The launch this week of the much-vaunted R100bn transformation fund is to be welcomed.
When it was first announced during a state of the nation address after the May elections, President Cyril Ramaphosa said it would be aimed at uplifting millions of black South Africans who have previously been excluded from participating in the country’s economy.
He said: “For many decades our economy has been held back by the exclusion of the vast majority of the South African people. Black South Africans were deprived of land, of capital, of skills, of opportunities. Our economy was starved of the potential of its people.”
This predicate is absolutely true. What is also absolutely true is that our political leaders have not done enough to uplift the majority of people since the dawn of democracy.
Perhaps this fund, with a budget of R20bn per year for the next five years, is the magic wand required to solve the many ills facing our country. Or maybe it’s just another project to create false hope and help many look forward to something — to distract them from doing appropriate appraisals of past performances to understand why we remain in the economic doldrums over 30 years since our freedom from apartheid.
At the launch of the fund this week, Ramaphosa’s deputy Paul Mashatile reminded us that our Gini coefficient of 0.63 and poverty rate of 17.82% are a cry from economic justice which requires a willingness to challenge the status quo.
“The measure of inequality implies a tiny fraction of the population disproportionately enjoys a large amount of wealth and income that is inaccessible to the majority,” he said.
Mashatile rattled off a list of new commitments “to addressing corruption by strengthening our institutions, fostering transparency and accountability and encouraging public participation and oversight”. He topped this by announcing “war rooms” to ensure things get done.
History, however, is replete with examples of how so-called “war rooms” have not led to much success.
The empty talk about 'war rooms' makes us believe this transformation fund might just end up as a mere promise, a mere tool to generate false hope when, in fact, it could be a force for something good
The City of Johannesburg, for example, has a war room on service delivery. Yet there’s no better example of a city failing to keep up with demands for services by residents. On Tuesday evening, a large part of the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, including Randburg, were plunged into darkness for hours without an explanation.
Eskom has also had a war room for years led by then deputy president Ramaphosa and later another deputy president David Mabuza without an end to load-shedding.
The spectre only came to an end after a well-qualified board was appointed, an electricity minister (Kgosientsho Ramokgopa) versed with engineering was put in place and a CEO (Andre de Ruyter) who was clueless about how to run Eskom was shown the door.
War rooms in times of peace have achieved close to nothing in our country.
We hope the transformation fund serves its purpose of lifting the majority of poor people out of lives of indignity.
We believe a transformation fund, in and of itself, is a positive development that must be supported. What it is not is a silver bullet for the myriad economic challenges we face.
The empty talk about “war rooms” makes us believe this transformation fund might just end up as a mere promise, a mere tool to generate false hope when, in fact, it could be a force for something good.
Indeed, Ramaphosa is right to observe that for many decades our economy was starved of the potential of its people. May we do better this time.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.