Durban - It beats me why our trade union leaders, and the workers themselves, can’t see that their wildcat strikes, excessive demands and generally disruptive behaviour are doing serious damage to the economy andthat this is to their own great disadvantage. Wrecking the platinum sector, forcing the shutdown of shafts in the gold mines, all mean diminished returns, which mean fewer jobs and more unemployment. I am astonished when I read of Zwelinzima Vavi, the general secretary of Cosatu, advising the embattled National Union of Mineworkers to become more radical in its demands to keep its members from defecting to the rival Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union – an act of incitement thatprompted the NUM to demand whopping increases for mineworkers up to a preposterous 60 percent. Vavi is a sane and sensible man with a deep concern for the welfare of the working class, and he must surely have known such a NUM demand would lead to precisely the kind of scary headline that is causing foreign investment to flow out of the country like water down a plughole. Which is what is slowing our growth rate to a pathetic 0.9 percent when we need seven percent a year to begin reducing unemployment. It is also a factor in weakening the rand to justless than R10 to the US dollar, which can only mean surging inflation so that everything, especially food, will cost more for people who have less and less because of worsening unemployment. This is self-immolation and it baffles me. Has the intensity of the internal faction fighting within and between the trade unions blinded them to what they are doing to themselves? Have they become caught up in a self-delusional frenzy of competitive populism? But what baffles me even more is the failure of President Jacob Zuma to act more decisively to bring order to the labour market and restore investor confidence in the economic future. He is obviously concerned about the haemorrhaging of confidence, which is why heheld a media briefing last week. He wanted to inject some reassurance, but that needed more than appointing Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan to engage with the unions and the mining companies to try to settle the wave of labour unrest in that industry. That is important, to be sure, but what investors want to see is a clearer road map of where the economy is headed. Drifting along aimlessly with periodic band-aid attempts to deal with crises as they arise on our muddled course won’t restore their confidence in what should be the leading economy in the “African Spring” they believe lies ahead. They see us faltering at our moment of great opportunity. The pity is that, fresh from his triumphant re-election at Mangaung, Zuma was in a strong position to give a positive lead. In his anxiety throughout his first term to avoid splitting the fractious ruling coalition and to secure his second term, Zuma became so tentative and weak that he ceded the power of veto to his alliance partners, particularly Cosatu, over policies they didn’t like. This rendered him vapid and powerless. But now he is safely installed for his second term. He came away from Mangaung looking more self-assured, sounding more positive. This was his moment to act more decisively, to seize the opportunity presented by the mining crisis to assert his leadership, to steady the ship and chart a course towards a more prosperous future. Here is the kind of short, decisive speech he should have made to achieve that: “The crisis in the mining industry, which has long been the central pillar in South Africa’s economy, brings us to a point where we must act decisively to implement policies that we have long debated in our various forums to end these periodic crises and put our economy on a stronger growth path. Key decisions were taken at our Mangaung conference. Now we must implement them. “The immediate crisis in the mining industry must be ended. To that end Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan will join with Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant and Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu to engage constructively with the mining companies andtrade unions to reach a settlement of the present wage disputes. “Once this has been achieved, the group will be expanded into a broader commission to review our entire labour relations system, inter alia to find ways to expand its democratic structure so that smaller unions, and not only the majority union in each industry, will have a role in wage negotiations. This will be the equivalent of theEconomic Codesa some analysts have called for and will, hopefully, lead to reforms that will make our labour relations system work more smoothly and constructively. “As you know the National Development Plan (NDP), which has been widely acclaimed by many sectors of our society, was embraced as ANC policy at our Mangaung conference. As I said at that conference, our main strategic task in the years ahead must be to ensure that all sectors of the state and society are focused on the vision and implementation of the plan. “To this end I am appointing the deputy president of the ANC, Mr Cyril Ramaphosa, to head a working group that will include Minister of Planning Trevor Manuel as well as the secretaries-general and chairpersons of both Cosatu and the SACP, to set out a programme for the implementation of the NDP. “As you know, it is a 20-year development programme, so we must decide on the order of priorities for its implementation. We cannotimplement everything at once; it must be done in phases. “This working group will have the task of preparing an implementation programme for the first five years, which will form the centrepiece of the ANC’s platform for next year’s election. “I wish to announce, too, that after that election, Mr Ramaphosa, in his capacity as deputy president of South Africa, will be placed in charge of the implementation of that five-year programme. “That is all. Thank you for your attendance.” Just five minutes. No long peroration needed. In a short speech along those lines, President Zuma could have signalled that his second term was going to be a new era of decisiveness. Within days, nay hours, sentiment in the investor community would have been turned around. The rand would have begun to strengthen and the growth rate prospects to have looked healthier. More importantly, the people of this country would have felt uplifted by the reassuring sense of real leadership at the top. Their response to that is the only thing that will silence the voices of dissent among the alliance partners and remove their power of veto. Lengthy consultation and debate is fine; that is what democracy is about. So, too, is seekingas much consensus as possible. But there comes a time, usually at a point of crisis, when a decision has to be taken – and only the elected leader can take it. Zuma missed his opportunity last week, but it is never too late. The Mercury
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 09:45:07 +0000
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