Honourable Chairperson,

Most informed observers now agree that our economy will not grow at the Treasury’s projected 2% this year.

We will be lucky to achieve 1,6%.

Considering the population growth rate, it is clear our economy is barely growing at all.

Indeed, Honourable Members, I think many in this House will share the general feeling that most South Africans now share, that our country is stagnant, drifting sometimes forwards, sometimes backwards, but without any clear course.

This is in a period of historically low interest rates, which must at some point rise in response to improving economic fortunes in America, and many say that that point is now imminent. This foretells a bleak winter ahead for our economy.

Some businesspeople are even saying that this period feels like the very dark economic days of the mid-1980s, when the apartheid siege economy was finally failing.

And I also think that many South Africans can now see, despite the government’s voluble claims to the contrary, that the trouble we are now in is largely of our own making.

This government has failed to provide those basic pre-requisites for economic growth that fall explicitly within their responsibility to provide – namely, a secure and competitive supply of energy, a predictable policy environment, a stable and productive labour environment, and vital economic infrastructure that is competitively priced.

It would be more honourable if the Honourable Minister and his colleagues had admitted this failure and come to this House with a fresh urgency and a renewed vigour to deal with it.

In a time of crisis, every businessperson, every entrepreneur, and every worker needs to know that their government is singularly focused, with laser intensity, on only those things that are needed to solve the current situation and help them keep their jobs and keep their businesses open.

But ‘urgency’, ‘vigour’, ‘focus’ and ‘intensity’ are not adjectives that anyone would use to describe this government’s approach to the economy. For a very long time now, Members on this side of the House, and South Africans outside of this House have been trying to rouse this government from its foggy sleep.

The policy confusion in BEE over the last three weeks demonstrates the extent of the rot.

Businesses had 18 months to prepare themselves for the implementation of the new Codes, and all indications were that they were diligently aiming to meet the deadline of 1 May. Then, on 2 May, the day after the Codes come into effect, the Minister issued a notice which threw into complete disarray the preparations businesses had been making. Then, after an entirely predictable and justified uproar from business and labour alike, a few days later, a series of clarifications were issued, which helped a bit, but not much. Then finally on the 14th of May, a further clarification was issued to cancel the whole thing and revert to the status quo.

If one needed an example of how policy uncertainty and contradiction dampers the investment climate, this is it.

Just as business had 18 months, so the DTI had even longer to figure out what it really meant by the new Codes, but waited until after the implementation date to cause a great deal of unnecessary damage to the relationship between business, organised labour, and government.

I wonder what will happen to those responsible for such a serious and avoidable blunder?

Allow me also to caution the Minister – if sources in the DTI are correct, as I am sure they are, then his officials are acting in favour of a powerful lobby of well-connected black businessmen, who had every interest in reinterpreting the Codes to ensure they remained at the centre of empowerment deals.

What other explanation is there for so blatantly removing broad-based schemes from the Codes and setting up the re-empowerment of a tiny, wealthy, well-connected elite?

The Department’s handling of AGOA is another example of its dithering and drift. South Africa’s position is now precarious, and given this government’s policies on intellectual property, investment protection and property rights, our exclusion from AGOA on account of the so-called “out-of-cycle” review, is ever more likely.

In fact, I know the DTI is already preparing for that eventuality, by sending questionnaires to businesses around the country asking for their feedback on projected job losses in the event of AGOA exclusion.

No one needs a questionnaire to know the consequences will be terrible. And all of those job losses will fall on the Minister.

It is frankly inexplicable to me how the Department allowed this issue to run right to the brink of disaster before showing it the attention and urgency it deserved. It is even more inexplicable to me how the Department allowed a private industry association to negotiate the trade policy of this country, as if the government had no say in the matter.

We must, I think, have a separate debate on how AGOA came to this, but what is already clear is that if we are excluded, it is only the ANC to blame.

Let me end by making a suggestion which I hope the Minister will agree with and try to give effect to. The current electricity crisis threatens to deliver a final and fatal hammer blow to South African manufacturing. We must do whatever is possible to try and see our manufacturers through this very trying time. I therefore propose that as an interim emergency measure, industrial-size generators should be made free of VAT, to make their purchase cheaper for manufacturing businesses. Further, that the DTI should as a matter of urgency redirect a significant portion of its incentives budget to helping manufacturing businesses to finance the purchase of generators.

This will not solve the problem. But it would be an important show of faith by the government – that factories and workers should not have to bear the brunt of this crisis, and that they are prepared to sacrifice, along with the rest of the country, to keep the machines running, and to keep the factories open.