Why SA’s SOEs should be used to fund grants

Who cares if state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are loss making? Taxpayers, sure, but let’s get real. If you’re an average South African, the tax you pay annually between PAYE, VAT and at the pumps will hardly pay for even one senior government official’s expense account. So being a taxpayer and caring about loss making SOEs is hardly going to incentivise the moving of the needle in getting them to function.

Load shedding has been in our lexicon for some 17 years. That’s more time than it took the world to fight and resolve two wars. It’s more time than it took to get to the moon. Yes, load shedding has outlived Rihanna’s Umbrella, Beyonce’s Irreplaceable, four US presidents and three presidential terms of Vladimir Putin (plus a prime ministership).

Yes, that’s how old load shedding is. It came in at a time Steve Jobs was still alive and showing off the world’s first iPhone. Android was just introduced to the world and the Kindle came to market. It’s old news. We were still busy converting our VHS tape to DVD. Yet, for all the technological progress in the world since then, keeping the lights on has been an issue, though not that big of a deal if you listen to Sylvia Lucas.

Hilariously, she tried backtracking using the tried and tested apartheid context and then, to bring herself down to our level, said, “the only thing that I bought with my own money is an inverter for my fridge and for my children so that they can watch TV and to charge,”… as if she has another source of money that’s not hers.

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But that is becoming the national way; getting used to spending money that is not yours and reaping the benefit.

Sure, there should be some social security but funding it by digging into debt doesn’t seem very sustainable and sustainability is a nice thing to have. It’s easy for those in charge but nobody is paying taxes just to make things easy for them. So, since Lucas has invoked the apartheid luxury card, let’s look at other luxuries that come from our past – the SOEs.

If those in need depended on SOE success rather than the colonial Robin Hood methodology, wouldn’t that give an actual incentive to run them properly? Why would no party put it in their manifesto? After all, it’s state resources. Why not just earmark the declared profits to be shared among the people. Those who don’t want it can take a tax credit instead and it’s not like we need to start it immediately. Give it a roadmap and get the SOEs into gear to actually be worth something to the nation.

If grants cost R200 billion a year and the Department of Public Enterprises website lists Transnet, SA Express, Eskom, SAFCOL, Denel, SAA and Alexkor as its SOEs, then each would only need to turn a profit of R29 billion. It would be much less even if you just subjected one of the grants to this idea. Sibanye hits the mark for its shareholders. Naspers does too. Why can’t the South African state do the same for its people?

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What’s the matter? Does the idea of effectively using state resources scare you? Imagine how scared the country is at the idea of the state resources not being used effectively. Instead of funding spending by taxing the profits of others, why can’t the state make profits of its own?

Why can’t the state actually work for us for a change and have the determination to make a success of the country and its infrastructure that they’ll put the social care at the forefront of our success?

It can’t be that difficult to start and say that we care about our people so much that we’re going work on what we have to improve their lives. Maybe that will be the start of seeing the benefit of having an actual functional state both for political leaders and the electorate.

After all, doesn’t the beloved freedom charter say something about sharing the country’s wealth? This would be an impactful way of doing so.

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