It's not only those with nefarious agendas who want to rewrite history. Seemingly sincere people do it too.
For 30 years the ANC's story has been prominent: they defeated apartheid, Mandela was the Messiah and great provider, Mbeki the philosopher-king, Zuma the RET deliverer who would overturn WMC so black people could rise from poverty and subjugation. And last, Ramaphosa the reformer and corruption buster. All hail ramaphoria!
Each leader had their acolytes and mythology. Zuma, after everyone thought he would retire, with the ANC and government's help formed the MK Party from disaffected members. Ramaphosa, in addition to being a suburb businessman, was the great negotiator and consensus-builder who would provide South Africa with investment, growth and jobs. When that failed to emerge during the first half of his presidency, the story changed to him having to bring like-minded ANC members on board.
Only during the last two years did the narrative unravel to reveal, to his distraught supporters, the lie it had always been: Ramaphosa is no reformer or corruption-buster. He's not even an average leader. His idea of decision-making and consensus is prevaricate and collapse under party pressure. Now with the grand coalition - its his invention, the story goes - his powers are renewed, his acolytes say. All hail ramaphoria 2.0!
But back to early stories. ANC-centric commentators - mainstream media, big business and certain analysts - were favourable to the Mandela, Mbeki and Ramaphosa. But they couldn't stand Zuma because he's atavistic - uneducated with unashamed tribal tastes and views, particular about the economics, the holy grail.
Typical of the story about SA's economy is Tim Cohen's who wrote that under Mandela and Mbeki "SA's economy grew helter-skelter when the ANC followed ideas within the spectrum of international economics and started to decline when it moved away from these policies in 2009 when they ousted Mbeki".
The truth - not a story - is the economy grew moderately for a period but lower than its peers - theirs before and after the 2008 financial crash. SA's economy declined after 2008 when others' resumed and has been moribund since.
I don't agree the ANC "moved away" from Western market policies, which is deemed to produce growth, because the ANC has always been clear about its leftwing ideology and policy intentions. This includes a social welfare state, high degree of government control/regulation, participation in the economy especially through cadres, and more broadly, blacks through BEE and affirmative action.
The Mandela term was about national reconciliation. And placating extant business and industry by continuing the apartheid-era concentrated, oligarchic economic structure (read Sampie Terreblanche and others) as agreed with them before 1994's elections. During this time government had to control and start repaying the apartheid-era debt through stabilisation and fiscal control, unofficially a structural adjustment (GEAR).
These factors - business as usual and responsible fiscal management - and very importantly, national and international goodwill and optimism, with the investment it brought, led to growth.
During Mandela's term laws and policies, informed by the ANC's Marxist/socialist ideological and social welfare ideas (and Constitution) we're written, among them labour, employment equity and BEE.
By the late 90s to early 2000 skilled white officials had been removed - retrenched, retired, sidelined, forced resignation - from state posts and replaced with unqualified - little to no suitable experience and (higher) education - blacks, and in higher positions, ANC cadres. (In the late 90s I couldn't find work despite being educated and experienced, partly, due to affirmative action and partly employers deeming me to be overqualified.)
Worst affected were municipalities. The loss of institutional memory - experience built up over decades - was quickly felt in the organisations themselves and for delivery to communities.
Other state entities were affected, some worse than others. The negative impact on delivery took time but by the end of the decade, and Mbeki's ousting, many institutions and organisations, eg Eskom, were in trouble, and with their slow collapse, the impacts on society were felt which includes the economy.
Up to 2008 resource-rich countries benefitted from the commodities boom. SA's economy grew but not as much as peer nations partly because the ANC's policies tempered investment needed to achieve 6%-plus over many cycles, the kind of growth even East African countries managed.
Manufacturing, a job-creator in traditional economies, drastically declined, partly due to ANC's focus on minerals and motors and their usual confusion and tardiness about industry; anything that doesn't benefit its personal interest as a party doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Analysts call this economic situation being due to the ANC's "anti-business" policies. A key reason too is their inexperience, ignorance and naivety about how market economies work.
Local big business too contributed to lower than hoped for growth and thereby employment with the way they, despite government obstacles, do business, which is uniquely South African. Big business exploited SA's economic environment to make oligarchic profits in excess of what the economy, and South Africans, can bear. The big four/five banks, big two cellular networks and food oligarchs come to mind.
In 2016 IMF's David Lipton mentioned SA's economic problems in a speech at Wits. He said everyone knew what the problems were. He said the big corporates make profits up to 50% more than equivalents abroad. He specifically mentioned the big banks, labour legislation and regulations that inhibit new entrants through barriers to entry. (The big banks' income on fees and charges were, c2017, above R40 billion a year. Lipton said bank charges and lack of access to banking facilities, due to a small pool in a highly regulated industry, inhibited small businesses.)
At one level Pick 'n Pay is an example of what is wrong with SA business: the Ackermans' control to exact high dividends. In SA, a reasonable rate of return is not good enough; a usurious return is demanded. This high-cost, high-profit, high-wage and entitled economic participants contribute to an unproductive, no growth economy, not including the impacts of government interference and incompetence.
At the customer level, many retailers are disinclined to make a modicum effort for customers. How can businesses, government and business writers complain of poor trading circumstances when part of the problem is business themselves?
Cohen said the MK and hard-left lack education, or nous. It's more than that, though. The left in SA are generally ignorant of economic principles. But then even supposed knowledgeable people are too, eg many commentators who do so without any idea of economics or bothering to check the facts.
There's an absence of entrepreneurial thinking and innovation throughout SA society. Often SA innovators, once they become successful, are co-opted and merged into the status quo way of thinking. How else to explain SA's lack of innovation - aside from ANC policies - compared to even successful East African countries.
In SA, skills - genuine skills - are not recognised for their worth. The stories about the alleged lack of skills are a lie. It's not that SA lacks skills, but that a different story - the politics of it - is preferred.
So, the problem for SA's bad growth since 2009 is not only Zuma and his faction. His cabinet contained some of the same people as Mbeki's. Ramaphosa, the purported great negotiator (still today after the wreck he's been, he has smarmy praise singers like Melanie Verwoed, Anthony Butler and Cohen), headed cadre deployment. Grand corruption under Zuma - called the greatest government corruption anywhere in the world - started with the arms deal, gutted society. All with the ANC's collective collusion.
But the ANC's socio-economic policies, developed for SA during Mandela and Mbeki (from whatever internal policies) survived, albeit with less thought to fiscal responsibility and economic norms under Zuma (corruption and patronage are unofficial policies, an adjunct of cadre deployment).
Claude Baissac, economist, wrote that Mandela and Mbeki understood fiscal discipline, utilised inherited economic infrastructure, private sector and markets and goodwill to attract investment and trade. This led to economic growth, benefitting from commodities surge. But the resource and capital-intensive structure continued, remaining SA's development strategy.
"Mbeki’s presidency undermined state capacity through cadre deployment, misdirected infrastructure investment – producing the Eskom debacle as one of its most dire consequences, and limited growth through sub-optimal policies. An extended Mbeki presidency would have likely produced only moderately higher growth than Zuma’s did."
Now that voters shocked the ANC and they're in a coalition with centre-right DA, will they moderate their disastrous policies in the country's interests? In 30 years, they're entrenched and it will be difficult for them. Even if they do, SA is already a fragile state and on the way to a failed state by 2030.
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Following a reader - me - mentioning David Lipton's views about SA's economy, Cohen wrote he had wondered about the accusation the economy was monopolistic and controlled by white monopoly capital (WMC). After a long, irrelevant digression about WMC, he disputed Lipton's expert opinion, based on fact, that SA corporates make up to 50% more profits than similar abroad. He said it was "far-fetched and not demonstrated". In evidence he presented a self-prepared table of major companies' earnings in four or five sectors - Shoprite-Checkers, Vodacom, Standard Bank etc - compared to similar abroad.
While WMC is the elephant in the room to some, it was a deliberate red herring to get Cohen's conservative readers, business community included, in a froth. WMC is not worth serious consideration in a discussion of SA's market concentration which is a fact mentioned in numerous papers on the subject.
His comparison of selected SA companies' earnings appear within international norms. But, the sample is too small, reflects earnings only (compared to international peers) and does not disprove that in SA those companies are among the very few in their sectors compared to international companies in theirs, ie market concentration.
Without defining monopolistic, his conclusion SA's companies are not unduly monopolistic is not true. (Monopoly means one dominant player with an exclusive, or near exclusive, control of the market. The economy is more oligarchic with true monopoly in only a few sectors.)
The Competition Commission's "Measuring Concentration and Participation in the South African Economy" 2021, where they conduct a sector analysis of concentration of SA industries, found industries to be highly concentration overall. And "inefficient concentration is associated with higher margins and seen to impose a structural constraint on the economy".
These are the facts. But the facts are not impervious to change to suit the story people want, even from supposedly impeccable sources.
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