In a traditional society with strong patriarchal features, thriving on patronage, to throw the rudder, turn things upside down, doing the unexpected, the humble thing, sends an all powerful message.

Finance minister Gordhan started it last month following his frugal budget preaching public sector belt tightening (though not, let it be emphasized, fiscal austerity) by electing to fly economy class Cape Town â€" Johannesburg. This Thursday Deputy-President Cyril Ramaphosa followed his lead, also electing to fly economy class on SAA on a domestic flight.

When it comes to status symbols, and power signals, the huge corner office on the top floor, the army of trophy assistants, the big car, the bodyguards, the flashing blue lights and cavalcade with army of motor riders in the lead, and then obviously business class seats domestically, and first class internationally, are some of the perks separating the elite from the plebs.

Private sector potentates long ago decided that this had gone far enough for hired hands and working stiffs, costs needed containment, and perk curtailment followed in many companies. Economy class for everyone except the Board and CEO. But the public sector kept going the other way, as if there were no limits.

When political recklessness and lawlessness were finally called to account these past three months as credibility effectively had gone out of the window, it felt like the end of an era and the dawning of a new one.

Not that everyone got the same message, parliament this past week giving the President a 16% salary hike, and presumably not forgetting his extensive wifely allowances, sending quite a different signal in a 6% inflation environment and deeply constrained times in which belts are made to tighten.

It was therefore interesting that Cyril Ramaphosa picked this week of all weeks to side with Pravin Gordhan, offering his own example to 400 Parliamentarians, the 1.5 million strong public sector, and to 54 million South Africans beyond.

The fat-cat times are over, we are seriously off mission, and things need to change, most symbolically with the perks. It reminds of that handful of American motor industry executives a decade ago wanting to fly hat in hand to Washington in their private planes to demand yet another bailout, only to be impolitely told to take the car, if they wanted to do so and hope to achieve anything. And so these good old boys had to hastily pile into a car and do Detroit-Washington by road, a long and demanding trek. Very humbling, too. Just what was needed.

The more nuanced aspect today in our case is our deputy president flying commercial, and economy at that, while the presidential plane is in high demand, especially for nearly weekly distant overseas trips, the relevance of which is often difficult to fathom, seeing that our most pressing problems are all at home, and mostly of our own making by causing the economy to stagnate and therefore not having the money to take the nation forward on many fronts.

It is by now apparently safe to distance oneself politically from the limitless high life lived by some, sending a signal that there are those who take a more economic approach serious.

Soon, it may no longer be safe for any parliamentarian or civil servant to be seen flying anything else but economy class domestically, for still not doing so would send out the wrong political signal, also from a career point of view?

Want to be counted as relevant? Fly economy. Nice marketing slogan for someone wanting to address a brand new market segment.

Of course, it would be so much more stronger a signal if SAA were now to elect to reduce its business class offering on domestic flights to two front row seats only (besting Comair), and severely question anyone wanting to make use of it.

Preferring to fly with that space empty would be even more impressive, with a strong signal to all those suffering taxpayers in economy class. One better, still, would be to abolish business class domestically altogether and go head-to-head with Kulula. Profits wouldn't necessarily suffer all that much (for far too many have all these free-ticket perks)?

Certainly just anything of this coming to fruition (it would take about a month to re-engineer plane configurations, if enthusiastically embracing this?) would be light years removed from wanting to lay on extra flights to Durban & Port Elizabeth for demanding parliamentary friends of the SAA chairman. Why, by the way, hasn't she been promoted yet to a distant ambassadorship and the three month mandatory diplomat training-course, too? Or do these things take time?

An era is ending, a new one is dawning, as generational change is coming, the process of choosing a new leadership being well underway, even though it may still take a while to be fully effected.

It may as yet not change our economic prospects, but one presumably has to start somewhere, even if only with symbolic gestures. But if powerful enough, these are a strong hint of what could be next. The key change moment was last December. We are now seeing the building stones being slotted into place one by one of a yet greater movement.

The economy may eventually follow if business can once again find herself in this newly shaping dispensation, rather than finding itself shunned as so much superfluous baggage. Exciting times, these.

Cees Bruggemans                                                                          

Bruggemans & Associates                        

Website www.bruggemans.co.za

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