PETER BRUCE: Why I did not join the national shutdown

SA’s trade union federations invited me and other citizens to join their national shutdown on Wednesday.  And it was tempting. I’m sick of high prices. I’m frightened to fill up with petrol. My wage is spent before the start of the month. I haven’t been to Woolies for weeks and the fridge is empty. There’s wine, but no labels to go by because that was the deal during lockdown.

It is hard to imagine, seriously, just how tough life will have become for the millions of South Africans earning relatively modest wages, or none at all. And, obviously, while we may be all in the same boat, most fellow citizens are in the lower decks, the waters of despair forever swirling around them.

The shutdown was led by Cosatu and the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu). Cosatu claims it long ago called for a petrol price cap and offered a solution to load-shedding. They complain business is deliberately not investing.

Hence the strike. But I decided not to join. Ultimately it would have been pointless.

In just two years Cosatu will be back on the same streets campaigning for the governing ANC and a second full term for President Cyril Ramaphosa and for exactly the same economic policies and rotten government that has got us into the inflationary hell they’re protesting about today. So it is hard to sympathise.

The unions, Cosatu particularly, are in a unique position. They are part of the ruling alliance and they have a seat at every negotiating table. They would have seen the crazed public sector hiring spree that Jacob Zuma went on in 2011 and 2012 and they did nothing to stop him or warn him.

They knew Zuma was corrupt and they backed him anyway. They know high import duties and industrial localisation hurt the poor and they do nothing to stop them. The state was captured on their watch. They know how rundown hospitals are becoming in Gauteng, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal but do nothing about it. They know municipalities all around the country are collapsing but they do nothing about them either. Passing polite warning notes to the ANC doesn’t help. They know how deeply corrupt we have become but you would have heard no word of it on the marches.

Yet the moment prices rise and we don’t have the money to pay for food and fuel, Cosatu is on the streets, shocked and angry. But prices are rising because poor policy has devalued the rand and the things we import cost more. We have to tighten our belts because it is too expensive to borrow more because our debt is rated junk because we allowed politicians and their friends to steal our taxes and thus cripple the fiscus.

“Cosatu say no to high inflation,” read a few placards I saw on television. No, Cosatu doesn’t. Cosatu supports high inflation, surely? Otherwise why support a government whose policies and behaviour cause high inflation?

What Cosatu won’t like is another hike in interest rates, now probably inevitable after Wednesday’s news that July’s annualised rate of inflation rose above expectations again to a 13-year record of 7.8%. And recent news that some 648,000 new jobs were created in the second quarter of this year, compared to the first, should be treated with extreme caution.

Stats SA changed its survey from face-to-face interviews during Covid to telephonic and the response rates fell sharply, possibly leading them to overestimate the damage the lockdowns were doing. Now that face-to-face surveying has begun again, they may be overestimating the recovery.

As a citizen I feel desperately sorry for the people I’ve been watching marching and singing. They have families to feed, some at home and others back in rural areas. They have to believe that what they were marching for is achievable. “Government must introduce measures that ensure we have a thriving economy,” a young marcher said to a TV reporter.

But with this ANC, this president, at this time, with its current policies, there is absolutely no hope of that. Companies are investing to keep operating, easily meeting Ramaphosa’s soft investment targets in the process. But they’re not really expanding. Even with possible errors averaging on the upside, Tuesday’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey from Stats SA reported a sharp decrease in jobs in manufacturing by 73,000, approaching 5%.

Would this persuade anyone in government to re-evaluate current protectionist industrial policy? Not for a moment, you can be sure. More likely, the government will double down on localisation, with the unions in full support, despite clear evidence it is increasing prices and destroying jobs in small and medium-sized companies hidden from view. Nothing will persuade the people marching yesterday that a “thriving economy” needs to be led by enterprise and businesses, unfettered by constant and negative state economic intervention.

Apartheid’s gift to us is that rage still trumps reason. Even the notion of a sustainable job cannot easily be appreciated in modern SA. The fact is, just a single real job is hard to create and sustain. An employer must constantly have the cash in the bank to pay salaries, pensions, UIF. Month in and month out. Year after year. If they’re not doing that, the job is in constant jeopardy.

Post Covid, most industrialised economies have a shortage of labour or are near full employment. Not here. Something especially toxic has delinked us from the cycle.

• Bruce is a former editor of Business Day and the Financial Mail.