Nkosana Sibuyi

Posted by Nkosana Sibuyi: 30 November 2011

The Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) delivered by Minister Trevor Manuel on 25 October 2006 reignited in its prelude, Sizwe Banzi is dead, a play written by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona. The story laments the ignominious manner under which black South African history was downplayed in the evolution of a democratic society. The chasm between the affluent and the desolate, oppressor and oppressed were extremely inexorable.

Despite all these paradoxical ambiguities, Manuel believed: “we still have dreams beyond the world we know, and we still have mountains to climb in pursuit of fairness, justice and opportunity. But we have broken open that desperate strongroom of dreams, we are now living out our hopes and aspirations, writing laws that put people first, building institutions that respect people’s rights, constructing houses, creating jobs, providing services. Though it is too early to claim victory in the battle against unemployment, we can already see how growth and development work together to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods, how the policy choices we made a decade ago are bearing fruit.”

Two years later, on 21 October 2008, when he delivered the MTBPS, Manuel, commenting on the economic weather report said: “The storm has arrived, it is fiercer than anyone could have imagined and its course cannot be predicted. We saw the signs early, and we took appropriate action. We can say to our people: Liduduma lidlule! The thunder will pass. Our course is firmly directed at our long-term growth and development challenges, and we will ride out this storm, whatever it takes, together, on the strength of a vision and a plan of action that we share.”

The two MTBPS speeches constitute a compendium of the concrete analysis of the concrete moment. In time, and to the superlative degree, the government has tried to straddle a balance within the context of populism, ideological precision and pragmatism of economics. The balance of power and evidence required of the state to appreciate the impact of long-term growth and sustainable developmental logic. Minister Trevor Manuel is not the proverbial Vicar of Bray. This, in essence, means that he is not the “satirical description of an individual fundamental changing his principles to remain in ecclesiastical office as external requirements change around him”.

The release of the National Development Plan Vision for 2030 on 11 November 2011, by National Planning Commission Minister Trevor Manuel’s National Planning Commission (NPC) poses concrete challenges. These are challenges of planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. It is unsurprising that the RDP, Gear, Asgi-SA, the New Growth Path and the Industrial Policy Action Plan suffered from the lacuna of these Achilles heels. Incontestably, the policy documents assumed the position of paper tigers thus suffering comeuppance and became rudderless in the national policy landscape. These central challenges, warts and all, provide the country with an opportunity to understand this zeitgeist.

The Diagnostic Overview of the NPC acknowledged that poverty and inequality are the central challenges retarding the growth and development of the country. The overview identified, through a process of scientific research, analysis and examination, nine key challenges facing the country whose resolution will emancipate the country from the ravages of poverty and inequality. These are corruption, crumbling infrastructure, too few jobs, exclusive planning, poor education, public service rutted, divided communities, resource intensive economy and massive disease burden. These are major problems. They must be resolved through both individual and collective intelligence.

To mitigate these challenges, the National Development Plan Vision for 2030 boldly proposes a gravitation away from the diagnostic of poverty and inequality to one based on the achievement of prosperity and equity. The plan is premised on the commitment to build a capable state, fight corruption, unite the nation, expand infrastructure, inclusive planning, quality education, job creation, quality healthcare and effective utilisation of resources.

Manuel has demonstrated his astuteness and sharp-wittedness as the erstwhile Minister of Finance. Equally he must also be commended for the substantive work done by the National Planning Commission. However, in a changing macrosocial environment, this high level recognition of the fundamental challenges, it is imperative that the solutions proposed must inspire the nation to a greater destiny and trajectory. The articulation of the challenges and implementation of the plan requires the requisite sophistry to understand that poverty and inequality are consequences not causes of the country’s lethargy. Appreciably, the NPC does not have the capability to realistically discern and grasp everything. The people centred nature of the process to enrich Vision 2030 should be anchored around the continuing search overcome contradictions. This is a task of all South Africans. It requires leadership, imagination, innovation, passion, dynamism, persistence, purpose and direction.

The release of the Vision has invited a momentous question: Is the NDP a paper tiger? The NDP does not provide a panacea to all the complex challenges facing the country. It is merely wetting our appetites. It has succeeded in dissecting the contests facing the nation. The distinguished book by Frank Furedi, Where have all the intellectuals gone? redirects people deficient in liberal culture whose interests are material and commonplace. In a chapter, Trivial Pursuits, he reflects on the sense of powerlessness in the face of uncertainty, identifies the complexities quite unashamedly:

“Disappointment with the promise of the Enlightenment has diminished public confidence in society’s ability to know, understand and ultimately control the future. The view that we live in a world that is so complex as to render meaningless the claim to know is systematically promoted by radical critics of modernity. Critics are also worried that the advance of knowledge itself creates problems, because it threatens to encourage activity and behaviour whose consequences cannot be known in advance”

It speaks of the heightening level of uncertainty about the future. Drawing parallels between the NDP and Furedi’s observation on society’s ability to know, understand and ultimately control the future, a number of questions become edifying: In what way does that NDP encourage the development paradigm? What, if any, is the development logic of the NDP? How far deep is the culture of listening and agreeing to be questioned encouraged and embraced in this context? What lessons could be drawn from countries such the Ireland, Ghana and Uganda? It is important to appreciate the progress and lack of that has been registered seventeen years into democracy in improving the human condition. The NDP notes that “we have set out key proposals to unlock opportunities, tackle major problems and put South Africa on the right path for building a state that is capable of promoting the key national objectives of eliminating poverty and reducing inequality”

This recognition is critical for four catalytic proposals on the organisation and capacity of the state.

Firstly, the role of the state in fostering active citizenship premised on strengthening the capacity of the state to ensure that transparency, honesty and compassion must assume an unprecedented significance to build partnerships with society for equitable development.

This brings us to the second standpoint around the construction of the Delivery State that will pride itself with a culture that has become institutionalised at the highest level of policy making, development, thrift implementation, monitoring and evaluation. This will assist as the Ghana National Development Plan contends, in “tracking progress of policy implementation and effectiveness, as well as bottlenecks associated with the implementation of the strategies for early resolution”

The third proposal arising from the current ideological approach myth based on the hybrid nature of the welfare and perceived commitment to construct a democratic developmental South African state must be debunked. The approach to development must be grounded in the acknowledgement and appreciation of the dimensional circumstances and conditions under which people live as a way of constructing a meaningful world and constructing reality.

The last perspective proceeds from the premise that development is about people. The United Nations Development Programme (2010) introduced three basic ideas intended to guide the way to future human development that underline the need to recognize the basic principles that can inform development strategies and policies in different settings. The basic ideas are: Think of principles first, Take context seriously and Shift global policies. The central message of the UNDP basic ideas is that people are the real wealth of the nation. A delivery and developmental state is a people-centred and people-driven form of governance, which seeks to improve both the historical and material conditions of the people. In a sense, development is fundamentally and primarily about people.

The Minister of Finance in Ireland, Mr Brian Cowen writing on the National Development Plan said it is a roadmap for sustainable economic expansion and will deliver a better quality of life for all. Arising from the complex and sophisticated challenges South Africa faces, it is farsighted to ask whether the country can boldly proclaim that Liduduma lidlule! The thunder will pass. Will the thunder ever pass? Yes and No. It is too early to claim easy victories in the battle against unemployment, poverty and inequality. The struggle to close the yawning chasm between the affluent and the desolate can only be realised and achieved when development revolves around people and their contribution.

REFERENCES

1. National Planning Commission, Republic of South Africa. National Development Plan Vision for 2030, 11 November 2011
2. National Planning Commission, Republic of South Africa. Diagnostic Overview. June 2011
3. Frank Furedi. Where have all the intellectuals gone? Including a reply to Furedi’s critics?
4. Minister Trevor Manuel. The Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS). 25 October 2006
5. Minister Trevor Manuel. The Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS). 21 October 2008
6. Ireland National Development Plan 2007-2013. Transforming Ireland. A Better Quality of Life for All. Dublin
7. National Planning Commission. Republic of Ghana. Medium Term National Development Policy Framework: Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda (GSGDA), 2010-2013
8. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Human Development Report 2010. 20th Anniversary Edition: The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development. New York: Palgrave Macmillan