There’s something about politicians once they leave office – voluntarily or otherwise. Suddenly they see the world in clear, simple terms. Former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas’s new book, After Dawn: Hope after State Capture, offers evidence of this.
Reading it, one could be forgiven for thinking Jonas was an academic who had recently taken an interest in the affairs of SA, rather than a veteran politician.
He is frank in his diagnosis. He readily admits SA failed to grow sufficiently to broaden the democratic dividend.
The average annual growth of 1.8% SA recorded in the past 10 years, is half the average since 1994. And it’s well below the 3.1% global average of the past 25 years. He then points out the obvious: “We are falling behind in a global context and in meeting the hopes, now, of two generations of South Africans”.
Jonas notes that it may be tempting to attribute this sad record to SA’s colonial (and apartheid) past. But SA’s growth path – 37.5% in per capita income since 1994 – looks wan in comparison with Singapore’s 437% spurt in its first 24 years of independence, Vietnam’s 241% jump after the war with the US, and Malaysia’s 188% per capita income growth.
“Our excuses pale by comparison,” says Jonas, adding that we have made poor strategic decisions for short-term interest.
This is the same politician who campaigned for the ANC in every election cycle on the ticket that it was doing a magnificent job of governing.
Jonas correctly laments the corruption that has hobbled SA. But he is loath to attribute it to his own party. Not only has institutionalised corruption torn the dreams of two generations of a people asunder; the party of corruption – Jonas’s ANC – is eating itself alive.
Jonas – again correctly – points out the role trade unions have played in limiting growth and rendering SA largely uninvestable.
But, predictably, he falls short of demanding the remedy: to reset industrial relations and limit the power of unions. There can be no doubt SA’s stringent labour regulations are a result of past human rights abuses.
The questions for Jonas are: When did you become aware of your comrades’ destructive role? And what did you do to correct that?
Even with his newfound freedom of expression, Jonas fails to offer the solutions he knows the markets want: liberalise the economy by limiting the government’s role, and sell the noncore and failing entities it owns.
The best he does is call for partnerships with the private sector. But who would put their money in a company controlled by this government?
Jonas fails to acknowledge that the ANC – along with the rest of SA’s parties – is not fit to govern. The brains that created our problems cannot be the brains that will solve them. For that we need a different, and better, set of brains. It’s not that those masquerading as our leaders don’t know what must be done.
The solutions have been obvious for a long time: let the people elect their president directly. Then, unshackle that president from the selfish demands of a party clinging to past glories and unworkable visions of socialism.
Perhaps the title of Jonas’s book is prophetic. The “new dawn” seems to have faded even before the sun has come out.