Over the past few weeks business and political leaders have taken important steps towards rescuing what little hope remains of the SA promise.
In July more than 115 CEOs of major companies signed a pledge to provide resources and capacity to the state to address challenges in key economic sectors, including energy, rail and logistics. The energy crisis had already led to the creation of a partnership with the government aimed at providing technical and financial skills to address some elements of the energy crisis.
Part of the problem is the truncated nature of policy formulation, which requires consultations that are notoriously slow to roll out. In instances where existing policy measures are an impediment to a faster rollout of critical initiatives the provision of additional resources does nothing more than provide a larger kitty of additional resources that then sit idle.
Ideas that are at odds with the agreed policy orientation of the government will create the type of hysteria recently witnessed in the conversations about Transnet’s partnership with ICTSI, and the SAA privatisation. Given the elevated focus on avoiding alienating political partners ahead of a general election the government will be keen to avoid its relationship with business being interpreted as a proxy for bypassing the ANC’s agreed policy directives.