You get the leaders you deserve, according to an old bit of political wisdom. At present, however, we are in danger of getting the leaders our leaders deserve and that is depressing indeed.
The apotheosis of Julius Malema last weekend, speeches replete with the demagogic soundbites that are his particular genius, has provoked a national bout of anxiety, principally because the content of the ANC Youth League’s programme of “economic emancipation in our lifetime” represents such a fundamental threat not only to our existing economic arrangements, but also to any hope of more rapid growth and job creation.
The real threat, however, is not Julius Malema; it is the fact that almost no-one else is boldly articulating any kind of political vision, let alone yoking to it a policy programme capable of delivering the rapid economic progress that is needed to address poverty, inequality and unemployment.
President Jacob Zuma and others in the governing party repeatedly insist that “debate” on the nationalisation of mines and land reform is welcome, but they never enter the debate themselves.
To temporise that nationalisation is “not ANC policy” or that the matter is being “studied” is an extraordinary abdication of leadership. There are any number of things Zuma could say that would rapidly relegate Malema to the policy sidelines where he belongs.
For example: “The mineral wealth of the country was nationalised nearly a decade ago with the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act. The primary role of the state in the sector is to provide the kind of sound regulation that will provide a stable environment for investment that will create jobs and ensure a steady flow of revenue to government.”
Alternatively, if he would prefer to tack left, he could say: “We do not believe nationalisation is the answer; however, we are concerned by the relatively low taxes paid in some areas of the resource sector and about the environmental legacy of mining. We are considering fiscal measures to ensure that the people of South Africa benefit in a sustainable fashion from the exploitation of the country’s mineral wealth.”
On land expropriation, he could say something simple like: “The seizure of land without compensation is a dreadful idea, which would do nothing to improve the lives of poor South Africans and would in fact harm farm workers severely. We cannot support it.”
Of course, Zuma has said nothing of the sort. Nor has any member of the ANC’s top six, or any full member of Cabinet.
Instead, it was left to Derek Hanekom, the deputy minister of science and technology, who was the first post-apartheid land affairs and agriculture minister, to tweet his opposition: “Whatever YL says, expropriation of land without compensation is not ANC policy and along with many others, I’ll never support it. Never”. He went on to point out, also on the social networking platform, that the Polokwane resolutions never called for such a policy. “The pace and quality of land reform simply has to pick up and the restitution process must be completed. Hope we agree.”
When criticised for these remarks, he wrote: “Strange to be called out of order for articulating ANC policy. NEC members do that.”
Tragically, however, most of them don’t. Like Zuma, they see their political survival in terms of the allegiances they can forge in the party’s back-alley brawls, rather than by staking out clear territory and defending it.
Malema has no such concerns. He is content to rally troops to his flag, call down opprobrium on anyone who offers the slightest opposition and bank on the cowardice of the mainstream ANC. That has so far been a very safe bet.
It is fashionable, of course, to point out that Malema’s words resonate strongly with a large and critically important constituency of angry, marginalised young people, as if that somehow lends them conceptual legitimacy. Of course his rhetoric appeals, with its compound promise of restitution for the dispossessions of colonialism and apartheid and a new economic order in which jobs and prosperity flow from state-owned mines and reclaimed farms.
That doesn’t mean he is any less wrong.
The trouble is that no one else is insisting in similarly resonant terms that the real challenge is to ensure that the aggregate outcome of government policy is the best possible life conditions for the largest number of people.
In the mining sector, that means adequate infrastructure, a regulatory environment free of uncertainty and corruption, sound social plans, an appropriate tax regime, real provisions for environmental remediation and rigorous measures to protect safety.
In the land and agriculture sector, it means vastly improved capacity in the land affairs department to use the existing tools to speed up reform and restitution. It means protecting rural women and farm workers, and deepening the economic linkages on which the agriprocessing sector relies. It means showing people durable change, rather than telling them it is coming.
This is the sort of position that emerges from Trevor Manuel’s semi-detached “ministry of good sense” in the presidency and from the treasury’s budget documents. It is evident, too, with a different set of emphases, in the work of the department of economic development.
No one, however, is standing on this mountain of credible work and staring down the young man with the crackpot plan. The result is a hollowed-out political space all too easily filled up by a man with a gift for catchy marketing slogans. Don’t worry about him worry about those who refuse to fight him.