South Africa

IRIN has two stories about the movement of human capital in Southern Africa that reveal a region in flux. The first shows how South Africa is trying to stanch the brain drain of skilled and highly educated workers and professionals, particularly in the healthcare profession. The second reveals beleaguered white former Zimbabwean farmers who had lost their land in Robert Mugabe’s wretchedly conceived land redistribution plans returning to Zim. Initially they left in hopes of finding options in other countries in the region, options that leaders in those countries had led them to believe would give them a chance to engage in commercial farming and important agricultural development.  

In both cases, individuals have been moving to find both opportunities to utilize skills. But the second half of the equation is that in addition to pull factors, they also experienced significant push factors, and those push factors will continue to inhibit development in the region if they are not alleviated.  

Cape Town has a perception as a racist city, according to Danny Jordaan, South Africa’s Local Organizing Committee CEO for the 2010 World Cup. And he believes that the city (and the country in general) will have to shed that image if the 2010 event is to be a success.

As a step in that direction, Cape Town will host “90 Minutes for Mandela,” which will pit an Africa XI against a World XI of all time greats in honor of Madiba’s 89th birthday. The game will provide a litmus test, or at least a gauge, of where South Africa is in terms of its capacity to host a big event without major glitches.

The 2010 World Cup is going to be a vital moment for South Africa. In many ways it will represent the country’s coming out party, a sort of debut or “Sweet 16,” coming as it does sixteen years after the epochal events of 1994. In this sense the World Cup will be about much more than sport. With the rest of the world watching, South Africa can show that it belongs in the first rank of nations and it can reveal to a skeptical and patronizing world what an African nation is capable of given the opportunity.

It doesn’t take much to tip the scales toward economic catastrophe for the people southern Africa. A poor harvest followed by a bitterly cold winter means that Swaziland is experiencing some of its worst economic conditions in recent years. Food and medical scarcities, inadequate shelter, and general economic vulnerability have created conditions for a miserable winter for South Africa’s tiny neighbor.   

Not at all surprisingly, the Mugabe government’s unilateral price cutting, and crackdown on those who would defy it, has proven to be a short-term palliative and not a long-term solution. Store shelves are empty. Shortages reign. Prices may be low, but no one can buy goods. Producers have stopped producing, store owners have stopped purchasing goods — for both, the price cuts mean that they operate at a loss most of the time.

Dissenters argue, almost assuredly rightly, that this is yet another ploy in Mugabe’s arsenal of tricks, demogoguery to appease the masses and win support or at least ease some of the sting of opposition. For now one of the most vocal critics of Mugabe, Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, hopes that the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union will be able to pressure Mugabe into enacting democratic reforms or something resembling them. But one senses that Ncube is skeptical of the efficacy of these organizations and of Thabo Mbeki, the AU’s designated choice to mediate the crisis in Zimbabwe.  For its part, South Africa would like the SADC to step in and try to salvage that which is salvageable in Zimbabwe’s economy. The AU wants South Africa to act. South Africa wants SADC to act.

It would be nice if the African Union, South Africa, and SADC would get together and act in concert rather than pass the buck. I continue to be sleptical about precisely what can be done to force Mugabe’s hand, but this sort of circularity surely is not the solution.

A couple of items from West Africa caught my eye this morning:

Ghana recently discovered oil off of its coast. But oil has usually proven to be a mixed blessing in Africa, bringing with it what has come to be known as the “petro-curse”: Fueling kleptocracy and division, exploiting poor workers for the benefit of a few, ultimately leading to deeply divided and oftentimes violent societies. Ghana hopes to avoid the petro-curse.

Meanwhile The Financial Times has the transcript of an interview with Nigeria’s newly elected President Umaru Yar’Adua.

Despite the questionable legitimacy of the elections that brought him to power, Yar’Adua hops to be able to implement economic reforms and to open the political system. In so many ways, Nigeria can be an engine that powers the whole of West Africa, and so many observers are rooting for its success, yet the optimism has to be tempered by wariness given all that has gone before. 

The Foreign Policy Association’s own Robert Nolan has been reporting on the African Union Summit in Accra. His recent FPA piece on early steps to establish a United States of Africa can also be found at allAfrica.

The African Union’s (AU)  predecessor, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), established a process called the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as part of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD). The AU has moved forward with APRM, which, whatever its shortcomings, holds great promise to help African nations spur one another toward good governance, best practices, and accountability. So far 26 African countries have signed on to the process, with others soon to follow. In keeping with the spirit of the African Renaissance that Thabo Mbeki has long championed, the APRM theoretically will enable Africans to develop African solutions for African problems, further moving the continent away from both the burdens of the colonial past and the dependence of the neocolonial present.

South Africa is now in the final stages of dealing with its review, which consisted of a combination of criticism, suggestions, concerns, and praise. The South African response has run the gamut from incensed to dilatory to resigned to determined. Initially, the word was that the South Africans were outraged and that Pretoria was set to reject the entire report summarily. But now that South Africa is participating in the African Union summit in Accra, Mbeki’s administration seems more acquiescent and even accepting of the APRM. Mbeki savvily sidestepped most of the most ardent (some Africans might say “strident”) criticisms of what he called  ”a positive report that acknowledges the huge strides made by South Africa in transforming the country into a vibrant democracy with one of the most progressive constitutions in the world”.

I think I understand both the harsh initial response and the more conciliatory recent indications from Mbeki’s government. In the first place it must have been difficult for South Africa to swallow criticisms — some rather harsh — from a body that consists of many nations that have not achieved South Africa’s successes, from countries that, right or wrong, South Africa sees as being its lessers. South Africa sees itself as a continental leader and regional power. Hearing criticisms from countries that enjoy the fruits of operating from within South Africa’s penumbra surely must have galled Pretoria, which likely expected a rubber stamp and pats on the back from the continent’s leaders. It is perhaps reassuring that such obeisance did not emerge from the APRM.

But South Africa’s change of tone also stands to reason. After all, South Africa fancies itself as the driving force behind the continent’s hoped-for future direction. Any African Renaissance that occurs will have South Africa’s imprimatur and South Africa’s fingerprints all over it. For South Africa to scuttle one of the chief mechanisms by which the continent can achieve its goals would be churlish, impetuous, and self destructive.

But there is another possible explanation for South Africa’s newfound change of heart: Initially the government was stung, in a sense, by the criticisms, which surely seemed harsh and highly critical. But the passage of time has allowed South Africa to take a step back, to find the positive in the report, to look at the negatives as constructive criticism, and as importantly, to look at that criticism as being largely accurate. The truth sometimes hurts, it is said. But that pain makes it no less true.      

In South Africa’s tiny neighbor, Swaziland, recent reports indicate that more people live in informal settlements than in formal neighborhoods, which has spurred the country to push to improve living conditions in urban areas. Officials have decided to upgrade the informal settlements (often called townships) rather than build new housing.

China’s increasing presence in Africa has become clear in the past couple of years. (For my own writing on this – with links – see here, here, here, here and here.) The Asian continent’s other giant, India has been watching, and has designs on increasing its presence in Africa. China’s role at best represents a dual-edged sword, and in the most realistic assessments Beijing represents a potentially dangerous and destabilizing force for most of Africa. Perhaps India will provide another option for African countries faced with the enticement of Chinese investment or none at all. 

The crisis in Zimbabwe, and especially the economic catastrophe, has proven to have a levelling effect in the country. This is, of course, a levelling in which a draining pool has lowered all inner tubes, and not one in which a rising tide has lifted all boats, and so it is probably of slim solace to the blurring of class distinctions and the loosening of police enforcement of at least some restrictions (since the police themselves have been reduced to engaging in the same illicit activities).

One wonders if this levelling will create political coalitions, radical movements, mass displays of discontent. mugabe relies on a certain level of anarchy to perpetuate control, but that anarchy is, by definition, both difficult to control and as importantly, it may have a tipping point, and if it teeters out of Mugabe’s control it might prove to be another potential force for his downfall.