Not so Liberated

In the latter half of 2011, an official from one of South Africa’s more disfunctional provincial governments, being quizzed on the popular radio station SAfm about a delivery failure, tried to weasel out by claiming that a study was in progress. The interviewer didn’t let him get away with this and wanted to know why this solved the problem when, the last time the issue came up, a study was commissioned, and nothing was subsequently done.

More recently, an academic told me of a story of how a dysfunctional municipal government commissioned a study on service delivery. Once the academic had started the study, it transpired that some consultants had already written a lengthy report covering exactly the same ground. The academic took this report to the town council, and asked whether this report could simply be used, rather than wastefully duplicate the work. “No,” was the response, “we want you to do this.” Naturally, both reports are now sitting gathering dust. The methodology it appears is to produce reports as a substitute for taking action. That way, each new set of incumbents can appear to take action without having to do any hard work.

This attitude that I can only characterise as stealing your salary is rampant in the (now not so) new South Africa. It is perfectly understandable that someone who starts out with nothing and who lands a well-paid job, after casting off the shackles of an oppressive system, should feel that they have arrived and do not need to do anything else. Like work. But that attitude is totally wrong. In a poor country, only a small minority have that option open to them. Not only is the majority denied the government services they are entitled to expect, but the money spent on high salaries for won’t work officials and politicians could be spent more effectively where the job actually would be done. What is ultimately behind this is a lack of leadership. The ruling party has no prospect of losing an election, and has become lazy in office.

I have a couple of examples of what can be done. The local hospital in Grahamstown was very poorly run, and a private operator offered to take over management in exchange for using a wing for private services. The staff expected to be fired but instead, with effective management, they are now doing the job they were being paid to do all along. In another hospital elsewhere in the country, a lawyer visited a family member who was in a ward that was filthy and where the nurses were failing to pay attention to the patients. He told a senior nurse exactly what remedies were open to a person savvy about the law and the next day, the ward was utterly transformed. The thing that struck him though was that the staff seemed a lot happier actually doing their jobs.

What has happened? How has South Africa’s liberation gone so far  wrong?

It’s as if those fortunate enough to land a government job, liberated from an ugly and unpleasant prison where they were unjustly incarcerated with no hope of escape, have placed themselves under house arrest in a mansion with all the facilities. They remain imprisoned in a mentality that says Black people are useless and unable to do a competent job. In that sense, apartheid has won. Steve Biko was right: liberation is not only about political change but also about psychological liberation.

What’s to be done? I fear the ANC is past redemption, and the overall situation can only improve in a big way if their political power is undone, something that is unlikely to happen in less than 20 years since liberation, roughly the time it takes for a majority of voters to be too young to remember the previous regime. In the meantime, people of goodwill who want change should focus on working with community members who want things to be better, and stop trying to work with government. Working with a government that is unwilling or unable to deliver beyond deploying cardres to plum jobs is not only a waste of time, but an exercise in frustration.

A New Modernity

Japan has done it. South Korea has done it. China may yet do it. A society with a long cultural tradition that has become stuck in old ways or that has become corrupted and lost its internal drive can only escape by defining its own modernity. Yes, there are major flaws in each of those I've cited: Japan went the extremely bad path of adventurous militarism in the first half the the twentieth century, and even today has an excessively strong work ethic to the detriment of quality of life. China is still far from a modern society in truly embracing the universal values of freedom of speech, freedom of association and accountable government.

In much of Africa, defining modernity remains elusive because much of Africa is still caught up in a victim psychosis, something South African activist Steve Biko identified in the 1970s as a critical problem. In his Black Consciousness movement, a critical element of their politics was building self esteem, including excluding White liberals from decision-making. The theory was not racially based, but rather aimed to liberate disadvantaged Black South Africans from the thinking that their plight was out of their control.

Today in the Middle East and North Africa, a transformation is under way that looks like defining a new modernity for the region. As I was formulating the thoughts that went into this article, I was pleased to encounter this TED talk by Wadah Khanfar, director-general of Al Jazeera. Much of what he says exactly echoes my thoughts on the subject.

What has made all this possible? Very much as in the 1976 Soweto uprising, young people who have not had the experience of their elders of being cowed by a police state have taken to the streets to demand their freedom. Sadly, in 1976, the Biko spirit was stilled before his organization had grown to critical mass. Biko himself was murdered by the apartheid regime in 1977, and many of his supporters gravitated to the ANC, as the only major organization in exile with any capacity to fight back – limited though that was. In the process, many of his core ideas were lost, not least the need to break free from the past. Today, much of the problem South Africa has in growing as a society arises from failures to transcend the apartheid past. Many Black people justifiably still feel they are victims but that feeling is not an empowering feeling, rather it is one that easily gives way to despair and disillusionment when facing intractable problems.

So where next for the Arab revolution? A key thing that is different this time around is that a tool for mass mobilisation exists that didn't exist in apartheid South Africa: social networks. The nearest analog I can think of for what is happening now is the early stages of the rejection of Robert Mugabe, when text messages were used to spread the word that he wasn't as popular as most people thought. The upshot of this was that he lost a referendum on a new constitution in February 2000, which would have entitled him to redistribute land without compensation. This did not amount to regime change, and gave Mugabe the space to organize against opposition before the next election, which he nonetheless only won by extensive fraud.

Where the Arab revolution differs is that it has effected regime change in sufficient countries to make a difference, and the tools of mass mobilisation will not be closed down easily in those countries. Already in Egypt, the prime minister appointed after the military takeover has been forced to step down. Libya is possibly the most difficult case, with plenty of evidence that the Gaddafi regime will kill as many people as it takes to cling to power.

The exact form the Arab modernity will take is yet to be determined. I would like to bet it will not include slavish copying of external cultures, nor will it include a regressive interpretation of Islam. Universal values are at the core of the change that is now sweeping the Arab world, and those universal values are being interpreted by ordinary people – not being imposed from outside. That is important, because democracy is not a piece of paper. No matter how good a constitution you have if the population as a whole is unwilling to or afraid of demanding their rights, it is only a piece of paper.