It’s okay to be angry

You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.

JEREMY MAGGS: In an insightful online column, commentator Melanie Verwoerd writes that those working with President Ramaphosa are tasked with protecting him and his office by giving good advice and heading off mistakes before they become public. By the way, Verwoerd was previously a politician, and ambassador, and the director of Unicef in Ireland.

On the ‘advice to the president’ observation she goes on to say that recent blunders showed this isn’t happening. So I guess that raises the question of how we can hope to get things right in the country. How can we fix things if the wrong people are in the wrong jobs, giving guidance – or none at all?

A very warm welcome. I’m Jeremy Maggs and our guests in coming weeks will be asked how we can make things better. How do we improve matters? How in the shorter space of time can we become a competitive and successful nation?

Melanie Verwoerd, a very warm welcome to FixSA. Before we get to the bigger problem, let me suggest to you that often a fix starts with small things like getting the right advice. It was an interesting piece of writing. What was the main point that you were trying to make?

MELANIE VERWOERD: Hi, Jeremy. Thank you. Well, I am a big Ramaphosa fan, let me say that. I’ve known him since the mid 90s or early 90s, and I really like him. I think he’s a man of integrity. I’ve never been concerned that he deliberately did something with Phala Phala. I think things went wrong, but I don’t think he would’ve knowingly been part of that. And I really like his commitment and passion towards the country.

But there have been so many instances where I’ve thrown my hands into the air in despair and wondered how that could happen. And in fact, that column I wrote the day before the drama with the ICC [International Criminal Court], where he said we are withdrawing and then that we are not withdrawing, that was just a super example. It came out the day that that happened.

Read:
SA backtracks on ICC stance before possible Putin trip
ANC weighing stance on international criminal court before Putin visit
Bank bosses and their national conversation responsibilities

It frustrates me because he should be able to rely on people around him. He can’t run the country – no president can – without good advisors, without good support staff. It just seems to me that they are dropping too many balls and too many mistakes are being made – [such as] the Phala Phala report going to the ConCourt, being thrown out there on a procedural issue.

One can continue with one example after another. It’s just frustrating and unnecessary. There are real issues to deal with, and [one should not have] to deal with blunders because support staff are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

JEREMY MAGGS: We are going to get to the real issues in just a moment. I don’t want this conversation to be a referendum on President Ramaphosa.

Let’s get back to the advisors very quickly. In any political dynamic what should advisors to government be doing? And, to perhaps stretch your point a little bit, how important are they in terms of good governance?

MELANIE VERWOERD: Well, they are very important, especially when it comes to the executive and particularly when it comes to the president. Like I just said, a president has only so many hours a day, like all of us, and it’s a gigantic job.

So any president needs good people around him or her to anticipate problems, to know what is going on, to engage with the media effectively; and then when mistakes are made to quickly catch them and correct them.

If you don’t have that, it’s very difficult to run a successful ministry and particularly also a successful presidency. So they are incredibly important. Good presidents are made by good support staff and advisors.

JEREMY MAGGS: I would also suggest that it’s a two-way relationship and one that is built on trust. So it’s also incumbent upon leaders to use or not to use that advice when it comes.

MELANIE VERWOERD: That is true, that is absolutely true. And, of course, to appoint good advisors. There have certainly been suggestions that the president at times has trusted the wrong advice.

I would certainly think the advice he was given and chose to follow around keeping quiet around Phala Phala was not good advice. And it has proven to be the wrong advice. So there is obviously a two-way dynamic here.

Also, the president needs to appoint the right people, those whom [he can] trust, and then [decide] whether to follow that advice. So the blame can’t just fall on the advisors, etc. It’s also of course on the person in charge.

JEREMY MAGGS: People that they trust – but I’m also imagining people they feel comfortable about disagreeing with?

MELANIE VERWOERD: It’s so important. We’ve had examples in the past with presidents whose advisors and staff refer to them as ‘Jesus’. One doesn’t argue with Jesus, of course.

So I think it is really, really crucial that ministers and presidents appoint people, who (a) challenge them, and (b) are really good – almost as good as they are – because it’s only then that there would be a dynamic which would ensure that it’s not just a bunch of ‘yes-sayers’ around the president, and that they will actually say, ‘I wouldn’t go down that route and I think that would be a really big mistake’, or ‘really don’t do this’.

Anybody who loves The West Wing [TV series] and is a political junkie knows that’s kind of a good fictional account of how advisors should work around the president. My fear is that we haven’t had that in South Africa since probably the Mandela days.

JEREMY MAGGS: Now let’s look at the issue more broadly, if we can. I was momentarily distracted, by the way, because I was reliving former episodes of The West Wing. Let’s come back – it’s one of my favourite shows as well. If only there was a modern incarnation of that.

But let’s come back to the broader problem if we can. That’s fixing South Africa. Let’s premise this conversation now on two things. One is good advice, but the other is that word ‘trust’. So the question then is why do you think we’re unable to come together and fix the nation with more speed than is happening – if it’s happening at all? Do you think that divide of cooperation now is just simply too wide, that we can’t breach it any more?

MELANIE VERWOERD: You see, I think we are completely able to fix this country. In fact, I would go so far as to say we are busy fixing it, albeit slowly. The reason why I say we are totally able to do it is because we’ve done it many times.

Hundreds of thousands of people came together and broke down apartheid. We got the interim constitution against all odds.

When Chris Hani was assassinated, something we just commemorated recently, all indicators were there that the country should fall apart. It didn’t. The country pulled together. When it looked like the elections were going to be boycotted, it didn’t [happen]. All was ‘going to fall apart’. It didn’t because the country came together.

More recently Cape Town’s water crisis was a good example of people standing together.

And then, of course, most importantly, in the riots of two years ago it was ordinary people in South Africa, taxi drivers, people in the townships, who said, uh-uh, this is not going to work for us. This has to stop.

One would have to be an idiot living in some very isolated place not to acknowledge that we are in a very, very difficult space in South Africa, and politically there have been huge failures. I want to say that [amid] all the optimism I have, people like me – and there are many, many of us who came from the liberation movement and served in those early days in politics – are absolutely heartbroken about where we are, and particularly what happened under the Zuma years.

Yet I think we are busy fixing. I think politics has turned a corner, as frustrated as we are that it’s not happening faster. There’s definitely a completely different dynamic in politics now and even the politicians are determined to fix things – albeit just in their self-interest to be re-elected, of course.

So I’m not one of those people who wants to say that the Mandela years were just a little ‘glipsie’. I believe there’s something fundamental there in our society that will help us to keep on fixing whatever needs to be fixed.

JEREMY MAGGS: So, Melanie Verwoerd, I take it then that you would believe there is a willing majority in South Africa who genuinely wants to get things right, who wants to fix things. But I wonder then why we always seem to take it to the brink. You reference the water crisis in Cape Town. You reference the riots in KwaZulu-Natal. We always get to a point, don’t we, then suddenly we’ve got to start fixing things. It says to me – and it’s back to your original column – that there is bad advice up front, and the people are not listening to it …

MELANIE VERWOERD: Look, systemically we have seen major breakdowns. It’s obvious. Local governments are failing and struggling. We have seen major breakdowns in national government and provincial government. That has caused not the Cape Town water crisis – that was an environmental issue – but obviously the systems have broken down. And those are the things that need to be fixed if we want to see prosperity and a country that functions well and delivers to its citizens. So yes, politically there have been major failures and major breakdowns and that cannot be denied.

But my point would be that we cannot sit around and just pass everything on to the politicians. So while people like me and you and others who have access to politicians and the media, etc., will keep on pushing the politicians, there is also a parallel process that needs to happen with the citizens who must get together and fix the country.

Just to get back to your point where you said everybody, or the vast majority, wants this country to be fixed. I think everybody who wants to live here does want the country to be fixed.

Of course, we need to acknowledge that when your daily life is all about survival – to get to work, to get back from work, to feed children – if every minute and every hour of your day, and every ounce of energy goes into just survival it’s very difficult to then still have the capacity – a huge number of South Africans live like that – to still think about the bigger issues and try and fix the country.

But of course the middle classes and business, etc. there is a buffer … There is capacity and a big obligation on the middle classes, I think, and on business in particular, to also say, how can we help and how can we contribute?

JEREMY MAGGS: I’d come back at you, Melanie Verwoerd, and say that maybe that argument is a little naïve because the middle class is angry, it’s frustrated. It pushes as hard as it can and is simply rebuffed. How do you overcome that obstacle?

MELANIE VERWOERD: I’m not sure how we are rebuffed. There’s been huge pressure on the middle classes, because that’s where the tax base is, and that’s becoming harder and harder. And yes, we’ve had to pick up a lot of the slack in the middle classes.

But let me say something about the anger and the negativity.

I think if there’s one thing South Africans excel in, it is to talk ourselves down – I’ll give you one example …

When I was ambassador in Ireland, there was an investor that we had worked on very hard for a long time, and eventually he agreed to come to South Africa. We had organised a fantastic trip for this investor. On the plane he sat next to a South African, and by the time he landed in Cape Town he turned around, unwilling to leave the airport, and flew straight back to Ireland because this person had told him every possible negative story about South Africa.

I speak a lot to international investors at the moment, and what they would often say to me is they know that we’re a developing country. They work in [emerging] … markets, they understand that there are challenges, and they will make money on the ups and the downs. What they don’t understand is why our own financial sector is so negative and talking the country down. That’s what impacts them more than the actual numbers and the actual figures.

So that negativity is a big problem we have, and I think we are almost in a collective depression at the moment in this country.

JEREMY MAGGS: Is the financial sector not just simply looking at the raw data and making an analytical interpretation of what is wrong – and that’s why they’re negative?

MELANIE VERWOERD: I guess that’s what they would say. What interests me is that international investors, when they look at the raw data, are not as negative as our own guys are. When you live here, of course you’re more aware of things like how it feels, things like load shedding, etc.

But I think part of the problem that we are experiencing – and again, there are more in the middle class, and we’ve experienced this in particular since 1994 and I think it has been accelerating – is that we are seeing increasingly a privatisation of our citizenship.

So those who can afford it have kids who go to private schools, we live in private estates, we have private healthcare, etc. And then what happens of course, what is mirrored back to you, is only what you hear from people around you and those who live in similar circumstances.

And then dinner table conversations become not only dinner conversations, but they largely inform how we feel and how we react to the country. For me the only way – you asked me about how to break through the anger and the negativity – is actually to do something, to say, okay, let me open the gates of my estate, step outside, be brave, go boldly where very few go, and see how I can help, how I can make a difference here.

I know it sounds naïve, but it actually works. And even if it is just in your own little neighbourhood, getting involved certainly helps to break through the incredible negativity because you then get a sense of purpose.

JEREMY MAGGS: That’s exactly the point that Jay Naidoo was making on our previous podcast, calling for citizenry and activism. So you do share the same philosophy and his concern.

We’ve been a little theoretical here, Melanie Verwoerd. We’re talking about fixing South Africa, but what do we need to fix? Is it crime? Is it corruption? Is it climate? Is it power? Is it infrastructure? I’ve got a long list. Where do you start?

MELANIE VERWOERD: It’s everything, isn’t it? What I think causes some of the paralysis sometimes is that the problem just feels so big. I feel it sometimes. When I sit down to write my weekly column I go, oh, sweet lord, which on this list do I take?

I think here we need to distinguish between government, and maybe business, and then private citizens. Government needs to fix it all. We can have a whole discussion, and I’ll be a lot sharper when it comes to what government should be doing. Cabinet needs to get its act in order. It’s not acceptable, what has been happening. Ramaphosa needs to appoint better people into cabinet.

We need to hold them much more strongly accountable for things that have gone wrong. So there’s a whole story around government, I think, and then there’s a story around business which we maybe can address separately.

In terms of ordinary citizens we can start small, just address what’s happening around you, around your household. We’ve seen your household and your town and your community. Even if it is just picking up rubbish in the streets and on the beach, that already starts to make a difference. We’ve seen so many beautiful examples of farmers, for example, who fix roads, who fix potholes, those who fix potholes in the rural community, citizens pulling together … to make sure that there’s water and so on. All of those little things add up.

Ultimately ordinary citizens can’t address the big regulatory issues around climate change, nor can we fix the issues around Eskom. But we can, in our own separate ways, make a difference to improve the communities that we live in. And even those of us who can afford solar are making a difference. Much as Eskom moans about its revenue disappearing, we are making a difference. We are taking pressure off the grid.

So there are many ways, and it’s just starting where we are, looking out and asking that important question. I often get asked by people, and particularly by business, for advice on how to engage with government. I always say the most important question that you can ever ask is, how can I help? It’s basically the only question we should ask. Don’t come with arrogant advice or something; they won’t listen to you [unless] you ask, how can we help?

For me, where we are in this country is if all of us can just consistently ask how can I help, how can I assist? I think that’s where the big change will come.

JEREMY MAGGS: It’s a fair point, but I have spoken to business leaders in the past who have put up their hand and asked that exact question: ‘How can I help?’ Often they’re ignored or simply not listened to.

MELANIE VERWOERD: Well, not listened to – that’s usually because they give advice and politicians don’t do well with that. I’m not saying that’s acceptable.

JEREMY MAGGS: So change the tone and dialogue.

MELANIE VERWOERD: The tone is very, very important. I think not to think, even though sometimes part of it might be true, that business has all the answers, because running a country and running a company are actually very different.

But I think most importantly – I still work with politicians – I see time and time again if people come with the right attitude, when they come and say, ‘how can we assist you, what is it that you need to do your job better to be able to fix this problem?’, very quickly and almost always politicians will respond to that. They might feel a little bit overwhelmed at times and things get forgotten and so on.

But certainly in the vast majority of times I have seen that when you are truly eager to hear how you can help [there will be a response]. The problem that often happens is that people go to politicians and say, this is what I can do, this is what I want to do – that’s not necessarily where the need specifically lies.

And then when it doesn’t go further people feel that they’re not heard or that their idea has been rejected.

But I think if you really come with an open mind and say, what do you need – is it research, is it information, is it for us to implement certain things – not always, but in the majority of cases people actually respond positively.

If nothing else, it’ll improve the relationships between business and government.

JEREMY MAGGS: You also said it’s more incumbent upon citizens to hold government accountable. That’s a very sweeping [statement]. Given the divide that exists at the moment often between citizenry and government, apart from the ballot box, how do you accelerate or amplify that accountability that you’re talking about?

MELANIE VERWOERD: Oh, speaking to your elected representatives really works. Even if you just let them know that you’re really annoyed about whatever. That’s one thing. Write to them, talk to them, find out who they are. That’s one way of doing it.

And secondly, on a more positive note, engage with them in a way – because there should be, and is a parliamentarian for every area, working in every area. There often are a number of them from the various parties, especially when you talk about the cities. So also then engage with them to say ‘How can we work together?’

I think sometimes we feel very disempowered as citizens, and it is a bit more difficult because of our electoral system with the proportional system. But the way that it has worked since 1994 is that there are politicians around in your area, and one should start engaging with them and see, again, what possibilities there are for collaboration.

JEREMY MAGGS: Part of fixing any problem, Melanie Verwoerd, is making sure that we stay the course, given that so many obstacles come up all the time. Given that so many South Africans feel almost ‘fix fatigue’, how do you make sure that we stay resolute, that we do stay the course?

MELANIE VERWOERD: We keep on doing it. I don’t know another way. All of us get tired. I would put myself right up there and say at times ‘Ohhh, how much more, how long can this go on?’ And I get very frustrated and very exhausted by it all. But at the same time what’s the alternative? The alternative is to give up – and that I’m not willing to do.

I can live abroad if I want to at any time. I lived there for a very long time. I chose to come back after 12 years. My kids want to be here. I want to see a future for my grandchildren here. So what’s the alternative? It’s just to give up. For me it is just to keep at it.

I will just keep fighting for this country because there is a lot here, and I will keep on getting annoyed, and having my annoyance heard when it’s appropriate.

I will keep on trying to contribute. I think acknowledging the exhaustion is fair enough – but we can’t give up.

JEREMY MAGGS: What I’m also hearing is that it’s okay to be angry and annoyed for a lot of the time.

MELANIE VERWOERD: I am more often than not [angry] with politicians – and many of them are still friends. And as you can see from my columns, I will let them hear.

They’re often very unhappy with me for writing some of the stuff. But of course you would have to be living under a rock to not be annoyed at the moment … it didn’t need to be this way, it didn’t. We were on a good trajectory.

If you, for example, asked me ‘If we had a clean slate, where would I start?’ I would say I would start exactly where we were in ’94, and I would say we would have to do exactly what we did in ’94.

The only thing we need to watch is [to have] much stronger controls in terms of corruption and to have far better ways of dealing with that quickly. That’s the thing I would change, because it was greed and a very negative part of politics that got the upper hand.

But for the rest I think we were on such a good trajectory, and it didn’t need to end up this way at all.

JEREMY MAGGS: You referenced grandchildren, and I want to get to that in just a moment because we are coming to the end of the conversation. But something that I always put to our guests on this podcast is the old cliché that ‘you can’t manage anything if you can’t measure it’. I know it’s corporate speak, but the reality is we’ve got to measure and chart progress if we’re fixing things.

So how would you define success? How would you chart [progress]? What would be a couple of early wins for us? Maybe a good place to start is electricity.

MELANIE VERWOERD: Well, I would first of all ask, does the country stay stable in the sense of it not going up increasingly into riots and unrest? The second thing would be can we still have fair and free elections next year? Does our judiciary remain independent? Does our media remain free? All of those things are very important.

But then of course, the things that are really hurting at the moment are the sort of basic needs that people have. Unemployment — do those figures start to get a bit better or do they just get worse? Electricity – we know we are still going to have load shedding for at least a year to 18 months, maybe two years. But are [these things] at least manageable? Is there literally light at the end of the tunnel? Do the health outcomes improve a little? Education – does that improve? Then you need to look at the basic indicators and [see] that they don’t consistently get worse and worse.

But then of course there are the things that I keep on mentioning. For people to keep hope and to have confidence, I think it is very important that the things that they can see on a daily basis improve – as well as these basic indicators like water, electricity, sanitation, etc.

If you don’t fix potholes, it really gets to people. If traffic lights don’t work, it gets to people. This is why there’s a very different feel in Cape Town than, for example, in Johannesburg.

I can never understand when I’m in the centre of South Africa’s economy in Sandton that traffic lights don’t work, and that I’m driving through the potholes. I know business is now fixing them.

But how can they think that business, international investors and general citizens will have confidence? You need to fix the things that people can see as well.

That usually is not a big deal – fixing potholes. They should really just get that done and make sure that traffic lights work, that street lighting works. Those things are also important, together with the bigger issues that are the basic indicators.

JEREMY MAGGS: As I’m talking to you, I’m also thinking it will be nice to rise a few notches in the Global Happiness Index, but let’s pass on that one for just a moment. Melanie, finally, you reference children and grandchildren, and I always ask this question, as I said:

When you’re talking to younger people in 20 years’ time, what will you tell them about the early 2020s and, in continuing to build South Africa, what then is their future role? We talk about the baton-holding generation.

MELANIE VERWOERD: I now have a little grandson – can you believe it? So of course I think about those questions a lot more. But if I was to talk to young people, even today? Undeniably we were in a very bad space in the early 2020s, and this was not where we wanted to be. And really we come to a crossroad as well. We really need this country now to go on an upward trajectory in order not to keep on deteriorating very rapidly.

For me, in terms of young people, the issue remains that they have also to a large extent abdicated from the formal political process. I think that is a big concern.

We know that young people, especially the under-25s, are not registering to vote. There’s a small percentage, even the under-35s are a very small percentage, and even of those who are registered don’t come out on the day to vote. Very, very few do. So ultimately, when it comes to the formal political process, their voices are not heard. We hear them in protests, we hear them on campuses, but we are not hearing them in the formal political process. I think that’s a problem.

Young people really need to start organising and getting involved, because this is ultimately their future. It is for them that we need to fix things in this country.

JEREMY MAGGS: Yes. And maybe they should watch The West Wing.

MELANIE VERWOERD: Oh, definitely. CJ – we need more CJs in the world.

[CJ is the White House press secretary played by Allison Janney in the TV drama.]

JEREMY MAGGS: Melanie Verwoerd, thank you so much for joining us on this edition of FixSA.

My name is Jeremy Maggs. Thank you for listening to the podcast right here on Moneyweb.

Listen to previous FixSA podcasts here.