SOUTH Africa is back at the top of the world news agenda. As always when this happens, the most pressing question is whether we can handle it.
The Brics summit was never going to lead world bulletins by itself, but combined with the military debacle in the Central African Republic, we are in the spotlight again.
The questions coming from the chatterati on social media, in the letters columns of some papers and elsewhere are: Should we be in Brics? – and should we be in Bangui?
The questions may reflect the irritating desire that some commentators seem to have to see us fail at anything we attempt as a country – remember the World Cup naysayers? – but both are nevertheless relevant at this moment.
South Africa may be outclassed in the company of Brazil, Russia, India and China when it comes to development or sheer economic size. Brics is, as some are having fun saying, the four major developing countries and South Africa.
But South Africa is in the game if the measures are economic growth or efficiency, as measured by economic output per person (per capita GDP). And it is still the biggest and most efficient economy on the African continent.
Data cited by the CIA World Fact Book compares the five:
l Brazil – Gross domestic product 2.23-trillion; GDP growth 0.9%; GDP per capita 11 845;
l Russia – GDP 1.953-trillion; growth 3.4%; GDP per capita 17 698;
l India – GDP 1.946-trillion; growth 5.3%; GDP per capita 3944;
l China – GDP 8.250-trillion; growth 7.8%; GDP per capita 8382; and
l South Africa – GDP 422-billion; growth 3.1%; GDP per capita 11 035.
If we have an obvious deficiency in this company, it is one of governance, not economic relevance.
It’s not that China or Russia are shining examples of democratic governance or that any of the other four is much ahead of South Africa in managing the corruption that seems to go with accelerated development everywhere.
It is a question of whether our current government and the officials it has installed think big, take a global perspective and accept that village politics is more suited to a compound in KwaZulu- Natal than to the global village.
We put on a great show for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. In the greater scheme of things, it did not really matter that we failed to qualify on merit and were bundled out in the first round. What the world remembers is a stunning event.
Playing in the Brics league, however, we need to qualify on economic merit – and we do – but we need to be more than just good hosts: we need to use the club to enhance our own reputation among investors within the club and outside.
Getting that right must include confidence-building performance in all the other areas of governance that will affect perceptions of our long-term stability.
Scenes of panicked policemen shooting and killing 34 miners armed with sticks and spears didn’t help. Nor, since then, has our evident inability to rein in those police forces undone any of the damage.
Now we have the killing of 13 soldiers from one of our best known battalions and the wounding of 27 more in a firefight with rebels in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic.
Many, ranging from the opposition Democratic Alliance to the Congress of South African Trade Unions, are asking whether we should have been there at all – and the answer increasingly seems to be that we should not have been.
“We see no reason for them to stay there. They were sent there to protect a president who has fled,” said Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
That they were there to protect the president at all and not just to train CAR forces suggests mission creep at least.
DA defence spokesman David Maynier called for a parliamentary inquiry to answer, among other questions, “whether President Jacob Zuma authorised the deployment of the SANDF against the advice of the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, and the military command who reportedly recommended, earlier this year, that the 28 soldiers originally deployed in the CAR should be withdrawn (and) whether the president was warned by senior military officers about the precarious situation in the CAR before taking the decision to deploy more soldiers”.
The mandate of the mission is blurred to say the least. We were propping up a leader who won power in a coup and retained it through elections that no one seriously considers free and fair.
More worrying is that we were there in terms of a bilateral agreement and not with the support of the African Union, whose job it is to decide where the African peace needs to be kept and by whom.
But it would be wrong to conflate the question of whether we should have been in Bangui with the question of whether we should be active in African peacekeeping.
In village politics, it may be appropriate sometimes to send a raiding party to support or to subdue a neighbouring chieftain. In the politics of the global village, our responsibility must be to support the emergence of democratic governance everywhere that it has not yet taken root.
We are leaders in Africa in many fields, ranging from democratic practice to statistical measurement, infrastructure development and judicial practice. It is in our own interest to make the best of our values the African standard.
To do that, we do need to be active members of every club that could bring benefit to our country or our continent. That includes Brics and it includes the club of continental peacekeepers.
It should not include bilateral mercenary deals with corrupt kleptocrats masquerading as democratically elected national leaders.
Brendan Boyle is editor of the Daily Dispatch
Questions about SA role in Brics – and in Bangui
The Brics summit was never going to lead world bulletins by itself, but combined with the military debacle in the Central African Republic, we are in the spotlight again.
The questions coming from the chatterati on social media, in the letters columns of some papers and elsewhere are: Should we be in Brics? – and should we be in Bangui?
The questions may reflect the irritating desire that some commentators seem to have to see us fail at anything we attempt as a country – remember the World Cup naysayers? – but both are nevertheless relevant at this moment.
South Africa may be outclassed in the company of Brazil, Russia, India and China when it comes to development or sheer economic size. Brics is, as some are having fun saying, the four major developing countries and South Africa.
But South Africa is in the game if the measures are economic growth or efficiency, as measured by economic output per person (per capita GDP). And it is still the biggest and most efficient economy on the African continent.
Data cited by the CIA World Fact Book compares the five:
l Brazil – Gross domestic product 2.23-trillion; GDP growth 0.9%; GDP per capita 11 845;
l Russia – GDP 1.953-trillion; growth 3.4%; GDP per capita 17 698;
l India – GDP 1.946-trillion; growth 5.3%; GDP per capita 3944;
l China – GDP 8.250-trillion; growth 7.8%; GDP per capita 8382; and
l South Africa – GDP 422-billion; growth 3.1%; GDP per capita 11 035.
If we have an obvious deficiency in this company, it is one of governance, not economic relevance.
It’s not that China or Russia are shining examples of democratic governance or that any of the other four is much ahead of South Africa in managing the corruption that seems to go with accelerated development everywhere.
It is a question of whether our current government and the officials it has installed think big, take a global perspective and accept that village politics is more suited to a compound in KwaZulu- Natal than to the global village.
We put on a great show for the 2010 Fifa World Cup. In the greater scheme of things, it did not really matter that we failed to qualify on merit and were bundled out in the first round. What the world remembers is a stunning event.
Playing in the Brics league, however, we need to qualify on economic merit – and we do – but we need to be more than just good hosts: we need to use the club to enhance our own reputation among investors within the club and outside.
Getting that right must include confidence-building performance in all the other areas of governance that will affect perceptions of our long-term stability.
Scenes of panicked policemen shooting and killing 34 miners armed with sticks and spears didn’t help. Nor, since then, has our evident inability to rein in those police forces undone any of the damage.
Now we have the killing of 13 soldiers from one of our best known battalions and the wounding of 27 more in a firefight with rebels in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic.
Many, ranging from the opposition Democratic Alliance to the Congress of South African Trade Unions, are asking whether we should have been there at all – and the answer increasingly seems to be that we should not have been.
“We see no reason for them to stay there. They were sent there to protect a president who has fled,” said Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
That they were there to protect the president at all and not just to train CAR forces suggests mission creep at least.
DA defence spokesman David Maynier called for a parliamentary inquiry to answer, among other questions, “whether President Jacob Zuma authorised the deployment of the SANDF against the advice of the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, and the military command who reportedly recommended, earlier this year, that the 28 soldiers originally deployed in the CAR should be withdrawn (and) whether the president was warned by senior military officers about the precarious situation in the CAR before taking the decision to deploy more soldiers”.
The mandate of the mission is blurred to say the least. We were propping up a leader who won power in a coup and retained it through elections that no one seriously considers free and fair.
More worrying is that we were there in terms of a bilateral agreement and not with the support of the African Union, whose job it is to decide where the African peace needs to be kept and by whom.
But it would be wrong to conflate the question of whether we should have been in Bangui with the question of whether we should be active in African peacekeeping.
In village politics, it may be appropriate sometimes to send a raiding party to support or to subdue a neighbouring chieftain. In the politics of the global village, our responsibility must be to support the emergence of democratic governance everywhere that it has not yet taken root.
We are leaders in Africa in many fields, ranging from democratic practice to statistical measurement, infrastructure development and judicial practice. It is in our own interest to make the best of our values the African standard.
To do that, we do need to be active members of every club that could bring benefit to our country or our continent. That includes Brics and it includes the club of continental peacekeepers.
It should not include bilateral mercenary deals with corrupt kleptocrats masquerading as democratically elected national leaders.
Brendan Boyle is editor of the Daily Dispatch
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