Credit where it is due: one ‘c’ was better than none. Thabo Mbeki’s third-last State of the Nation speech passed the ‘crime test”, but failed the corruption one. As an avid reader of the Financial Times himself, Mbeki would have noted that the influential newspaper led page 2 last Saturday with the story that the South African president had responded to pressure to speak strongly on the threat of crime. He would have welcomed the good international ‘play”, but resented the assertion that he had responded to ‘pressure”.
Though Mbeki backed his words with a pledge to increase the number of police officers, this was an issue on which symbolism and tone mattered more than substance.
Otherwise, the speech contained no surprises and only two new policy ideas — a wage subsidy for low-wage employees and a social security tax to finance basic retirement savings, death, disability and unemployment benefits.
On the face of it this appears to be a rather meagre return from the intense period of self-reflection with which government commenced the year; its leadership spent virtually the whole of January in a plethora of lekgotlas — one minister complained to me the other day that he had sat through four in as many weeks: Cabinet, ANC, provincial ANC and parliamentary caucus. What about his department, I asked; ‘Oh, it’s all one long lekgotla!” he replied.
So, the speech was essentially a ‘more of the same” exposition of government policy and not necessarily any the worse for that. But it begs a question: is this a case of a party that has ruled for a long time having run out of ideas? Or should we rather see it as the dividend of the stability that comes with having an electorally dominant party such as the ANC and an opportunity to implement long-term thinking (such as the growth strategy, Asgisa)?
Although the executive — the ministries and departments of government — hold the upper hand in terms of capacity and expertise, the locus for any fundamental change in policy direction would need to come from the ANC and so its mid-year policy conference in the run-up to the five-yearly national conference in December is a key moment. While the 1997 Mafikeng conference was dominated by the ‘will she, won’t she” shenanigans of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the real stuff — around economic policy especially — had been done six months before at the policy conference.
Will the 2007 process herald any major shifts? Well, if the draft Strategy and Tactics document published for discussion at the beginning of this month is anything to go by, it seems unlikely. Given that presidential policy chief and ANC national executive committee member Joel Netshitenzhe would likely have had a strong hand in both the speech and the Strategy and Tactics document, this is perhaps unsurprising.
Yet, the document has a special place in the ideological history and tradition of the ANC as a political frame of reference, charged implicitly these days with the difficult task of finessing the tension between the ANC-in-government and the ANC as a political organisation.
To some it is a document that commands a unique reverence, with its determined mantra of the ‘national democratic revolution”. Yet the latest version steers a modernist course, explicitly blending what it calls the ‘best traditions of a developmental state” with the ‘best traditions of social democracy” (while urging ANC members to find a way to negotiate what it describes as the ‘minefield” of ‘patronage, arrogance of power, bureaucratic indifference, corruption and other ills —”).
The document identifies, but fails to resolve, the inherent tensions between protecting the popular legitimacy of a developmental state and building its technical capacity. Currently, the pragmatists in government value the latter at the expense of the former. I came across a good illustration of this recently when viewing the tapes of an interview with Durban city manager and ANC stalwart Mike Sutcliffe for a forthcoming film on requests for housing policy documents made by the Abahlali base Mjondolo shack dwellers’ movement.
Sutcliffe offered a remarkably old-fashioned exposition of democratic government: ‘We were elected to do a job; we have the experts; we have the plan; it is a good plan; let us get on with implementing it; if you don’t like it, vote us out next time.”
This is not to pick on Sutcliffe particularly for he is far from alone in his attitude, and nor do I wish to damn him with the faint praise of commending his commitment to the tough task of local government by saying that he means well.
But the people of South Africa deserve the modern approach to government expressed by a Constitution that offers a very different vision of a participatory democracy, in which citizens are provided with meaningful opportunities to engage government in a permanent conversation, as opposed to the anachronistic, five-yearly episodic model of representative democracy that Sutcliffe unwittingly articulates.
We must find ways to help government resist the prison of technocracy — or ‘expertocracy”, as I heard it described last week in Switzerland — that all around the world threatens to undermine progressive politics. I am all for sound strategic planning, but rather than always talking to itself in lekgotlas, government must not lose sight of the need to converse with the real experts: the people of South Africa.