JEFF DINHAM: Embrace a difference of opinions

One would expect a country with SA’s diversity to have a wide-ranging public discourse. Yet contradicting ideas to mainstream thought have too often been suppressed. Without a “marketplace of ideas”, bad ideas will win the day, as they too often do in SA. 

It's not an understatement to say SA has entered a new era (for better or worse) under the unity government, and it’s into this fray that Econometrix (and the broader ETM Group) has decided to throw its hat into the ring and author a regular public column. 

Why now — when so much ink has already flowed around the GNU’s every machination? We want to offer solutions, not just criticism. Criticism is tiring, and there is certainly no shortage of it.

And we want to engage with our readers. We encourage feedback and differences in opinion. Too often our newspapers and screens are filled with one-sided diatribes that simply “flow from above”. We don’t have a huge team, but we will respond to this feedback when possible. 

So, what’s our first “small solution”? It sounds easy, but it’s a tough one:

• From a political level, walk back the explicit and implicit restrictions on free expression and embrace the difference of opinion that a more ideologically balanced GNU will bring.
• From a media perspective, publish opinions from all sides of the debate equally. 
• On a personal level, push yourself to engage maturely with views radically different from your own. 

There is a political concept called the Overton window, which “describes the range of ideas and policies considered acceptable and politically viable within public discourse at a given time”. SA’s constitution is one of the strongest in the world regarding the right to free speech that, combined with a diverse population from a range of backgrounds, should, on paper, be fertile ground for a vibrant, wide-ranging Overton window. 

Instead, for various reasons we sit in a position where our Overton window is constrained and skewed off-centre. Decades of an entrenched socialist government, backed by the power of the court system and lucrative tender contracts (which are used to enforce political correctness), have all led to a self-reinforcing echo chamber, where a limited set of economic, political and social solutions are ever meaningfully raised.

True difference of opinion is vital for economic prosperity. All societies are different; finding and implementing solutions that work for SA requires active debate and engagement. Good ideas have to stand up to scrutiny. If that scrutiny is forced out of existence, bad ideas will win the day.

Instead, we argue that political and social discourse should be a “marketplace of ideas”, a term coined by US justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jnr in 1919 and is as relevant now as it was then. When both sides of an argument are aired equally, the midpoint of the Overton window is usually more centralist, rational, efficient and restrained. When one side of an argument, or a series of ideas, are constrained, the Overton midpoint favours more radical, less efficient outcomes.

Advocating a more equal stage for debate sounds easy on paper, but we understand that for the decision-makers who read this that engaging with the “other side” isn’t natural. In fact, it’s easy to argue sceptically that the (often implicit) role of any political structure is to censor contrasting opinions. Ideology, culture, egos and conspiracy will all get in the way, but our constitution provides enough safeguards for robust debate. 

Some of these new ideas you will agree with, and some you will find offensive, but being offended is unfortunately part of the hard work a new SA era demands. A mature individual, a mature leader and a mature government respond to criticism with constructive debate, not by silencing the critic. Perhaps counter-intuitively, in an SA context the more you tell people they have a right not to be offended the more you encourage intolerance rather than tolerance. 

One thing is clear: allowing decision-makers (political, cultural and in business) to hear only “their side” of the debate will never result in anyone changing their approach. 

• Dinham is head of macroeconomics at Econometrix.