South Africa

The International AIDS Society (IAS) conference, the biggest of its kind in the world, just closed in Australia. Its most significant conclusion is that the world must find a way to develop and deliver child-specific, side-effect-free (or limited) drugs to allow children with the disease to survive into adulthood (and perhaps to live to see a future in which the disease is eradicated).

Beyond hoary “children are the future” cliches, this proposal makes sense for a number of reasons. For one, call me a cynic, but the cliche is a great selling point. Finding a way to address in AIDS in children will inevitably capture hearts and imaginations in a way that simply addressing AIDS in Africa does not. But beyond the salesmanship, it seems logical to try to stanch the spread of a disease that has proven so fatal for children. Address the disease among its youngest victims while at the same time pushing for antiretroviral drugs geared toward adults and with side effects that can prove as dangerous to children as the disease they intend to attack. This is a strategy that seems both smart from a disease-combating perspective as well as from a marketing and political vantage point.

Drought has exacerbated a food shortage which in turn has been exacerbating an HIV/AIDS-fueled health crisis in the tiny Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. Maseru has declared a state of emergency. And things are probably going to get worse before they get better.

According to Business Report, South African consumer confidence, which has been ongoing for some time,  either continues apace or it does not. What this somewhat frustrating contradiction tells us, I think, is that the dismal science is more dismal than science and that consumer confidence is probably a pretty vague matrix to gauge the health of any economy.

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. 

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.

Robert Mugabe has stepped in to try to staunch the bleeding in the Zim economy. But like just about everything he does when it comes to his country, his methods are dubious. This time around he is taking a strong stand in intervening in the economy, which includes increased nationalization of industries and the expansion of price controls in order to address the seemingly inexorable upward march of inflation, which some reports are placing at a nearly unfathomable 10,000%. The Mail & Guardian calls Mugabe’s gambit “risky,” as if up to now Mugabe has been a model of temperance and caution. (On a vaguely related note, perhaps, there appear to be irregularities in Zimbabwe’s voter registration process for next year’s elections.) 

Since the crackdown there has been a run on store stocks and shelves are empty. The Mugabe government has promised that it will come down hard on any businesses that defy the mandated cutting of costs. Some of Mugabe’s critics in the West will use this as an example of Mugabe’s not-so latent communism, but this really has nothing to do wioth ideology and everything to do with the exercise of power. Mugabe foreswore Marxism when it suited him and he embraces it when it does not. His willingness partially to nationalize the economy is not the excercise of a committed communist; it is the act of a ruthless tyrant, and though most often historically the distinction between the two has been inconsequential, in this case, the two are not the same thing.

The ramifications of Zimbabwe’s collapse go well beyond the country’s borders. The effects even transcend the immediate southern African region. A recent report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) indicates that Zimbabwe is having a negative impact on the entire continent’s economic growth — numbers that otherwise might represent a slice of positive news for much of Africa — and that the laissez faire approach of the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the continent’s leaders is only exacerbating the situation.