Time-sitters. People who have been left behind by events, but who succeed in keeping their jobs, sitting out their remaining time to pension, not contributing much though getting full pay and benefits.

After last week’s events culminated in a presidential address to the nation, followed by the secretary-general conference remarks, one should be left in little doubt as to the state of play. The 18 million South Africans who drew crosses on ballots allocated political power, and those who have it, retain it, with or without concourt guidance, duly acknowledged and in the name of the constitution even welcomed. Meanwhile, the status quo proceeds, and has 20 to 35 months to run.

That in turn defines the playing field for the economy. A few thousand medium to large businesses, and a few million small outfits, using some 15 million labour, daily set their own course through life, which constitutes mostly an obstacle course of varying severity, depending on what competition, own government and the world, besides life, wants to throw at them. Not all that different from many other parts of the world.

The world at large is not in crisis, but nevertheless steadily recasting itself, still recuperating from past crises, with difficulty absorbing many revolutionary technological changes, in mostly transforming and unstable social and political frameworks deeply fragmented per continent, yet universal in nature.

It is a world in which parameters are changing rapidly, demand and supply structures and their costs don't remain the same and only the fleet-footed and footloose survive for any length of time.

The outside world therefore offers major challenges, to which Mother Nature adds its weight with severe droughts and other extreme conditions. Besides these disruptive external forces undermining our output, prices and income, we have to battle similar forces in our midst at home.

An average day like this is bad enough without having to contend with a public sector on a mission of transforming our reality that appears to be proceeding irrespective of cost implications, whether it be managing the labour force, our various productive sectors, future seed capital (education, training, health), our infrastructure, and our interaction with the outside world and whom we take as our role models (Russians, Cubans?) and backers (Chinese?), with a modern market economy in hand whose complexion is apparently a problem.

Predicting the performance metrics of such a system is a bit of a challenge, for no part seems to be working together towards a common goal. Instead, each part mostly for him/herself, together constituting a productive entity.

Except it isn't supported by an obliging world (we traditionally feed on windfalls giving us lucky breaks and income spurts, allowing investment streaks, but these appear to be missing of late). There is little support from a facilitating public sector (instead wanting to change much without enquiring about consequences). And the competition is stiff, in the manner new ideas and means keep being invented and introduced, changing operating realities often overnight.

It isn't a world that offers stability and long views, encouraging massive investment leaps. There may well be those who have such strategies, but many seem to be defensive.

And so we find enough base load energy to keep the system expanding, if rather slowly, transforming in some respects, but not succeeding in transforming the insider/outsider dichotomy. One-third (or even more than half when including the under-capitalised, underperforming informal sector) of the labour force remains stuck where they are, a feature of the Middle Income Trap the Chinese debate daily but we seem oblivious about though having been stuck in it for over 70 years.

The time-sitters paradise discussed here isn't a place where nothing happens. But overall it is making little structural progress that counts, while internally rearranging some deck chairs and claiming it an achievement.

This reality isn't yet at an end. For it to change, the time-sitters need to give way to reformers, hardly a given when new cohorts of time-sitters are at the gate offering their services, and beyond them even more youthful generations some of whom impatient to try their hands at this nifty mechanism.

We may find our performance assessment changing a bit if Mother Nature lightens up (it is bound to do sometime), when the larger world gets a bit more order in its ranks (it episodically happens), and when some of the loonier domestic frills get checked once in a while, allowing some more coherence into the policy framework, though not necessarily universally or comprehensively.

Anyway, it isn't all downhill after last week. Instead, some of these areas seem to be registering shifting wind direction. But don't overstate the shifts. It is all decimal point level stuff, encouraging but minimal.

Genuine breakthroughs you will recognise in major global windfalls and own leadership shifts. Of that so far very little. So Stuck in the Middle with You a little longer. Hope the dirt poor luckless can grin & bear it, unless they become the lever with which to break open the political system, let the time-sitters go, and have some more organised chaos out of which something better may evolve, like a butterfly flying its cocoon, if it remains a controlled breakout.

That, though, is some time away. Until then, it is heavy going.

Cees Bruggemans

Bruggemans & Associates, Consulting Economists

Website www.bruggemans.co.za

Email  economics@bruggemans.co.za

Twitter  @ceesbruggemans

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Honorary Professor of Economics, University of Stellenbosch