With the latest banning of young Julius, many radio commentators (especially those on my favourite station) preach that the country is in need for more debate. Have we not had enough of debates over the years?
1) We debate bad service delivery;
2) We debate bad policing and lack of training;
3) We debate the worst education system in the world;
4) We debate the fact that we are leading the world in TB and HIV;
5) We debate the fact that politicians enrich themselves by asking for “development incentives” and not for bribes;
6) We debate racism that stubbornly stays when it suits whichever party needs to play that card;
7) We debate the E-Tolling system and the clumsy way that is handled;
8) We debate the fact that prisoners can walk out of prison because some official signed the wrong papers at the right time for the prisoner;
9) We debate children that are out of control;
10) We debate to debate, because debating is on of our new national past times;
Three important indices back up the fact that all our debates simply wears out our vocal cords.
1) The Global Competitiveness Index shows how this country is deteriorating when it comes to health, primary education, tertiary education, service orientation, and work force quality.
2) The Global Entrepreneurship Index shows that we lack far behind African countries that went through Arab Springs last year.
3) The Global Innovation Index shows that even Swaziland outpaces us in some aspects of innovation.
We grumble about the inefficiencies of Government, and the fact that bribery and corruption is now the major constraint in doing business in this country. In 2008, crime was still the reason for difficult business conditions in this country.
Now that Mangaung 2012 looms ahead of us, it is interesting to see politicians jockey for positions while denying that they do not have any ambition to become the next president of the country. Also interesting to see how radio presenters and people calling into talk shows bemoan the low quality of political leadership in this country. Even those who sternly voted for their party a few years ago, now threaten to vote along other lines. It reminds one of the old regime where those who complained about the Nats voted for them election after election.
It seems that we vote so that we have reasons to debate between elections.
This phenomenon is not unique to the political landscape in our country. It is also part of our business landscape for the last 28 years.
1) Some business people (from supervisory level to those in the C-suites) spend more than half of a work day sitting in meetings debating points that have been on agendas for months. At one company, a record has been set with a point in the minutes of a meeting that was flagged as “in progress” for six years. Each week, the point is simply moved on to be discussed next week.
2) At some company a decision to replace double-ply toilet paper with single ply needed to be debated and took six months to implement.
3) A complaint about bad service that is received from an important customer needs to be debated;
4) Competitors that launch a new product that the others do not have needs to be debated.
Important decisions requires debating – and rightly so. The question, however, is when does all the debate stop and when does the action and willingness to do something actually starts? Limiting the time we debate things does not mean that leaders become Draconian. One cannot make a decision without having all the facts. But to hear the same arguments stated in different words by different people does not add any value to a debate.
Facts often lack when such debates take place, or the facts are economical and tailored to suit a specific position. Too many examples exist where “facts” are thrown about in boardrooms without any real decision or action being taken.
The political debate and the business debate could sometimes be described as a schoolyard spitting contest. While Rome is burning we decide whether we should decide to debate the heat of the fire.
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