In June last year, the commission released a diagnostic document which stated that the elimination of poverty and the reduction of inequality were the objectives of a long term plan, but that nine key challenges stood in the way. Let’s call these the Undesirable Effects or UDEs for short.

• Too few people work.
• The quality of school education for black people is poor.
• Infrastructure is poorly located, inadequate and under-maintained.
• Spatial divides hobble inclusive development.
• The economy is unsustainably resource intensive.
• The public health system cannot meet demand or sustain quality.
• Public services are uneven and often of poor quality.
• Corruption levels are high.
• South Africa remains a divided society.

Then, in November, the commission produced a draft National Development Plan for 2030. It contained recommendations covering the following areas. Let’s call these the Desirable Effects or DEs for short. We can see that these are in effect the inverts of the UDEs, and hence become objectives or what we will classify as ambitious targets.

• Create jobs
• Education and training
• Expand infrastructure
• Transform urban and rural spaces
• Transition to a low carbon economy
• Provide health care
• Build a capable state
• Fight corruption
• Transformation and unity

Then comes the following, almost casual assumption: South Africa can become the country we want it to become. It is possible to get rid of poverty and reduce inequality in 20 years. We have the people, the goodwill, the skills, the resources – and now, a plan.

Assuming that the ANC finds the time at their Mangaung conference to review and approve the plan, then the 20 year implementation process has to actually start. The ANC has never shown any glory in action and implementation to follow their renowned rhetoric, so herein lies the test to see whether the assumption made by the plan is more than the usual innuendo.

Let’s take a reality check on the proposed elements of the plan. We can approach this with a mindset that has evolved from a fairly long exposure and many practical applications of the theory of constraints, commonly abbreviated to TOC. It is evident that this NDP challenge is a case of aspiring to a number of ambitious targets that not only require the full dependence on their specific necessary and sufficient conditions, but that such conditions can exist without any mutual conflicts. The practice of using the strategic and tactical mechanisms of the ambitious target process makes the assumption that the target is achievable and is approached in a confident frame of mind rather than one of disbelieving scepticism, which understandably, most commentary on the NDP has generated so far. Intuitively, the NDP is doomed to failure primarily as a result of an historical lack of effective management execution in SA. Any amount of political innuendo will not overcome that reality. What we can only hope for is that the government, as the sponsors so to speak of the plan, will draw on the intelligence, skills, experience and proven competence of available resources to set up, design, articulate, prescribe and monitor the plans making up what we should in fact call a programme, as it

will be a collection of interactive and dependent projects each requiring skilled planning and management execution. The best must be used, not the most politically favoured.

There is one very fundamental factor that will render this programme so challenging that it should convince us of the need for the most radical, urgent, collective effort. I will simply call it the Rule of exponential projections. It is evident in reviewing the listed DEs that every one of them is essentially population growth rate dependent. From 2000 to 2011 the Mundi index shows that the growth has been 12,8% in net gain of population numbers, or an annualised rate of 1,2%. This moderately low (recent) increase in the population was due to the escalation in HIV/Aids driven deaths. How this will change in the next 20 years is an unknown, but it could increase if the treatment measures are effective. 30% of the current population is 14 years old or less and all reaching the job market age in this period. There are an estimated 4,7m unemployed persons in the employment spectrum at present, so a rough projection shows that we need to create about 4.7 m, plus those jobs to employ the 14 year olds, plus the result of the population growth over this period. In my maths, the NPC vision to create 11 m jobs (see the plan) over the next 20 years means we shall have more unemployed in numbers than we have at present. So the elimination of unemployment and hence poverty would appear to be a pipedream and we question whether it has taken exponential growth into account.

Clearly economic growth is required to create these jobs and it has to occur at a higher exponential rate that of the population needing employment. How does one converge these two lines? We either limit the growth rate of the independent variable (population) or radically increase the dependent variable (economic growth rate). If not, the lines diverge and the problem becomes greater. Many goals are missed due to the prevalence of linear thinking.

The ability to provide the management execution to all these components of the programme requires skilled and experienced resources (primarily technical: Engineers, Technologists and Technicians) to be available at the right level and numbers to implement the projects: infrastructure for example requires that the reinvestment into the assets of the infrastructure must equal the rate of depreciation just to remain static. Again we will find that the curves diverge if we cannot reverse the current trend in historical deterioration of these assets without replacement. The infrastructure is currently in a state of serious entropic decline with little evidence of major projects in the pipeline.

If the growth rate of urbanisation which is a major factor in overload and breakdown of infrastructure exceeds the rate of infrastructure growth by only 3,5% per annum, the magnitude of collapsed and underserviced urban population with all its attendant troubles will double in 20 years.

What are the simple fundamentals that must be followed in the big plan or programme? Firstly, identify the goal of each ambitious target of the programme, identify the constraints, subordinate to them, elevate them and keep following this process ensuring that interim pre-defined milestones are being met. Prioritise what will drive the throughput to meet the goal. Do what should be done and do not do what should not be done. Do not waste resources and time, for example changing town and road names, when the resources should be used to manage the required activities to achieve the programme objectives. Utilise the best available management and capacity to execute the processes.

South Africa has a major constraint in the numbers of productive resources that it can apply to this pending challenge. Unless some sense is brought into the skills space alone that reverses the current trend to enforce misplaced affirmative action, uses the experienced skilled (and ageing) work force, raises compliance levels for entrance to learning institutions, discontinues the employment of political appointees into roles instead of competent persons selected on merit, reviews the negative impact of the labour laws, formulates effective policy on small business development, and identifies measurable, interim milestones over the next twenty years, then I have to say that the great plan will fail on the basis that reality is again being replaced with political imperatives that make the appeal of the planning commission to the public to join forces "to make miracles” nothing more than hollow rhetoric we have come so used to hearing. And the exponential rule waits for no one.