Speech by Ryan Coetzee MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of economic development, in the debate on budget vote 32: Trade and Industry, June 30 2009

Mister Speaker,

Our country faces three key challenges:

First, we must protect the integrity of the constitution and live its values. That means accepting the foundational idea that the state's power over its citizens must be limited by a bill of rights and that key institutions, most critically the judiciary, must remain independent of the executive and the ruling party.

The ANC's cadre policy and the Leninist thinking that gave rise to it have no place in a constitutional liberal democracy, and neither does the government's on-going attempt to shape the judiciary in its own image behind the veil of "transformation".

Second, we must find it within ourselves to overcome racial nationalism and the bigotry to which it gives rise, because those nationalisms are the taproot of the resentment, suspicion and division that colour our politics to this day.

Third, we must build a state that facilitates the opportunity of every person to develop themselves and pursue their own ends in life, not one that controls and directs the lives of the South African people in accordance with the ruling party's vision of who they should be and what they should do.

One problem with the ANC's "developmental state" is that it is not premised on Amartya Sen's insight that development should be measured by the extent to which people develop the capabilities to direct their own lives, and not simply by the outcomes, like per-capita GDP, that economists conventionally prefer. It puts the state, not the people, at the centre of every policy, and more especially of economic policy, and in so doing, retards the very development it seeks to advance.

The other problem with the ANC's "developmental state" is that it won't even generate the conventional outcomes it seeks to achieve. Indeed making "decent work" the objective of economic policy is an unusually striking example of a government setting itself up for failure for it fails to take into account the economic and fiscal circumstances we face over the course of the next five years.

When this recession finally ends, we are going to experience a number of years of very sluggish growth, both domestically and abroad. Under the circumstances, any work will be a godsend for millions of our people, even if we pursued the most aggressive growth-orientated policies possible. And so the more adjectives we place before the word "work", the more certain we are to disappoint the millions and millions of unskilled unemployed people who so desperately need to find a way into employment.

Mister Speaker, there are only three things the state should do with the money it takes from its citizens:

The first is to provide them with security of person and property, for that remains the heart of the compact between a state and its citizens.

The second is to provide, or preferably to facilitate the provision of, goods and services which the market cannot. For those with too little income, this includes access to healthcare, education and shelter, among other things, many of which are identified in our constitution.

The third is to provide a welfare safety net for those unable to provide for themselves. This is a moral imperative in a society that values human solidarity grounded in a capacity for empathy.

What is should not do, Mister Speaker, is own - and mismanage - on behalf of the people it claims to serve, a long list of failing "public enterprises" like SAA and Denel, among others.

It should also not try to turn itself into a kind of Warren Buffet, deploying the taxpayer's capital in industries of its choice in the hope that they will generate a superior return. We will create more jobs, including more decent jobs, if we let people invest their own money. The aim of industrial policy should be to create the conditions in which enterprise can turn a profit, not to decide for the taxpayer which enterprise he or she should invest in.

Only the opportunity state can achieve the developmental outcomes the ANC desires, because its motive force, to use a term those on my right will appreciate, and its objective is human freedom - the kind of substantive freedom that can be lived and enjoyed daily until our time on earth is up.

Source: Democratic Alliance

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