MARK BARNES: Painkillers won’t cure our national autoimmune disease

The National Treasury will have no choice but to come up with the money to buy diesel for Eskom or any other state-owned entity that provides essential services. There is simply no option. We cannot grind to a halt and there isn’t time to fix things right now.

But fix them we have to in the medium to long term — there will never be enough medicine (diesel) to keep treating the symptoms of the disease. The circle of despair is obvious, and the comparison that can be made with the sustenance of human life is compelling. Financial death (bankruptcy) will surely follow as we keep throwing resources at the symptom just because we cannot implement the cure.

Energy is the lifeblood of the economy, and its shortage (or eventual absence) has knock-on effects that go way beyond the first obvious, observable consequences. We have become so used to energy interruptions that we hardly blink when it happens, particularly when there is a another source on standby, ready for the automatic switchover.

But this is the case for only a small fraction of the total population, in their personal lives. Large businesses have made plans, but these come at a cost, which must ultimately be borne by the consumer. The government has also made plans, and those too come at a cost.

Sadly, we are all just treating the symptoms, not the cause. We are dishing out painkillers, not cures. It is only the providers of medicine that make money in such circumstances, for now — before the terminal disease runs its course, and then it is the turn of the undertakers and funeral parlours.

As businesses start to fail and consumers can afford less and less, so the state in turn collects less and less revenue. At some point the local ecosystem, having been hollowed out of its productive capacity, can no longer support itself and has to go outside the circle to get (beg for) help.

There has always been a willing, if not enthusiastic, supply of money from where it is stored in the developed world to where it is needed in the developing world. But as this “help” becomes more urgent it gets more expensive — the required dose needs to be stronger and stronger — until finally it is the medicine that kills you, not the disease.

We either end up a failed state (multiple organ failure) or a totally dependent one. In SA’s case there is enough international interest in our natural and other resources to warrant keeping us alive. Those who can manage it better than we are now doing will get to own it (the economy). We will then be enslaved by those who buy us (at our weakest point).

What frustrates me is that it does not have to be this way. So many of our business people, across all fields of endeavour but particularly in the field of finance, have engaged at the highest levels of international capital formation and business acumen, and have not been found wanting. On the contrary, we have excelled.

This is still the case, and will be into the future for so long as the centres of education, healthcare, security and other vital constructs of a functioning state hold.

Acting together we can cure the fundamental illnesses of poverty, unemployment and inequality. Acting apart, as we seem intent on doing, we will surely perpetuate our burdens, and inevitably cause our own demise or dependence.

When will the impending crisis be obvious enough for us to set aside our differences in the name of survival? It is surely close enough already. The crumbling is practically audible, the collapse seemingly unavoidable. Our ugly civil behaviour is a manifestation of despair.

What selfishness and stupidity keeps driving us to the futility that awaits our absence of common cause? SA is suffering from an autoimmune disease — we are attacking ourselves at all levels.

Let’s stop doing that.

• Barnes is an investment banker with more than 35 years’ experience in various capacities in the financial sector.