I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that despite all the excitement over the formation of a government of national unity (GNU) and the wave of confidence it has thrust behind the rand, which has strengthened sharply since the GNU was formed, and the local stock market, which is breaking all records, and the ratings of our debt, which foreigners have found a new taste for, nothing much new is actually going on.
For the moment there is a lot of talk about the country becoming a construction site and this and that imbizo, but in reality the ANC, having crashed spectacularly in May, behaves as if nothing happened. The policies of the GNU are pretty much the policies of the ANC. In local and provincial governments, ANC mayors and premiers are the same ineffectual and self-important blue-lighters they were before the election.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is going to allow the implementation of a borderline insane ANC conference decision to return control of state-owned companies to “their” line departments — Eskom to energy, Transnet to transport, Denel to defence. The plan to kill off the department of public enterprises and replace it with an investment holding company based on Singapore’s Temasek is, surprise surprise, delayed.
The fact is Ramaphosa is still afraid of his own party and we now hear the SOEs will be transferred back into this mystery holding company whenever it is formed. Can you imagine the state they’ll be in after a couple of years, with the bureaucrats tracking Ebitda and tenders and now also, ludicrously, their regulators as well.
The fact is Ramaphosa is still afraid of his own party
So much for reform. Lifting the cap on private sector energy production was easy, a stroke of the pen. Fixing logistics, not so much. Not only is Transnet dragging out the process of getting private sector rolling stock on the rails but the rail regulator envisaged in the reforms thus far will also be in the department of transport. That must surely be illegal, as well as plain stupid.
Ramaphosa will sit back and allow his party to unseat a responsible administration in Tshwane and to form another toxic metro council in Johannesburg. He pushes ahead with the signing of a new “health compact” despite the business and medical community walking away from it. So it is basically a compact with himself.
The only active new success I can see coming out of the GNU so far is new home affairs minister Leon Schreiber’s dramatic cutting of our 300,000 visa applications backlog. He is in just a few months approaching half way and should be clear by the end of the year.
Three hundred thousand people not being able to visit South Africa, especially of the kind willing and able to apply to come in the first place, is a gigantic economic problem. The man who created the backlog was former home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi, who never remotely appreciated the economic importance of his department. He thought his job was to keep people out of the country.
Typically, Ramaphosa has rewarded him with another term as minister of health, where he cheered along the signing of the “health compact” and followed it up with an oath that, under the National Health Insurance (NHI) the ANC wants to introduce, “medical aids are out” once it comes into effect. “We are not in an alliance with the DA [which is in the GNU but opposes the NHI],” he said. “We just went in because the situation demanded it.”
Good to know the GNU is of such little consequence to a minister so close to the president. Also good to know Motsoaledi, idle, incompetent and impatient, is driving the NHI again because he is an extremely poor manager and bound to make a mess of it. Could it be Ramaphosa’s cunning and secret plan?
Anyone seriously interested in helping poor South Africans with their health would look for a middle way. A voluntary and standardised blood test (plus mammogram and pap smears) a year for all women between the ages of 30 and 70 could identify a host of problems, from possible diabetes and prostate cancers to thyroid or dietary problems, infections, kidney diseases and anaemia.For free to those who have little. And standard treatments should be free too. And the private sector would be a part of it.
The fact is it would not be hard to make this a fairer and more inclusive country if the ANC would pause for a moment to take a good look at itself and stop, for once, trying to play God with our money and our health.
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