The new growth path framework tabled in parliament on Tuesday will test the optimism of the minister of economic development, who will run it, and the minister of finance, who will fund it, because it presumes a national conversation that will quickly deliver a consensus on how to take the country forward to common prosperity, even at the cost of some personal profit.
"We will have to develop a collective national will and embark on joint action to change the character of the South African economy and ensure that the benefits are shared more equitably by all our people, particularly the poor," the document says.
Blacks seeking the economic empowerment denied them under white rule, must worry more about production and less about ownership, it proposes.
The search for a unifying common identity, a shared vision and agreed priorities was launched by Thabo Mbeki when he was president and was a focus for his Policy Coordination and Advisory Services unit, headed by Joel Netshitenzhe. But with no results to show, the ball was passed to Trevor Manuel and his National Planning Commission, which is expected to release a draft one-page national vision for public debate early next year, leading to a complete national plan by the commission's November 11 deadline.
Many will feel that somebody should just take charge, tell us where to go and whip up the stragglers so that the long promised mass march to a better future can begin. After all, that worked with the World Cup, which was imposed without consultation, it worked with the abolition of capital punishment, which would not have been the outcome of genuine national consultation, and it worked when the government decided, against the sentiment of an obvious majority, that gay marriage was the right way to go. It even worked with Gear, the 1996 economic plan reviled by the left.
But Patel insists it should be possible to achieve a social compact tying workers into wage restraint, business into price restraint and the private sector at large to a promise, backed by tougher regulation, of less collusion, more competition and moderation of the runaway executive packages that have been stretching the income gap for the past decade.
So far, there is no queue at his door to start talking. Business Unity SA's deputy CEO, Raymond Parsons, promised a statement on the package, but had not delivered it by late yesterday. Cosatu did not return calls when asked to comment on the call for a wage-price pact that would require anyone earning more than R20000 a month to accept that they are rich enough for now.
Nor is it going to be easy to get agreement on the NGP's fiscal and monetary proposals, which call for slower acceleration of government spending and a continued commitment to low inflation - which will worry labour and the left - as well as a more aggressive attempt to manage the rand and a call to the Reserve Bank to keep interest rates low, which will worry the free marketeers looking for a confirmation of the central bank's independence.
The private sector is being offered a down-table, junior partnership.
The primary target of the growth path is to create five million new jobs by 2020. Perhaps mindful of the negative press Zuma got for his vague promise of 500000 new jobs by the end of 2009, the plan itemises where most of those jobs will be created - and it is not in the make-work expanded public works programme, it's in the real economy.
Details of the strategy to achieve those targets have yet to emerge in consultations between the government, business, labour and civil society organisations, which is where Patel's optimism will be tested.
"We must develop this new growth path in conditions of active, noisy democracy," the document says. But Patel, whose department of economic development is largely responsible for the framework, stressed in a presentation to MPs on Tuesday that it would not be necessary to agree on everything before starting on anything. The same point is made in the text itself, clearing the way for piecemeal implementation of agreements as they are made.
But Patel warned that the plan would have to be accepted as a whole if it was to work. Cherry picking the pieces each sector wants would unravel the plan, so he, Gordhan and, if he is invited to the table, Manuel, need to start the conversation soon to find the combination of carrots and sticks that will bring sides that see their interests very differently towards some sort of a compact.
Pressed by sceptical reporters after the first announcement of a new growth path to explain why this one would work when others had not, Patel and Gordhan separately resorted to the same exasperated reply: "There is a new team in charge now. Let's give it another try."
Source: Times LIVE
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