JUSTICE MALALA | It’s high time SA stopped living only for the here and now

South Africa has so many political and economic fires erupting everywhere that they are distracting us from asking: what are we doing here? 

South Africa has become a country of drama and noise, of angry gestures and shouting. The quiet reflection, the examination of actions taken and opportunities abandoned, has taken a back seat. The participants in our government of national unity are at each others’ throats. The DA has come out of court where it was trying to reverse the passing of the budget to jump into new disputes about who really won the battle of VAT. Junior parties in the coalition are playing the parents — the ANC and DA — against each other. The ANC, allegedly a leader of this coalition, is riven by jockeying for position, power and money. 

Unity is the last word one would use to describe our current government. Its leaders are petulant, immature, selfish and incompetent. Most lack integrity and the leadership qualities required for today’s unique and complex challenges. 

Then there are the threats from outside. The country has been punished with withdrawal of aid by the US, attacked as genocidal against its white citizens, been threatened with sanctions, had its Afrikaner citizens offered refugee status despite not even one of them being killed in any type of genocidal action. South Africa is in US President Donald Trump and his administration’s crosshairs, and it will suffer from the big stick wielded by the world’s most powerful economy. 

Meanwhile, South Africa’s “trusted ally” Russia is continuing to murder Ukrainians and seek to take their land. At the same time, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has now become one of Trump’s best buddies, making our shunning of the US and our past support for Russia look like the fool’s errand it always was. Then we opened the doors of Mahlamba Ndlopfu and the Union Buildings to Ukraine’s admirable Volodymyr Zelensky. I am sure neither Vladimir nor Donald is happy with President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Under all this domestic and international pressure and complexity, South Africa is falling into the trap of thinking and acting in a panicked, short-termism manner. In this mode, it is easy to make the mistakes many across the globe are making: taking bad short-term decisions and being stuck with a disastrous result for a very long time. 

Take a country like the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Under pressure from the rampant M23 rebels, it has begged the US to ensure its security in exchange for handing over its mineral wealth to American business. Lesotho is another example. Following grossly unfair and erroneous tariffs imposed on it by the US, it has offered to house deportees from the country within its borders. Has anyone thought about what happens to these deportees when Trump leaves? Has DRC considered what happens to all these wealth-for-security deals when Trump goes?

South Africa right now thinks day to day, week by week. Is the GNU behaving this week and will it survive the fortnight ahead? Will it make it to its birthday in June? We need to step out of this trap. If things continue this way, we will flounder about with no plan, no proper coalition agreement, no set of goals and strategies for what South Africa looks like in 2028. 

If we continue to behave the way we have over the past year — which is similar to the way we behaved in the period since 2009 when the ruinous Jacob Zuma era began — we won’t achieve anything in the next four years. That’s because the culture entrenched in that time has been one of sloth, incompetence, corruption and unaccountability. But if we go back to our key developmental documents, such as the National Development Plan, we will find ample guidance about goals we can set or reset now and how we can achieve them quickly. 

What a glorious spurt of growth and prosperity South Africa could have if we were to just focus on what to do for three or four years! With a three-year plan, agreed on by the two major players in the coalition, South Africa could vigorously cut the size of its cabinet and the civil service, trim its fat and reduce debt, implement plans with vigour, and make Ramaphosa’s pledge to turn the country into a “construction site” a reality. In three years, we would see a changed South Africa. We could even achieve the 3% GDP growth we were talking about just months ago. In four years? We could be flying. 

The same principles would apply if we could begin to think strategically about foreign policy. In four years, the US will either have a new administration, likely more amenable to South Africa, or it will have one that continues with the current trajectory or worse. That’s what South Africa should be thinking about instead of the current obsession with present-day responses only.

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