Can a house so acutely divided long endure?

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand” (Matthew 12:25)

These words were first spoken two thousand years ago by Jesus of Nazareth as a response to His detractors who, in a failed attempt to discredit Him, accused Him of casting out demons by Beelzebub the prince of demons. The subtext being that even Satan understood this principle. The great American president Abraham Lincoln was to repeat them in 1858 to highlight the untenable continuation of a half slave owning and non-slave owning United States of America, ideas that would be consummated by blood. Approaching twenty years since the advent of democracy, our hope to endure and prosper well into the twentieth century and beyond would be well served by hearkening to the same message: a house divided cannot stand!

Our country faces no greater challenge to its unity, cohesion and enduring prosperity than the gnawing spectre of racism. Perhaps this ought not be too surprising given stubborn, subterranean and often unchecked beliefs in the superiority of the white race, which had earlier found expression in apartheid. 

This iniquitous system which catapulted the national party to power in 1948, had been seen by some as an “ingenious” solution to the “native question”, which had troubled man of such intellectual dexterity as General JC Smuts who simply could not fathom the thought that South Africans of African descent could live side by side with their white counterparts, in a environment of mutual respect, equality and citizenship. 

No longer able to contain his exasperation, Smuts once confessed, “When I consider the political future of the natives in South Africa I must say that I look into the shadows and darkness, and then I feel inclined to shift the intolerable burden of solving that sphinx problem to the ampler shoulders and stronger brains of the future“. 

Feeling the burden of this “sphinx problem”, John Merriman, the last Prime Minister of the Cape Colony before the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, had earlier lamented, “I wish we had no black men in South Africa”. Seeing as Providence had so determined, he had to concede with these ominously prescient words that ignoring it would be “to build on a volcano, the suppressed force of which must some day burst forth in a destroying flood, as history warns us it has always done.” 

Under the scheme of apartheid, black South Africans would be given the “privilege” of self-governance in their own reserves where they would ostensibly enjoy the privileges of citizenship governed by their own “people” by their own customs. The Verwoerdian vision captured the imagination of the times. It seemed an elegant way of dealing with the nagging problem, while simultaneously deftly sidestepping the gnawing moral pitfalls, under the pretext of preserving black culture and autonomy. 

Of course black South Africans were not so simple as to overlook the obvious bigotry, refusing to be duped by this show of “graciousness”. They rightfully resisted, reluctantly resorting to a decades-long armed struggle, having despaired of the efficacy of peaceful means. Though a full-blown civil war would be averted, violent racial tension made the country a difficult place in which to live. The pressure of the consequent civil unrest, economic and sports sanctions as well as the stigma of the country’s pariah status, culminated in the ineluctable dawn of the democratic era, a “miracle” that rightly brought the country into the gaze of an admiring global community. 

Without taking anything way from the “rainbow moment”, with hindsight it seems the change was brought about largely by pragmatism than any sense of contrition over the immorality of apartheid. Evolving western views on racism had given rise to intensified international sanctions against the country, effectively crippling its economy, which was a crucial factor in the eventual capitulation. 

The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 also aided matters. It had given tactical, moral and financial support to the liberation effort. Its demise therefore allayed concerns about the imminence of a dreaded communist revolution, which had served as what some consider as merely a pretext to cover what was otherwise a visceral aversion to democratic reforms. Negotiations could therefore commence in earnest.

An assessment of race relations twenty years later reflects sporadic improvements but leaves much to be desired in light of the grandeur of the idea of the rainbow nation. Some might cynically contend that we have seen nothing more than cosmetic changes from the days of our dark past. Changes that appear at times more induced than embraced and usually not without much resentment from largely unwilling protagonists. Indeed, much of our inter-racial engagement continues to be characterised by suspicion, distrust, smouldering resentment, scarcely concealed condescension, exclusion and forced smiles. The ideal of harmonious, deep and equitable cross-racial relationships remains largely a dream deferred. 

The roots and the nature of racism in South Africa are highly complex, and a view that purports a complete understanding can rightly be considered presumptuous. Equally, it would be disingenuous equating racism to the unpardonable sin or one that every white South African suffers from. Certainly any attempts to ascribe moral superiority to any people group by virtue of its standing on this question would be duplicitous. Indeed, the honest among us will find it difficult to dispute the biblical proclamation, “there is no difference, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. 

It is not my thesis here that this is the only or even necessarily the greatest problem facing South Africa today. It is only one of the many challenges we face. Nevertheless, it is well within our collective interests to remain indefatigable in contending with injustice wherever and whenever it surfaces, particularly when its persistence imperils the hope of realising an idea so core to our incipient national identity - that of the rainbow nation, one on which many have sadly long despaired, considering it farcical and a cruel illusion in the face of persisting racism. 

It could be argued that in dealing with racism, we have fallen prey to the error of presuming that the abrogation of apartheid laws marked its end in South Africa. It is not uncommon hearing from proponents of this line of reasoning repeated appeals for black people to move on and leave the past behind. While a forward-looking orientation is crucial to our progress as a nation, this should not amount to a failure to deal with present realities, rooted in our fractious past. Indeed, the nurtured and oft-unchallenged notion of the supposed inherent superiority of white people, explained by nothing other their whiteness, is a present and not a past reality. It can only be for our collective benefit to lay the proverbial axe to the root. 

A deeper reflection on racism illuminates a condition with roots common to all humanity. To varying degrees, we are all given to the universal vice of prejudice, founded, among other things, on fear. Fear that we are not quite adequate and that we will one day be found out. A fear that has many faces, not least a desire to portray an imagined sense of superiority over the next person. Translated into a people group in relation to another, we call this racism. Accordingly, the origins of racism, as it came to be experienced in South Africa, found spurious justification from theological, scientific and cultural anchors respectively through passing of various historical epochs. 

Self-serving interpretations of scripture sought to portray black people, the putative descendents of Ham, even with the tenuous biblical substantiation, as a cursed race and therefore subject to subservience and subjugation. This was further conflated with a twisted version of Calvinism that mischievously condemned black people as irredeemably predestined for perdition. The advent of rationalism and the concomitant cultural shift away from biblical Christianity came to weaken reliance on biblical authority. A new intellectual anchor needed to be found. This brought into play Darwin’s theory of natural selection. 

Charles Darwin’s seminal work, tellingly entitled “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, came to take central stage in defining human consciousness, according to which it seemed an acceptable proposition in Western popular thought to consider black people as inferior to their white counterparts, owing to a lower place on the supposed evolutionary scale. After all, so the argument went, Europeans were streets ahead in technological and cultural sophistication. This coincided with the enslavement of black people, colonialism and apartheid. All of which had the added consequence of adversely shaping the mind of both actors, entrenching habits of superiority and subservience that served to reinforce the original lie and thus promoting a pernicious vicious cycle.

Of course the test of time would betray these arguments, robbing them of their prominence in mainstream Western consciousness. They would be driven to the fringes of society and at times the shadows, where they would continue to lurk unnoticed. It is curious that despite the obvious injustice, particularly in a culture supposedly steeped in Judeo-Christian morality, the change of mind came only after much resistance, bloodshed and time. The moral authority, tenacity and sometimes militancy of such giants as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela played a pivotal role in raising the profile of the injustice of racism and thus reshaping Western popular opinion, with South African being among the last bastions of institutionalised racism. 

My contention here rests not on a belief in uniformity for its own sake. I contend rather for the inherent equality in dignity and worth of all human beings. Our histories that were nurtured continents apart by vastly divergent exigencies make our differences unavoidable. Rather than a limitation, this is a strength that contributes to the wealth and vibrancy of our nation. The challenge and opportunity before us is to harness the latent treasures of our rich diversity and forge them into a competitive advantage that makes us a cohesive and unstoppable force in global business, the arts, engineering, science, sports, technology and international relations. 

President JC Smuts, a brilliant man by all accounts, with uncharacteristic cowardice and myopia, opted to transfer the resolution of our inter-racial challenges to the “ampler shoulders and stronger brains of future”. How dearly we have all paid for his abdication of responsibility! In taking up his challenge however, we must accept that the full realisation of the boundless potential of our rainbow nation requires for the perennial issue of racism to be finally laid to rest. We owe our progeny no less! 

Without burdening each other with the overwhelming weight of guilt, we do well to remember that apartheid was merely a fruit of a tree that remains with us. Its end was a commendable start. Nevertheless, we remain with the arduous task of dealing with its resilient progenitor, racism. This task can only begin with an acknowledgement of its existence, a simple proposition that has so far proven surprisingly illusive. 

What is morality?

Perusing any contemporary newspaper should remove any lingering doubts that human beings, regardless of their professed positions on theism, remain ineradicable moralists. We must confess to be uniformly given to moralizing. At the core of a typical political story is, invariably, a multiplicity of usually unquestioned underlying moral judgments with which both journalists and readers alike instinctively concur. 

Corruption is a subject on which South Africans have become painfully conversant in recent times. Try as we might, for many of us a presidential homestead to the value of R200million, at tax payers expense, amidst a sea of poverty, is an idea we find simply irreconcilably repugnant.

With morality evidently as intrinsic to being human as it seems to be, one cannot help but be provoked by a jarring question attributed to one of our prominent politicians, whom a Sunday Newspaper story reports as having asked, "what is morality?"

The question is troubling at first. After all if a person in a position of such public trust confesses ignorance to this fundamental question, what hope is there for our politics? Such concerns, which I share, only betray our status as inveterate moralists. Upon deeper reflection the question becomes deceptively profound, surprisingly honest and a logical conclusion to what many consider a coherent worldview. 

Indeed, for evolved molecules and free moral agents that we purportedly are, the underlying question suddenly becomes a reasonable one. Namely, the question of what is morally right or wrong must necessarily be a personal one. It is rightly unjustifiable for a people of intrinsically equal value and worth to ascribe their moral standards to the rest of humanity. 

So, rightly we should ask, who conferred up them that authority? 

Someone might argue that what we regard as morality is simply a social contract. In other words morality consists of the evolution of values that a society has incrementally embraced through time, driven by mutual self-interest, towards collective survival.

The same question had to be contemplated by the victorious Allied forces in their dealings with a conquered Nazi Germany, relating specifically to the chilling spectre of the holocaust. Nazi Germany, whether passively or actively, collectively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of countless fellow human beings who committed no crime other than to be born into a particular ethnic community. It is worth highlighting here that those gruesome acts that constitute the holocaust occurred in a society that had for decades longed for a way of contending with the irritatingly persistent Jewish question, and thus Hitler’s “final solution” found resonance with what had become morally numb society. 

During the famous Nuremberg trials, the Allies were presented with the troublesome matter of bringing to judgment people who acted not only in concert with societal norms but in fact within the laws of their land. In convicting the Nazi officials, they were in fact making a profound statement on morality, namely, there is a standard of morality that transcends both societal norms and laws. Though they might not have been quite able to fathom it, its reality was so immanent as to be impossible to deny. Though not intending to, they were essentially compelled to unwittingly present a penetrating debunking of the social contract argument. That is, there is more to morality than merely societal norms and laws.

This leaves us face to face with a troubling conundrum. That we are moral, we cannot truthfully deny. Indeed, when we learn, as we commonly do, that one of our politicians has misappropriated public funds, a visceral sense of injustice wells up inside of us that seems to go exceedingly beyond philosophical reasoning. Invariably, we become deeply overcome by a righteous indignation by the brazen dishonesty. Instinctively, in the process, we make what are undeniable moral judgments. This immediately places us on a pedestal that presumes universality to our supposed personal moral standards that we feel at liberty to indiscriminately use to judge politicians, who may not even share them!

This conundrum leaves us with the same conclusion implied by the verdicts of the Nuremberg trials, that there exists such a thing as transcendent morality that is profoundly visceral and self-evident. If we accept morality to be necessarily personal, the question becomes who is this person whose moral values we seem to irresistibly gravitate to? Whoever this person is, they must possess intrinsically superior worth and value than all human beings. Otherwise, how else can they justifiably command a universal obligation to their personal moral standards? 

The bible reveals the identity of whom Greek philosophers of antiquity called the "Unmoved mover" as possessing the mysterious appellation: I AM. The name, speaks much about His nature, that of one who is unbound by time, eternally present and personal. Scripture reveals Him as just and untouched by corruption of any kind and in fact untouchable by it, the very embodiment of those timeless virtues that have bound nations for time immemorial, without which they seem irrevocably destined for tragic disintegration.

We are His offspring and thus possess remnants of His personal attributes from which we remain yet unable to entirely extricate ourselves, even though the grotesque imprimatur of sin continues to mar us. His holiness precludes Him from touching what is corrupt, which has accordingly created an infinite chasm between Him and us, his prodigal offspring. In the absence of this vital connection, life makes a discordant sound that leaves us helplessly aware that things are not quite as they ought to be. Though in times past He remained hid from his wayward offspring, compelled by His essence, love, on the cross he paid the penalty for our gnawing guilt. To nations therefore, the divine invitation resounds with echoes of infinite mercy, it speaks and will not be silenced: “Look to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:22)

Rebuilding a nation - claiming our place among the great nations of the earth

Lucifer has been in the business of troubling the nations for time immemorial. No wonder it was said concerning him: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations!” (Isaiah 14:12-2). How eagerly the nations await that prophetic demise! Precisely because none has been left untouched by the reach of his ravenous tyranny. The prophet Isaiah offers a promise of hope through the redeemed, that “they shall rebuild the old ruins, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations” (Isaiah 61:4). The unrelenting question remains, how can this be done for South Africa?

The chronology of South Africa, a land of unmatched beauty, with broad, sunlit and open spaces, clear blue skies and smiling faces, catalogues a litany of political, cultural and ideological contestation, leaving a bitter trail of conquest and bloodshed. A glance across the horizon of its troubled history brings to mind images of scuffles between Dutch and the Khoisan, the Xhosa and the Khoisan, colonisation by the Dutch and counter annexation by the British, series of frontier wars, many internecine and highly distressing tribal wars, notably the infamous Mfecane instigated by bellicose Zulu warrior-king, Shaka, two bitter Anglo Boer Wars and finally the abhorrent system of institutionalised racial domination of apartheid. Indeed, one finds little reason to disagree with the British missionary Mary Moffat, who over 200 years ago lamented, “it requires some little fortitude to live at rest in such a tumultuous land”. Even in our day, her words continue to find unsavoury resonance with many South Africans. 

In its present form, it is a relatively young nation, born 17 years ago in 1994. Its history books attest the reality of its fierce contestation, where one group or the other, has found it to their advantage at sundry times to revise the story of its origin. Nowhere is this more applicable than the date of the first arrival of Bantu South Africans, the largest cultural group, one that was preceded by the Khoisan by many centuries. The quest to attain what semblance of legitimacy possible was well served by the attempt at historical revisionism that sought to date this arrival centuries later. 

While the exact date of arrival of the Bantu is unclear, archaeological evidence points to their presence in South Africa as early as 700AD. The landing of Jan van Riebeeck in 1652, soon followed by the first crop of Malays in 1657, the British in 1795, with Indian and Chinese immigrants following later, would later give rise to the apt appellation, the "Rainbow Nation". Rather than benefiting from the multiplicity of advantages associated with multiethnicity, seen in such nations as the US, this diversity precipitated a fractious epoch in the history of our country that culminated in the Apartheid system, which left a deeply imbedded socio-economic wound. 

The advent of democracy in 1994 brought with it waves of hope for the country in general and the previously oppressed majority in particular. Hope that the democratic era would erase the fruit of centuries of hatred and injustice, ushering an era of freedom, peace and prosperity. The entire nation, if not the world, could hardly resist being caught up in raptures of euphoric optimism about the prospect of this “miracle” nation. A survey of the national mood 18 years down the road paints a picture of nation overcome by a growing restless angst, smouldering disillusionment and increasingly common outbursts of public indignation and violence, a language that is well entrenched in the national psyche, bringing to mind Langston Hughes poem, The Dream Deferred: 

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Rather than steady progress towards the hoped-for utopian ideal, the journey has been rocky, fraught with disappointment and a multitude of snares. The reasons are complex, including a combination of unrealistic expectations about the cost of true progress and the time it takes to build great nations. This notwithstanding, the post apartheid ANC government, hamstrung by its own misdemeanours, reminiscent of countless liberation movements across the world, has sadly been an impediment rather than an aid to progress. Rampant corruption, poor leadership and maladministration have added to the ills of apartheid such that the convenient excuse of blaming apartheid has begun to lose some of its erstwhile lustre. 

Our generation is therefore faced with formidable social, political and economic challenges to which we are called to find answers that have so far eluded the present generation of leaders. An inexhaustive list thereof includes: 

• Economic inequalities 
• Insufficient social cohesion 
• Endemic corruption and maladministration 
• Poverty and unemployment 
• Education and skills crisis 
• Crime 
• Infrastructure backlogs 
• A growing lawlessness 

The challenges are undeniably formidable; nevertheless we draw much hope from unshakeable truth encapsulated in the "great and precious promises" by which the natural is transcended. Among which is the assurance that authority over the nations is no longer with Lucifer, the destroyer of nations. The biblical invitation to the Son, chronicled in the old covenant is so captured:

“Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession”. (Psalms 2:8)

The Father, in his infinite faithfulness, has been true to His promise, giving the promised nations to the Son who has relinquished them with His blood from the rapacious grasp of the Satan. Accordingly, He says to His ecclesia:

“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you”. (Matthew 28:18)

We are therefore assured that for the Lord Jesus and his strategy, the church, victory is inevitable. (The English word “church” is a translation of the Greek word “ecclesia”, which incidentally has nothing to do with a building but refers to “those called out to rule.”) This unshakeable conviction is rooted in our knowledge of the Lord who cannot lie and to whom nothing is too difficult, whose promise to us continues to speak:

“ I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it”. (Matthew 16:18)

This scripture speaks of the inexorable but imperfect advance of the church through history and the certainty of its ultimate defeat of the enemy. Rather than joining the growing ranks of the disillusioned, with hearts filled with unshakable faith, let us strengthen our hands to work. Our work must be strategic, with future generations firmly in our minds involving the following:

1. Rebuilding the family. The family as the first institution established by God and the most foundational building block of any nation must be restored. It is here where identity and self worth are forged. It is in the family where we receive our value system and learn how to relate to other human beings. No nation can be enduringly great with a broken family system because all politicians, teachers, trade unionists and businessmen come from a family. When the family is functional, there is no stopping a nation. Malachi 4: 4-5 reads:

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he will turn the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”

Sadly, broken families characterised by fatherlessness litter the streets of our beautiful nation, with evidence of the promised curse all too apparent. If you do not believe me, I invite you to peruse any newspaper in South Africa. Let us allow therefore, God to plant in each of our hearts a vision of prosperous families across the nation, beginning with our own.

2. Rediscover the apostolic mandate given to the church. The mandate given to the church is simple: “make disciples of all nations”. There is much that can be said about the institutional church and its role, which at times has been of regrettable complicity with the tyranny of apartheid. It is a colourful tale with much that is noble and ignoble, whose glorious true colours were glowingly manifest during the very cavernous sunset years of apartheid and the transition into the “New South Africa”. Those were treacherous years of great heartache and uncertainty, with an omnipresent threat of civil war that cut an unnerving feature over the horizon, casting the nation into a perpetual state of anxiety. 

The church led the charge of praying for the troubled nation, storming the proverbial gates of heaven and averting what appeared certain catastrophe. Men such as Ray McCauley, among many others, rose to the occasion showing leadership that secures their place among the pantheon of great South African leaders. The church acted, as the church should and the nation rejoiced. 

Sadly, the post-apartheid era gave way to an inward focus and a preoccupation with the spirit of the age, aptly captured by Francis Schaeffer as the pursuit of “personal peace and prosperity”. Predictably, this coincided with an inevitable national moral decline because when the church withdraws, the nations cannot but travail. When the church ought to have occupied itself with discipling a new generation of South Africans - men and women with the solid moral character and vision such as was required to lead the quest of restoring a country still reeling from the effects of an unjust system - it turned rather to a ‘self-help’ gospel, which placed an inordinate emphasis on material enrichment and personal comfort for the individual believer, with out the concomitant regard to his heavenly responsibilities. 

It tragically blended, as such, with a culture preoccupied with self-enrichment at any cost. This meant that the army of morally upright and principled future leaders that should have flowed from the church into education, politics, business, nursing, the family and every arena of human endeavour were tragically no where to be found. It is axiomatic that nature abhors a vacuum. Men of corrupt minds, destitute of the truth, therefore duly filled the vacuum and so the nation travails.

3. We must see our vocation as a holy calling from God and make it a life long ambition to discover the applicability of God’s word in every facet of it. The pursuit of soul- winning in the marketplace must be complemented by the application of God’s way and will in the actual content of work. Some may be called to demonstrate what a kingdom business looks, others of may be called to shape the arts, the media and education. Perhaps you might be a part of a new generation of godly politicians to provide visionary, integrous and competent leadership to our communities.

4. We must embrace the biblical call to be disciples of Christ first and then disciplers of nations. A disciple is a disciplined learner, one who is on a lifelong journey toward mastering those truths that have truly captured their heart. In all of history, those who change the world for better or worse invariably are disciples of someone. Examples include the likes of Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Buddha, Mohammed and others. Jesus distinguishes Himself from anyone in history, in that He did not merely claim to show us the way, the truth and the life, but declared Himself the embodiment of these realities, proving this by His unprecedented and unmatched resurrection from the dead. In heeding His commission, we must embrace a vision of discipleship that seeks to affect not only individuals but also nations. We must seek to be catalysts of change who shape the institutional infrastructure of our nation, affecting what it values, how it thinks and operates for generations to come. 

Once again the clouds have begun to gather around the horizon, not unlike numerous moments in our history. The advance of corrupt and wicked men seems inexorable. Our families and schools seem a wasteland. We scour the horizon in vain for the emergence of leaders to guide us to a hopeful tomorrow. Our search should look no further than ourselves, as the church of Jesus Christ. For we have been empowered and entrusted with the sacred task of stewarding the nations. The nations will thrive or prosper to the extent of our faithfulness to this holy stewardship and no further. With and for us is the victorious One whose death on the Cross has earned Him the supreme title: Lord of heaven and earth. Also with and in us is the same Spirit who once upon a time hovered upon a dark and formless planet, far from being daunted by the chaos that was before Him, He soon released a gush of power that created the orderly planet we have come to know. As those whose hope is drawn not from this world and its passing comforts and pleasures, let us dust ourselves from our slumber and prepare for a heavenly mission that cannot fail, “For the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, As the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14)

The (im)morality of quantitative easing

With the Euro and US economies continuing to sputter, whispers of Quantitative Easing (QE) have once again consumed the financial media. It is hardly encouraging that, in their recent pronouncements, the Governor of the New York Federal Reserve, various senior IMF officials among other respectable figures have given further credence to these discomfiting mutterings. Even more worrying is what appears a prevailing indifference to glaring moral and practical problems associated with the instrument. 

QE is simply the purchase of outstanding national debt by a country’s Central Bank, an instrument that is becoming a worryingly common feature of the contemporary post-financial crisis global economic landscape. It is hardly a secret that it is a poorly disguised method of printing money, an action that ironically, in the not-too-distant past, could have provoked an avalanche of sanctimonious lectures if those from the developing world had taken such actions. We can be thankful, however, that the South African Reserve Bank is constitutionally precluded from participating in this regrettable procession and so we can consider ourselves safe for now.

The lessons of the recent financial crisis, consisting in the heavy price that families across the world have paid in mass retrenchments, as a result of certain “innovations” in mortgage structuring, are seemingly yet to be fully grasped. The desire for economic and social advancement is a divinely endowed human instinct. When this instinct, however, is unhinged from common sense and the truth, problems are usually not too far away. Though they may be delayed, we can be assured of their certainty. The fall of man and his perennial pursuit of the knowledge of good and evil, a pursuit for knowledge from places either than its true source, has meant that since the fall of man, problems have become the norm rather the exception across the spectrum of history. 

It might be of benefit therefore to occasionally return to elementary principles that should otherwise be common sense. This could be no truer than in the case of money, where it seems those who are called to be stewards thereof, for the benefit of society, have taken a veritable flight to irrationality. We must remember that modern fiat money, that has become an accepted medium of exchange and store of value, carries negligible inherent value apart from the worth imputed to it by those who use it to exchange goods and services. In other words a hundred Rand note has no greater value than what you and I have ascribed to it. 

We communicate this value through the quality or quantity of goods or services we exchange it for. The real value resides not with the money but with the underlying goods and services underpinning it. This is in contrast to a bygone era when units of money had inherent value. Such as when coins were alloys of actual silver, gold and other precious metals. The entire supply of Rands in South Africa can therefore only be a representation of the goods and services it produces, in condensed form. 

The modern state, among its many tricks, has conferred upon itself the sole legal right of creating fiat money. That is why using other currencies such as the US dollar is forbidden in South Africa. Of course, there are practical reasons for this, such as the need to effectively control and manage a country's financial system. Though it may be so, we should not forget that it is a sacred trust. The enormity of this trust is often underestimated. It consists in the fact that the state has the legal right to decimate, if it so wishes, years of our earthly labours, represented by the wealth stored in its currency, if it chooses to employ injudicious monetary practices such as QE. Thankfully, while we may have much room for disgruntlement with other organs of state, as far as the so-called “financial cluster”, the same is hardly applicable. This discussion is mainly relevant to our US, British and European counterparts and we would be wise to lead in this regard rather than to follow, as has been the historical pattern.

The financial crisis has upended our understanding of the world and who knows what else is to follow? We could even be in the cusp of a generational shift in the entire structure of the global political economy. Nevertheless, I will leave that discussion for another time. For now, what we see are anaemic European and American economies, the erstwhile engine rooms of global growth. China appears to have effectively decoupled from its over dependence on Western demand. It continues to face, however, the challenge of facilitating an internal cultural change from extreme thrift towards greater consumption orientation, which is no mean task considering the famous frugality of its people. Along with its ascent, it is pulling economies of the resource rich world, many of which are located in the developing world, to similarly unprecedented economic heights. 

Commensurately, the developed world faces economic challenges of sphinx proportions. The long rumoured “double-dip” recession has finally arrived in many of these countries and seems to have found a semi-permanent home. Rising or stubborn unemployment, along with the inevitable social consternation continues to confound the great minds of the West. The consequent low demand for goods and services from its cash strapped citizens has led to an epoch of unprecedented low inflation. Eager to assuage the increasingly restless masses, not to mention the unquenchable urge to hold on to office, in desperation, anything that appears vaguely likely to ameliorate this dilemma is heartily embraced by hapless politicians. The rising prominence of QE occurs amid such conditions. Its proponents continue to contend that it is a harmless instrument in the quiver of Central Bankers (and of course, who are we to argue with lofty Central Bankers?). After all, in such a deflationary environment, what danger can it amount to?

While this consistently pronounced line of reasoning has a spurious ring of truth to it, it misses a fundamental point: the morality (or the lack thereof) of QE. To talk of the purchase of government debt by Central Banks is a misnomer, particularly when the money is created from nothing. There is no cost to the purchaser in this case, beyond that of paper and the printing press. This renders the word “purchase” deceptive because “purchase” normally implies a cost to the purchaser, which in this case is negligible. Power is therefore assumed by concerned Central Banks of creating value out of nothing. This, of course, cannot be possible because value cannot be instantaneously manufactured out of nothing, unless it is misappropriated from elsewhere. In this case, the value is the compressed ingenuity, effort and time stored in the underlying assets represented by the currency. The real losers here are those have been prudent enough to save their hard-earned income. This places in context German antipathy to talks of QE by the EU, with good reason!

A relevant question that might be asked is why we are yet to see rampant inflation associated with excessive money supply, as a result of QE. The answer lies in the weak demand conditions on the ground, due to consumer over indebtedness, that have led to commensurately poor growth prospects for main street businesses. The banks have therefore been unwilling to lend in such conditions, choosing to rather hoard their stacks of dollars, pounds and Euros. So it may be premature concluding that the current environment of benign inflation will persist indefinitely. 

There is much that is being said about the possible effects of QE, such as whether or not it is the panacea to well documented Western economic travails, among other fallacies. In this regard history offers some noteworthy lessons, not least the Japanese experience that we have not explored. Nevertheless, while this is an important discussion that warrants continued assessment, not enough is being said about the morality of this instrument. I find this particularly troublesome, considering how fundamental this issue is. In any other situation we would instinctively frown at anyone who takes what is not his or hers, without permission and without paying for it. I’m not sure why it should be any different with QE. 

Rationalism versus rationality

It has been rightly argued that ideas have consequences. Even flawed but often repeated ideas are known to leave an indelible mark on the pages of history, often with far reaching implications. Perhaps no one understood this dynamic more than Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebels, who once said, "If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth". It is with this in mind that I thought it necessary to distinguish between rationalism and rationality. 

Rationalism is the belief that (human) reason alone is the foundation of certainty in knowledge. It necessarily elevates the human intellect as the pre-eminent arbiter of truth, knowledge and reality. In other words what is true can only be so to the extent that it accords with what man considers reasonable. The apertures are immediately apparent in this logic, precisely because standards of reasonability are subject to continual change from era to era, thus rendering human intellection, though useful, an instable and therefore undependable measure of true knowledge.

The rise of rationalism in Europe is often traced to an unlikely source, a Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas. In his magnum opus, Summa Theologica, Aquinas expressed a high view of the human intellect, which he considered the “highest human function”. He believed the fall of man excluded the mind and was thus a viable instrument for redemption. As one who lived in the 1200s, he is considered among the forerunners of the Renaissance, which famously displaced spirituality, replacing it with man and his intellect, at the apex of the perennial human quest for knowledge, truth and redemption. Aquinas came to be succeeded by such eminent humanist philosophers as Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant, John Locke and Voltaire among many others who became champions of the wave of rationalism that swept through Europe.

The biblical Christian worldview places God, rather than man, at the centre of epistemology. According to this narrative, to which I’m am fully subscribed, truth is embodied in the person of Jesus Christ, who alone is the “way, the truth and the life”. Man, as a spiritually incapacitated being, is unable to arrive unaided at Truth as incarnated in Christ and His revealed word. Indeed, scripture asserts neither is he inclined to, for “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2:14). It is clear therefore that rationalism is hopelessly misguided, not only because it is idolatrous but also because it is unable to deliver on its promise of leading mankind to the Truth he so longs for. 

Accordingly, it is understandable why human intellection has had and continues to have an acrimonious relationship with many Christians. This acrimony can only be underpinned by a false dichotomy, at the centre of which is confusion between rationalism and rationality. Whereas rationalism absolutizes the human intellect, rationality makes no such pretensions. It merely upholds the virtue of logic and consistency, as universal principles that are implicit in all of scripture and the cosmos. 

While God cannot subscribe to rationalism, He is perfectly rational. His actions and views are underpinned by perfect consistency and logic. That is why He is perfectly trustworthy. His plea to a wayward Israel is instructive, “Come now, and let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). Now, we must accept that this logic may not be immediately apparent to mankind at a given point in time, indeed some of it may never be (Deut 29:29). Nevertheless, God invites us to an intriguing odyssey in the pursuit of knowledge and discovery (Proverbs 25:2). 

For similar reasons as earlier explained, it is not unusual for the mind and the Spirit to be seen as incompatible. The view being that one can either spiritual or intellectual but never both. Once again the dichotomy is a false one precisely because the human capacity to reason, contemplate and understand originates with God Himself in whose image we are made. While the unregenerate mind can neither accept nor process spiritual material, which can only be spiritually discerned, for those born of the Spirit no such problem exists. For we have the mind of Christ. 

Rather than a foe, the Spirit thus becomes a great aide, whose manifestations scripture often describes, on many occasions, with words normally associated with the intellect. We refer here to “the spirit of wisdom and understanding” spoken of by the Prophet Isaiah in describing the Spirit that was on Christ (Isaiah 11:2). Again, the Apostle Paul refers to “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation” (Eph 1:17). We know also of the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit, among which is the “word of wisdom” and the “word of knowledge” (1 Cor 12:8). Indeed, we learn from the book of Job that “there is a spirit in man, and the breadth of the Almighty gives him understanding” (Job 32:8). We see this operation of the Holy Spirit at work in the life of Daniel, in whom was “light and understanding and excellent wisdom” (Daniel 5:14). We conclude thus, that for the believer, the dichotomy between the Spirit and the mind is a false one. 

We are well advised to eschew rationalism for both moral and practical reasons, which is not unlike a mirage which promises much while always failing to deliver. As we rightly do so, we do well not erring by rejecting rationality. The chasm between the two is vast. To fully engage our faculty of reason, contemplation and understanding is not only not a sin, it is crucial if we are to fulfil the biblical mandate to be the salt and light of the world, which includes every area of human endeavour. Following Him who guides us into all truth, even as we have learnt to love the Lord our God with all our soul, strength and heart, let us learn now to unashamedly love Him also, with all our minds. The cry of our generation demands nothing less of us.

Towards the dawn of a new millennium and beyond...

The sudden fall of communist Russia left the world with a solitary super power, with the world as its playground. Democracy and Capitalism had been vindicated, it seemed. As with the historical pattern, the verdict would not be without a few surprises. 

With its nemesis vanquished, the USA now had free reign to recreate the world according to its own image. The first opportunity to flex its geopolitical muscle arrived soon, in the form of the Gulf War that it dispatched with devastating efficiency. This period coincided with the dawn of the “Information Age”, which precipitated a sustained economic boom in the US. US President Clinton, who had the fortune of presiding during this period, simply could not put a foot wrong in the eyes of many Americans. Indeed, deservedly or not, his name is destined to go down into the annals of US folklore. 

Like all fairytales this one too had to come to an end. This end was brutal if not surreal. It came in the form of a surprise attack on the symbols of American economic and military power, the Twin Towers and the Pentagon respectively. The world, it seemed, was not as safe as had been imagined. This time the instigator was a “faceless enemy” from hardened Islamist militants, whose hatred for Israel was matched only by that of its key ally America. An exceedingly costly war on terror that included simultaneous wars with Iraq and Afghanistan ensued, with untold fiscal consequences, which may yet define its future hegemony.

The event precipitated a chain of events of far reaching implications. The shock to the markets was tangible, with the New York Stock Exchange closing for a few days. Consumer confidence and trade plummeted. Exacerbated by the recent bursting of Internet bubble, the US economy plunged into deep and unfamiliar recessionary waters. 

An attempt to ameliorate these economic travails led to a reduction of interest rates to near zero by Governor of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, leading to a welcome but specious recovery. It carried hidden dangers, which would only fully manifest later, when the damage had already been done.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic, Europe was busy celebrating the fulfilment of a fifty-year-old dream. In a quest to forever banish any possibility of a European war, under the 1957 treaty of Rome, the European Economic Community and the Common Market were established, institutions which were to be consummated with the formation of the European Monetary union in 2002. And thus was the Euro birthed. The multilateral arrangement consisted of fifteen countries, with a population of almost 400million. This diverse union consisted of countries of such economic disparity as Luxembourg and Portugal with GDP per capita of $108,952 and $21,542 respectively. From the onset, it seemed an unsustainable marriage of convenience. 

The silent rise of China was now beginning to be tangibly felt. By sheer force of its population size, this erstwhile global power was beginning to stir geopolitical waves, bringing to mind words attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte on China,"Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world." An inflection point had been traversed and China began to shake the world indeed. Following the market friendly reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese Gross Domestic Product had grown by a remarkable average 10% from 1979, continuing to this day. From a mere footnote, it would later overtake Japan to become the second largest world economy, with some forecasts predicting that it will ascend to the summit by 2020.

The low interest rate years of the Greenspan years, had given rise to a property bubble, which duly burst in 2007, resulting in a collapse of a number of financial institutions. Thanks to the wonders of collateralisation, banks across the world were affected, some of which never saw the light of day again. The so-called sub-prime crisis was soon to turn into an economic crisis that plunged much of the world into the deepest crisis since the Great Depression. 

As though the world had not seen enough crises, the excesses of a previous boom, financed through volumes of debt, gave rise to a Eurozone crisis the end of which is not yet fully known in 2011. Elaborate if not desperate efforts to rescue a profligate Greece are well in progress. At the root of the crisis is the misguided pursuit of a monetary union without a commensurate fiscal union. In turn, the latter would be impractical to implement without a corresponding political union. With entrenched cultural homogeneity and deep-seated historical rivalry and antipathy, the sustainability of such a political union is difficult to envisage. 

At the end of 2011, the world faces deep and ominous challenges, which this platform does not allow for much scope to exhaustively explore. The image of a rudderless ship drifting aimlessly on treacherous seas, tossed this way and that way, seems an apt description of the condition of the nations of the earth. Where exactly this voyage will lead, is yet unclear. The death of idealism, the so-called “death of God” and the mortification of objective truth have robbed the world of a substantive anchor, such that the best it can hope for, in the absence of fundamental change, is an aimless drift from one crisis to the next, as it navigates its way through the unchartered waters of the third millennium AD. Indeed, if man is truly the measure of all things, the events of the previous century have taught, there is good reason for uncertainty and a sense of foreboding. 

The advent of postmodernism and the mortification of objective truth

If the Enlightenment was characterised by boundless optimism and hope, it is unsurprising that the post-WWII world, yoked with the hangover of two brutal wars, was marked by scepticism and despair. 

The atrocities of the first half of the 20th century had all but dashed man-centred idealism and to borrow Nietzsche’s imagery, Western civilisation had also long ‘killed‘ the Biblical God. With the absence of a substantive societal anchor, scepticism could only flourish, and it did.

Truth became relative and the only absolute of this era became the absurd, “there are no absolutes.” 

The growing affluence of the West, gave rise to a value system that came to define the spirit of the age. Francis Schaeffer defined it as, “the pursuit of personal peace and affluence.”

The defeat of Hitler, who had been the common enemy, led to the swift redrawing of fault lines between the Capitalist West, led by the United States and the Communist East, lead by the Soviet Russia, both of which harboured a visceral distrust of the other. 

With the presence of nuclear weaponry, the world lived under the unnerving and constant shadow of yet another world war. It is with some irony, however, that the presence of nuclear weaponry was perhaps the very reason open conflict between these two superpowers was largely avoided.

For much of this period, the quest for world dominance by these two ideologies defined social, political and economic engagement. 

Though they would pretend otherwise, both sides understood the self-destructive consequences of direct conflict and were careful not to provoke it. The rest of the world became the playground of the simmering hostilities, where both sides, to further their ideological ends, manipulated local and regional political contentions to further their strategic aims. 

This was particularly true in Eastern Europe, the Middle East developing Asia, Africa and South America, often leaving a trail of destructive consequences.

While the Cold War continued to smoulder, Europe and Japan, with the aid of the Marshall Plan, were busy rising from the proverbial ashes. By the beginning of the 80s, they had once again become affluent. 

“The winds of change”, meanwhile were blowing mightily through much of the African continent, bringing with them an infusion of optimism regarding the ‘endless possibilities’ of a postcolonial Africa. 

On the other side of the world, seemingly unnoticed by the rest of the world, following sweeping market oriented reforms by leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979; China was quietly but steadily beginning to emerge from the ash heap of communism-induced poverty. 

Its quiet ascent was soon to reach a game changing inflection point for the global political economy on the other side of the new millennium.

The long coming and sudden collapse of communist Russia in 1989 was celebrated as a triumph of good over evil by many, perhaps not without reason, as the system was associated with gross repression, severe human suffering and multitudinous mindless executions. To others, it merely marked the triumph of a lesser evil over a greater one.

The fall of communist Russia, perhaps as with its rise, was undoubtedly among the most significant events of the twentieth century. While there is much that is true about US sentiments of it having been an “evil empire”, as famously stated by President Ronald Reagan, certainly the record of tyranny speaks for itself, its rise and subsequent fall offers a few lessons:

1)There is no telling what exploits can be accomplished with an unflinching commitment to a clear vision. Beginning with a contemptible cadre that numbered only a handful of people in 1917, at its apogee, Marxist-Leninism had overrun roughly half of the world’s landmass and population.

2)Socio-economic disparities are dangerous breeding ground for all manner of destructive socio-political movements. 1917 Russia was a classical example of what perils this may pose. It was characterised by a small island of a landed aristocratic elite that lived in obscene opulence amidst an ocean of penury. The lot of the disenfranchised, frustrated and economically excluded serfdom gave rise to the dangerous mindset that there was nothing to lose. 

3)Contrary to the postmodernist paradigm, ideas are not all equally valid and beneficial. Which can only lead to the conclusion that there is such a thing as objective truth, with applicability not only to moral but also economic matters. While the nobility of the communist vision to rid the world of exploitation and “class differences” deserves to be acknowledged, it is clear that the principle of choice and personal responsibility are built into the very fabric of the material world. Thus, because it sought to flout this reality, the eventual collapse of Marxist-Leninism could only have been a matter of time.

With the elimination of the communist threat, surely there was no stopping the rise of the West? Indeed, this appeared true for most of the 1990s, often nicknamed “the roaring 90s”, with good reason…