K A I Z E R M N Y A T S U M B A
Nyatsumba is CEO of the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of Southern
Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
D E CE MB ER 1 2 , 2 0 1 7
As 2017 draws to a close, SA is mired in controversies and on the brink of a financial
precipice. The country finds itself at its worst since the dawn of democracy: the
business confidence index is at its lowest since 1985, at the height of the punitive
economic sanctions imposed by some in the international community against PW
Botha’s apartheid government.
We have become weary of political and financial scandals, mostly involving our political
mandarins and those closely connected to them in the public sector.
Our head of state is the butt of endless, justifiable jokes and has proved to be a major
liability to SA Inc. He is in many ways responsible for the parlous state in which we
find ourselves.
Disclosures or allegations of malfeasance and other forms of corruption are made on
almost a weekly basis, and these appear merely to disappear into the ether, without
any visible consequences for those said to be the perpetrators. In a mere 23 years,
we have moved from being the darling of the international community to being
described as one of the most corrupt countries in the world today.
Our economy is limping along. Unemployment has reached frightening proportions
and continues to grow. While we began 2017 with much hope, in a matter of months,
international ratings agencies downgraded us from investment grade to junk status,
with worse likely to come before the year is over, thanks to the destructive leadership
of President Jacob Zuma and his merry band of myopic and insatiable supporters, who
can see no further than their own noses.
This was supposed to be the year in which our economy took a turn for the better
after a number of years of merely plodding along. Various forecasts had anticipated
GDP growth of about 1.2% in 2017, with higher growth levels expected in 2018 and
beyond. With global demand for mining commodities recovering somewhat, SA was
supposed to reap the benefits.
At a time when the country is crying out for inspirational leadership that rallies all of
us to a common goal, we have the exact opposite: a leadership vacuum characterised
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by noise, with whatever passes for leadership focused exclusively on personal survival
and wealth accumulation by any means necessary.
We have a governing party riven with tension and completely internally focused, with
much of its energy expended on fighting internal battles. On the rare occasions when
it does focus externally, it casts about for imaginary enemies.
Whatever its causes, the sad truth remains that post-1994, SA has never been as
divided as it is now. Racial, sometimes ethnic, cleavages are far more pronounced
now than at any time in our democratic era.
With our economy performing so dismally owing to the poor economic stewardship
we have experienced from our political leaders, fervent and legitimate cries have
echoed everywhere for our economy to be radically transformed to include the black
majority, whose equity in SA Inc is negligible, only to be countered by the
understandable but mistaken refrain that all our efforts should be focused on growing
our shrinking economic cake.
There is a clear, mistaken belief among some of our compatriots that real
transformation cannot — and should not — take place until the economy grows. While
a growing economy should make transformation easier, the reality is that
transformation cannot wait until then. There is no reason why we cannot advance
transformation even as we seek to grow the economy.
There are primarily two reasons for the widening and more pronounced racial tension
in the country.
The first is that, with the exceptions of some individuals within it, the Zuma
government has excelled at embracing and celebrating incompetence, mediocrity and
outright malfeasance, in the process giving potent ammunition to those who had
always had doubts about black leadership.
In other words, the Zuma government did a fantastic job in supporting or affirming
the stereotype among recovering racists that black people make terrible leaders and
cannot run a sophisticated, modern economy.
Given the terrible manner in which the scandal-prone Zuma has acquitted himself in
office, even decent white compatriots who believed SA could be an exception on the
African continent have started to doubt their initial optimism.
Yet what SA needs to realise its full potential is for us to leverage the strengths and
talents of our compatriots. We need to work together as fellow citizens, with
government, business and labour as strategic partners
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Second, our stuttering economy has made competition for opportunities and financial
resources that much more acute, in the process sharpening the racial chasm.
After all, while many may not consciously carry along with them the demon of racism,
it is when they believe themselves likely to be locked out of opportunities to get jobs
or rise professionally in their jobs, or when they believe they will be forced to give up
or share their wealth — through the ownership component of the broad-based black
economic empowerment policy, for instance — that they retreat to a mental laager
and feel impelled to fight back, often covertly given the considerable risks attached to
doing so overtly.
Yet what SA needs to realise its full potential is for us to leverage the strengths and
talents of our compatriots. We need to work together as fellow citizens, with
government, business and labour as strategic partners. We need to establish common
goals that are indubitably in the country’s best interests and to work together single-
mindedly towards their attainment.
As citizens, at election times, we need to ensure that we do not give any one party
too much power in terms of the electoral majority it obtains. We need to make sure
that we disabuse politicians of the mistaken belief that, once elected, they wield
inordinate power. We need to do more than just remind them; we need to make them
feel that collectively we, the people, wield all the power and they are merely our
servants, whom we can ditch at will or reward with another term in office for good
performance.
Like ordinary citizens, business has an important role to play. By all means, it should
continue to make its collective voice heard, but it has an even greater responsibility
not only to respect and observe the country’s laws (including those dealing with
transformation and black economic empowerment) but also to team up with the
elected government and labour to rebuild our country.
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