Looking for silver linings when the sun shines

While attending the Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Yokohama, Japan, this week, President Cyril Ramaphosa relied on the oft-repeated Benjamin Franklin quote that “out of adversity comes opportunity”.

This truism was directed not at his hosts, but at South Africans imperilled by a sudden change in trade relations with the world’s biggest economy — the US. Ramaphosa’s point was that we must not despair simply because today the sun shines no more after US President Donald Trump slapped us with mind-numbing 30% tariffs certain to lead to a jobs bloodbath. To make things even plainer, Ramaphosa trotted out the old saw that “every crisis has a silver lining”. It was raining clichés.

We often fall back on these well-worn idioms to make the point that there is hope in unpleasant or challenging situations. What we never do is explain how our actions or omissions landed us in these unpleasant situations in the first place.

There’s no gainsaying that Trump is a lunatic weaponising tariffs to force Americans to buy local products, even if these are expensive, in the hope that doing so will ignite job creation in that country.

Faced with huge job losses, our leaders are forced to go out seeking opportunities and trying to spot silver linings. “We are also preparing ourselves to open new markets in the light of the tariffs that have been imposed by the US,” said Ramaphosa. But therein lies the problem. We search for silver linings when we should be searching for more opportunities when the sun shines. It is unfortunate that it takes a crisis to jolt us out of our slumbers to search for opportunities. That’s what is sad.

The ANC, for example, had to fail to garner more than 50% of the vote in the 2024 general elections for it to start talking about renewal a bit more, to create an illusion of change. Why did it not, when it still had the two-thirds support of the South African electorate, earnestly embark on efforts to cement its position as the country’s much-loved, leading political party? Why must it be out of a disaster, tragedy or whatever mishap that we start looking for something good?

With a jobs catastrophe looming, could it be that our leaders merely want to be seen trying to make, rather than genuinely making, an effort? That view may sound cynical, but hear me out. Nothing stopped us before the Trump tragedy to try as hard as we are now — or even harder — to get better deals for our country.

Nothing stopped us from thinking outside the box about keeping jobs here. We just ticked boxes and didn’t try hard enough. We spoke about beneficiation or, to quote Ramaphosa, putting an end to “exporting rocks and sand” because we knew the importance of upgrading raw ore and trading in something with increased economic value. However, we didn’t make our efforts count. We were waiting for a disaster to push us to add value to what we mined.

Nothing stopped us before the Trump tragedy to try as hard as we are now — or even harder — to get better deals for our country

We celebrated the “commodity boom” because it translated into increased tax revenue, which enabled us to govern with minimal borrowing. We erroneously thought of this temporary phenomenon as a win. We were comfortable with being an extractive rather than a processing economy. If we had genuinely wanted to create jobs here at home, we would have taken steps to add value to mined ore long ago, by creating new industries. Equally importantly, we would not have been happy merely that load-shedding had stopped — we would have been obsessing over what was needed to ensure our children never again had to develop a specific vocabulary around power outages.

What is more, we would have been looking at jobs data and noticing that unemployment was increasing despite load-shedding having ended. The jobs emergency we now face is not simply because the madman Trump has decided to impose tariffs — it is because our joblessness problem is getting worse even though all potential employers have access to the energy they require. That alone is proof that our efforts to create jobs are woefully inadequate and should have sent our leaders to Japan and all over the world seeking opportunities in good time — not when we have been knocked down and are desperate for so-called silver linings. That is self-respect, and it is evidenced by the crucial decisions we make each day and every week.

That Gen Rudzani Maphwanya in the SANDF was recently forced to take early retirement should have sent a message to everyone that negative actions attract consequences. In this regard, defence minister Angie Motshekga should have been reprimanded. These small but important decisions could change how other leaders behave.

This week, Bantu Holomisa might have had a modicum of respect for the office of deputy minister he is lucky to occupy and not have told a radio caller to “go to hell”. Gayton McKenzie probably would have been calmer and more sensitive when dealing with issues involving the K-word, even if he believed he was right. Higher education minister Buti Manamela perhaps would not have scraped the bottom of the barrel to find sector education training authority administrators and instead have showed voters some respect. Former defence minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula likely would not have used tears in the witness box to appeal to a gullible populace for sympathy. In fact, she would probably not have been in court at all.

And Patricia de Lille, the former anticorruption crusader, would not have been so bold as to dissolve boards for having had the audacity to convene a meeting to suspend the CEO of Tourism South Africa — who is not only clueless but should not have been appointed in the first place, according to a report. Yes, politics can make you mutate from being a militant Pan Africanist Congress of Azania supporter to a more moderate member of the DA, and then from a corruption buster to an apparent corruption backer, but you would hope she would think twice when exposed. The gall in soldiering on in punishing a board seeking to do the right thing beggars belief.

Yet this is what we accept as leadership. All these people will be telling us in the months ahead why they should be trusted with rescuing failing municipalities across the country. And for some reason we will again be looking for the silver lining or the opportunities in adversity. We can and must do better.