Barbara Hogan is once again in trouble for talking sense. Parastatals that can’t be turned around should perhaps be got rid of, she suggests, provoking stern correction from Gwede Mantashe about straying from ANC policy. There is a history to all this.
After he stopped selling state-owned enterprises, some time in 2002, and before he lost the job of running them in 2004, Jeff Radebe used to say that the government’s attitude to privatisation was “pragmatic”. He’d already been kicked out of the Communist Party for his pains. Alec Erwin, who took over the portfolio, said the same thing. His behaviour, however, was anything but pragmatic.
Erwin, who believed economic development would flow from state control of the big levers of industry, not only stopped selling things (bar a few bits from the bottom of the Transnet bin), he started pouring taxpayer cash into existing parastatals and dreaming up new ones.
Some of that was defensible. Transnet and Eskom clearly have a crucial role to play in the provision of basic economic infrastructure and there are good arguments for keeping aspects of what they do in state hands. Much of it, however, was quixotic to the point of being deeply misguided.
Denel, the hopelessly mismanaged apartheid relic that houses the state’s defence industry assets, has already swallowed a few billion and wants more. There is little prospect of it ever being commercially viable in state hands unless the defence budget is distorted by handing it overpriced contracts. It should be broken up and sold off to form part of the burgeoning private defence sector.
South African Airways clearly needs disciplined private sector management if it is to dig itself out of its mess. And speaking of digging, why does the state still own a loss-making diamond operation in Alexkor?
There are others: the vast Komatiland forests, for example, the money-hungry Pebble Bed Modular Reactor and the ill-conceived, increasingly irrelevant Broadband Infraco.
To be sure, the ANC at Polokwane called for state-owned companies to play a vanguard role in development. That is the broad-brush policy position. Hogan’s job is to interpret in fine-grained detail and within the limits of a greatly straitened fiscal position.
If she chooses to set aside scarce financial and managerial capacity to focus on Eskom and Transnet, while hiving off or shutting down corporations the state is incapable of turning into developmental ends, then she is simply doing what she has been mandated by the president and the party to do.
Hogan is no Washington-consensus ideologue. She is a knowledgeable, committed and indeed pragmatic person, who has a detailed understanding of the competing forces at work on her portfolio. She must be allowed to put those qualities to work.
Long-awaited dream in the balance
South Africa has overcome a coterie of tackles and foul plays from seen and unforeseen forces hell bent on denying the African continent its chance of hosting its first Fifa World Cup finals.
Just when whispers of an insulting Plan B, aimed at undermining our ability to stage the biggest sporting tournament, were dying down and the dream of an entire nation was an hour from reality, the most unlikely source throws a spanner in the works. Ourselves.
The country was thrown into turmoil this week, literally, at the eleventh hour of staging the Confederations Cup, a tournament that presents us with the opportunity of shaming our detractors. We join the rest of the country in strongly condemning the culture of greed that has manifested in South African football and culminated with Bafana Bafana holding the nation to ransom with their unreasonable demands before they can do duty for the country.
The timing of their threat to strike if their obscene suggestions to dismiss the R14-million they were offered are not met and be paid a whopping R34-million for the Confederations Cup smacks of treason. Lost in the selfish act of lining their pockets is the embarrassment this has brought upon the country and Africa as a whole. Sadly, Bafana players’ own goal mirrors some of the actions of their bosses.
The shocking way in which the contracting of private security was handled for the Confederations Cup, and the organising committee’s (OC’s) refusal to accept responsibility and blame doesn’t bode well for our football administrators a year before the World Cup kicks off. There is just no excuse for contracting untrained security guards a mere two weeks before the start of the World Cup’s curtain-raiser. And the OC’s explanation that the police would ensure a safe tournament is more than disingenuous.
The police have a very specific role to play in big sporting events such as these, which is not to protect stadiums, control access and throw drunken soccer fans off their seats. This is the OC’s job. And judging from the incompetent way they have handled putting private security in place for the Confederations Cup, something has gone seriously wrong.
This must be fixed immediately. Security is still the biggest factor that would keep tourists away from our showpiece and the country can’t afford lazy, shady or arrogant administrators to be a spanner in the works.
If individuals not doing their work caused the security fiasco, they must be fired. If bigger irregularities underlie the crisis, Danny Jordaan and his sidekicks must clean it up without ado. Anything else would show an utmost disrespect for Africa’s long-awaited dream.