Our domestic reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death included assertions that SA is too different from the US for the tragedy to resonate here. Yes and no.
Both countries overshadow their neighbours while harbouring isolationist preferences alongside much politically manipulated ethnic strife. The stark differences are economic and geopolitical.
The US leads the prevailing world order, while China, Russia and Iran want their spheres of influence to be recognised and their bullying tolerated. Central to SA’s economic woes are our frayed relations with leading Western nations.
Governing parties of resource endowed nations are prone to patronage, and this is incompatible with prioritising competitiveness — which is required for the global integration that now drives economic development. Vanishingly few of our young adults add value to exports, and this traces to anticompetitive policies that have entrenched the world’s most severe youth unemployment crisis.
ANC policies would be less unsustainable if there were a 1970s-style spike in commodity prices, but global economic growth is now dominated by services, and productivity gains driven by technology and specialisation. The ANC’s economic and foreign relations policies have long been counterproductive, but the party’s leaders have been able to contain critics by asserting their presumed moral authority.
However, ANC leaders can no longer rely on framing debates at home and abroad around social justice issues; the party’s presumed moral authority has been abused to the point where it is now indefensible. The US Democratic Party has travelled a similar path.
Both the ANC and the Democrats sought support not through policies that could provide “a better life for all” but rather by exploiting social justice themes. Yet results matter. Polls show support for both parties tracking at historic lows.
The assassination of Kirk, a 31-year-old conservative who challenged college students to debate him, is as problematic for the Democrats as the ill-fated national dialogue initiative is for the ANC. As the two parties now seek to confront their critics, they find that the fair-minded among their traditional supporters are leaving them.
Neither of the two parties is prepared to pivot from overindulging idealism towards a better balance with pragmatism. Both have been conditioned to shush solution-focused voices by chanting about inequality and other injustices. Their supporters can now see that they had been scammed.
Average Americans and South Africans are similarly isolation-minded relative to their counterparts in leading European and Asian countries. A key difference is that the US is home to many of the world’s most dynamic companies. Silicon Valley executives consistently supported Democratic candidates, until it became clear that the Biden administration did not appreciate their competitiveness-focused culture.
The US presidential election last November highlighted the excesses of woke culture and how leaders of top US universities and media companies were committed to advancing leftist ideologies at the expense of teaching and informing pragmatic decision-making. The tide had been turning, and Kirk’s killing accelerated the shift.
Having overindulged the extreme elements in the party, the Democrats must rally around its leaders with more centrist views. The ANC’s challenges run deeper, as its various factions are united not by ideologies or causes but rather by patronage. Favouring China, Russia and Iran makes sense for ANC leaders as those countries won’t pressure them to adopt the competitiveness-enhancing policies that are needed to add value within global supply chains. But without such pivoting to advance within such supply chains, SA can’t possibly achieve normal employment.
While there are clear parallels between the politics in the US and SA, the US has had 10 generations of ever-rising productivity alongside generally prudent saving and investing. Our financial innovations have led to more than 10-million policies to fund funerals and a surge in two-pot pension system withdrawals.
As our households simply don’t have the purchasing capacity to support adequate growth and job creation, we must integrate far more meaningfully into the global economy. This will require pivoting from disingenuous justice-justified policies to embrace pragmatism and competitiveness.
• Hagedorn (@shawnhagedorn) is an independent strategy adviser.
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