Think global and act local – I’m sure we’ve all heard that. It’s a nice cliché about how we can all do our bit for the planet by making small adjustments in our corner of it.
Many clichés contain an element of truth, and this is certainly one that does. What we do in our own lives, with the things we have in our own control, can have an effect larger than we might appreciate. When many of us do the same thing, the cumulative effect can be large indeed.
In a week, we’ll be acting local, politically speaking. The local government elections will be a judgement on the state of our municipalities, and their capacity to provide the foundation for our community life. Strangely enough, for all the impact that our local governance has on our everyday lives, we often see this as a political afterthought.
This is not the case. Back in 2016, as we approached the elections of that year, I wrote this piece with a then colleague:
South Africa’s mayors and other stakeholders are realising that cities are the key developmental hubs and that how they tackle infrastructure, health and the environment at city level is what matters. That is why city mayors were included at COP21, the climate change summit, in Paris in November – because any global commitments will require cities to play their part. These rapidly altering realities demand that Africans give due attention to the governance of their municipalities. South Africa’s municipal elections are thus no sideshow. With our more mature cities and stagnant economic growth, accountable and visionary governance of our urban centres is a goal we can ill-afford to miss.
What we do in our own environment has an impact on others. And almost as importantly, it plays a very large part in determining how South Africa is viewed beyond its borders.
South Africans, for various reasons across their history, have assumed the country to have an outsized importance globally. Its democratic transition validated this. South Africa was the miracle nation, a country that had defied the odds and was not only an example to others, but a rising power, ever eager to share its experience and expertise with the world. As the former ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, flamboyantly put it in 2014: ‘I don’t think South Africans have realised how well poised we are to become a moral superpower.’
Hard to believe
Even at that point, it’s hard to believe that rhetoric of this nature could be taken seriously. South Africa’s moral standing and reputation – part of what might be called its ‘soft power’ – may have hinged initially on its transition, but that was never going to be a limitless account on which to draw. The claims on being a ‘moral superpower’ would need to be re-affirmed and re-established constantly.
For a time, South Africa could shine through the high drama of its transition; not only its democratisation, but through the widely admired Constitution, its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and so on.
Yet South Africa has for many years faced a seemingly intractable challenge in transitioning beyond the transition. It has needed to consolidate its post-apartheid institutions, and propel a developmental policy that would ensure a rising standard of living, the latter having been a consistent electoral promise, the objective of a veritable carpet of policy documents and the prescription of the Constitution.
As the late Prof Kader Asmal framed it, the genius of the Constitution was that it recognised basic human needs as basic human rights.
Local government was part of this. The African National Congress was never enthusiastic about provinces, but felt that strong municipal governments would be necessary for driving an ambitious developmental agenda. On the latter point, conceptually at least, they were right.
What has happened is somewhat different. Despite some promising growth in GDP and employment in the 2000s, the past decade has seen a dreadful slowdown. Unlike its peers across most of the developing world, South Africa never really recovered from the shock dealt by the global financial crisis.
Moreover, many of the country’s post-apartheid institutions failed to come into their own after their establishment. Local government was among these, as a scramble for the spoils of office, toxic race politics and a deliberate politicisation of administration both deskilled local government and fatally distracted it from the proper execution of its duties.
Immiseration
All of which is seen in the interrelated socio-economic and governmental failings: the immiseration of around half the population, unemployment that exceeds 30%, and the dysfunction of so many of our towns.
As this chews away at the country’s internal cohesion, South Africa’s reputation fades. There has long been both anecdotal and academic evidence of the declining reputation that South Africa enjoys on the continent. But the failure of its political and economic systems is more than a matter of unpleasant national character – it is about the credibility of South Africa’s claims to embody any set of values, to offer any sort of expertise and to represent any positive agenda on the global stage.
Indeed, the 2011 White Paper on South Africa’s Foreign Policy – Building a Better World: the Diplomacy of Ubuntu – referred to development (excluding in institutions’ names) around 140 times. How should that be received abroad when efforts at home are so often fatally compromised?
The Paper asserts:
Since 1994, the international community has looked to South Africa to play a leading role in championing values of human rights, democracy, reconciliation and the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment. South Africa has risen to the challenge and plays a meaningful role in the region, on the continent and globally.
South Africa is not without its achievements in this regard, true enough. Whether it is capable of doing so now and in the future is open to question. Credibility is easily forfeited, and perhaps nowhere more easily than in our crumbling towns.
Think global and act local. Indeed. And the latter is a precondition for the former.
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