I’m probably going to make a fool of myself publishing this column, as it is about the economy, and I know very little about the economy. Until very recently, for instance, I was still under the impression that the Eurozone was a trance state one reaches during deep meditation. Apparently, it’s not that at all, it’s a place on the map (a backward conglomeration of destitute countries somewhere north of Mpumalanga, to be more precise). I was also under the impression the real value of money was still tied to the gold standard. Apparently, it’s not. Apparently, even paper money and coins are on the way out, and most of our money simply exist as digits on a computer screen. Which is quite frightening, because it means that if there’s a world-wide power failure, or if all our computers and the whole Internet get wiped out by one of these new super-viruses, there goes the economy. We’ll be back to trading brightly coloured stones and herds of cattle, and the whole world will be instantly reduced to one gigantic Burning man festival, which would all be very well if you’re into tie-dye T-shirts, but what about the rest of us who had gotten used to queuing in Woolworths with our MySchool cards?
Something accidentally came up in my last Thought Leader entry that I’ve been meaning to explore further. I mentioned in my previous column that, to me, there is very little difference between the red of Cosatu’s T-shirts and the red of the Coca-Cola logo. To my mind, both the old-fashioned leftism/Marxism/socialism/Communism etc. embraced by so many prominent leaders of the Tri-partite Alliance and the monopolism/decadence/globalisation etc. of Big Business are equally frightening. Why are we being forced to choose between the fascism of the pseudo-revolutionary sloganists of Numsa and the ANCYL or the dictatorship of the hypocritical neo-imperialists of the First World? I can understand why the comrades are sceptical about liberalism and all its baggage – I also prefer strong black coffee to Earl Gray tea any day – but why do so many of them still embrace ideas that were popular in Red China and Cuba years ago, ideas that never worked, ideas that, wherever folk persisted in them, reduced entire countries and communities to poverty and neglect almost as bad as the Eurozone?
The Berlin wall fell years ago, and communism was universally discredited. Likewise, the so-called free West is now approaching the end of their free ride, and unless they accept drastic new responsibilities and change the way they view themselves and their relationship to the planet and everyone else on it, the entire bloated gigantic edifice of capitalism, as a system and a way of life, may very well come crashing down on us with a devastating racket of plastic containers, billboards, fossil fuels and gooey soft drinks. It’s a frightening prospect, but the day that happens I hope it will be live on TV, as it will certainly be something spectacular to behold!
BUT when that happens, what will remain? Is it not time to plan ahead for such a day? Is it not time for the citizens of this beautiful country to replace our respective obsessions with Capitalism and Communism with a simple commitment to Realism? Isn’t it high time set aside our traditional left/right battle-lines and start finding common ground as black and white Africans? I know this sounds like just so much airy-fairy “let’s-get-along” claptrap, and I know stuff like this have been said before, but this time I mean this in real practical terms, not just in the vague terms of the so-called rainbow nation or peace and love or any of that retro-hippie-I-love-Tutu shit.
When I heard about how informal traders are being harassed by Metro police in Gauteng, I really got hot under the collar. Street trading, correct me if I’m wrong, is a form of capitalism that is very African. It has been around for ages (see next paragraph). I haven’t been to Africa myself except for a short spell in a Namibian jail and two dreadful hours on an airport runway in Kinshasa, but according to my colleague Johan Badenhorst, who loves travelling through Africa, this kind of informal free market is fashionable all over the continent. There are restaurants and markets everywhere, not the glitzy kind of franchises we have in our malls, but pretty efficient and more personalised. Why are people who trade in this way being made victims in South Africa? Why, for that matter, do Somalian shopkeepers get torched and killed? Surely shops are good things to have around, especially when you run out of milk? These guys may not have a licence from Walmart or Game or any of the big retail outlets familiar to Westerners, but they work hard, they compete fairly, and they are the living embodiment of the principle of free enterprise in action.
When I was at school, we were taught that, before the white man arrived on these shores, nothing much was happening in the African continent. South Africa, in particular, was as desolate as that last Nando’s ad suggested (the one that got banned from TV), with just a few Khoisans running around in loin clothes made from dead kwagga’s. It was with some degree of surprise that I happened to glance at my kids’ new history text books, and made the incredible discovery that Africa, before the arrival the white man, had a vibrant economy. For the first time, I learned about the lost cultures such as that of Greater Zimbabwe, and their trade with India, and all the thriving activities, the trading of goods and ideas that had been going on here before the arrival of modernity. For the first time, it dawned on me what havoc the white men caused in this continent when they blasted the indigenous population with their white religions and philosophies, redrawing border-lines at will and carrying people away as slaves. Of course, the arrival of the white men also brought some benefits – penicillin, yo-yo’s, shortwave radio’s and Panado, to name the most important ones – but I have a strong feeling that, all in all, both the extreme left-wing extremism of the Tri-Partite Alliance and the hysterical superiority complex of the modern ‘white’ mindset tend to blind us to our true potential, and are keeping us locked in old ways of thinking. And so, alas, attitudes tend to harden, the blaming game continues, and precious opportunities are lost forever.
If Africa is the true home of the real free market as encapsulated in the informal sector, isn’t it time we leave behind our old ideological comfort zones and look at things the way they really are? If Western-style capitalism is failing, why cling to it? If old-fashioned Communism doesn’t work, why can’t we ditch all this talk of “revolution” and work with what we have instead of tearing down all the existing infrastructures in the name of Karl Marx? The choice is ours; either South Africa will become the symbol of the failure of Africa as a whole, or, by coming to grips with our true collective African identity, we can become the true home of the brave in the new world order that awaits us after the collapse of Europe and America approximately (within the next two weeks at the rate they are going now, if you don’t believe me, look at how those soccer hooligans carried on in Warsaw).
Let’s take a good look at our national flag. It’s a great design, isn’t it? It doesn’t contain the colour orange, and there’s no Union Jack in site, not even a tiny one! The green, gold and black of the liberation struggle is placed in juxtaposition against the red, blue and white of my own biological forefathers in France (a little country in the Eurozone). These colours are not hostile to one another, they are complementary. Place yellow and blue alongside each other. They don’t clash, they enhance each other. The contrast between red and green make both the red and the green appear brighter than they would have been if they had been al one. I am convinced that white and black can form an attractive pattern instead of clashing. Any artists will tell you that using complementary colours is a sure way of making an artwork stand out more clearly. Opposites attract, that is the natural law.
We need new thinkers, new visionaries, new entrepreneurs and new writers and artists. We need new Bikos and new Voltaires, new Brett Murrays and new Ayanda Mabulus, new Churchills and new Ghandis and new Boesaks and new Madibas, new Richard Bransons and new Daymond Johns, new Arthur Mafokates and new Steve Hofmeyrs. We need to combine the best qualities of all the cultures of this country, all the best elements of our separate past and our shared future, and blend it into a new true rainbow nation idiom. Not the pie-in-the-sky rainbow nation of the liberals and the Struggle idealists, but one that actually works.
We are Africans. We are not stupid (well, apart from me). Let’s organise our own Renaissance. Let’s bring back the spirit of entrepreneurship we had ages before Stalin killed all those people and the Americans discovered McDonalds.
VIVA THE REAL FREE MARKET!
The Coco Cola logo has changed from the Red and White Santa Clause to the Imperial Papal Purple of the new Santa, Bishop Tutu – had you not noticed?
Coco Cola has been his main sponsor for decades.
@Kombuis, I asked the same question why are many leaders in SA want to setup a system in this country that failed in Russia, China and Cuba? Zuma and Malema went to Cuba praising the Cuban system and how good it was for the people. Two weeks later Castro made a speech saying the Cuban system was a failure and don’t copy it.
@Sterling Ferguson
I suppose its a case of “There are none so blind as those who will not see”.
The reason is simple: The Chinese influence. Our leaders love the idea of a system that still requires leaders, with more power and influence, and people who are just there to be tapped for their wealth in the case of the privileged, or abused as voting fodder in the case of the previously disadvantaged.
I think our solution is soft power, rather than the hard power approach of China or the ANC.
We have to be more vocal about how wealth is created and what destroys wealth. Evidently, the idea of redistributing wealth is not sound.
Nice article Koos. You’ve come a long way
I agree that the policy of restricting foreigners from running these stores appears too heavy handed. But then again, I’m not familiar with the details of this issue and why such action is being contemplated. Perhaps tensions are simmering, and government is simply trying to diffuse tensions and save lives if violence breaks out?
Sterling
The Afrikaner, at the end of apartheid, were fighting the ANC because they were communist, not because they were black. Thatcher and Reagan believed them – the rest of the world did not.
Admit that truth and the whole “liberation” myth collapses.
Which is WHY the ANC started a township black-on-black war in about 1985 and blamed the IFP; and when that did not work, rigged a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to discredit Buthelezi and the IFP, and De Klark and the New Nationalist Party – whose parties had won a province each off the ANC in1994.
BECAUSE of the Cuban failure at Cuito, and the Nkomati Accord with Mozambique – the communist support for the ANC had ceased in all the frontline states by 1985.
The word “claptrap” has been bandied about greatly and until recently I thought it was a description of a promiscuous lover: A trap from whence you get the clap. I was wrong, its actual meaning is a trap that makes one clap; with your hands.
Mr Kombuis I fear you too have fallen into this trap because as much as people, especially those enamoured by Marx, exalt the demise of Western Capitalism, it sir is going nowhere. The socialist soothsayers will try to convince you that a couple of corrupt banks and a Mediterranean micro-economy herald the demise of the evil capitalism. But even two swallows do not a summer make.
The truth is that capitalism is marching on, never stronger, and the countries that adopt it flourish and those that don’t stagnate. In the past twenty years the 2 billion people of India and China have awaken to capitalism’s potential and their embrace will be eternal.
There is a local spirit to their form of capitalism, as there are with all cultures that accept the free market. France is a perfect example of a country that moulded capitalism with their cheese eating, wine drinking and I like to take a long holiday culture. Japan too.
When Africa realises that economic modernisation does not necessitate the demise of one’s culture perhaps Africa will too stage the revolution, accept competition and reap the rewards of a truly free market.
You are a breath of fresh air, Koos. I am fascinated that those who comment take on such different aspects of the post. For me: let’s all get along and trade as we choose, stands out. I have a theory that The Competition Commission is neglecting its work as far as Somali spaza shop keepers are concerned.
I don’t believe the African Renaissance will ever make the history books (in years to come, unless they are ours). It’s never really taken off at all, has it? Perhaps movements need to grow before being given a name. No one woke up one Monday morning and announced he was going to start a Huguenot movement, did he?
Cant speak for the rest of Africa but SA is full full to overflowing of innovative, clever people (mostly Black, said better ‘non -white’) that hourly make, on the run, important and innovative decisions for business and life transactions. All they need is to be left alone, protected by the authorities and allowed to thrive so as to pull us all up to the incredible 3rd way you talk about. Marxism is 150 years old Eurocentric bunk and big bank/big business/big capital is not working in the new fast innovative world.
Brent
@Angus, I like to shake your hand on that one capitalism is live and kicking the big businesses are make loads of money and companies like Apple has more money than the government of SA. Goldman and Sachs is making loads of money and has more people working for them than many countries in Africa. Last year they paid their workers $16 billion dollars which come out to $500000 each.
@Brent, there is nothing wrong with capitalism except, it has to be regulated to protect society from being manipulated by crooks. There is no system in the world that can give the people a large share of goods like the capitalist system. However, capitalists are not social workers and they exist to produce goods services at a profit. It’s the government job to take the excess profit in the form of taxes and provide services for the the people.
Thanks Koos; I’m a sucker for rhetoric delivered with a degree of humour (We take ourselves soooo seriously); that’s pragmatic (We love the sound of our own voices; Viva Talk, yea? And then?) and written intelligently free from textbook thinking. (No reference to the Limpopo debacle – which is a wildly inflated issue anyway; I taught part-time in many schools and these textbooks were seldom USED. Good teachers don’t need books, period.)
Sterling Ferguson, “there is nothing wrong with capitalism except, it has to be regulated to protect society from being manipulated by crooks.” Like sensorship, who sensors the sensor or decides who is the sensor. Believe me for every ‘crook’ running a company there are at least 10 worse crooks – politely called politicians – scaming the system for freebies and power. The problem with your solution is that the worst crooks are the gamekeepers watching the lesser crooks.
Brent
CD
Maybe good teachers don’t need textbooks, but pupils of bad teachers (which is what we presently do have) do need to learn from books.
In my day the pricipals of schools got an allocation for books, and ordered what they wanted direct from the publishers – and it was never enough so we often used second hand books, trading in our books at the school book exchange at the end of the year.
This centralised system is a disaster and only seems to exsist so that some ANC connected pals can get the tenders.
I am glad that Koos Kombuis has embraced a new historical revisionism regarding the pre-colonial civilizational state of Africa. Albeit this is a historical revisionism that has been widely accepted internationally since the early 1980s. The Swahili city states did indeed allowed for a complex web of interlocking trade to develop between Southern Africa and Asia. Of course such trade (and more importantly such trading spaces) was constrained and controlled by a complex series of relationships that existed between traders and the political elites of South African. In other words, if trade is an “African thing” than so are attempts to control trade. Should foreign traders therefore be harassed by police? No of course not. But should the government intervene in the economy? Yes. That is, in my opinion, without contestation. What should be the level of that intervention? That is more difficult to answer. A call for a Third Way between capitalism and communism is always welcome (although it is a very old idea and has been in play in Africa since the late 1960s). But what would such a Third Way look like? The developmental state championed by the ANC policy makers? The devil, as the say, is in the details?
@Brett This crookedness you talk of is the problem and it exemplifies how Africa for the most part has not embraced a modern free market society. The free market society requires multiple levels of accountability all in competition with one another – both in the private realm and in the public. The citizens keep the government in check by voting them out when they get out of hand. The legislature ensures rules are created in the interest of the populous like making sure that business doesn’t poison the population in their quest for profit. The executive arrests those who break the rules. The judiciary interprets the rules and the media keeps everyone informed. There are a myriad of special interest groups who lobby their causes with the biggest being labour and business who too are usually in competition.
These need to be fairly independent of one another for they need to compete to keep the system efficient. As soon as coalitions in these institutions occur the power is unbalanced and the opportunity for monopoly profit occurs, and in the public realm this is corruption. This is what is happening in South Africa with the Tripartite Alliance’s hegemony over the executive and the legislature.
But this situation is due to the people of South Africa having acquiesced by voting the ANC back into this destabilising position. We, the voting public allow this to happen and we are primarily to blame for our present situation.
Koos
According to Jeff Radebe the blacks were One Tribe before colonialism/apartheid seperated them.
Then why have we got 11 official languages? Surely we should have only 4 – San, Afrikaans, English, and Ur-Bantu?
How were the Afrikaners so clever that they taught these false tribes that they seperated the one tribe into 8 different languages?
Also according to Jeff Radabe “White Men still control the economy”.
What he actually means is that white men control business. The economy is controlled by whoever collects and dispenses the taxes and makes the laws, which when I last looked is the Black ANC.
And I dispute that EVEN elected ANC members control the whole of SA – not with 21 million people in Homelands under the rule of tribal chiefs.
Koos, you asked me to undo the Gordian Knot.
Alexander the Great just cut it! I am afraid we do not have this luxury anymore.
@Plato Harry:
Actually we’ve been following that Third Way in Africa since the Roman times. Just look at the slave trade and after that the mercantilism of the British and Dutch settlers. It is only from about the late 1700s that anyone even tried Capitalism, and such experiments have been few and far between.
Trading is a part of African culture, as is diplomacy. Both these date back thousands of years.
Garg
French and British colonisation happened presisely because the blacks had nothing to trade for Arab manufactured goods except slaves.
At least on the farms they earned wages.
Beddy, in order to understand modern Africa one has to look at the slave trade because this is when modern Africa’s history began. Black Africa has never tried to make the things they needed, they have always traded off their resources for finished goods.
Sterling
The British and French knew that Africa was not ready for self-rule, but they were powerless against the Capitalist Americans (using the UN/IMF/World Bank) and Soviet Russians (arming every black tribe to bring back the tribal wars) determined to fight their Cold War in Africa.
So the Socialist/Welfare States being established in Africa by the British and French were destroyed.
When one can see through the illusion of our world reality, it loses its power! The truth of life as we know it lies in the silence of the thoughts!