Howard Barrell
Over A Barrel
What gives politicians more sleepless nights than anything else? “Events,” according to Harold Macmillan, British prime minister in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
“Events” are those often awkward occurrences with big consequences which governments can seldom foresee and over which they have little control, but which their electorate expects them to anticipate perfectly.
Political observers like you and me, on the other hand, always have 20/20 hindsight. And we roll our eyes in eloquent despair when we find that those we have elected to positions of political leadership don’t have the same powers of foresight.
There has been quite a bit of eye-rolling in recent weeks. For goodness sake, who can claim not to have been forewarned about the Bank of England’s gold sales, which have further driven down the value of the metal that still makes up an unhealthily large part of our foreign earnings?
Aren’t we publicly committed, anyway, to reducing the part played by gold in our economy by increasing the role of manufacturing and other sectors? Who could not predict many more job losses with the cost of money (the rate of interest) being as high as it is? Who cannot understand that, if the government is determined to privatise state assets, it must turn them into commercially viable units to get a decent price for them? So, why all the delicacy and hand-wringing about the tens of thousands of retrenchments likely at Spoornet, Telkom and elsewhere?
There is a good deal of sense in these questions. Much of the shock and horror that has greeted the difficult economic news of the past fortnight has been more than a little disingenuous. In the mouth of the odd African National Congress politician, it has been just so much hoo- haa.
ANC leaders and representatives knew it was coming, and of those who can genuinely plead ignorance it is reasonable to ask if they would notice a double-decker bus bearing down on them at five metres.
In the mouths of leaders of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the shock and horror have sounded like so much hot air. No doubt Cosatu, more so than the rest of us, feels badly for the some 60 000 workers who will lose their jobs and the half-a-million people who will be direly affected by this. But it does not – for which we may also be justified in reading cannot – offer any serious alternatives to the processes in motion.
In these circumstances, the mass action threatened by Cosatu acting general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has about as much contribution to make to rational debate on the economic difficulties we now face as a child’s tantrum.
For its part, the glorious vanguard of our working class, the South African Communist Party, has been conspicuous in this matter only for its relative silence thus far.
As I write this in midweek, I am not yet sure whether this diffidence indicates a new-found wisdom on its part, or a view that obscurity may be the better part of valour on this particular problem, or whether, as I suspect, the SACP just doesn’t know its contradiction from its dialectic anymore.
If wisdom provides any part of the explanation, it probably stems from the SACP’s realisation that it and the rest of the left (if that is not to put it too strongly) is being thoroughly – completely might be the more accurate adverb – outmanoeuvred by President Thabo Mbeki.
For, from discussions I have had this week, it seems that the president and the group of economic conservatives who help him make and carry through economic policy, have carefully chosen this as the ideal time to push through a difficult agenda.
They have known for some time that bad news was forthcoming on jobs in those state enterprises they are intent on commercialising and, later, perhaps privatising.
We should expect a lot more such news. And Mbeki and the group have recognised that the immediate post-election period is the moment to release it.
Why? Mainly because this timing means they can hope to have the government back on a good-news track when the next election comes around in 2004. But also because this timing makes it very difficult for any of the awkward squad in Cosatu or the SACP to cause real political problems.
Why? Because Cosatu and the SACP have just spent a lot of time and some money returning the ANC to power. One month on, are they suddenly going to denounce the government they have worked so hard to have elected? They risk making fools of themselves if they do so.
Moreover, because of ANC rule changes on the drawing-up of electoral lists, the 80- odd Cosatu and SACP members who have been elected to Parliament now hold their seats, more clearly than was the case after the 1994 election, as ANC MPs.
This means that the party whip whispers a lot more threateningly at their shoulder – as indeed does the danger that they could find themselves out of a salary and on the street if they start contradicting policy on, say, privatisation. For Mbeki and his economic advisers believe that revenues from privatisation have an important role to play in cutting government domestic debt, so reducing government’s need to borrow, so bringing down interest rates and, so, in stimulating the economic growth that will eventually create many more jobs.
The unhappy economic news of the past fortnight has been a lot less unexpected than pretence would have it. If there has, however, been a major weakness in the government’s approach, it has been the failure to have in place the retraining arrangements or the kind of growth in other sectors of the economy that would mean those now losing their jobs could quite quickly find alternative work.
No doubt the government can be criticised for aspects of this failure. But then one event more than any other perhaps is to blame for the absence of growth and jobs in other sectors of our economy, and that is the emerging markets crisis of the past two years. And that was far beyond our control.
What is encouraging is that, notwithstanding a difficult environment, the government is showing signs that it might at last be willing to bite the economic bullet.