Letter: SA needs to reassert constitutional governance - Business Day
Your editorial ably describes the parlous state of the country, and the role of the president and the ANC in bringing it to this point (“ANC happy with a puppet president,” May2).
However, the early optimism about President Cyril Ramaphosa and his reformist inclinations was always without foundation: most obviously, he had served as Jacob Zuma’s deputy and chaired the party’s cadre deployment committee, which was central to so-called state capture.
Ramaphosa’s first years in office were spent leading an assault on property rights through the expropriation-without-compensation drive. More recently, his government has introduced the framework for effective race quotas in business, and firm-crippling penalties to compel them.
Meanwhile, cadre deployment remains central to the ANC’s approach to government — the report of the Zondo state capture commission notwithstanding — stoutly defended by the president himself.
These are the double-down actions of ideologues, not reformers. The “alarming tendency of the ANC as a whole to regard itself as wiser somehow than the collective expertise gathered in state departments” is in fact an expression of the ANC’s self-conception, as a liberation movement embodying the righteous and objectively correct aspirations of the country. SA is paying a steep price for this.
Much has been said recently about the need for a new approach to politics. This is correct, though it will not come simply through a new leader, nor even new leadership. SA needs to reassert constitutional governance, starting with a clear differentiation between party and state. It needs to commit to efficiency in the functioning of its state, which means a singular recognition of the importance of merit and the abandonment of political preferencing or racial requirements.
BB-BEE and race quotas must be done away with, and replaced with measures to assist the poor and the unskilled. And growth-focused policies must be introduced. Business and entrepreneurs must be allowed to prosper without the onerous diktats of an often inept, capricious and venal officialdom. Needless to say, initiatives like expropriation without compensation must be abandoned.
Ramaphosa is unlikely to deliver any of this. The question is whether the SA people will demand it.
Terence Corrigan
Institute of Race Relations