Interviews

Policy Development in South Africa.

Where is Policy currently developed nationally?
‘In government, which is I guess where it should be coming from, but government and the party are not engaging with intellectual capacity out there. The process by which policy is developed needs to be questioned – is policy developed in workshops?
If policy makers cannot understand the reality within which people live, then they cannot make good policy. There are a lot of institutions within the state that give feedback about what is going wrong – the auditor general reports etc. We need policy makers to understand the actual constraints within which officials on the ground are working and get creative energy and leadership, visionary leadership backed up by policies.’
New Policies - the New Growth Path and the National Development Plan.
‘What is it that we have been doing all along that we have not been able to achieve in 18 years a transformed internal environment? The policies are not working. Intellectual and business capital is not working optimally. Government will listen when good things are said. Government also fails to claim and show what good things it has done. But where is the ‘light bulb’ moment that enables people to say – I see?’
‘In my view, the iconic status of the Freedom Charter will not be replaced soon by anything like the National Development Plan (the NDP), despite the arguments against the liberal interpretations of the Freedom Charter, but what the NDP does is to define what the 2030 end game plan will look like and set targets to get there. It should be seen as more of a road map within the broader framework of the Freedom Charter. It sets out the steps and choices necessary, building on the experiences of the last 18 years; for instance in education we have learned that it is not about resources, but more about experience. Stability and professionalism within the civil service can be undermined by the actions of political heads. The NDP should focus on building on that experience and the corrective measures that could be put in place.’
‘The NGP and NDP are just wish lists of what we desire to have, they virtuous outcomes, one cannot really disagree with them, but both fail to adequate address issues of systemic and endemic corruption within the state.’

Scorecard: How would you rate the transformational success of the ANC Government?

‘Not too high, but they have allowed themselves to be brought into this system as consumers, look around you, what do you see but shopping malls and gated residential complexes – it was not like this pre-1994.
Who owns this? White capital, which benefits from the rents of all of this.
But there is no production, and this is why South Africa is still going to hit our own crisis really financially. There is no economic transformation, no one has an idea of what to do and no jobs are created.
Share option schemes are just chasing the people and giving the mines. Co-opt and capture through shares, even though you have no idea how to mine or what a geologist is. But this does not mean that anything industrial is growing, for these people with the shares – they have not created a single job out of being there.
The ETC (Economic Transformation Committee) of the ANC sits and pontificates, but there are no indications of change or growth. Look at education today. Each year there are 400 000 matriculants who do nothing, do no further education or training or work, they just sit.
Consider the case of the Further Education and Training institutions – the Afrikaners used these to build society, the technicians that produced the builders of society, the ones who worked the steel plants, but now we have no steel plants as a state.
We have a serous economic crisis in South Africa that leads to a social and political crisis.

The ANC is losing legitimacy – look at the service delivery protests – no ANC leaders can go amongst the people who are tired of empty promises. The DA cannot go either and therefore our people are leaderless.’

How consistent have we been in meeting the pre -92 Commitment to respond to the immediate preservation of the majority?
‘In some ways this was achieved for instance, the commitment to the social grant transfer system has had an effect, it improved living standards in rural South Africa, based primarily on the grant system. It was important to capitalize poor places especially within a context of high desperation and need. The sustainability of this intervention is questionable especially in the long-term: as grants are not keeping up with the pace of inflation; one part was subsidized and we didn’t pay attention to critical indicators.
We did manage to create the range of institutions focused on securing our democracy and the independence of the Constitution, however we failed to invest in maintaining an engaged citizenry, we failed to invest in local level work- the beginning of the dislocation between the state and population. We also got caught up in seeing the institutions as an end in itself.’
“ANC transformation was disrupted by the dangers of BEE (championed by Gear), which was a white business counter strategy of co-option of leaders as their insurance. These leaders were meant to be the thinkers and leaders of social transformation, but then came the tension between personal interest and social transformation.’
‘Transformation under Mbeki was a narrow replacement project of race. In mining, black faces replaced whites – spokespeople for the mines during Marikana were all black – you would be forgiven for thinking mines were all black owned.

Challenges Ahead for Substantive Transformation.

‘The entrenchment of a new multi-racial elite via BEE, corruption and patronage, this perpetuates the exclusion of the majority of the population and entrenches the levels of inequality, and as a result we will re-enter the conflict zone.’

‘Back to basics (reconnecting with the people, encourage direct participation- “for the people, by the people”). How do we nurture a leadership and ownership? Pre-94 we never saw ourselves as leaders, and I never attended a meeting with the bosses on my own, I was always in the company of workers representatives. Our notion of leadership-needs to come under review, our experience and the experience and practice of the ANC is a top down leadership.
‘We need strong institutions of state and non-state, strong in the sense of functioning and executing their mandates and being responsive to the situation. ANC deployment or patronage has resulted in a diminishing of the role and function of many of our institutions. Public perception and trust in our key institutions, including the police, the courts, parliament, is extremely low at the moment. The public is bombarded on a daily basis by stories of corruption at all levels of government. Personal interest is the driving force. The confluence of State and party is a dangerous precedent we need to wake up to.
Our courts are over-burdened, we have not begun to restructure the lower courts, and our health and education systems are in a state of crisis and disrepair. 10 years after 1994, the first local government structure was formed- efforts took time to materialise.
Post 1994, the ANC’s move from a Liberation Movement to a party, resulted in many shifts. The de-politicisation and decay of party structures (branches), the structures that provided the linkages between the ANC leadership and its members are non functional. Decision-making has become interest driven and elite in its process¹.
The “factional” fighting at a national level manifests at the provincial and local levels of the ANC structures (those that are still in existence). At these levels the counter-productive self-interest battles are spread to the community- some members belong to other organizations like unions etc and these battles take root in other structures. So a weak or dysfunctional ANC will have an impact on all sorts of institutions beyond itself and the Alliance, Civil Society structures like the Church will also be riddled with these issues.
When Marikana erupted, not a single political leader nor civil society could get the workers or community to accept their authority. Where and to whom do people go to if they need help?
Service delivery disruptions – what is the cause for these? Is it because people have no other avenues to seek redress – and in South Africa, violence is fast becoming the language of delivery? People believe that their needs will be met if they use violence, intimidation etc. This was even mentioned at the Cosatu Congress- it came out of one of their recent studies.’
‘We have a multi-directional movement; our context is dynamic, yet we have become static and stunted in our approach and therefore unable to be responsive to our environment/contextual challenges.
We need to grasp the fact that our context has changed, therefore our organizations’ approach must resemble this change, and we have to become more creative and innovative. We have a young population, who has little or no memories of the liberation or its traditions etc, how do we engage them, organize them, and address their needs?
But you have to be courageous to speak the truth, to put your head over the parapet you will get shot down. We need more tolerance, you just shout down your opponent these days.’
‘Both our intelligentsia and the middle class have been demobilized, and people like me need to give aerial cover to their voices.
I know it is difficult to raise ones head above the parapet, the fear factor leading to self-censorship is a real concern that needs to be addressed.’
‘Government will listen when true and useful things are said. Government also fails to claim and show what good things it has done. But seismic shifts are happening within our body politics currently, huge shake-ups- not all negative or all positive. The ANC is facing huge leadership challenges in terms of how it positions itself, within a context of a myriad of contesting forces, whoever takes the spaces will influence the positioning.’
‘There is so much scope for communities to be organized. More attention needs to be focused on social delivery issues – what needs to be done to make these delivery institutions more effective? This requires a lot of work. The problem is that civic movements often become politicized and captured; we need to have movements rooted on a strong grass roots base. We can recreate this, it does not have to be massive, these are not massive things, but need a deep rooted effort to engage the poor in their own social transformation.’
‘Since Polokwane, the ANC leadership has become more intolerant, defensive and paranoid. As we move closer to Mangaung, the personal battles will intensify and any form of dissent and critique will be shut down, marginalized or co-opted. Post Marikana- the ANC denies that the country is in a state of crisis- we’ve seen and experienced the deadly effects of denialism and intolerance from the ANC. The (HIV/AIDS) debacle not only made us the laughing stock of the world- it cost the country dearly, in lives and potential.
Of the 83 members of the ANC’s NEC, who still lives in a township? Not one, not even Vavi. Leaders of the masses exist with great social distance between the suburbs and townships and in fact are ‘guest leaders’. Leaders have no legitimacy because of this social distance, and this lack of legitimacy dilutes the urgency of transformation.
There are then threats to those who question this urgency, by those killed by the comforts of middle class and social distance from the middle class who don’t want to challenge the status quo.
Leaders get targeted under real threats, until you lose so much energy you become despondent.
Most of the CSOs do not know about this. Government does not worry about CSOs except those who they target, or else they will try to co-opt you. Either you suffer or else you get co-opted to comfort.’
‘Over time we have failed to take heed of the warning signs that indicate potential crisis, we don’t give enough attention to understanding our environments, the context in which we operate, hence we fail at being responsive.’
‘Between 2003 and 2008, South Africa had a growth period of about 4,8%. By 2007 we had achieved a 24% fixed rate of investment that was attained much more rapidly than even ASGISA had predicted.
We could have halved unemployment, but prior to the recession, the economy had already begun to heat up and we had surpassed the threshold of ‘trend growth’. We need to think about trend growth through other things, like growing infrastructure and its scale, structural issues that need to be addressed and expanded on or else these limitations will always be the limitations to growth. Added to this is the capacity of the state and its intention to improve its own efficiency and not to accept a muddling state. The attendant temptations to raid the coffers increases with the increase in the link between the upper echelons of state and political patronage, the idea that you hear that “I joined the ANC for self- advancement”, if this continues, then the rot within the party will worsen.’

‘No- one is grappling with a bigger issue of how our resources can be used- for example the half hearted attempt at implementation of the mining legislation and charter and little or no commitment of calling the actors to account. So it’s not necessarily the policy or legislation that is inadequate, it’s the implementation, the means of monitoring it and the commitment to hold the transgressors to account. Look for instance and the failure in terms of restitution of land rights- so many land claims have not been settled and communities’ rights to land have not been confirmed.

The real issues facing us include how resources need to be used for the benefit of the population, in response to the question of what would it mean to eradicate poverty. Look at the Royal Bafokeng Trust for example - the construct per se is not bad, but it was a short-cut and what could have been broad-based is broad -based only to the extent of its Phokeng reach.’

‘We need to go back to what the National Planning Commission tried to do – we need a social compact or else we will not achieve any of this.

In South Africa, the leaders’ discourse is about what is in it for my sector irrespective of the consequences to other sectors, therefore the discourse should be more strategic about what sacrifices are also required.

There is a tendency in talking about issues of social justice and civil society to confine our thinking to bricks and mortar – the physical inputs, but we forget – and other states that have grown show this, we forget the ‘thinking industry” that is required to inform all three sectors. South Africa does not do this. Think tanks etc – in part, the resource people end up doing consultancy, or become political analysts and public commentators. South Africa lacks a tradition of being able to look at the theoretical ability to look at civil society spheres and also provide policy analysis. We need that space to be able to THINK without having to fundraise etc.