LEARN FROM EXAMPLE

WE HEARD, during the State of the Nation address by our president, a number of negative references to race that was probably last heard 50 years ago.

It would seem as if all the focus for correcting the problems of our country is on the 9% white people.

Furthermore, it would seem as if there is a belief that, if the education of white people was dragged down and the 9% white people were impoverished, then the 91% of the rest of our country would somehow enjoy radical economic transformation, whereby the 91% would all be rich, walk around with university degrees and all would be appointed in highly-paid jobs.

To get some hints about how we should go about achieving radical economic transformation, we should compare Ghana and Malaysia.

Both these countries were colonised, the natural resources of both these countries were plundered by their colonialists, and citizens of both these countries were forcefully taken and sold as slaves in faraway places.

Ghana achieved independence on March 6, 1957, while Malaysia became independent on August 31, 1957, 178 days later.

Malaysia did subsequently achieve the radical economic transformation that we are striving for in South Africa.

Malaysia reduced the number of people defined as “poor” from 50% at independence to 4% today.

Economic growth, including ups and downs, is about 5% over time. The focus areas were industrialisation and privatisation, and the government, with its own share of problems, supported this strategy.

Ghana, unfortunately, was an opposite story. The average Ghanaian was, after 25 years of independence, 20% poorer than at the end of colonisation.

Maladministration, in the meantime, is still a problem: a cabinet list, released on January 7 this year, indicates the country has 110 ministers and deputies. A Ghanaian commentator described his country as “a great beggar nation”.

I would say before “whites must fall”, before “decolonisation” and before “science must fall”, have a careful look at how Malaysia managed to leverage the positives of colonialism to its long-term benefit.

Imker Hoogenhout