SONA signals no end to malaise - The Citizen

South Africa’s crisis is systemic, and arises from the deliberate arrangement of governance and economic incentives over decades designed to satisfy the ideological and patronage imperatives of the ruling party.

President Ramaphosa’s  State of the Nation Address was a clear statement that he hasn’t any intention of abandoning them, and embarking on a course that will address South Africa’s afflictions.

There is no evident contemplation of rolling back race-based policy in procurement and hiring. These policies have effectively imposed costs on society – not least in the state-owned enterprises and the country’s administration. This is not only a matter of whatever unproductive premiums are being paid, but an implicit denial of the chronic shortage of skills and crumbling revenue base of the country. South Africa cannot afford this, yet its government acts as though it can. 

Much the same could be said of localisation demands and the notorious ‘30%’ set-asides that have emboldened criminal gangs seeking a piece of the action.

Cadre deployment remains central to governance, the indictments of the Zondo Commission notwithstanding. The politicisation of the civil service has arguably been the centrepiece of state dysfunction. It has secured party ‘hegemony’ and offered sinecures to its favoured supporters, but has reduced the state to a broken parody of what it should be.

This dysfunction makes policy proposals that intrude into property rights – like Expropriation without Compensation and the National Health Insurance – direly threatening. Leaving aside whatever conceptual merits they may have (few enough, I’d suggest) the state is too compromised to implement them ‘properly’.

With SONA signalling no end to the national malaise, business, civil society and the electorate must gear themselves for endurance as best they can; a resolution, however, demands a comprehensively new mindset.

Terence Corrigan

Institute of Race Relations