In a world of restless and edgy markets, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel managed to project a reassuring image of amiable calm during the delivery of his budget speech that shows, at the very least, that he has become a consummate salesman.
Despite the innate conservatism of the budget, the gradual swing towards more investment in education and job creation shows a healthy respect for social priorities. It is still not enough, but we support Manuel’s determination to attack the scourge of corruption and make government spending more efficient.
A note of caution is required, however, that too often the government allows its noble objectives to be undermined.
Economic growth is an essential component of macro-economic policy. Yet our failure to achieve more than a mediocre 1,7% growth rate last year must be attributed to Reserve Bank governor Chris Stals’s retention of high interest rates that have squeezed the life out of the economy and particularly the credit-dependent small business sector. Even the too little, too late, 1% cut in the bank rate at the weekend had to be cajoled out of Stals with all the charm at Manuel’s disposal.
But it is on the subject of corruption that the government’s commitment to matching words with deeds is most suspect.
Manuel declares his willingness to root out graft, but at the same time the government fails to heed the auditor general’s recommendation that Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele’s connections to the Motheo housing project – and how her close friend landed the biggest housing contract in the country’s history without ever having laid a brick – be thoroughly investigated.
Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna blows a raspberry at a commission of inquiry that he himself appointed when it recommends that he axe Central Energy Fund chair Don Mkhwanazi and his Liberian conman “consultant” friend and paymaster Emanuel Shaw II. Instead, Maduna is spotted driving around Sandton in Mkhwanazi’s convertible, sending a wonderful message to the masses who risk damnation if they steal a roll of government-issue toilet paper.
These incidents may seem small compared to the billions that are being filched every year, and sometimes even recovered by that tenacious Judge Willem Heath, but they are enormously symbolic because of the example set by people at the very top of the power chain.
We would like to believe that the sentiments Manuel expressed in Parliament this week were more than just jam in the mouth for investors and voters, and that the government is serious about tackling growth, the bloated bureaucracy, job creation and corruption. Otherwise, we would recommend Manuel for an Oscar at the ceremonies in Los Angeles – for a leading role in Titanic.
Mandela’s epic drama
It is one of the many ironies of the new South Africa that Louis Luyt should be at the centre of the landmark debate on constitutional principle which has been taking place in the Pretoria High Court before Mr Justice de Villiers. In what circumstances should the judiciary be entitled to subpoena the presidency? It is a question which will surely have law professors drooling for decades to come. What a pity that the issue should be associated with the name of a man who has long been, if not precisely a skeleton, at least a scallywag in the national cupboard.
It was, of course, an issue which could have popped up anywhere and at any time, bearing as it does on what might be considered either the central strength or the central weakness of our new constitutional dispensation: the separation of powers between the legislature, executive and judiciary.
Essentially, the notion of a harmonious separation of powers – a sort of constitutional holy trinity – is a fiction. Harsh reality, as was discovered to their cost by millions of our citizens during the apartheid years, is that you can never be separate and equal. Inevitably one dominates, but the fiction is maintained by consensus – at least until a certain threshold is crossed. At which point constitutional government either collapses, or the competing loci of power retire to the comfort of a fresh consensus, whatever it may be. In South Africa, for the moment at least, it is the executive which dominates, followed by the judiciary, with the legislature – thanks to the patronage of the party list system and despite the recent, admirable stand on prerogative by Terror Lekota – trailing behind.
When counsel for the president told the court this week that the dignity of the presidency had to be protected he was, we would hazard, not expecting the assertion to be taken literally. It could hardly undermine the dignity of his office if the president were to enter the witness box to nail a lie, however small. It certainly does not compare with the assault on the dignity of the United States president represented by the recent in loco inspection of his genitalia. Dignity, in this context, is a territorial rather than a personal concept.
In the event, Judge de Villiers has chosen to call the president into the witness box. The president’s office said he would appear next Thursday. Territory is abandoned and constitutional history is made. It is a quiet process, but an epic one.