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SECURING THE FUTURE

22/09/2021 08:07:00 Sanele Sibiya

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It has been a while since we got entrenched into a political impasse as a nation and it seems there is no end in sight.

The obtaining political conditions are not conducive for economic growth and job creation. It presents with it a situation of perpetual risk and uncertainty, conditions which repel capital, hence the future of the economy remains bleak. Today I will venture into uncommon ground and give my opinion on the political deadlock in the country and the impacts of the political on the economic.

Accountability

It all started with calls for accountability, Members of Parliament demanding a transparent model of government that ensures the elected officials remain accountable to the electorate. In my opinion, this would have positioned the economy towards a balanced growth path. A political system that bothers on accountability produces public policy which improves the lives of the population because the longevity of one’s political ambitions are at the hands of the population not with the elite.

Politics of resource allocation

How a government allocates resources is usually a strong determining factor on whether they will win the next election or not. It is my professional opinion that if we had accountability in our system, the unemployment problem would not be this dire, the poverty levels would not be this high and a lot of our social problems would not be so dire. I say this because as a country we tend to allocate resources where we do not reap much benefit, for example, the proposed Parliament building among others.
There is no incentive for the ones in power to thrive for a fair allocation of resources for the masses, since they are not accountable to the masses, but accountable to the appointing authority. The country’s resource allocation mechanism lacks social justice, yet studies show that a just and accountable political system is a pre-condition for a fair distribution of the economic resources in any society.

A fair resource allocation can be attained if we have benevolent authorities. In economics a benevolent authority refers to an economic agent responsible for allocating resources within a household or the macroeconomy, who ensures that they are altruist in their resource allocation decisions rather than being atomistic. Ideally the economic agent we postulate in orthodox economics is a non-satiable, self-serving agent, who seeks to maximise only their gains (atomistic economic agent). The atomistic economic agent cannot even fathom the benefits that come with altruism and doing good for the others, and just being good, for goodness sake.

Centralised power, economic resource allocation

Given the pertaining political system as a country, we would only be able to attain a fair allocation of the economic and political resource if we had benevolent authorities who feel the plight of the people and seek to allocate resources to maximise the utility (welfare) of all emaSwati. The current allocation of the resources shows that the current system is not at all benevolent, but rather an atomistic one. It is my professional opinion that the obtaining political system is a bottleneck to economic growth. Hence calling the dialogue and forging a way forward may solve a biding growth constraint and set the economy back on the growth path. The decision to delay the call for dialogue and reforms encapsulates with it a very high economic cost, every day something burns, the nation is radicalised and the economic conditions are fertile ground for radicalisation.

The right channels

The Constitution outlines how this impasse is to be handled, however we need to evaluate the sufficiency of the constitutional route in solving the impasse. Albeit the Constitution identifying Sibaya as a gathering of bantfwa’benkhosi, tikhulu of the realm and all adult citizens as an annual general meeting. As a platform for an annual general meeting for the nation to present the views of the nation on pressing and controversial issues. The Constitution does not state what happens to the views the nation expresses during Sibaya, do they have any validity whatsoever? There is just no mechanism for Sibaya to make decisions and enforce those decisions. Sibaya is meant to be an annual event but we all know that it has not been constituted annually and no one has been held accountable for not calling this annual general meeting.

Towards the future

The monarchy is meant to be a symbol of unity for the nation. The divisions in this country have never been so apparent. If the current state continues, then we are funding with public funds an institution that is failing in its role, which is a misallocation of resources and needs to be re-evaluated. It is imperative now more than before that the monarchy plays its role before we are driven into further disrepute. We need a return to some form of peace and stability and get the economy growing again.