STATE OF THE NATION DEBATE / Geordin Hill-Lewis

Madame Speaker,

There is a very strange thing happening in our politics.

Four times now the President has come to promise urgent reform and pledge leadership.

Three times now the Finance Minister has pleaded for reform in budget speeches, and I’m sure that is what he’ll do again next week.

The President promises major reform, the Treasury supports major reform, the Official Opposition supports major reform, the country wants major reform.

So here is the very curious thing: where is the major reform?

We have been promised it. But we do not have it.

Let’s track progress on reform for a moment:

In 2018 he said “Next month we will launch the Youth Employment Service…to create a million paid internships in three years.”

Now just months from that deadline, it has created 32 248 internships. At this rate it will reach its target in 88 years time, the year 2108.

In 2018 he said “We need to see mining as a sunrise industry, rather than a sunset industry.”

But his mining minister published a new Bill that was, if possible, even more uncertain and confusing than the Bill it replaced.

In 2018, he said “We will reduce the regulatory barriers for small business. I am going to make sure the regulatory barriers are reduced.”

Not a single regulation has been removed for small business.

VAT has gone up though. Petrol taxes have gone up. And many small businesses have closed.

In 2019, he said we would go from 82nd to the top 50 in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings.

Well, we have dropped down another 2 places, we are now at number 84.

In 2019 he said “our highest priority” would be visa reform.

It took 10 months after that statement for the Minister of Home Affairs to issue a simple writ to cancel the disastrous birth certificate requirement.

10 months to sign a letter for the government’s “highest priority”.

In 2019 he said “Security of energy supply is an absolute imperative. We need to take bold decisions and decisive action.”

There has been none of either.

In June 2019 he committed to a “lower debt trajectory”. In October his Finance Minister announced a much higher debt trajectory.

And now to 2020, he promises a sovereign wealth fund, and a state bank.

He knows there is no money to capitalise either of those. They simply will not happen in any meaningful way.

All of this begs the question: what is the point of the SONA if it is just a list of emphatic promises that most emphatically will not be delivered?

The truth is this: we have a President in the grip of paralysis, and a government that is non-functional.

This government cannot decide even the most basic of questions or resolve even the simplest of problems.

All while the country edges closer to disaster.

So, he was wrong to say that we face a stark choice.

He faces a stark choice, not us.

He can achieve immortality. He can go down in history as the man who saved South Africa from economic collapse.

Or he will be remembered as the President who failed to lead in a time of national crisis.

Sadly, I think he told us his choice when he made a case for more “consensus building” and “social compact”.

The question is – consensus among whom?

There is already a broad consensus. Not since 1994 has there been this much agreement on what needs to be done.

So who are these enemies of the obvious and the urgent?

The truth is, he means “ANC consensus”.

There are still many state capture looters in his own party that are fighting him and fighting his reform agenda.

They brandish the language of the loony left, but they are rapacious, corrupt and hell-bent on winning back control of state resources. And they sit on both sides of this House.

Why, sir, are you interested in building consensus with these enemies of growth?

Why make any social compact with them?

The only compacting that needs to happen is the crushing of their corrupt careers.

You see, Mr President, my great fear and my firm suspicion is that when you say “consensus”, what you mean is “concession”.

And every concession you make to the enemies of growth will only be met with a fresh demand.

So you will go on conciliating until you have given up everything.

What then will have been the point of your Presidency?

To have won a mandate for reform, only to concede everything in the name of consensus.

Your latest appeasement is your rumoured support for a Cosatu plan to use R250 billion of civil servants’ hard-earned pension savings to bail out Eskom.

This is a disgrace, and you should have ruled it out explicitly. But you didn’t.

You said you would mobilise funding “without putting pensions at risk”.

What you mean is that you will take their pension money, and then “guarantee” the value of the pension later.

But every civil servant should know now – that guarantee is not worth the paper it’s written on. If government can’t pay its Eskom debts now, it will not be able to pay for all your pensions later.

Cosatu has actually admitted this. They have said upfront that workers should not expect a financial return from this bailout. They should be happy with a “social return”.

Civil servants work hard and save hard for their retirement. That money is theirs. It came from their pay cheques. It doesn’t belong to Cosatu, and it cannot be commandeered to pay for the ANC’s mismanagement and corruption.

Mr President, your support for this shows that the enemies of growth are on the march, and to be frank, your presidency looks in retreat.

They are winning because you are not even fighting.

In your absence, we’ll keep making the case for what we know South Africa needs.

We still believe in South Africa and in the vision of a country united in shared prosperity. We know we could be booming.

If you want to build a consensus that really matters – one that can fix what is wrong with our country – you need to look beyond your own party.

There are enough people in this House who are committed to the reforms we need. They’re just not all on your benches.

If you reach out, you can build this majority.

Put your country first, Mr President.