INLSA
David Canning
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By David Canning
Please identify the two most significant traits of people living in sub-Saharan Africa – one being positive and the other negative. This was the question posed to me by a friend preparing to write an article about the future, as seen from an African perspective.
This is almost impossible, I thought! How can one define, in just a few words, the subcontinent’s single greatest asset and single greatest liability?
Nevertheless, it was a challenge, so I did my best to come up with the answers.
If we are to believe the headlines, this is a very gloomy place. Slowing economies, wars, ethnic and racial tensions, massive unemployment, extremely skewed income distribution, corruption, poor education, malnutrition and failing health care are the primary subjects for news coverage. But, then, the news is not always balanced.
Heidi Holland’s new book 100 Years of Struggle: Mandela’s ANC, published last week by Penguin, also lists the many successes that have emerged over the past 20 years.
They include our peaceful transition to democracy, the removal of apartheid, the provision of welfare benefits for 15 million people, the dramatic drop in the rate of the severe malnutrition among the under-fives, the increased primary school enrolment to nearly 100 percent and establishment of the world’s biggest antiretroviral treatment programme for HIV/Aids.
From a global perspective, I came across an encouraging six-page feature in the latest edition of the Christian Science Monitor’s weekly review.
In it journalist Peter Grier writes that humankind actually has made striking progress in the past few decades – despite all the negatives.
Titled “The good news – Bad news does not define the human race”, his piece relates some marked progress made over the past few decades.
It identifies four major areas of striking global success: A dramatic decline in deaths from war, the growth of freedom and democracy (in 1950 only 22 countries were defined as “free” – today there are 86, with another 60 partly free), a clear narrowing of the gender gap and marked progress towards achieving the UN’s Millennium Goals for the year 2015 (now only three years away).
The six-page graphic feature shows that, even with the current economic slowdown in major economies, the world is well ahead of the UN’s targets of poverty reduction by 2015.
In 1990, about 72 percent of the global population lived on less than $1.25 (R10) a day. By 2005, this had fallen to 25.2 percent. The world is now ahead of the game towards achieving the goal of 14.4 percent in three years time.
The goal in the Middle East and North Africa is just 1.3 percent – similar to that of Europe and Central Asia. Sadly, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region lagging – despite a welcome poverty reduction from 57.6 percent to 50.9 percent in the 15 years to 2005. Grier writes that many Southern African states are still in the lower tier of nations “mired in misery”.
Significantly, many of these are also states with ineffective or corrupt governments.
There is a correlation between the corruption of the elite and the poverty of the people.
However, there is substantial hope even for sub-Saharan Africa. Overall real gross domestic product growth in the region is estimated to reach 5.75 percent in the current year, from 5.25 percent.
It is interesting that the region’s average growth rate is significantly higher than our own. As I have commented before, South Africans are wallowing in the delusional beliefs of economic strength and personal entitlement – even while our neighbours grow apace.
Corruption, nepotism, encroachment on individual liberties, discrimination (albeit in new guises) and neo-racism remain our deep social problems and they can all basically be linked to a lack of fundamental moral values. This was my answer to my friend’s question about Africa’s single greatest liability.
Paradoxically, my answer to his second question – its greatest asset – was similar. After all, what really lay behind the success in removing the institutional and personal ills of apartheid? It was the spirit of selflessness, sacrifice and passion of millions.
We were primarily driven by a sense of right and wrong and a desire to create a just and equal society.
This sense of morality arose from shared values whose roots were primarily religious or spiritual. This was evidenced by the forgiveness and reconciliation that marked processes driven by SA’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was led and influenced by the spiritual values under the Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
So, when a spiritual dimension played such a huge role in establishing the successes, should we not look there, too, as the “alpha and omega” route to solving to our social ills?
