South Africa: Talk, Talk And More Talk Can Be Enlightening

27 April 2010

By Richard Calland

Thursday March 18

Dinner at the Twelve Apostles with a flutter of fund managers (if that is the correct collective noun). I always enjoy the piercing simplicity of their questions: Who is in control of the ANC? Will the Reserve Bank's mandate be changed? Do Pravin Gordhan and Gill Marcus see eye to eye? Who exactly is the right wing of the ANC? (No one. No. Yes, more or less. Work in progress, I'll get back to you.)

These are good questions (and debatable answers). In exchange they tell me that "selling SA" has become a very difficult task since January. Something happened that tipped the balance, turned market opinion.

Now it is my turn: Was it Jacob Zuma? The childish talk of nationalising the mines? Or Eskom, perchance, and the general lack of leadership and uncertainty around state-owned-enterprises? (Probably. Probably. Maybe.)

Why these infernal questions about a "lurch to the left"? I quarrel: Dissect your concerns about the government, about the president, about the ANC, about the culture of politics and the strength of democracy and examine where your interests align with those of the "sensible" left. Now do the same exercise with the right of the ANC. Take nationalisation. Who is arguing for it, the right or the left? Yes, the right. Take corrupt accumulation. Yes, exactly. They're intrigued; they're definitely listening. Maybe I'm on to something here.

Friday March 19

Host a roundtable discussion at Idasa's aptly named new Spin Street restaurant and bookshop where our visitor, Klavs Holm, Denmark's first ambassador for public diplomacy, brings a connoisseur's subject to life. It's about the need for governments to seek to influence a more complex array of non-state actors; old-fashioned foreign office to counterpart bilateral relationships will no longer suffice.

Linking neatly with my previous evening, Holm tells his audience that "people will form very quickly made decisions about another country and their views can change very rapidly". Denmark had to deal with the Islamic cartoon a year or two back. Even if they had wanted to use traditional methods, the question was who to talk to? The "offence", after all, was to the whole of the Islamic world. But they talked and talked, to as many of the think-tanks and media outlets they could, reminding people that one cartoonist is not a nation (note to Zapiro) and that Denmark's commitment to freedom of expression is a deeply held cultural value.

Holms is compelling on the related subject of "nation branding". Denmark's is built on the foundations of a happy people who care about the climate, are strong on design and have a flexible attitude to employment law, based, in turn, on very strong social security provision. With the Rainbow fading, does South Africa have a durable, cohesive brand beyond Mandela?

Tuesday March 23

A glimmer of light: Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel delivers a well-rounded budget vote speech in the National Assembly followed by a roundtable on the "next economy". Without funding, staff or substantial line functions, this is how he has to operate -- like an NGO think-tank within the government -- seeking to shift hegemonic attitudes to economic policy. And so far without much impact.

But today it looks and feels different. Partly it's the announcement of his ministerial advisory committee that not only pips Trevor Manuel's National Planning Commission to the post but contains, amid a list of the usual suspects, the name of Joseph Stiglitz. It's not that he is anything other than a moderate and, come to think of it, another usual suspect; it's that he is a rather large usual suspect. It adds gravitas to Patel's minimalist profile.

Flanked on the stage by the evenly matched Zwelinzima Vavi and Bobby Godsell, who are both in terrific form and clearly like each other, Patel is like a sharp-eyed sparrow betwixt two great eagles -- but using his convening power to start a very necessary national dialogue: between big business interests and working-class interests, represented by "sensible business" and the "sensible left".

Friday March 26

I table this at Ernst & Young's quarterly politics breakfast, framing it as a grand toenadering. It strikes a chord: it is time to focus on the right wing of the ANC -- represented so clearly by "you know who" and not the alliance. It is the conservative wing of the ANC, too often ignored, that represents the real danger.

Monday March 29

I moderate a discussion in Cambridge on "limits to growth": the speaker is Jeremy Baskin, a former South African trade unionist, who now heads Cambridge's programme for sustainability leadership in Australia. The delegates on the four-day sustainable development leadership programme are senior managers from the World Bank, who are deciding whether to give South Africa its first major loan and the bank's biggest ($4-billion).

Baskin uses the loan, which will enable Eskom to move ahead with its building programme of new coal-fired power stations, to make his case. It is, he argues, an entirely unsustainable and irresponsible loan; it puts South Africa on a coal-based growth path from which it will not be able to escape.

Before even the World Bankers can get their teeth into it, I put the government's case, with which I have much sympathy: We need to protect and create jobs; without those jobs, an already precarious society will surely collapse into instability and greater violence; therefore, we need the power that comes from cheap coal -- at least in the short term -- and we need the jobs that come with it; yes, we must change the economy, but it has to be done in stages, with a transitional path; cold turkey will do more harm than good.

Baskin is a brilliant provocateur and a vigorous debate ensues. Of course the loan was approved a week later.

 

 

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