| By Gavin Chait,
on 21 March 2007
|
 More obscure, impenetrable prose
It just so happens that the majority of people who are poor in South Africa are also black. That should not be allowed to mislead and misinform efforts of economic development. But it has.
South Africa’s President, Thabo Mbeki, has once again chosen to racialise a debate he is uncomfortable discussing directly; this time on crime.
The history of South Africa is not of black versus white. There were plenty of whites who fought on the side of the various liberation movements, including the ANC. There were plenty of blacks who supported National Party rule. Race may have provided the vehicle, the excuse, for the savage dictatorship we were subjected to, but it is not the cause. Just as communist dictatorships, fascist rule, Nazi propaganda all used some form of ideology to draw support to their cause, so too did National Party rule require a foil. It just happened to be racial descrimination aimed at blacks.
It could have been anything.
The Economist recently described a failing country thus: “The country was paralysed by a sense of terminal decline. The mainstream left was beholden to its militants, union friends and class warriors. Politicians were preoccupied by the distribution of wealth, not its creation. Strikes were as crippling as taxes. Industrial jobs were going to lower-cost countries and academic brains to America.”
This was about 1970s England. And they are comparing it to the current situation in France. Yet it is as pithy a summary of the situation in South Africa as you could hope to read. England came out of their morass on the wings of Dame Maggie Thatcher. Sadly, the French have Jacque Chirac, and we – more’s the pity – have Thabo Mbeki.
Any transition from dictatorship to majority rule is messy and unpleasant. However, the injustices of the past should not be used as an ongoing excuse to perpetuate continuing injustice. That way lies future corruption, autocracy and dictatorship. We have seen this before. Colonial rule in Cambodia gave way to Pol Pot, the Khmer’s Rouge and the killing fields. Zimbabwe’s Mugabe has justified his oppressive and heavy-handed dictatorship in terms of redistribution of land owned by white farmers. Iran’s fear of “the great Satan” and the rule of democracy. China’s communists murdered hundreds and imprisoned thousands after the peaceful student uprising in Tiananmen Square. Yet the communists had earlier risen up against similar behaviour by their royal house. Even France’s continuing terror of capitalism and globalisation are simply a way of pretending that they can control their future without making any allowances.
It doesn’t always have to end in tears. Spain’s dictatorship gave way, after a period of confusion and mayhem, to a stable and wealthy democracy.
The difficulty is always to keep one’s eye fixed firmly on the true problems one is attempting to address. It should not matter who offers to fix those problems as long as they are solved.
Right now the South African government has squandered the goodwill of the peaceful elections in 1994 as glibly as the United States discarded their support after the terrorist attack of September, 11. A world that would have supported the US has seen them “go it alone” and cause hardship and suffering where they did not have to.
It is impossible for government by an act of intervention to create any jobs. It is impossible for any government to determine what products will sell or what individuals may want. That is the job of free choice and free will. Individuals will decide for themselves.
It is self-serving to speak of a “formal” and “informal” economy. There is only the economy. That government thinks that certain businesses embarrass them is meaningless. They are still businesses and they still support livelihoods and create jobs. To distort and pervert this transition to fit in with preconceived notions of race and identity deliberately ruins opportunities and excludes those who would help.
There is no nobility in poverty. Poverty is grubby, brutal and tragic. It destroys hope and opportunity. It degrades the self and leads to violence and crime. This is not about race, it is about people.
On this Human Rights Day, let us reflect. There will be no common South African identity until the notion that all poverty is the sole purvey of race is calmly and rationally set aside.
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