S'THEMBISO MSOMI | What lies behind the DA's rejection of national dialogue on what needs to be done to rescue SA?

What is the white establishment’s seeming aversion to talking about what needs to be done to rescue the country from its current crises and build a foundation for a society whose features would not be dominated by our apartheid and colonial past?

This is a topic that has interested me since the Covid-19 pandemic, when, given the damage the lockdown was doing to the economy, corporate South Africa began to eagerly speak of the need for inclusive growth and even began to put together a blueprint that envisaged a future economy that reduces inequality, increases levels of employment and lift millions more out of poverty.

At the time, large business organisations and prominent industrial leaders seemed to be agreeing with political leader-turned-corporate-boss Mcebisi Jonas that the social contract entered into in 1994 was unravelling and that, to move forward, some kind of new deal was needed.

In his 2019 book, After Dawn – Hope After State Capture, Jonas argued that the 1994 consensus that enabled the country’s peaceful transition to democracy was built on four pillars.

The first was established white business being assured that the post- apartheid state would value macro-policy stabilisation and build into the new constitution mechanisms that would protect private enterprise.

The second was the accommodation of the black business strata through BEE, affirmative action, provision of senior public sector jobs, as well as procurement policies that prioritised the previously disadvantaged.

The third involved the accommodation of the black working class through the passing of legislation that improved working conditions and guaranteed workers’ rights.

The fourth concerned looking after the poor and the unemployed through rapidly expanding the welfare net. “This,” Jonas wrote, “ensured the poor and the unemployed remained more or less supportive of the transition, accommodative of the market-led policy choices and less susceptible to national and ethnic mobilisation.”

But all that had begun to unravel 15 years later as big business grew frustrated by mixed policy signalling, corruption and the rising cost of doing business.

Black business, for its part, was unhappy with the lack of economic opportunities and continued concentration of economic power in the hands of a few white people.

The workers, on the other hand, were being retrenched and struggling to find new jobs, while the poor and the unemployed suffered due to a lack of satisfactory service delivery from the state.

Enter President Cyril Ramaphosa, who, buoyed by what big business seemed to be signalling, enthusiastically started talking about plans to form a new social compact. He even announced that a deal involving social partners would be signed within months.

Nothing came out of it, however, and informal discussions with a few business executives suggest that organised business was wary of an all-inclusive deal that would commit them to specific actions. They prefer small and sector-specific agreements. The grand idea died its natural death.

In its place, however, has emerged a new idea of a national dialogue. Since this is much broader than talking about the political economy, big business has not had much to say about whether it supports the initiatives or not.

Political parties, however, are split. Almost all of those outside the government of national unity (GNU) think it will turn out to be a mere talkshop, a waste of time and of the R700m some say would be set aside for it.

Within the GNU, while the majority of the parties are in favour, the second-largest partner – the DA – has decided that it will boycott the whole process in retaliation for Ramaphosa firing a DA deputy minister for going on an unauthorised international trip while not taking action against a couple of ministers and deputy ministers accused of corruption and other wrongdoing.

Reading DA leader John Steenhuisen’s reply to former president Thabo Mbeki’s public letter rebuking the DA for withdrawing, one can tell that the DA has long held the view that the national dialogue was a bad idea, one that had been conceived to save an ANC that is fast losing its grip on power.

But what is wrong with talking? The country is clearly in a shambles and no single political party is going to amass enough electoral support to be able to fix things all on their own for at least the next two elections, so why not support the option of platforms where South Africans from all walks of life – not just politicians and business representatives – gather to discuss how to share things?

Is the aversion to initiatives such as the social compact and the national dialogue because the establishment knows that the benefits it derives from the status quo are better protected when it can strike behind-the-scenes deals with the political elite, away from the eyes of the public?