GARETH VAN ONSELEN: The language of failure
The ANC’s economic strategies are just words: a patchwork of ideas sewn together to feign leadership, writes Gareth van Onselen
President Jacob Zuma has unveiled a bold, new strategic direction: Radical Economic Transformation. It even has an acronym, RET. That’s when you know the government is serious. Only the ANC has produced so many bold, new strategies over the years, and, on reflection, they are never bold. The strategies are incoherent and directions are confused. They are, in the final analysis, just words: a patchwork of ideas sewn together to feign leadership. They flicker brightly but never have a lasting effect, before they are discarded on the scrapheap of empty rhetoric. Today, it is a mountainous heap of rotting magniloquence, decomposing in the country’s backyard. RET will find its way there soon enough. Former president Thabo Mbeki, at his confirmation as chancellor of the University of SA, repeated his call for "the renaissance of Africa". Renaissance, he said, meant "rebirth". The irony seemed lost on him. The idea was stillborn a long time ago. Nevertheless, back in the old days, the flag...
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