South Africa

I do not even feign to be an economist, but many observers, including Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, worry that the country’s current account deficit represents a “major chink in [South Africa’s] armour.” The declining value of the rand and the tenuous state of global markets is also a concern, but as Manuel points out, probably wisely, “If I were concerned every time the market moves I would probably have been committed to an asylum a long time ago.”

Charles R. Stith, a former US ambassador to Tanzania and director of the African Presidential Archives and Research Center at Boston University, has an op-ed piece in today’s Boston Globe endorsing the Millennium Challenge Initiative as a way to help develop Africa. He argues that partisan squabbling over the amount of funding to provide the MCI is akin to an old proverb that asserts that when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. It seems to me that it would be worth providing the full funding that President Bush wants if only to see if the program is viable.

There can be little doubt that the past year has been the most trying in Thabo Mbeki’s oft-tumultuous presidency. Tonight he gave his State of the Union address before parliament. He certainly had plenty of fodder from which to work: The electricity crisis, crime, poverty, the daunting prospect of hosting the 2010 World Cup, and simply a general sense of malaise.

Mbeki provided a positive spin, called for the nation to pull together to confront the issues facing South Africa, and praised his countrymen for their resilience in the face of recent difficulties, especially the power delivery nightmare.

The response to Mbeki’s optimism has been skepticism in many, but far from all, circles. Helen Zille,  leader of the Democratic Alliance, whose job it is to be critical, took her job seriously, criticizing the president for “business as usual.” The editors of The Mail & Guardian approached Mbeki’s address fatalistically as did other observers. One imagines that those critics were likely not placated by Mbeki’s address and that Mbeki’s supporters found much with which to be pleased. In other words, status quo ante is likely to prevail.

According to Reserve Bank Governor Gideon Gono, Zimbabwe’s inflation hit a record 26 470,8% in November 2007. These sorts of numbers defy commentary. They defy understanding.

A number of stories caught my attention this weekend. Here are a few of them, with brief commentary as appropriate:

The Makana Football Association, which operated surreptitiously on Robben Island among the political prisoners has achieved recognition from FIFA, the sport’s governing body. A feature film, More Than Just a Game, starring Tsotsi’s Presley Chweneyagae, is to be released in South Africa in the next few weeks.

Thabo Mbeki recently has been stepping up his advocacy of a trilateral free trade area between South Africa, India, and Brazil. Mbeki believes that this trade bloc will give these leading nations in the developing world a stronger hand in trades with the World Trade Organization and will focus on addressing poverty and underdevelopment in the three countries and within the regional spheres that they dominate.

The Mail & Guardian’s “ZA @ Play” has an interview with Mark Gevisser, the respected observer of South African politics whose forthcoming book Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred is highly anticipated. The interview is fairly anodyne, truth be told, but the book should stand as a definitive early treatment of Thabo Mbeki’s life if it can avoid the pitfalls of polemicism and advocacy to which virtually all of the books on Mbeki up to now have succumbed. 

Finally, a bit of a controversy has enveloped one of my old stomping grounds, Rhodes University. Last year Anne Warmenhoven submitted a doctoral thesis to Rhodes’ psychology department, which approved the dissertation and granted Warmenhoven the PhD. Her topic is the late disgraced former Proteas captain Hansie Cronje. But the dissertation apparently is nowhere to be found, apparently because members of Cronje’s family only agreed to speak with Warmwnhoven under conditions of secrecy. Obviously this goes against every principle of academic freedom and openness, not to mention ideals of transparency that are supposed to be a hallmark of the New South Africa.

The proposed Constitutional changes to streamline (or consolidate ZANU-PF power, depending on your perspective) the political process in Zimbabwe have come to pass. Under the provisions of the legislation Zimbabwe will change its electoral boundaries, increase the number of MPs and accelerate by two years parliamentary elections.

In a gesture that makes a virtue out of necessity, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) decided not to contest the changes despite widespread opposition, because the party did not have enough votes to stop the vote from carrying in any case. MDC thus can claim that it is facilitating the negotiation process that Thabo Mbeki is overseeing for South Africa on behalf of SADC.  It is easy to detect resignation on the part of the opposition. But without any viable outlet to prevent the changes from taking place, the opposition hopes that the outcome of this Constitutional tinkering will be a more open political process. (The Foreign Policy Association has more links here.)

Acquiescence seems to be the coin of the realm north of the Limpopo these days. Despite the economic crisis (which now includes outbreaks of disease in Bulowayo), unions, for example, have been unable to gain any traction in their call for a general strike this week.

Meanwhile in South Africa retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for more outside pressure on Zim from both the western powers and especially England, but also from South Africa. As long as there is progress, however tentative and cosmetic, an outside world that has been loath even to think about intervening in Zimbabwe is going to continue to stand pat. This is Thabo Mbeki’s roll of the dice. If these reforms prove effective, he will deserve a large proportion of the credit. But if they fail, and it is easy to succumb to pessimism and argue that they will, it all lands in Mbeki’s lap. Let’s hope for Zimbabwe, far more than for Mbeki, that his gamble proves to be a winning one.

If’s a busy news cycle right now in Southern Africa. here are a number of stories that caught my eye in today’s chock-full Mail & Guardian and elsewhere:

As the thirteith anniversary of the murder of Steven Bantu Biko at the hands of the security forces approaches different South Africans remember Biko’s life and death differently.

the Zimbabwe crisis continues unabated. The economic calamity has opened the door for corruption. Some maintain hopes  that South African-brokered talked will lead to a resolution of the political elements of the country’s conflicts, but it seems that  this may not be the time for whistling past the graveyard.

Meanwhile, transformation isn’t always easy. Members of the Democratic Alliance (DA) are up in arms over the Tshwane metropolitan council’s reported ban on white businesses. If the allegations are accurate, the DA would certainly seem to have a case that they will bring before the Constitutional Court. Meanwhile in a  pronouncement that is likely to be equally tendentious, the Black Management Forum  (BMF)  has argued that white women should be removed from the list of groups previously disadvantaged ”in terms of . . . employment equity legislation.” It is a bit hard for white women who benefitted in every imaginable way from apartheid suddenly stepping forward to claim their lots alongside the black South Africans on whose backs the Apartheid system built white privilege.

Finally, the M&G’s longtime rugby columnist Andrew Capostagno has a nifty piece on how this Rugby World Cup represents a “big chance” for the Springboks. He concludes his historically astute article by arguing that if the Boks achieve their considerable promise and “Win this one” South Africans “can forget, for a long, glorious moment, about politics.”

According to the Mail & Guardian, SADC’s plan for Zimbabwe’s economic recovery is a non-starter because, well, SADC and its member nations do not have the necessary funds and the prospect of such support coming from the west in sufficient qualities is highly improbable.:

The economic rescue package for Zimbabwe, touted at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Lusaka last week, is a non-starter, economists and political commentators argued this week.

They said that at least $15-billion would be needed to restore Zimbabwe’s collapsing infrastructure and revive commercial agriculture, the mainstay of the formal economy. The region could not foot this bill and Western “development partners” would not come to the party unless Zimbabwe democratised and introduced rational economic policies.

There are two (possibly three) questions that SADC ought to be asking: Were the funds available, would the economic recovery plan be either desirable or viable? This is a crucial question because any Zimbabwe economic recovery plan that does not incorporate regime change seems to be placing a misshapen stopper in a spilling bottle. Doing so will be, at best, a temporary solution. The second question then takes two paths: If such a plan is viable or desirable, is accessing the funding truly an impossible task? If not, then what plan must SADC develop in its place?

But of late it seems that SADC is uninterested in asking what ought to be baseline questions for fear of not finding their preferred answers. Until the member nations of SADC take the questions seriously, there is little reason why we should seriously consider their answers.

Economic development in Africa can be a daunting concept. Countries with little infrastructural foundation are difficult to penetrate, and one of the key dilemmas comes with where to start. Food security, political instability, military conflict and crime, economic chaos — these problems can make building roads and bridges and phone networks nearly impossible to conceive, never mind to execute.

Perhaps the best way to develop larger infrastucture is to start small. At least this is the argument of Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School (and a former college classmate of your faithful scribe), in The Boston Globe. He discusses the case of Democratic Republic of the Congo entrepreneur Alieu Conteh, who founded the cellular telephone company that became Vodacom Congo:

His success is an example of a new strategy for building infrastructure in Africa that might revolutionize the continent. Called “incremental infrastructure,” the idea is to build essential facilities — telephone networks, power grids, roads — in small pieces using private investment, instead of relying on large, centrally planned, government-run projects. . . .

The infrastructure challenges most African nations face are enormous. Just to meet sub-Saharan Africa’s current power demands, for example, could cost $70 billion in new power plants — even more if African nations begin using power to process minerals locally instead of exporting them to China, North America, and Europe. But the success of entrepreneurs like Alieu Conteh suggests that African infrastructure is a big problem that demands a small solution.

We need to be wary of panaceas, of course. Big solutions and small solutions are necessary throughout Africa, but Zuckerman makes an important case inasmuch as executed properly, small solutions can become big ones, and by growing organically can help provide the development Africa most needs.

Uitenghage, and industrial city not far from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape is South Africa’s Detroit. It has long been the center of South Africa’s automobile production, with companies such as Volkswagen having a heavy presence. Recent reports indicate that VW is planning to shift production of right-side-drive VW Golf models for the Asia-Pacific region from Uitenhage back to Wolfsburg, not far from Frankfurt. 

 Naturally VW is selling the plan as an attempt to maximize efficiency and to allow the Uitenhage producers to do what they do best. But any time a major manufacturer, especially one as central as the automobile industry, decides to shift production away from South Africa, it is cause for some concern. South Africa on the whole has an impressive record of economic growth since 1994, but the economy assuredly is fragile enough that news such as this might have an unpleasant ripple effect.