Hello and welcome to the so-what podcast, in which politically-economic analysts J.B.
Landman discusses the issues up-a-most in the minds of South Africans.
You can find a written version of this content on J.B.'s website jblandman.co.za
I am Ruda Landman and I am your host.
This conversation, accompanies. is newsletter dated 19 September 2024 and titled
So far so good.
focusing on the G.N.U. the Government of National Unity.
It's now two and a half months.
Is it going to last?
It certainly looks like it's so far and I say that because the first red line for the Government
of National Unity was the so-called BELA Act, Basic. Education Law Amendment Act.
The D.A. as well as the Freedom Front Plus made it clear before they joined the Government
of National Unity that this is a red line for them.
That if the President signs the bill then they will leave, Lantzelle was really was
suffocated about that but also John Steenhuysen.
Well, the President did sign it and nobody left.
The President did play a clever card. He delayed the bringing into operation of clauses
four and five of the bowl which are the two contentious clauses.
And he said he would delay that for three months to enable a political process, political
discussions between various parties and stakeholders to try and resolve the issue.
That was a good move and we must now see what happens in the next three months.
Let's just play out the scenarios if a political compromise is reached and well then
great, then the problem is resolved.
If it is not reached then the matter will go to the constitutional court.
I think that's a fairly certain assumption.
And if the court says these clauses are not valid, well of course then they won't come
into force and effect and the matter is settled.
If the constitutional court says no, all this is fine, there is no constitutional problem
with it.
Well then then that's the story and the parties who have committed themselves to the constitution
cannot then walk away because the constitutional court gave ruling that they don't like.
So I think we're over that red line.
The second red line of courses in H.I.
But the President has already made it abundantly clear on several occasions that he wants
to see talks and negotiations around that.
So I would expect in the next year or two, significant political movement around this,
around in H.I.
And that will probably remove that from the red line list as well.
I see that there are some commentators who say that this process was the President signing
a bill which then becomes an act.
But holding back on some elements of it that it clouds the legislative process.
Well, yes and no.
But it enhances the legislative process and has since the Judeal with critical problem
areas.
Take for example the electricity regulations amendment bill which the President signed earlier.
They also suspended the clause because the local government association has indicated that
they will take that particular clause on review to the constitutional court.
And the President said, well, okay, then let's not in acted.
Let's hold back and see if we can find a compromise.
I think that is the intelligent and wise way of dealing with it.
What's the purpose of RAM running something through and signing it if people are in
any case going to take it to court and you've got a whole aggressive contestation around
it.
I think it's better to try and find a political solution.
First of the day, Andy A and C have cut people loose.
How did they happen and why?
Well, the day has cut loose two people.
The one was John Siennace and Chief of Staff, which you appointed and then very shortly after
asked him to resign as well as a member of Parliament that has been highlighted.
That is made range of offensive remarks over the long time, long period.
And he was expelled from the party.
He lost his membership and therefore he also lost his parliamentary seat.
I think what we see in that case is it's okay to have strong views and articulate them
strongly and so forth, but they're not really in line in tandem with the spirit of a government
of national unity.
So the day I judged it wisely to cut them loose.
I think that tells you something about the impact that the president is having.
On the other side, we saw that Czikotwa who resigned as a member of the Government because
he was charged, then surprisingly came back as a member of Parliament and now he's resigned
from that as well.
And I think once again what we see is that he's realizing if you are seen countering to people
with a record and people that are charged, you're going to pay an electoral price.
So they cut that loose as in loose as well.
And I think what it indicates is people appreciate that the body politic has changed.
You cannot just do what you want and stick to your position and then the rest.
You've got to behave in a way which reinforces the model.
There are also other parties in the G&U, apart from the ANC and the DA and some of them have
or had before the elections, even more radical positions, our new Minister of Land Affairs
comes from the PAC.
How's that playing out?
Playing out very well and you're quite right.
The PAC is well known for the stand-on-land matters, for they meet a kind of a red line.
I'm using the description.
That's not what they said.
But restoring land to the previously dispossessed is a very very important part of the PAC
tradition and philosophy.
Now the leader of that party is the Minister of Land Affairs.
So one could expect fireworks or speak.
What he said was he made an early speech, early in his tenure and he said that at some
stage the country must have an adult conversation around exploration and then he moved
on and he said in the meantime, there is low hanging fruit that can be harvested.
What is the low hanging fruit that they had in mind?
He highlighted two.
The first one is fishing out title deeds to beneficiaries.
People look at land and people look at houses.
They have them title deeds, so there is no question about their legal ownership.
And secondly he said that the government has got to speed up the process of land restitution.
We people have put in claims and those claims are not being resolved yet.
Now land restitution is of course a program which is particularly specifically mandated
by the constitution.
So it must be done anyway.
And I think it's two very sensible, sensible proposals, two very sensible low hanging fruit
so to speak.
So there again you can see that it's not about slow-consistive solutions.
And I think for that one must commend him and he probably wouldn't have taken that position
if he wasn't in the government.
It seems to me that this also gives us a kind of answer to something that people said before
which is, oh this part is going to get that position so they will now put into practice
their specific policies.
Now we see that that doesn't happen.
They have to work as a unit.
You can only put in place or push forward the policies of the government of national unity,
not of your party.
If your party is for example in favor of the death penalty.
Well that's an easy one, it's against the constitution so that's easy but even politically
the majority of parties in the G and U doesn't want the death penalty.
So you can't get on your high horse and start planting it.
You've got to take the line of the government of national unity and by definition that
is a kind of a moderate in the middle line.
Yeah you're quite right.
Party cannot pursue their own positions.
They have to pursue their own positions within the framework of the big government of
national unity.
What do you think motivates a party to stay in the G and U even when this tension and disagreement?
Well you know if you inside the tent then you can help to move things along.
You can help to change things.
Maybe even only in theory and only on the margin but at least you can do that.
So it's much nicer to be in the scrum and to push forward and try and capture the ball
than what it is to just stand on the sidelines and shout.
The thing that's number one.
Number two, the party is gain visibility when you are the minister or the deputy minister
of something and you move around and immediately attracts you and so on.
It's visibility not just for you but also for your party and thirdly the perks, the benefits.
So people are not going to move away or walk away voluntarily from the perks, from the
visibility and from that feeling of being part of the scrum.
They will stay.
All of this sounds like good news by cutting the pictures.
There's a bit different.
Absolutely.
The cutting is the outlier.
It's the one place where the idea of a government real government of national unity has not
taken place yet.
We see that in the province, provincial government but we also see it in the Joe Berg, Johannesburg
and Tuany Metros.
That's a great disappointment.
It's also a great missed opportunity.
I think both the provincial government and the metro governments will be much stronger if
you can involve the biggest and second and third biggest parties in the government rely
on their expertise and ability and work together to improve conditions.
So Rudau will have to see what extent the ANC will pay a price for this approach because
they had the one driving it.
The local government elections of 2020-26 is only about 26 months away.
It's not a long time.
If you're thinking about the next 26 months, you'll be able to improve substantially over
the next 26 months.
If you serve as the delivery and the quality of administration and so on, do not even
do not improve substantially.
I think the ANC will pay an electroprisse.
But how it is certainly the outlier to the national picture.
You say the ANC, but in 20 it's actually a which is making the trouble.
Yeah, quite right.
And I think they will probably pay a price.
I think Action A said that much worse than what they thought they would in the election.
So they are already weaker.
Maybe this is a kind of a desperate play from them.
I don't know.
But I can't imagine that that's the kind of thing that the people who voted for Action A
say want them to do.
So yes, I think they will also pay a price.
They're not part of the GNU are they?
No, they're not.
He's been very with several seven machabas with very the separatists that he will not work with the ANC.
And now he's working with the ANC in Toronto.
So much for promises.
What can the rail that you and you?
Well if we look back at our own history and the experience of the government of National
Unity that we had after 1994 for two years, it is quite clear that the biggest danger,
the biggest risk, is inside the political party itself.
In the sense that those people in the political party who is not in the executive, who is not
a minister or a deputy minister, start attacking the colleagues who are in the executive
and say, why didn't you do this?
Why did you agree to that?
Why did you support that?
You know, you can hear the accusatory tone coming through.
That played a role in the collapse of the government of National Unity after 94.
People in that government told me that.
So I think that is the big danger here.
That people in ANC are saying to the ANC leaders, guys, what are you doing here?
You are going to fall and people in the day will say, guys, what are you doing here?
You're going to fall.
So you've got to keep your own people not under control, but you have to bring your own
people along, I think that's the important point.
And that's where the internal party managers, like Fakili Mubalula, in ANC and Helen Zelle,
in the day where they play a very, very important role.
They did this their responsibility not just to look after the party, which is of course what
they must do, but they must also help and carry the government of National Unity.
Those internal party managers have got a very important job.
And let's see how they conduct themselves over the next year or two.
A major criticism of the G&U is that it means that we now have 10 more cabinet members,
cabinet members, then we had before and that it's very costly.
Yes, that is the criticism.
We have two more cabinet ministers.
We used to have 28 day now, 30.
We have eight more deputy ministers.
They used to be 35, then now 43.
So you've got a total of 10 more.
And so yes, on the first sound, it sounds as if that's really expensive on the first
yearing.
But let's just look at the picture from the other side, what did we get in return for
the 10?
Well, we got 21 people who are not from the ANC now in the executive.
We got 12 people from the DA who is now in the executive.
In exchange for the 10, if you want to look at that way, we also have four people from
the IFP now in the executive.
And then you have people from a range of other parties like Good, Al-Jama and so on who
now are sitting in the executive.
So now you have to ask yourself a simple question.
These new people that have come in with new energy, with diversity, with a different perspective
from life and so on, are they making the government stronger a weeker?
I think they make the government stronger.
They bring new ideas, they bring different approaches.
Am I happy to pay for that? We've seen extra cabinet ministers, I'm certainly very happy
to do that.
I would much rather have a bigger cabinet that is more diverse and have more new
comers than just the same old, same old that we used to have.
What will be the real taste of this government?
If we when we look back in five years time, how will we judge it?
I think the most important test would be what the government has achieved, looking back what
it has achieved in bringing down poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Those those three things poverty, unemployment and inequality are by far the biggest problems
in South Africa.
And you're not going to solve other problems if you don't solve those problems.
So the government of national unity will be in my view, will be judged by that.
Now is that possible?
Well, as you know, we are now in the 11th year, 2020, 4 is the 11th year.
So we've had more than a decade with the population grew faster than the economy.
The economy grew at about one and a bit per cent.
The population is growing at 1.5, 1.6 per cent.
So you're going backwards all the time.
You're creating new jobs.
At the end of 2023, we had as many jobs as we had before covered struck in 2020.
So that's something to celebrate, but what happened in 2021, 2022, 2023?
Well, three to four million new people enter the labour market.
So your unemployment goes up.
You've got the same number of jobs, but the unemployment goes up.
So you have to grow the economy faster than the population.
It's a simple matter of mathematics or accounting.
And these are tests.
The government of national unity will have to get our economic growth rate to at least
3.5 per cent, double the rate of population growth.
Then we can get somewhere.
Now, the good news is that the Bureau of Economic Research at Stalingbars has done the
work and they've published their findings.
And basically, they say if the changes or the reform under Project Will and Laila are implemented
in energy, in harbours, in railways, in water and so on, then we can achieve over the next
two to three years, three and a half percent growth.
That view of free and a half percent growth has since been confirmed by the governor of the
bank of the Reserve Bank.
And also by the epidemiolastrofinance.
By the way, the epidemiolastrofinance, who is a very committed Will and Laila supporter, is also
a leader of the ASACP.
And they have again one of those wonderful paradoxes that you find only in South Africa.
So I think it's quite possible the manufacturing survey was released by the BR and what
they found was that politics as a constraint on manufacturing.
Politics as a constraint on manufacturing is now the lowest level that it has been since
2012.
And so that's a significant development.
And what you also see with that is a sharp increase in manufacturing investment.
We're talking manufacturing sectors specifically now.
And that is without doubt good news.
And then yesterday the consumer confidence index was released and that is also improved from
what it was.
Not as dramatically as manufacturing but it has improved.
So the bottom line is I think the government of national unity is a confidence dividend
coming out of it and that dividend is already spreading investment and hopefully will
also spread consumers to take a slightly more optimistic note.
And that builds well for the economic growth.
So I think it is achievable but that will be the test.
Can they get economic growth to a level substantially more than population growth and do something
for poverty and employment in inequality?
And that depends on the structural reforms contained in the Brazilian program.
Now it is both simple and complicated simple in the sense that we don't have to do 55
things.
Simple in the sense that we don't have to go to the IMF for the World Bank.
There's a home ground solution right here.
But as reforms are of course not easy.
Performing railways and reforming harbors is not easy process and completing the reforms in
energy is also complicated.
So in that sense it's complicated.
But you know what you want to do, you know what you have to do is only the execution.
That is complicated.
So I think it's really doable.
In summary, so what?
Well I think the first so what is the development of national unity has survived its first
red line.
You may recall if you go back over news headlines of the last three months that when the government
assumed they said, okay, right, the government is now formed but what about these two red
lines?
Bellar and NHI.
Well we've now passed Bellar and on NHI the tone is already changing.
So this expectation stroke fear that the government of national unity will just collapse
simply has not materialized and I think that votes well for the stability of the government.
I think secondly all the parties who are now currently in the government of national unity
are operating in the middle.
They're not operating on the flinges.
They then bring the parties are the logical positions.
And the list of the ideological positions are in line of the government of national unity.
So the government is playing in the middle of the field, not on the left and not on the
right.
And that I think is a very strong class for the country.
And we see that the improved confidence measures that I have for the fator.
And I think the last so what is that this government, this government of national unity,
is really presenting the base chance for South Africa to break out of this stagnation of
the last decade.
Basically from you can say from the time of the world cup we've been trading water for
a decade, decade and a half.
And I think this brings the real opportunity of changing that into a much more dynamic
situation.
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