Dare to bypass the Left and be waylaid by hypocrisy
Every day, officials at the National Treasury have to find around R1bn to repay the interest on our national debt. If it ever happened one day that they couldn’t manage, then we would be, as a country, what you and I would be if we missed a car payment. Buggered. So while Treasury boffins are busy making sure policemen, teachers and nurses get paid every month by the broken government departments they work for, it’d be pretty normal for them to wonder why this all has to be so difficult.
We’re a major mining and agricultural economy, we have world-class financial institutions and some pretty good infrastructure. We’re a natural tourist destination attracting just a fraction of potential visitors. We have a small but perfectly formed auto industry with the workers in it ranking among the best in the world.
And yeah, we just dumped a world-class villain who tried to break the Treasury as president, we held a peaceful general election and have open and colourful arguments among ourselves about how to be better, how to make sure we leave no-one behind. And we may even win the Rugby World Cup which is kicking off in Japan later this month.
So when the Treasury released a discussion document on Tuesday outlining policy proposals to get SA on a path of faster growth, you would have thought they not only had a perfect right to put some thoughts on the national table, but that the points they raised would be taken seriously, dissected and debated, and treated with some respect.
Dream on. What happened instead was a wail of outrage from the Left — the unions, the communists, their economic policy fellow travellers and the EFF. To the surprise of no-one, they were each instantly upset about one thing — many clearly without having read, let alone studied, the 77-page document they were all instantly appalled that the Treasury should produce such a thing and share it with the public without first taking it to the ANC “structures”, the allies, Nedlac or any of the other places ideas in SA go to die.
The South African Left is addicted to consultation. It is one of the reasons apartheid lasted as long as it did.
I’ve read the Treasury paper. It is a thoughtful document, decently Left of the political centre, drawn up by careful South Africans working under great pressure and conscious
of the dire circumstances in which most of our citizens live. Yet their work has been savaged by the Left, and particularly by its economic policy cheerleader, Neil Coleman.
“National Treasury has gone rogue … again,” he tweeted on Wednesday, reminding everyone how recently it was that the State Captors under Jacob Zuma used to say the same. “They have unilaterally published a policy document without engaging government structures, ANC structures or civil society (unless you count financial sector economists at their colloquia).” Shocking! And a little while later this: “The urgent task remains to have a serious and inclusive national conversation about a bold, innovative economic strategy which can move our country forward. The Treasury document is not a useful basis for this discussion.”
So it’ll be Coleman and the Left who decide what is useful and what’s not, then? And this “inclusive national conversation” happens within the ANC and its “structures” and its allies first, and then the rest of us? A few weeks ago Coleman produced a long, two-part series online on the same topic as the Treasury — economic change. “South Africans are literally dying for a change,” he wrote. “And the current political moment cries out for some bold, imaginative thinking. But if this shift is to happen, government needs to open itself up to new ideas.”
Well, Treasury just did that very thing. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
But it is also typically South African. This must be one of the worst countries anywhere in which to have an idea. Say something out loud and you will be instantly demolished by the horde of “other sides” out there.
Coleman might say he wants innovative ideas but he doesn’t. He wants his ideas. It isn’t just him — our body politic is shot through with jealousies and hatreds, with superiors and inferiors. Everyone in his or her own foxhole.
There’s no question the Treasury was being provocative in making their thinking available to the public. I presume (but can’t be sure) that President Cyril Ramaphosa knew what was happening. He was in Japan with some senior economics ministers, including Ebrahim Patel, on Tuesday.
But now that it is out, please God can we not have the discussion centred on how it was published, but rather on what’s in it?