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Thinking and doing is what South Africa needs

 One of the most preventable decisions that have plunged the country into a disaster is the introduction of independent power producers and how the country transitions to that future. While in climate change standards, the decision might have been one of the best, in how it impacts the livelihoods of South Africans, it comes out as the worst decision ever to be made by a country’s National Executive. The rigid organisational structure the governing complex has grown into, the muted fear to challenge the centre by voices of reason within the governing complex, has put a country in a condition where perishing at the hands of benevolent dictatorship contexts is a reasoned option. Decisions on electricity were thus taken within the prism of economic interests of imposing the creation of a new establishment by hook or crook. 

Thus far, we have seen a growing imbalance between thinking and doing. With the dearth of innovation and long-term political economy thinking in the governing complex, achieving the variability of thinking and dealing with the realities of doing has been one of the hardest things to do if the outcomes of thinking challenge what is desired. What has happened is that almost all decisions on electricity have increased uncertainty. The absence of network thinking as a process of allowing for a spectrum of options on how to transition society has been one of South Africa's new, rigorous, and systematic approaches to demonstrate how incumbents in the governing complex have succeeded in refusing the national brain trust to reduce uncertainty on electricity supply. The nearest memory of how to govern and the institutional design of the government seems to be amenable to a govern or rule by decree to levels where the greatest comfort space to think is contexts where no one questions, whence the declaration of a state of national disaster. 

 

The National Executive has been obeying the clock set by its international commitments to the exclusion of asking the proverbial strategic question, is what we are doing so right the right thing to do? It would seem the decision to rush the alternative energy policy decisions, including all other instruments like environmental levies, carbon taxes, and funding models for new infrastructure did not go through the basic processes of comprehensive leadership quality analyses. Because there needed to be better pausing, reflecting, and solicitation of inputs on how just transition can happen without disrupting what we have, the already brittle electricity supply system could not be ready to adapt when anything goes wrong during the transition. With commitments to the carbon credits and new money systems, the higher interests, most of which are in the global financialisation of public policy decisions, pausing to review the just transition process might foreground problems the new order does not have an appetite to deal with. The sense of perspective required to deal with actual societal issues during the transition would foreground matrices which include minimum base load and energy availability factor, all of which the financialisation has no appetite to include in their modelling. 

 

Dissent as a native in any development-driven policy environment like South Africa was exiled and othered to represent anti-establishment thinking. Instead of being curious about the implications of the new policy direction, there has been a drive to compel the energy complex to mix only one dimension of what is acceptable as the true energy mix. The promotion of self-affirming questions to confirm the established answers to why questions should have been subjected to the how questions to test the validity of answers to why. 

Understanding how we got to have Andre de Ruyter as part of the solutions complex would lead to questions about how we ended up with the governing complex we have. Arguably, South Africa might be a public policy diabetic. We have the required public policy, which as a society cannot convert into implementable because we either overthink without doing or do a lot without thinking. Almost akin to being (policy) obese, with no (insulin) to help convert to what society needs. We must accept that Andre (and all those that appointed him) and all that he represents, are a solution that has failed, and should be removed. CUT!!

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