Ideological flexibility will be necessary as the governing party needs to strategically balance populism with pragmatism
What is the political economy around next month’s ANC elective conference?
Uncertainty will inevitably remain elevated until then. As business and the markets weigh up possible political outcomes it should already be evident that the elective conference will have less to do with economics and more to do with politics, patronage and power. After all, the jockeying candidates all come from the same party and are broadly driven by the same ANC policy documents.
Nonetheless, whatever the outcome of the economic deliberations at the conference we are facing a quite different set of global and domestic circumstances to 2017. Apart from the residual impact of Covid-19, international and domestic headwinds are gathering speed, which requires realistic thinking and decision-making — from dealing with painful inflation to tackling stubbornly high unemployment, navigating new geopolitical developments and fixing climate change.
Effective economic governance now requires that the December meeting outcomes be better aligned to the government’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, thus paving the way for more policy certainty and less implementation risk. In this sense the ANC elective conference remains capable of influencing SA’s economic direction, either positively or negatively. Unbridled political factionalism can still exact a high price from an economy that is already walking a fiscal tightrope.
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