The Sharpeville Massacre led to international condemnation of South Africa
In 1964 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was imprisoned for life by the then Apartheid government in South Africa. They moved rapidly to disband democracy movements in that country and imprison all their leaders. The African National Congress (ANC) was banned and its leaders went into exile, spawning an international movement to demand freedom in South Africa. The ANC regularly called for sovereign nations to intercede in the South African state. After the Sharpeville Massacre , in which 566 children were killed during a peaceful protest, the world chose to express their condemnation of the internal behaviour of a sovereign state - South Africa. In 1993 Nelson Mandela was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, to highlight his plight, as well as reward his bravery, in standing up to a bunch of autocratic anti-democratic thugs. He became South Africa's first democratically elected head of state when the ANC became the government in 1994.
Recently South Africa, and the ANC government, won the right to sit at the UN Security Council. Now they have the opportunity to pitch their own vision to the world.
In 1990 Aung San Suu Kyi won elections in (then) Burma decisively. She was immediately detained and placed under house arrest by the military junta who are still in power. They moved rapidly to disband democracy movements in that country and imprison all their leaders. In 1991 Aung San Suu Kyi was presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, both to highlight her plight, as well as reward her bravery, in standing up to a bunch of autocratic anti-democratic thugs. She remains under house arrest. Her people remain brutalised and oppressed.
Which is why the South African government sided with the Burmese military junta against a UN resolution calling on the Burmese government to ease repression. The resolution was proposed by the United States and took two years to agree upon within the United Nations.
A lot of people have had a lot to say about the US since it went it alone - without the participation and support of the United Nations - in their war with Iraq in 2003.
Everyone has an opinion on how awful and stupid the US response has been. Many claim that the US has undermined the United Nations and reduced their authority. Maybe people, and nations, should be asking whether their own hypocrisy has earned them the right to be heard by the world's most powerful democracy. If the United Nations is a toothless, gutless and totally hypocritical talk-shop it is hardly the fault of the United States. It is the fault of its members.
As Jonathan Katzenellenbogen says in the Business Day, "Voting this way, SA emerged looking comfortable with one of the world’s most brutal military regimes. Whose side is SA on, anyway?"
Imagine a product so important that it requires special treatment. Supply considered so essential by the state that it must be guaranteed through the creation of state-owned monopolies. State monopolies so autocratic that no competitive products are allowed? What products would you consider that important?
The South African government has quite a list: fuel, electricity, education, telecommunications, transport, and information (amongst others).
Sure, there are private petrol, education, transport and telecommunications companies, but that is just icing. The core components, without which the rest cannot operate, belong to the state.
Many countries consider these types of products worthy of controlling. Does it serve the public?
Witness the furore in Germany when Russia cut off their gas supplies during a dispute with Belarus. Eskom, the South African state energy supplier, is suffering the indignity of demand that is “higher than was anticipated for this period," according to the company's managing director for transmission, Jacob Marog.
Only state-owned monopolies can talk like that. Private companies discuss the unprecedented demand for their products and the opportunity for growth.
Apple's iPod sales increased by 50% compared with the same period a year ago. Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer said: "iPod demand was extraordinary," over the recent festive season. Their new iPhone is to run on US-based Cingular’s telecommunications network. Apple would be very surprised if Cingular capped the amount of bandwidth their subscribers could use and, in so doing, prevented them from downloading songs from Apple iTunes.
Yet this is precisely what Telkom, the South African state telecommunications monopoly does. They cap bandwidth. They cap telephone bills. They cap lines.
Reuters, the media and information group, which has been expanding in countries such as India, is not investing in South Africa. CEO Tom Glocer said his company was reluctant to do the same in SA because of Telkom’s high prices and poor bandwidth.
This is the real cost of state monopolies. Not only isn’t there enough of the product that was considered so important in the first place. But you’re unable to find any other supply.
A single supplier of anything is like having a single supplier of toilet paper. You’ll only notice the problem when you most need it and, by then, it’s far too late.
If you ever wondered who all those people are sitting behind notebook computers enjoying cups of coffee and having long discussions are – those are the most talented at work. They set up short-term projects, work together, collapse the project when it’s done, move somewhere else, do it again. The type of job insecurity that highly skilled people demand is anathema to the union movement.
Yet, if you are unemployed and struggling to find a job in Africa, you are also probably unskilled. If you are skilled – and especially if you have good technical ((skills)) – then you’re probably working harder than you’ve ever worked in your life while earning well.
In a recent international survey, the Corporate Executive Board polled senior human resources managers around the world about their main concerns. Some 62% worried about company-wide ((talent)) shortages. More than two-thirds declared “attracting and retaining” talent was their number one concern.
At the same time a major demographic shift is taking place: the baby boomers are getting ready to retire. By one estimate half the top people at America’s 500 leading companies will retire over the next five years.
International competition for ((recruiting)) the best and brightest is hotting up. Infosys, the Indian technology giant, spends $ 100 million a year on training.
It is no wonder that, with all this competition, TCS – an Indian software company intending to hire 30 000 software engineers over 2007 – has a sign at the entrance to their building: “Warning, trespassers will be recruited.”
This is wonderful news for anyone who had the good fortune and ability to get a technical qualification. If you’re unskilled and struggling it’s a disaster.
African countries have to compete on an international level with everyone else to ensure that critical skills are available to support their economies. Most, with their inept governments and chronic instability, are doing a phenomenal job of exporting their best and brightest to other countries.
For those who say, “What should we care about talent, we have all these unemployed people, let them work.” The simple answer is that any business requires a core of talented, skilled individuals who will set up and run the show. The balance of employees are less skilled and don’t have the abilities necessary to create business for themselves. If they did, they’d already be doing so.
Continuing integration of markets will make jobs around the world more subject to competitive pressures. "As trade expands and technologies rapidly diffuse to developing countries, unskilled workers around the world - as well as some lower-skilled white collar workers - will face increasing competition across borders," says Uri Dadush, Director of the World Bank's Development Prospects Group and International Trade Department. "Rather than trying to preserve existing jobs, governments need to support dislocated workers and provide them with new opportunities. Improving education and labour market flexibility is a key part of the long-run solution."
Without this, even should they stabilise, African countries won't have the core group of ambitious, talented locals necessary to create sufficient wealth to create the virtuous circle of stability and growth.
For the past two months my significant other has been working 18-hour days at DISA Vascular, where she is Quality Assurance manager. This weekend auditors fly out from Germany to evaluate their product and their systems for that quality assurance.
Accreditation allows them to use the CE mark; the standard assurance mark that reflects compliance with essential health and safety standards set by the EU. Without it they cannot sell their product in Europe.
DISA Vascular manufactures cardiovascular stents. A failure of the product can result in fatalities. Scrutiny is quite a costly business but consumers are probably happy that this type of evaluation takes place. You are probably even more happy that scrutiny is performed by third-party professionals.
If all the stent manufacturers got together and agreed on a set of safety standards and told us to trust them, “We’ll comply with these,” you probably wouldn’t feel as safe.
Everywhere in the commercial sector there are external means of feedback to hold those responsible accountable for their actions. Financial auditors watch the money, standards authorities watch the products, journalists watch the way companies treat the public … all of this scrutiny may be unpleasant for those being observed but it helps us to feel comfortable buying products made by people we don’t know.
And then we get to the development sector where charities and development agencies assist people we don’t know to stop being poor.
In October 2006, at an international conference in Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands, the representatives of 24 countries signed a Statement of Ethical Principles in ((Fundraising)). Charitable fundraisers are to abide by this code. And we should trust them because they are working for the common good.
Imagine a similar code of conduct were issued entitled Statement of Ethical Principles for Chief Executives. Imagine CEOs across the planet told us simply to trust that they would work in the best interests of shareholders. Would you ((trust)) them? Or would you continue to demand close audit scrutiny and tough controls (like Sarbanes Oxley)?
At this moment there is limited scrutiny placed on development organisations. As William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York University, remarks in his essay “Why doesn’t aid work?”: The two key elements necessary to make aid work, and the absence of which has been fatal to aid’s effectiveness in the past, are FEEDBACK and ACCOUNTABILITY. The needs of the rich get met through ((feedback)) and ((accountability)).
But the needs of the poor are not. There is very little. Because it’s free, because it’s donated, somehow we don’t care for accountability as much. And so, despite spending a total of $ 568 billion on aid to Africa, Africans are no better off than they were 40 years ago.
Clearly the lack of money isn’t the problem.
And so, in full awareness of this shortfall, we offer our own services. To measure the effectiveness of different approaches and different organisations, and to offer clear guidance as to what works and what doesn’t.
So that we don’t ask ourselves again, in 40 years time, “Why doesn’t aid work?”
In 1840 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book “What is Property?” famously declared, “Property is theft.”
"The peasant who hires land, the manufacturer who borrows capital, the tax-payer who pays tolls, duties, patent and license fees, personal and property taxes, &c., and the deputy who votes for them, — all act neither intelligently nor freely. Their enemies are the proprietors, the capitalists, the government … instead of inferring from this that property should be shared by all, I demand, as a measure of general security, its entire abolition."
Since then a great deal of effort has been put in by communists, socialists, new-economists and trades unions to exercise exactly that.
Most recently, Cosatu's secretary in the Western Cape, Tony Ehrenreich, demanded that people living in an informal settlement in the luxury enclave of Hout Bay should rise up and take land away from those with property in the area. Some residents have threatened violent retribution if anyone attempts to act on this instruction.
We talk about the redistribution of land-based property as if this, somehow, makes people wealthy. The people who earn some of the highest salaries in the world today are hedge fund managers. The only property they need to perform their job is a cell phone and a computer. What would redistribution of these assets achieve?
The most important inalienable property that you own is your life. Your liberty is the freedom to use your life. No other person, or group of people, may own you. Neither do you own the lives of others. We have laws against slavery precisely because most modern societies recognise this right.
A product of your time and your liberty is your property. If someone offers to pay you for your time to perform work on their behalf then you have entered into a property transaction. You exchange some of your property – your time – for some of their property – their money. If they value your time at an amount that you are happy with then you will work for them. It is only under an autocratic system – one which sanctifies slavery – that you would be forced to work for an amount less than the value you place on your own time.
To take ((life)) is murder. To take ((liberty)) is slavery. To take ((property)) is theft. Everything with which you transact with others is property; from the clothes you wear, to the time spent on conversation. People who waste your time are, technically, stealing it.
It takes time and investment to learn things. I spend my time on myself to develop my own abilities. That time has value. Once I have learned sufficiently then I procure property that will assist me to earn a living. If I live in a society that doesn’t allow for the individual ownership of property, then I may never make that investment in the first place. I’ll wait in line to take the property I want away from someone else.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the recent civil war, live cows were worth significantly less than fresh beef. The reason was that marauding soldiers would attack farmers and kill them, then take their cows away. No-one wanted to own a live cow for fear of being killed. So the value of cows dropped. More importantly, since no-one wanted to invest their time in raising them, in many areas cows disappeared altogether.
The question to Tony Ehrenreich and others of his ilk is this: if you aren’t in favour of property ownership how can you have redistribution in the first place? If you abolish property rights so that you may own something not rightfully yours then there are no rights to protect your ownership of that property either. When property has no ownership then you lose even the most basic ownership of your own life and liberty.
Too many countries, in an effort to reduce very real poverty, abandon property rights and take wealth away from people who have it. Wealth generating individuals flee those countries and, as refugees, go and generate wealth elsewhere. Their home-countries are left bereft of talent and even more impoverished than before. Like the man who killed the golden goose, they discover that the wealth they wanted didn't come from ownership of other people's property.
Real development comes from respecting the property produced by others and giving individuals an incentive to create new property so that they may increase the overall wealth for everyone in that society.
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