Jonathan Steele says there is a big hole in South Africa's media coverage: "The sad fact is that, with very few exceptions, South Africa's mainstream commentators, editorialists, reporters, and headline-writers espouse rightwing pro-business views. Some have bought unthinkingly into the neo-liberals' Tina line - "There is no Alternative" - initially popularised by Thatcher. Others peddle it deliberately. The bogeyman of "leftward lurches", given flimsy substance by the ANCYL's mine-nationalisation waffle, is used deliberately to tell us that we must all knuckle under to neo-liberal economic management and the harsh reality that Tina is right."

The bogeyman of the leftward lurch

There is a big hole of Kimberley-size proportions in what passes for economic debate in South Africa. Out here for three weeks on vacation, and making a strenuous effort not to follow current events too closely, I started to get the feeling of a strange vacuum in the newspapers through which I occasionally leafed.

Where was the concept of "social democracy"? What made the political commentators and economic analysts I was reading unable or unwilling to mention the word "redistribution"? Why did no-one on the editorial pages show any awareness of the fact that modern capitalist economies can run efficiently on Keynesian lines and not just according to the neo-liberal methods that were instituted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher way back in the 1980s?

In the United States and Europe a massive economic re-think has been underway for the last twelve months. Neo-liberalism is on the defensive, and rightly so. People realise that the current global recession was sparked by the neo-liberals' mistakes in de-regulating financial markets and encouraging bankers and pension fund managers to rush into short-term profit-making and a greedy bonus culture that led to pyramid schemes built up on shaky but impenetrable derivatives.

None of this shift in thinking seems to be reflected in South Africa. Political commentary is stuck in juvenile tram-lines and a repetitive cycle of speculative newspaper and magazine headlines which one day announce that the government may "lurch to the left" and the next day gleefully report that there will be no such lurch. At regular intervals readers are warned that Cosatu and the South African Communist Party are planning to force Jacob Zuma's government to adopt "socialist" policies.

Then comes the jubilant news that they will not succeed. Articles about Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's briefing to the media shortly before making his interim budget statement concentrate on the inane issue of whether he was still a secret member of the SACP. The fact that the SACP long ago abandoned socialist policies and that for at least the last ten years Cosatu has not articulated a radical leftwing programme is ignored.

It is true that Cosatu bangs on about the need to tackle unemployment and improve service delivery as the government's top priorities. But these are goals. What about methods? What concrete programmes has Cosatu offered to reach these goals, other than those which the government is already following? It is also true that the ANC Youth League and its leader Julius Malema talk of nationalising South Africa's mines at some vague point in the future.

But has the ANCYL done any technical analysis or feasibility studies about which mines to start with, and what costs or benefits would flow from taking the mines under state control? Until it does, the talk of nationalisation is rhetoric and not worth taking seriously, especially as it comes from a man who lives a high life of flashy consumption that reflects nothing of the sacrifice and modesty which most South Africans have to put up with.

The sad fact is that, with very few exceptions, South Africa's mainstream commentators, editorialists, reporters, and headline-writers espouse rightwing pro-business views. Some have bought unthinkingly into the neo-liberals' Tina line - "There is no Alternative" - initially popularised by Thatcher. Others peddle it deliberately. The bogeyman of "leftward lurches", given flimsy substance by the ANCYL's mine-nationalisation waffle, is used deliberately to tell us that we must all knuckle under to neo-liberal economic management and the harsh reality that Tina is right.

What rubbish. The economic debate, now going on in Europe and the United States, is between centre-right and centre-left, between conservatism and social democracy. In order to extract the economy from recession should governments cut spending or raise it? How high can public sector debt be allowed to climb before the economy's re-expansion replenishes the Treasury's intake from taxes? In the short-term, given the mess into which bankers' greed has got almost every Western economy, why should their bonuses not to be capped? In a time of national austerity, shouldn't middle- and upper-income earners bear a greater share of the pain, in part through redistributive taxes?

South Africa's economy is not the same as those of the developed north. It is a hybrid of the First and Third Worlds. Even on a visit as short as three weeks the country's glaring inequalities stare one in the face. Nowhere else in the world are they so extreme. But that only heightens the urgency of getting a sensible debate going here. There is a whole host of policy options that deserve to be discussed, both within government as well as in parliament, the media, and civil society. Bury Tina. Cut the crap about "socialist threats", and start an adult dialogue on what policies are likely to work best.

Jonathan Steele is a commentator, writing mainly for the Guardian in London

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