Sidelining commercial considerations will result in plans that have no effect on SA’s chances of recovery

Placing one’s hopes on a 2024 political transformation is dangerously — and needlessly — defeatist. Today’s mounting crisis must inspire a prompt overhaul of our national dialogue, allowing a powerful growth plan to emerge supported by necessary policy pivots. The alternatives are prohibitively perilous.

We have long been hurtling towards debt and poverty traps with none of our various leaders able to articulate a compelling growth plan. Why is such a plan still conspicuously absent? The ruling party’s electoral dominance followed from its success at sidelining commercial considerations in economic debates. This is entirely inconsistent with how high-growth countries operate.

Rebounding from the current crisis can only happen if we frame our central economic challenges realistically. This is more doable during a crisis than in an election season. As last year’s inconsequential elections didn’t reframe key issues, the foundation to develop and contest growth plans remained elusive. Notwithstanding credible allegations of widespread corruption and delivery shortfalls, ongoing ANC loyalty followed from vote-inducing patronage: prioritising redistribution rendered a majority of South Africans reliant on government payments or policies. Yet growth had vanished, bequeathing a debt crisis amid rampant poverty.

The pandemic is hastening dreadful outcomes. But no amount of economic damage ensures a political realignment in 2024, while much ensuing damage will be irreparable. Life prospects for today’s youth are being harshly degraded. The governing party’s political success through framing economic issues in justice terms has smothered commercial considerations, thus devastating growth prospects. As funding options rapidly narrow, economic issues must be urgently reframed to develop growth solutions.

Policies will have to be reconceived to balance social and commercial objectives amid depressing headlines featuring death tolls, bankruptcies and job losses. As SA is probably the most fragile, least growth-focused of large developing economies, further credit downgrades will prompt speculation of a debt restructuring requiring growth-orientated policies. Much preparation is required.

The ANC’s success at narrative management allowed it to dominate the national dialogue — to the nation’s, and now the ANC’s, detriment. But it is not realistic to expect the party to unilaterally undo what it has wrought. Nor is it logical to think tinkering can get us through this massive crisis until political dynamics improve — perhaps — in 2024.

We must acknowledge that a quarter century of digesting emotionally touching political narratives has embedded national perceptions at odds with globally determined success factors. For instance, the prioritising of redistribution ahead of growth presumed that SA could indulge isolationist urges. The Treasury has accepted the necessity of prioritising exports, but this requirement is generally underappreciated and too often regionally focused.

The urgent need to remake our politics mustn’t be locked down as economic prospects dwindle. The crisis has highlighted the ANC’s long-standing policy and management deficiencies as well as its authoritarian nature. The evidence confronting us explains why its policies will not deliver broad prosperity within another 25 years. The national dialogue and internal party positions must be reset.

National leaders beyond the ANC’s sphere have been freed from having to dance to the ruling party’s tune. To recast the fundamental issues, they, not the ANC, must take up the mantle of being the unabashed champions of economic freedom. A workable growth plan will be needed to back up such rhetoric. This must begin with humbly acknowledging a lack of preparedness.

Dancing to the ANC’s tune has largely been about seeing economic issues within an SA context. This precludes solutions. We didn’t have the domestic purchasing power to reduce poverty and grow the economy before Covid, and the situation is much worse now — particularly given how international tourism has taken a massive hit.

Over-emphasising legitimate justice challenges has submerged our commercial potential. Those least well-off are most in need of a strong economy. Regulatory impulses must, like the budget, be zero-based. Most particularly, BEE and property rights challenges must give way for economic freedom to flourish.

A list of prospective projects is not a plan. Broad prosperity hinges on individual initiative and global integration. Instead, our economy is suffocated by regulatory zeal amid isolationist delusions. This reflects a patronage-focused political strategy that breeds corruption and poverty. It’s time to accept that corruption can’t be purged without adopting a commercially grounded focus on growth.

Redistribution was an inevitable post-1994 political imperative. The challenge was to achieve inclusive growth while advancing our productivity and international competitiveness. Failure to strike such a balance was certain to spur rising corruption. Combating corruption without a growth plan is futile — yet this requires mending our deeply dysfunctional political dialogue.

Today’s economic crisis makes mending our national discourse manageable. It does so through making it a necessity.