For those who take their lead from the old ideologies that sought to shape this country and failed so abysmally, the very idea of a Black Management Forum was and remains a cheeky notion — for blacks can only be drawers of water and hewers of wood.
If black management generically were to fail, that Verwoerdian postulation would rise triumphantly from the graveyard of racial ideology, just as it would if our consistent economic growth is compromised on the altar of desperate and unprincipled lunges for power.
As we continue our successful reconstruction of our country from the wreckage of its disastrous past, we must not forget that apartheid was above all a failure of political leadership, which in turn led to the failure of economic management. It is a myth both of history and our times that economic prosperity can be sustained without good political leadership.
Good economics is premised upon and presupposes good politics; thus, for example, populist economics and populist politics will work together to impoverish the well off, but even more the already impoverished. However strident the criticism of the so-called trickle-down economics, poverty cannot be fought by compromising economic growth.
As we count our way down to December, it is time for all those who truly care about our nation to understand how easy it is to destroy an economy.
Speaking in another, but contextually relevant, context, Winston Churchill said: “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”
No one demonstrated this more dramatically than PW Botha, a law school drop-out and party organiser who never earned a cent outside the NP, when he destroyed the economy of the country with a single address — the now infamous “Rubicon” speech, which crossed nothing but merely reconfirmed the bankruptcy of the country’s then political leadership.
The wisdom of our free and democratic South Africa is in how, with its fundamental emphasis on sustainability, it has avoided the economic traps that also ensnared some of our well-intentioned post-colonial comrades, some just across some rivers and bridges from us. They paid little heed to the ANC’s admonition about the unsustainability of a well-Âintentioned socio-economic programme, which, however, in strict economic terms, amounted to cutting one’s suit larger than the cloth one had.
Happily our Zimbabwean neighbours are striving for political rapproachement, which I believe will put them on the road to economic recovery, albeit a slow and difficult one.
Economic stability, as even Iraq is proving, cannot be divorced from political stability and inspired leadership. It cannot be provided through opportunistic rabble-rousing whose vision is as short as that of eyes in the dark. Our impressive economic growth and its creation of a bigger economically secure population must not be sold for a mess of porridge to individuals who, in a grab for power, will say anything to please the masses they have targeted as their ticket to that power.
The reality of modern economics is that the simplistic reduction of poverty eradication to unbridled empowerment is the fastest road to economic perdition; and we, in and outside the Black Management Forum, must say so without endorsing the equally irresponsible myth that unregulated markets are the panacea for our historically socially engineered poverty and unemployment.
Now is the time for the socially conscious sustainable economic development proponents and activists to rise up and assert the correctness of our macroeconomic trajectory.
Economic realism is what got us where we are today, and economic realism is what will take us to a South Africa of limited unemployment and severely diminished poverty. In the euphoria of the early 1990s there was some talk about possible nationalisation and a renunciation of the debts of the apartheid regime. After mature reflection, however, by the collective leadership of the ANC, it was concluded that such an agenda, while resonating with the masses, would damage our country in the medium to longer, if not short, term.
In 1994 we stood on the brink of a debt trap, which would have meant that our role as managers of our own destiny would be curtailed by our creditors such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In the process our inspired economic choices and our subsequent prudent management of our economy in pursuit of steady and sustainable growth have empowered us to be cheeky but admired architects and managers of our own political and economic destiny.
How many post-colonial countries have compromised their economic independence and ended up under the hegemony of credit-lenders because of superficially radical and politically expedient policies and actions?
Just as unsustainable spending in your own home leads you into the clutches of your bank manager, so does unsustainable spending by a country lead it into the hands of the most conservative policymakers in the world. We have thus far successfully resisted this, and we must continue to do so by standing up against the politics of economic expediency and the economics of political opportunism.
Through our proud record of successful governance we have wrong-footed the markets, which, as the Reserve Bank governor once said to me, do not trust liberation movements successfully to run modern economies such as ours.
In the process we also silenced Afro-pessimistic voices which, during the 1990-1994 transition, predicted that our country would splinter and serve their goal of re-colonising it in the same way that they had done for decades in the Congo after independence.
In 1992 a brainstorming group that included Trevor Manuel and Tito Mboweni met outside Stellenbosch to debate and consider possible scenarios for economic policy under a democratic government. Among the scenarios sketched out was the ostrich scenario, where a government sticks its head in the sand and pretends that problems do not exist. Also analysed was the lame duck scenario, in which a government effectively allows hegemonic forces to dictate terms to it.
A third option considered was the Icarus scenario, named after the mythical man who triumphantly ventured too close to the sun, but whose triumph was short-lived as his wax wings melted in the heat and he plunged to the ground.
It was, ultimately, the flamingo scenario which found acceptance — being a vision of steady growth symbolised by a bird that starts to fly slowly, clumsily at first, and that overcomes its early difficulties as it gains height and rises in magnificent and sustainable flight.
So said, so done as we, through the 1990s, took a measure of pain as we gained control of our public finances to a point where, by 1998 we could withstand the meltdown suffered by the emerging markets.
The correctness of our gradual growth approach is vindicated by the fact that we have just completed our 36th consecutive quarter of economic growth since 1998, the longest upswing in the country’s history. To some this might actually justifiably be cause for what Alan Greenspan once unflatteringly called, in reference to the dotcom boom, “irrational exuberance”.
In our country, however, we too often suffer from the malady of irrational pessimism.
While celebrations are appropriate, utmost caution is still called for, for we might yet lose it all to economic experimentation.
Let it therefore be said, even though some might not be comfortable with it, that the adoption of cheap thrills, short cuts, glib phrases and invective that characterise some of the latest developments within the broad democratic movement is cause for concern.
It detracts both from its practitioners and their intended victims, this being out of synch with the best traditions and protocols of the movement. In succumbing to our basest emotions after our years of noble comradeship we veritably risk the application, upon us, of Winston Churchill’s profound statement, that: “When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.”
Now is the time for political bigness and visionary leadership, and that includes mutual respect by the members of the alliance, which in turn must exclude the imposition of each other’s views on the appropriate leadership for the other.
Never in the annals of the alliance’s history has one partner sought, as is currently the case, to determine — and almost dictate — who the ANC’s leaders should be.
Indeed, this has stretched the country’s tension like a rubber band, and in the process it has led to predictions of doomsday and is sure, in the immediate run-up to December, to slow investment decisions down.
For me, the great leadership of our movement and its cadres will protect the economic gains of our post-apartheid democracy as they have done when the ANC faced its biggest schisms. It is because of this type of leadership that, as Churchill said, we can also safely say: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
From that perspective, then, it is appropriate to end with Churchill’s famous rallying cry: “These are not dark days: these are great days — the greatest days our country has ever lived.”
Bheki Khumalo is group corporate affairs manager at Sasol. This is an edited version of a speech he delivered to the Black Management Forum earlier this month