Hello and welcome to the So What podcast, in which political economic analyst JP Landman
discusses the issues uppermost in the minds of South Africans. You can find a written
version of this content on JP's website, jplandman.co.za. I am Ruda Landman and I am your host.
These first few recordings were done at our dining room table, but we will soon be moving
into a studio.
Hello and welcome once again to a recording to accompany JP's newsletter. This one dated
the 26th of April 2022 under the title Connecting the Dots. It is going to be slightly longer
than usual because the newsletter is slightly longer than usual. Maybe you want to listen
to it in a few sessions, maybe you want to pour yourself a glass of wine and settle in.
Why use the metaphor of dots and connecting the dots?
It was Steve Jobs who said you can only connect the dots backwards, you cannot connect it
forward. I think that is absolutely applicable to where we are in South Africa in terms of
political analysis. There are a lot of forecasts going around, a lot of predictions going around,
a lot of comment going around. What I do in this newsletter is simply to focus on things
that actually have happened. The dots are already on the page. We don't want to speculate
about what the page will look like. The dots are on the page. So it's a backward looking
methodology if you want. We connect the dots and then we see what the dots tell us. That's
basically what I do in this newsletter.
The first group of dots, if I can put it that way, concern macroeconomic policy, macroeconomic
framework. What exactly does that mean?
Macroeconomic policy refers to two things. First of all, monetary policy or interest
rates, independent reserve bank, inflation, fighting inflation and so on. That's all monetary
policy. Fiscal policy is the second leg, second part of macro policy and that refers to government
finances. Now, in the most up-to-date growth theory that we have in the world, that is
one of the five critical elements of an economy that would like to grow. That is you've got
to have stable macroeconomic policy. In other words, stable monetary policy and stable fiscal
policy. Now, I think what has been done in South Africa in the last couple of years,
if we connect the dots, are quite remarkable. If I can go to monetary policy first, let's
go back to the ANC's conference in December 2017 at NASFEC. There was a resolution adopted
that the South African Reserve Bank must be nationalized and it must become part of the
public sector or it must be in government ownership. Also at that conference, there
were all kinds of noises made about changing the inflation targeting regime in South Africa.
Eighteen months after the conference in June 2019, Ismail Shula, who was then still Secretary
General of the ANC, pushed the envelope a bit further. He issued a press statement to
say that the government should pursue quantity easing. He didn't get a quantitative, but
he got to quantity easing and he said that should be government policy. Also in that
time, ex-President Zuma issued a tweet in which he said that quantity easing is indeed
government policy and if a government doesn't implement that, the government can be recalled.
He clearly made a threat there. He would recall that at the same time, the public protector
in her infinite wisdom issued a report in which he said the inflation targeting regime
in the country must be recalled and the mandate of the Reserve Bank must be changed. There
was a huge amount of political pressure on the bank. If you connect those dots in 2017,
2018, 2019, you can see to what extent there was a total onslaught on the South African
Reserve Bank and by implication on independent monetary policy. In June 2019, on precisely
Tuesday, the 4th of June 2019, Ismail Shula issued that statement of his, which prompted
Mr. Zuma's tweet and so on. 48 hours later, on Thursday, the 6th of June, the top six
of the ANC issued a statement from the Tully House to say, this is not the policy of the
ANC. The position of the bank remains unchanged. The authority of the Minister of Finance to
decide on the inflation target was reconfirmed and that was put out as official government
policy. Ismail Shula then find himself in a terrible position that 48 hours after he
issued a statement, he now had to issue another statement on behalf of the organization and
he is one of the top six have to sign it, committing the ANC to the opposite of what
he propagated. There was a clear, clear, clear victory for Mr. Ramaphosa for sound monetary
policy and I think we can put June 2019 down as the month on which the tide was turned
on the Reserve Bank. Not the only important developments, there were also court cases,
but that's a different set of dots and that has to do with a legal fight. I'm focusing
here on the political dots. Also in that statement of the 6th of June 2019, the top six said,
look, it is the policy of the ANC that the bank should be in public ownership, but we
realize that there's a cost involved in it, in other words, you would have to pay shareholders
out. In our current fiscal situation, we do not have the money for that and it's not prudent
to pursue that option. So that put the whole Reserve Bank thing to bed, so to speak. Now
note the dates here. We're talking June 2019, but it was long before a thing called COVID.
It was long before that disaster hit us. It was quite clear which way the political wing
was blowing. So if you look back since that time, since June 2019, it's now almost three
years later, the status of the bank has grown further. Its independence is more assured.
We've really deflected or defeated that attack that we saw on the sub-African Reserve Bank.
So that's what the dots and monetary policy tell me. If you look at fiscal policy, it's
much the same story. And there the turning point for me was in February 2019, more than
three years ago, when the president in the state of the nation speech that February said
very, very clearly, quote, we will not spend our way out of our economic troubles, unquote.
Again, that was before COVID. So that was not on the table at all, where he said, we
cannot carry on in the way that we've been going. We've got to curb our spending. And
that has been stuck to. Now in 2020, of course, we got COVID and government expenditure, including
at least considerably. But here is the benchmark. The economy shrank by about six and a half
percent. We now know looking back. At the time, government stimulation measures to try
and keep the economy going came to about 5.5 percent. And that is within the rule of thumb.
The rule of thumb is if the economy contracts by five or 10 percent, then you must stimulate
by five or 10 percent. And that's precisely what we've done. In fact, the one criticism
many people make against the government on this particular dot is that we should have
spent a bit more. Five point five percent was not enough. We should have spent six or
seven percent. Whatever that is, that is what the dot tells us. In 2019 also, when the president
made that speech, it was three months before the election. And the chatteling classes were
going ballistic about how we're going to see a splurge of spending. Looking back, what
does the dot tell us? The dot tells us that in that election here, spending was only 0.3
percent more than the ceiling which was set by Treasury. I really don't think that's
a catastrophe. In fact, I think it's quite an achievement. So if you look back at the
COVID, you look back at the Natal unrest that we had in 2021, you look back at the load
shedding that we had on top of COVID, then I think the fact that government succeeded
in staying the course of expenditure is no mean achievement. Now, how did that come about?
People immediately want to say, oh, it's because there was a commodity boom and we got extra
money from there and that helped us. That's quite right. There was a commodity boom, but
before the commodity boom, in other words, in the first half of 2021, two other things
happened. First, government took a very firm stance on civil service increases and broke
their negotiated agreement with the unions on three years of guaranteed increases. Now,
the political significance of this mustn't escape one. Ramaphosa was brought into power
with the support of Kusato, also others, but definitely Kusato. Now he goes and he breaks
an agreement which was negotiated with them. His government breaks it and he says, we can't
give that to you. That is not a sign of political weakness. That is not a sign of not looking
after your fiscal expenditure. So that year, the increases were null. In the following
year, the increases were kept to a minimum and we will see what happens in 2022. But
certainly the tough decisions to tackle civil service increases have been made and the consequences
are working through. How do we know that? Because in April, Moody's changed their outlook
for South Africa from negative to stable. So clearly they can see that the dots are lining
up behind prudent fiscal policy. Then we had the lucky break of extra money from the commodity
boom and again, government didn't squander it. It was used to reduce the deficit and
of course, part of it was used to subsidize people after the Natal unrest. So I'm very
happy if we look back, that fiscal and monetary policy that we're meeting the requirements
of what has to be done in that area. And that's what I think what the dots tell us.
Something that your newsletter also points out and that I think we must actually remember
is how close we came to a very rough edge with the attacks on treasury.
A very important point and one which was confirmed this last week by the release of the fourth
part of the Zondo Commission's report where Mr. Zondo detailed the attacks on treasury.
If you remember that weekend special, Des Van Rohean as Minister of Finance, if you
remember that about 15 months later, a year later, both the Minister of Finance, Gordon
and the Deputy Minister, Deputy Minister Jonas were both just summarily dismissed. Zuma was
really going for the treasury. In the end, he failed. He may have come with any whisker,
but the fact is he failed. And that's the important point to bring across. And I think
what we are now as the statue of the Reserve Bank has risen and become really unassailable,
I think inside government, the statue of treasury has likewise risen. And we can talk about
that under structural reform to indicate to what extent that has happened. So I'm really
very happy with what I said that I think if you look back and you connect the dots on
fiscal and monetary policy, we've done well.
Your next heading is structural reform. And that's the next group of dots, if we can put
it that way. Yes. But structural reform seems to me can mean almost anything to anyone.
What do you mean? What do you think the government means when they talk about structural reform?
Yeah, it's a very good point. Structural reform means different things to different people.
On the left of our politics, it means take away the independence of the Reserve Bank,
push up the budget deficit, print money to cover it and so on. On the right hand side
of our political spectrum, it deals with deregulate labor markets, ban unions, there mustn't be
minimum wages and all that kind of nonsense. What does government mean? Government has
put down a very simple eight points or eight bullets, eight point framework. The first
one, which is monetary and fiscal policy, which we've already discussed. And the other
remaining six, there are eight in total fiscal monetary policy. The remaining six basically
deal with introducing the private sector into what is called the network industries. And
the network industries is telecommunications, internet, that whole area, spectrum. It's transport,
railways and harbors. And it is infrastructure. There is an eighth element which we can talk
about and that is what you can call social employment. So those are the eight things
that government understands under their policy. That's how I read their policy. And we can
take them one by one. The most important one, because it's happened already, is spectrum
release. As you know, spectrum release was delayed for 10 years. For the first eight
of the 10 years, because of political ineptitude and fighting between the minister and the
regulator and so on, a U-turns that was made by the Zuma government, that was eventually
sorted out after the mapporza came into power. The last two years, it was delayed by private
sector opposition to the proposals for spectrum release. That has now also been overcome.
The auction has taken place and 14.4 billion rand came into the treasury in payment for
that. So that's, I think, a huge dot. Just by the way, Rudha, we must just note that
when it comes to telecommunications and internet connection and so on, it's not just the government.
It's also players outside government who've put down important dots. Think of the Facebook
consortium that's building a cable linking the whole African continent with the world.
And there's the Google cable, which is also supposed to be finished at the end of this
year, which will increase by 10 times all the current capacity linking South Africa
to the international internet world. Nothing to do with government, but also happening.
So I think that the new spectrum release and so on, you look at quite big changes. Inside
South Africa, MTN, Vodacom, and Remgrove subsidiary are working very hard to extend cheaper fiber
connection into townships and rural areas at lower prices. All that will help to put
South Africa on the front foot in terms of telecommunication.
The second area is transport, and they're basically railways and harbors. Now, again,
just look back and get the long term perspective. Portia Darby, the MD of Transnet, tells us
his own words from mine that two years ago, two years ago, the model was a state run monopoly,
a state owned monopoly in railways and harbors. Now the policy is to allow the private sector
in. It's a big change. The fact that it was brought about by circumstances, brought about
by pressure, well, that is how life works. And there's two ways that you can deal with
pressure. You can ignore it and try to stumble through, or you can change direction. Clearly,
there's a big change in direction. Again, one must have a feeling here for the practical
difficulties. Before you can allow the private sector into ports or railways, two things
had to happen. You had to separate the operations of Transnet and Portnet from the regulatory
function. They were basically judge and prosecutor, if I can use that analogy, and you had to
split those ropes. Secondly, you had to split infrastructure from operations so that you
can get a true measurement of what cost is. Then you know what to charge people who come
and use the infrastructure. Those two things took about 18 months, two years. They've now
basically been completed. And what has happened in the last couple of months is a request
for proposals was put out for a big new pier in the Durban Harbour. A request was put out
for Kucha. And over the Easter weekend, just before the Easter weekend, a request was put
out for a liquid gas terminal in Richards Bay. So you can clearly see which way Transnet
is moving or Portnet is moving. As far as railway lines go, at the beginning of April,
that freight rail opened up slots in the Gauteng Durban corridor for private operators to use.
Now here, I just want to make a point. There's a huge amount of public discourse going on
about the fact that Transnet and private operators are very far apart under conditions and so
on. Let's just stand back a little bit here. South Africa has got a long history. It's
a 100 year old history, more than 100 years of state monopolies in the network industries.
It goes back to the days of South African railways and harbours. It goes back to the
days of the South African post office long before Telcom. So we have a centuries old
approach to these matters. Now you change it over from a state monopoly to private sector
players participating. You've got to make new rules. You've got to develop new practices.
What are those rules? Who must carry the risk? Who must pay for maintenance? Who carries
the depreciation charge? What return will be a feasible return? Over what period? Two
years, 20 years, 200 years? You've got to work these things out. They don't descend
to you from heaven. We've worked them out in the case of toll roads. And how did some
rail work at else? Well, Nazir Ali at the time brought everybody into the same room.
The lawyers, the engineers, the builders, the government regulators, the bankers who
must finance everything. And between them, they sorted out the toll road model, which
is working fairly well for South Africa. Now you'll have to go through a similar process
now with railway lines. You'll have to go through a similar process with ports. And
that's part of developing, moving over from a state run monopoly to one in which the private
sector participates. And I think this hysteria that we get from the chattering classes every
time there's a kind of a disagreement is also really an area that asks for us to grow up.
I think you need a little bit of empathy with people's frustration because things are announced
and then it takes two years before anything happens. So it is human to get frustrated.
It may be human, but you should also know why it is taking two years. If you have to
separate the regulator from the operator and you have to separate infrastructure out that
kind of thing, you know, we also need empathy for that. The reality is that it takes time
to develop new practices. And that's where we are. We don't live in a Mary Poppins world.
No, we don't. The next thing on your list of patterns of dots is energy reform. You
have spoken about this quite often and there is a lot of information, a lot of there are
a lot of numbers in this section. So I'm going to ask you to try and just very broad strokes
and then we refer the listeners to a graph which is on the website.
Yeah, absolutely. Look, in the last two years, I counted, I've written about energy seven
times explaining what I think is going to happen and what indeed is now happening. Everything
that we said will occur is proceeding. So it's quite gratifying from that point of view.
I don't want to repeat any of that today. So all I do in my note is to focus on the
recent load shedding. And here is the focus. We have load shedding in South Africa because
we produce between 4000 and 6000 megawatts too little power. That's why we have load
shedding. If we can wave a Harry Potter wand and tomorrow morning have 6000 megawatts of
extra power, there'll be no load shedding. So it is now very simple. Just look at what
is being done. Just connect the dots on what is being done to produce that 6000 megawatts.
And as you say, there's a lovely graph which you have developed, which is in the text.
And it basically tells us that that 6000 deficit that we've got is at the moment being covered
by 11 and a half thousand megawatts of new capacity that's being installed. There is
the last open window fall, which is being connected to the grid this year, 500 megawatts.
There is the emergency power procurement, which is dominated by car power ship. Forget
about car power ship. It doesn't look as if that deal will happen, but that was only 1200
of 2000 megawatts. There's 800 megawatts left over. So you can add that in. Then there is
the announcement of October 2020 that municipalities can generate their own power. So far only
two municipalities have made use of it. Johannesburg was the first. Cape Town has done it recently.
That adds up to about 300 or 500 megawatts. More municipalities will follow, I'm quite
sure. But again, it takes time to work through these processes. You know, you don't wave
your hand and then you have a municipality procuring power.
The big, big game changer was in June 2021, when the president announced that you no longer
need a license if you generate power up to 100 megawatts. The ceiling used to be one
megawatt. Now from one to 100 is an enormous jump. And not only that, the president also
announced in that announcement that you can generate the power below 100 for yourself
or anybody else and you can sell it to anybody. This is a huge, huge change that took place.
Something that we did predict in the seven times that I read about energy, but it has
now happened. Now you can look at the graph in the piece. I'm not going to repeat it all,
but all these changes that has already been announced, the decisions have been taken.
We're busy with implementation. We'll add up to about 11 and a half thousand megawatts
versus a four to six thousand deficit. Now just be careful. One megawatt of renewable
power is not the same as one megawatt of base power. But again, be careful. Two things are
shifting that. That is if your deficit is six and you get 11 and a half, you're covered
to a large extent. And technology is also changing it. New storage technologies are
coming in, which is making it possible for renewable operators to provide power 24 hours
a day, even if they make use of renewable power. Near Postmasberg in the Northern Cape,
there's a plant that is now run for, I think, 12 months. A solar plant run for 12 months,
providing power 24 hours a day because of storage technologies that they've got. But
I think you must make the point that this will be connected by 2025. It has been procured,
but it is still being installed, as you say. Absolutely. Because it takes time to build
a plant, then you've got to connect it to the grid. Then you've got problems in the
grid. You've got to sort that out. In general, you can talk about 24 months, but in some
cases even a bit longer from the date that you start until you actually connect to the
grid. So this 11 and a half thousand on my cigarette box analysis will be connected to
the grid by 2025. Now that's still three years out. So that to me implies, unless something
else changes, that we will have load shedding for another three years. But it also makes
it very clear that load shedding will not be a permanent feature of our landscape. I
think one should say that as well. I don't think we're looking at a situation like Nigeria,
for example, where they've now had load shedding for many, many years and people have just
given up on the national system. Here the national system is changing quite dramatically.
And it's changing from one which is dominated by a state utility, a state monopoly to one
in which the private sector will operate. And by the way, talking about that, all the
money needed for this 11 and a half thousand megawatts will come from private sector players.
So you're talking massive investments that will take place in the economy already has
taken place and will carry on taking place, pushing our investment numbers probably higher
than what they were before COVID struck us.
The next group of dots concern infrastructure. You've always been quite cautious about infrastructure
because you said so many people had to agree on so many things. Is that shifting?
Yeah, I think it is shifting. It's precisely right. Doing infrastructure where you mix
public and private money and you've got private operators coming in, the kind of thing that
we saw with toll roads, is quite a difficult thing to do. You need contracts, you need
banking agreements, you need financial arrangements. Now in the case of roads, we've worked it
out in other areas we haven't worked it out. And some areas don't lend themselves to it.
I don't think you can use, for example, private finance to do a school in a poor area. It
just doesn't lend itself to it. But a couple of things have happened. The first is when
the president became president, he pushed the idea of the infrastructure fund. It took
three years to get that going. He started with it in 2018. By 2021, the thing was established
and operational. In this year's budget, Treshtree has allocated quite a few billion rand to
it. I think the total for the period for the three years that the budget rolls is 13 billion
or more. And they've committed themselves to a hundred, Treshtree has committed itself
to a hundred billion over 10 years. And the idea is that you mix in the infrastructure
fund, money from Treshtree, from the taxpayer and from the private sector. Now what has
changed now is that the first seven projects have been approved by the infrastructure fund.
The total investment will be about 21 billion, of which only 2.6 billion, a little bit more
than 10% is coming from the infrastructure fund or from the taxpayer. The rest is coming
from private players and development institutions. Now that tells you something about the ability
of the infrastructure fund to leverage. If you can do 21 billion with 2.6 billion, then
you're clearly in a new game. That's the same story. You allowed the private sector to come
in to help to finance infrastructure. So I think that that was quite an important shift
that took place. The second shift that took place is that the budget for the year that
just ended is 22% higher in terms of government infrastructure spending than what it was in
the previous year. And in fact, we are now at the level where the rands being allocated
are more than what it was before COVID. So there's clearly a comeback in terms of infrastructure
spending. But I think the most important dot in this area of infrastructure, Rudha, is
the dot where government last year said very clearly and unambiguously, the state cannot
do infrastructure. They have to involve the private sector. They have to develop skills
and capacity. Now that recognition is a little bit like when you're an alcoholic. The road
to recovery begins with admitting that you're an alcoholic. And what is happening at the
moment is you're both at the infrastructure fund and at the unit called Infrastructure
SA, which is in particular the Laws Department, precisely through its technical advice team,
is busy developing the capacity and skills of people to build project pipelines. And
that's why I think the dial is beginning to move here. We are not nearly as far advanced
as we are in energy, but I think the movement is clear.
So let's do a so what in the middle. What does all this mean? Why is it so important?
Why do you write about it in such detail? Well, common sense tells you that if you allow
the private sector into previous state monopoly areas, you would expect in theory an increase
in investment and you would expect in theory an increase in productivity. And that is exactly
what Treasury modeling has indicated. Treasury modeling indicates that these changes that
we've been talking about can add as much as 1.7% to annual GDP growth. Now our growth
rate up till now has been around about 1.5%. So if you can add 1.7, you basically double
growth rate. You take your growth rate from 1.5 to 3.2. 3.2% growth is double the population
growth rate of 1.6%. So you're now getting back on track. You're now getting back to
where we were in the first 10, 15 years after democracy, where the economy grew much faster
than the population. And that generates extra resources that can be used to develop. Basically,
I think we are busy going back to where we sort of ended, if I may use that word, in
2008. South Africa had a lovely run, also economically and politically, until about
2008, 2010. Then the Zuma era kicked in with full force and we all know what happened there.
Now, I think we, with a growth rate of 3%, 3.25%, double your population growth rate.
We're going back to where we were before the Zuma era struck us.
One thing that comes to mind for me, it sounds as if the famous or infamous trust deficit
between the government and business or the private sector is being closed.
I wouldn't say that at this stage. Let's give it a little bit more time. The private
sector, in my view, doesn't appreciate the fact that they've got, really for the first
time since Mandela, they've got a business friendly president. I don't think that penny
has dropped yet. If you look at some of the things that are being said by business leaders
and so on, they're not there yet. The government, on the other hand, doesn't have a full understanding
yet of what it means to have the private sector participating. What conditions, what payback
periods, what return on capital, what carrying of risk is digestible and whatnot.
You've got problems on both sides. Business people don't appreciate what they've got
in a business friendly president and the administration doesn't yet quite appreciate what it takes
to run a business. I think we'll have to slog a bit more to overcome that trust deficit.
The last thing that worries the whole of South Africa, of course, is the unemployment. Is
the government doing anything which will shift that?
As I said earlier, one of the eight pillars, seven of them deal with the economy. The eighth
pillar deals with what I call social employment. This is essentially employing people in all
kinds of what you can call artificial ways. Not because that's a permanent solution, it's
not, but because it brings temporary relief. Here, the most important one is public employment.
In October 2020, when COVID was really at its most merciless, the government announced
that 800,000 people will be employed in a public employment program. Now, these are
not civil servants. Let's just be clear about that. When you say public employment people
immediately jump to civil service positions, that's not what it is. It's positions which
gets a stipend of about three to three and a half thousand grand a month. It's not a
civil service job. It's usually temporary. Now, at the moment, there are 850,000 people
in this program, more than the 800,000 target. There's money in the budget for the next three
years to take that up to a million people. Now, if you have a million people in public
employment, then have you shifted the numbers on the 12 million unemployed in the country?
No, not really, but you are putting a lot of money through 3,500 grand a month. You're
putting a lot of money into the poorest people of South Africa in an effort to help. Then
there are a couple of other initiatives that was also launched under this program. The
one is the SA Youth Mobi platform, which has got 2.3 million young South Africans registered
on that platform and 600,000 of them, 25%, have been placed in jobs. Then the National
Youth Service, which has been around for a long time, but has completely collapsed, has
been revitalized and they will probably employ 50,000 people this year. That is what has
been budgeted for and what is planned. Now, again, will 50,000 people change the 12 million
unemployed? No, it won't, but it will help 50,000 households. It will help 50,000 people
to start getting into the labor market. There are four or five of these initiatives, what
I call artificial initiatives, but they help to get people into the labor market. That's
the important point. In the end, there's no substitute. If you want to employ more people,
if you want to bring that down, that 12 million unemployed, you need more economy. You're
not going to employ 10 million more people in the same size economy. You need a bigger
economy to employ more people. That is where the structural reform measures come in. Until
such time as the structural reform measures have kicked in and start having an effect,
you need these kinds of short-term relief measures to combat poverty and keep stability
in the country. If you step back and you look at the big picture, what are the main things
that these dots tell you? I think the main thing that it tells me is a point that I've
already made, and that is that I think we're going back to where we were in 2008, 2009,
at the end of the Mbeki period, when we had a long run, a successful run in our economy,
where the economy grew faster than the population, where we increased incomes. Because we increased
incomes more, money was available to be spent. I think we're going back there. We're leaving
behind us the stagnation that we've had over the last couple of years. That's the first
point. The second point is, it was Bill Emmett, who was the editor of The Economist. He's
now retired in Italy, I believe, who said that the journalist, like the instant analyst,
is constantly at the risk of over-interpreting the short term and under-rating the longer
term. I think there's a lot of that in South Africa. We are so carried away by the news
headlines of the morning, never mind what will come this evening, that we run the risk
of instant analysis and coming to the wrong conclusions. That's when I think a longer
term view, which you can get by connecting the dots, is such an important input. I think
the other thing that I want to say is, it was at the second investment conference in
2019, I think, where I was in the audience and I listened to the president, and he made
a comment which, for me, summarized what he was busy with. It was the beginning of his
tenure before COVID, but you can see that that's how he governs. He said, there's an
old saying that a man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away the small stones.
A man who moves the mountain begins by carrying away the small stones. I think that's what
the Ramaphosa administration has been doing. They've been carrying away the small stones,
which became bigger and bigger and bigger. You see it beautifully illustrated in energy.
You're beginning to see it in transport, in ports and railways. You've seen it in
spectrum. I have no question that the stones will get bigger through a process of structural
reform, and eventually we will move the mountain.
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