Is poverty the next big thing?

China’s prosperity is associated with America’s belief that job losses are due to currency manipulations in Beijing

A sparky guy staying at my guesthouse, The Melville House, has been commissioned in London to search the continent for the next big thing that will change the future. He is hoping to find a compelling idea like “make poverty history”, and good luck to him in these unpredictable times. Having recently vacated his office at Downing Street, where he was African advisor to the Labour government, he admits with a brave grin that his exploration hinges on comprehending not only the future but the past and, of course, the present.
We’ve had some interesting chats over wine in the evenings. After reviewing a golden era between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of Lehman Brothers, we discussed our global entry into an age of anxiety characterized by lack of liquidity (pass the Chardonnay) and fear of the future. Not only has Britain embarked on a dark age of austerity but angry Europeans are prematurely up in arms over having to work just a couple of years longer into their early Sixties, when delayed retirement is likely to remain a trend in the West until employment extends to 70 years or longer.  
It is a depressing picture overall. The EU is in perilous debt as it quarrels about the future of its shared currency, while embracing populist, anti-immigration politics. The US battles huge unemployment and stubborn deficits. People serving the public in many countries report a level of rage and rudeness that wasn’t nearly as rife in happier days when we all believed prosperity everywhere was getting better for everyone.
One of our losses in the wake of the financial crisis is the end of the reassuring idea that globalization had created common interests among big powers, although the free-market thing hurt a lot of African nations who found it hard to sell their products to Western markets. Says Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times: “A world that had once been divided between capitalist and communist systems – and between a small group of rich countries and a much larger group of underdeveloped nations – was now united by a single economic system. For a tantalizing 20 years, globalization seemed to promise rising living standards for all nations, and a more peaceful world.”
Unwelcome tensions have since accompanied the economic rise of developing powers like China. Its prosperity has become associated with fearful America’s belief that job losses are due to currency manipulation in Beijing, among other suspicions. Authoritarian China’s post-2008 confidence meanwhile continues to counter the soothing idea that the onward march of democracy will unite the world.
In this hazardous environment, where the most startling global economic predictions induce yawns, you would think an investment-dependent country like South Africa might proceed cautiously. With even America printing money as if fiscally advised by Robert Mugabe, you would expect an economically-vulnerable African country to behave uber-sensitively.
Europe - colonial warts and all – is debt-ridden and needs markets like ours. EU nations, alongside the US, have admirably led global reform since the end of the Cold War. Millions of people around the world are freer and more prosperous because of the spread of democratic and capitalist ideas by the West. You would think the ANC, with all its lofty notions of political freedom, would want to hang onto its old but humanely compliant generation of foreign investors instead of sucking up to new ones with dismal human rights records.
But no: it is to China that the ANC looks for its economic model. Next month, for example, members of the ruling party’s executive committee will be attending a special political school in Beijing to study China’s economic success. Don’t even ask if the repressive Asian regime’s political failures will be on the agenda because China is a country that hides information from the public and punishes the exposure of corruption (not unlike the ANC’s latest media aspirations, in fact). Zuma’s team will do whatever it takes to extend BRIC to BRICSA as their next big bloc-buster thing.
You might argue that the free-market economics, globalization and democratic values of the West are yesterday’s news, or that China has not been accorded adequate recognition for the growth of its economy. But as a progressive South African, you would also have to ponder the blindingly obvious: that China’s sole trade union is controlled, like everything else in the world’s foremost awakening economic giant, by the government. Surely that isn’t the coveted key to economic development we’re looking for? What does Zwelinzima Vavi have to say (and why hasn’t he said anything yet)?
The ANC’s most generous gift to Africa and its own citizens can only be to struggle on to become an example of lasting economic growth in a resilient democracy. China simply cannot be any sort of a model for a free SA.
So what will it take for us to become a developed rather than a developing country without obnoxious strings attached - as South Korea did in just 30 years? We will have to employ the majority of our people and offer them a good education and good healthcare in addition to a higher standard of living, says Michael Spicer, the CEO of Business Leadership SA (BLSA).
Referring to the country’s extremely narrow tax base, in which 80% of companies belonging to BLSA pay 80% of all corporate taxes, he explains: “This shows the inequality of society, but it also shows that very few geese are laying the golden eggs.”
Spicer says South Africa relies on foreign investors for capital investment and, without them - a predictable bunch of Western corporates up to now – our economy would not have sufficient tax revenues to meet commitments. “It must be remembered that we are a large welfare state with 16 million receiving benefits, and this will rise to 20 million soon. In fact, one person supports benefits for three persons, and this is not sustainable.”

Therefore, dear leaders, let’s not opt for an unknown future with the Chinese. For one thing, our already questionable human rights status among nations might turn into human wrongs. For another, we’ll risk South Africa’s next big thing being a replay of poverty history instead of us becoming a proudly developed country.