South Africa's May 29 election results brought out a most pleasant and positive outcome, not only for South Africans, but also for all in the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), if not East African Community (EAC) as well.
The African National Congress, in power since 1994, the year of the introduction of Universal Adult Suffrage, lost its majority in the South African Parliament for the first time, in the now labelled watershed election.
In order to secure the presidency, the horse trading that followed, and well captured in the document "Statement of Intent of the 2024 Government of National Unity”, the ANC secured the hand of the right-of-centre Democratic Alliance.
Together with three other much smaller parties, they got Cyril Ramaphosa re-elected for a second and final term, as South Africa's President.
A female member of the ANC also got elected as Speaker of Parliament with the help of the DA. A rainbow government is the outcome.
Quoted in the press some 10 or so days after the election, Kokkie Kooyman, a celebrated and veteran investment management expert at Denker Capital, said the markets had welcomed the election result, as well as the ANC's choice of coalition partner(s).
The price of the rand and shares in financial stocks had risen in response. The markets, he felt, believed the election result heralded a shift from the doomed course leading to a Zimbabwe type disaster.
Kooyman warned, however, of the risk of “own goals” and, or the machinations of malevolent politics, a staple north of the Limpopo.
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He also felt the global capital markets were still soaking in the significance of the change of course on the South African political landscape.
When they eventually comprehend the magnitude of the disaster avoided, he expected further sharp rises in asset prices due to increased global capital flows into the South African economy.
Across the Limpopo Zimbabwe's ailing pension funds, and their regulator Insurance and Pensions Commission (Ipec), should move in now.
Zimbabwe's Treasury, and its central bank should assist the industry invest off-shore where returns may be sustained, genuine and higher.
Apart from reduced inflation, this bold move may be one of the silver linings of the dark cloud of dollarisation. There would be an added advantage of asset price correction in Zimbabwe.
The dark side of the ANC leadership
Hopes of a quick Cabinet appointment, which had been slated for June 23, were soon dashed.
Despite the clear stipulations of the statement of intent of the 2024 government of national unity, (hereafter the Statement) and the President’s stirring speech, following the taking of his oath of high office on inauguration day, the ANC triggered intense politicking and bickering over Cabinet posts.
The “own goals”, and malevolence that Kooyman had cited as risks, reared their ugly heads, reminding all who had dared hope otherwise, of the deficit of positive and constructive social capital within the ranks of the so-called inclusive ANC leadership.
Of interest to the comrades was cheating the DA out of the vice presidency, and a third of the total Cabinet posts.
They wanted the spoils for themselves, totally ignoring the message from the voters, which, read correctly, amounted to a no-confidence vote in the President, his over-bloated Cabinet, and the ANC's so-called top seven.
Big, bloated cabinet
The President and his ANC team kept on harping about what they called fundamental principles, which were included as items 8.1 to 8.10 in the statement.
It would appear these principles were used as justification by the President to appoint a big and bloated Cabinet, contrary to the wishes of the DA and the generality of the masses from the Cape to Nairobi — where Kenyan President William Ruto — is in hot soup for such extravagance.
Furthermore, among the principles are some that contradict appointment of a bloated Cabinet.
These are:
Accountability, transparency and community participation — (Evidence suggest the public wanted a much leaner but more efficient Cabinet, as did the lack of fiscal space)
Evidence based policy and decision making (There is no evidence that a large, bloated entity delivers. On the other hand, the lean and mean Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China's Politburo has done wonders for decades. The US federal Cabinet is almost half the size of the South African GNU one).
A professional, merit-based, non-partisan public service. (Should not this principle have applied to the GNU Presidency and Cabinet selection as well? Cabinet Ministers are public Servants, and it may be best practice that meritocracy is applied in their selection. Flawed Constitutions must be amended).
Integrity, good governance and accountable leadership — (The case of the loot under the mattress at the President's Phala Phala farm dented the President's integrity credentials sufficiently to have denied him a second Presidential term regardless of the ANC's performance at the polls).
GNU cabinet's works orders
The statement goes beyond the principles to be observed by the GNU in the execution of its official duties. It also includes as items 11.1 to 11.9 what it calls “Basic Minimum Programme of Priorities”.
You can tell it is written by clever lawyers. It promises everything, and nothing — the key escape word being “priorities”.
Engineers would have preferred time-framed, costed and quantified works orders for measurable deliverables such as year-on-year gross domestic product (GDP) growth, housing and road infrastructure stock to be constructed, power generation capacity to be installed, targeted agriculture production output and productivity enhancement and jobs to be created.
This would enable them to do their resource and production planning before issuing firm time-framed production orders.
Such detailed planning is called central planning. Singled out as being synonymous with the failed Soviet Union, African leaders and governments have been told central planning is poor governance and unacceptable.
The private sector, foreign and local, should be incentivised to drive industrialisation. Sadc and EAC countries, among them RSA and Kenya, the region's economic heavyweights, have religiously adhered to this advice for the past 30-50 years without delivering the desired industrialisation, jobs and Accelerated Sustainable Socio-economic Transformation (ASSET).
ASSET has remained elusive in Sadc and the EAC as the Africans, usually reluctant to think for themselves, besides being (secretly) contemptuous of each other, waited long for the industrialisation to ignite “spontaneously”, if not miraculously, in answer to “prayer, structural reforms, good behaviour and good policies”.
Elsewhere, as is now common cause, Japan, South Korea, and recently China showed that a knowledgeable activist or interventionist state is essential for accelerating late industrialisation through learning from the industrialised world, and diligently deploying market mechanisms (subsidies, tariffs, standards etc) to nurture start-ups through infancy in exchange for meeting performance targets during the growth phase.
As these practices may violate World Trade Organisation Rules, the State must be adept at managing the geo-politics.
This can only be done by a strong state authority, something palpably missing in Sadc and EAC.
Some of those priorities listed in the statement recognise this important point.
They are complex and less easily measurable by a single parameter.
They are nevertheless of vital importance to accelerated, sustainable, socio-economic transformation, the main objective of the GNU as correctly demanded by the now restless electorate.
These critical priority programmes are:
Building state capacity and creating a professional, merit-based, corruption free and developmental public Service. (Such a public service is the engine of ASSET provided it takes an investment managers and production directors/engineers approach, in executing its production orders/projects, and based on prudent national/enterprise resource planning).
Strengthening law enforcement agencies to address corruption.
Strengthening effectiveness of Parliament with respect to its functions — both legislative and oversight. (This is a profound observation and admission that deserves a standing ovation wherever you are).
These three key priorities need urgent attention as a strong state authority and competent, ethical State Institutions drive ASSET.
To help them along the State strengthening road so as to better manage their market mechanism in order to achieve their common objective of ASSET, books such as Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialisation, by Alice H.
Amsden, published by Oxford University Press, should be bedtime reading for all Sadc and EAC presidents, Cabinet members, and parliamentarians, for the next few months.
Thereafter, they should meet to consider the draft developmental constitution of a federal state made up of Sadc and EAC states to provide a platform with enough muscle and market size to drive ASSET through late industrialisation, which of necessity, will be a mixed bag of Israeli, South Korean, Chinese, and Japanese styles, though with African characteristics.
This is the answer Ruto should give the aggrieved youth of Kenya.
- Nyandoro is a pharmacist.
