The state needs a lesson in humility

If you’re a South African living in South Africa it would not have been lost on you recently that basic infrastructure is crumbling. 

Electricity is the poster-child of South Africa’s parastatal and government bungling, but it really is spreading to all corners.  Before I go on, just know that this is not a doom and gloom pack-your-bags-for-Perth pep talk… far from it.  SA rocks and is an awesome place to live, but it does not take huge predictive expertise to know that if we don’t upgrade basic infrastructure properly (water, roads, pavements, power generation plants etc etc) then it will all decay and be ruined. 

This is not unpatriotic, pessimistic, or defeatist… just fact.  Stuff decays.  Capital depreciates.  It happens. 

The problem lies with the fact that our government has embedded in the core of its very soul the notion that somehow these areas are the domain of the state.  The longer this ugly myth is perpetuated the more indistinguishable the ANC looks from those hideous political masters of past, the Nationalists. 

The Nats were the embodiment of tyranny and big government operating by the stultifying bureaucratic mass minutia that characterises the worst cleptocrat states.  The problem is, the ANC inherited this bloated state apparatus and, like any self-respecting government, its eyes lit up.  “ALL of THIS is OURS? Wow!!” 

Half freedom is no freedom at all, and as author Rex Van Schalkwyk wrote in 1996, it is going to take more than one miracle for SA to thrive.  Getting rid of a bunch of tyrannical clods like the Gnats and their apartheid laws was wonderful, but that was surely always just phase one?

When the commies over at Cosatu and the SACP demand indignantly that the “revolution” must continue, they kinda have a point. I mean, 1994 was cool but it was just a step, right?  If a little freedom’s good surely a lot of freedom is better?  Unfortunately the Red’s prescription for continued revolution is woefully mislead and would take SA on the expressway to serfdom.  But still, you can see why the lefties are pissed off – government run entities are grinding SA slow-motion toward a standstill and the constitution and legislative agenda of the ruling party has ironically kept its own supporters back from participating economically like they can politically. 

Too much government is bad at the best of times, but when your government lacks the skills to implement an agenda and is so totally opposed to skilled whities doing the jobs, you’re left in a bit of a bind. 

You can almost feel the infrastructure creeking wearily on your way to work, about to give up the ghost, and as any business owner will tell you, if you wait until it all falls apart the cost of repair will be way higher. 

But maybe the all-fall-down scenario is the healthiest.  Seriously.  Healthy in the this-medicine-tastes-disgusting-but-I-really-need-it sense.  Think about it: it’s taken an electricity crisis of massive proportions and South Africa being bought to the brink before finally, after years of head-in-the-sand stubbornness, government has started to whisper the “P” word for Eskom. 

If its taken that long for Eskom, can you imagine how far from the government radar privatisation of water provision and management of water infrastructure is.  Oh, you scoff, you can’t privatise water provision, what about all those poor souls with little to nothing who need water to survive?  Well, we need food to survive too but the last I checked the best, cheapest, most convenient and widely distributed providers of this necessity were privately owned.  That argument simply does not hold up.

Absent an ounce of humility it may take the worst before we get the best.  Government can talk and moan and blame and intensify affirmative action and steal from municipal coffers and tell voters how they’ll do better next time and all other manner of excuse-mongering, but in the end you can’t argue with systemic failure and if we don’t have a major overhaul of dead-end ideologies it’s systemic failure of infrastructure we’ll get. 

Maybe then, when the system has so obviously come to ruin, will our political masters finally have the wisdom gained from humility to hand over these functions to private enterprise and let the economy’s basic and vital infrastructure soar for everyone’s benefit.

I hope they don’t require such a painful lesson, but if it’s what it’ll take, bring it on.

UPDATE: Humility 101 for the Colorado Springs local government