This was not the brightest thing
to do at this critical time in the country’s economic history. The new Minister
of Finance is in New York, attempting to convince the world’s investors,
already very leery of the economic policies of the ANC, which have placed the
country on a continued economic slide towards the present junk status, will not
change, that it will continue on its path of ‘fiscal conservatism’. The fact
that this path, together with several other elements of the ANC policy, are the
cause of the current junk status, appears to have escaped his attention, and
the inflammatory electioneering speech of Ramaphosa will certainly go a long
way to convincing the investing public that the ANC will continue to be blind
to the failings of its policies.
Junk did not happen overnight. It
was the result of a long series of bad decisions, one building on the other,
since the ANC came to power on the back of a voter base which is either economically
illiterate or blindly trusting in the qualities and moral integrity of one man.
The country has been sliding down this increasingly-steep slippery slope for
the last twenty-three years, and a continuation of the political lunacy is
guaranteed to bring about a continuation of the economic train smash, until,
finally, the Government will be forced to accede to the harsh demands of the
IMF when it begs for rescue. There are only two ways to avoid this fate: either
a less-corrupt leader will take control of the ANC and change the country’s
economic direction, or another Party will do the same. The only question is
whether the change will come before the IMF takes control, or after.
What Ramaphosa fails to recognize
is that the country simply does not have sufficient well-experienced and
qualified Black managers to rescue the country. Of all people, Ramaphosa should
know that a skilled manager is not born: he or she is the result of a good
educational foundation, with the addition of years of on-the-job training and a
wide exposure to the advice of people who have seen it all before. South Africa
could have been approaching that stage now, if only the ANC had not decided
that a certificate that the bearer has been educated is less important than the
content of that education. The educational system has demonstrated convincingly
that it is not capable of producing the managers of the future that the country
needs, and no number of examples of exceptional Black graduates will change
that. There are exceptional Blacks, as there are exceptional Whites, Indians,
Coloureds and Chinese, but that is not proof that the system produced them –
they are exceptions. The country cannot grow on exceptions. It needs an educational
system that consistently produces school and university graduates who are
amongst the best in the world. South Africans are capable of that, as is shown
by the Model C schools that Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma so disparages, but the
general system does not harness that talent. That was proven convincingly this
week, when the Law Society warned the University of the Witwatersrand that it
will lose approval for its Ll B school unless it tightens its law educational
standards. That comes only a few years after the Law Society reported that a significant
proportion of new law graduates were incapable of using language efficiently.
It is a frightening state of affairs when a formerly prestigious law school,
which, over the decades, has consistently represented the pinnacle of
university education in South Africa, and the graduates of which have, until
the past two decades, been held in high regard by most of the world’s academia
as well as big business, has to be warned that its education is sub-standard.
Unfortunately, in the international Management Consultancy of which the author
is part, a recent degree from a South African university is treated as an indicator
of below-par capabilities. Once again, the ANC has shown its belief that tens
of thousands of certificate bearers is of greater value to the country than a
smaller number of graduates of excellent quality.
The quality of management of the
State Owned Entities, such as Eskom, SAA, Sanral, Denel, SASSA and SABC, as
well as of most ANC-controlled State Departments is an unmistakable testimony
to the extremely poor standard of the Black management available in the
country. The South African Police Services seems incapable of producing a
Commissioner who is able to hold the top job for more than a year! Apart from
the rampant corruption (another manifestation of poor management), it is clear
that the policy of pushing an ANC cadre into the top job years before he has
the skills, the integrity and the personal qualities to perform adequately is a
virtual guarantee of failure, and no amount of Hlaudi-speak will be enough to
convince the world that the financial woes of the organization are a figment of
the Opposition’s fevered imagination. SABC requires another R3 billion,
although the former CEO, now out of the job for only a few months claims it had
a cash surplus of R800 million, and SAA requires another R4 billion only a
month after the last R5 billion was injected to save it from bankruptcy – who has
ever heard of a State-owned airline failing to publish its annual accounts for
fifteen months after the statutorily-required date, in order to save it from
insolvency! The incompetence and corruption (another manifestation of
managerial incompetence) of Eskom has resulted in a massive slide in the
industrial and mining output of the country, causing it to miss out on two
world booms. The reliable, affordable supply of electricity is universally recognized
as a promoter of economic activity, and Eskom has been singularly negative in
its role in that regard, while the ANC and its leaders have benefitted
enormously from the endemic corruption on the corporation.
The management talent is
available in South Africa, amongst the thousands of sidelined White managers
who would love to be in a position to help their Black counterparts, and tens
of thousands of South Africans abroad would be delighted to return to add their
skills and efforts to the drive. Believe it or not, Mr. Ramaphosa, Whites want
the country to succeed as much as Blacks do! They all understand that the
future of the country lies in the hands of all its citizens, and the amount of
goodwill on the ground, amongst all races, is considerably greater than the ANC
wants to believe. The average citizen wants the Rainbow Nation of Nelson
Mandela to succeed, and he or she will do whatever it takes to make that
happen, if only the Government will step aside and allow them to do that.
The real problem of the ANC and
its hangers-on is that they believe that the size of the economic pie is fixed,
and that the only way that the Blacks can get more is to ensure that the Whites
get less. That may be true in the world of the ANC, as is demonstrated by the
fact that the economic pie has been shrinking consistently since they have been
in power. Numerous non-ANC initiatives to grow it have failed because the ANC
policies have ensured that the preconditions for growth – good education, good
experienced management, good control of corruption – have been removed, rather
than being expanded. An attempt in the 1990s to bring about 350 000
sustainable jobs failed because the Premier of KwaZulu Natal demanded from the
German sponsor of the project a bribe of 15% of the cost of the project,
promising that payment would ensure the co-operation of the Premier and the MEC
for Economic Development! The economic pie is, in fact, not fixed, as is
demonstrated by the fact that several economies, around the world as well as
around Africa, have been growing at a pace greater than 5% p.a., even in times
of world economic slowdown (with the South African GDP growth rate now
projected at under 1% in 2017/8, and likely to be less). Even a smaller share
of a bigger pie will translate into a better standard of living for tens of millions
of South Africans, Black and White, with a brighter future for the Blacks
making their way up the educational and experience ladder. Black Empowerment
will happen inevitably in a growing economy, but cannot in a declining economy.
No amount of entrepreneurial training in school will substitute for the quality
education that is required to allow the schoolchildren to become citizens of the
world.
Mr. Ramaphosa, as an intelligent
politician, it is necessary for you to recognize the facts of the situation. A
continuation of the mantra of Radical Economic Transformation cannot achieve
anything of value for your Black voter base. A continuation of putting down the
Whites who managed the growth of South Africa from a small colony at the end of
Africa to a country that was important to the world, in the face of abjectly
poor political management over many decades, will only deprive the country of a
significant base of skills, knowledge and entrepreneurial capability, to the
cost of all.
Mr. Ramaphosa, you are the Deputy
President of all South Africans, Black, White, Coloured, Indian, Chinese, not
only of the ANC portion of the country. The continuation of the present Zuma-ANC
lunacy will serve only to drive away an increasing number of the people who
supported the delivery of a democracy in this country on the basis of the moral
character of a great man, Nelson Mandela, as well as the capital that is so
essential to economic growth.
Now you have the opportunity to
stand up, to speak truth to your political boss and to your nation, and prove
to them that you have what it takes to be the next President.
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