Glacier Quarterly 4 - 2018

SCENARIO PLANNING
Quality of Infrastructure: We
haven’t had another round of major
Eskom load-shedding this past winter
season and serious attempts are being
made to improve management of
state-owned enterprises. However,
it’s worrying to see so many
construction companies with their
backs against the wall. This implies
that the multi-billion rand government
programme to improve infrastructure
isn’t yet seriously under way. The
manner in which National Health
Insurance in South Africa is
implemented will provide considerable
guidance on the prospects of this
flag turning green.
Style of leadership: South Africa
works very well when it has a leader or
purpose uniting it. Witness the years
of economic growth under Mandela
and the outstanding reception given
to soccer players and foreign fans
during the 2010 World Cup. President
Cyril Ramaphosa is definitely a
person who can exercise the right
kind of inclusive leadership to put us
on our feet again, but he’ll have to
handle the final flag of land reform
very carefully in order to avoid a
mutiny on deck.
Pockets of excellence: We have so
many pockets of excellence in South
Africa in both the public and private
sector, but the past 10 years have
taken their toll, and sadly, many people
who would have formed the next
generation of excellence have left
the country. The most important area
in which to watch this flag is education
because only high-quality education
is capable of reducing social
inequality in the long run. We have
some of the best schools and university
faculties in the world. If we can learn
from them in order to uplift the rest,
we’ll be on our way to becoming a
winning nation.
Entrepreneurial spark: By common
consent, this flag is the one that can
change the country’s economic destiny
the most and create a genuine state
of economic freedom. We need:
• An enterprise summit rather than a
jobs summit to tackle the exclusive
ness that still persists in our daily
lives
• To integrate the township economies
into the mainstream economy
• To come up with innovative solutions
to convert rural communities into
thriving networks of local activity.
At the heart of all this will lie the goal
of multiplying the number of youthful
entrepreneurs in our country.
Land reform: A tweet by Donald
Trump is not helpful on this issue, but
it goes to show that only the kind
of team approach that caused the
political miracle of the early 1990s
can turn this flag green. The positive
meeting of agricultural players in
Bela-Bela in August should be seen
as a forerunner to a full-scale Agridesa
that can take place once the
government has completed its
consultations with the public. Any
move to impose a top-down remedy
on land redistribution that sparks
widespread resistance among existing
land owners is bound to have immense
downside on both the local and
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