On November 1 30-odd individuals gathered in an unprepossessing, mostly beige and brown meeting room in Block C on the campus of the department of trade, industry & competition in Sunnyside, Pretoria. Several more joined online.
The meeting was called a workshop, and it was designed to develop an effective, all-party export strategy for SA’s steel sector after all the work that had gone into the Steel Master Plan over 18 months. For steel — and most of the other parts of our economy for which master plans have recently been developed — exports are the pointy end of generating job-creating growth.
There were murmurings and mutterings from the private sector along the lines of: “Well, shouldn’t you have picked up the phone ages ago and at least talked to each other?” The murmurers and mutterers had a good point. But there was no private-public, “us” and “you” rancour because the private sector people knew that they were just as guilty of operating in self-imposed silos when it comes to selling this country abroad.
We have simply never worked like that before. But on November 1 the steel sector began to think differently. And committed to acting differently. All role players committed to working together as SA Steel Inc. As South Africans we can point to a spectacular successes in pulling off large infrastructural projects in Mozambique, West Africa and elsewhere by bringing multiple parties to the table. Projects in which the finance and insurance, the project-management, manufacturing capability and logistics were brought to bear on work that creates wealth and jobs. We just don’t do enough of it, and we don’t do it at scale.