PALI LEHOHLA | After the World Bank’s mea culpa, South Africa can no longer claim ignorance

A rare convergence of events occurred last week that reminded me of the Lamentations of Apostle Paul in his letters to the Corinthians, as they shed light on a long and protracted struggle of contradictions in our socio-economic edifice of over 30 years.

What gave this moment of convergence sad significance in particular for South Africa was the confession of the World Bank. Not that we did not know, but we refused in the glaring face of evidence that Noam Chomsky gave about the playbook of neoliberalism: “That’s the standard technique of privatisation: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”

This known playbook was repeated by the World Bank.

“I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault; therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin, all the Angels and Saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.”

Perhaps credit should go to the not-so-useful erratic ‘idiot’ in the White House. [Donald Trump’s] error-riddled stance of content-free economic tariffs might have had the consequence of blowing the lid on the World Bank and IMF.

The mea culpa is fresh from the oven. Coming only three days ago is sad, for had it come earlier it would have given South Africa’s National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank a policy advice it needed most.

Paul Hanon writes: “The World Bank Tuesday confessed to an error of more than three decades’ duration, moving to embrace industrial policy as tariffs, subsidies and a variety of other interventions become increasingly popular with governments in search of growth. Back in 1993, the bank published an assessment of the rapid economic growth achieved by some economies in east Asia, and which appeared to owe something to government interventions in support of selected industries. The bank controversially concluded that their economic success had nothing to do with those interventions, which it instead described as a ‘costly failure’.”

Perhaps credit should go to the not-so-useful erratic “idiot” in the White House. His error-riddled stance of content-free economic tariffs might have had the consequence of blowing the lid on the World Bank and IMF. Now bereft of cover from the White House, a mea culpa is the only way out to retain support for our spineless economic policies that generated just about 1% over the last 15 years.

So what created the convergence? I attended three events from Thursday to Friday, two of them monumental. They resuscitated former Gauteng premier David Makhura’s Growing Gauteng Together 2030 (GGT 2030). The convergence marks the stubbornness and refusal of an idea to die. It is now an idea whose time has come, yet at great cost because of opportunities lost, youth wasted and collapse of democracy.

On the other hand, it shows that patience brewed in deep intellect and grit pays. Guts and instinct and history underpinned by science and research are crucial. The research work by the department of infrastructure development Gauteng and that done by the Gauteng City-Region is a marvel. Being part of the turnaround strategy of November 2024 gave me confidence when the two departments, one on Thursday and the other on Friday, presented their 2030 programmes. While implementation hurdles may still be in the way, as was the case when Makhura’s Growing Gauteng Together 2020 came under fire while being starved by the National Treasury, Lesufi’s shield is the mea culpa of an askari 30 years later.

Paul Hanon’s article of the confessions of “an askari” is not complete without the cases of Lesufi’s Gauteng that now stand out as resistance and resilience against the World Bank’s proxies. Lesufi’s back and that of MEC Lebogang Maile are charred. Their battle against the toll gates was not an easy one, nor was the Gautrain one.

Full of illustrative case studies, [Dr Robert Nkuna] makes a significant point that the genesis of the Freedom Charter did not have the regulators in mind; the regulatory framework was an afterthought. It remains an albatross to the state rather than an enabler.

They demonstrate without any shadow of doubt that when the state leads, it unshackles itself from the leash of capital and becomes developmental to the electorate than just being a toothless arbiter of patronage or referee between capital, labour and civil society. For that it uses new instruments of power that unleash new capital such as in the Gautrain, where the asset of the state is R52bn. They can now expand services to underserved areas and should now subsidise travel in these new vortexes of poverty in the extended routes to Soweto, Mamelodi, Atteridgeville and others that we have abandoned and that democracy collapsed as a consequence.

As regards e-tolls, Gauteng just stood stubbornly and refused to pay. The stubbornness was emboldened by realising that capital thrives where there is fragmentation. Lesufi refused fragmentation in favour of directly empowering Sanral with the resources it would need to build roads.

When Smuts needed to build roads for industrialising South Africa, he did not start with e-tolls to raise money. He started by funding Bijl with R16m to establish Eskom in 1922. Bijl paid back an Eskom loan from Smuts within three years. Then Bijl supplied South Africa with energy for generations to come. It’s sad that the centenarian collapsed in De Ruyter’s hands. Yet it’s not completely his fault but illustrates that if Washington decides for you, you get into all kinds of rabbit holes.

On Friday I was a discussant at the launch of the book by former director-general of the department of planning, monitoring and evaluation Dr Robert Nkuna titled Infrastructure and Regulation for Economic Development: Institutional Reforms in South Africa’s Network Industries. The book nails South Africa’s pussyfooting. Full of illustrative case studies, it makes a significant point that the genesis of the Freedom Charter did not have the regulators in mind; the regulatory framework was an afterthought. It remains an albatross to the state rather than an enabler. Development on the ground was entrapped in the hyperbolic exchange of memo and authority buried in hip-high stacks of paper and never reached the public benefit.

The speed of spectrum allocation and digital migration is a classic case. Nkuna compared the speed of adopting spectrum between Iran and South Africa. The evidence of purposeful action is so palpable in the battlefield in Persia this very moment. Iran took 90 days to decide and implement. South Africa was choked by paper for seven years. Lesufi, Maile and Mamabolo have a well thought through plan, quantified with specificities and painful use cases. But armed with Nkuna’s insight, they are fully and sufficiently forewarned.

But the armoury does not end there. Nkuna writes a letter that ends like Paul’s lamentations to the Corinthians: “From the Freedom Charter to the 2019 National Treasury proposals, South Africa’s regulatory journey has been shaped by ideological swings, strategic compromises, and deep structural tensions. The enduring conflict between a state-led developmental model and a rules-based regulatory model continues to animate debates on infrastructure governance. Regulators remain caught between efficiency and equity, autonomy and accountability, enforcement and coordination. Policy frameworks have grown more sophisticated, but institutional incoherence, political contestations and capacity deficits persist. If South Africa is to build a regulatory state that delivers, it must come to terms with this legacy. Reform must be politically grounded, institutionally aligned and outcomes focused. Only then can regulation move from symbolic oversight to meaningful transformation.”

I leave Lesufi-Maile-Mamabolo with Lenaka La Mohlomi, which states: “A responsible leader understands first him/herself and second those he leads. Pursues peaceful and productive alliances, accommodates stakeholders and uses new instruments of power to create intergenerational value through integrated reporting.”

Lehohla is the former statistician-general of South Africa, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana.