There is little that is new in the discussion papers
And, again hopefully, that discussion will take the issues they attempt to address a great deal further than the initial discussion papers do.
For it is clear that, overall, the papers produced are largely inadequate as serious evaluations of existing policy and its effects, never mind as thinking on the subject of what is to be done and how implementation is to proceed.
This newspaper, in conjunction with the Wits Institute of Social and Economic Research (Wiser), recently held a symposium on the ANC discussion documents, which were made public in March. Various responses from differing ideological viewpoints emerged from that discourse, as shown by the pieces we publish in this week’s edition and will publish in coming weeks, but none of them is filled with praise for the documents’ policy proposals or their understanding of the problems faced by South Africa at this moment.
Massive failures
There is little that is new in the discussion papers, and still less in the way of detail on how plans already under way are to work. Vitally important issues such as employment are glossed over, with the state’s planned infrastructure programme expected to solve that problem and many others – almost magically. Massive failures, such as those in education, are barely addressed.
There are statements about what is needed, for instance in the civil service, that one can only applaud, but these are often statements of the obvious, without any sense of how such goals are to be achieved, or why such enacted policy has failed over the nearly two decades the ANC has been in power. It seems that the gap between policy and realisation yawns more widely with each such policy conference.
Take out the rhetoric about the ANC’s glorious 100-year history, the denunciations of the “neoliberalism” hampering progress in South Africa, and all the wonderful-sounding goals for which no roadmap has been provided, and there’s not much left in these documents.