Spring has sprung, so it may seem odd for me to recommend that people read the recently published ANC national general council (NGC) discussion document published on Friday, with its turgid text and divine-right-to rule “till Jesus comes” subtext casting a dark cloud over everything.

But it is also illuminating on several themes, particularly while everyone seems to be screaming “something must be done” as job losses mount. The first is the doubling down on the existing interventionist path of industrial policy, particularly since no evidence is presented for how this might work.

The suggestion that further state investment, quotas, master plans and subsidies are required comes with no mention of any cost-benefit analysis for the existing interventions, let alone the new ones. This is a general malaise of the government’s microeconomic policy considerations — the sheer lack of modelling and evidence base, or use of relevant data.

Business should consider whether SA’s problems of low growth, infected by poor industrial policy, would mean higher or lower growth in future if this doubling down were to occur. Far too much of the growth diagnostics has focused on network industries, rather than industrial policy. We could be in for a rude shock when network industry reforms are complete and growth is still below 2% per annum, with no new jobs.

Let’s not forget that the ANC is in complete control of such issues in the government of national unity (GNU), through the department of trade, industry & competition. None of the other GNU parties has had a nose in via the cabinet, even when there was a DA deputy minister in the portfolio.

Another amusing issue is that the ANC seems to think it can prosecute business (whether collectively or individually is unclear) for not sticking to socially compacted commitments to invest certain amounts. Most people probably won’t believe this can be true, but look it up. There remains a mad notion that somehow business can collectively promise to invest, say 25% more a year, or localise so much in billions of rand per year and be held to that legally.

This is not how business works, and that such a statement can be published shows a lack of understanding, not only of how the private sector works but also of the optics. What is missing is an understanding that businesses respond to the myriad signals around them, and make small bottom-up decisions that add up to SA’s overall growth and output. Most of the other parties (even the EFF) seem to understand this, but not the ANC.

Flick through the document to the bits about voters and the electorate, and you get the same sense of misunderstanding. What emerges is a sense of classist struggle and reasons that certain voters need to be loyal and can somehow realise their aspirations through the ANC. Yet with unemployment high and grinding higher, it is never clear what this is meant to mean.

This is not just the classic Dutch disease of liberation movements, but more a failure to see elections as transactional. The document couches last year’s elections as a defeat in a long-run, complex, deep and opaque battle of forces.

No. Stuff was on offer at various political party market stalls, and more people than before walked past without showing much interest. The ANC in particular failed to make as many sales as on the previous market day in 2019. It is that simple. The lack of its own focus grouping and polling makes this invisible to the party.

Investors and business are already contemplating 2029, and the ANC’s continued insistence that the GNU is just a tactical retreat reveals a lack of engagement with the “game” of winning voters through a meaningful offer. There is a risk of a whiplash after the 2026 local elections if the ANC believes it has the philosophy right and can’t understand why it has dropped to second place in Johannesburg, for instance.

This whiplash may well take the form of doubling down on failed industrial policy, and firmer attempts at other things, such as expanding the social wage and forging ahead with implementing National Health Insurance and the SA Reserve Bank dual mandate.

“Such things are unlikely to come to pass” has always been a common catchphrase, and has often been true. The GNU acts as a moderating factor — or at least the risk of its collapse does, given that it is not a real unity or coalition government with proper institutionalisation or foundations. So do the markets and ratings agencies, which the ANC traditionally acquiesces to when matters become critical. The courts also have a firm view on fiscal stability and splurge spending risk, especially as you climb to the Constitutional Court.

Yet there are niggles that worry people. The inability of the Ramaphosa faction to lay out a succession strategy that can bridge any current wobbles through to the longer term (about 15 years out) is certainly one of them. As time ticks by and a Mashatile presidency campaign looks to be gaining momentum, the markets could resist to force the president’s hand on this point.

The nexus of the problem should a desperate ANC consider how to respond to demands on jobs is: where is the piece of string to hold onto that might take us through to 2030? This is ultimately what the president must define in the ANC (internal and external) electoral context, by establishing firmer foundations for the GNU. That way, other parties can rise to the challenge.

• Peter Attard Montalto leads on political economy, markets and the just energy transition at Krutham, a SA research-led consulting company.

This article first appeared in Business Day.