SCENARIOS FOR THE CULTURAL AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES

Overview

Scenario planning has played a starring role in South Africa’s political, social and economic development, starting with the High Road/Low Road scenarios developed for the Anglo-American Corporation and made famous by corporate strategist and author Clem Sunter in the 1980s (though preceded by secretive apartheid government “futures thinking” exercises).

The Anglo-American Corporation’s “The World and South Africa in the 1990s” scenarios, with its starkly contrasting futures, originated within the corporate sphere before being presented widely across the country. It is acknowledged to have had some influence in persuading key figures in apartheid South Africa to pursue a negotiated settlement rather than a continuation of conflict and civil war. The Nedbank/Old Mutual scenario planning exercise and then the landmark Mont Fleur Scenarios, both focusing on the economy, followed in the uncertainty of the early 1990s before the democratic elections. In more recent history, the Presidency of the SA government launched its “South Africa Scenarios 2025: The future we chose?” in 2008 and the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in 2018 the “Indlulamithi South Africa Scenarios 2030”.

The Mont Fleur scenarios in particular stand out both because of their apparent success and obviously different method.

In the Mont Fleur exercise, compared to what seems to have become standard practice, the exercise originally produced seven scenarios, which were then whittled down to four. These four were, according to the chief architect of the scenarios Adam Kahane: Ostrich, Lame Duck, Icarus, and Flight of the Flamingos:

• • “Ostrich” pointed out the risk and futility of the white government's trying to prevent or avoid a negotiated settlement with the black majority.
  • “Lame Duck” envisioned a prolonged transition with a constitutionally weakened government. Because the government “purports to respond to all, but satisfies none,” investors hold back, and growth and development languish amidst a mood of long, slow uncertainty. This was an important scenario because, in 1991, the majority political parties were negotiating a coalition government. “Lame Duck” allowed people to see potential dangers in certain ways of organising the coalition and how these could be mitigated.
  • “Icarus” suggested that a black government could come to power on a wave of public support, embark on a huge, unsustainable public spending program, and consequently crash the economy. This was the first time that a team including prominent left-wing economists had discussed the dangers of a new government trying to do too much.
  • “Flight of the Flamingos” outlined the broad parameters of a positive and successful transition: everyone in the society rises slowly and steadily together. Overall this project contributed to the building of a common language for talking across groups about the opportunities and challenges facing the country, and hence about a way forward.

A wide ranging publicity campaign involving among others a video and a 16-page insert in the alternative newspaper The Weekly Mail was an integral part of the scenario process so that the names of the four scenarios became part of common parlance - at least among the literate and perhaps privileged population. Nonetheless, it is hard to evaluate the immediate effect.  One extensive study judges the scenarios had , apart from the impression on the influential participants “limited direct impact” in South Africa. Yet the Icarus scenario did not eventuate and fiscal conservatism persisted, though the contending views of the need for greater spending by the State did not vanish.

A contrarian view of the Mont Fleur scenarios and the fight against what was seen as the threat of macro-economic populism is that the economic orthodoxy the scenarios subscribed to have caused long-term problems. Greater redistributive spending – along with redistribution of economic opportunity – may have shifted South Africa from its stubborn path of inequality and poverty contrasting with conspicuous consumption by newly enriched elites and lessened the temptations of crime and corruption.