Tshilidzi Marwala writes:
Countries where politics is prized at the expense of education and merit risk economic stagnation and frenzied corruption as the state’s resources shrink
Domination of politics over all spheres of our lives risks economic stagnation
● Kwame Nkrumah, the first prime minister of Ghana — the first African country to attain independence — said: “Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be added unto you.” Thus he ushered in an Africa that is dominated by politics at the expense of all other vital factors, such as the economy and technology.
Today, some 60 years later, the nominal GDP of Ghana is $70bn (R1.1-trillion) with a population of 31million. Compare this to Singapore’s nominal GDP of $392bn, with a population of 5.7-million.
At the time Nkrumah uttered these words, Ghana was much richer than Singapore. It seems the “all else” that Nkrumah promised did not follow.
The concept of politics dominating all spheres of our lives is called politicism. Here in SA over the past few days there has been intense public attention given to what the national executive committee of the ANC is going to do about corruption. The fact that the future of SA depends to such an extent on fewer than 100 people means politicism is increasingly taking hold, becoming a defining feature of South African society.
Because of shrinking economic activity outside of the government, the South African economy is increasingly centred on the state. If this trend continues, the shrinking of the South African economy will accelerate, and soon enough the capacity to afford the civil service will be compromised. This is because as the economy shrinks, so does the tax base, the only source of revenue for the government.
Why is politicism not effective? Firstly, because an entity as complex as a nation state requires multiple skills and capabilities to function. In many countries, the skills of political leadership are one-dimensional, producing people who think and talk alike. Any system driven by a one-dimensional mindset will always fail spectacularly.
Countries that work are those where leadership is distributed across many spheres of society.
For a country to work, you need technologists who are operating at the top of their game. The impact of their work should change the lives of a multitude of people.
Recently, Elon Musk, the South African-born and Silicon Valley-based engineer who founded Tesla, unveiled a device that is inserted in the scalp of a person to read brain activity. The implications for the real-time measuring of sugar levels and early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and brain tumours are significant.
What people like Musk are doing is creating a culture of leadership on a substantial scale, influencing people at a considerable level.
With politicism, we cannot grow the same technological leadership we see in the US and China. This filters into SA’s ability to compete globally, resulting in de-industrialisation, job losses and economic contractions.
Another dimension of leadership that we lack because of politicism is in the arts. The arts look nonessential, a “nice to have”, but they are incredibly crucial for establishing a creative culture that can spill over into technology, the economy and society in general. Leaders such as Steve Jobs were seen as being half artist and half technologist. When Jobs founded Apple with Steve Wozniak, the latter concentrated on technology while Jobs focused on the design, which requires competence in the arts. The look and feel of Apple devices define its products to this day.
Extreme politicism quickly descends into corruption, as is the case in SA. If all economic activities around the state shrink, the clamouring for access to the state becomes hypercompetitive. The fact that many people who gravitate towards the state are regulators or have direct and indirect control of the regulations makes the whole system prey to manipulation.
A few days ago I asked the following question on Twitter: though there are pockets of success, why has post-colonial Africa mainly been a failure? Of the 707 people who responded, 78% thought it was because of corruption, 11% thought it was because of the legacy of apartheid, 7% thought it was because of lack of education and 4% thought it was because of lack of investment.
Something as complex as the prosperity of nations cannot be explained by just one variable, and indeed it is a combination of many factors. Furthermore, the timing of my question was such that there were plenty of conversations about corruption. This could have influenced the outcome of this poll because of the psychological concept called availability bias, when people assume the likelihood of an event based on the ease with which examples come to mind.
Many people ask a relevant question: if politicism is so bad, how come China is a phenomenal success? Why do the consequences of politicism not apply to it? This is because China has a strong and effective state, which explains the country’s success.
Furthermore, China is meticulously selective when choosing its leaders. Many of these leaders are high achievers who were at the top of their classes.
The culture of studying is embedded in China’s leadership, with many leaders taking time to study in what they call party schools as well as in leading international centres. The curriculum in these party schools is astonishingly modern and usually about the economy as well as China’s new ideology, which is based on technology. China is more a meritocracy than a politicism state. As Henry Kissinger noted, China is not just a country, but a civilisation.
Now, compare that to the ANC’s OR Tambo School of Leadership. Is it even worth it?
What now for SA? We need to move towards building a meritocratic society rather than a politicised society. We need to invest seriously across the board on education. We need to develop a productive rather than a consumer economy.
We need to diversify our leadership in terms of skills, race and gender. It is only through the “portfolio of skill sets” at all levels of leadership in our country that we shall have the necessary capability to lead SA efficiently.
Professor Marwala is the vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Johannesburg. He is the author of Closing the Gap: The Fourth Industrial Revolution in Africa. On Twitter at @txm1971