GEORGE NEWS - The most likely future scenario for South Africa is the "lucky few zone", where only a small number of people can afford to live a high-end lifestyle, according to Dr Marius Oosthuizen, a futurist from Johannesburg.

Oosthuizen was guest speaker at a business breakfast of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (Saica) last week.

He spoke about the need for strategic foresight to plan for the future in a fast-changing world. The breakfast was held on Friday 23 September at Protea Hotel King George.

He said the "lucky few zone" is not a nice place to be, but South Africa is not unique in this as the emerging markets in the Global South look exactly like this. One of the worst case scenarios for South Africa is the "despair zone" which would emerge if we do not get the economy right.

"That is a little like the KZN environment (the plundering riots last year).

"If we do not sort out that 'despair zone', it does have the potential to escalate downwards into a 'breakdown zone'," he warned.

For the best case scenario - the "aspiration zone" - to emerge, South Africa has to deal with the energy and water crisis, political fracture, and the possibility of a fiscal crisis. He warned that the current structure of the economy is unsustainable.

The number of people depending on grants from the state (20 million) is three times the number of people earning an income in the private sector (seven million), who pay taxes to the state to pay the grants. 

Those active in the informal economy are often productive, but the nature of that productivity is not value generating for the country; it is only survivalist.

He said productivity must be increased if South Africans do not want to lose to the highly productive and focused Chinese and other similar groups. Strategic foresight must also be developed to help develop responsible business leaders to pursue the best possible future outcome.

In addition to getting the economy right, policy alignment and the development of a capable state are needed.

"If we do those things, there is huge potential in Africa for entrepreneurship and SMMEs."

Growing the pie vs eating the pie

He said while President Ramaphosa's focus is to grow the employment figure, "there are other red political groups who do not want to grow the pie; they want to eat the pie".

But if every South African with a job is removed, you would have to replace them three times to give every jobless South African a job.

"Our primary problem is not the fact that some people are controlling the economy, it is that the economy is not as big as it needs to be. This economy needs to double, and then needs to double again, and then needs to double again, and then we are going be fine," he said.

"Around the world there are some big shifts changing the world in a way that we are only beginning to understand. In our lifetime, 60% of the global population will be in the Global South, which means Africa, India and China will be 60% of the global population." With this in mind, he said young people need to become competitive and proficient in languages such as Mandarin or Hindi for a competitive edge in the future landscape.

There is also potential for digital leapfrogging for South Africa where we could adopt the best technologies from everywhere in the world and make them work for our country.

"That will make South Africa one of the most exciting markets to be in."

He said imagining other possibilities for the future through strategic foresight opens up a "cone" of probabilities.

"The question is not what is the economy of the past, but what is the economy of the future ... There are some futures that are more plausible than others. Is it plausible that in 2050 South Africa is the next Singapore?

"It is plausible - we have the coastline, we have the rainfall, we have the human capital, the workforce, the climate, the technology, the infrastructure.

"Do we have the will? Can we coordinate ourselves? Depending on what we do in the present, we shape the futures that all are plausible to some degree."

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