Some real pointers for Pravin

As a performance, Pravin Gordhan’s maiden Budget speech deserved as much applause as he got for the content. Perhaps he deserved more spontaneous applause than his jokes achieved — he had to chide the MPs.

And yet if the comments of intelligent and educated young people are anything to go by, I have some real pointers for Pravin

Evaluating the speech as communication was one of the tasks I assigned to a group of students this week.

I asked journalism postgraduate students at Rhodes this week to review, in groups of three, the Budget from various perspectives, and give presentations summing up their collective findings.

The two groups charged with evaluating what Gordhan had done well and what poorly in communication generally approved of his delivery. But they felt that it could have had even less jargon than it did, and was vague in key areas. One group believed that the speech could have had fewer figures, which listeners to a speech, rather than readers of such a speech, would find difficult to grasp.

One group pointed out that the speech contained a fair amount of “word salad” ie phrases such as “ambitious yet realistic”, “bold yet pragmatic”, and “creative and inventive yet … “.

Both groups pointed out the grammatical inaccuracy and risibility of the reference to “literally holding hands” with President Jacob Zuma and Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. One group went further to say that they found it unnecessarily deferential as well.

While Gordhan’s quick and spontaneous humour was commended, one group did question whether it really was appropriate, and whether it did not detract from the formality of the occasion. They mentioned his chastising of parliamentarians — “the public will think you are sleeping” — as an example.

This group did not like what they felt was too much “plugging” of government and party.

One group found his delivery “slow, steady, confident” and commended the way he repeated the State the Nation themes of “jobs, growth and poverty”, while providing neat soundbites for radio and TV, such as “create your own future”.

That he repeated key messages such as “working together” and “doing things differently” were also seen as pluses, as well as his talking “directly to the public”.

That he even mentioned Facebook was seen as being having “modern flair”. Both groups noted this reference.

Importantly, both groups latched on to parts of the speech where Gordhan lapsed into jargon and over complication such as “I propose to review the current treatment of winnings in the hands of gamblers as exempt from personal income tax”.

I asked how the groups believed a journalist would have handled such a speech.

One group felt a journalist would have been “less biased and ‘rosy’ about the situation, and emphasised the challenges and acknowledged the severity of the situation”.

The other group said they would have headlined the key aspects up front, used visual aids, storytelling and examples to illustrate how the Budget would affect ordinary people, and simplify facts and use more common language.

Most interesting was the idea that the Budget should have focused more on how the “ordinary” South African would be affected.

From my personal point of view, I support a lot of what the students said.

I know the Budget has to satisfy — or try to satisfy — a broad range of people. There is a sense of occasion at its reading, even though much should not be new, because of the three-year budgeting cycle and government’s emphasis on transparency.

But the fight for greater simplicity and clarity is always a worthy one. If university students find difficulty, how much more so will poor people whose second language is English?

Postscript

The finance minister should know that whatever he says in the Budget speech will certainly make someone unhappy.

Cosatu’s Zwelinzima Vavi was the picture of unhappiness when interviewed by SABC after the Budget speech. Numsa were even unhappier, branding the Budget “anti-poor”.

So much for the vaunted “shift to the left” in economic policy.

Actually, I had to agree with the union when it pointed out that Gordhan’s references to “a new growth” path were simply untrue.

But where I was relieved at consistency in what I see as sensible economic policy, the union was enraged.

That was the real message of the Budget for me: that we still have a finance minister who is doing what a real finance minister is supposed to do, which is to say “no” to things that don’t make economic sense to him and his team.

That he is a communist and a veteran of the struggle is incidental, just as it was incidental that Tito Mboweni had been labour minister before becoming Reserve Bank governor.

Any real change in economic policy comes with the IPAP2 policy unveiled today (I wish they would find a better acronym) but that is the subject of another blog.