Hope without action is hopeless, Mboweni

When our leaders proclaim “hope” to be a patriotic duty, one can be assured the country is really deep in the dwang.

It was President Cyril Ramaphosa who started the hope crusade. In the February State of the Nation Address, he said “our people are much more hopeful about a better tomorrow”. And this hope “is not baseless; it is grounded on the progress being made”.

Business is doing its bit. Investec’s Stephen Koseff says: “You have to give people hope.”

Discovery’s Adrian Gore expounds an entire theory around hope: the optimism paradox. The paradox is “the gap between private hope and public despair” and, apparently, this is “an intriguing idiosyncrasy explained by behavioural economics”.

In the face of this week’s truly awful unemployment figures, Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi exhorted South Africans to “not give up hope”.

There is nothing wrong with these attempts to kindle hope. Despair can be paralysing.

But let’s not be simplistic about it. Common sense, thorough planning and competent execution beat hope, optimism and stout hearts.

Some in government get that. As Tito Mboweni said this week, presenting the medium-term budget policy statement: “Hope is good but it is not a strategy.”

The national debt exceeds R3 trillion and will rise to R4.5 trillion in the next three years.

That, says Mboweni, is “a serious position”. Worse, it is “unsustainable”, “clearly, we need to do things differently”, and “the consequences of not acting now would be grave”.

Then he does, as is the ANC’s wont, absolutely nothing.

Any action is postponed to next year’s budget.

On the issues of Eskom, SAA and other state-owned candidates for bankruptcy, there were only platitudes.

“Eskom is a business and should be run that way.” With SAA, “operational and government interventions are required urgently”.

As regards the national disease of nonpayment for services, government has decided the solution is to appeal to our better natures: “I urge the nation to please pay your bills.” No doubt that will bring rolling in the R37 billion that was owing to Eskom by delinquent users.

The proposed and hugely expensive National Health Insurance drew only a passing mention. The ministers of finance and health were in “ongoing discussions”, said Mboweni tersely.

A Treasury document attached to his speech was more honest: “However, given the macroeconomic and fiscal outlook, the estimates to roll out NHI … are no longer affordable.”

At least Mboweni provided the opposition with some wonderful ammunition.

He revealed the average government wage has risen by 66% in 10 years and that 29,000 public servants now earn more than R1 million a year. Adjusting for inflation, that is double the number in 2006/2007 and, since Sars data shows 148,000 taxpayers earn over a million a year, it means that 20% of SA’s rand millionaires work for the state.

This encapsulates the kernel of SA’s problem. The ANC has added massively to the state payroll and these are the people who keep them in office.

For an ANC government to now do what it knows it must – slash state employment – would be to slit its own throat.

All together now: One! Two! Three! Hope!

William Saunderson-Meyer.

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