London - As South Africans face the stark reality of yet another year of hardship, endless load shedding, rising prices and a cost-of-living crisis under the stewardship of the only government they have known since the onset of democracy in 1994, their political master, the ANC government, is hedging its fortunes and whatever goodwill it has left on the seamless aspiration of hope.
Judging by the Christmas message of Deputy President David Mabuza and the New Year message of President Cyril Ramaphosa, there were bucket loads of the stuff.
“As a country, we should not lose hope because we have the skills and potential to deal with the social and economic challenges we face. What we need more than ever is unity of purpose,” declared Mabuza, who, in the aftermath of the 55th ANC National Conference and party elections a fortnight earlier, made way for his successor Paul Mashatile as Ramaphosa’s ANC deputy.
The president himself rose to the occasion, albeit in a more sombre and subdued tone: “It is also a time of hope - hope for a better life for ourselves and for things to become better for the country that we all love.
“Last year was a difficult year. It is a year during which South Africans continued to endure the hardships that are given rise to by unemployment, poverty and persistent inequality. With all that has happened this past year, we must remain optimistic and have hope. For hope does spring eternal in the human breast.”
There is nothing wrong in conjuring the powerful sentiment of hope.
Madiba, even in some of his most trying times, readily advised: “Remember that hope is a powerful weapon even when all else is lost.”
The difference is that Madiba’s trust in hope was defined by a moral authority underpinned by a brutal near three-decade incarceration of himself and hundreds of his cadres and millions of his oppressed countryfolk by the apartheid state.
It was a measure of his stature as a statesman that in his presidency of the nascent South African democracy starting in 1994, hope was definitively, albeit not completely, transformed into meaningful and transformative socio-economic gains in GDP growth, education, housing, jobs and electrification – especially to rural and disadvantaged communities, for which the ANC was slow to get credit.
In contrast, is Team Ramaphosa’s attachment to hope, which seems to be misplaced and perhaps a mere desperate exercise in the rhetoric of aspiration, a marked feature of the narrative of senior ANC officials over the past three years?
Today’s ANC has little to show for this investment in hope because it has failed to deliver the just socio-economic transformation of most South Africans.
This despite the repetitive roll-call in the speeches of the president and his ministers of the “successes” of government policies and delivery, while acknowledging the entrenched socio-economic challenges South Africans face daily.
Gains made in structural reforms in Q3 2022; the sovereign credit rating affirmations by Fitch and S&P based on the National Treasury’s “higher-than-expected tax revenues” and the “government’s strong efforts to control expenditure”; a modest 1% decrease in South Africa’s official jobless rate from 33.9% in Q2 2022 to 32.9% in Q3 2022; and real GDP contracting by 0.7% in Q2 2022, compared to a downwardly revised expansion of 1.7% in Q1, are nowhere near deep enough to effect any meaningful change, especially in the short term.
At best, the green shoots might give Ramaphosa some breathing space and the ANC a holding year in 2023, albeit with the caveat of dealing with a spate of other headwinds, especially the energy and load shedding crisis.
The reality is that the ANC, as a party, has been in moral decline since the ousting of Thabo Mbeki and the subsequent decade of state capture under Jacob Zuma.
By the time he was ousted in 2018, the rot of self-enrichment, entitlement and corruption had firmly rooted the party at national and local government level, exacerbated by wanton looting at state-owned enterprises and through procurement profiteering in government and state contracts.
It was a juggernaut too far for Ramaphosa to stop, only for the president himself to become embroiled in the Phala Phala “cash in the sofa” scandal, whether wittingly or otherwise.
Ramaphosa survived an impeachment motion, thanks to the support of his party. The ANC also returned him as president to lead the party into the 2024 general election, arguably its most important poll test in the democratic era.
Here lies the pathway challenge for the ANC in 2023, in terms of political governance, economic management, social transformation and impactful delivery.
It depends on whether a chastised Ramaphosa can regain any semblance of moral authority in leading a restorative government agenda based on the ANC’s stated aims of renewal and “decisive action to advance the people’s interest”, as implicit in the party’s January 8 statement marking the 111th anniversary of Africa’s oldest continuous political movement.
Team Ramaphosa is beholden to the priorities set for 2023 by the ANC’s national executive committee (NEC) in accordance with the directives of the 55th National Conference.
These include renewal of the ANC; solving the energy crisis to end load shedding; economic reconstruction and recovery to increase job creation, investment and empowerment; delivery of basic services and maintaining infrastructure; strengthening the fight against crime and corruption; and ending gender-based violence and the abuse of children.
The anomalies in the January 8 Statement are glaring. The priority to “resolve the energy crisis and end load shedding” rightly identifies insecurity of electricity supply as “one of the greatest impediments to economic recovery, and disrupts the lives of all South Africans”.
It talks about just transition and sorting out the mess at Eskom and exhorts the “the Eskom Board to recruit world-class professionals to fill the vacancies in executive management”.
But there is no mention of the “P” word – privatisation and any mention of a much greater role for independent power producers, to generate much-needed grid capacity.
That the NEC turned a blind eye to Madiba’s red line to seek funding from the International Monetary Fund, and yet is dragging its feet on the issue of widening the opening of the power generation sector, with the requisite safeguards, suggests that ideology continues to be an erratic fault line in the ANC psyche.
Perhaps it should heed another of Madiba’s observations – “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears!”
Parker is an economist and writer in London
Cape Times