Let us tread our own path
IWANT to try, as I often do, through a process of bricolage – pulling bits and pieces of different sets of ideas or bodies of knowledge together – to cast some light on something that, I think, helps explain our fractured political economy.
The opening statement would be that since those fateful days in Polokwane 2007, when the ruling party elected Jacob Zuma its new leader, the country effectively abandoned the late capitalist globalist period and returned, willfully, to an early ‘60s ideological path dependence.
We shall refer to this as the 2007 Class Project. Let me unscramble all that. Just reading it again hurts my head . . . Soon after the ANC took office in 1994, it basically led the country boldly into regimes, norms and institutions that defined the decade of globalisation.
That’s what we called the 1990s in global political economy.
South Africa broke with the path dependence (I use the term loosely), that almost all erstwhile colonised states adopted after independence. One very simple understanding of path dependence is that there are sequential chains of events that are causally connected.
So, in the 1960s colonial states became independent. After that, by various means of coercion and consent, from India to Algeria, most European colonialists and settler colonialists left.
After that, there began various processes of “Africanisation”.
In Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda referred to “Zambianisation”, in what was known as Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko referred to “Zairianisation”, in Nigeria there was, for a period, a process of “Nigerianisation” and “indigenisation”, and in India “Indianisation” took root in the 1940s.
Forty-one years ago, almost to the day, on June 29 1976, the Nigerian leader, Lieutenant-General Olusegun Obasanko, said: “In embarking on indigenisation, the government has been influenced by the need to place control of the Nigerian economy squarely in the hands of Nigerians and to ensure that Nigerians are the main beneficiaries of the resources of their country.” Who can argue with that? The phrase I borrow, then, “path dependence” is deployed to mean that decolonisation is necessarily followed by the departure of colonialists, which is followed, in turn, by indigenisation.
It does become difficult when you consider that countries like Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo or Zimbabwe are in ruins.
But they remain the examples that the Class of 2007 want to emulate.
For some reason, the Class of 2007 believe that to be true liberators they have to follow the path of all African countries since at least 1960.
Here’s a contentious submission: the world has changed significantly since the 1960s, or the 1970s for that matter.
National economies and national financial systems are much more integrated into global structures.
If we consider only global finance, there is a veritable nest of bodies – most prominent among which are the Financial Stability Board and the Bank of International Settlements – which make sure everything to do with money actually works.
There are some problems, but for the most part, it works.
For instance, and put most simply, for banks to be considered as viable, they should have a minimal amount of cash to protect people who place their money with them, a rigorous supervisory review process, and effective application of market disciplines and measures.
Imagine a woman in rural Eastern Cape placing her life savings in a bank that has no money.
Also, banking regulation and oversight make sure that her money will be safe.
Under President Nelson Mandela, President Thabo Mbeki and President Kgalema Motlanthe there was a clear and very deep appreciation for the complexity of global finance, and for how the global political economy actually hung together.
There was no need even to discuss marching settler colonialists (whites) into the sea, nor was there any talk of rapine or displays of infantile disorder among military veterans posing as warriors of a time before the sword.
Alas, it seems the Class of 2007 would insist that we rewind the clock to 1960 because we have to assert our African identity.
For the record: “I am an African . . . I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land . . . In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East,” Mbeki said in 1996.
The only problem is when we believe that our development should follow the pattern of every country in Africa, from Liberia to Sudan, to Zimbabwe, to Chad, never mind the march of history and the onward passage of modernisation – all its pitfalls and ideological baggage notwithstanding.
Nothing prevents us from following well-trodden paths, but when human lives are at stake, we might want to consider a new path.
We’re not in 1960 anymore, but we’re not over the rainbow, yet.