The National Development Plan (NDP) is supposed to be the omnibus blueprint to take South Africans from the abyss of underdevelopment to the soaring heights of a creative economy of technical industry, cutting-edge services, and better aligned agriculture.   

 

But alas! That opportunity has been missed again; and how embarrassing does the pongy Humpty Dumpty feel on our faces.

 

The opportunity was missed for two all-important reasons, i.e. on the diagnostic and on the whole dimension of modernism.

 

At the gut-feeling level, the ANC government purports to know the social scene of every nook and cranny of every community, in all of South Africa. The Zuma Adminitration seems to have conducted a country-wide research (who knows the duration of it) behind our back. And it's now shoving it down everyone's throat. 

 

Once again, and considering the e-tolling system on Gauteng's motorways, we are being dictated to. We are being told of our own condition and future without us ever making "grassroots" contributions. Suppose that's what the recent census-taking did for the Rain Nation. Point is, that consultations are not a part of this country's order of democratic day. Our problems are what the ANC tells us they are. And we are to accept that outcome as the only truth, the whole, and nothing but the truth. So help us hopelessness.

 

We are and must always be a resource-intensive economy. This is one of the dictates contained in the schedule for development. The NDP can be safely depicted as just a semantic document--big technical words that sound nicer than the problems they're communicating.

 

The NDP does not touch--not one bit--on how to improve the appalling education paradigm which the ANC has messed up so badly. It doesn't say how to industrialize this economy with enthusiasm and rigor, after thrust it in with the big industrial powers. It ignores the productivity aspect of agriculture and arable land use.

 

The buzzword seems to be getting all adult South Africans in to jobs, and at whatever pay--the quality of these jobs flies out the window. And entrepreneurship is spoken of as the snake oil to each problem at hand. At its core, the entrepreneurship is predicated on the fact that economy will pick up momentum once each South African hangs their shingle.

 

South Africa is the "s" in the economic formation called BRICS. All other BRICS nations are manufacturing economies and export their products. Except for us. We just consume what we are not producing ourselves--as charity cases are suppose to. To be fair, we hand over to them our raw materials at nominal prizes, and pay exorbitantly for what we need from them. Our textile industry is fast going south.

 

"Cry the beloved country" indeed.