South Africa’s transformation project, as a necessary route to escape the legacy of apartheid, sees a big failure owing to its inability to progress beyond economic stagnation to the stage of meeting legitimate demands and expectations for a developmental state and a better life for the underprivileged despite several policies, programmes, plans and strategies that have been adopted by the government since 1994.
For many underprivileged black South Africans, transformation has not yielded the desirable outcomes as promised prospects continue to remain a pie in the sky to many. They remain stuck in the trap of poverty, inequality, unemployment, high dependency ratio, racism, corruption and homelessness. The longer it takes South Africa’s transformation experiment to overcome these challenges, the more likely the transformation project will lose credibility. This reality prompted economist Sampie Terreblanche to coin the phrase of “lost in transformation”. He was referring to the failure to deliver on legitimate expectations, which fly in the face of all the promises made by political leaders.
For this failure there should be accountability and consequences. Transformation in most sectors of the economy and society has been unsuccessful. Among the sectors that are behind in transformation are primary sectors, such as mining; secondary sectors, such as the automobile sector; and tertiary sectors, such as tourism and financial subsectors.
In the public sector there is a failure to achieve set outcomes in the media, judiciary, sport, heritage and tertiary education.
Although black people are placed at the level of leadership in some public entities, that has not made those institutions’ systems and structures change to the extent that they effect substantive transformation.
Commitment
Unfortunately these shortfalls happen in institutions where black people are the top management and leadership. This leads one to infer that there is no commitment to transformation among black leaders mandated to speed up transformation.
The core responsibility for transformation is placed in the hands of black leadership to ensure that it succeeds in addressing poverty, inequality and unemployment. This responsibility cannot be expected to be done by white leadership, which historically was the greatest beneficiary of apartheid and who continue to benefit and harvest privileges at the expense of the poor black majority. Unfortunately, this unfair condition is allowed by some black leaders to perpetuate itself.
It appears that decisive leadership to exert transformation in all sectors of society is in chronic short supply. The country is where it is after 22 years of freedom partly because of the choices and decisions leaders have made and continue to make in public and private institutions, which do not bring about the fundamental changes in accordance with the legitimate expectations of the majority of black South Africans.
Affirmative transformation is a well-thought-of idea to address the legacy of racial discriminatory dispensation, but it remains flawed in its implementation.
Given the large amounts of money associated with transformation, in terms of broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE), that has enriched very few black elites in the name of transformation, the poor black majority are justified to expect socio-economic upliftment and improvement in their material conditions and standards of living.
Unfortunately, without being pessimistic, it seems likely that South Africa’s transformation model will not be able to meet the expectations that are prompted by the misleading historic promises by the leadership in the public sector.
Current unfavourable economic circumstances are not helpful to the collective efforts of the government on economic transformation or growing the economy.
The pseudo transformation created a small black elite that pretends to represent a poor black majority while it indulges in self-enrichment in the name of BBBEE. This created black elite is unable to influence white capital control of the economy.
Black elites
Some of these black elites were elevated by government tender deals to become instant millionaires and billionaires who largely share the same interests as white elites. If social economic transformation in our country remains unsuccessful, there is potential for social instability.
The few black elite beneficiaries of transformation remain unapologetic about recycling and monopolising the benefits arising from the BBBEE deals at the expense of the poor black majority.
At the centre of transformation should be responsible and accountable black leadership with credible and efficient structures of governance that serve the citizens without abdicating the collective responsibility. It has become clear after 22 years of democracy and freedom that South Africa cannot completely transform without de-racialising her economy to be inclusive in ownership, management and control of the commanding heights of our economy.
This may lead to the untangling of economic ownership by the few and expedite equitable redistribution and de-concentration of ownership, management and control of the means of economic production from the monopolistic few rich white males who are said to occupy about 70 percent of management and control in the private sector. Unfortunately this condition, allowed to remain for 22 years, is led by black elites themselves due to oversensitivity to the myth that economic transformation is the antithesis of economic growth. It is a reckless error for leadership to entrust responsibility for transformation to white leadership that has never shown an interest in speeding transformation.
When black leadership allows this the way it does, while it has an opportunity and resources in its collective heads to lead and exert transformation on all fronts, then our black leadership cannot turn around to blame anyone except for itself. This black leadership should provide credible accountability for the failure to lead successful transformation and if need be resign from leadership positions and allow those able to deliver economic transformation to take the helm.
There is no hope to end poverty, unemployment and inequity without de-racialising the South African economy.
* Brian
Mahlangu is an independent governance and public policy analyst. He writes in his personal capacity.
** The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Independent Media.
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