Last Thursday marked the end of an era at the Department of Trade and Industry. Alistair Ruiters, the department’s Director General, brought his five-year stint at the helm to an end. It also brought to a close his 11-year stay in the country’s economic engine room.
The question of whether Ruiters was successful or not depends on who you ask and what the purpose of your inquiry is.
Observers tend to agree that the department needs either to have its responsibilities reduced or its capacity increased; yet there is a lingering sense that more could have been done with the time and resources available.
The most unfortunate feature of Ruiters’s tenure was the amount of time taken up by restructuring and name changing. Ruiters’s tinkering was accompanied by a culture of spin, which has evolved to a widely held impression of poor communication
The single biggest failure of Ruiters’s reign has been the formulation and implementation of an industrial policy strategy. The integrated manufacturing strategy appears not to have moved significantly beyond document form.
An industrial policy analyst, who declined to be named, said this is an area that needs an unwavering, single-minded focus from the new director general. “It is an area around which all will fall into place.”
By all, he means the spin-offs of a thriving industry, most notably small business development. The new director general has, for example, to test labour’s argument that the chemical industry represents downstream opportunities that are relatively labour intensive.
If the opportunity is unlocked, it will create the environment for small suppliers of, say, workers’ uniforms, which would lead to market-driven small business development and, by extension, empowerment opportunities.
Even the areas of industrial policy that appear to be working now need attention. The motor industry development programme, a celebrated achievement for so many years, is turning out to be a curate’s egg, having delivered no significant job growth, getting by on five year renewals and facing the ire of Australia — not to say that this is a bad thing.
The next important skill a new incumbent will require is diplomacy that conceals toughness. This has to be used to sustain the momentum of success in international trade negotiations. But must also be brought to bear on negotiations over projects such as the pebble bed molecular reactor and the Coega industrial development zone. Otherwise the joke that Coega should be incorporated into nearby Addo National Park to make it the only game reserve in the world with a white elephant could become a reality.
The process of appointing Ruiters’s successor is likely to illustrate his failure to groom a candidate.
Long-serving directors general such as Sivi Gounden, Maria Ramos and Andile Ngcaba leave in place candidates who can take over. (Though in Ngcaba’s case the candidate, Phakamile Pongwana, lost to an outsider, Lyndall Shope-Mafole.)
In Ruiters’s case, there is no insider in place to take over. The last capable insider, Bahle Sibisi, left amid claims of frustration at the height of Ruiters’s name changing.
A department insider and a staffer at an agency housed on its grounds confirmed that Lionel October, deputy director general for enterprise development, is touted as an internal candidate.
Unfortunately, apart from his profile, October brings little else to the position. Ruiters’s intention to hang around as a consultant is puzzling and suggests a desire to do some more tweaking. No self-respecting incumbent wants to have a predecessor’s shadow looming or to overhear remarks such as “that is not how we used to make coffee”.
Thus it is with fondness, but not sadness, that some will say “farewell to the tinkerer”.