Economic Planning ANC Style – Wait for the Disaster First

An interview on SABC with Enoch Godongwana today revealed a frightening fact.

Godongwana is the head of the part of the ANC charged with economic planning. When he was asked what the reaction of the Government would be to the Ratings Agencies’ downgrade of South African bonds, Godongwana replied that they were starting to think about it, but it was difficult, because the second downgrade came only four days after the first, and they need now to digest what the effects will be!

The answer is frightening, because such a Ratings Agency downgrade has been an imminent reality since at the latest Nene-Gate, in December 2015. In any responsible group dealing with economic planning, consideration must be given to possible threats, even if they are not imminent. Planning can be defined as dealing with a problem situation before it becomes a reality, and the threat that has now become reality has been considered in the Press for at least as long as Zuma’s second term as President. The ANC has had at least three years to do the research and considerations, yet it was still taken by surprise when it happened. Even now, Godongwana appears to be confused by the scope and complexity of the downgrades’ effects.

One wonders how effectively the ANC will respond to this crisis in our economy. The President seems to be almost completely ignorant of what it really means, and seems to believe that the cause for the downgrading lies at the feet of White Monopoly Capital (whatever that might be), as driven by the ‘agents of regime change’, another undefined but clearly evil group of Western capitalists, or imperialists, or whatever, as long as they are not ANC drones, whose sole aim in life is the downfall of the ‘glorious democratic revolution’ that swept this ignorant bunch of terrorists to power. Godongwana appears to subscribe to the same level of ignorance, and one wonders whether this state is at the behest of the President. The new Minister of Finance, whose sole qualification for the job seems to be that he is beholden to Zuma (one wonders what happened to Des van Rooyen, who, Zuma has stated several times, was the best-qualified Minister of Finance ever, but was nevertheless not chosen again for the job again), gives every appearance of being overwhelmed by the job, perhaps now understanding that, if he goes against his boss’ order to facilitate the Russian nuclear deal, he will lose the job, while, if he gives effect to that order, he will end up at the end of the same rope that is being talked about as Zuma’s likely fate once the people come to understand what he has done to them.

And all of this is happening as the economy spirals down, with factory output down 3,7% in February 2017 (before the downgrades became reality), and the President’s public acceptance at 15%, the lowest of any sitting President ever. How much worse will it be when the effects of the downgrades start to bite? When another million people are added to the list of unemployed? When another two hundred factories close their doors? When interest rates on the home loans taken by the tens of thousands of new Government employees rise by a half, making the repayments unaffordable while the Government (or the other employers) put a freeze on salary hikes in a desperate bid to remain solvent, making those loans unaffordable? When the White Monopoly Capital banks decide that they cannot afford the tens of thousands of defaulting loans and foreclose, putting those homes on the market at knock-down prices, because no-one else in the stagflation economy can afford to pay even those low prices? When the Government is unable to pay the social grants to 17 500 000 grant recipients, because the tax revenue has collapsed and foreign lenders are unwilling to take the risk of advancing more money to this Government, which has demonstrated its inability to meet the most elementary planning requirement of a Government in the civilized world?

There can be no doubt that South Africa is now deeply ensnared in an economic crisis, one that is deepening by the day. South Africa has been in this crisis for many years, as the Government has worked hard to make business ever-more difficult, to impose ever-more stringent requirements for those within the country and from beyond its borders to undertake investments (by means of equity participation and the requirement to employ a percentage of Blacks in positions for which none on the employment market are qualified, and by means of lowering the standard of education to the point where South Africans rank as one of the 5% worst-educated people, despite expending more per capita on the educations system), and all the while blaming Jan van Riebeeck, who passed away 350 years ago, and who ran the then South African economy for less than a quarter of the time that the ANC has been in power. There can also be no doubt that the ANC is one of the worst-equipped Parties in the world to manage its way out of the crisis.

The worst of it all is that Enoch Godongwana, the man charged with formulating the policies that will guide the ANC in its attempts to resolve the situation, is willing to demonstrate so clearly to the public, in South Africa and the world at large, that he has no clue as to what the crisis is, and what the way out might be.