Strikes - a living wage and Europe's glass house

Let's cut the bull for five minutes and call a South African spade a shovel.

1. The government has failed. Service delivery; job-creation and an improvement in living standards has fallen short of the political promissory note. Paradoxically, the ensuing leadership vacuum has given intellectually questionable and morally obtuse opportunists the platform to fuel discontent.
2. Government excess and nepotism is no different or more morally corrupt than the culturally entrenched nepotistic employment practices and excesses common in the private sector. 
3. The unions have lost relevance. NUM, in particular, has forfeited control; lacking the strategic vision, leadership qualities and structural continuity to motivate effective collective bargaining. When dialogue fails, militant violence must follow.  
4. The strikes in the mining and transport industry are tangible manifestations of the current misalignment between the expectations of the general population and the ability of the country to service those claims. The private sector, specifically those companies structurally confined within the geographic region, lacks the margin to pass on a higher wage bill to consumers. The cycle intensifies when consumers themselves face further cost-push realignment; usually a down-scaling.
5. Education is neither pragmatic nor sufficiently preparatory for effective participation in the global environment. The negative economic consequences of the largely defunct educational system will emerge in the next decade, effectively negating an entire generations' creative potential.
6. Structural inadequacies and largely porous borders strain the rule of law, promoting violence, ethnic mistrust and racial bias.
7. Publicly reported remuneration excesses in the formal private sector fuels the corporate culture of personal gain and systematic asset stripping at the expense of longevity and so on and so on...

Notwithstanding all of the above, the South African situation is not much different from the structural failures in both Europe and the US. European corruption, nepotism, ineffectual leadership and the emerging militancy of its populace is neither imagined nor surprising. Political ineptitude, tax evasion and corporate excess at the highest levels is systemic. 

Critically, although most condemn the associated violence, you could argue that the strikers demanding a living wage are correct in their claims that hitherto local and now internationally domiciled mines have been stripping this country's assets for far too long. Is there a case to pursue a national policy of resource-ownership? Why not rather pay contracted mines for their extraction skills, infrastructural spend and intellectual capital and pay them generously? Market the refined, rather than the raw product, through a state-owned central hub managed by the private sector, also contracted and paid generously. Strategically viable? Yes. Socially acceptable? Perhaps. Timeous and innovative? Definitely. 

At its core South Africa's mineral wealth, currently residing in the corporate / capital structures of Europe, has not made her people prosperous and you don't have to look too far to see why. 

Policy, civic pride & perception

Let's give Europe a breather and, for today at least, consider our financial exposure in the South African dynamic.That has me thinking about civic pride; the South African government, it's policies and investor perception as a whole.

At the macro level, civic pride plays a key role in predictable economic expansion. Short-sighted strategic planning with 'nation-building' as justification in preference to civic pride misinterprets the sustainability of the project. To clarify: - 'nation-building' as a concept, is a State imposition ie: big brother knows best whilst civic pride is more reliably 'we-the-people-get-what-we-need'. The push / pull forces are very different. Civic pride is commensurate with a mature society. Imposition at its core is not sustainable. Giving people what they need rather than what you think they need addresses civic pride and is, by definition, more sustainable. A nationally-recognised vested interest in an asset and or a project promotes longevity. It's arguable that South Africa's young democracy has not matured sufficiently to nurture civic pride and therein lies the problem. Assets in the hands of the private sector, particularly the mining sector, are perceived, generally, by many South Africans, to be an injustice. There is therefore very little civic pride in the current mining infrastructure. As a consequence this sector faces a possible / probable legislative, judicial and or administrative threat to its longevity, certainly in its current form. Political preservation disguised as policy discussion on nationalisation and or the recently proposed 2nd-transition is evidence enough of this phenomenon. 

What's worse for the mining sector as a whole, in the South African context, is the tangible dislike local communities display, often violently, against these mines. Employment, as opposed to inclusion, is not seen as justification for the nurturing of civic pride. Until that changes, mining productivity, asset security and staffing will remain an issue. It is, in fact, the key risk variable most analysts build into mining-sector risk-models. 

International investors, as a whole, either directly or indirectly, justify risk by examining longevity. In the South African context sustainability is perceived, by both foreign and local investors alike, to be questionable and it's for that reason only that companies, either locally domicile or wholly invested here, particularly in the mining sector, will continue to underperform their peers.