Geopolitics and the global economy are being reconfigured; without sweeping policy shifts SA’s vulnerabilities can only compound.
An adult human who had lacked human interaction since infancy and had been raised by chimps would not be markedly smarter than an adult chimp. A chimp’s survival prospects would be better. Our big trick is using exceptional communication capabilities to work well in large groups.
Having a large number of people working together is vastly more productive if the tasks are divided and everyone develops specialised skills. The advantages of specialisation gathered much momentum when cities emerged near rivers that connected them to farmers. Connecting computers to the internet was similarly impactful.
We are a highly emotional species with strong social needs. Grouping people by the hundreds of millions, and having those groups compete and cooperate, requires politicians and political tools. As language is our superpower and our views are formed by stories, shaping the stories that bind us is a politician’s most powerful tool.
The advantages of global economic integration compounded in recent decades as communication and transport costs plunged; this is evidenced by low-cost international video conferencing and efficiency gains from container shipping. The benefits from knowledge diffusion have been less obvious yet even more profound.
Knowledge and skills
Whereas communication and transport cost savings mostly benefit consumers, diffusion of knowledge and skills creates more productive workers who are then better paid. This has been central to Asia’s rapid post-Cold War development.
Africa missed out on globalisation’s unprecedented upliftment. This continent accounted for about 15% of the world’s extreme poverty in 1990, compared to roughly two-thirds today. About 85% of African countries’ exports are dominated by commodities, and their populations are mostly poor or low-income.
Africans are far less likely to live near ports or navigable rivers than counterparts elsewhere. The continent was upended by colonial powers seeking resources in the early stages of the industrial era. This was followed by various liberation movements morphing into ruling parties that now rely on exporting commodities to fund imports and patronage.
When the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, political resistance to globalisation eased. Hundreds of millions of Asians soon joined a global ecosystem motivated to rapidly diffuse knowledge and evolve business practices. Countries, companies, and workers that achieved ever greater efficiencies through specialisation were well rewarded.
Productivity gains have rarely been prioritised by Africa’s post-liberation governments. SA’s global-supply-chain participation remains concentrated around providing raw materials. Prioritising union jobs has been counterproductive. Only an insignificant sliver of SA’s young adults add value to exports. Consequently, prospects for most of our school leavers have long been, and remain, dismal.
Self-sanctioning
It is difficult for political parties in geographically isolated countries with much resource wealth and significant tribal rivalries to campaign for policies which prioritise competitiveness. While SA’s post-1994 government inherited valuable ports, isolation from sanctions slowly morphed into the self-sanctioning of localisation policies. This has been politically packaged as necessary to redress generations of racial oppression. Yet, rejecting global integration has entrenched the world’s most severe youth unemployment crisis.
Instead of adapting the Asian model of emphasising productivity and job creation through integrating into global supply chains, successive ANC governments have prioritised redistribution – inflicting tremendous, multi-generational damage at the household level.
Rather than engage Western countries and companies on commercial terms that could support higher growth, productivity, and employment in SA, our ruling elites prefer to lecture their Western counterparts on social justice themes. This traces to the ANC having gained power as multiculturalism became a popular theme, setting the stage for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Meanwhile, ANC leaders were wooed internationally as global social justice icons.
Criticising injustices was natural for leaders of a liberation movement that had triumphed over the evils of apartheid. Plaudits were easily inspired. Conversely, governing is hard and good governance became increasingly elusive to the ANC.
Dominate the narratives
Long before the end of the Cold War, hard-left intellectuals had set out to dominate the narratives which shape political and social discourse across the West. They had begun to gain control of many leading media houses and universities. Then, after the Berlin Wall fell, such gains accelerated and they also targeted major supranational organisations such as the UN and the EU.
Their success advanced steadily and as it became broadly accepted opposing voices could be cancelled. The left could demand ever greater fealty to its dominating narratives, spanning climate change to language edicts. Nuclear power plants were closed and people lost their jobs for not using prescribed pronouns. Access to important institutional jobs was restricted to those who declared their allegiance to progressive dogma and who weren’t white males.
This broad movement built success and confidence by dominating public narratives and the institutions that shape them. Progressives savoured repudiating right-wing criticisms rooted in traditional values. Their confidence peaked during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election was a crushing blow for leftist intellectuals but they could assure themselves that it was a short-term setback. A trickier problem emerged in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s savage 7 October 2023 attack. Within less than 24 hours, prior to Israel’s response, a tremendous outpouring of antisemitism was on display within left-controlled institutions, particularly elite universities. Such hateful energy contrasts sharply with the indifference on college campuses to the killing of Iranian protesters.
Vulnerable
The core weakness of progressive intellectuals – and of liberation movements in Africa – is their focus on capturing power through criticism rather than solving problems. Feigning intellectual and moral superiority, they champion curricula like intersectionality and post-colonial studies that blend anti-Westernism with disregard for managing trade-offs. This leaves them internally vulnerable to bad actors. Nor are they good at balancing diverse interests or key commercial challenges such as competing internationally.
The Nobel Prize in economics was recently awarded to three economists who had highlighted the value of institutions. But while institutions are very important, they can be captured. Whether those capturing institutions are motivated by greed or a less-materialistic lust for power is secondary.
The decades-long capturing of key institutions by progressive elites is now under threat. Europe subordinated its economic and defence capabilities to indulge progressive causes such as climate change concerns. It could have adopted the French path of building many nuclear power plants but that would have required shifting from a collective desire to find fault toward being solution focused.
Europe is vulnerable both to Russian military aggression and to China flagrantly disregarding core principles – particularly anti-dumping – of the World Trade Organisation-regulated free trade regime. As the leaders of Russia and China see Europe as profoundly vulnerable, the rules-based international order teeters.
Substantially degraded
US president Donald Trump had evidently hoped his negotiating skills could set things right but his team’s efforts are being rebuffed by Russia’s and Iran’s leaders. He has sought to make the war in Ukraine Europe’s problem while substantially raising the costs in ways which will trouble Russia’s president. Russia’s influence in South America and the Middle East has been substantially degraded. The leaders of Venezuela, Cuba, or Iran can’t count on support from Moscow.
The ANC and Western progressive intellectuals long enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship. In the darkest hours of then-president Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky-based impeachment proceedings, President Nelson Mandela said at a reception hosted by Clinton: “We have often said that our morality does not allow us to desert our friends. And we will … say tonight … we are thinking of you in this difficult and discouraging time in your life.”
Fast forward to today, and the only high-ranking public figure as vulnerable as the brother of Britain’s king is Bill Clinton. The ANC’s accusing Israel of genocide must now be considered in the court of public opinion alongside Iran having unnecessarily killed thousands of protesters. The left’s ability to manage narratives is slipping.
The US, with direct or indirect support from Israel, might soon retaliate militarily against Iran’s brutal regime. This could easily go very badly but even a best-case scenario would almost certainly involve heavy “collateral damage.” Urban warfare has often killed far more civilians than combatants.
For many years Hamas prepared to maximise the use of human shields such that deaths of their non-uniformed combatants would be greatly exceeded by civilian deaths. This was to produce an outpouring of criticism of Israel. Many Western voices were quick to comply. How the left discusses an attack on Iran will be greatly complicated by the street protesters who bravely faced death to pursue freedom.
International integration
Humans are emotional pack animals. To transcend kin-based groupings we align by adopting shared beliefs. This reflects an inherent vulnerability, whereas economic progress today demands international integration.
Progressive ideals have been irresponsibly indulged to an extraordinary extent. This has not benefited the people of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Russia, or SA. The ANC’s choice of preferred alignment partners, particularly Iran and Hamas, reflects very negatively on the party, as does its overindulgence of redistribution at growth’s expense.
To have a functioning worldview we must reject progressive narratives that prioritise judging at the expense of solving. Instead, we must employ realistic language in our thoughts and political discourse to advance the policy pivots SA needs to spread prosperity.
[Image: Mario Verduzco on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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