When Africa's liberators set about freeing their people in the early part of the 20th century, the developed world was very much in the throes of defining what ideologies from hundreds of years of wars, including two world wars, worked best in establishing a new world order. A battle, in truth, between western and eastern elites, a choice between an elite in American corporate suites and an elite within government. It's a battle that muddied much of the early years of the continent's freedom, and in the case of South Africa, delayed our emancipation because of the US's support for an apartheid, but more importantly, a capitalist country.
Waging a battle for freedom is a rather expensive exercise for a disenfranchised people. With capital, as it was then and now, locked in the capital cities of the world's northern climes, the only way the greats of this continent such as Patrice Lumumba (if given time) could raise finance for their liberated acre of the continent was to either choose a side, which was a dangerous game, or to play offside against each other, perhaps an even more dangerous game. But in so doing they'd have to profess their allegiance to a side in the great philosophical battle. Some, like Julius Nyerere, followed what he termed "African socialism", but in essence it was the same debate.
As Zimbabweans defrocked their leader I thought about this battle - which I suppose, until the 2008 global crisis, was won outright by the West when the Soviet Union collapsed and China began its capitalist experiment - and the choices our liberators of old were faced with.
Robert Mugabe, who may have defined his party as socialist at the dawn of his rule, by circumstance or rather because of the Lancaster House agreements, was simply forced to follow a different economic path. And for the first decade of his term, no matter the scandals and the brutality of his regime, he was held up by the West as an African example of excellence and was even knighted. Then a fall in his popularity and the very real possibility of a loss of power were the triggers for his shift towards populist policies supposedly realigned with a more socialist doctrine. He addressed the emotive issue of land in a manner that really didn't consider the implications.
If Mugabe, like many other liberators of other African nations who have seen their economies get unstuck, had remained pragmatic about his country's faults, would circumstances not have been different? In theory, an entirely free market system, as espoused by Margaret Thatcher, should have made all Zimbabweans richer and that wealth would have trickled down to the rest of society. We know that it didn't quite work and, given growing inequality, doesn't work on the global stage. The wheels were bound to fall off, and the rest is history as Mugabe again found his socialist or pan-Africanist roots.
Now here's the lesson for South Africa and whoever takes political leadership of this country at the end of December and again in 18 months. There should be no dedication to any one ideology.
Take South Africa's state-owned assets; they are a weight on the state's fiscus, denting the creditworthiness of the state. Taking them off its books would lighten the load, but that would mean entertaining privatisation. To do so would be to abandon a "developmental" philosophy.
The practical solution is partial privatisation. With capital markets as deep as South Africa's, why not break up an asset such as energy monopoly Eskom and list its separate entities? The state could hold control and through regulation ensure that tariffs remain in check. Some investors may shy away from a regulated market, but given the dominance of any of Eskom's strands, it's an investment case that can be made to others. When economic growth gets back on track, the idea of nationalising such assets again could very well be revisited. To remain a prisoner of ideology is to ensure that South Africa's creditors and rescuers, such as the IMF, will enforce an asset sale at some point in the near future.
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