South Africa

OP-ED

Brink of a breakdown: South Africa has reached a critical fork in the road (Part 2)

Brink of a breakdown: South Africa has reached a critical fork in the road (Part 2)
It’s time to cut a proper deal to grow the economy, say the writers. (Illustrative image | Source: Gallo Images / Bloomberg / Waldo Swiegers)

South Africa needs to admit prior policy errors and make tough calls on how to build an economic offramp from the Covid-19 crisis. A new narrative is needed which makes freedom from poverty the joint responsibility of government and business. Rah-rah investment summits and leadership fora will not do it. It’s time to cut a proper deal to grow the economy.

South Africa is at a fork in the road when it comes to making the right policy choices – and implementing them.

The economy had already entered a technical recession prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, recording growth of -0.5% in the fourth quarter of 2019 and -0.1% in the first quarter of 2020.

The unemployment rate – narrowly defined – breached the 30% mark in the first quarter before the effects of Covid-19 were registered. According to a study by the Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey, some three million people lost their jobs between February and April as a result of the pandemic. This is a number that, while disputed, would suggest unemployment could surge through half the working population, by the broader definition, including those discouraged from seeking work.

There is no disguising the trouble that South Africa was in before the crisis. This has simply been accelerated by Covid-19. Consequently, the country is on the cusp of a breakdown: fiscally (with a projected 15-20% deficit, and 80% debt/GDP ratio), socially (with perhaps another three million unemployed, bringing the number of jobless to half the population), and in growth terms (falling from its paltry record of 1% for a decade, to as little as -8% in 2020).

It can choose a reform path, which seeks to boldly address its low-growth policy failings and structural constraints. This will be tougher politically than economically.

Ten years of change in three months (Part 1)

Or it can choose the familiar populist path of doubling down on the state – on increased spending and on attempts to increase state “capacity” for “delivery”.

The reform path will be hard. It demands a frank and unflattering assessment of the growth and development record over the last quarter of a century of rule by the ANC and its allies, and requires the abandonment of some of the economic policy shibboleths which appear to have attained sacred status in liberation mythology.

The statist path will initially be easier, as it’s the road which South Africa has been taking, particularly under former president Jacob Zuma, and it offers the dispensing of patronage to the faithful – and may even offer some early wins from easy cash. But it will end in disaster; a messy, tragic variant of Venezuela or Zimbabwe. The length of the journey is debatable, but the destination is not in doubt.

This road to penury is attractive because ideologues can stay true to their rhetorical path, and when things go wrong, they can blame “enemy agents” and a hostile world for failure, rather than the policies they have pursued.

The belief that the economic laws of nature can be rewritten in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary all over the world and throughout history is as powerful as it is false.

The incentive to default to radical statism is strengthened because of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which require the state to play a leading role in civic and economic affairs to help constrain the spread of the virus. This larger role for the state, during a time of crisis, has awarded politicians more power. They decide when and how people can go outdoors, what they must wear on their faces and whether or not they may return to work. In response to the crisis, they are taking control of things which, in normal times, would fall outside the ambit of the state.

The trouble is the leap of logic which argues that what is good for fighting the pandemic is good for the economy, leading to the questioning of the last 30 years of globalisation. Prior business models, no matter how successful, public and private, are now up for debate.

At another level, popular support globally for trade and migration has apparently fallen, the seeds being planted before the crisis by growing mercantilism and a language of self-sufficiency, autonomy, independence and sovereignty. Beyond that, there are all manner of debates, not least about the efficacy of lockdowns, and exactly how these should be eased in an increasingly smart and topical fashion.

The latest numbers released by the Reserve Bank show that the first quarter – prior to the Covid-19 crisis – saw the outflow of over R96-billion from bonds and shares. Foreigners, showing decreasing confidence in the local economy, sold bonds worth R74,4-billion and equities worth R23,1-billion.

There can be no gainsaying that the crisis changes things. It will disrupt labour markets, continue to push up levels of indebtedness and limit state manoeuvrability, accelerate digitisation at the expense of some jobs, and maintain unprecedented peacetime fiscal deficits. The crisis is also likely to be easier for advanced economies, which have the scope to ramp up spending because they possess the monetary tools. The challenges are amplified in emerging markets which lack such tools. As tempting as it is to borrow, someone will have to pay this money back, here or abroad, this generation or the next.

There is greater consensus, it seems, on the proposed tenets of the post-Covid-19 economy: ideally, greener, more equal and with a rapidly digitising workforce. But this is usually a view from a privileged standpoint.

The question for those in the private and public sector, who fear a populist path and its inevitably calamitous socio-economic and authoritarian outcome, is how to build an offramp from the Covid-19 crisis to a higher-growth economy that will absorb the growing pool of unemployed.

Despite innumerable plans and attempts at public-private dialogue, from growth initiatives to rah-rah investment summits and leadership fora, these have not delivered. Celebrationism – the view that a positive outlook will change reality – is no substitute for substance. The statistics of growth, employment and (actual, not promised) investment are the key metrics, not the frequency of meetings and their attendance.

A lesson from Zimbabwe, among others, is that just when you have seemingly hit rock bottom, things can always get worse. And in South Africa, things are now about to get much worse.

The latest numbers released by the Reserve Bank show that the first quarter – prior to the Covid-19 crisis – saw the outflow of over R96-billion from bonds and shares. Foreigners, showing decreasing confidence in the local economy, sold bonds worth R74,4-billion and equities worth R23,1-billion.

Given that South Africa’s economy has been strangled by (sometimes necessary, sometimes excessive) Covid-19 regulations, it is likely that this fall in confidence will accelerate for the second quarter when the lockdown began in earnest between April and June.

Policy-rich, implementation poor?

South Africa has never been short of economic policy documents and prioritised plans. It is policy-rich, but implementation poor. True to form, in the wake of the shock economic forecasts mentioned above, the ruling ANC, business and a clutch of individuals have issued economic recovery plans which claim to have the answer to the country’s economic travails.

This new round of papers shares common themes – an acceptance that the economy must be fundamentally restructured, a belief that a large infrastructure programme will stimulate the economy, and a view that government and the private sector must work together.

But the devil is in the detail, and when it comes to how these themes should play out, there is a sharp divergence of views. As ever, South Africa’s economy’s greatest enemy is itself – the entrenched patterns of decades of doing things the wrong way, which are hard to change.

The ANC’s document, issued by its Economic Transformation Committee with the title Reconstruction, Growth And Transformation: Building A New, Inclusive Economy, sees the state growing in reach and micromanaging the economy. It cuts an isolationist path, calling for import substitution and local beneficiation of minerals, even proposing that state departments account for how much of their spending goes on local products.

There is little point in moaning about “investment strikes” in referring to the R1-trillion that once sat on the balance sheets of South African companies. More important is understanding what has to occur to get this money – new capex, not tops up to existing investment – to be spent in the country, creating wealth.

The ANC believes that the pandemic has given the government the upper hand in what it describes as “the contested relationship between the public and private sectors”.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced the legitimacy of public investment in health care. It has legitimised a greater and more active role of the state in guiding the economy. It has forced a rethink on public services that are now seen as a necessary investment rather than a liability. Central banks are increasingly being called upon to assume a more active and direct role in supporting the real economy,” the document reads.

And it has strengthened the party’s interventionist instincts.

“To achieve significant job creation multipliers, the emphasis will be on localisation, including maximising the use of South African materials and construction companies as well as labour intensive methods,” the ANC argues.

Business For SA’s document, A New Inclusive Economic Future for South Africa: Delivering an Accelerated Economic Recovery Strategy, strikes a different course, envisaging an expanded role for the private sector.

It argues that it is time for “a committed leadership willing to make difficult, though sometimes unpalatable choices focused on appropriate policies, which enable investment and thus inclusive growth”.

It goes on: “Enabling economic growth at the required level, and attracting domestic and foreign investors, requires new thinking on policy development and implementation by government. In particular, these must focus on the ease of doing business (currently ranked 84th out of 190, from 35th in 2008, in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index), education, sustainable economic transformation, and innovation and entrepreneurship to improve the nations’ overall competitiveness (currently ranked 60th out of 141 globally by the WEF).”

Clearly a more interventionist state is not going to improve “the ease of doing business”, so there is a gulf between these two positions that ought not to be swept under the carpet in the desperate search for a way out of the crisis.

A new transactional approach

The failure of previous plans, however well-sequenced and prioritised, has led some to believe that the ANC will never make the tough choices necessary to pull the country out of its steepening economic dive. Instead, the political consequence of inevitable economic failure is, by this argument, the only means whereby the ANC will change.

South Africa’s greatest adversary remains itself. The government’s failure to assess the failure of its policies and admit error, and thus to view the current situation as a problem only and not a crisis, has brought us to this point. Hence the rhetorical doubling down on the state. This is compounded by a pathological unwillingness to make tough choices, and insufficient ability to manage complexity.

At the same time, even though business may be an increasingly trusted interlocutor in the face of government failure, it has so far been unwilling to use its economic leverage in this national interest, reflecting its diffuse nature. Instead, business may have made it easier for government by donating to and supporting causes that soften the blow of poor policy choices and weak delivery systems.

Attractive though it might be to allocate blame and sit on the sidelines, neither business nor government can afford this approach as the country enters its worst-ever economic crisis.

In fact, business and government face a similar challenge in trying to engineer a new path that will lead to recovery and jobs. Business has to convince sceptical shareholders that they will not only get their money back, but that they will make a profit. And the government has to convince its sceptical alliance shareholders that the country needs to drop the posturing and reset its economic trajectory to attract the capital needed to grow.

We know that growth is not only too low, but that it is a function of investment, and that of a combination of opportunity and business confidence. We also know that the state is not an efficient mechanism for delivery, and public capital is, anyway, insufficient to achieve the rates of employment and growth necessary.

There is little point in moaning about “investment strikes” in referring to the R1-trillion that once sat on the balance sheets of South African companies. More important is understanding what has to occur to get this money – new capex, not tops up to existing investment – to be spent in the country, creating wealth.

Much has to be done and led by government in terms of policy and the machinery of the state. It should fundamentally do so by asking whether this action will help or hinder in creating employment.

What is needed is a new compact between government and business which should move beyond the tired old culture of blame and name-calling. A compact can be the incentive for the tough choices necessary – a positive alternative to waiting around for the disincentive of failure.

A new model for public-private partnerships that introduces professional management and capital into large projects could relieve government of some of the borrowing it might otherwise have to undertake to fund infrastructure.

Such a compact would have to be based on give-and-take and an agreement to undertake concrete actions which move the economy and the nation forward.

Some of these agreements could be catalytic. The government could agree to speedily implement the opening up of spectrum, and business could commit to investing in free wifi.

The government could allow graduates with Masters degrees in all disciplines, and Bachelors degrees in computer science, entry into the country. Business could undertake to establish coding schools in the major cities and unlock investment in tech and innovation.

The government could agree to free up urban land and business could agree to invest in housing in public-private partnerships that could alter apartheid spatial planning.

The government could introduce labour market flexibility for youth entrants and business could undertake to increase hiring in labour-absorbing industries.

Other measures could address inequality and fiscal challenges. Business could undertake to cap executive remuneration and the government could agree to a similar salary cap in the public sector.

But perhaps the greatest compact that is needed is around how government and business could spark growth and generate jobs by accelerating the maintenance and installation of new infrastructure.

A new model for public-private partnerships that introduces professional management and capital into large projects could relieve the government of some of the borrowing it might otherwise have to undertake to fund infrastructure.

A new narrative is needed which makes freedom from poverty the joint responsibility of government and business, working in partnership and leveraging the pool of skills and capital which lies dormant because of distrust. The ideologues on either side will cry foul, but they should not be allowed to determine policy from the sidelines.

It’s time to cut a proper deal to grow the economy.

Greg Mills is director of the Brenthurst Foundation; Ray Hartley is research director of the Brenthurst Foundation.

This is the second of the two-part series based on the discussion paper, “South Africa’s Greatest Economic Adversary … Itself – Finding Common Ground for Growth. The first part “Ten Years of Change in Three Months” can be read here.

Gallery

"Information pertaining to Covid-19, vaccines, how to control the spread of the virus and potential treatments is ever-changing. Under the South African Disaster Management Act Regulation 11(5)(c) it is prohibited to publish information through any medium with the intention to deceive people on government measures to address COVID-19. We are therefore disabling the comment section on this article in order to protect both the commenting member and ourselves from potential liability. Should you have additional information that you think we should know, please email [email protected]"

Please peer review 3 community comments before your comment can be posted

X

This article is free to read.

Sign up for free or sign in to continue reading.

Unlike our competitors, we don’t force you to pay to read the news but we do need your email address to make your experience better.


Nearly there! Create a password to finish signing up with us:

Please enter your password or get a sign in link if you’ve forgotten

Open Sesame! Thanks for signing up.

We would like our readers to start paying for Daily Maverick...

…but we are not going to force you to. Over 10 million users come to us each month for the news. We have not put it behind a paywall because the truth should not be a luxury.

Instead we ask our readers who can afford to contribute, even a small amount each month, to do so.

If you appreciate it and want to see us keep going then please consider contributing whatever you can.

Support Daily Maverick→
Payment options

Become a Maverick Insider

This could have been a paywall

On another site this would have been a paywall. Maverick Insider keeps our content free for all.

Become an Insider

Every seed of hope will one day sprout.

South African citizens throughout the country are standing up for our human rights. Stay informed, connected and inspired by our weekly FREE Maverick Citizen newsletter.