Johannesburg - The SACP has called for a new post-Covid-19 economic order in South Africa, with developmental policy interventions that include agricultural support and a massive infrastructural rollout.
Insisting that the pandemic has exposed the country’s underdevelopment and incapacity, the party said the current levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality were an indication of government
policy failure.
In an interview with Sunday Independent yesterday, spokesperson Alex Mashilo warned that South Africa could not go back to the pre-coronavirus “crisis” period of economic stagnation and rampant unemployment.
The interview followed the release this week of an SACP economic policy discussion document, titled “Post-Covid-19 Sustainable Recovery and Development Programme”, which proposed an economic policy overhaul.
“Underdevelopment in most parts of the country was exposed by the coronavirus. We believe a massive infrastructural roll-out should be a key way forward. We need an economic policy change because where we come from, things did not work. The high level of employment, poverty and inequality are indicators of economic policy failure.
“The document proposes a set of changes we say we should debate as options,” Mashilo said.
“Imagine if Covid-19 found South Africa with people having access to water. Were we going to be in the panic mode that we found ourselves in? There was so much procurement of this and that of the things that should have been done before and were not done and were now done in the context of a crisis.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Khusela Diko yesterday said
the president concurred with the SACP that the “flawed and exclusionary” South African economy needed to be overhauled.
“To this end, he has called on social partners to utilise this moment to create a new economy which must be a decisive break from the fundamentally flawed, exclusionary and deeply unequal economy, South Africa had been bequeathed by successive colonial and apartheid regimes,” said Diko.
“The president therefore concurs with the SACP on the need to boldly transform and restructure the economy to build back a better and more inclusive society. Such a new economy should have as its tenets accelerated structural reforms, greater localisation and industrialisation, a strengthened informal sector and repurposed state-owned enterprises.”
Diko, however, denied assertions that the pandemic had exposed the state’s lack of capacity.
“The many interventions the government implemented to provide socio-economic relief to millions of South Africans during the Covid-19 pandemic have demonstrated that the state does have the capacity to implement programmes to improve the lives of the people when called upon to do so in moments of crisis.
“It is this capacity, commitment and determination that we should harness even beyond coronavirus.”
The government earlier announced various measures aimed at mitigating the impact of Covid-19.
In addition to the R500 billion stimulus package already announced by Ramaphosa, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni was expected to table an emergency budget which makes provision for Covid-19 relief efforts in two weeks time.
Mashilo rejected the assertion that the pre-Covid-19 period was normal, saying those calling for its return had internalised a crisis.
“There is this talk out there that we should return back to normal. However, what they refer to as normal, in South Africa and many other countries, was not normal but a crisis. Imagine a population of approximately 10 million people unemployed. Many countries do not even have a total national population that matches the unemployed population in South Africa. Before the coronavirus arrived on our shores, South Africa was in a technical recession against the background of long-term stagnation,” he added.
Like in many parts of the world, Covid 19 in South Africa has mainly affected the poor and working class, who are predominantly black.
South African is in a technical recession, while ratings agencies have downgraded it to sub-investment standard or junk status.
More than 10.4 million people are unemployed, including those actively looking for work and discouraged job-seekers, according to Statistics South Africa’s Labour Force Survey.