The national dialogue has been positioned as an opportunity to change the direction of the country, but while we all know where we have come from and where we are today, do we really know what reimagining our country means?
Today, South Africa is a country where success or survival is a zero-sum game — a national mentality that for me to prosper, someone else must fail. That mentality must fundamentally change if we are to be a country where everyone has a decent life.
One way that zero-sum game operates in practice is through the Faustian pact we have made that allows some of us to insulate ourselves from the impact of the country’s collapse with our privilege and good fortune. Drive around our suburbs and see how the walls have gotten higher, the security features more exclusionary; some among us pay higher and higher private health-care costs as a “protection fee” to avoid the dysfunction in our public hospitals, or unaffordable private school fees in the hope of our children winning the education lottery that is the ticket to the hope of a better future.
In our public education system some of us will selfishly demand a bribe from a desperate but unqualified person, giving them a post as a teacher and in so doing damning children to a sub-standard education and a life of penury. In our SOEs, I will charge a 4,500% mark-up on an item that I have not even manufactured — just so that I can afford a holiday to Dubai/Greece/the French Riviera and post the pictures on Instagram for everyone see and marvel at.
A question we must all ask ourselves is whether this model is sustainable. While it is easy to point fingers at the government and politicians when we apportion blame for the cliff that our country is driving towards, as we start the national dialogue process our success in reimagining South Africa will require a deep, honest and likely painful introspection from all of us. In simple terms we must each ask ourselves “how have I contributed to the mess that we are in?”
We must each ask ourselves ‘how have I contributed to the mess that we are in?’
Successful countries that have pushed their people forward have done so by defining a clear vision of how their citizens should live. Having defined this vision, a momentous “all of society” approach is adopted to drive that vision forward. This is what countries such as China, Germany, Norway and Malaysia have done.
Imagine for a moment that we decided the average South Africa family with two-three children should live in a three-bedroom standalone home in a safe community with quality public primary and secondary schools within walking distance and a tertiary institution accessible within 30 minutes by an affordable, reliable, integrated public transport system; and where every household would have breadwinners with income sufficient to afford the conveniences of the 21st century bought from local shops. If that were our vision, what would our “all of society” approach mean?
Instead of our current model of matchbox RDP houses “delivered” by the government, could we not imagine property developers, the construction sector, banks and local government collaborating to problem-solve how such a vision could be rolled out? Could we not imagine a local manufacturing sector making affordable furnishings and modern conveniences for consumers? Can we imagine our schools staffed only by qualified teachers whose first and last consideration is what is in the best interests of the children? Can we imagine a society where it is not acceptable for some employees to push to earn more than they can possibly spend in one lifetime while others are condemned to salaries that do not stretch to the middle of the month? Can we imagine an economy where we no longer talk in terms of a zero-sum game between full employment and profit because we recognise that it is the spending power of well-earning citizens that drives economic growth and not 43% unemployment and 18-million people on social grants?
Imagine the power of those 18-million people fully employed, earning decent wages, paying taxes, affording food, transport and utilities and still having enough disposable income to buy furniture, cars and fridges while being able to save for the future. What would that do for our national saving levels? Our tax collection? The funding of our public services? Our crime levels?
A problem with our current development model is that we define development quantitatively in terms of disaggregated numbers and statistics rather than qualitatively, in terms of a holistic vision of how South Africans should live. The national dialogue provides us with such an opportunity to craft a vision of a fair, just and progressive society.
If this national dialogue is to really change the trajectory of this country it will require each one of us 62-million South Africans to look deeply within ourselves and ask ourselves: “What am I willing to do to make South Africa a comfortable place for us all to live in?” If we fail at this challenge then we must imagine a country where 30 years from now crime and corruption make us even more fearful than we are today, where increasing inequality makes us a more fragmented and angry society and where our hard-fought democracy collapses under the weight of our failure.
• Gadd is a member of the Chief Albert Luthuli Foundation
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