An Economic ‘CODESA’| Will it Settle the Dust?

I reckon that the so-called Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) negotiations that eventually resulted in the current South African constitution, was not a great success.  It seems that compromise is sin.  Negotiating parties' walk away thinking they gave away too much and gained too little.  This is especially the case if you were wanting to hold onto a slice of the power you had, but ended with nothing, or you wanted all the power and only got a piece of it.  CODESA stalled the shooting phase; it denied us the image of T55s storming the Union Buildings.  Instead, we settled for an endearing speech.

Compromise has resulted in everyone feeling they are losers, rather than on average feeling they are winners.  Many Whiteys feel that they were sold out; that they did not sign up for what they have today.  Discussants on social media sites say they would have voted differently in the all-White referendum, if they could have looked down the track to see the future.  On the other hand, the language of parties and people who were on the other side of the table seem to have treated negotiations as a phase in the revolution.  For them, the resultant constitution is merely a staging post for the acquisition of total power that the T55 would have given them.  If only the USSR had not collapsed, if only they were not hoodwinked into talk-talk.

So, a political conversation took away political power from one collective, and gave it to a new collective.  But, economic rewards have not automatically followed the baton of political change.  See, the T55 and AK47 would have had a more direct approach, now there has to be a drawn out byzantine route to the same destination.  The White folk, the ones who still have the bulk of wealth – the land, businesses, stocks, better education and skills, jobs, access to private health-care, and so forth, have not given up enough to swing the balance the other way.

A solution, proposed by some, is another talk-shop, another CODESA.  For those who make a living out of talking, predicting the future and solution-mongering, an economic-CODESA (eCODESA) is right up their street.  On the one side will be the have's, the other, the have-less.  The one agenda will be how to get wealth from A to B as fast as possible, and the other will be how to delay it for as long as possible.  The tug of war will result in another compromise that makes everyone grumpy.

Or, perhaps not.  Maybe I am being disingenuous, and another talk-talk convention is better than a shoot-out in the gardens of the Union Buildings.  I thought it would be of practical value to begin to develop an agenda for the proposed e-CODESA.

My starting point is the ideas provided by those calling for such an event or process.  Here is a snapshot of what the proponents are saying:

£  There is an economic crisis in South Africa, and by implication, there is a socio-political crisis.  Others say it is not yet sufficiently acute to get the right people to talk, it must get worse first;

£  Put another way, some suggest we are at a crossroads and there is need for 'genuine negotiation';

£  We require a 'shared vision' – I assume for South Africa, including the economic system;

£  There are two confronting ideologies: the interventionist state versus the free enterprise system driven by market dynamics;

£  There will have to be 'contributions and sacrifices' in the process;

£  A social pact is required, we need to appreciate the strategic interests of society;

£  Labour laws are too rigid (inflexible) for some but not sufficiently so for others;

£  South African skills levels are too low and production costs too high;

£  The nature of the labour regime is wrong, it is too adversarial and needs to be more co-determinant;

£  The prime problems to solve are unemployment‚ inequality and widespread poverty; and

£  Economic growth will solve the problems, or growth will occur if the conditions are more equitable.

I could not construct a serious agenda from the above.  All the points are subsets of the real issue, the elephant in the room that thrashes about.  Anyone who imagines that 30% unemployment is not a crisis is looney.  Anyone who does not appreciate that at current levels and kinds of economic growth we are going deeper into crisis is part of the problem.  Those who do not get nervous at the levels of social unrest and support for anarchists solutions are probably packing for Perth, chauffeured in cavalcades, or live behind desensitising thick walls.

Recognised crisis or not, most protagonists seem to appreciate the problems.  It is the 'how to address them' that is the veritable elephant.  Until we have agreed that South Africa needs either, a collectivist solution with a touch of free markets, or the other way around, there will be no action.  Until the 'heights of the economy' are in the hands of the bureaucrats, some will still be fighting the war they did not win.  Those who claim collectivism is not a panacea for our condition will resist such a solution.

It feels that South Africa will be sacrificed on the altar of a political spitting contest.  This is despite the existence of what I thought was an agreed action plan to address our problems, the National Development Plan (NDP).  The NDP sets out what the problems are (again), their genesis, and what the future should look like (again).  It establishes ten critical actions that solutions can be constructed around.  What more do we want?  What more can another round of talking do that the NDP has not set out?

Since 1994, we have had lots of research, talking and plan development, but we continue to be terribly short on action.  Initially we had the RDP (1994), then the Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy (1996), the Jobs Summit (1998), the Growth and Development Summit (2003), ASGISA (2005), the Harvard Economists Study (2007), the Growth Commission (2008), and the New Growth Path (2010).  I may have missed a few…

An eCODESA is another detour to avoid the tough (for government) leadership decision to put South Africa first, and politics second.  Leadership is about doing the right thing, as history will judge it.  Not right for me, or for my narrow interests, but for us all.

On a single page of the NDPs Executive Summary Introduction, there are 140 words, and nine times the word 'work' is used.  Let's get some leadership, stop talking and just work.