By John Fraser

Tiito one; pundits nil.

Those who were sure we would see a VAT hike in the 2020 budget have been proven wrong. 

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni says that extra taxes were looked at, but instead it was decided that now is the wrong time to put any further downward pressure on SA’s fragile economy, where GDP is growing at less than 1% a year.  The word he used was “foolhardy”.

He added:  “In difficult situations like this, it would have been far preferable to have had deeper tax cuts.”

Instead of plugging the gap with more revenue receipts, borrowing will increase, and efforts will be made to cut spending, mainly by tackling the oft-inflated wage bill of our public servants.

The taxman is being told to become more efficient, so do await that 5am knock on the door.

Undoubtedly, some budget groupies will find some fault with this, but the Finance Minister did say in his budget speech that there will be some easing of personal income tax and that he is looking at a future reduction in corporate tax.

Excise duties are up across the board, and there will be new taxes on vaping and hubbly bubbly, with higher fuel levies and more to pay on supermarket plastic bags.

Meanwhile, some of the scammiest of scam churches can now expect to have to pay tax.  Fewer luxury limos for the mammon-loving bogus men of god. 

Manufacturers get a raw deal – a major investment incentive known as 12I is being killed off, while the government is speeding ahead with a review of the whole industrial incentive framework. 

Less drama, then, in the speech itself than we had expected.

That will come if rating agency Moody’s clobbers SA with a further downgrade.

Tito had little room for manoeuvre.  So we shall have to wait and see if he has been prudent enough to stave off a kick in the teeth by those moody buggers at Moody’s

 

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By John Fraser

Like most journalists, writers, barflies and other layabouts, I spend a lot of time on the Internet.

Quite often I am reaching out to link up with companies or government departments, those who pump out info which may be of use, of interest. Or not.

However, while most organisations have an online profile, far too many have shit websites, where you can waste a lot of time and get nowhere.

In my long and extinguished career, I have myself helped with the content of websites, so I understand the motivation and the fears of those who host them.

Given the increasing importance of this communications tool, I have a few ideas which may guide those who have the task of managing websites – a far more demanding and difficult job than it may at first seem.

Why bother?

A website is important because it serves as a shop window, the first point of contact between you and interested clients, suppliers, analysts and all sorts of other irritants – who want to know who you are, what you do, whether and how they should approach you.

Keep it simple, please

In terms of content and design, the landing page of the website should be as easy to navigate and to scan as possible.   By all means, provide a lot of detail which can be accessed through drop-down menus and other portals, but for this initial handshake with a visitor, it should be simplicity itself.    Who are you, what do you do, and how do people get in contact? Pretty photos are fine but don’t sacrifice info to aesthetics.

Contacts are vital 

A well-designed and managed website should be an invitation to engage, and should not annoy and frustrate.   I often seek the media contact of an organisation when I surf around a website, and this is often a fruitless search.   They normally post their media releases and communications to investors – but frequently the contact details are missing from these.   Instead, you are invited to fill in a contact form, and more often than not this is a waste of time.  If you employ people to engage with outsiders, put their cell numbers and e-mail addresses in a prominent place, for all to reach.   If you don’t give a toss about the world, close down the website and piss off down the pub.

Keep it accurate and updated

Government departments are the worst, but all too often we see websites which need a daily spring-clean, which are of more interest to historians than to those of us living and working in the present.    One news site in South Africa has had a story saying President Cyril Ramaphosa is in Brazil – which has been there for the many months since his return.  It looks bad – and, after all, a website is a showcase. If you look sloppy here, where is the confidence that you are not sloppy everywhere?

So get working on an efficient, friendly, helpful website.

And then we can chat about the minefield which is twitter………

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Former South African President FW De Klerk at the opening of parliament recently. The Economic Freedom Fighters objected to his presence. EFE-EPA/Reuters Pool

By Roger Southall, University of the Witwatersrand

FW De Klerk, South Africa’s last apartheid-era president, and his foundation have learnt the hard way the dangers of the comparative politics of sin.

He recently gave an interview to mark his historic speech to parliament on 2 February 1990 when he announced the freeing of Nelson Mandela and unbanning of political organisations.

During the interview on the national TV broadcaster, when he was asked for his thoughts on the declaration by the United Nations that apartheid was a crime against humanity, he replied:

I don’t fully agree with that.

He went on to assert that he was not justifying apartheid in any way whatsoever, saying:

But there is a difference between calling something a crime. Like genocide is a crime. Apartheid cannot be, for instance, compared with genocide. There was never a genocide.

He added that more black people were killed by other black people than by the National Party government.

But in making this statement he conveniently chose to forget that a great deal of violence was fomented by the government’s security forces.

De Klerk was immediately engulfed in controversy.

Condemnation of his statement came in thick and fast. Big names entered the fray, including former president Thabo Mbeki and Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.

The South African Council of Churches issued a statement, as did the governing African National Congress (ANC).

And the opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, called for his ejection from parliament when President Cyril Ramaphosa was waiting to deliver his State of Nation speech.

De Klerk’s foundation responded by dismissing the UN’s statement as a product of Soviet-style ‘agitprop’.

This aroused yet more popular fury. Such was the outcry that De Klerk opted for an immediate and humiliating retreat, issuing an abject apology, and insisting that he remained firmly committed to the politics of national reconciliation.

His foundation also backtracked. It issued an apology for any anger and hurt caused. In its statement, it said it agreed with the International Criminal Court’s definition of a crime against humanity as acts:

committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.

But it’s unlikely the incident has brought about a sea-change in De Klerk’s personal beliefs, or the political assumptions that guide his foundation.

Indeed, it is not unlikely that his twin beliefs – that apartheid was not a crime against humanity and that apartheid cannot be equated with genocide – are shared by many white South Africans, even though they are rarely so incautiously stated in public.

This is why it’s important to take a little time to challenge them.  Let’s start with the issue of apartheid’s killings not amounting to genocide. If the body count is the only criterion for mass killings to qualify as genocide, then it has to be acknowledged that there is truth in De Klerk’s statement.

The thousands killed under apartheid cannot reasonably be compared to the millions systematically exterminated by, most notoriously, the Nazis during the Holocaust of European Jews between 1941 and 1945.

But is the argument that “we weren’t so bad as the Nazis” really one with which De Klerk really wants to be associated? Can that be regarded as a moral defence, especially if we recall that apartheid was implemented in the wake of World War II, following the revelation of the horrors that had taken place in the Nazi death camps in the name of racial supremacy?

It is, in any event, of no great comfort to people suffering from brutality of any kind to be told that there is always someone else who is suffering worse than them.

Now to the question of the description of apartheid as a crime against humanity.

De Klerk might well respond that his National Party implemented apartheid in good faith in 1948, believing it to be a moral course of action whereby the white minority and black majority could live peacefully and productively alongside one another, without either one dominating the other.

He might back this up by adding that this benevolent view of apartheid was shared and propagated by the Dutch Reformed Churches and that the National Party of the time was confident it was pursuing a genuinely Christian policy.

But De Klerk would also need to engage with the fact that this position was challenged by such outstanding individuals as the anti-apartheid theologian and fellow Afrikaner Beyers Naude. And, the Dutch Reformed Church belatedly confessed that apartheid was a sin.

Despite all these qualifications, it seems that De Klerk continues to find it hard to accept that apartheid was a crime against humanity.

But, the position that apartheid was a crime against humanity was established and pursued by the UN because, first, apartheid entrenched racial superiority and inferiority, and second, it systematically enforced the inferiority and oppression of black South Africans through law.

Questions for philosophers and historians

It is also now well established, even if De Klerk professes not to have known about the atrocities committed by apartheid security forces at the time, that these were a systematic accompaniment of apartheid law, and that in any case, the law was broken by the regime’s operatives if and when they found it convenient to do so.

It was not legal to torture people in detention. But the state did just that, resulting in the deaths of hundreds.

Among them were the trade unionist Neil Aggett, activist Ahmed Timol and black consciousness movement leader Steve Biko.

De Klerk should accept that doubting the criminality of apartheid is an insult to their memories and their families.

He has apologised for causing hurt and offence to South Africans. Let us accept that this apology was genuine.

Nonetheless, we are left with the impression that the former president remains insensitive to the feelings of the mass of South Africans.

He is simply out of touch.

If he learns nothing else from this incident, it is that he should leave assessments of the moral qualities of apartheid to the philosophers and historians – and shut up.

Roger Southall is Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Thomas Hastings, Queen’s University Belfast

Echoes of apartheid-style exploitation of workers have resurfaced in recent years in South Africa. Debates around these malpractices were given fresh impetus four years ago with the release of a documentary, Bitter Grapes. Produced by Danish journalist Tom Heinemann, it featured workers from South Africa’s Winelands.

Bitter Grapes cast light on wide-ranging exploitation. Hardships included health and safety violations, underpayment of wages, and illegal efforts by producers to restrict trade union access on farms. These conditions sit uneasily with South Africa’s progressive constitution. They also run counter to numerous International Labour Organisation conventions relating to organised labour rights that the country has signed.

In a recent research paper, I outlined the case for greater optimism around working conditions on wine farms – due in part to the activism which helped create the documentary.

Worker’s networked activism

Key to the production of Bitter Grapes was the role of Ethical Wine Trade Campaign. This was a collaboration of worker organisations and solidarity movements across South Africa, Sweden, Chile and Argentina. All are important wine regions. (Ed: Sweden?).

The campaign makes use of local knowledge about conditions in Winelands in the Global South. This can be used to apply pressure to improve conditions in wine supply chains. An example is the role played by the campaign in connecting actors in Scandinavia and South Africa which informed and made possible the Bitter Grapes documentary. Subsequently, the film has proved key in creating regulatory reforms.

The Commercial Stevedoring and Allied Workers Union played a vital role in the campaign.

The impact of Bitter Grapes reflects a strategy to connect activists in different places connected to common sectors. The links between South Africa and Scandinavia are not incidental. Nordic countries consume around 10% of all South African wine exports. This is mainly via the country’s state monopoly retailers – Systembolaget in Sweden and Vinmonopolet. They have the sole licence for selling alcohol on the high streets of Norway and Sweden. Both governments have faced pressure to better regulate supply chains which are directly funded by taxpayers.

In my paper, I examined how labour can use networks to create public pressure on governments and firms to better regulate supply chains. This has the potential to improve working standards and opportunities. In particular, I look at changes in the regulation of work conditions that have resulted.

Improvements

Several changes to wine farm regulation have emerged since Bitter Grapes, on the back of moral and political appeals to European consumers.

The first set of changes is around formal state-led labour inspections. After Bitter Grapes, the South African labour inspectorate investigated (and verified) several claims made in the documentary. Subsequently, the inspectorate has shown greater interest in the rural sector and has committed to more dialogue with trade unions in gathering intelligence about worker exploitation.

Secondly, there have been major changes in the private regulation of wine producers. A key private labour standards monitor in South Africa, the Wine and Agricultural Ethical Trade Association, has adjusted the way it operates. It has responded to concerns by committing to auditing farms more frequently.

And it’s agreed to use a more transparent grading system. This change will mean that poorly-performing farms are now confronted with a genuine trading threat. Farms getting a low score in an audit are now – in theory – unlikely to be able to sell products to major retailers in Europe.

For their part, Vinmonopolet and Systembolaget have sought to improve standards in wine production through additional strategies. Vinmonopolet commissioned a series of independent audits and developed a new eight-point assessment for producers to adhere to. Findings confirmed a range of “critical” risks in several wine farms.

Systembolaget, meanwhile, has adopted a new and novel approach to reporting standards violations spurred by the Swedish trade union Unionen. This has included a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Food Workers’ Federation. The memorandum is intended to support unions on the ground and offers a reporting mechanism for unions operating on the ground in South Africa, ultimately feeding information back to Systembolaget in Sweden.

Lessons learnt

The creation of progressive labour laws is important in securing improved standards of work. But laws in themselves remain limited in their effectiveness in industries where workers are hidden and isolated, and where inspectorates struggle to attend to the work realities on the ground.

That’s why regulation is so important.

The case study I have done shows that workers are capable of influencing both private and public forms of regulation in their interests. This involves the creation of consumer boycotts, as well as supply lines of pressure from within corporate networks which producers will struggle to ignore.

Workers not only create pressure to reform laws and regulation: they can influence the strategies for policing labour standards too, for example by getting the labour inspectorate to be more active.

In this instance, workers have helped re-orientate regulatory agencies away from merely nudging companies to improve conditions towards a stronger regulatory model with a threat of sanction.

Others could learn from the collaborative networks that were formed.

Despite this positive story it is important to stress that the job of improving labour standards in South African wine is far from finished. Issues such as evictions of workers and the over-reliance on casual labour (often via labour brokers) are not typically addressed by either labour inspectorates or private codes of conduct.

The need for transnational worker activism in monitoring labour standards is sure to remain relevant.

Thomas Hastings, Lecturer in Management, Queen’s University Belfast

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Mcebisi Ndletyana, University of Johannesburg

Is it possible that South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa has become a “lame duck” president? This often happens towards the end of a leader’s term, especially when a successor has already been identified. But Ramaphosa is not even halfway through his first term.

That I even to ask the question suggests that I have doubts that Ramaphosa is making the necessary decisions. By that I mean catalytic decisions that will define the legacy of his presidency and the fate of the country.

Ramaphosa has the misfortune of being president at the most challenging time in the life of post-apartheid South Africa. Economic activity is at its lowest, with growth this year estimated at below 1%.

The country’s tax agency will collect R250bn below what was forecast in the 2019 budget over the next three years. And unemployment – at 29,1% – remains a grave concern, although perhaps not as immediate a danger as dwindling revenues. South Africa has a massive welfare safety net – from free education and health to monetary grants – which has cushioned the country’s poor against the ravages of unemployment.

But because the tax agency is collecting less – the result of companies closing and jobs being lost – the little that goes into public coffers should be spent prudently.

Is it being spent prudently?

The answer is a resounding no. Nor does the president’s State of the Nation address offer much comfort. It showed that he has a preference for less contentious matters that attract praise. And there were such easy wins in the speech. They included relaxing regulations for independent producers to generate energy and allowing municipalities to procure renewable energy. Students were promised more accommodation and aspiring business people should expect a state bank that will provide affordable loans to start a business.

These are all commendable measures, unlikely to attract any derision – at least not immediately. But the country’s problems will not be solved through safe decisions. This is a “decisive moment”, as the president himself acknowledged, that requires equally bold moves and vocal support for cabinet ministers carrying out his instructions.

The State of the Nation address showed, once again, Ramaphosa’s proclivity to avoid tackling contentious issues. Examples abound, but one of the most telling is his handling of the crisis at the national airline, South African Airways.

Bungling big decisions

South African Airways has been surviving on government bail-outs. After the previous CEO, Vuyo Jarana, quit in exasperation in June 2019, the government eventually conceded that the airline was unsustainable in its current form. Tito Mboweni, the finance minister, thought the airline should simply be shut down, or sold to a private owner. But the government figured that it could still be salvaged. Its preferred course of action was to put it through business rescue.

The understanding was that the rescue practitioners would do whatever was necessary to turn the national airline around.

But when it came to actually doing what was necessary to rescue the airline, the rescue practitioners soon began to realise that they didn’t have carte blanche. This became clear after they’d announced the cancellation of unprofitable routes, a step taken to reduce operational costs.

Khensani Kubayi-Ngubane, the minister of tourism, disagreed with the decision. Some of the cancelled flights, she protested, would harm the tourism industry. The minister’s protestation was understandable – she was protecting her own territory. What was bewildering was Ramaphosa agreeing with her.

As the president, he ought to have a broader appreciation that cutting costs would ease pressure on the airline’s finances. Moreover, the president should know that decisions like this hardly please everybody. A president who has to balance various interests against each other goes with the decision that guarantees the maximum results.

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Read more:
Public approval is Ramaphosa’s only defence against his enemies in the ANC

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The president didn’t even provide a viable alternative plan. In his State of the Nation address, he said only that the “business rescue practitioners are expected to unveil their plans for restructuring the airline in the next few weeks”. It’s not clear from this whether the plan will be formulated entirely by the practitioners.

Government’s discomfort over the reduction of routes suggests that it wants to determine what the plan should be. This shows its reluctance to allow the practitioners to do what is necessary, however unpleasant, to make the airline commercially viable.

But finding funds to bail it out once more looks increasingly unsustainable. The latest injection – a R3.6bn loan from the Development Bank of Southern Africa – can’t be repeated. And any decision to take additional money out of government coffers will negatively affect other things.

As it is, the minister of finance has the unenviable task of finding money for all the things the president has promised. But Mboweni won’t be able to source money for students and aspirant entrepreneurs without denying others. And he’s likely to have to deal with an even more crippled national power utility as Eskom loses income when consumers –- especially companies and municipalities – opt for independent producers of energy.

And assuming Mboweni does find the money somewhere, will the president come to his defence when he’s attacked?

Formidable foes

It is difficult to sustain a fight against formidable foes all alone without support. Mboweni appears to be showing signs of resilience against severe criticism from the left-wing of the party. But Pravin Gordhan, minister of public enterprises, doesn’t seem to be doing as well. Since taking over this portfolio, Gordhan has exposed widespread maladministration and corruption in state-owned enterprises and led the call for prosecutions.

Yet, after repeatedly supporting the restructuring of the airline, he also backtracked when business rescuers cut down on routes. This suggests he is taking a lot of strain and may be capitulating. It’s not surprising as his detractors even include the country’s deputy president, David Mabuza.

Mabuza is unhappy that Gordhan has bypassed the governing party’s deployment committee when making appointments to boards of parastatals. The committee was partly responsible for appointing unscrupulous individuals that looted parastatals and its current head, Mabuza, is not known for propriety. But Ramaphosa has not been vocal in his public support for Gordhan.

Ramaphosa appears not to have realised that routine decisions are akin to inaction, no different from being a lame duck. Lack of support will alienate allies, which will leave him vulnerable to detractors. Without ardent supporters, Ramaphosa may not even conclude his first term. He has formidable enemies.

Mcebisi Ndletyana, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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By John Fraser

As a ubiquitous tax, VAT has many critics.

Whereas income tax or corporate tax have thresholds below which your earnings are not plundered,  VAT applies to all purchasers of goods and services.  There are a few ‘zero-rated’ exemptions for sanitary pads, bread flour, cake flour and a limited list of other necessities.

(Bizarrely, my own necessities of whisky, red wine and foie gras do not receive the same humane treatment.)

Rich or poor, black or white, male or female – paying VAT on most stuff is as inevitable as death.   It is unfair but is seen to be a necessary instrument for topping up the government coffers.

Which is why Tito Mboweni’s looming budget – due to be inflicted on us all on the 26th of this month – is going to be a tough one.

Accountancy firm PwC believes that even with some spending cuts, and taking into account tax rises which are already in the pipeline, around R25bn more will have to be raised.

Some of this from VAT.

The only question is whether the Finance Minister Tito Mboweni will take VAT up from the current 15% to 15.5% or to 16%.

“There will be no option but to pull the VAT lever,” warned PwC tax supremo Kyle Mandy.

And his economist colleague Lullu Krugel agreed there are tough times ahead: “This is the toughest budget since 1994,” she argued.

These are not lone voices, crying in the wilderness.  No one seriously believes that we can have a soothing, pain-free budget on the 26th.

Given the plague-like indiscrimination of VAT, this tax-hike which is so widely expected will hit customers in shabeens and in the plushest of restaurants, shoppers in Spaza stores and in Woolworths.

Like government corruption, it will be impossible to escape.

That’s VAT.

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By John Fraser

With South Africans facing daily misery due to rolling power cuts, and power utility Eskom in the deepest financial doo-doo, it would be nice to think that our banks would be riding to the rescue.

Solar panels are one of the cleanest and greenest ways of energy generation – but where are the aggressive ads, the phone campaigns, the prompts every time you log-on to internet banking to see how broke you are?

The economic case for solar installation/conversion is increasingly compelling.

As the cost of Eskom-generated electricity shoots up in multiples of the inflation rate, the cost of solar installations is steadily falling.

Yes, there is a high initial outlay, but the business case for reducing your dependence on the grid is strong.

Add the bonus that home-generation reduces both consumption from, and reliance on, Eskom – and you have a winner.

In time we will be moving to more and more ownership of electric vehicles. These need charging, and what wonder if you can do this from the sun, instead of relying on the unreliable, and costly, Eskom.

Add a few storage batteries to your kit, and you can keep the lights burning and the TV blaring throughout the period in which Eskom decrees that you should sit in the dark.

But back to the financing…..

Banks and related institutions are falling over one another to offer (the solvent) loans to buy houses and cars.

These can be structured so that there are manageable monthly payments, and once the loan is paid off, the customer owns the asset.

But where are the finance packages for converting your home to solar?

They may exist, but they are bloody well-hidden.

What I want to see is a crusade by the banks to pour funds into lending cash for solar conversions – not just in homes, but for commercial buildings as well.

Just as you are steered towards financing when you buy a car, so there should be an oven-ready, simple and affordable finance deal on offer to every eligible home-owner with solar aspirations.

Solar is the future.

If only the banks would stop living in the past!

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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has to inspire confidence amid growing scepticism. GCIS

Susan Booysen, University of the Witwatersrand

The spotlight will be firmly on South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as he runs the gauntlet of delivering the annual state of the nation address on behalf of the governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), and his government on Thursday.

This year’s speech is light-years removed from the promise of a new beginning he offered in his first state of the nation address in February 2018. This was delivered soon after he took over from Jacob Zuma. The hope then was that constructive new policy initiatives and definitive repair of damaged state institutions would emerge.

In contrast, all indications are that South Africa’s political and financial landscape is parched. Yet it is Ramaphosa’s job in the state of the nation address to highlight the silver linings. It is, after all, a pre-election year. South Africans go to the polls to elect a new local government in 2021.

Ramaphosa will undermine his own prospects as well as those of the ANC if he and the governing party cannot create reasons for voters to keep on believing that the ANC is able to bring change.

This won’t be easy given the odds are stacked against the government having what it takes to fix South Africa’s problems. There is growing cynicism among citizens – and a good reason for the despondency.

Many of the country’s problems have become intractable: political and economic conditions in the country remain stark. And the areas of action and hope identified last year have not responded favourably to the promises that were made and plans that were announced.

In fact, there has been a regression.

Despite this, the president needs to present new approaches and put a fresh spin on the ANC’s stabs at stubborn problems. He needs to offer assurances that the core problems are being addressed on a scale that will make an actual difference.

The list

The set of interrelated issues that beg to be addressed definitively in this year’s speech, Ramaphosa’s fourth, include:

• poor economic growth that is draining jobs instead of creating new opportunities,
• a handful of state-owned enterprises that continue to bleed the fiscus and sabotage the economy,
• Unacceptably high levels of crime, femicide and general lawlessness,
• An expansive civil service that eats up at least 35% of the national budget,
• an energy crisis that’s demoralising the citizenry and sapping business confidence, and
• concerns that land reform proceeds haphazardly, torn between possible lapses in constitutionalism and an executive that wants to score political points – while many citizens remain deprived.

This set of problems, at a minimum, need definitive announcements that will show that the ANC government is capable of extracting South Africa from the quagmire.

Ramaphosa and his government need to reallocate funds to make the necessary interventions work and ensure improved state efficiency and effectiveness.

It is a tall order.

But who is in charge?

The challenge to deliver a persuasive speech comes firstly in the context of intense doubts as to whether Ramaphosa is truly in charge of the ANC. Or who else is, if he’s not.

ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and his faction, acting as the actual political opposition, has only got a fraction of the popular support that Ramaphosa has. Despite agitation against Ramaphosa within the ANC, he remains the pull factor that brings the party more popular support than it would have without him. He helps the ANC retain its dominance.

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Read more: Public approval is Ramaphosa’s only defence against his enemies in the ANC

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But this may not last. His acrimonious legal fight with the country’s Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane could very well dent this.

The ANC’s factionally-indulgent policy wars, whether on land reform or stake-holding and mandate of the SA Reserve Bank, also advance the perceptions of ANC weakness and leadership indecisiveness.

Major surprises during the state of the nation address have also been minimised by the fact that the ANC has been through a thorough internal process to identify key policy areas, and what it wants to focus on.

This process started on January 8 when Ramaphosa delivered the ANC’s annual anniversary statement. It highlighted the priorities of the ANC-in-government for 2020.

This was followed by a meeting of the ANC’s national executive committee, the party’s highest decision-making body in between its five-yearly national conferences. Speaking on the outcome Ramaphosa assured South Africa that the party deliberations had

forged a clear and concrete programme to address the challenges the nation faces.

He admitted that the ANC had “fallen short” in implementing its policies and had “devised realistic measures to address these”.

The next step in the process was the adoption of a set of proposals by the ANC’s national executive lekgotla. This annual gathering precedes the cabinet lekgotla and informs the agenda of the government for the year ahead.

The plans that emerged were recognisable from previous plans. These included the proposal to rationalise state-owned enterprises. For example, the unbundling of Eskom, the troubled power utility, seemed to gain momentum from the national executive committee and lekgotla deliberations.

What exactly the outcome will be remains unclear, however, as the labour federation Cosatu, has tabled its own plan. This is against unbundling Eskom. Cosatu is the ANC’s governing alliance partner, along with the South African Communist Party. Its proposal for the power utility appears to be gaining momentum.

Further signs that the ANC is still not singing from one hymnbook came days earlier when Gwede Mantashe, the Minister of Minerals and Energy and in the top leadership of the ANC, floated the idea broadly of establishing a new government-owned electricity company and permitting businesses to generate power.

All this points to the fact that energy can be expected to be one of the state of the nation address pivots.

Limited options

Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address options are limited. Shrinking numbers of South Africans believe the ANC has solutions that would justify trust in the government.

A small way out for the ANC in 2020 going into 2021 will be to ensure that civil servants remain in their jobs. That will go a long way to ensuring that Cosatu remains a loyal governing alliance partner.

Another way out for governing party is to make sure that the social grant system, which benefits 17 million South Africans, remains lubricated and that Eskom keeps the lights on.

But given the enormity of what needs to be done, and what Ramaphosa can actually achieve, the state of the nation address is unlikely to confound the cynics.

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By John Fraser

The podcast pack is back.  Sampling a wine which honours the wild dog.  It is a 2018 Roussanne from Painted Wolf – The Pack.

Guest tasters are economist Ian Cruickshanks, brander Jeremy Sampson, consultant Duane Newman, and IT superstar Malcolm MacDonald.

There is also an animated discussion of government support (hardly any) for the SA wine industry and some reflections on the too-slow transformation of the industry.

Click here to enjoy the fun:

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Do also check out:   http://www.michaelolivier.co.za