Sweet like a lemon: when good intentions go wrong

Policies, protests and corporate decisions often begin with good intentions. But JIM WARD warns that the consequences can ripple far beyond what anyone expected, reshaping industries, communities and lives in surprising ways.

The sociologist Robert K. Merton first described the law of unintended consequences. He asserted that human actions within complex systems may yield outcomes that diverge radically from the original intentions, often creating unforeseen results.

An example of unintended consequences arose when governments enforced minimum wages. The intention was to uplift poorly paid workers, but it also triggered knock-on effects such as businesses downsizing their workforce or increasing prices to offset higher labour costs. The reasons behind such outcomes remain difficult to explain, but essentially, actions taken by people – and especially by governments – often have unanticipated impacts.

When the South African government introduced the sugar tax in a knee-jerk reaction to combat diabetes, significant consequences included retrenchments and closures in the sugar industry, as historic sugar estates and businesses shut their doors. The anticipated closure of further mills will exacerbate this and increase sugar imports. The intention was to tap into a handy new tax revenue stream – a response deemed easier than educating citizens to drink fewer cool drinks or consume less sugar. The fallout has been especially damaging for employment in KwaZulu-Natal.

Good outcomes and bad outcomes

Unintended outcomes may be good or bad, and major or trivial. Someone might be dragged reluctantly to a party they intended to avoid, only to meet their soulmate, marry them, and later realise that attending the event changed their life. Alternatively, they might willingly attend a birthday function, enjoy the catered seafood dinner, then develop food poisoning the next day and spend the remainder of the week in hospital.

Economists have known about this “law” for decades, but it remains difficult to predict knock-on effects, and the repercussions may be lasting and damaging.

Dieselgate and global fallout

An example familiar to many was the Volkswagen emissions scandal, which coined the term Dieselgate. In the 2015 controversy, it was revealed that VW had secretly installed defeat-device software in millions of diesel cars. The engine management software detected when a car was undergoing emissions testing and artificially lowered exhaust pollutants, permitting them to return to levels far exceeding legal limits once testing was complete.

This deception, intended to meet stringent US emissions standards, spread like wildfire. The “clean diesel” cars sailed through environmental tests but polluted heavily during everyday driving. Competing manufacturers that had struggled to match VW’s exceptionally clean diesel engines suddenly understood why.

The scandal had a massive and lasting effect on the popularity of diesel cars worldwide and affected 11 million vehicles globally. The fallout included billion-dollar fines, executive arrests, widespread vehicle buy-backs and severe reputational damage to the manufacturer concerned – all unintended consequences.

Business collapse and transport casualties

Locally, when the sprawling JD Group was dismantled after its parent company collapsed, there were casualties in the transport sector. Forty new furniture pantechnicons had been ordered and built to distribute and deliver goods for the group’s furniture stores.

Specialised welldeck pantechnicon trailers are never built for stock; they are built to order. The drivers, hastily recruited through a deeply flawed process, had seemingly contrived to hit every low bridge, low-hanging tree and low structure between Beit Bridge and Die Doorns before the combinations were even a year old.

The Sisyphean task of selling the fleet of specially built, badly treated vehicles was mine, and nobody wanted them. During inspections, I found doors that would not close and saw rays of sunlight streaming through holes bashed into roof structures that were coupled to rusting metal floors; water leaks did little to enhance the service relationship. Unrepaired minor accident damage was common.

This fire sale evolved into a perfect storm: unpopular single-differential truck tractors coupled to specially built lightweight volume bodies – relatively new but already badly battered – entering a fast-dwindling and highly selective market. It was not an easy disposal process, and the vehicles ultimately created an impairment loss: an unforeseen consequence of dodgy accounting and lending practices destroying a local business, entirely unrelated to the transporter itself.

Growing tensions on the ground

Something new, and potentially explosive, is rapidly gathering momentum around us. The organised “March and March” movements aimed at driving foreigners out of communities are gaining support and already affecting several urban and rural areas. Some foreigners have departed hastily, leaving abandoned buildings, homes, businesses and jobs behind. Many foreign-owned spaza shops have closed overnight, with stock removed for safekeeping.

Taxi passengers and ordinary workers now wait longer because taxis are carrying fewer commuters after ceasing to transport foreigners to work. People of several nationalities have already returned home. Communities are inconvenienced, walking further for daily necessities because nearby shops have shut down. The diplomatic fallout has also begun, straining relations with countries that once sheltered and supported South African exiles during the struggle years.

This is a human consequence of unemployment frustration boiling over after years of porous borders, corrupt immigration officials and the influx of millions of undocumented immigrants.

For urban communities, taxi owners and diplomats, the law of unintended consequences continues to hold true. For the marchers themselves, despite demonstrating forcefully against the symptoms, some anger should still be reserved for those who created the underlying causes in the first place.