It is an oft-repeated truism that the South African public policy landscape is replete with ambitious plans, priorities and ideas, but that these are too often scuppered by a state which lacks the capacity and the political will to deliver on its own vision.
On Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa outlined an ambitious, focused and succinct series of government priorities for the post-Covid-19recovery in his state of the nation address. His four focus areas - defeating the virus; accelerating our economic recovery; implementing economic reforms; and fighting corruption - require exceptional levels of capacity within the state to deliver.
The tragic irony in SA is that we must simultaneously reckon with the combination of a bloated civil service and its lack of capacity to deliver on its mandates — an indication the public service headcount is too high in all the wrong places, and lacking in the areas where knowledge, expertise and competence are desperately needed.
The National Development Plan (NDP) is an example of a fine policy and planning document that enjoyed cross-party support when it was adopted by parliament in August 2012, but which remains in danger of being rendered an implementation failure because the government lacks the skills and the competence to deliver on its ambitious targets.
Under the current circumstances, the state will never be able to fulfil its mandate in the requisite time - both in terms of long-term planning and the Covid-19 recovery effort - without an urgent “plan B” for implementation.
A possible solution to this impasse lies in the work of social enterprises - a blended business model taking off in a variety of sectors in SA and around the globe - in which businesses with for-profit objectives also include in their mandates a commitment to advancing both people and the planet.
Shareholders and investors measure the successes (and failures)of these enterprises not only based on financial returns but also on their impact on society at large.
Under the current circumstances, the state will never be able to fulfil its mandate in the requisite time
In addition, many social enterprises operate as self-funding charities that plough their profits back into the social projects the enterprise supports.
Many social enterprises include among their objectives delivering on the public and social goods that form part of the mandates of their governments. These run the gamut from education and sustainable energy generation to hunger and poverty alleviation, the economic empowerment of women and the protection of children.
In SA, social enterprises have the potential to close a critical gap between government policy intention and delivery by providing incentives and support for social entrepreneurs to take over the delivery of certain critical government objectives.
All social enterprises in SA currently have to make the unenviable choice between registering as private companies oras nonprofit organisations — neither of which designation adequately captures their purpose or their contribution to the broader society.
Some have attempted to overcome this challenge by forming two partner organisations - one for profit and the other a nonprofit - together to create a hybrid that enables access to the tax exemptions of nonprofits combined with the taxable profitability of private businesses. SA needs a regulatory framework combined with a series of tax instruments that will incentivise innovation in this neglected part of the private sector and drive that innovation towards the many critical priorities identified by the government — especially those that enjoy broad consensus support from opposition parties.
A social enterprise designation would also act as a natural tool for monitoring and evaluation, enabling the state to measure its progress towards achieving the goals contained either in its political manifesto or in a longer-term agenda such as the NDP, simply by requiring social enterprises to report regularly on the number and category of beneficiaries impacted upon by their work.
The national government would be in a better position to identify the areas in need of trimming within the state, so that it can bring down the public sector wage bill while simultaneously redirecting resources towards those areas of state capacity that cannot be substituted by private individuals and organisations.
It has never been more necessary for us to accelerate the pace of change in SA than at present, as we find ourselves in urgent need of a whole society plan for recovery from the social and economic ravages of the pandemic and nine years of state capture under the previous administration.
The World Economic Forum’s 2019 competitiveness report identified financial markets, advanced transport infrastructure and market size as SA’s regional strengths, while highlighting the challenge of our declining competitiveness in terms of attitudes towards entrepreneurial risk.
A pivot towards a formalised policy framework for social enterprise would have the dual impact of stimulating further local investment in business and innovation while accelerating government delivery in critical areas of public life. The time has come to grasp the nettle and enlist every stakeholder in our economy and society in the country’s urgent rebuilding effort.
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