Janus, the Roman god of doorways, of beginnings and endings, has two faces, one turned back, the other looking forward. In January, as the new year stutters into life, we inevitably do the same. Many events in South Africa in 2005 suggest a need for New Year’s resolutions. Not only are we on the early, uncertain threshold of 2006, but the legacy we bequeathed ourselves last year is deeply ambiguous.
The old year was, in many respects, an awful one — awful enough for the president to say so publicly. The battle over succession in the African National Congress brought out dire tendencies in our political life and no one in the ruling party, the government, state institutions, the media or civil society was immune to the consequences.
At the same time, popular anger over service delivery failures and municipal boundaries reached unprecedented levels. And to heighten the gloom, Bafana Bafana failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup.
But in other ways, 2005 was a great year. The economy moved into a phase of much more robust growth, powered by record levels of consumer spending. Business started to invest more in new capacity, foreign companies such as Barclays placed some big bets on the local market, and the rate of joblessness edged downward.
The government spent much more money on both social development and economic infrastructure, and still managed to improve its fiscal position. Broadly speaking, the country hummed along underneath the pall of smoke cast by the Zuma affair, Travelgate, Oilgate and a host of local government scandals.
New Year’s resolutions are generally distinguished by the speed with which they are broken, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth making in the first place. And in this strange, conflicted year, with the toughest battles of 2005 still very much alive, it is worth drawing a few lines in the sand. Here are our suggestions:
1. For Jacob Zuma and his supporters: fight on, if you must, but lay off the judiciary. Resolve, if Zuma is found guilty on any of the charges against him, not to call him a victim of apartheid justice, or suggest that the courts are being manipulated by a vast right-wing conspiracy.
2. And a corollary for all presidential hopefuls: quit dragging the institutions of the state into the leadership race. Tell the spooks to butt out, let law enforcement agencies do their jobs, let the bureaucrats get on with their work.
3. For President Thabo Mbeki: talk to us more often, in person. Come to Parliament. Explain your decisions, and engage your opponents. During the Zuma crisis, you became increasingly invisible.
4. To the leadership of the ANC in general: resolve to lead; 2007 is round the corner, so come out into the open. If you support someone, or don’t support them, say so, and say why. Be as brave as you were during the struggle, when your political dominance was not assured.
5. For the Cabinet: stop working on new policies and put the ones you have into action. You keep telling us is what you are going to do. Trevor Manuel’s moneybags have never been this full, convince him to open them up to you by focusing on projects and results. Hire skilled people, make tough decisions, get on with it. That goes double for the problem areas of education, housing, and transport. Where things are working, resolve to stick to your guns.
6. For business: look around, there is serious money being made in this economy. Resolve to be brave, follow the lead of companies such as SAB and PPC, which are making serious investments in new capacity. And learn to live with real competition from inside and outside the country. The death of the great South African oligopoly will be one of the final stages in the transition from apartheid economics. You should also resolve to embrace the spirit of the government’s empowerment codes of good practice, which go to the heart of your business practices, instead of fiddling cynically with equity structures and influence-peddling arrangements.
7. For the institutions of democracy: you might also consider being braver. Parliament’s leaders could resolve to deal forthrightly and publicly with the damage done to the institution by Travelgate, even if party colleagues are implicated. Likewise, the judiciary could firmly and openly mark out the path it intends travelling between the imperatives of transformation, independence and the fair and efficient administration of justice.
8. The media should resolve to be both courageous and careful. In the heat of an extremely fraught political environment, not to mention intense editorial and commercial contests, we need to keep focusing on the basics: accuracy, fairness and rigour.
9. For all South Africans: resolve to vote. Local government is thecoalface of service delivery, yet only 57% of youth thought it was worth voting in 2000. If you don’t vote, you can’t expect your complaints to be taken seriously.
10. And to the professional malcontents: cheer up. South Africa is a better place to live than ever before, and we have it within our means to make it better still. The doors we open to the future are ones that we ourselves make.