The horns of the bull, with their enveloping wings and powerful centre, reminds strongly of the current economic policy configuration in South Africa.

The one wing is traditionally a strong one, dominated by a pragmatic conservative Minister of Finance and likewise SARB Governor, both new in the job in 2009 but apparently very much cast in imitation of a long line of predecessors, fully intended by their disciplined styles to convince world markets (and South Africa) of macro policy continuity, with all the sobriety that conventionality requires.

Meanwhile, on the very tip of the competing wing, the National Youth Leader is engaging in a different kind of economic rain dance. There the talk is fundamentally revolutionary with a populist tinge, talking of taking over the mines and the land and sharing its ownership with the masses.

The message is a historic one, wishing to turn the clock back and undo all the injustices ever done, for which a mere change of a few place names won't be enough. Nothing short of eradicating the foreign intrusion seems to be good enough, all adequately compensated, of course.

Clean out the stables

Both these stances are not unique. Just as one variety of modern policymaking adheres to trusted rules and practices to ensure sustained growth and rises in national income, so another blend of modern taste these past one hundred years prefers to clean out the stables and undo the inconveniences from a colourful past.

Identity, culture, language, ownership. These are old battlegrounds only slowly taking shape anew.

Meanwhile, while the sober wing makes for increased national income, the revolutionary wing assists in preventing the well-off of becoming too comfortable. A little creative tension is apparently to be welcomed, keeping minds concentrated and engendering a certain willingness to engage in steady redistribution.

Both wings have their political uses as the bull charges ahead.

And then there is the powerful center, now populated by new friends, also of yet other modern persuasions, liberally borrowing from the East anything strategically appetizing while making sure to ignore anything inconvenient or not of anyone’s liking, as if in a delicatessen store making a pecky selection according to distinctly narrow tastes.

Demands for increases in real wages

Ideologically, there is conviction that free market forces driven by Western capitalist ethos have failed us. We need to protect our weaker producers, as we apparently can't compete on an equal footing with stronger outside forces.

Thus there is apparently great willingness to contemplate subsidies, to keep foreign product out, to have an undervalued currency. But when accompanied by powerful demands for increases in real wages and limiting competition, one is potentially creating a vortex of efficiency losses.

Bulls have shown through the ages the use of their horns as powerful instruments of persuasion. As we charge into the future with our renovated wings and center, a new season awaits in which many agendas apparently will be addressed simultaneously, where there is something to keep everyone happy, even if with big internal contradictions.

We seem to be borrowing, or so it seems, from the past what is good in one sense (pragmatic macro) and practicing what suits (neo-protectionism) while not forgetting to air all old grievances and hurry along their many implied restitutions.

Changing rules of the game

All of this will yield some kind of payoff, such as popular acceptance, grudging support, keeping the associates happy with their new toys, and minimizing grumbling in the ranks, aside of a few inconsequent sidelined grumblers.

A new season is upon us in which much is to be harvested. One senses the impatience, the wish in certain respects to be done with Western prescriptions and the hope to equal the apparently effortless achievements of the East.

We certainly seem to be changing goal posts and rules of the game. But we seem to be borrowing something from every school alive (and extinct) in the hope it will yield us a bright new beginning.

It certainly will yield something, though not everyone will gain the full measure hoped for. And that in the end will really determine where we are going, if only eventually.

Cees Bruggemans is Chief Economist of First National Bank.

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