The problem is not that there is not sufficient economic policy thinking in SA. On the contrary, there is too much of it, and too little leadership. Many of the ideas the DA proposes have been explored to death. A quick tour of SA’s economic-policy history since 1994 will reveal volumes of policy frameworks that have already been generated.

There was the redistributive approach articulated through the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) driven by Jay Naidoo, which was a pro-poor agenda predicated on redistributive economics. It was left untried.

The RDP was immediately followed by the growth employment and redistribution strategy, which was driven by the National Treasury. It sought to achieve macroeconomic stability by reducing the budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product (GDP), reducing the size of the public sector, restructuring state-owned enterprises and reforming the labour market. It was hoped this would yield 6% GDP growth and create 400,000 jobs a year. The most difficult yet crucial aspects of it, notably labour-market reforms, were also left untried.

Soon thereafter, there was also recognition that SA lacks a microeconomic strategy and industrial policies to diversify the economic base, promoting labour-intensive sectors and reducing spatial disparities in levels of development. It was at this point that the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of SA was crafted. It prioritised removing bottlenecks related to skills, infrastructure and excessive red-tape for businesses. This initiative was bolstered by a team of economists drawn largely from Harvard University. Needless to say, their recommendations were victims of the poverty of leadership in the African National Congress (ANC).

If there is anything SA has a shortage of, it is not economic policy thinking, but capable leadership. One can buy the best brains from around the world to design economic policies, but political leadership has to have domestic DNA and be a product of an existing social contract — it is a product of the country’s social and political culture.

Instead of reducing the weight and complexity of the country’s challenges to an arbitrary GDP number of 8%, the DA should have concentrated its mind on the more important challenge of leadership. This is an area where it should have explicitly drawn the battle lines. What a missed opportunity.

Apart from an absence of a leadership narrative from the DA, this narrow focus on GDP growth creates unrealistic expectations about what is possible, given both the internal and crisis-induced exogenous constraints that hold back economic growth. Some of these challenge are to do with energy and the resource-intensity of the economy; physical infrastructure; and weak export demand.

Further, the DA ignores the growing body of evidence in global economic debates that obsession with GDP growth is a poor basis for tackling structural challenges in the economy and overcoming social inequalities. A paradigm that is narrowly built around GDP growth sheds little light on the kind of initiatives and strategies needed for enhancing the economic well being of individuals in society, promoting social inclusiveness and improving the functioning of the public and private institutions critical to inducing dynamism in the economy. Regurgitating text book economic models selectively drawn from parts of the world will not improve economic performance or heal society. Even the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the standard-bearer of orthodox economics, in its most recent report, which was dedicated to inclusive growth, shifts emphasis away from approaches focusing on GDP and emphasises economic strategies that promote social cohesion and well being.

This luxury of dabbling in academic debates about a GDP figure does not paint the DA as a party that grasps the nettle of the leadership challenges of our time. By now, especially given the overwhelming evidence that the ANC’s collapse is inevitable, the DA should be doing much more than comparing its specific policies with the ANC’s. It should be engaging directly with the public as a party that is ready to govern.

It is not the DA’s economic policy framework that will be a political game-changer. Rather, it is compelling leadership. And that is something that will have to begin internally in the DA. Accordingly, the DA will have to ask itself two questions: Is it ready to govern? And do its leaders have gravitas in the eyes of South Africans across the social spectrum?

This article appeared in Business Day of 3 August 2012