SA like Zimbabwe
THE film A United Kingdom somewhat disappointed last week, as it ended before Seretse Khama became president of a newly independent Botswana in 1966.
But he was remarkably successful in creating an inclusive society that transformed one of the world’s poorest nations into one which has coped better than most with the challenges of the early 21st century.
In his refusal to automatically indigenise the civil service, his tough approach to corruption and crime, and his encouragement of education and a multiracial society, Khama followed much the same path as Lee Kuan Yew, who took Singapore to independence from Malaysia in 1965. Lee Yuan Kew understood that Malayan racial preference policies could not work in a predominantly Chinese Singapore and created today’s brilliantly successful city state.
In his recent State of the Nation address, President Zuma insisted on pushing forward with his policies of radical economic transformation along racial lines which, he said, would be implemented through legislation, regulations, licensing, budget and procurement as well as broad-based black economic charters.
The lack of economic growth, corruption and government ineptitude appear in his mind to be the result of not enough reparations to black people. But is a further dose of radical economic transformation likely to bring success? The stories of Botswana, Singapore and others suggest not.
Instead, as the ANC elite gets trapped in a tightening spiral of non-existent growth and increasing poverty, it will have to resort to evermore divisive policies to keep precious electoral support, which is being lost both to the radical EFF and the more reasonable, but still racially confused, DA.
Ironically, the only example I can find of a racially divided nation where economic growth still surged ahead was America during the 1950s.
At the moment, South Africa is far more likely, medium-term, to resemble Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe than Seretse Khama’s Botswana or Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore. James Cunningham Camps Bay