They are the institutions of hope and aspiration that have become soiled and bedraggled. With a trail of many tragic millions of rands wasted, and of human and institutional failure, it is time to take a hard look at whether we need the National Development Agency (NDA), the National Empowerment Fund (NEF), the loan guarantee agency Khula and the enterprise promotion agency Ntsika — at least in their present form.
Each is, or has recently been, in crisis. Each has stumbled from one restructuring exercise to another, losing chief executives as quickly as babies lose milk teeth. With weak leadership, none of the organisations has been able to draw up clear mandates or spending plans. Each has lost the confidence of those it is meant to help, be it the non-profit sector and the very poor, the struggling owners of small and medium-sized businesses, or black business people.
After a series of misadventures and chronic infighting, the NDA is now under government curatorship. Khula and Ntsika have made no appreciable impact in spurring small business development. Although it has a better record, the Umsobomvu Youth Fund took ages to become operational.
What is the problem? The national skills deficit is clearly taking its toll on the agencies, which are not able to attract top business and administrative talent because the private sector can pay considerably more than the (reasonable) salaries the agencies offer. Left with second best, the organisations have also been undermined by the lure of easy money and the power to hand out contracts to family and friends. The development agency’s Delani Mthembu remains suspended and faces disciplinary action after allegedly directing money towards projects in which his relatives have an interest. The empowerment fund’s Sydney Maree is alleged to have invoiced banks for work performed free of charge.
What should be done? South Africa never needed the NDA and does not need it now. State interference in the relationship between donors and NGOs may have been well intended — some suspect that the unspoken agenda was political control — but NGOs and their benefactors got on fine before the agency was formed and it is time to shut up shop.Â
The rest could be run as private-public partnerships, with Khula and Ntsika managed by effective private organisations like Business Partners and Brain. The NEF, whose job is to promote black economic empowerment, could be outsourced to a consortium of merchant bankers and deal-makers working to a strict set of corporate governance and performance measures.
The Mail & Guardian feels slightly uncomfortable about proposing private intervention in the semi-state sector. But there is no point in being doctrinaire. If government bodies in the crucial areas of job creation, economic development and small business promotion are systematically wasting scarce resources and failing to deliver, it is time to look for other solutions.
A security imperative
The police made a silly mistake this week when they banned media representatives from the unrest-hit informal settlement of Diepsloot, outside Johannesburg. Claiming that reporters and photographers were “fuelling the violence” inevitably invited comparisons with the emergency period of the late 1980s, when bars on the media were justified on the same grounds, but were in reality designed to give the security forces a free hand. What Margaret Thatcher described as “the oxygen of publicity” could conceivably breathe new life into violent protest. But in a democracy, the dangers of screening unrest from the public eye are potentially much greater. Police counter-violence — for that is what riot control essentially involves — must be monitored by outsiders to ensure that only reasonable force is used and the innocent do not suffer.
It would be an equally grave mistake to treat the Diepsloot upheavals as a simple security issue. It was striking that so many young men were on hand during the working week to swell the ranks of the rioters — half the adults in this 100 000-strong community are thought to be unemployed. It was also striking that no one seemed entirely sure what was at issue. Was the trigger for the violence a rumour that residents were to be incorporated into North West province? Or was it conflict over the allocation of formal housing in Diepsloot? If there were “agitators”, as police claimed, what was their agenda?
The fact is that because of their poverty, insecurity, high crime and unemployment levels and alienation from the socio-economic mainstream, South Africa’s shack settlements are tinder to any spark. Censuses indicate that informal households as a percentage of the total fell between 1996 and 2001, a sign that government policies are bearing some fruit. But an estimated 30% of South Africans still live in shacks and traditional dwellings. Bringing them into the economic and social net of full citizenship is both a moral and a security imperative.