The recent opinion pieces “Is South Africa’s business-government collaboration just a comforting ruse?” and “Business-government bromance is failing” say what many of us have suspected for years.
The “titans of industry” initiative is being seen for what it is: PR dressed up as patriotic problem‑solving. For years, our titans have insisted they are working with the ANC and “fixing things”.
We were promised 3% GDP growth by 2030. The numbers tell a very different story. The economy contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter, after growing 0.4% in the quarter before. We need 3% to keep up with population growth, so in reality South Africans are getting poorer.
Observers might blame oil prices, yet the US grew at 2.1% and 1.5% over the same period.
Finally, some are waking up. Bernard Swanepoel now says this business-government collaboration is a “bullshit narrative”.
Eskom alone should have shattered the illusion. One of the headline “accomplishments” of this business-government collaboration was that “we have fixed Eskom”.
But Eskom’s latest financials show industrial revenue down 22%, and a debtors’ book up to R111bn. Our manufacturing base is in terminal decline, and those two numbers prove it. We import more than 100,000 Chinese cars a year while the local auto industry burns.
Meanwhile, more individuals and municipalities are unwilling or unable to pay for electricity. Eskom is kept alive only by above‑inflation price hikes and tax subsidies of about R80bn this year — funded in part by personal and corporate taxes.
Now the same titans of industry have moved on to “fixing” crime.
We have 722 generals and brigadiers and 2,426 colonels in the South African Police Service, yet the Madlanga commission is exposing serious claims of corruption against many. Apparently a minimum salary of R1m no longer buys the right Waterkloof mansion. Police minister Senzo Mchunu and the national commissioner are on a leave of absence — with full pay.
It takes a World Bank outsider to call a spade a spade: “SAPS needs a once‑off deep clean.”
Yet our local titans prefer to play buddy‑buddy. At the centre of this mythology is Adrian Gore. For years he has personified the business‑ANC “partnership”, marketed as “disciplined optimism”. We are told that South Africans, especially the “dying white male” variety, are congenital pessimists who must be re‑educated by this new gospel.
I don’t buy it. I started a business in South Africa 23 years ago. I came back from the US when the ANC was unbanned. One has to be an optimist to be an entrepreneur, in any country. My family remains here, even as the temperature in the pot rises daily. We have three passports and could emigrate tomorrow. Instead, we stay, vote here, employ people here. That is not pessimism; it is commitment.
What I reject is being lectured on optimism by people who stand alongside the ANC, tell us everything is fixable, then call us defeatist when we point to the actual numbers.
Our problem is not a lack of optimism; it is that the ANC is in charge. Gore and his fellow “titans” need to take off their rose‑coloured glasses and recognise they are suffering from a form of Stockholm syndrome, still believing the ANC is “fixable on the margin”. It is not.
President Cyril Ramaphosa may be personally likeable, but his legacy will be that of yet another failed ANC leader on the long road to a failed state.
Robert Breyer, by e-mail
