Peter Bruce: Can’t translate ideas into action

NONE of us is getting out of here alive, but I do sometimes think I live in another dimension. It is disconcerting because I carry around this delusion that in South Africa, reasonable people do reasonable things to improve their lives and secure their futures.

So, was I in Johannesburg or on Flasnop Snabbler2078 when I read this headline on BDlive: “Government to provide R550m to support black industrialists”? Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies had revealed that the department had received 107 applications for its much-heralded black industrialist programme, five of which had been approved.

But hang on. When I last read a newspaper, the department was promising R23-billion to create black industrialists. When I was sarcastic in print about that number, all manner of worms crawled out of their holes to criticise and insult me.

One madman even wrote me a six-page single-spaced letter on the matter. Apartheid did more damage than we realise.

Some 107 applications and five approvals sounds about right for an industrial programme, although the R550-million assumes all the project ideas received are approved. Even then, R550-million is a mere 2.3% of the grand target.

I said at the time it was the kind of project you wanted the deputy to handle and it is turning out so. The fact remains that no matter how honourable and hardworking Davies may be, he cannot “plan” his way out of our de-industrialisation.

He cannot “create” an industrialist. He cannot even “create” a single job.

He is a victim of ideology, as are many free-marketeers well to the right of him. These are people addicted to their arguments rather than to what works.

So, Davies will parade a string of motor industry investments into South Africa as if they were “proof” of our charms as an investment destination. But, we pay the Fords and BMWs of the world to come here.

If we stopped paying them, they’d leave, like, immediately.

Fantasy is an ANC problem. It simply doesn’t know how to translate ideas into action.

In exile, all the ANC did was have meetings and make declarations. This, in the end, became its work and the country is now being run by the very people who grew up living such a life.

So, when President Jacob Zuma says he’s going to create 100 black industrialists, you must understand that merely by saying it, he actually, seriously, thinks it is as good as done. Apartheid did a lot of damage.

Cast things forwards and they don’t get better. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the African Union Commission chairwoman and putative candidate in December next year for the ANC presidency, told a mining audience in South Africa last week that Africa (read South Africa) needed to do things differently “including”, said a report, “that the continent ceased to export jobs through exporting raw minerals.

“It is important that resources must benefit . . . the people,” she reportedly said. “These resources do not belong to the mining companies, they are ours.

“Our contracts must be such that it is a win-win for companies and communities.”

What she is saying is that South Africa should be beneficiating the minerals it produces, rather than sending them to, I don’t know, Italy, for beneficiation. But it is a slippery slope.

If your strategy is to do to a mineral what, say, the Italians do, then you also have to have the relationship with the customers and markets that the Italians have. Otherwise you beneficiate and can’t sell it to anyone.

But if you think the Italians are going simply to give you their customers and markets, you’re a fool. So, you have two choices.

You fight the Italians in the global market. They find other sources for their minerals, and hold on tight to the markets and customers they’ve had for decades. You lose.

Or you invite the Italians to come and build a plant here to beneficiate the minerals you’ve been selling them. You give them every incentive you can.

They already have the forward market. They hire South Africans and export from South Africa to loyal customers. You win.

That’s the simple choice South Africa faces as it tries to re-industrialise. Davies and Dlamini-Zuma cannot change the facts.

The motor companies come here with their markets already in their back pockets. So could every widget maker in the world.

The more things foreign companies make here, the more skilled we could become.

But don’t tie them up in fantasies about black industrialists and black economic empowerment. Tie them up in opportunity.

This is such a great country to live in. Investors would flock here if we welcomed them on terms they could relate to.

The prosperity and opportunities that would flow from serious investment would change our future for the better.