FRANS CRONJE: Finding positives amid the overly dark national mood

While the national mood as expressed in the media, business and public polling is acutely pessimistic, I wonder if that pessimism is not in some respects misplaced. There are important positives that must be brought into any accounting of where SA is headed.  

A first is that our political system is working as it should. The people of SA chose democracy precisely so that were a point ever reached where its government failed the expectations of the electorate they would be able to remove it from power and replace it with another. That is happening. The governing ANC now polls below 50% — more than 20 percentage points down from its peak.

A second is that within the ranks of both the governing party and the opposition are leaders with the wisdom to understand that those numbers present an opportunity to bridge the country’s oldest political divide and deliver a pragmatic, unity government. By that I mean an ANC-DA coalition of sorts, even if it initially takes the form of a confidence and supply arrangement whereby the DA and ANC agree to support each other in key budget and confidence votes in the interests of national stability, even as they retain the right to disagree on other pieces of legislation.

I am aware of the many excellent analyses of why such a deal would be a mistake. However, as ever, the SA challenge — to quote an SA military officer in Washington in the 1980s — is “not to make the wrong mistake”. I fear it will prove a too costly mistake to try to grind the ANC, now at its weakest, into the political dust, stigmatise its supporters and shun them from government. Even in its weakened state the ANC represents the aspirations of millions of good and decent people. Shun and stigmatise them into an “us” versus “you” dynamic, and SA risks replicating cycles of political recrimination for which future generations will pay a terrible price.

Remember too that in its first decade and a bit in government the ANC did better than it has ever been given credit for. The financial and economic mess inherited from apartheid was largely fixed, with debt levels halved as a budget surplus was recorded. The ensuing saving on the government interest bill was applied to financing the rollout of the emerging world’s most expansive social welfare programme — over an era in which the number of people with a job roughly doubled and 10 formal houses were built for every new shack erected.

Match that expertise and experience, which still exists in the ANC universe, with the track record the DA has shown, when unimpeded, to govern over local authorities, and the combination could be very good.

I do not know whether ANC and DA leaders will succeed in coming to even a confidence and supply arrangement, but until quite recently it was not even an option. If they fail there are other coalition options that space prevents me from dealing with here, save to say that all point to potentially promising long-term results.

A third is that while some coalitions have broken up, many others have held together. By my count the ratio is roughly 8:1 in favour of working coalition governments, but precisely because they work, you are unlikely to have heard of them. 

A fourth is that our civil rights culture is chiefly intact. A cliché of the fascist playbook is that under pressure a liberation movement government will turn to the suppression of civil rights to cling to power. This year in both Venezuela and Zimbabwe arrest warrants were issued for opposition leaders, while numbers of opposition activists have been thrown into jail. That is not happening in SA; and political parties, the free media and civil society are generally left in peace to say and do whatever they wish.

A fifth is that the fascist playbook further dictates turning to the printing presses under political pressure so that inflation might sufficiently wreck an economy to enable a populist dictatorship to supplant democracy. Yet when the finance minister delivered his budget on Wednesday the extent of his government’s fiscal prudence was striking, especially given the poor outlook for growth and revenue — prudence that echoes that of his predecessors of 15 years ago.

A sixth is that while complacency would be a mistake, much of the talk of expropriating private assets or nationalising private health care, which were policy priorities just five years ago, has quietened down. Many government leaders now realise that the political advantages of those ideas are near nil, while their economic and therefore direct political costs are immense.

A seventh is that the cabinet is, admittedly haphazardly, surrendering the idea that SA could function as a state-directed command economy. Or at least that the ANC could survive the consequences. Private providers are now mostly allowed to do what they can to mitigate the consequences of Eskom’s failures.

Because SA is such an unequal society with such a small middle class, and an economy so skewed towards services as opposed to industrial production, it is relatively easier than it may at first appear to somewhat shield a critical mass of GDP from the consequences of Eskom’s failures.

Consider that if in addition to current rates of private energy construction Eskom is granted permission to temporarily bypass some environmental controls at Kusile, while funding to procure diesel for its gas turbines is provided and the functioning of the coal fleet is improved by just 5%, SA is likely to go into the 2024 election without load-shedding. Moves are even afoot to privatise railways and ports. It is striking just how much policy common ground now exists between the ANC, DA and many of the smaller opposition parties on these latter points, from fiscal prudence on down.

None of this is to underplay the failures of the government or the terrible hardship and stress many SA families now endure as a result. Rather, it is to illustrate that the present position is more evenly balanced than the dominant pessimism suggests. SA’s democracy is functioning as intended; within the governing party and opposition are leaders open to making the concessions necessary for a unity government; in more cases than not SA’s coalitions have worked; civil rights are intact; the government is fiscally prudent; and in key areas command economy populist policy is giving way to pragmatism.

Collectively these represent a most fortuitous set of circumstances given the serious crisis SA now finds itself in, and as a consequence I believe the outlook for the country is better now than it was five years ago.

• Dr Cronje, a former CEO of the Institute of Race Relations, directs advisory firm Frans Cronje Private Clients.