As a researcher in peace and conflict studies, I have carried out field work in two failed states in Africa. In 2009, I spent a month in Liberia to ask locals questions on the reasons that led to the brutal civil war that ended in 2003. I asked questions about Chinese participation in the UN mission in Liberia and gathered views on the path to sustainable peace.
In 2012, I spent a week in South Sudan, a year before the civil war broke out, this time to try to understand the goings-on in Africa’s youngest nation, and local, Chinese and Western perspectives on the future of the soon-to-be war-torn country.
The common thread that runs through failed states is the breaking down in the unspoken but well understood social contract between governor and governed. I was repeatedly told — from professors to everyday locals — that the heart of the issue was the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Big-man patrimonial systems inevitably become the norm in postcolonial African states as new governments struggle to change the nature of the extractive colonial economy they inherited. As the years pass and patience for a better life among the people wanes, the government is only able to grow jobs in the public services and state-owned enterprises to ensure loyalty and support. Eventually, the big-man patrimonial system becomes unsustainable and the whole edifice comes crashing down.
SA appears to be following the same postcolonial script that most of its northern neighbours have experienced. SA is more unequal now than during apartheid. The manufacturing sector, the engine of job creation, remains weak and underappreciated by successive ANC governments.
Instead of choosing the difficult and painful path of structurally reforming the economy with programmes of agriculture reform, on prioritising the job-creating manufacturing sector and public works programmes that provide purpose and training to the youth, it has chosen the well-trodden path of big-man politics with attending patrimony, of jobs in the public service and state-owned enterprises.
The message is that the have-nots in SA feel the injustices of the system they live under justify their looting. After all, if politicians can steal millions with impunity, why can’t we take a couple of cool drinks?
The postcolonial script of Africa being hopeless is changing though. Some African states are rising. Paul Kagame’s Rwanda is a useful example. Since the 1994 genocide, the country has taken a leaf from the script of developmental states in Asia. Over the past 20 years it has substantially improved the living standards of its poor and reduced poverty from 77% in 2001 to 55% in 2017, with an impressive decrease in inequality.
The country is indeed authoritarian, and Kagame changed the constitution to serve a third term in office. However, he has thus far kept his end of the bargain by growing the economy and reducing inequality and poverty.
The rioting, insurrection and horror we witnessed in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng last week was a wake-up call. The message is that the have-nots in SA feel the injustices of the system they live under justify their looting. After all, if politicians can steal millions with impunity, why can’t we take a couple of cool drinks? It’s a wake-up call to the ANC in particular — that it is no different to many of its sister liberation movements turned governments in the rest of Africa; that it has failed in its promise to provide a better life for all.
Another lesson from countries in Asia and Africa that have bucked the trend of entering a postcolonial economic and social death spiral is that they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew and China under Deng Xiaoping made hard decisions. They looked in the mirror and admitted they had failed. They reflected on the error of their ways and had the fortitude to get up, rally their people together and try again.
Singapore and China are two vastly different countries, but they played the cards they were dealt and managed to turn the fortunes of their countries around. We can do the same.
• Dr Kuo, a former lecturer at the Shanghai International Studies University in China, is adjunct senior lecturer in the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.