On Friday 10 July, the ANC and Business for SA (B4SA) released policy documents outlining blueprints for an economic recovery. While finding common ground on a couple of points, they are still depressingly far apart.
Once upon a time, a long long time ago, philosophy was one of the core subjects of education, and the starting point of philosophy was the study of logic. For all its grand pronouncements and glimpses of new thinking, the ANC’s latest economic policy document could do with a dose of that, because it has at its heart a logical fallacy known as circular reasoning.
Frameworks vie with co-ordination and planning and new infrastructure. And at the dead centre of all this is the mighty, infallible, indefatigable, all-knowing state. But in terms of policy, it is a confusing muddle, which pretty much sums up the ANC’s record on the issue. Looking ahead to the medium term, the document pointedly asks “What is to be Done?” That’s the title of a 1902 work of theory by Vladimir Lenin. So, it’s a dog whistle of sorts and not one meant for fund managers deciding where to deploy their clients’ capital.
The B4SA list of priorities in its document “A New Inclusive Economic Future for South Africa” also includes “regulatory reform” and “addressing crime, corruption and undoing state capture”. Do crime and corruption, which are clear deterrents to investment as well as a waste of scarce capital, figure in the ANC document? Not so much.
Keynes refuted the classical economics of his day, advocating the use of fiscal and monetary spending to set the flywheel of economic growth moving and stimulate demand.
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