SA’s endless stay or leave debate

An oft discussed topic around the South African dinner table is the ‘are you staying or leaving debate’. It’s unsurprisingly polarising and generally attacked from a passionate standpoint. I’ll wade in.

First, I must set the stage. People come and go from all countries. Plenty of people leave for perfectly understandable reasons such as career, personal love or a sense of connection with a place they visited and couldn’t leave. This type of emigration is normal and uninteresting to a debate. But is often brought into the South African discussion, confounding it. I will speak of it no further here.

In South Africa, the discussion around stay or leave is really a proxy for a view on whether South Africa will prosper or become a failed state, a question of utmost importance to all South Africans. Or is it really? If you believe South Africa will fail, does that mean you should automatically leave the country? I’ll argue that it depends what you are after.

Let’s deal with the options for folks who believe South Africa will fail. Firstly, you can flat out leave the country, as many have. Besides the South Africa bashers (who are generally scorned by those who stayed), most leavers choose to get on with their lives and aren’t particularly relevant besides the deficit of skills this group has left behind.

Which brings us to the second option, to stay and exploit the country for money or skills. You’ll often hear people talk about the ‘excess of opportunity’ that exists in South Africa given all the highly skilled folks I mentioned earlier leaving a deficit on their departure (this is quite true in my opinion). Reading between the lines, the meaning is that you can still get rich in South Africa, either through making a lot of money, or getting a skill set that would be a lot more difficult in a more structured and competitive market. Remember, this group still thinks SA is going down the tubes and to be honest, could be expanded to include those who really don’t care about the state of South Africa one way or the other. With either all or most of their money off shore, or an international passport, they’re here to exploit. If things hit the fan, they’re out of here. Political views? If you are here to make a buck, you need the music to keep playing. Therefore, all support will go to making sure South Africa keeps the lights on long enough for them to exploit to the hilt. For this group, a vote for the ANC in the last election made complete sense (or a backing of the COSATU plan on Eskom). The narrative of Cyril ‘not getting a strong enough mandate and being fired’ would have terrified them. Cyril was the best shot at keeping the music playing for another 8 years. The ANCs failure for 25 years prior to this made little impact on this decision.

Finally, you have those who think South Africa is toast, but have no ability to exit. They can continue to exploit, but if SA actually went bang, they would have nowhere to go. This group can be further split into what is best described as a generation gap. The generation of adults when apartheid ended, and their children. The adults often feel like they hung around and gave the government a chance when a lot of others left between 1992 and 1994. Many of them voted for the ANC, excited at the prospects for the country. Many of these folks now feel let down and are economic prisoners as a result. They do not have the finances to live abroad comfortably and are too old to explore offshore career or business options. They fear that policies like NHI and land distribution will run the life they have. They feel helpless to do anything about it. They’re bitter and have turned to moaning about the government as a defence mechanism (and they all follow Magnus Heystek with a passion).

On the other side of the coin are their children. They have their adult lives ahead of them and even if they are worried about SAs future, they’re not going to spend their lives moaning about it. As such, they often falsify their opinions in public and appear optimistic on South Africas future. It’s a far more pleasant way to live than moaning about impending doomsday. There is a true void opening up between this generation, with the older folk moaning and the younger folk losing patience with it. If the older folk aren’t careful, I predict a wall going up between them, with the youth bored with their parents bitterness and the adults berating their children for their ‘naive’ optimism at a clearly doomed situation. This is also not to say that everyone who says they believe South Africa will make it isn’t telling the truth, but to walk around saying SA is on a one-way road to going bust, while having no option but to ride the wave, is a depressing reality to be part of. Easier to jump in with the #imstaying lot and claim that South Africa will turn around rather than preach doomsday at every braai.

So in general, if you’re in the SA is going bust camp, you have either left already, you’re exploiting SA for the time being knowing you have a back up plan, you’re in permanent moaning mode, or finally, you’re by default forcing yourself to believe SA has a rosy, or at least tolerable long term future.

But what if you genuinely believe SA has a rosy future? Well the question then becomes where does this future come from? Some say small business is the answer to all of South Africas problems and the government need only set them free to unleash our potential. I feel this underplays the role of government in the economy as seen by the impact of Eskom and other state owned institutions. Without a consistent power supply (or freight rail network), long term investment decisions will not take place, small business will not grow as a result and the country will go backwards.

If you buy the premise that South Africas future is closely tied to the government in charge, then the rosy future really depends on a government facilitating it. Which government though? The ANC, or an opposition and if an opposition, which opposition?

The ANC has had at least 60% of the vote for the past 25 years. Some believe the ANC will self correct and push SA down the rosy path and achieve greatness. I don’t think this is possible, given the ANCs internal mandate, but that is an essay for another day. Some believe the DA is the one to push SA down the rosy path. For me, the DAs legacy of being a white party caps their ability to succeed in South Africa given our apartheid history. In my view, we need an upstart, young party with views that represent the modern South Africa that a lot of people want. Once again, what exactly the majority of South Africans want is up for debate and won’t be discussed here, but for those who see a rosy future as a possibility for South Africa, I think they should be looking out for this new party that will push them to that vision. I personally hope this comes to be and think it will. I don’t think the ANC will turn South Africa around, and for as long as South Africa is a one party state (whose policies are decided upon by the 4,700 delegates at the ANC conference), I don’t think South Africa will do particularly well at all.

But when the ANC is challenged by a new, fresh party then South Africa truly will have the opportunity to flourish. I’m not exactly sure what this party looks like or when it will pop up (something similar to Our Movement for Change maybe?), but they will no doubt come with less state intervention, less rent seeking policies, hopefully be coupled with huge GDP growth, a lot of jobs and a push toward a more capitalistic state. This is, I would admit, a very preachy, Western view. I don’t know if this is what South Africa wants, and fear that what most of South Africa wants is exactly the type of state that the ANC is promising (although this may well be due to the monopoly on information the ANC has in rural SA). And if that fear is true, then I must begrudgingly put my hat in the doomsday camp.