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Editor:
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Ian Jandrell
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Quarter 4 (October - December 2015)
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The views expressed in this publication are
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We have now been through the State of
the Nation address as well as the budget
speech. I suspect neither was easy for
the respective presenters. One tends to assess
these things on not only what is said, but also on
what is unsaid.
There can be no doubt that many of the policies
governing the way we do business in South Af-
rica need a thorough review. This is not for one
moment to suggest that each policy, initially, was
not well thought out with very clear objectives.
Many, however, tend to clog up the very systems
that we need to be unplugging in order to begin
to grow the economy. And dare we flirt with the
reality that it may imply accepting policies that
would, for instance, not be considered accept-
able in Europe.
Let’s be honest… imagining that we can grow the
economy by attracting more tourists, or digging
more stuff out of the ground and putting it onto
trains… is missing the point. We need to actively
address a number of key issues. These include:
• Reducing the number of unemployable citizens
• Recognising that the vast majority of our popu-
lation is young (very young)
• Coming to terms with the fact that, in general,
our basic education standards are atrocious
• Understanding that our higher education sector
is unaffordable to most South Africans
• Dealing with the fact that huge sums of money
are squandered by the very people who should
be custodians of that wealth
None of these deals with thorny policy issues.
They deal instead with systemic issues that can be
managed and controlled. What is required is the
will to do that.
It is easy to find fault and point fingers, but my read-
ing of the two speeches is that there is a growing
realisation that it is a shared responsibility to sort
all of this out. That it is not the State alone, but the
citizens and the State.
I sense a growing acceptance that the State sets the
tone for how we engage in solving these wicked
problems and it is beginning to take responsibility
for growing the economy as well as creating the
environment in which this can take place.
I find it interesting that we face drought, crisis in
the Department of Finance, troubles in some State
owned entities, the threat of a downgrading by rat-
ings agencies – to focus our attention on the fact
that we need to turn the ship around. It takes the
threat of a wreck for us to pay attention.
Unfortunately, there no quick fix. There is no way to
continue to make short-term gains at the expense
of long-term sustainable solutions.
In as much as social grants are a critical reality,
we need to begin to figure out how to make our
population less reliant on the system; how to en-
gage the population in creating wealth and making
a difference.
These are wicked problems indeed. But they are
problems we need to be finding solutions to…
yesterday.
Ian Jandrell
Pr Eng,
BSc (Eng) GDE PhD,
FSAIEE SMIEEE
COMMENT
1 March ‘16 Electricity+Control