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An open letter to the President, Cyril Ramaphosa
A Second Chance
Mr President
South Africa is on the verge of total socio-economic collapse. Nonetheless, foreign capital (in abundance) sits patiently at our borders waiting to invest—waiting for certainty to replace the clutter and chaos of political and economic disarray that currently permeates this beautiful country.
We South Africans are also waiting. We want common purpose, we want economic dignity and we want our national pride back.
We need fundamental change, before it’s too late.
Your up-coming conference is an ideal time to introduce these changes. Present us with a clear vision at the next State of the Nation Address – a new way for things to be done around here, in our future, prosperous South Africa.
Here are my ten suggestions:
1. Cabinet: Re-constitute cabinet portfolios and ministries to reflect the new underlying drivers of our socio-economic renewal. Start with a clean page, clearly define the political roles and boundaries, listen to the future, appoint experience and merit, not popularity nor connections. Insist on it.
2. State Departments and State Owned Enterprises: Give real executive authority to duly appointed and experienced Directors General – they are the CEO’s of government departments. Agree explicit mandates and time frames, define courses, prescribe checkpoints, implement outcome based incentive schemes. Then get out of their way if they stick to the deal and replace them if they don’t. Re-constitute SOE Boards with industry experience and leadership. Independent, not politically aligned Chairpersons. These boards only need a minority of government representatives, but those should be armed with sufficient veto rights on matters of (pre-agreed) policy.
3. Foreign Direct Investment: Exempt all foreign direct investment from the prescriptions of the Public Finance Management Act which fall outside internationally accepted investment practices.
4. Public-Private-Partnerships: Pass legislation to enable and govern the formation of public-private partnerships. Allow for industry/entity specifics to prescribe structure, whilst preserving the roles/rights of the State, as may be necessary or appropriate.
5. Justice: Require and enable fast-tracking within the judicial process, through delegating certain final and binding authority levels to lower courts, without higher recourse. Adopt a policy of zero tolerance for incompetence or purposeful delays in the execution of justice.
6. Municipalities: Devolve certain decision making, capital funding authority and contractual capacity to municipal level to fast-track local needs. Do this in partnership with specialist operators and capital providers. Likewise for provinces.
7. Prioritise infrastructure projects: Allocate capital and expertise to the projects that will most enable our local economic growth and increase our export earnings. Obvious examples include ESKOM (energy more broadly) – cancel the debt, raise capital for new forms of energy – make electricity free (you’ll get it back in taxes); PRASA – our economic arteries have to function, efficiencies of rail over road are obvious, for people and cargo transport; LANDBANK – re-constitute functional, affordable, broad base access to reasonably priced, tailored term finance, which is essential for local food security and will enable vast international market opportunities … the list is long. Long term structural change must also be tabled for education, health care, personal safety, water security … another long list.
8. Social development: Change the focus, over a responsible period of time, away from social rescue and relief and towards development. The sooner and the more we invest in our youth, the less we’ll need to support them in old age. Move on from the notion that a nation made dependent will continue to vote for you, it won’t.
9. BEE: Discard the BEE constructs that favour elite selection and enrichment. Move away from high level transfers of un-earned wealth towards bottom-up economic participation – jobs instead of shares. Impose transfers of knowledge and opportunity, not money. Capital ownership will follow as a natural consequence of outcome base deals between employees and capital providers. Create a new economic order rather than simply including more people in the old, divisive class of the obvious elite.
10. The State: Bring the full force of the State to create an exciting investment environment, which screams “Welcome to South Africa!”, to foreign and local capital. Use the full capacities of SARS, SARB, all state and developmental funding agencies, trade and industry, to make obvious the ease of doing business here – a Minister of Investment, perhaps? Simplify tax, do away with all taxes other than VAT, using differential and zero rating to balance the budget and cater for the needs of the poor.
For any of this to realistically be achieved in the short time we have will require our best women and men to be tasked and released to deliver it. They are all here, Mr. President, but they are not all in position. Appoint them.
Make these changes, Mr. President, and we will rise from the ashes that otherwise await us. It will likely require a majority in Parliament – I would expect the right coalition to naturally emerge, driven by the common sense of it all. We want to move on from the past and embrace a better future.
We’d better get started, before the hour is too late.
Respectfully.
Mark Barnes
Barnes is a successful merchant banker and a wannabe postman.
This is great advice, of course. But if President Ramaphosa was capable of this calibre of muscular, insightful leadership we would probably have seen evidence of it by now.
This would work if Cyril were actually in charge. But if he was, the current situation would not have developed to the mess it is in.
A Beatles song comes to mind “please don’t wake me, no don’t shake me, leave me where I am, I’m only sleeping”. ZZZZZZZZ……..
Mark, without the coalition and majority, ie the right government, referred to in your last paragraph this wish list which we all agree with ain’t gonna happen. I also think we can agree that based on what has or hasn’t been delivered on by the New Dawn leadership delivering on your 10 suggestions is a tall ask and I am going to put my money on a lottery ticket. Nevertheless thanks for putting into the enormity of the task which lies ahead for all South Africans. Enjoy the rest of your weekend under level 6 loadshedding. Best regards Grenville
Excellent ideas, will require considerable bravery from Ramaphosa
Spot on Mark. Key and Big difference is that no one, including the leader, shares this priority with you. We are in a different movie, one that is playing exactly as intended by the ANC.
Top stuff, Mark Barnes! No whinging. No whining. No infernal venting of frustration of what is wrong in this country. Just do-able solutions in clear, concise, accessible language by a man who knows what he’s talking about. Now: how to get this message out? Maybe print on the back of a T-shirt & distribute to the nation? Free T-shirts seem to be a winner in this country! Then people will be compelled to read while standing behind the wearer in supermarket checkout lines/ taxi ranks/ bus stops (are these still in existence?)/ anywhere where people gather. How about it, DM? I’m willing to pay a reasonable price for such – can be done for under R50.
Good solid advice. Unfortunately directed at the wrong person in the wrong party. It’s time SA starts envisioning a post ANC reality and organising ourselves accordingly.
Amen to that, Vuyiswa! It would be great if CR had the moral gravitas to take Mark’s advice – but sadly that’s just not going to happen. So the only hope for our beloved country is the formation of a viable alternative government. Could Mark (and others) get together with Cheryl Carolus and DOD and get the momentum going for 18 months time? Our country needs you!
Evidence seems to point in your same direction Vuyiswa. I agree with you.
An excellent summation of the only path to prosperity that we have left available to us. I would gladly hang my last vestiges of optimism on this future. The problem, of course, is that it is not up to only the President. His whole party reeks of cronyism, including his cabinet. Every single point suggested here is incompatible with the ANC’s raison d’être (reason for existence). They will have to somehow manage to effect an internal revolution to liberate themselves from the farce of their core identity since the 1980’s (an ideologically bankrupt band of dishonest terrorists).
Dear President Rhamaphosa, to borrow a phrase from a well known cheetahs coach: I know you can, but will you?
Mark Barnes is a South African entitled to express his views regarding his own country that like some amongst us have served. I would hate if he is attacked or criticised based on race not on facts and by compromised individuals. One has some serious concerns with his open letter. The first he is asking a very conflicted person to reconstitute a cabinet and does not say to bring who. He is also very thin on the SOEs instead of key SOEs like ESKOM, TRANSNET and PRASA that are very central to the functioning of the economy. A Minister of Investments is not necessary because that mandate has always been that of DTI and Treasury supported by other departments like Agriculture and Communications. He is not saying anything about the Kitchen Cabinet that has been created in the Presidency that involves envoys, people to cut red tape and now anti – corruption task team. All being a recipe for turf wars and incompetence. He says nothing about safety and security which is critical to investments and the incompetence of the pick and pay general call Cele. The other question is whether Ramaphosa takes advice and if he does from whom because he has the most able National Security Advisor in Mufamadi! This I do not say it lightly. On Municipalities, a question arises whether do we these many municipalities enveloped in corruption without a revenue base. Why was the Apartheid model abandoned of having these run by Provinces? He must name the people and if they include Nomvula. Amen.
Why do you say that the municipalities were run by the provinces during apartheid? The truth was that they were far smaller, which probably made them less complicated, but less resourced. No, the corruption at the municipal level is the same as at other levels – it is driven by cadre deployment and nationalist ideology. The solution to most of these problems are actually just common sense, but for that, those in control must be ALLOWED to apply common sense solutions, which will never happen as long as the cadre deployment system exists; it in the end drives away all those that are interested in the common sense solutions because of the frustrations caused by ANC cadres that wants to apply ideology instead of proper management practices. That is where what Mark says about properly competent persons to be in control; moving away from transfers of un-earned wealth to transfer of knowledge and money; re-constitution of SOE boards by independents. not politically aligned people; etc comes in. Before that can happen, CadreDeploymentMustFall must happen. That is where all of that will start. It is irrelevant whether Ramaphosa thinks that it is needed or the ANC wants it, it is the core of the problem.
If you take Butterworth that has become a slum, it had no council but a manager who was paid to ensure the town functions. The same as small towns. We do not need councillors in many towns to loot but structures for service delivery because these towns do not have a revenue base to pay bloated councils. Cadre deployment is a global phenomenon for strategic positions that must be occupied by qualified people with skills even the DA does it. You only have to look at the Western Cape. You have corruption in Enoch Mgijima and you must ask yourself why would we need a council there as before 1994 there was none and things were working properly. These councils only provide foot soldiers for political parties during elections and 90 percent of the time they do nothing and in the 10 percent they steal!
Well, Cunningham, I’m pleased to be able to say that, for once, I mostly agree with what you say here. Thank you.
Tell me, as a past Deputy Director General, are you still an ANC member today?
Far too sensible and practical for this lot, excluding the usual “what’s in it for me” brigade is impossible, they are unemployable any where else and they know it.
Barnes for President.
I broadly agree with your sentiments, Mark. But there is one obstacle that the President is not allowed by the ANC to remove, but that needs to happen before all this can happen. That is the removal of the cadre deployment system. So there is only one way of getting this done, and that is for the ANC to lose power, and without the lost votes going to the EFF. I really hope that this will become a reality in 2024. Until then, let us hope that SA can hold out.
Wonderful advice! Fairytale stuff indeed.
Yep! It’s certainly is fairy tale stuff….a lot more difficult than fixing the Post Office, which in itself was a failure!
Great ideas… plausible solutions… but in application a total “polite fiction” as it presupposes that Ramaphosa actually has the political will or ability to effect any change at any level!
Great advice! The best actually. Sadly it is intellectually beyond the communist inspired thinking of the ANC.
A good letter Mark. However, I have to address the elephant in the room with you, that being whether you left the Post Office in a bigger mess than when you got there or not.
When Barnes left the Post Office it was the ONLY SOE that was able to stand alone financially and was not requesting ANY funding from central government. From memory, in his first year the loss was over R1B, in his second year that dropped to R900M, in his third year it was +/-R600M and in the year he left it was +/-R300M. It was heading for breakeven during his 5-year tenure. It had also taken on the distribution of social grants. Hardly a “bigger mess”, unless you’re an ANC cadre looking for non-ANC supporters to fail.
Free Electricity and only VAT? Some of these ideas are good but you can’t be taken seriously with such proposals…
Great sentiments and much common sense . Burt common sense is in short supply in the ANC. We need some bravery from the ANC now !
It would be great to envision a future for this country other than the dark and depressing trajectory that we find our selves on.
Good but futile letter, Cyril’s only objective is to ‘boil the frog’. It appears to me that ‘the frog’ is starting to really realize that it is being boiled and is trying to jump out the pot but it might be too late? We need to have letters to each other on how ALL South Africans can stand together to push back and rescue our beautiful nation.
Hear Hear!!!!
All good, sensible, obvious and common-sense advice, Mark, except for your Point 10.
Removing all taxes except for VAT (and presumably raising it to be on par with other countries at ~25%) is truly a novel idea. It would certainly simplify doing business tremendously and will boost personal incomes for the productive, thereby hopefully reducing / reversing the Brain Drain.
For the unproductive, suitable zero-rating of basics will hopefully minimise the adverse impact. Nevertheless, it is likely to be a hard one to sell.