The African National Congress this week released discussion documents that will form the basis of its Policy Conference to be held in June this year. This is a significant item in the ANC's calendar of events building up to the December elective conference that will choose leadership for the following five-year period.
Essentially, the discussion documents will represent different viewpoints within the ANC, and the proponents of those viewpoints will be either voted into power or rejected come December.
Justice Minister Jeff Radebe, in his capacity as Chairperson of the ANC National Executive Committee Sub-Committee on Policy, released the documents on 5 March. However, as is the nature of such things, some information was "leaked" to some members of the media ahead of the weekend.
There are essentially two types of leaks in the media world.
The first is of great importance to any society; a whistle-blower making information available to the general public pointing to malfeasance. This is the lifeblood of investigative journalism, and the purveyors of such information generally do so at some personal risk out of a sense of integrity.
The second type of leak is insidious in that it takes information that is going to make its way into the public eye at some point, and presents distorted pieces of such information to the public ahead of the formal release of the entire document. The purveyors of such leaks are always advancing a personal agenda; they seek to sway broader opinion in a particular direction by spreading disinformation.
Lazy journalists happily accept such handouts and publish without questioning who stands to benefit from the release of such information.
So it was that weekend papers had a conniption around "dramatic plans by the ANC to change the Constitution".
If you, like me, a frustrated by the level of debate around the future of the country, that's a perfect example of why we are so uninformed as a nation.
So let's get the issue of changes to the Constitution out of the way by pointing out what should be obvious, but clearly isn't.
Firstly, Section 1 of the Constitution says: "The Republic of South Africa is one, sovereign, democratic state founded on the following values: (a) Human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms; (b) Non-racialism and non-sexism; (c) Supremacy of the constitution and the rule of law; (d) Universal adult suffrage, a national common voters roll, regular elections and a multi-party system of democratic government, to ensure accountability, responsiveness and openness."
In order for that section to be changed in any way, 75 percent of the MPs in the National Assembly and 6 out of 9 provinces in the National Council of Provinces would need to vote in favour of such change,
Second, for Chapter 2, the Bill of Rights, to be changed in any way, at least two-thirds of the MPs and 6 provinces would need to vote in favour of such change.
Now it does not take a rocket scientist to recognise that not only does the ANC not have the requisite two-thirds majority to change the constitution even slightly, but also that the ANC has been steadily losing ground to opposition parties in every election over the past 5 years at least.
In other words, the only way that the ANC can change the constitution is with the cooperation of the opposition. And if the ANC is able to persuade sufficient members of the opposition to vote in favour of changes to the constitution, that's what's known as the democratic process.
Lost amid this furore are critical issues in the ANC discussion documents that to my mind are very much in the national interest.
The question, for example, of whether we need nine provinces, should be discussed. My personal view is that we do not. Three provinces – Gauteng, KZN, and the Western Cape – generate the revenue that powers this economy. The other provinces are parasites providing sheltered employment for their governmental structures. My solution would be to combine those six into one structure giving us four provinces again: Gauteng, KZN, Western Cape, and Welfare Province.
Then there is the question of whether local industries should pay global rates for commodities. My personal view is that we should not. I have no objection to Lakshmi Mittal being rich, but iron is a finite resource. Sure, we get lots of money for the iron we export, but how does that help us build railroads and bridges?
So I urge all of you to forgo the bird-droppings from the weekend media which passes for journalism: go to the ANC website, peruse those documents carefully, and form your own opinions. You will find both sense and stupidity. Which comes to the fore in December should influence how you vote in 2014.