Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana is now the face of what looks like an about-face in ANC economic policy.
Looking at Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana detailing his plans for government spending in the medium term, one couldn’t help but marvel at the evolution of a revolutionary.
In the ’80s and ’90s, Godongwana was an organiser and later general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), one of the country’s most radical trade unions.
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In those years, repeated strikes almost crippled the motor industry, causing some foreign motor manufacturers to consider whether to continue their investments in South Africa.
Now, though, in corporate suit and tie, he is the man who is the face of what looks like an about-face in ANC economic policy.
Gone are the days, he said, of the bulk of government spending being devoted to “consumption”; in future, most taxpayer money would be “capital” investment.
In explaining the way things are going to be in the future, Godongwana could have been reading from a script prepared by the Free Market Foundation.
You cannot spend on development or social programmes unless you have the money to do so – and that only happens if you grow the economy.
And the first thing you have to do in stabilising and growing an economy is to reduce the levels of debt servicing, which take the biggest chunk of government expenditure every year.
The ANC’s opponents have quickly seized upon the new-look spending plan to accuse it of “selling out” now that it has been forced to bring other parties – most notably the DA – into the government of national unity (GNU).
It is doubtful that it was the DA’s influence in the GNU which has birthed this new pragmatism… it is more likely that the ANC has woken up to the reality of the world, which dances to the beat of a capitalist, not socialist, drum.
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