Transcript Q&A Unlocking ’s Potential: The Challenge for New Political Parties

Dr Political Activist; Founder, Party; Managing Director, (2000- 04)

Chair: Tony Dykes Director, ACTSA (Action for Southern Africa)

28 May 2013

The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/ speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions, but the ultimate responsibility for accuracy lies with this document’s author(s). The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery.

Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential

Question 1: Having been involved in the mining industry in South Africa, with Gold Fields, I was just interested to know from your perspective, in your vision for South Africa, where do you see – as you know, resources is almost the base of our economy. How would you like to see that being funnelled and used to develop our economy, and where do you think it will go in the medium to short term?

Question 2: Could you outline the differences between your party and the Democratic Alliance, and perhaps explain why you weren’t able to throw in your hand together?

Question 3: I was one of those passive 5 million registered voters. I can tell you now, you definitely have my vote for the upcoming election. But one of the things that they said on the radio, I remember, when you were there and you were speaking to the youth to say you are launching a new – I wanted to call in and say that one of the things that I realize is that as a South African, if you have to make a vote – I’m black so the vote is either you have to vote ANC or you don’t vote. So if you’re mad you say, I’m not going to vote at all – which is actually wrong, but I think a couple of months ago they said that black voters still view the DA as still a white supremacist party, that if we ever were to elect them we would go back to apartheid. Not a version of apartheid but maybe a different version of it.

What I like about your party is that it represents us as the youth, because we are frustrated and we are at that point where we don’t see a solution. We look at the ANC, it’s a big organization – sorry. Basically, what I’m trying to say is you do have my vote and I hope we get to a point where Agang gets to that level where we can affect policy and we can change some of the things that we don’t like about our country at this present time. Thank you.

Mamphela Ramphele: I clearly spent a lot of my professional life in the mining sector, as Anglo [American plc] director and later as a chair of Gold Fields. As a citizen of South Africa, I’m very proud of the resources sector and the contribution it has made to the country. But I also spoke… to say that I’m sad that the South

www.chathamhouse.org 2 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential

African mining industry has not taken the opportunity of making the transition from the 19th-century model of mining, which is a mass low-skill, low-wages approach, to what in Australia – using some of our intellectual resources from South Africa, the Australians are mining like a 21st-century country. They are streaking ahead of South Africa in many ways as a mining country and as a more attractive place for investors.

So my view is – and this is very strongly stated in our policy framework – we have to push very hard for the restructuring of the mining industry so we can mechanize more and get those people who will lose jobs to be retrained for the kind of jobs that are higher-paying and will be more sustainable. There is also a natural link between the , which has got the most fertile land in South Africa, which has traditionally – for more than a century – sent its most able-bodied men to the mines; they can now retain their people there. But that will require a restructuring of our approach to agriculture. So we can go into more intensive agriculture, and also grow industrial crops. There is also another opportunity for the mining industry. The mining industry owns vast tracts of land that are contaminated, but you can still grow industrial crops on them. But the mining industry just regards it as a dead asset. They are actually, literally, zero on the balance sheet.

So we are sitting on a huge asset base in terms of both the mining industry and agriculture. If you can clasp them together in a very creative way, we can have an unmatched growth potential as a country, sustainable into the future, and thinking about all the industrial benefits that will come from re- industrializing the whole approach to mining and to agriculture. So that’s that.

The issue of Agang and the DA, I think actually the comment there just explains to you why. It is not an accident that 5 million people registered in 2009 and chose not to vote. They did not want to vote for the African National Congress, nor did they want to vote for the DA. So there is in fact an evidence-based case for Agang. What South Africans are saying – and these are largely young people. Some of them are children of people like me, who were freedom fighters, but they would not vote – they will not vote – for the current offerings.

Agang is a new offering that is coming into a space which is going to become even bigger with the ‘born frees’ who really don’t believe that the country should be held hostage by liberation politics and by the claims by the DA and the ANC over who was more involved. Obviously we respect the role that people played in the liberation struggle. I was one of those people. But we cannot be a nation that is held hostage by its past. We know what happened

www.chathamhouse.org 3 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential to Lot’s wife, who kept looking back instead of looking forward. Agang is a party of the future. We are focusing on young people – as I said, the 15-to-34- year-olds are 60 per cent of the country. So the country is majority young, and yet these two parties that are the big parties right now are really more establishment, more older people like me. You may well ask: what are you doing? I’m doing what I’m doing because I believe you need a bridge between my generation of freedom fighters and the young people who want a different South Africa. They don’t want to be held hostage by the past. They want to build a South Africa that is united in its diversity, that is forward-looking and that is a real creative force on the African continent and in global affairs.

Tony Dykes: Thank you. I’ll take the last comment as just a message of support, if we may.

Question 4: I have three questions, very brief. Can you please elaborate on campaign finance issues in South Africa, given your reference to Chancellor House? The second is in relation to the structural labour issues that you see and how one can actually deliver on this economic transformation, given very strong structural linkages between the ANC and vested interests? The third relates to your view with respect to South Africa’s role on the continent, given recent developments with BRICS.

Question 5: I left South Africa about 11 years ago to further my education in the US. At the time I had full intention to return to South Africa, but because of a lot of the reasons you have mentioned tonight, I haven’t. Mainly because I think there hasn’t been enough opportunity and frankly because I’m scared of crime and the social situation. I know that a lot of my friends in the US and the UK think that way. So my question to you is: how do you intend to speak to people like me, and I’m sure there are a lot of those people in the room, and what are the ways in which you intend to draw us back? First of all, we can move back, and I know there’s a massive brain-drain problem, but second of all, there are ways to attract funds, in terms of FDI or charity or philanthropy. Then the last one, and I’m embarrassed to say this, but I’ve never actually voted in an election. So there are ways to reach the overseas community and encourage them to vote for parties like yourselves. Thank you. www.chathamhouse.org 4 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential

Question 6: I covered South Africa for the Financial Times between 1984 and 1989, which was an absolutely wonderful and fascinating period. But I only went to South Africa because I’d been kicked out of the Soviet Union, and my editor sent me to South Africa. So I went to South Africa with a slightly different perspective than most people. What I found was that all this communist pollution of people’s minds, this mental illness, had deeply permeated the ANC and particularly the ANC leaders, who I used to go and see and fight with up in Lusaka. It’s thank goodness that the Soviet Union collapsed because if the Soviet Union had still been there then South Africa would be in even a worse position than it is now. But I would just like to say, I’m not at all surprised that the ruling class turned out to be incompetent and grasping – they were following the Soviet model.

The question is: how do you get away from that? I loved what you had to say, but there’s one thing which was absolutely dominant when I was there: the question of race. Everybody was obsessed by race. You didn’t mention it. But unfortunately there is an aspect of the ANC, that the ANC makes particularly non-Xhosas or non-Zulus unhappy, because they run a black nationalist regime very largely, underneath all this talk about multinationalism and so on. The essence of it is that.

I would like to come back to the question of the lady at the back: how would your party attract people from all races, on the basis of their competence and ability? Because the greatest tragedy, it seems to me, of South Africa is that so many people with great will and with the education and skills and everything else needed to bring the third-world part of South Africa up to first- world levels – which is what you hope for and everybody else does – these people have been systematically cast aside and many of them have emigrated – including my wife, I have to say, which I’m delighted for but it’s no for South Africa.

Mamphela Ramphele: Agang’s funding thus far has come from well-to-do South Africans and has come from individuals who give anything from 100 rand to 100,000 rand. We have on our website a button for people to donate, so it’s very transparent. The issue of how we are going to deal with naming and tabulating who has given is one that we are working on right now. I’m going to start by putting my own financial assets and liabilities and whatever I own or don’t own on the

www.chathamhouse.org 5 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential web, so that the issue of transparency for people in public office has to be one that we don’t talk about but we do.

Also on our website is a petition for electoral reform, because we believe that every public official – particularly public representatives – has to have their interests publicly known, so we know on what basis they are making decisions. We should not have what currently pertains: government officials doing business with government. What an outrage! With my own tax money, I pay you and then you come and charge me for services that I didn’t ask for. So that’s what we’re going to do on the party funding issue.

There is also a larger structural issue with regard to party funding. The current model is quite retrogressive, in that the Independent Electoral Commission gives the biggest slice of money to the party that got the biggest vote last time, regardless of their performance. So it literally discourages new entrants into the system. So we need electoral reform that includes party funding reform.

The issue of the structural labour issues, it goes back to the whole conflation of the governing party, the government and the state. It is impossible, humanly impossible, for a government to be in alliance with a labour union and be able to be an impartial regulator in the marketplace. We have seen it now in the mining industry, where there are two unions. The union allied to the government is losing support and ministers, including the minister of mineral resources, without any hint of irony, stand up to say, ‘no, we have to defend this one union’. In any normal democracy, they would be asked to resign as a government. But ours is not a normal democracy, which is why we have to change the way we are governed.

It is very difficult to deal with labour issues in South Africa because of this alliance. There is nothing more that I would defend than the right of workers to unionize. They have the right to unionize. But that should not mean that the governing party, whoever they are, can go into alliance with sections of the union movement and then pretend to be governing in an impartial way. It’s just not on.

Clearly we will have to make sure that we have clarity on the separation of the regulator from the players and to deal evenly with all participants in the economy, because it is in part because of this alliance that the labour market is so rigid – because it was designed for the corporate sector, where traditionally and historically people were exploited in the corporate sector. But to then use the same labour regime of the corporates on smaller and medium enterprises is to kill the goose that’s laying the golden egg. Somehow we www.chathamhouse.org 6 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential can’t extricate ourselves from that because we have a government that is held hostage by its alliance partners.

The South African diaspora – that’s why I’m here, my dear, to get you to go back home. Our country is too beautiful for you not to be there. I agree that we owe it to your generation – and that is the reason why I put my hand up. I was in retirement and now I’m here because I realized that my generation has failed you – has failed to create the kind of South Africa of our dreams, the South Africa that we all hoped we would have, united in our diversity so that we would have room for all citizens. This is what Mr Mandela has been saying over and over again, that the South Africa we are envisaging is a South Africa where all will feel at home.

But right now even black South Africans can’t find jobs in government or in the private sector. If you get into the private sector, you can’t get funding from the development financial institutions because unless you’ve got the right credentials, you don’t. I know this very intimately.

So we have to address the fundamental problem in South Africa. It’s not lack of money or lack of good policies. It is lack of integrity in the public and private lives, because of this corrupting influence, this impunity which has eroded even the most highly regarded institutions. Even our courts are no longer safe. Our Chapter 9 institutions are no longer safe. So we do have to address the problem at source, which is governance. That’s why you must register, you must vote, because you as a citizen must remember that your vote is not only an important tool for democracy – yours is sacred, because it was bought by the blood of so many people. So you dare not, not vote. Fortunately we have won in the constitutional courts –when I say ‘we’, I mean we as South Africans – so we can vote, as long as you are a South African citizen, it doesn’t matter where you are. We certainly need your financial support – press that button and put in those pounds, they translate to a lot. And volunteer. There is a volunteer button on our website so you can volunteer whatever skills you have.

I can assure you, post-2014 we are going to form a government of the people, by the people, for the people, so that people like you and all South Africans can again be able to contribute to their country. It is unwise to discriminate in a country which has got so many talented young people. We have to be the ones who are exiting the system, and not you as young people.

So how will we change the mindset? This campaign and this election is about a new political culture – a culture that puts the principles and values of our constitution front and centre. Those values are human rights values. The fact www.chathamhouse.org 7 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential that women’s rights are human rights – if you have been looking at our statistics, you see how many women are facing gender-based violence. We need to change the culture that says women’s bodies are toys that can be used and abused. We need to again create an environment where people will be sure that their children will do better than they do, not what we are currently seeing where the older generation is supporting the younger generation with old-age pensions.

So we believe that ours is a country destined for greatness. But for that to happen, all of us as South African citizens – and I’m here to call you all – we have to build that country of our dreams, and it is possible; 2014 is the deadline.

Tony Dykes: There was a third question, South Africa and the continent.

Mamphela Ramphele: That’s another one of the underperforming areas. You have the largest economy on the continent, you are a continent that is growing by leaps and bounds – and what do you do? We focus on China; we focus on everything but the home front. We have a particular form of xenophobia in South Africa: it targets Africans only. That should tell you that our problem, the problem of our political culture and our social culture, is one of a people who have not yet built that self-confidence of who they are. The only reason you want to discriminate against somebody is because you are vulnerable, you are afraid. Why are we afraid? Because we didn’t work out that mindset change that – some of us who were fortunate to be in the black consciousness movement, we worked through that inferiority/superiority complex. Many South Africans haven’t done so, including many in government. So they’re fighting a war that is over. We are in charge – there is no longer any reason to be afraid of white people or these people or the other people. We are now federal citizens. We should be finding ways of working together, and for that we need leadership of integrity that is focusing on the country and not on the self.

Question 7: I’m really interested to hear about your thinking and what you were saying about mining and industrial agriculture, labour and human rights in South Africa. I want to ask you about climate change. Scientists have said that www.chathamhouse.org 8 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential climate change is the biggest threat to civilization this century and our human activity has just meant that we’ve just breached 400 parts per million in the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, which is the first time for 3 million years. So would Agang agree that climate change is our biggest threat for this century? If so, what does sustainability mean for your political party? Then lastly and unrelated: I would love to know also what you think about the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the process that’s going on in Africa at the moment.

Question 8: You mentioned in your speech two things. One, that the number of people qualifying to enter higher education was going down, in effect. You also mentioned that the number of graduates who are unemployed was much larger than you would hope. What role would you ascribe to higher education in the future South Africa that you are imagining?

Question 9: I have a question about capacity. How much capacity does Agang have to govern now and perhaps next year? Because I worry that the policies are good but it’s the implementation that will make the difference. I don’t know if the capacity will be to manage a province or a municipality or national.

Mamphela Ramphele: There is nobody who is logical in thinking who would deny that climate change is upon us. It’s no longer a matter for discussion and debate. The issue is: what do we do now? The problem about not having good governance, integrity and transparency is that we in South Africa have just not focused on climate change in any real sense. We have had an opportunity, in terms of the challenges of our energy needs, to use god’s given sun – I mean, you have to come to London to realize how lucky we are. And yet to get that alternative energy sources programme going was like pulling teeth. Again, because the public sector has been undermined by corruption and all of the issues that I mentioned. So to get any sensible policy – and there are many sensible policies that the ANC has – to get it implemented is a major mission.

So we believe that we will need to accelerate the use of alternative energy. We will also need to pay attention to what has become quite shocking: the www.chathamhouse.org 9 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential total disregard of natural resources in the chasing of minerals. That they could allow a coal mine within a few kilometres of Mapungubwe, the absolutely pristine World Heritage Site, is just shocking, but it tells you what happens when you are corrupt and conflicted, because the people who are inside making policies also are getting benefits.

The ICC is a big challenge for the world, not for South Africa. I believe that the global community needs to go back to basics about the ICC. The idea was a good one but the implementation has not worked. It doesn’t help that America is not a signatory, it doesn’t help that most of the people being charged are Africans. So we need to go back to basics and see how that good idea can be put better to use.

Education underperformance is one of the things that pains me most. I spent a lot of my time and energy in the education sphere, as a vice-chancellor and even after that, trying to help our government to deal with education as a critical success factor. But it’s been an area of experimentation – and that’s not unique to South Africa. Most African countries treat education as an unimportant portfolio; they give it to the weakest ministers. You look at the minister we have right now, appointed as your minister of education with such huge issues. Of course she says, ‘what do you expect me to do?’ Hello, we expect you to govern.

So the issue really with regard to education is not the problem that can be solved at the higher education level. It’s the approach to education, that in theory we say – in the department’s website – we should make every child matter. But if you look at children going to schools without toilets, without laboratories, without libraries – they don’t matter. Eighty per cent of South Africa’s children don’t matter to this government. So we need to get there. In my view, if you tackle the infrastructure needs of education and health, you create a massive amount of work and training, opportunities for adults in training.

But the model we need to be looking at is the German and Swiss models, where kids go to school, they get taught, and when they get to Grade Nine, they choose where they want to be. You want to be a dancer, a musician, an artist of one form or another, or an engineer or whatever – you get high- quality training and education in your area of competence. That we haven’t yet figured out. That is what we need to implement very rapidly.

That brings me to capacity to govern. We have the capacity in South Africa. Just look at all of you here. You are going home with me to create that capacity. No, seriously, if we can look at South Africa’s 25-to-45-year-olds, www.chathamhouse.org 10 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential underutilized, we can do what Agang says we should do, which is to have a professional public service. Because what we have currently is not a capacity to govern. We have no capacity to govern, neither at the national nor provincial nor local level. The people I visited in Alex and in PE and elsewhere, when they open their taps, sewage comes out. When they flush their toilets, sewage goes to the neighbour’s yard. That’s not Agang; this is the ANC’s government.

So it’s not about how big you are. It’s about, are you going to use the best available skills in the country? We know that there are skills in the country. We know there are many civil engineers who have retired – we are going to get them back to do the work that needs to be done to build this great country. We can, and we will.

Question 10: I focus on Francophone Africa, and as I’m sure you know, there’s been a lot of resentment in west Africa, particularly a perception that South Africa has been throwing its weight around. How do you strike that balance between being naturally one of the biggest players in the continent and not provoking resentment in other regions?

Question 11: Thank you again, doctor, great presentation as always. Great speaker, a lot of insight, and looking as young as ever. My question is around the youth. We have seen it all over the world. If you look at Greece, I think their population is about 55 per cent young people unemployed. We see it all over Europe, we see it in America. We see it more predominantly in South Africa. You rightfully mention that the policies in our country are not the problem. It’s the government or the implementation thereof.

My question is: from a practical point of view, looking at the number of young people who are unemployed – I’m fortunate to have a job today – what is it that Agang plans to do to ensure that we address that problem? Because it talks to issues of education, of crime, of abuse – you name it, it’s a whole string of issues. So my question is, what are the practical aspects that Agang envisions going forward, in terms of educating our young people to give them the great jobs they need?

www.chathamhouse.org 11 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential

Question 12: What do you expect the ANC’s reaction to be once your party is formally launched and gains traction? I ask this question because, firstly, I’m not sure exactly how seriously the ANC takes the DA; and secondly, Africa doesn’t have a great track record of established post-liberation parties accepting new competitors. Closely related to that, how do we really move beyond liberation politics? I ask that because I also can’t think of a great example of that in Africa. We know from places like Zimbabwe that you have teenage war veterans. I see that as a big stumbling block in South Africa at the moment.

Question 13: I wanted to take you back, and this may be a good way to end, just to the title of your talk, which is ‘The Challenge for New Political Parties’. Clearly, the challenge as you articulated it is the size and monolithic nature not of the ANC but of the tripartite alliance, and you articulated the many failures that we’re all familiar with in education, in the grants system, and so on. The question is: is the challenge, or is the failure, administrative – or is it ideological? Because if it’s ideological, I haven’t heard you say something different, and if it’s administrative, I don’t see how you can change it.

Mamphela Ramphele: Francophone Africa, like the rest of the continent – I think people are disappointed in South Africa’s post-apartheid relationship with the continent. We have not really thought seriously about how to be the biggest economy in Africa, and how to leverage our being ‘Johnny-come-latelys’ and the relationships that we had forged during our struggle with the rest of the continent. I put that to the fact that we don’t have one single, coherent, articulated foreign policy in South Africa – not one. That’s because we don’t regard foreign policy as a professional domain which requires specific expertise. Our former president, Mr Mbeki, thought that because he knew so much about foreign policy, there was no need for foreign policy. But now we’ve got people who have never been in foreign policy in a serious way.

So we need to really go back to basics in terms of our foreign policy, because we can learn a lot from the continent. We mustn’t assume always that they are going to learn from us.

The youth unemployment issue is a challenge and a big opportunity. It’s an opportunity because every one of the problems I’ve mentioned today will www.chathamhouse.org 12 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential require a lot of rebuilding. So imagine how many young people who are unemployed today we can train in terms of the artisanal skills, like in the building industry, in plumbing, whatever – you name it, we can do it. We will be employing the infrastructure expenditure which somehow gets voted in but we never see where it goes – we can now put it to great use. We’ve got 5 billion, one per cent of payroll, that always comes on stream but we have created a huge machinery called the SETAs who have not been to train or produce artisans in any numbers. They are producing less artisans in number and quality today than the apartheid government did. This is how appalling things have become. So by just using the resources that currently exist and marrying them to the problems that we have, we can actually absorb a lot of the young people who are today unskilled, and skill them in the process.

A beautiful story is that we have 10,000-plus volunteers. Many of them are young people. What we are doing is not to train them to be party hacks. We train them first of all to know how – and they say that, they want to know how to comport themselves in order to be able to become more professional. We then train them in terms of the democratic process. We train them to understand our policies and then we train them in the use of technology, in order to mobilize support. By the time they finish their volunteer stint with us next year, they will be ready to be employed in a number of jobs. So I’m quite hopeful that we can deal with the unemployment issue if we just go about it the right way.

The issue of what will be the ANC’s response – I just think that that should be asked of the ANC. I am operating on the assumption that I live in a constitutional democracy and we have rights of association, rights to establish a political party as we have done, and we have a right to contest – and if we win, we believe we’ve got a constitutional dispensation that protects the rights of people to make the choices that they need to make. That’s the assumption on which we are working and we are not looking left or right, because we know for sure that we are founded on a very firm foundation of our constitution.

The challenge of the tripartite alliance, is it administrative or ideological – it’s neither. The challenge is one of integrity. There is no way you can tell me that you can have a political party in alliance with the SACP – what’s the commonality, I don’t know – and with the union movement, who have the right to unionize – but if you are a government, you are meant to be above, or you are meant to be an honest broker in mediating the various interests which often are conflicting within society. But if you start off by not only dealing with the challenges of managing those conflicts, but you create huge edifices that www.chathamhouse.org 13 Transcript: Unlocking South Africa’s Potential represent conflicts, you are undermining the very principles, the very foundations on which a constitutional democracy stands. Remember, ours is not a parliamentary democracy like yours. Ours is a constitutional democracy where the citizen is the sovereign. We don’t go and ask the Queen for this or that, we ask the citizens.

So if you have a government that does not put the citizen front and centre – as our struggle for freedom said, ‘the people shall govern’ – then we have a major, fundamental problem. So ours is a monumental failure of governance, with a lack of integrity right at the centre of it.

www.chathamhouse.org 14