TOPIC: THE NDP AND THE DEATH OF SA’S YUNUSIAN DREAM.
INTRODUCTION.
About 2, 000 years ago, Plato, the Greek philosopher, pointed out in his Socratic ‘Dialogues’ that justice is nothing but an advantage of “the stronger” in society. There is growing consensus in post-apartheid South Africa that economic justice, to paraphrase Plato’s words, is nothing more than an advantage of an increasingly powerful, cohesive, confident and self-assertive multi-racial, hegemonic ruling elite. Economic justice continues to elude tens of millions of poor and marginalized SA blacks, creating a huge, semi-permanent disadvantage in society for them.
Matters, looked at from the vintage-point of the past anti-apartheid struggle, did not have to come to this sorry, acute pass. For economic justice delayed, is economic justice denied.
At the very heart of the persuasive power and moral strength of the anti-apartheid struggle was always the belief that victory over racism and apartheid in South Africa would deliver not just a political vote for the formerly disenfranchised, but that it would double up as economic justice for the poor and marginalized as well. This would be SA’s Freedom Charter moment. There was always a strong belief, throughout the period of the anti-apartheid struggle, that economic justice would become an advantage for the whole post-apartheid SA society, in its entirety, the poor included, and not just for the stronger and powerful elites, and least so for just a tiny, self-serving, insatiable, and grubby multi-racial ruling elite.
It was therefore with a measure of great pride that I listened to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s inspired impromptu speech at SA evening Gala Dinner at the January-February 1998 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, where he spoke, convincingly, about “a scintillating South African economic miracle about to happen.” At that point, I vividly conjured up post-apartheid SA as an economic miracle on par with Singapore or Norway or Finland.
Fifteen years later, the dream of economic justice for tens of millions of dirt-poor South Africans remains unrealized by the much-heralded CODESA political settlement that ushered in “new” South Africa. Fifteen years later, the poor in SA are still waiting for “a scintillating economic miracle about to happen.”
Fifteen years later, South Africa is not facing the much-feared prospect of Zimbabwefication of our economy and society, but is confronted by the haunting economic and societal reality that our post-apartheid, multi-racial ruling elites have settled on Kenyafication of SA’s present and future. Those who fear Zimbabwe are daily, and incessantly, plotting that we never escape the suffocating neo-liberal clutch that is SA’s Kenyafication today.
Are SA’s poor waiting for Godot, in terms of deep-going economic transformation? Well, yes, if you take the timeline of the National Development Plan (NDP) seriously. The poor may have to wait for another generation to know whether “a scintillating economic miracle about to happen” will ever happen in their lifetime.
Even the uplifting and moving words of Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Grameen Bank, seem incapable to unleash our collective national imagination towards defeating the economic legacy of apartheid, which is embodied in the continuing exclusion of the overwhelming majority of South Africans from real and substantive ownership of, and participation in, SA economy as equals.
Delivering the Seventh Nelson Mandela Lecture Address in Johannesburg on 16 July 2009, Muhammad Yunus held up the truly scintillating prospect that SA could be the first country in the world to defeat poverty in the shortest possible time.
“Human journey began in Africa”, declared Yunus. “On behalf of Africa”, he continued, “let’s make South Africa the first country where poverty will not exist, nobody will be a poor person. Let’s do it fast – let’s do it in the next 20 years.”
A great Yunusian dream for Mandela’s South Africa was born to much fanfare. But the NDP begs to differ. It has indefinitely deferred this Yunusian dream for SA of sweeping poverty eradication in 20 years. The NDP merely promises to halve poverty in SA by 2030.
Amongst those who vigorously applauded (and even sniggered at) this ambitious vision of Yunus for post-apartheid South Africa, and who attended the Seventh Nelson Mandela Lecture, were men and women, all of them of very substantial, comfortable means, who would later craft SA’s National Development Plan (NDP), and, in the process, bury the Yunusian dream of SA without poverty in 20 years.
How is it that the drafters and promoters of the NDP cannot find in themselves the courage of their convictions to embody poverty eradication in SA in the shortest possible time in the NDP, in line with the vision espoused during one of the Nelson Mandela Lectures?
What is proving so difficult in delivering economic justice for all in post-apartheid South Africa, in the shortest possible time of 20 years, as a precursor to ‘a better life for all’? Why does the National Development Plan fail to promise delivery of economic justice for all by 2030?
Not only has the NDP dismally failed to commit to economic justice for all in SA by 2030; it has recently been subjected to a truly surprising detour. The NDP, which started, supposedly, as the most democratic and participative form of popular expression of how to draw up a vision and strategic national plan for SA towards 2030, has hit a Rock of Gibraltar-size problem on its path to implementation. Its economic chapter, which clearly does not enjoy national consensus, has been farmed out to Tripartite Alliance technocrats to reformulate, in an effort to reach some consensus on it.
So what started out, supposedly, as the most popular, democratic and participative initiative in the hands of all interested South Africans since the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955, has ended up in a typical and predictable SA place – some darkly-lit, smoke-filled and CODESA-like small room, where a coterie of political technocrats will attempt to thrash out a compromise on the NDP’s economic chapter; but where SA masses are spectators.
In a word, the NDP has ended up in a Tripartite Alliance’s Task Team. Far away from popular, mass energies. This is not the endgame of crafting the NDP that was previously promised by its drafters and supporters. Interestingly, some of the initial supporters of the NDP supported it on the basis of its proposals contained in the current economic chapter, which are now likely to metastasize and to look very different from the NDP draft which was adopted by all parties represented in SA parliament. Were these early supporters of the economic chapter of the NDP made to buy a pig in a pork? Or did they willingly fool themselves and the SA public regarding the true economic content of the NDP?
CHAPTER ONE.
When it comes to matters of “economic justice”, this is SA’s default position – namely, demobilized mass, popular energies, entrusting to what Plato would term “the stronger” in society the task of mis-delivering economic justice for all, betting that the elites will agree on a minimalist economic justice consensus that does not subvert the apartheid-era economic apple-cart, and that they will seek to broker an exclusive, elite-centred economic pact.
It is the typical CODESA and SA economic fudge.
And the NDP will, ad nauseum, seek to perpetuate this blatant, time-dishonored economic gimmick.
Whilst spouting infuriating banalities from their BEE fat-filled mouths, their income massively augmented by their sitting, through their political connections, on no less than 50 boards of JSE’s white-owned blue chip companies each, these rentier elements of the tiny post-apartheid ruling black elite will declare themselves utterly surprised that there are still tireless and un-cowered NDP critics abroad in the country. They then proceed to rally whoever listens to them to hurry to implement the NDP, without any sense of rich irony on their part.
But the more fundamental question is, now that the economic chapter of the NDP has been found woefully wanting, by almost universal consensus, and has been farmed out to a Tripartite Alliance Task Team to shape up, can that which is left of the NDP still be called a coherent national vision and strategic plan? How can a plan and vision still be called so, when its very heart – the economic chapter – has been ripped out, rather cruelly and unceremoniously, for further reworking? What is the NDP without its economic chapter? A heartless vision? A cold national plan? A mirage? A stillborn? A jumble of disparate, and even desperate, wish-lists of SA’s foremost development planners and strategic visionaries?
Ideally, and under normal circumstances, the economic chapter is supposed to be the anchor of the NDP. That is the practice universally regarding long-term development planning and strategic national vision. It certainly was the East Asian, Chinese and Indian experience.
But evidently not so with SA’s NDP.
The South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), in its Statement on the NDP of 14 July 2013, which contained SAIRR’s most trenchant and liberal critique of the NDP, pointed out that one of the major flaws of the NDP is that its motherhood-and-apple-pie projects are not costed. Simple as that. The SAIRR’s Statement also predicted the NDP’s abject failure, with a certainty and confidence that were both jolting and bold. The SAIRR Statement on the NDP went further and characterized the NDP as “a betrayal of the poor.”
“A betrayal of the poor”?
Interestingly, whilst COSATU and NUMSA continue to critique the NDP as neo-liberal, on the one hand, the SAIRR, on the other hand, believes that the NDP is hardly liberal enough.
So, instead of embodying the lofty ideal of the Seventh Nelson Mandela Lecture Address by the world-renowned Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, the NDP encapsulates, in the correct assessment of the SAIRR, “a betrayal of the poor.”
A greater SA example of unimaginative leadership on a strategic vision and development plan for our country is hard to think of.
And now that the NDP’s economic chapter has been referred by its drafters and supporters to “a political committee”, and effectively to a political ICU for a major heart surgery, how is it even possible to hazard a sustained implementation of the NDP’s other chapters, which are now denuded of the NDP’s economic chapter, and which all must depend on a vibrant and growing economy for a heavy-lift? Why flog to death a reluctant donkey (NDP’s non-economic chapters) before which you have placed the malfunctioning cart (the NDP’s economic chapter)?
It absolutely makes no sense – this idea of an NDP devoid of an economic foundational chapter. It is like, to borrow a Marxist terminology, a superstructure existing in the air, all by its own, without the economic base. Only a house of cards is constructed that way, that is, without the need for its foundation or base. The NDP, without its economic chapter, should as well cease to be called a national vision and long-term strategic plan, but simply be referred to as a projected omnibus of rolling, long-term, multi-year budgetary plans for South Africa until 2030, covering all types of SA’s governance spheres. But even this is a charitable, tall order, given the SAIRR’s famous complaint that the NDP is not costed. Because projected budgetary plans would at least have to have costs attached to them. Without its economic chapter, the NDP loses its cohering and integrating internal logic that runs from its opening sentence to its closing sentence, book-cover to book-cover; because the removal of the NDP’s economic chapter for further drafting creates a yawning, Kimberley Hole-sized policy uncertainty in the middle of the highly contested development plan.
Or is the NDP, at the end of the day, merely a vanity project, immune to reasonable critique, and meant merely to inflate the egos of SA’s new, hegemonic, multiracial elites in their interactions with the much-feared spectre of “foreign investors”? Is the NDP nothing more than what Friedrich Hayek would term “fatal conceit” on the part of SA’s ruling policy honks?
The greatest, singular failure of post-apartheid South Africa, and its collective national political, as well as economic, leadership, at various levels, has been the massive failure to confront, eye-ball to eye-ball, the enduring and gigantic economic injustice inherited from apartheid and colonialism, in terms of the distribution of economic ownership and real economic power, beyond the shameful, jam-for-money, rentier activities of the BEE oligarchs. Thus economic apartheid lives, and economic apartheid endures. The path of gradualist reform in the economy has invariably been the route of least resistance preferred by SA’s post-apartheid, multi-racial ruling elites.
No wonder the NDP has become their New Testament. In terms of the economy, the NDP stirs a bit, but fundamentally, does not shake.
Like the insufferable Soviet ideologues of the past, who would quote the Communist Manifesto at the slightest drop of the hat, the ruling elites thus quote the NDP when they circumcise a mosquito, when they doodle on an old newspaper in the lavatory, when they pick out the morsels of state tender meat between their teeth, and when they again appeal to the indigent, wallowing in dire poverty, to exercise patience once more, for two more decades.
It rains – they quote the NDP. It snows – they quote the NDP. The sun rises in the east, they quote the NDP. The sun sets in the west – they quote the NDP. It’s a new season – they quote the NDP. It’s “Hlaudi” – they quote the NDP. The Guptas land a private plane at a military base without proper authorization – they quote the NDP. Quoting from the NDP has become an obligatory symbol of SA elites’ group-think and group-identification.
It borders on the vile, quite frankly – this saturated, blanketed quoting of the NDP. It is like a numbing Muzak playing across SA’s power corridors. All other contrarian development policy melodies are drowned out.
The elites’ appearance on TV, or on radio talk shows, or on newspaper op-eds, has to be marinated by ill-suited and mindless quotes from the NDP, if not their unconvincing laudation of the little-understood aspects of it.
The NDP is the new opium of SA’s new multi-racial ruling elites, temporarily bedazzling them to forget about the entrenched and enduring plight of SA’s poor beyond the confines of SA’s rich urban centers. Funny thing is, beyond the circles of SA elites, meaning across the villages, shanty towns and townships of SA, the NDP-centred buzz so beloved of the elites, is conspicuous by its absence. If there is any buzz at all in these human settlements of the poor, it is about whether Julius Malema’s EFF party is the real thing, or whether it is another ephemeral pre-election opposition meteor that will self-destruct shortly.
Regarding the NDP, the clichéd has become a conviction, negating Nietzsche’s admonition that “convictions are more dangerous to the truth than lies.” Yet the quoters of the NDP are so full of conviction, passion and righteousness. They are so full of certitude about the unquestionable correctness of the NDP’s suggested course of action for our long-term future.
What accounts for this dashing and astonishing political arrogance and “fatal conceit” (Hayek) on the part of the drafters and supporters of the NDP?
Both Mahmood Mamdani, the great Indian-Ugandan academic, and Slovaj Zizek, come closest to unmasking the basis of this insufferable arrogance and conceit around the NDP.
In one of his long, self-introspecting interviews, Mamdani once stated, amongst other things, that:
“Unless you belong to the class that rules, a good argument will never be enough to safeguard your interests.”
Appropos SA’s NDP.
And so, because representatives of dirt-poor South Africans are not part of “the class that rules” in SA, their good arguments against aspects of the NDP will not “safeguard their interests.” The powers that be will determine to proceed to implement the NDP, as patently made clear by the ANC’s secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, in an interview carried by The Times (SA) of 23 July 2013, entitled “ANC tired of talking – Mantashe says party will press on with development plans, come what may.” The article further stated that “President Zuma’s administration would no longer tolerate protracted debates about contentious projects because they often caused investor uncertainty.”
Oh, my Heavenly Father, so it does boil down, once again, to ruling elites’ concern about “investor uncertainty”, and not about the plight of the poor?
On the other hand, Slovaj Zizek, writing for the London Review of Books (LRB) of 3 February 2011, declared that “the ultimate show of power on the part of the ruling ideology is to allow what appears to be powerful criticism.” So the drafters and supporters of the NDP have put on a paradoxical appearance of seeming to entertain, tolerate and even encourage “protracted debates” over the NDP, at least heretofore, as long as the “invisible red lines” are not crossed by the critics of the NDP, especially with regard to the NDP’s economic chapter. These “protracted debates” the ruling elite can permit until it arbitrarily dictates time-out on such debates.
And when a lone critic occasionally crosses the NDP’s hallowed “invisible red lines”, the response from within the drafters and supporters of the NDP can be crude, brutal, herd mentality-like, and instantaneous – all wrapped in one and at once.
An example of this “rough justice” treatment was recently dished out by one of the influential National Development Commissioners, and a leading ANC NEC intellectual, Joel Netshitenzhe. In his Pretoria News article of 31 May 2013, entitled “NDP is an attainable vision”, Netshitenzhe wrote thus about Irvin Jim, the general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), who doubles up as a leading and fearless critic of the NDP:
“For instance, can the NDP, to quote the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa general secretary, moonlighting as cartoon actor, be ‘a working-class programme, not a capitalist one’ or vice versa?”
Clearly Netshitenzhe, a man of impeccable struggle credentials, great erudition and refined, cultured intellectual and personal disposition, was not employing the reference to Irvin Jim as “cartoon actor” to enhance and undergird the strength of his arguments in defence of the NDP, of which he is one of the major and highly knowledgeable co-authors. Nor was he temporarily surrendering to the kiddie allure of Loony Tunes.
It was a cynical and deliberate smear and innuendo, a vicious personal and personalized attack afore-thought, driven by naked malice, and intended to both belittle and harm, to the maximum extent possible, the reputation and integrity of NUMSA’s general secretary in the eyes of SA’s reading public, irrespective of what Mahmood Mamdani would describe as “a good argument” Irvin Jim was advancing, if any. At that point, Irvin Jim was viewed by Netshitenzhe as having self-defined outside the “broad church” tent of the hegemonic “ruling ideology” regarding the NDP. He had to be viciously dealt with, if only to set a powerful deterrent example for similar contrarian behavior in the future. It was a low blow, occasioned by an unrestrained anger that the “invisible red line” on the NDP had been crossed by Irvin Jim. At such a moment, “the ruling ideology” dispenses away with the formula, call it nicety if you want, of entertaining “appearances” of allowing and encouraging “powerful criticism.”
Surprisingly, Netshitenzhe had earlier in the same article made an historic and essential concession around the NDP. In his words, “the consensus that flourished in the few months after the release of the NDP seems to be in tatters.” He had also made an important point that “..in debating its contents, it’s necessary to avoid nitpicking that distorts its core arguments.” By the same token, the defenders of the NDP, such as Netshitenzhe, “should avoid nitpicking that distorts…arguments” of the NDP’s critics, including NUMSA and its general secretary. Clearly, in how he quoted Irvin Jim out of context, Netshitenzhe himself was, against his own pretty good advice, “nitpicking” on NUMSA’s arguments against the NDP, in an effort to cruelly isolate Irvin Jim for open, bare-knuckled political ridicule.
The truth is, the consensus around the NDP is in worse “tatters” today, than at the time when Netshitenzhe penned what was otherwise a very thoughtful and measured contribution, from within the National Development Commission (NDC), to the ongoing national debate on the NDP.
If the consensus around the NDP is indeed in “tatters”, as averred by Netshitenzhe, an analysis of the current status of the NDP with which many among us would readily agree, how come there is still ongoing, determined and relentless push for its implementation, regradless? On the basis of a national consensus “in tatters”? Who is playing ostrich here? Who is fooling who?
The decision to proceed with implementation of the NDP in haste, in spite of the national consensus around it being in “tatters”, does not strike one as wise. Or do the ruling ideology’s policy honks suffer from a sense of infallibility and untouchability?
The growing emotionalism, and occasional knee-jerk reactions, by defenders of the NDP, should be viewed against the backdrop of Friedrich Hayek’s words that “[w]hoever controls all economic activity controls the means for all ends and must therefore decide which are to be satisfied and which not.”
That SA’s dirt-poor do not control commanding economic activity, and that they therefore cannot decide which of their ends are to be satisfied, and which not, is obvious. But this is a painful economic reality of South Africa that needs to be changed without delay, for it is not sustainable.
No wonder the massive national disagreements around the NDP have, finally and very predictably, coalesced on the NDP’s economic chapter. The economic chapter is obviously the NDP’s Archille’s heel, the point of its highly concentrated weakness, and, consequently, the NDP’s weakest link. It is what potentially will unravel the whole NDP in the long run.
That there would be rapid SA national consensus around the non-economic chapters of the NDP, should have come as no surprise at all. But that national consensus continues to elude us around the NDP’s economic chapter, should be a matter of grave national concern. For, to paraphrase Roy Childs Jr., when a tiny, ruling elite has total power over the entire national economy, political power becomes the only power worth having; and indeed worth fighting for. Thus the era of populist revolts gets unleashed upon a conceited and unsuspecting society. It was so in Tunisia. It was so in Libya. It was so in Egypt. It was so in Yemen. It was so in Syria. It is so in Bahrain. It is so in Turkey. It continues to be so in Brazil. Only congenital fools amongst SA’s multi-racial elites, suffering from God’s complex, would presume that SA is totally immune from such societal contretemps which have afflicted other countries around the world since 2010.
The NDC, by parking the economic chapter of the NDP in some dark, inaccessible, auctioneering room amongst select politicians, whilst pretending it is business as usual in terms of implementation of the rest of the NDP chapters, will only entrench this gigantic SA leadership failure until 2030; and possibly beyond. In fact, in an important sense, this outcome is far worse than CODESA, or the process that brought up GEAR. It is elitism at its worst elitist, particularly galling when it comes from former freedom fighters. Post-apartheid South Africa deserves much better from the NDC.
But will the NDP succeed to fool us when it comes to pressing matters of economic justice for all in post-apartheid South Africa?
Does the NDP represent the death of a Yunusian dream for South Africa of completely and permanently defeating and eradicating poverty and inequality in South Africa in the next 20 years? Or, as eloquently suggested by National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, has “the NDP…galvanized society to seriously think about and debate the future of the country”? (Trevor Manuel, “Treading softly on our dreams”, Sunday Times, 16 July 2013).
CONCLUSION.
The NDP tells a fascinating story about post-apartheid South Africa, roughly two decades after SA’s first all-inclusive, democratic elections.
Firstly, there is the story the NDP tells at the level of sartorial elegance. The former legendary SACP general secretary, Joe Slovo, once remarked, rather presciently, that “sometimes if you wear suits for too long, it changes your ideology.” (Quoted in “Great South Africans”, BBC, 1996). We need to know to what extent the male suits that drafted the NDP had their ideology changed by their own massively improved (since 1994) economic fortunes, a la BEE. Has such a massive change in their economic fortunes, beyond their wildest dreams, in turn changed their ideology, away from the ANC’s historic, long-standing, pro-poor bias?
Secondly, we should be at all times mindful of the perceptive insight of the American social scientist, Allen Bloom, that “a new language always reflects a new point of view, and the gradual, unconscious popularization of new words, or of old words used in new ways, is a sure sign of a profound change in people’s articulation of the world” (Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind – The German Connection, 1987).
It is not just a matter of sartorial elegance that is a give-away, in terms of a changed ideology. It is also the linguistic power and arbitrariness which is deployed by ruling elites that is also a sure-fire give-away.
Other than GEAR, the NDP is by far the biggest and most influential neologism of the post-Mandela era, in terms of SA’s vision thing. But, as Allen Bloom would point out, such neologisms portent a radical departure in how people view and articulate the world, or at least their narrow, self-centered, greedy, elite world. This we need to understand regarding the drafters and supporters of the NDP, in spite of their self-declared outwardly lofty intentions.
At a much deeper level, the NDP represents a particular point of view of its drafters, supporters and promoters. The NDP is not devoid of a slanted ideological content, aim, thrust and bias, especially as it relates to its vision regarding the issues of economic justice for all in post-apartheid South Africa in the next 20 years.
Behind any neologism, there often are arrayed special, powerful, particular hegemonic elite and class interests. The NDP is no exception, despite protestations to the contrary from its supporters and promoters. South Africa needs to confront these elite, class and multi-racial interests behind the NDP, and expose them for what they truly are.
Thirdly, as pointed out by the great Caribbean and Pan-African activist, Marcus Garvey, “the ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself, but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.”
Ultimately, whose ends does the NDP serve? Those of its drafters, supporters and promoters only? In that case, as Garvey would say, the NDP would serve no further than the narrow, egotistic elite and class interests of this motley collection of individual and ruling class factors, and not an inch beyond that. Or does the NDP serve, as Garvey would put it, the interests of all South Africans, in common, especially the advancement of economic justice for all in our post-apartheid land? If so, the NDP will take South Africa into eternity, in prosperity, for all posterity. This would be especially true regarding the NDP’s economic chapter, if and when it can finally stand on its own two feet, without crutches or prosthetics, and without manufactured consent.
In such an event, the Yunusian dream of eradicating poverty in South Africa in the next 20 years, and not just to half it, as purported by the NDP, becomes the all-purpose, visionary ideal to aspire to. And this would indeed be South Africa’s Freedom Charter moment.
In his long article quoted above, National Planning Minister, Trevor Manuel, energetically leaping to the defence of the NDP, quoted WB Yeats’ poem Clothes of Heaven, where Yeats wrote:
“…But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.”
Yet it is conceivable that, as a poetic riposte to Manuel’s preference for Yeats to defend the NDP, the NDP’s critics could instead quote, more pertinently, the great African American poet, and the phenomenal Harlem Renaissance Man, Langston Hughes’ poem “Kids Who Die”:
“And the gentlemen with Dr.
In front of their names
White and black
Who make surveys and
write books
Will live on weaving
words to smother,
the Kids who die.”
Just too many kids in SA’s black communities continue to die, because of poverty, malnutrition and acute underdevelopment. They want us not to tread softly on their daily, horrific nightmares, but to rip these nightmares away, with all the heavenly force we can collectively muster, from their youthful innocence – yes, the black Kids who die.
Can the NDP do this?
They are alive, simply because they are not yet dead – these black Kids who die in post-apartheid SA, and so needlessly, because our country is so well-endowed with vast natural and human resources, enough to make every South African to live pretty comfortably above the poverty line.
Will the NDP offer a better salvation for them, these Kids who die, than the more daring Yunusian dream of eradicating poverty in SA in the next 20 years? Or will the NDP be one of the “books” which will be “weaving words to smother the Kids who die” in post-apartheid South Africa?
National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel, which will it be?
Will it be WB Yeats, or will it be Langston Hughes?
Which will ultimately triumph in 2030?
Will it be your sunny optimism on the NDP? Or will it be the dark, gloomy pessimism of the SAIRR around the NDP?
1st Cediablog by:
Mr. Isaac Mpho Mogotsi
Founder and Executive Chairman
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10 October 2013
Centre for Economic Diplomacy in Africa 