The African National Congress is the target of some heavy-handed criticism in The Economist’s April 8 South Africa survey.
Under an umbrella that spells out the ANC’s difficulties in turning itself into a modern, democratic party, The Economist is forthright: “The ANC still has a top-down authoritarian structure where loyalty to the political cause is prized above almost everything else, including competence.”
A diplomat is quoted at length: “People are deployed to do jobs that they are not fit to do, and the ‘consensus’ means a loyalty to people who do not work, or who are not effective … clientism hinders rational distribution of resources.”
Independent consultant Professor Lawrence Schlemmer is given a platform from which he observes that ANC people never learn the nuts and bolts of administration as they move from one job to another. “There are not enough people who worry about paperclips.”
At the local level, incompetence and ineffectiveness are regarded as widespread.
But The Economist perceives the ANC’s greatest weakness as its inclination to dismiss ideas from outside its own bureaucracy, the most obvious being President Mbeki’s response to the HIV/Aids crisis.
In the wake of this approach, The Economist argues that there has been little change of mind. “In a country with 5,2-million HIV-positive people on record, the largest number in the world, there is almost no public acknowledgement of the problem or public education about it.”
The tardiness with which the government had responded to the crisis, “together with Mr Mbeki’s own strange take on the underlying science, has tarnished his own reputation, as well as that of the ANC”.
Political analyst William Gumede tells The Economist that the moral basis of the ANC is in decline, and that it is well on the way to being judged as “just an ordinary party”. Gumede highlights growing signs of petty corruption (MPs fiddling their expenses).
Even so, the ANC is viewed by The Economist as facing no serious competition.
“So, halfway through his second [and, constitutionally, last] term of office, Mr Mbeki, the technocrats’ technocrat, is still in tight control. But the ANC’s style and structure risk becoming anachronistic in the new South Africa, where society is evolving in a more plural, liberal and democratic direction.”
SA capable of finding pot at end of rainbow
However, if South Africa pursues its rainbow vigorously enough, it may find a pot of gold, The Economist says.
Richard Cockett, author of the survey, presented his findings in Johannesburg on Thursday.
Critical of government’s concentration of power in Pretoria at the expense of the municipalities and provinces, the survey urges the ANC to deal with this and other related issues if it is to retain the support of a society expecting high levels of accountability, openness and transparency.
Cockett suggests that in the longer term, more openness and loosening of control may also lead to “a true de-racialising of South Africa”.
Noting that “empowerment” has done little to stimulate the private sector, The Economist recommends that the country relax the current tight limits on immigration as one solution, another being to welcome people with the skills to create good jobs for the blacks to take up.
“The whole economy would also benefit from allowing private firms into sectors such as telecoms, power and transport, currently each dominated by a single provider.”
Emphasising that Africa needs a strong South Africa, Cockett maintains that the continent also needs a South Africa that goes beyond its strictly Africanist agenda and delivers on its commitments to good governance, human rights and democracy enshrined in the new vision of the African Union and New Partnership for Africa’s Development.
“These are very much South Africa’s creations. It is time for Africa’s leading democracy to cast off its humility and diffidence — and perhaps even to throw its weight around for these causes.”
The last survey on South Africa conducted by the magazine was in 1994, just before the country’s first democratic elections. — I-Net Bridge