LETTER: Operation Vulindlela was dead from the start due to cadre deployment
It is merely tinkering with a system that needs radical overhaul, as well as a paradigm shift in approach
Your editorial on Operation Vulindlela was absolutely spot-on in its assessment that progress from this initiative has been “excruciatingly slow and often contested...” while also being “essentially an attempt to tackle the symptoms, not the cause” of SA’s economic and governance malaise (“Operation Vulindlela is making progress, but at glacial pace,” August 10).
Year after year, ANC governments have announced plans and programmes but have fallen short on achieving them to address SA’s challenges, and all we’ve witnessed is a never-ending stream of promises without performance, intentions without implementation, and policies without political will.
The simple truth is that interventions such as Operation Vulindlela, or its “presidency twin project”, the Presidential Employment Stimulus, are fundamentally compromised in their potential effectiveness because they merely comprise “tinkering and tweaking” a system that actually needs wholesale, radical overhaul, as well as a paradigm shift in approach.
There’s little point in putting oil into a defective engine that actually just needs to replaced, or putting petrol in a leaking fuel tank. One can make all the modifications one wants to maximise the performance of a toaster, but it will never be able to do the job of a proper heater to warm up a cold room.
Thus, Operation Vulindlela was stillborn from the outset, because the presidency is shackled and hamstrung in its effectiveness by the ANC government’s modus operandi of cadre deployment, patronage and policy compromises to accommodate different political factions and divergent ideologies.
“Vul’indlela” means “open the way/clear the path”, which implies a vigorous and disruptive (possibly even destructive) activity, counter to business-as-usual and shaking up the status quo, just as one would have to brutally chop and hack through jungle thicket to clear a path — a gradual and gentle approach simply won’t cut it (both literally and figuratively).
The only way Operation Vulindlela will meaningfully and substantively “open the way” to sustained economic recovery and “address the underlying causes of low economic growth and high unemployment” through the “implementation of structural reforms” (to cite a government source document) is through the promulgation of a comprehensive suite of investment-attracting and job creation-promoting exemptions from overly restrictive and confidence-dampening legislation and regulations. Those must ease the burden of doing business, lower barriers to compliance and incentivise capital investment and entrepreneurial innovation.
Zakhele Mbhele, MP, DA shadow minister in the presidency
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