SA holding breath on recovery plan

If the ANC’s promises for a brighter future were bricks, then South Africa would not have a housing crisis, because everyone would have walls around them and a roof over their head.

There were fine-sounding words and fine-sounding commitments from President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday as he presented the government’s Economic Recovery and Reconstruction Plan.

It is difficult to assess the merit of the words, given the feeling that we’ve heard all this before – in the Reconstruction and Development Plan of the Mandela years; the Growth, Employment and Redistribution idea of the Thabo Mbeki era and, most recently, the National Development Programme 2030 unveiled by the then finance minister, Trevor Manuel, in 2013.

There is no doubt that the government – indeed, the whole country – needs to focus on repairing the damage done to our economy by the lockdowns occasioned by the need to keep the coronavirus in check and avoid our medical facilities being overwhelmed.

But, listening to Ramaphosa’s words – that the crisis offers us an opportunity to “hit the reset” button and to “transform” society – it makes one wonder whether the Covid-19 crisis arrived at a convenient time for the ANC.

Now, much of the failure to deliver real transformation and improvements to the lives of ordinary people can be laid at the door of the coronavirus and the martial images can once again be used to “recruit” the populace into the “fight” for economic recovery. One only hopes we don’t see more ministers playing soldiers in camouflage fatigues at official briefings.

Ramaphosa said all the things he was expected to say: supporting small business and women, fighting corruption, reducing government spending. But he also said the most critical word: implementation. Given the ANC’s record in following through on its promises, we will suspend judgment for a while.

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