The scenes out of the Oval Office in the White House were eye-watering and stomach-shrivelling, but chucklesome and hilarious at the same time.
US President Donald Trump is the butt of jokes around the globe, but watching him act like an entitled back-in-the-day school principal — with his deputy JD Vance effusively trying even harder to show he had his boss’s back — was the lowest of lows.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his team must duck bombs on the one hand while being extorted of mineral rights by a transactional, morally bankrupt Trump on the other. It’s an unbelievable compendium of tragedies because the world still expected a modicum of humanity from the leaders of the free world, even as they became nakedly transactional. “You have no cards to play,” said Trump, trying in vain to sound clever.
Where others have spoken of colonialism of a “special type” in the past, we now have a new era of barbarism from the White House that beggars belief. We are, as it were, back in the Stone Age, with sword-wielding madmen in suits running amok, demanding mineral rights in front of the cameras. Shamelessness has an orange face. Civilisation has gone out of the window. Whoever has the sword cares not for Ukraine; it’s their time, they believe, to swing the scythe, without a care as to who gets affected. It’s like a scene from a badly written Hollywood movie.
At a time when so-called world leaders are behaving like 1960s Third World despots, we should be putting our best foot forward. We already have one foot into the G20 and — despite the diplomatic kerfuffle sponsored by the US and AfriForum — we have done well so far. Yet that’s far from enough. At a time like this, we must be hard on ourselves. We must display to the world the political nous that helped us navigate a difficult past and demand of ourselves only the best.
This requires us to deal with Trump — but not like children in the “naughty corner” or by being apologetic about who we are, where we come from or why it is important that we transform our economy while growing it.
It demands too that we are fastidious about what we table on March 12 in the new budget. To free ourselves from Trump’s — and frankly anyone else’s — pity parties, we must scrutinise what we spend money on and justify why such expenditure is necessary. Profligate spending must be a thing of the past.
Otherwise, who is to say Trump won’t make outlandish demands on whatever we own, on what he needs when our turn comes to replace Zelensky on that chair in the principal’s Oval Office — reminding us we “have no cards to play”, as if we are engaged in a 2025 version of Game of Thrones?
Our failure so far to find a solution to the proposed VAT increase is, as embarrassing and painful as it is to navigate, an opportunity we should embrace. Our leaders are focused on ensuring there’s consensus on how to balance the books. Where’s the R60bn going to come from?
Whatever the outcome, the limitation of the current process is its narrow focus on solving today’s pressing issues. That too is a failure to realise that today’s crisis is an outcome of many years of fiscal ineptitude — a failure to appreciate that the success of dominant economies is the outcome of long-term thinking.
The question facing South Africa — a week before a second attempt is made to pass the budget — is not where we are going to get the R60bn but rather what we need to do to turn the economy around
The question facing South Africa — a week before a second attempt is made to pass the budget — is not where we are going to get the R60bn but rather what we need to do to turn the economy around.
I am a strong believer in mission-orientated industrial policy that forces the government to invest in innovation that makes it easy for our companies to succeed. The success of Chinese companies was not simply because business was left to its own devices and then stumbled upon working models. The Chinese government is a principal player behind the success of Chinese firms. So too with American and German companies.
Mariana Mazzucato, an economics and innovation professor, calls them “mission-orientated entrepreneurial states”, ones willing to “take on risk” to engender global competitiveness. While sorting out the budget shortfall, we must also think about how not to create long- or short-term crises.
Deputy President Paul Mashatile has been tasked with running a small committee to find budget solutions. The budget fiasco we are dealing with is Mashatile’s opportunity to lead, to show us what he’s capable of.
My problem with how the state does things — when at least it gets itself to do something — is its failure of imagination. We are caught up in resolving too many challenges that we never get time to pause and imagine what we could do that could change the face and economic DNA of our country in five, 10 or even 50 years.
Much of this is because the politicians in charge know they won’t be around in a few years, so they focus not on what will make those who come after them succeed and so benefit all of us but on tinkering with current, short-term challenges, so they’re seen — the operative word — to be doing something.
If we focus on the wrong things and perennially become unable to balance our budget, that yellow chair occupied by Zelensky will become a place we go to sell off whatever remains of this, our beautiful country — and it will be anything but chucklesome then.
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