part and the idea dragged on and threatened the survival of the mayor. Mahoney was out of a job in 24 months and the project was up and running after his departure.
The SAA deal of R53 sale seems to have run stale and is no longer on the menu. This is after dragging on for four years and misery pouring on everyone who was associated with SAA. But the more interesting saga is of Eskom. Andre de Ruyter, the disgruntled former CEO of Eskom, might have heard the “kill it, De Ruyter” but missed the “quickly” part.
The cases of Eskom and SAA are very relevant and should stimulate our appetite for vigilance and engagement in the convention or dialogue that is proposed. The institutions were on their way to privatisation and are probably still on their way. But the floor became so slippery especially with an election around the corner. De Ruyter’s book seems to highlight how the mission to kill the coal units that according to him were dead anyway, failed to or refused to die.
Black excellence has prevailed at the power station, and it is this excellence that should drive the intergenerational value that the blacks and coloureds have been deprived of not only during apartheid together with the Indians but in democratic South Africa.
For almost 90 days to date we have not had load-shedding. The new leadership at Eskom has not only assured us that load-shedding is behind us, but has provided the ample evidence that reveals that the erstwhile power stations that were irreparable and on death row were a ruse aimed at implementing the privatisation standard defined by Chomsky. “Defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”
But this time around a Miles Mahoney trap caught De Ruyter because he only heard kill it and did not hear the “quickly” part. Now king coal has won the debate. However, for how long, it is not very clear, especially in the context of a pro-privatisation DA in the government of national unity. But if Eskom and SAA are anything to go by, we may see a return of the SOE as a central feature of the developmental state. The developmental state assumption undergirds the agreement for national unity, yet privatisation deals had also been almost concluded on the matter of rail. So we might be in it for the long haul.
Chomsky’s notion of the grand privatisation formula coincides with Peters’ analysis of how Enron's value was destroyed by unethical conduct and led to the arrest of Skilling, who designed the scam that kept California citizens in the dark for three years from 2001 to 2003 when the governor of California suspended load-shedding. That sounds familiar as we have been weaned from five-year value destruction. But the centenarian Eskom has proven beyond doubt that it can defend itself. Black excellence has prevailed at the power station, and it is this excellence that should drive the intergenerational value that the blacks and coloureds have been deprived of not only during apartheid together with the Indians but in democratic South Africa.
In a recent publication Tom Peters, said on McKinsey, a company he worked for more than a decade ago: “I can present no hard evidence, but from a couple of conversations with people who are well informed, it is my understanding that head rolling has been minimal. Certainly, the managing director should have been fired, one hopes with no accompanying benefits. Though I do not know modern McKinsey, the office manager and all those between him or her and the coal face should have been shown the door as well. I am not a vindictive person, but this situation is so appalling that, I believe, the punishment should match the crime.” The assertion by Peters affirms how greed and capital connive to destroy value and leave society bereft of intergenerational value.
It is a Trojan Horse that Amilcar Cabral reminds us of: “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head.” Or is it a GNU that will usher to society what they fighting for “to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children”.
Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa
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