Last week in London, I had the opportunity to view the extraordinary Vincent van Gogh exhibition “Poets and Lovers” at the National Gallery.
The Dutch master’s magnificence, from showstoppers such as “Starry Night over the Rhône” and “Sunflowers”, were on dazzling display alongside less familiar works – all testament to his creative and troubled genius.
The viewing coincided with a South African ministerial-heavy visit to Britain’s capital, headed by Deputy President Paul Mashatile.
At the risk of mixing high art with mundane politics, three Van Gogh paintings, toward the end of the exhibition, struck a note. They offered a tryptic of sorts for our fledgling government of national unity, especially since our Cabinet of curiosities was much commented upon by journalists and investors whom I met there.
Van Gogh’s paintings of the landscape around Saint-Remy in Provence allowed him to stylise and diversely express one rural scene: He painted the same olive trees and mountains in dizzying variations of colours and in completely different ways – one abstract, another expressive of mountains and clouds, and a third concentrating on earth and shadows – the same place imagined and expressed entirely differently.
There are entirely different interpretations and expectations, too, for the GNU, now just past the 100-day mark.
Mashatile’s contradictions and clichés
First, on his roadshow, Mashatile prominently showcased his two DA colleagues, Dean Macpherson (Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure) and Andrew Whitfield (Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition). They were present at each photo opportunity and featured prominently at every investor engagement. “Diverse people unite,” as Mashatile also expressed his confidence in both the construction of the GNU and its longevity.
While he showboated with the DA in London, back at the ranch (or in Gauteng, at least), Mashatlile’s “Alex mafia” collaborators were putting the finishing touches to the decapitation of former DA Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink.
Arguing on who would inherit the spoils of office: either one of their own or one from their newfound ally, ActionSA, whose promise to never collaborate with “the criminal ANC” did not long survive the lure of office and the chance to avenge the DA.
Such inconvenient contradictions between honeyed words abroad and nasty nettles back home went unmentioned in London. Though, for the DA at least, hard questions will be asked as to how the support the party provided to elect the ANC’s Cyril Ramaphosa as president on 14 June would be repaid by his party, barely three months later, to eject the DA leader of a major metro.
Second, Mashatile is no verbal expressionist or stylist. So, when questioned about the economic trajectory of the new government, he dialled up the cliché machine, offering the old nostrum, “South Africa is open for business.” This one-note wonder was proffered before, at the height of state capture. Economic illiterate Jacob Zuma, who begged the country and pillaged its Treasury, loved to sprout it, too. This suggests something beyond a rehashed platitude is needed to move the investment dial with hard credibility.
Still, last week, the contours of the same economic landscape drawn in entirely different colours were also on full display.
On the one hand, many investors and financial journalists noted the impressive improvement in both the local currency and bond markets and the return to life, indeed surge, of the near-dead JSE. Simply, the better political mood music changed the tune of previous fleeing bonds and shareholders in SA Inc. As one analyst told me, “The GNU might not have achieved that much so far, but its creation and staving off a far worse alternative (the MK and EFF in government) suggests the country is getting a second chance and second look.”
Just lowering the cost of capital and servicing the gargantuan national debt, which stands at around R5.5 trillion and which costs about R356 billion to pay down each year (consuming 18.5% of all government revenue) is an achievement. Perhaps with lower costs, fewer teachers can be fired, and more nurses can be hired.
On the other hand, as Van Zyl Slabbert liked to muse, “Talk is cheap, but money buys the whiskey”. Ministerial roadshows and ringing the opening bell of the London Stock Exchange do not in themselves advance the real deal: attracting foreign direct investment into the country.
On this score, Hilary Joffe, in Business Day, noted last Friday: “The real test is whether [Mashatile’s jamboree] reached corporates and multinationals that can bring new fixed investment into the economy…including those who aren’t invested and haven’t wanted to be.” (Last year SA recorded a 43% decline in FDI, according to Unctad).
For this picture to improve, policies and practices need to change.
Both the Departments of Home Affairs, Communications and Digital Technology, and Energy and Electricity are making some pro-investment noises, but this approach needs to be replicated across the government.
ANC ignoring Jews
Thirdly, one change in the picture presented abroad compared to the portrait at home was on foreign policy.
Mashatile kept the kaffiyeh he often adorns back here out of sight in London. He also, doubtless in his meetings with senior members of the British government and the UK investor class, did not wave around or articulate his party’s recent statement on the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
The Financial Times noted that Hamas on that day “killed more Jews than on any day since the Holocaust”.
For the record, 1 200 mostly civilian, unarmed Israelis were slaughtered, including 36 children. Many were brutalised, and 250 hostages were seized – many of them known now or presumed dead. The Palestinian and Gazan total since is, of course, far, far higher. But the origins of the brutal war since, were seeded on that day.
A mere nod at the true events, perhaps a single line on occurrences that day, would ground any statement on solidarity with Palestinian suffering since in at least a shred of credibility, or cloak it in a dose of humanity. Neither was evident in “The ANC Letter to Structures on 7 October” (released on 2 October).
It simply ignores and omits that a single Jew or Israeli, most attending a musical peace festival, were massacred.
On the contrary, it commences, “As we approach 7 October, a solemn day marked by the tragic loss of over 42 000 Palestinian lives in Gaza, the ANC reaffirms its unwavering with the people of Palestine.”
By omission, elision and wilful moral blindness, this statement stands on its own. As an exercise in cognitive dissonance, it astounds.
One wonders if Mashatile and his colleagues came across celebrated English comedian and writer David Baddiel. He wrote a bestseller book entitled, Jews Don’t Count. Clearly, this applies to the ANC’s worldview.
But it does count on some Jews at home (Adrian Gore, Lisa Klein and Martin Kingston, for example) to assist the government to right-size the ship of state; and plenty of the investors and financiers Mashatile met with in London were of the same religious persuasion, even a couple of dreaded Zionists in the mix.
So perhaps Baddiel doesn’t quite apply here – sometimes the ANC counts on them, for the rest they can be ignored and consigned to moral oblivion. Either way, not an attractive picture at all.
