State must not overload growth initiatives
So much of the government in SA functions suboptimally that there is a tendency to overload any successful part of it with ever more mandates. The new administration has added three more areas to the list of priority reforms that Operation Vulindlela is tasked with fasttracking. There is pressure, too, to add further focal areas to the three-item list of priorities that the partnership between business and the government is tackling.
That there is appetite for these two initiatives to do a lot more is testament to the success they have achieved in breaking through some barriers to economic growth, and doing so relatively swiftly. But it is important to remember that a key to the success in both cases has been the targeting of just three to five priority areas. They did not try to do everything for everybody, despite SA’s multiple and urgent challenges. They selected targets that had the greatest potential to drive economic growth. And they picked those that lent themselves to this kind of intervention — by an agile delivery unit in Operation Vulindlela’s case, and a carefully crafted partnership between business and government.
No doubt some of that success can be replicated. But their work is far from done. All sides should be careful about loading them up with more mandates that could dilute focus on the priorities they already have, or spread limited resources too thinly.
Operation Vulindlela deserves support, as well as sympathy, as it expands its reform efforts into fixing SA’s ailing municipalities, dysfunctional cities and public digital infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the business and state partnership is sticking for now with the three big crises weighing on economic growth: energy, logistics and crime. It has agreed to consider taking on more, but only if there are the resources and capacity on both sides of the partnership to do so. It is right to insist on this.
As the partnership’s report-back this week shows, its model is starting to show results, particularly in energy. But it is only just making a start on the joint effort to tackle crime and corruption, where business is working with the government to get SA off the greylist by fast-tracking prosecutions. And there is still a very long way to go to turn around SA’s ailing rail and port networks.
Business and the government did not tolerate it when Eskom said it would only end load-shedding in 2025, and the result of their joint efforts is that SA is on the cusp of ending load-shedding. SA cannot afford to tolerate it either when Transnet does no more than stabilise rail volumes. A priority for the business and government partnership must be to work with Transnet to step up the pace on the efficiency front, as well as on reforms to bring in competition on rail and in the ports.
Just over a year into the partnership, the momentum is there. So is the commitment to keep working together to get SA growing again. All good for confidence and for the country.