JABULANI SIKHAKHANE: Pretoria acts only when pushed by a foreign power
The government has lost the political will and capacity to do things that are in SA's best interests
Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago made two important points in a speech in late September 2022. First, that relative to the 2000s SA now has a weaker state that is spending a larger share of the country’s economic output as measured by GDP. Second, SA has earned a reputation of being good at planning and bad at implementation.
I would add a third: that the government has lost the political will and capacity to do things that are in SA’s best interests. It does things only when pushed by some foreign power. That’s bad for the credibility of public policy because it tells citizens their government chooses certain policies because of foreign pressure, not because those policies are in the best interests of the country. ..
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