Choices

 Michael - Alternate Thursdays

Governments don’t do things, people do things. I don’t know who said this, but I’m sure someone did. Unless it’s too obvious to be worth saying. Government may set policy, even provide guidelines and money, but eventually someone has to act on those. The success or otherwise of an initiative depends very much on how competent that person is and how committed they are to the initiative.

Let’s take two examples from South Africa. Up until a few months before the elections in May this year, South Africa was suffering from fifteen years of electric power problems culminating in rolling scheduled daily blackouts called loadshedding.

Eventually, with the national elections looming and the government watching its support shrink at pretty much the same rate as the electricity, the president set up a new ministry and appointed a new minister. Bypassing party structures, loyalties, and even financial considerations, the president appointed an extremely competent person and gave him a free hand. Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa is a civil engineer with two MBA-type degrees and a doctorate, and he has serious experience to boot. 

Dr Ramokgopa

Bypassing party structures, loyalties, and even financial considerations, the president appointed an extremely competent person and gave him a free hand. He rapidly made it clear that inefficiencies, corruption, and straightforward theft would not be tolerated whereas competence and success (as in keeping the lights on) would be rewarded. A couple of months before the election, the load shedding stopped. Cynics raised their eybrows, saying that the government was burning megagallons of diesel in emergency generators to look good for the election. “Just wait till the day after the election,” they said laughing. There has not been a single day of load shedding since then.

Queues at Home Affairs

After the election, the ANC had to take other parties on board to build a majority. That required handing over some ministries. It was the first time the erstwhile official opposition had been in the national government, and they were given the important Home Affairs ministry among others. Home Affairs deals with matters like citizenship, residence permits etc. It was a poisoned chalice of inefficiency. It had a backlog of about 250,000 cases open cases. However, the new minister was competent and motivated. This was a make or break assignment. He looked at the system and changed it, stepped hard on corruption, and expected everyone to work as hard as he did. After three months there was no backlog.

By contrast, the previous president Jacob Zuma was only interested in what he could personally get out of the job. Ministries were filled with yes-people who were rewarded with riches. He demanded absolute loyalty for the money and generally got it. The civil service took their lead from the top. The center could not hold.

The moral of all this is that the choice of the person heading an important instrumentality is crucial to its success. Competent governors appoint competent and respected people with expertise in the operation that they are required to guide. Despots, however, don't do that. Their interest is to stay in power so the key requirement they have of their ministers is loyalty. Competence may even be a disadvantage because the incumbent may be diverted to achieving the aims of his portfolio at the expense of the required absolute loyalty. We saw a suite of examples in the previous Trump administration when he tried to appoint some competent people to important portfolios. They didn’t last very long.

I think Trump 2.0 has learned the lesson that loyalty is critical; the rest is optional. For example, Matt Gaetz is a perfect choice for Attorney General. He’s a lawyer, available since he was forced to resign his seat in the House ahead of the bipartisan report on his "extramural" activities, and clearly has no other possibilities of employment. There’s no doubt that he’ll be completely loyal and focus on getting rid of any residual cases directed at the president elect by getting rid of the people concerned. Another appointment along the same lines is Linda McMahon as Education Secretary. The president elect wants the department gone. What better person than a specialist in TV wrestling for a wrecking ball?

The Treasury Secretary post is still open. The requirements are enthusiasm for tariffs and the false belief that the exporting country pays the tariffs. Some experience with money (preferably legal) will be helpful, but one mustn’t be too picky. Loyalty is the big thing. We await developments.

Abroad, and especially in Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, the question is how the new US administration will affect them. For mineral producers like South Africa and Australia, the threat to the world economy posed by punitive tariffs is a huge concern. In addition, South Africa has aligned itself with the BRICS group, which includes such players as Russia, China, Iran. It has also aligned itself with the Palestinian refugees. That amounts to disloyalty…