MARK BARNES: Same old, same old — you’d think nothing needs to change

With the elections only about six months away we’re being inundated with new manifestos, speeches, promises and some actions clearly aimed at seeking favour with (or forgiveness from?) the electorate.

Beyond the proliferation of new parties and some new faces, the attention is focused on getting new votes (in particular the swing votes that’ll determine which coalition gets to form a government) from two significant, not yet partisan pools: those registered voters who didn’t vote last time, and those citizens entitled to register and vote for the first time. Both pools will have a high proportion of youth in the mix, and we’d better offer them a future to vote for, not a regrettable past to cling onto.

I’ve been following the speeches a bit, trying to figure out the new players and deals that’ll make up our choices for 2024, but there’s a hell of a lot of same old, same old doing the rounds. You’d swear nothing needs changing. You’d think the status quo is worth buying, because that’s what they’re selling us — with a smear of cheap makeup. It is a bunch of should-haves and could-haves and must-dos, without a single measurable action to be found in the rhetoric of blaming, apologies, promises and lies.

The root cause for all of this is the pervasive lack of evidenced capability (with some noticeable exceptions) in practically all our ministries, departments, municipalities, metros and provinces — where popularity has been allowed to prevail over ability. The evidence of failure is everywhere except, for now, inside the fragile bubbles we’ve built to live in. They won’t last much longer. When a team hasn’t won a game for however many seasons you have to start questioning the basis for its selection, and the selectors themselves.

For the future of our country, we (all of us) are the first line of selectors. Up to now, once we’ve done our choosing, those elected to lead have gone ahead and selected people they favour, or at best “like-minded people”, to fill the slots, to manage the state-owned enterprises, hand out the contracts and run the country. It hasn’t worked, and never will.

We have to change the whole chain of consequential incompetence by electing a government whose purpose is beyond overthrowing the apartheid government. That’s already been done. What’s needed now is to manage and grow post-apartheid SA. We need to build a prosperous future from apartheid’s ruins, not continue to live in them.

Everything has to be looked at differently and mostly changed. The bylaws governing cities, for instance, have to embrace urbanisation, provide inner-city shelter and employment, public transport and security. Cities have to become centres of attraction through education, healthcare and functional, cheap services and infrastructure. We must stop building houses so far away from jobs. To do this, to fundamentally change direction, will require overwhelming consensus and capacity, not scrappy party-centric politics.

It can no longer be your struggle credentials that get you voted into power. We need to imagine and construct a world of promise beyond regret, guilt, anger and racism. Only then will the necessary transfers of knowledge and attraction of capital be achieved, urgently and enthusiastically, with common cause and defined outcomes.

There are enough people, young and old, eager and experienced, who want to embrace this foundation, this intersection of needs and inputs, through initiatives that will draw a line under our past and create the prospect of universal economic dignity for our future.

It will take only 100 good people three years to produce enough evidence to prove that we can do it, enough faith for continued common purpose, enough positives to stop us just looking at each other and keeping score, enough to stop the hatred and anger.

Who will lead us to this new place? Someone who can get things done! Stand up! We can’t see you. We’ll vote for you when we do.

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