We have had Jacob Zuma and his post-Mangaung "Lula moment", which never arrived. We have had Cyril Ramaphosa and his "sound business management" approach, which did not materialise. Now we have Mamphela Ramphele and her new "party-political platform".
A cynic might say that the ruling class, troubled by its own increasingly bad odour, is setting successive bowls of stinking diarrhoea before the public, assuring us that this is delicious butterscotch pudding. But to its chagrin, the public continues to trust its sense of smell.
Perhaps the cleverest of these is the national development plan (NDP). We get told regularly that we, like everybody in the propaganda and plundering communities, must "get behind the plan". It is a new plan, not like the new growth path, which is soooo 2011. Nobody says what the plan entails. With the lid kept in place, nobody can smell the stench. You can download it off the internet, apparently, but the PDF is 444 pages long, and who is going to read that?
The "key targets and implementable actions", however, are on pages 28 to 40. The targets are great. Really. Eliminate poverty and reduce the Gini coefficient from 0.7 in 2009 to 0.6 in 2030. Halve unemployment by creating 11-million jobs by 2030, double the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate to 5.4% and nearly treble the GDP itself by 2030. The poorest two-fifths of the population will get 10% of national income, instead of the 6% it gets now. Exports will grow by 6% a year. The savings rate will rise by 66%, as will the level of investment in fixed capital. And the public works programme will quadruple by 2030, to twomillion full-time employees.
This is actually all possible according to orthodox economics. Substantial tax increases could fund investment and savings (forced savings are taxes by another name) and wealth redistribution and the public works programme. Consumer imports can be blocked, freeing exchange for imports of capital equipment. Capital export can be banned and banks brought under state control to direct the flow of capital to manufacturing. High wages and dividends can be savagely taxed, forcing the flow of cash into investment. If all these things are done, South Africa could potentially be as successful as Malaysia, which pursues most of these policies.
But the national development plan is not rooted in orthodox economics. Instead, it is based on the economics of novelist Ayn Rand, who believed that rich people are superhuman and economies can prosper only by giving them total freedom to do what they please.
Removing constraints
You think I exaggerate? The plan talks continually about "removing constraints". Promising not to nationalise the mines will make the mines grow. Bribing business to hire young people at low wages will magically increase the number of jobs. Paying people to help school-leavers to find jobs will somehow make the jobs exist. More to the point, making it easier to fire workers and banning middle managers from access to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration will create jobs.
We need more electricity: 40 gigawatts, half to be renewable. This happens by encouraging coal miners to plan better, by fracking gas and importing lots more, by privatising most of Eskom and in effect privatising all municipal electricity supply. Despite building 15 more coal-fired or gas-fired power plants, the NDP says, greenhouse gas emissions will fall, thanks to the carbon-pricing system (which has not worked anywhere else). We will increase our trade by being friendly to our neighbours and building better border posts. That is basically it. Oh, and there will be more public transport.
There is going to be much, much better, much, much bigger education. This will be done by linking teacher pay to performance, allowing principals to fire teachers, excluding unions from education, and expanding further education and training colleges and universities in ways unspecified with money unexplained (and forcing them to pass more students, of course). If this is not enough, we will hire more foreigners.
Apparently, the ruling class knows what the public wants and is sensible enough to put forward a set of attractive and attainable targets to appeal to it. But it then puts forward plans that transfer state money to the rich, privatise state assets and allow the rich to do as they please.
None of this has anything to do with meeting the plan's targets, which will not be met, but the bill falls due only in 2030, so that does not matter. The spending will have to be funded by borrowing, so one consequence of the plan will be national bankruptcy (which, as shown by the European Union's Mediterranean strategy, is actively desired by today's global ruling class).
In other words, diarrhoea disguised as butterscotch pudding – except that we can sniff it only in 2030. By which time, we will have to eat it after all. Possibly at gunpoint. – Mathew Blatchford, University of Fort Hare