Multiple centres of influence emerge

The members of the National Planning Commission, headed by Presidency-based National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, were announced last week, showing a strong pro-business bias. It stands in stark contrast to the Left-leaning advisory panel announced earlier by the Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel and which is packed with opponents of Manuel’s more conservative economic policies of the past.

The result is likely to be that current policy tensions between the ANC Left and centre, and as represented by these two policy spheres of government, will at best be maintained, but may well worsen.

There are also a number of other interesting factors that seem to come to the fore from the composition of Manuel’s commission.

With the commission being a year in the making and recent reports that its members would be announced soon, Patel upstaged Manuel by being first to announce his panel – barely two weeks after first floating the idea of such a  panel in Parliament.

A major coup for Patel had been the inclusion of Nobel laureate and former World Bank executive Joseph Stiglitz who, while not a hard-line socialist himself, finds favour with his views in left-wing circles.

Some would argue that such tensions could be healthy and lead to the best possible policy compromises. The government’s economic policy management, however, increasingly moves along on two separate tracks, and it could further increase policy uncertainty and scope for struggles and conflict.

It remains to be seen how the two economic policy centres of influence will handle their divide going forward.

Still no clarity

It has been a year now since President Jacob Zuma announced a restructured Cabinet that would include Patel’s new Economic Development ministry, a year in which no clarity emerged as to the exact responsibilities, mandates and boundaries to be established between Patel and Manuel’s two ministries or, for that matter, between them and the Finance and Trade & Industry ministries.

Patel has said his Economic Development advisory panel is to provide him with “advice on economic matters affecting South Africa’s development and the creation of decent work as well as key economic challenges and international, regional and national trends”.

He sees the distinction between his and Manuel’s functions as being that his ministry will be in charge of economic policy formulation, while Manuel will be tasked with integrating that policy into a broad national plan and a range of development planning programmes.

He may well be right, given the fact that the focus of Manuel’s commission members seems to be distinctly away from economic policy and much closer to development policy planning around a broad range of development, social and strategic resources issues.

Patel’s panel

On Patel’s panel will be Stiglitz; Investec Asset Management strategist Michael Power, who supports intervention for a lower rand in line with the views of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu); Cosatu economist Chris Malikane; Development Bank of Southern Africa economist and former Cosatu economist Neva Makgetla; chief executive officer of the Human Sciences Research Council Olive Shisana; Industrial Development Corporation CEO Geoffrey Qhena; Competition Commission chief economist Simon Roberts; University of Cape Town sociologist specialising in poverty studies, Haroon Bhorat; and Standard Bank group economist, Goolam Ballim. Ballim seems to be the only exception to the Left-leaning rule.

Manuel’s commission

Manuel’s commission – approved and announced by President Zuma – will see Manuel as chairperson; businessman, ANC national executive committee member and former trade unionist Cyril Ramaphosa as deputy chairperson; former Eskom chairperson and Business Leadership South Africa chairperson Bobby Godsell; Business Unity South Africa CEO Jerry Vilakazi; ANC NEC member and former head of policy co-ordination in the Presidency, Joel Netshitenzhe; Wits University water expert and former Water Affairs director, General Mike Muller; Sanlam policy analysis head Elias Masilela; Akhona Properties CEO Noluthando Gosa; Digby Wells and Associates Hydrology and Water scientist unit manager Jennifer Molwantwa; Wits University School of Public Development Management senior lecturer and development and employment strategist, Miriam Altman; Wits University Economics expert and Cosatu economist Chris Malikane; University of Cape Town Social and Economic Development head Vivienne Taylor; Walter Sisulu vice-chancellor and principal Marcus Balintulo; social policy and planning expert Vuyokazi Mahlati; University of KwaZulu-Natal vice-chancellor and principal Malekgapuru Makgoba; University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business director Anton Eberhard; Elilox Trading founder and first female president of the Chartered Institute of Building, Bridgette Gasa; engineer and entrepreneur Thandabantu Goba; Wits University Built Environment vice-dean Phillip Harrison; University of Johannesburg vice-chancellor and principal Ihron Rensburg; University of Natal Doris Duke Medical Research scientific director Jerry Coovadia; Labour-aligned social cohesion and fragmentation expert Karl von Holdt; University of Stellenbosch Agricultural Science dean Mohammed Karaan; former Western Cape Transport MEC and now World Wide Fund international climate policy advocate Tasneem Essop; Resolve Group managing director Pascal Moloi; and National Responsible Gambling Programme chairperson and SABMiller executive, Vincent Maphai.

Malikane is the only person serving on both Patel’s panel and Manuel’s commission, and is one of the commission members who had been nominated by Cosatu. He has a distinguished academic track record here and abroad.

Makgoba is perhaps somewhat of an odd choice, given his record of controversy. But he was an opponent of Mbeki and a supporter of Zuma, and Zuma had the last say on who would join the commission.

Another faintly odd choice is Marcus, a sometimes controversial globe-trotting, university-hopping, discipline-switching survivalist academic whose tendencies seem to go to the Left as much as to the centre, and who in the past has been deemed too old to run a university before being given the top job in that rural outpost of academia, the Walter Sisulu University of Technology.

Netshitenzhe is another somewhat surprising choice, having been Former President Thabo Mbeki’s planning and policy expert. Netshitenzhe is a Moscow-trained political scientist who also has British academic qualifications in Economics. He helped Mbeki and Manuel to craft the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) strategy that became the main anchor of government economic policy for a decade, but was strongly rejected by the ANC alliance’s Left wing.

A number of the commission members are pro-business heavyweights who in the past supported GEAR. Cosatu and the South African Communist Party had hoped that Patel’s inclusion in the Cabinet would have led to the replacement of GEAR with a new, Left-leaning developmental economic policy.

Among these pro-business members or former supporters of GEAR are likely to be Ramaphosa, Godsell, Vilakazi, Netshitenzhe, Masilela, Gosa, Eberhard, Goba, Moloi and Maphai.

Cosatu criticised the "over-representation of business people" on the commission, making up nearly half of the NPC.

The kind of issues to which the commission members are likely to apply their minds and expertise include spatial development, urban development and management, employment and job-creation strategies, water security and the link between water and development, poverty alleviation, social development, rural development, energy development and security, health, education, agriculture and food security, local government and local economic development.