House Chairperson, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, DPME's primary role is in the guiding of planning and implementation of the National Development Plan. This entire budget is driven by the NDP. The ANC's loadstar as Minister Mthembu pointed out. It was launched in 2012, and is to be progressively implemented over the remaining decade or more, until Nirvana arrives in 2030 [Laughter.]
The monitoring and evaluation of this plan, year by year in rolling five year cycles, is necessary to assess its historical performance - unremarkable to date, by any yardstick - but the real issue, is the plan itself, accountability apart. Now I have a confession to make. I had not until very recently read the National Development Plan, in its entirety, so, the other day I treated myself to all 400
odd pages of it. I suppose I should thank the committee Chair for not reading it verbatim in his speech [Laughter.] It is a document which gives the state primary responsibility to address our development challenges. The overarching culture minimises risk, and maximises compliance. Boxes are ticked, and real time grappling with complex social problems is sidelined, it's hardly a neoliberal document as had been referred to.
The battle with state capture has also increased the culture of compliance, with a concomitant minimising of any innovation. Every bit of jargon and consultant speak is enshrined in the toolkit which complies nominally at the expense of real implementation. Flexibility is minimal, partnerships are practically non-existent, command and control is the order of the day, it is GOSPLAN on steroids straight out of Moscow in 1950.
At the heart of it all is the concept of a developmental state, focused on determined elite, that represents a specific variation of capitalism in which the state has significant authority to exert political power over economic matters through regulatory intervention. It's about market share over profit, economic nationalism, protectionism, technology transfers, and the existence of a large, insulated and competent civil service-I wish- a weak and
subordinate civil society, and an alliance between state, labour and industry.
The development state and democracy do not always make good bedfellows - they have historically been reliant on a fair measure of repression. Later models, as in Botswana and Mauritius have however evinced more flexibility. Could it work in South Africa, it's undesirability on the grounds of democratic repression and illiberalism, notwithstanding? Well, I'm afraid the answer is a resounding no. It needs to rely- even on its terms on an elite that is not predatory; it needs the capacity through a competent bureaucracy; and, social groupings in business and labour need to be positively and negatively incentivised to implement it.
In South Africa, the absence of an economic and political consensus, and a balance of power between the left and right in the ANC, stands in the way of this. Then there's the huge weakness in administrative competence and capacity - visited on us by a government that refuses to understand the concept of fit for purpose; that continues to squash the square peg of race into the round hole of competence via self-defeating quotas, and a public sector that needs to be shielded from the vagaries of politics and patronage. A capable state, my foot!
All of this tends towards a weak state that stands in the way of a developmental state, which at the minimum requires consensus around an elite project, and a public sector that is not facing systemic crises of capacity, competence corruption and efficiency. Moreover, the state cannot be treated as an external agent of change; it needs to be treated as a problem in itself, and also as part of the solution. What is required is that society and the economy be treated as agents of growth and development. This sorry state can not achieve this. What is required is high labour productivity, and vibrant and empowered private sector. This would lay the foundation for a unique opportunity for improvement of the lives of all South Africans.
Cooperation, innovation, experimentation, and flexibility is what is needed; it doesn't need the approach of the Communist Party and its allies that calls as Stalin did in his passionate speech, commanding workers to play a crucial role in industrialisation, when he said: "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make up this gap in ten years. Either we do it or they will crush us", and crush they did unaided.
Add to this, a disabling health situation, threatened with exacerbation by the introduction of the National Health Insurance,
NHI, and an equally bad primary education sector and output quality. Not only is the enrolment in primary education low, relative to peers, but the quality of the schooling is poor, despite the government largesse in the area as a percentage of gross domestic product, GDP. The situation is just as bad when one looks at higher education and training, characterised by low quality.
The country has notoriously low labour market efficiency. This is characterised by lacking cooperation in labour related relations, inflexibility of wage determination, excessively constricting stringent hiring and firing practices and a very low labour productivity. To make matters worse, there is little leverage in the NDP of those sectors and indicators in which South Africa has a significant advantage, in which the country excels, such as efficiency of corporate boards, quality of management schools, market size, financial market development, availability of financial services, innovation advantages, the importance of the mining sector and the potential of agriculture.
To crown it all, the NDP seeks to create eleven million jobs by 2030, while we sit at ten million plus unemployed, in a shrinking economy, on a ship charted by a stolid and ossified plan, and a Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation tasked with
oversight and compliance to steer the ship to Nirvana. All concerned would be wise to heed the words of Marius Oosthuizen of the Gordon School of Business Science, who recently remarked in an article "Building educational institutions is not as sexy as striking a BB- BEE deal or becoming an overnight tenderpreneur. It doesn't roll off the tongue, as does the idea of a "hundred black industrialists" or the EFF's "cardinal pillars" of nationalisation or" massive protected industrialisation". What we actually need- listen- ... [Interjection.]