 Laying the basis Editorial, Business Day, 19 January 2010 PLANS for the National Planning Commission have been sidelined by so many red herrings over the past nine months or so that it’s a wonder that the new commission is coming together at all. One red herring was that the commissioners would have executive powers, so that it would supposedly be able to override the Cabinet on matters of policy. That never was the case, as anyone who reads the original green paper on planning could easily see. That’s not what planning commissions do anywhere. And the green paper that Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel released last year certainly seemed to make it clear that while the commission would devise long-term plans to inform policy making, any decisions were up to the Cabinet. But Manuel has nevertheless moved to allay fears on the power issue and neutralise the attacks by his detractors, releasing a new, slimmed-down green paper that opens the way for the commission to be set up. He has tried his best, too, to address the other red herring bedevilling debate about the commission, which is that it’s about economic policy. It really shouldn’t be: the commission’s work should not be exclusively about economic policy. The things it needs to look at most urgently are surely issues such as energy security, water and education, where SA needs to be devising plans with a 20- year time horizon — so that it can start to put policies in place soon that might have a chance of making an impact in five or 10 years’ time. That will require facing trade-offs and making decisions about how to allocate resources, and the planning process is about economics in that broad sense, but it’s certainly not about economic policy in any strict sense — whatever Manuel’s detractors might claim about his ambitions. It’s the 20-year time horizon that is really what the planning commission should be about. To do its work well it will require bold and imaginative people who can think about these issues, commission research on which to base strategic plans and define the choices that must be made and the trade-offs that must be faced. It needs to be, in other words, a brains trust. What the 20-member commission does not need is people who are incapable of thinking beyond their own narrow, short-term political agendas. And there is some danger that might be precisely what some politicians have in mind as commissioners. Already we have had Cosatu calling for labour to be represented on the commission. Why? Start talking that way and it begins to sound suspiciously like Nedlac, whose cumbersome and conflicting processes have in recent years become a recipe for paralysis. We do not need another Nedlac. Nor do we need a bunch of politicians with agendas. What we need are smart commissioners who can help to shape a better SA two or three decades down the line. |
