Manifesto: A New Vision for South Africa

By Songezo Zibi

Shortlisted for the 2023 Sunday Times Literary Awards

‘This book is not an analysis of South Africa’s problems. It is an outline of what we must change to have the South Africa of our dreams. In these pages, I challenge myself and all those who are willing to take a chance to pursue a higher ideal, something bigger than any individual, a belief that we can be the stewards of our own destiny. This is a manifesto.’ For millions of South Africans, the promise of democracy, a promise our Constitution attempts to set out in its preamble, will not be realised in their lifetime. Some who are yet to be born will live and die poor and marginalised because their country was not ready to provide the tools that would help them to make their lives meaningful, healthy and prosperous.

This situation is no accident. While the structural conditions that created the initial inequalities are a result of colonialism and apartheid, the worsening of this condition after 2010 is the result of political negligence, incompetence and rampant corruption borne out of a deep disconnection between the political elites and the real needs of the people. South Africa is in urgent need of a comprehensive overhaul of its political and state institutions, its social structures and institutions as well as its economy and policies.

Manifesto presents a challenge to South Africa's professionals, black and white – who should know that turning the country around will take much more than good intentions – to urgently return to public life. They are key to moving the country towards modern democratic politics and can help to grow its economy to fit in with and thrive in a rapidly evolving world. South Africa will get nowhere if the most able continue to be on the periphery of politics.

Instead, we must adopt a different mindset and take on a new generational mission to accept the responsibility of leadership so that South Africa can finally have the future it has been waiting for the ANC to deliver.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan South Africa
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781770107991

Songezo Zibi

SONGEZO ZIBI has more than 20 years of corporate experience, during which time he has been a communication and corporate affairs professional and a leader in diverse industries. Prior to joining Absa as the Head of Communications, he was the editor of Business Day. As a journalist and editor, Songezo has written extensively about South Africa’s political system, economy and social dynamics. Since 2007 he has been a consistent and recognised voice for accountability, good governance, nation building and for the creation of a dynamic, inclusive economy. In January 2022, he announced the launching of Rivonia Circle, a think tank that will give birth to innovative and more effective ways of political participation. Manifesto is his second book, following on from the acclaimed Raising the Bar: Hope and Renewal in South Africa (2014).

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Manifesto

a new vision for south africa

Songezo Zibi

MACMILLAN

First published in 2022 by Pan Macmillan South Africa

Private Bag X19

Northlands

2116

Johannesburg

South Africa

www.panmacmillan.co.za

ISBN

978-1-77010-798-4

e-

ISBN

978-1-77010-799-1

© 2022 Songezo Zibi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Editing by Alison Lowry

Proofreading by Sally Hines

Design and typesetting by Triple M Design, Johannesburg

Cover design by Ayanda Phasha

Front cover photograph by Victor Dlamini

For Qhama, Lizwi, Sisipho

and all the children in the Zibi family.

This book is about the future you

and all South African children deserve.

Contents

Introduction

chapter 1 Snapshot of a Broken Promise

chapter 2 Lessons from America

chapter 3 Political Decay

chapter 4 A State Destroyed

chapter 5 The Choice We Have

chapter 6 A New Leadership

chapter 7 A New Society

chapter 8 Reimagining the State

chapter 9 The Political Economy

chapter 10 Manifesto

Acknowledgements

Also by Songezo Zibi

Introduction

By the end of March 2022, there was a new and seemingly unstop­pable wave of anti-immigrant sentiment under the banner of a campaign called Operation Dudula. Anecdotally, it appeared to enjoy the support of more South Africans than previous anti-immigrant campaigns, some of them prominent.

At its core, the campaign was a brutal competition for economic opportunity between two sets of black people – locals and immigrants. Although those involved in the campaign claimed that it was targeting illegal immigrants, a careful scan of social media and news interviews by those supporting it showed that the general sentiment was that non-South Africans were usurping opportunities that should accrue to South Africans.

The campaign was an outcome of many things that have gone and continue to go wrong in the country.

First, the campaign would hardly have any legs to stand on if the country’s immigration system was not broken. Some entered the country without being registered at all by crossing the border illegally. Others used normal procedures but overstayed the period stipulated in the rules of immigration; in other words, they came in on a tourist visa and ended up working without changing the type of visa they had acquired. Others were refugees fleeing persecution in their own countries, but it had taken so long to process their asylum applications that they were effectively without legal status. In the Operation Dudula campaign they were almost always lumped together with everyone else, and victimised.

During the campaign, it was very convenient for politicians of various hues, including the Minister of Home Affairs, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, to disingenuously join the bandwagon. In their telling, the immigrants were the problem. There was hardly any mention of how the system was to be fixed. There was also no discussion on how ingrained corruption in the law enforcement system in general, and the administration of immigration, was to be dealt with.

And so we were introduced to a long-standing and persistent South African disease: diversion. Instead of dealing with the core underlying issues, public discourse and political attention were occupied by a sliver of the overall problem.

So what did we learn from the Operation Dudula saga? We learned that South Africa’s ‘ticking timebomb of unemployment’ was beginning to explode.

By the end of 2021, total unemployment was just over 43%, which means almost half of the working-age population either could not find work or had given up even trying. During March 2022, the World Bank released a report on inequality, which showed that out of 164 countries, South Africa was the most unequal. Ten per cent of the South African population owns 90% of the country’s wealth. It also showed that black people proportionally had the least assets and were least likely to get the level of education that gives them a decent chance at finding employment.

I cannot see how the desperate fight for basic resources was not going to culminate in a bitter conflict such as Operation Dudula when the data shows how and why millions of South Africans remain poor and increasingly with little or no hope of a better life.

From the behaviour and statements of various political leaders, including those in government, we also learned that South Africa is on dangerous autopilot. By the end of the first quarter of 2022, as Operation Dudula supporters forcibly and without lawful permission raided people’s homes and businesses, President Cyril Ramaphosa said nothing.

Instead, out of what I believe to be sheer political opportunism, his clueless ministers subtly climbed on the bandwagon by carrying out public performative ‘inspections’ of various businesses in a hunt for breaches to immigration and labour regulations. If there was a strategy to deal with the issue comprehensively, it was not communicated.

President Ramaphosa was not alone in being unhelpful. The Economic Freedom Fighters’ leader, Julius Malema, found himself sitting uneasily on the fence. At first, he engaged in the same performative inspections of businesses, and then later clashed with the organisers of the campaign.

The campaign reserved particular venom for Zimbabwean immigrants. In countless social media posts, Zimbabweans were told to ‘go back to Zimbabwe and fight for your country’. It is true that there are many Zimbabweans in South Africa, a direct outcome of political repression, economic mismanagement and institutionalised corruption by Zimbabwe’s governing ZANU-PF party, which has been in power since independence in 1980.

Since the Zimbabwe crisis began in 2000, successive African National Congress (ANC) governments have acted in a way designed to maintain ZANU-PF hegemony as a fellow party of liberation. Although South Africa has often been called upon to play a leading mediation role, this has not succeeded in opening democratic space in that country, and the ANC government has always been happy to sustain the status quo.

And so we were introduced to another systemic problem, an immoral and broken foreign policy that lacks strategic foresight. Anyone who applies themselves to these matters would have foreseen that one day South Africans and Zimbabweans would battle for scarce resources. And just briefly, and looking at just one incident, there are already three areas in which South Africa’s brokenness is evident.

There is economic stagnation, a broken immigration and law enforcement system and institutions, and directionless, tactless foreign policy, where the confluence of all these places the lives and livelihoods of the poor at risk. Yet, the reaction of those entrusted to lead the country was to join the mob in their suits and stoke the fires of blaming, shaming and humiliating more people with not a single systematic solution in place.

Whether it is immigration, unemployment, education, health or any of the myriad problems that persistently keep millions of South Africans awake at night, a careful analysis shows the same pattern. That pattern begins with poor political leadership and weaves its way through institutional decay, corruption and lack of care, and it produces devastating outcomes for the most vulnerable in our society.

It is not possible to solve any one problem without taking a systematic approach that involves political intervention, a new leadership and comprehensive multi-sector reforms to drive national renewal. When the very soul of the country is corrupted, and its attention is easily distracted by carefully orchestrated diversions, mere representations and protests to the same ­people who have caused the damage will not yield any sustainable results.

South Africa urgently needs change.

This book is my attempt to start a conversation about national renewal, with the very specific purpose of producing direct, materially beneficial outcomes for South Africa’s most vulnerable. That task can be accomplished without sowing further divisions and presenting sections of the South African population as a stumbling block to those outcomes.

I am calling on all right-thinking South Africans who care for their fellow citizens to unite behind common values, national priorities and solutions to our problems. To do that, we need a different and new leadership, new institutions and a new political culture.

It is not an easy task, but it can and must be done.

chapter 1

Snapshot of a Broken Promise

As the year 2021 drew to an end, after many months of uncertainty and anxiety brought about by a global pandemic that severely stretched the country’s resources and tested its citizens’ resilience, South Africa was feeling the strain and hoping for some good news with the summer holiday season approaching.

On 30 November, Statistics South Africa released its Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the third quarter of that year.¹ This is the country’s detailed statistical analysis of employment and unemployment levels in the economy. As usual, the report was bleak. At 34.9%, unemployment was the highest it had ever been since the government began releasing the survey in 2008.

The figure is somewhat misleading because the 34.9% unemployment is known as the ‘narrow definition’ in that it only considers those unemployed people who are actively looking for work. When those who are no longer looking for work, the so-called ‘discouraged work seekers’, are included, the unemployment rate is almost 46%.

Almost 52% of unemployed persons did not have a matric. Of just over 10 million young people between the ages of 15 and 24, 33.5% were neither employed nor in school or in training. The same report showed that all categories of work except managerial roles shed jobs during the same quarter. Finally, in the 12 months to September 2021, unemployment had increased by 4.1% compared to the same period the previous year.

* * *

The same month, November, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), which is responsible for ferrying millions of working people, students and work seekers across the country, was very visibly in the throes of its own troubles. These had persisted for many years, but for much of 2021 the agency had been in the spotlight, its woeful decline the subject of news coverage and social media commentary.

Firstly, some of its employees and former employees who testified before the State Capture Commission, headed by current Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, spoke about the carefully orchestrated corruption at Prasa that, significantly, was driven by corrupt politicians and ministers who chose to look the other way. At the time, Prasa did not have a permanent chief executive officer (it had had six CEOs in three years). Although his appointment was accompanied by some controversy in that he was older than Prasa’s retirement age of 63, eventually Zolani Matthews was appointed in March 2021. But Matthews never had time to complete even one familiarisation lap before he was gone. He was fired within the year for apparently failing to disclose that he had dual South African and British citizenship.

The board chairperson, appointed the previous year, is a failed politician named Leonard Ramatlakane, while the cabinet minister responsible for the agency (Transport) is Fikile Mbalula, an object of social media and media ridicule, given his often comical and childish public behaviour. Although he is now in his 50s, Mbalula is considered ‘young’ in ANC leadership parlance when compared to the high number of pensioners occupying either party leadership or ministerial positions.

Prasa was also in the news in November 2021 because, following years of forensic and other investigations, the board chaired by Ramatlakane set about investigating the senior employees who had testified at the State Capture Commission about corruption at the agency. In its first edition for December 2021, the Sunday Times led with a story detailing how, despite the Labour Court reinstating these employees after they had been fired, they were now being suspended on new charges – the charges of which seemed spurious.

As if the internal corruption was not enough, the agency proved unable to stop thieves from literally gutting its infrastructure, with train stations being reduced to rubble within a matter of weeks in various locations around Gauteng.

Mired in the Matthews and whistleblower victimisation controversies and nowhere near solving any of the core challenges it had had for many years, such as operating safe and reliable passenger trains for South Africa’s people, the situation was undeniably dire.

With Matthews’ departure, the company once again had no leader.

President Ramaphosa said nothing. Fikile Mbalula remained Minister of Transport. The underwhelming Ramatlakane remained chairperson of Prasa’s board of directors.

* * *

Also in November, the then national police commissioner, another underwhelming figure, General Khehla Sitole, appeared before the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) as part of its public hearings into the public violence and looting that engulfed Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal in July 2021. From his testimony, I could only deduce that Sitole had little or no command of his own police members.

What was not discussed at the hearings was excellent reporting by the Daily Maverick of the extent to which senior police ranks are riddled with corruption and factionalism and, in many instances, infiltrated by organised criminals, especially in the Western Cape. This does not surprise me. The last time South Africa had a national police commissioner finish their term without controversy was when George Fivaz held the position (1995–2000). Every subsequent national police commissioner has either been suspended, fired or charged with corruption. Sithole would be given his marching orders in February 2022 and leave office by the end of March.

In another universe, this would be alarming, but in South Africa citizens, especially the middle class and well-to-do, are able to carry on as if everything is normal.

During the same week that General Sitole and his minister, Bheki Cele, appeared before the SAHRC, the head of the National Prosecuting Authority’s Investigating Directorate, Advocate Hermione Cronje, resigned her post after just 30 months.² The unit did not make much headway in its investigations, failure that is partly attributed to a lack of resources, which was reported in the media during July 2021.³

* * *

From this abbreviated catalogue of things that had gone wrong in just one month, November 2021, the truth becomes obvious: South Africa is in serious trouble and has been for a very long time. Part of the reason we have ended up where we are is because of people who for years have elected to look on the bright side, where the cup is half-full rather than half-empty. While I understand the need for us to retain hope at all times, doing so despite mounting evidence of state and general collapse amounts to wilful blindness. This is a position often adopted by those who still manage to do well out of the chaos.

When I initially set out to write this book, it was out of raw emotion – anger, disappointment and fear that our future is increasingly looking bleak unless we take urgent steps to change course. Although that is no longer the main driving force, I am still disappointed in myself and many other members of the professional class who have done very little to contribute to the strengthening and deepening of our democratic system. We have left this task to the poor and the working class. They are the ones who feel the impact of the political dysfunction the most and they have very little option but to fight for the right outcomes. If we want to get the results we complain are not being delivered by those in political and economic power, the required action is obvious: the professional class has to get involved.

I believe we are guilty of having no confidence in our capabilities, and thinking too small in terms of the scale and depth of the transformation that is possible in South Africa if only we were willing to take the trouble to make it happen. We are often the noisiest on social media and radio talk shows but almost never prepared to do anything practical to change what we are unhappy about. We appear to regard political leadership as a hereditary system in which it is not possible to participate, which is how leadership is achieved in a democracy.

I am also struck by how many of us who are fortunate enough to have jobs and financial security have become accustomed to seeing poverty without feeling shame or anger. We may feel sorry for those who are begging, but we are generally not ashamed that a country with as much wealth and potential as ours has so many poor people. Had we been moved to shame, we would long ago have found the state of the country to be an intolerable injustice requiring urgent political action.

Even worse, we have learned to be impervious to the waves of hungry, jobless people we see on street corners and sidewalks begging for work, any work, for any amount of money. The children of the better off, sitting in air-conditioned cars, are learning to be desensitised to the daily humiliations of their fellow human beings who are forced to beg.

Often I have wondered how much this present experience of millions of people will define and be the future of our own children. Will they grow up in an economy and country that can provide them with opportunities to build a life? On our current trajectory, I do not think so.

For millions of South Africans, the promise of democracy, a promise our Constitution attempts to set out in its preamble, will not be realised in their lifetime. It is a broken promise.