Strange and uncertain times

History records that a young Abraham Lincoln, brimming with idealism and ambition, rued the times in which he was born. 

He peered back, it is said, with longing eyes toward an earlier age that unfairly conferred upon the likes of George Washington, an enviable stage for their bounteous talents - a heroic age of a revolutionary war and the birthing of a new nation.

We might surmise that the young Lincoln succumbed to the familiar tendency to look at the past and its heroes through a lens sanitised by a rose-tinted hue of quixotic romanticism.

Perhaps some of those who, like me, came of age after WWII, a time that future generations may call Pax Americana, share some of his restless sense of injustice. As if robbed of a rightful platform for our repressed heroism.

Lincoln and his generation would soon discover just how ghastly war can be, when their turn to emulate their departed heroes was abruptly thrust upon them.

Ours is a lamentably unheroic age. One afflicted by not merely the dearth of great men and women but, quite tellingly, the perverse unappreciation for the very idea of greatness.

Lingering memories of two of the most gruesome wars in history and the implicit deterrence of nuclear weaponry have produced an unusually long absence of open war between the great powers. Something that may unnerve the discerning among us.

In this regard, our times are not unlike the relative peace that descended upon the world following the Congress of Vienna, that concluded the disruptive Napoleonic Wars. One that reigned until WWI, almost a century later, with the only notable interruption being the Franco-Prussian war of 1871.

Pax Britannica, so called, came to a rapid conclusion as a result of the failure to resolve the familiar contestation that tends to eventuate between rising and incumbent world powers.

We live now before the looming shadow of the same spectre.

Furthermore, the extended peace of our times has come with unparalleled global prosperity. So many of us have been lavished with the type of ease that has rendered virtues of courage, honour and nobility dispensable luxuries, strange relics of a charming but long departed romantic age.

War is an unmitigated horror, the ugliest expression of the worst in humanity. Yet there is something about it that makes it a crucible for greatness, disinterring long-buried virtues of honour, humanity and courage, perhaps out of the sheer impulse for collective survival.

This may be the reason the qualities of many of those we consider great often emerge before the haunting spectre of encroaching apocalypse.

Ours, on the other hand, is the age of narcissism, defined by a generational self-indulgence that seems to set us indisputably apart from bygone eras.

I never cease to be amazed by just how unimportant history seems to so many of my contemporaries.

This may have to do with our staple diet premised on the supposed indispensability of constant entertainment and distraction.

So myopically obsessed with the present we have become, even events from a mere decade ago occupy a remote place in the contemporary memory bank. Ominously, that time-span might be erring on the generous side.

This is disconcerting for numerous reasons, not least the missed opportunity to develop a broad and grounded perspective that correctly contextualizes contemporary events.

What seems ubiquitous is a mind-set that inordinately magnifies current newspaper headlines. Such that we have become akin to a bipolar society, given to oscillation between soaring euphoria and morose despair and usually nothing in-between. As informed by the latest soundbite on the news cycle.

We resemble those who have been enslaved by the tyranny of now.

Thus, we have been robbed not only of a strategic perspective, but our temporal parochialism represents a tragic squandering of all the accumulated lessons of the ages that seem to exist beyond the scope of contemporary consciousness.

One hopes we do not live to ratify the age-old aphorism brilliantly captured by George Santayana:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned repeat it.”

It is precisely this myopic preoccupation that misses the winds of change currently blowing in the geopolitical environment.

Pax Americana is now rapidly retreating beyond the sunset to be united with the grand eras of ages past. It was no Pollyanna, of that we can be sure. But few epochs rival the peace and prosperity it brought about.

Former president Obama has rightly described these as “strange and uncertain times”.

He captured thus a nagging feeling that we have entered into an unfamiliar and unpredictable epoch. One that elicits thoughts of disquietude much more than it does those of hopeful anticipation.

Perhaps it was too idealistic to imagine that the curtain would never close on so optimistic a period, where the universal triumph of freedom seemed within reach for so many of us. One that oversaw the triumph over the tyrannies of Fascism, Marxist-Leninism and Colonialism.

It is a tragic sight to behold the excesses and hubris that threaten the demise of Pax Americana. So soon after the unipolar moment that followed the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.

In fact, we may be forgiven to conclude that Trump’s “America first” paradigm signals the final nail on Pax Americana as the great super power flirts with retreating into its customary Monroe doctrinarian posture.

If a decade ago has now become akin to ancient history, there should perhaps be little wonder that the global consensus that emerged from a world deeply chastened by the horrors of the grisliest of wars, means so little to so many of us. It was, after all, almost seventy-five years ago, akin to a millennium to our anti-historical sensibilities.

It seems, tragically, we are now ready to relearn the very same lessons purchased by the rivers of blood flowing from tens of millions of our very own fellow human beings, in a war that ought to have forever cured us of our congenital bent towards violence. But alas!

Let us pray that the mercurial hand of fate will be kind to the romantics among us; those of us who for years have cast longing eyes to the grand ages that produced the Lincolns, the Churchills and the Mandelas of yesteryear. 

Perchance we soon be presented with our own stage upon which to discover the heat of the furnaces that reveal the great among men.

The thorny land question

In the previous iteration of this discussion, I proposed that we do not have the luxury of choice when it comes to the structural reorganisation of the South African socio-economy - radical economic transformation, if you will.  Not if we are serious about creating a spatially, socially and economically just society at piece with itself and the world.

Considering our socio-historical context and my general observation of history, it is my considered view that radical socio-economic change is a certainty. There are only two uncertainties: when it will happen and who will drive it.

Will it be demagogues, charlatans  and opportunists ,with the attendant cavernous vortex of chaos or will it be patriotic South Africans?

I further proposed that if such a society is to be realised, the instruments of creating it must be a reflection of the society we hope to create. That is, it has to be done thoughtfully, equitably, sincerely and with malice toward none. In this piece I seek to weigh in on possible ways of materialising this ideal.

It is neither possible nor desirable to delink this discussion with land restitution. With good reason as history has placed land at the centre of any discussion about restructuring our socio-economic edifice.

Land is usually a highly emotive topic anywhere in the world as it is one of the primary dimensions of our existence, economically, socially, psychologically and spiritually. In this regard, we are no exception.

Recently, certain politicians have raised some controversial questions around our colonial legacy. It has predictably stirred different sectors of societies in different ways. At the heart of it is – if our history in this country is viewed in purely negative terms, what does it say about our place in this society and our right to exist? Do we have a place in it? Do we belong?

These are important questions that must be understood and carefully considered by all. After all history has conferred upon our young democracy a multi-cultural status. At the best of times it makes social cohesion and organisation considerably tricky but the mature approach requires that we make peace with this  unchangeable reality and soberly deal with the problems it comes with. Not least the thorny land question.

This is because embodied human beings cannot exist outside space and time. Land is thus at the centre of what it means to be a human being.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that the identity of any people group usually derives from its forebears, their personal and collective histories as well as the land that bore witness to those histories.

The dimensions of space and time are not disconnected because those who own space, in other words land, are usually conferred power to own their time, along with the freedom and dignity that comes with.

This is besides the fact that land has the potential to earn rental, capital appreciation if not some kind of agricultural or mineral yield. This serves to further relieve land owners of the pressure to sell their time or labour in the market place at potentially unfavourable terms.

Time in this case corresponds to the hours sold for labour. Land ownership thus affords the freedom to choose how to invest time because those confined to the rental system do this under a form of duress due to the perpetual pressure to earn rental income to survive. This creates a mind-set that deprives them of the genuine choice over the direction of their lives.

Slaves are by definition those who have ownership of neither their space nor time. Those who do not own land, as I argue, also only partially own their time and are thus only partially free in this sense.

It is unsurprising that most wars have been fought over land. This brings to mind Hitler’s idea of lebensraum, which drove his acquisitive eastward march towards the vast, fertile fields of Eastern Europe and Russia.

In South Africa the dispossession of land from the natives was initially to assume illegal control of their space but culminated in the quest to control their time as well, thus completing their status of constructive enslavement.

The growth of the agricultural and mining sectors of the South African economy around the advent of the 20^th century became restricted by growing labour shortages. The unwilling natives were thus violently compelled to sell their labour in distant and inhospitable places, mostly separated from their families, through the dispossession of the last vestiges of their land.  

Short of total slavery, which had been abolished in the British Empire for at 66 years by 1900, this was the next best option. The union of South Africa in 1910 thus coincided with a series of laws that culminated in the land act of 1913 that completed the destruction of black South African way of life.

This had been an iterative process that had begun over 200 years prior. It was no coincidence that this period coincided with the formation of the ANC in 1912.

Subsequent to this, native South Africans came to cut a pitiful sight of contemptable vagrants and scavengers at the fringes of South African society, squabbling amongst themselves for the pitiable morsels of slave wages tossed to them by their effective slave masters.

The rest were left to scuffle among themselves over the sum of these wages in the confined dormitory spaces that continue to blight the fringes of South African cities, for their survival.  It is no surprise that these became fertile ground for the criminality that came to spill into the rest of society, haunting the entire country, scarcely sparing formerly white suburbia at the conclusion of apartheid.

This background is important because it is not possible to understand current South African socio-economic problems without it. In fact what I’ve just described is still largely an accurate description of much of the workings of the contemporary South African economy.

Save for the much maligned BEE and affirmative action, in the minds of many South Africans, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest there would have been significant changes to the historical status quo had these interventions not been legal requirements. 

This is because of deeply entrenched social attitudes of master/servant, superiority/inferiority, excellence/mediocrity, diligence/laziness, insider/outsider, shaped by the history of dispossession and the constructive slavery I’ve described. Mind-sets that stubbornly persist.

As a way of redressing these historical injustices, there have been growing proposals for expropriation of land without compensation. These have been predictably met with counter expressions of utter horror at the purported injustice.

Though some are honest enough to acknowledge that land was violently dispossessed at incalculable cost, even among those, there is a sense that the land was subsequently made productive in ways that has multiplied its value over the decades and centuries.

The interest of justice requires for the serious consideration of these concerns. After all it cannot be denied that significant value was contributed to the land over the centuries subsequent to its dispossession.

This valid factor should nevertheless be assessed in its proper context. The fact that the wealth of South Africa was built on the foundation of land, labour and skill.

The land was appropriated without compensation. The labour was at hired at grossly deflated rates due to the induced excess supply created by the constructive slavery previously discussed.

It is the skill injected by colonial architecture that gives expropriation without compensation a look of unfairness. But this should not be overstated. Current market prices do not reflect all the historical factors I've described. Not in the very least.

Certainly the colossal suffering caused by the destruction of the black South African life over the centuries is difficult to quantify in monetary terms.

A workable middle ground must therefore be found in the pursuit of sustainable land restitution. Models must be devised with clear timelines that must ideally include the acquisition of skills for the maintenance of current productivity levels at the very least.

It is important to bear in mind that the creation of a sustainable social order is the goal here rather than meting out historical justice for its own sake, even as it must be acknowledged that the absence of felt justice places our young democracy on very shaky ground. Which is why a zero-sum approach must be avoided at all costs.

South Africans need to wrestle hard about what constitutes a just settlement with a mind open to persuasion. Our future depends on it.

Radical economic transformation I - a case for restructuring the South African economy

Recently, there has been much talk about radical economic transformation. Not least from the highest office of the land. This follows a period of rising popular discontent against the very same office.

Thus many reasonably view this talk as akin to political opportunism not unlike that exhibited by its counterpart north of the border, when faced with similarly declining political fortunes more than two decades ago.

This language nevertheless strikes a visceral chord in the hearts of too many South Africans to take lightly.  It is for precisely that reason that it is now being used.

Such an instrument in the hands of leaders with a demagogic bent is shown by history as highly hazardous. Akin to a fail-safe perennial lifeboat for their political survival albeit at an incalculable cost to the rest of society.

The problem is that this instrument will remain useful for such destructive ends, even if merely as a threat, until the root issues that give it a look of legitimacy are systematically dismantled. Chief of which are the chronic structural economic inequalities that make our society a curious global phenomenon.

Herein lies the price of the socioeconomic inequalities that some of us have bewailed for some time - they make for politically and socially unstable societies.

This in turn contributes to low levels of the very economic investment needed to salvage the situation, as is currently the case in South Africa. And thus we have the makings of a pernicious vicious circle that future analysts may use to account for our sharp economic reversals decades from now. Unless we do something about it.

The stalemate needs to be broken.

Fundamental restructuring of our economy is necessitated by this pressing need. This is what I understand to be the meaning of radical economic transformation. But it has to be done thoughtfully, equitably, sincerely and with malice toward none.

Sullied political regimes certainly have no business being anywhere near this process. The Zuma regime is a case in point. It has proven itself all but morally disqualified for this critical and delicate task.

In fact the problem many of us have with the Zuma administration is not that it is an advocate of economic transformation, as it misleadingly suggests, but that it is not sincere in its advocacy for it.

What we have seen from it instead is enough to conclude that it seeks to misuse this highly emotive and important discussion as a cover for more of the same patronage and ravenous looting that we have seen from it from the onset.

By co-opting the concept of “radical economic transformation”, Zuma thus serves as an obstacle to its genuine advancement by giving it an undeserved bad name by association.

And you can be sure that those on the cushy side of our skewed economic equation, by and large will scarcely be proponents of it. Not unsurprisingly, as it is not in their immediate economic interests to be so.

The desire to protect these short-term parochial interests lies behind the perennial refrain for organic and gradual economic change as our only sure path, as we have heard ad nauseam since 1994.

If we put all the pseudo-intellectual posturing aside what ultimately underpins the idea of trickle-down economics is clear: the conscious or unconscious quest for the preservation of historical privilege.

Though we might have been easily seducible in the 80s and 90s, the aftermath of the Financial Crisis has all but exposed it for its utter bankruptcy.

Not unlike cream, wealth simply refuses to trickle down to the poorest in society on its own accord. As Piketty and others have argued, the very structure of the present global economic system dictates that it doesn’t.

It must either be induced or the entire system must be changed. Since we still await a coherent alternative to the current system, our recourse for now remains the former.

More so in societies characterised by the sharp structural inequalities such as South Africa.

The sea of the multitudinous unemployed means that bargaining power is always heavily tilted toward owners of capital, such that the rate of return for them and the managerial class, their surrogates, always exceeds wage growth.

In recent times the multiples have become increasingly excessive, bordering on the obscene. Ever yawning socio-economic asymmetries have been the inevitable result.

In South Africa this has deep historical roots as the economy was designed in the interests of colonial hegemony. The role of natives was always clearly cut-out for them - that of hewers of wood and drawers of water within this economic framework.

This theme was and is still largely consistent across domestic, agricultural, mining, industrial and corporate systems.

Those for whom no use could be found, well, tough luck for them. Their lot was to eke out a meagre existence in the fringes of society.

The problem is that in South Africa, unlike in many other societies, this fringe constituted voluminous descendants of the historically dispossessed.

Though this pattern has been altered somewhat since 1994, the mould remains largely intact. That is why economic inequality is still generally colour-coded in South Africa.

Though demographics dictate that colour will inevitably change with time, the structural flaws risk remaining in perpetuity, along with the attendant socio-political instability, until the flawed structure is conclusively altered.

The democratically elected post-apartheid government, with its position as chief stewards of the country’s socio-economy through its legislative and executive power, must take primary responsibility for failing to do this. Laying the blame solely on so-called white monopoly capital is disingenuous.

Unless the country is radically disrupted from its noxious inequality trap, there is no reason to expect anything but a worsening of the situation over the decades and centuries, with commensurately dire socio-political implications. Precisely as history and the compounding dynamic of wealth instruct that inequality can only beget more inequality.

Structural economic reform is necessary to rescue the country from this historically determined path-dependent trajectory. If not for the demands of justice than certainly for the pragmatic quest for a stable, sustainable and prosperous social order.

Broadminded patriots have an ever diminishing opportunity to ensure that this process is managed peacefully.

The window of opportunity will not remain forever. As recent events highlight, it is highly susceptible to manipulation by demagogic political actors driven by their twisted interests, with ominous implications for all of us.

What we must consider next is how we can go about structurally reforming our socio-economy. Part 2 will tackle this question.

The ascent of anti-intellectualism

The world stands at a worrying historical juncture.  In Britain we recently saw popular rejection of pan Europeanism despite spirited attempts by its intelligentsia to persuade a decidedly cynical public about the perils of this course of action.

The European integration project that has underwritten among the more peaceful epochs of a historically warlike continent, now confronts some of its sternest tests. It must contend with smouldering populist undercurrents that could only have been emboldened by Brexit.

Across the pond we watch with bated breath as Americans dally with the possibility of electing as president, a man with the temerity to not only publically disrespect women and entire people groups, but one who has expressed unmistakable admiration for Vladimir Putin, a fellow who has never been accused of possessing effusive affections for democratic values.

Who would have thought that we would find within a whisker of the American presidency a person whose commitment to NATO, an organisation that has stood as an unwavering bastion of post-Second World War global stability, is flimsy at best?

We are justified to be a little troubled by the disquieting implications for the global world order as it confronts the grim prospect of a dark and unpredictable era not entirely unlike the infamous nineteen thirties.

The thread running through much of what I have described is a disconcerting preference for emotional ventilation regardless of its standing in relation to sound judgement. The zeitgeist was aptly captured by erstwhile British minister of Justice Michael Gove, whose simplistic but effective rebuttal of his Brexit opponents, captured the sentiments of millions of his compatriots – we are tired of the experts!

As a South African I observe these developments with a curious if not a wary sense of déjà vu.  The script seems eerily familiar as I have a distinct memory that hearkens back barely a decade ago, of watching with helpless terror as a wave of anti-intellectualism threatened and succeeded to sweep away some of the hard-earned gains of the post-apartheid era in my country.

Disappointment with the Mbeki administration, led by a man with an well-earned reputation for intellectualism as well as many real and perceived flaws, came to convince a large section of the South African population that it was the intellectualism he represented that was the problem.

A disturbing consensus gradually coalesced that nothing but his polar antithesis would do. Zuma came to be the obliging incarnation, complete with a colourful personally and a singing voice go with. And thus began a grim epoch in our country’s history with its ubiquitous, well-documented, tragic and at times embarrassing travails. It is fair to say that the country has already paid an incalculable price for its flirtation with anti-intellectualism.

The difficulty with the surge of popular anti-intellectualism is its intrinsic imperviousness to reason, precisely as it casts as its archenemy, reason itself. In the ensuing inverted script, unreason is crowned as the new reason. Fools become the new sages. The discerning are rendered completely impotent as idiocy becomes the only respected currency of engagement even in the loftiest of corridors of political power.

As with Mbeki, intellectuals are usually not entirely innocent in creating the dismal state of affairs that accounts for their eventual demise. They are ultimately hoist by their own petard.

Intellectualism has the tendency to breed elitism and paternalism instead of serving as a weapon to advance the general good. At worst, as we saw in the recent financial crisis, it can also be used to advance the crudest form of self-interest that carries scant concern for the consequent cost to the general public.

Intellectuals are those with the penchant for disciplined and rational thought. Thought attested to by the scientific method or well tested wisdom, along with the necessary demonstrable benefits.  Their ranks are swelled necessarily by those who by virtue of the value of their contribution to society, become prominent, successful or even wealthy.

All of this is very desirable. Indeed, it is a perverse and self-sabotaging society that discourages the legitimate success of its citizens. It can only be impoverished by their inevitable flight to places where their talent is embraced and celebrated.

The successful nevertheless ultimately undermine their own long-term interests, as we are seeing in the prevailing climate in the West, when they do not consciously employ their intellectualism toward the advancement of the greater good. There are after all only so many places they can wander to.

This unfortunate state of affairs is crudely captured by the yawning economic inequalities in parts of the West and the accompanying popular resentment. Western intellectuals are guilty of creating a socio-economic environment that is increasingly hostile to the socio-economic upward mobility of the rest.

The resulting resentment can spawn a wholesale rejection of the establishment along with the values it represents, to the ultimate ruin of everyone. Such as the very idea of intellectualism.

The rise of Trump occurs upon the crest of this rising tide of anti-intellectualism. In times past it swept into the mainstream the French revolution and the ghoulish Reign of Terror. On a different occasion it swept into oblivion the Russian Romanov dynasty bringing with it Marxist Leninism replete with its show trials and gulags.

It is yet unclear what the current iteration of anti-intellectualism brings for the West but the prognosis is hardly glowing.

Civil society, arise!

Recent events in the judicial and political environments of our country betray a curious duality – the strength as well as the fragility of our constitutional democracy.

It has been heartening to see that despite the alarming decay witnessed in two of the three arms of government, the judiciary is as robust and effective as it has ever been. 

The fact that we are celebrating Justice Mogoeng’s seminal constitutional ruling is nevertheless instructive. In dark times the faintest ray of light does much to inspire flagging hope. Not least when a grim sense of despair casts a forbidding shadow, as it has over our once hopeful nation.

Not unlike the proverbial deer under headlights, we seemed as those incapacitated by the advance of emboldened purveyors of corruption, along with the accompanying sense of impunity.

Though we are by no means out of the woods, civil society has been given a propitious platform upon which to mount a spirited counter offensive against those intent on destroying our blood-wrought democracy.

If anything, what the Zuma administration has given us is a needed wake-up call from the post-apartheid slumber that naively relinquished all civic power to politicians who are universally known for their corruptibility.

Citizens of our fledgling democracy would do well to pay attention to the words often mistakenly attributed to Thomas Jefferson – eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!

Jefferson’s sobriety about the delicacy of democracy is further reinforced by his prescient caution - “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”. 

The devastating civil war that almost tore apart the US only a few decades after his death underlines the breadth of his perception.

Thankfully we are yet to arrive at that place. We would nevertheless be well advised to abandon our misplaced sense of exceptionalism that imagines us impervious to such misadventure. 

It is time for civil society to wake up from its untimely slumber, lest we wake up to find one-day a howling wasteland where a promising country once promised to bloom.

Random thoughts on social organisation

I will start by enumerating a few observations:

1. Marxist-Leninism is a demonstrably failed economic ideology that has been exposed by history as at best impractical and thus only enforceable only by the application of tyrannical government force.

2. The prevailing western economic orthodoxy - Capitalism - has survived so far but that survival should not be mistaken for sustainability. It has significant flaws such that the absence of major reform almost certainly guarantees its eventual demise.

3. The free market and capitalism, though they share some important characteristics, ought not be confused.

4. The Free Market is preferable to Capitalism and societies prosper to the extent that they are free.

These observations lead me to the following conclusions:

• Humankind is possessed of inestimable worth, beauty, potential, intelligence and creativity. This is amply demonstrated, among other things, by how much has been harnessed from land, water, air and vegetation, along with their constituents. Apart from scientific and technological accomplishments, her moral capacity is abundantly displayed by ubiquitous daily acts of unheralded kindness, love, self-sacrifice and magnanimity that all can attest. 

• There is nevertheless a darker side to the human persona that has necessitated the evolution of government as we have come to know it. The undeniable tendency towards taciturn individualism (selfishness) epitomises this reality. Thus, conflicting interests and anti-social behaviour have conferred a destructive blight to his otherwise recognisable grandeur. 

• This dark bent manifests in his family relations, inter-ethnic interactions, business dealings and many of his social interactions. He lies, steals, murders, cheats and bullies. He colonises, enslaves, objectifies, wages unjust wars and stubbornly clings to irrational prejudices. 

• This state of affairs naturally lends itself to lawlessness such that weak or non-existent government has always been associated with social chaos and ultimately the destruction of community, wellbeing and the suppression of his immense potential. This brings to mind the ominous spectre of the failed state that is painfully endured by some societies. 

• The most effective form of government has been demonstrated to be the selection of trusted individuals by the society in question, for the primary purpose of preventing the anti-social behaviour of individuals from undermining the interests of the group. Democracy as generally understood seeks, with imperfection, to advance this ideal. The chosen individuals must then govern to the best of their ability with integrity and justice and in keeping with the ideals, values and aspirations of the governed. 

• By virtue of their status as a sample of broader humanity, the chosen leaders are inescapably subject to the same spectrum of virtues and vices of the human population. This recognition necessitates the circumscription of their powers as well as accountability to the same laws that govern the broader population. In other words they are not above the law.

• Because of these realities, the ideal of completely unfettered markets can realistically only exist in degrees. The government must inevitably intervene one way or the other in trade and social dealings, either to enforce justice, to establish firm boundaries or otherwise to prevent some form of collective catastrophe against which disparate individual action is powerless. 

• While there is value in developing simplified organising principles, models or ideologies around which the world can be understood, there is nevertheless the danger of dogmatism and oversimplification. The ideology trap thus lends itself to the unhelpful proclivity to fit the world into predetermined ideological moulds, even when it scarcely fits. It seems discerning that leadership is exercised with the kind of wisdom that takes account of the complexity and multidimensionality of the world and takes principled action keeping with the demands of the challenges at hand.

I am, therefore I do

The drama of individual and by extension national histories occurs before the overarching quest to answer the questions: “who am I?” and “what is my worth?”

These are the great ontological and axiological questions that haunt all of us. 

In fact I will be bold and propose that the broad vista of human history is defined by multifarious attempts to answer them. 

Seeking to deal with these questions, among the leading philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, Rene Descartes, is credited with having said, “I think, therefore I am”. These simple words captured, like no other, the spirit of his age. 

I would like to proffer my own variation: I am, therefore I do. The order is deliberate and important. 

It is self-evident that human beings are of inestimable value, even though all of us, to varying degrees, are assailed by vexing self-doubt, from birth. 

The nature of this value is intrinsic. That is, it does not depend on any external parameters. 

This is no less self-evident than our inherent understanding that kindness is preferable to cruelty. I will not venture to justify this view. For now I will simply take it as self-evident. 

Even though that may be the case, it is corroborated by a sweeping glance across the glistening waters of history. 

The lesson from history is that we step onto precarious terrain whenever we define the value of human beings in extrinsic terms. 

Gender, economic status, beliefs, culture, educational achievements, physical beauty, charm, intelligence, actions and accomplishments of any kind are entirely inadmissible gauges of value. 

It is on this basis that the words of the great philosopher trouble me somewhat. An inference can be drawn from them, that to be or to exist, one must first think. 

Following that line of reasoning brings us to the problematic conclusion that the greater one’s intellectual powers, the more human they are and vice versa, because humanity is supposedly justified by the capacity to think. 

All its positives notwithstanding, it is easy to see how intellectual chauvinism came to be among the unfortunate residues of the Enlightenment. 

Let me come to one of the towering injustices of our time: racism. 

The injustice of racism consists in its answer to the axiological question according to extrinsic parameters, such as colour, origin or culture. 

Its cruelty is that it judges people according to things over which they have absolutely no control, such as where and by whom they were born. 

Its roots and justifications are deep, including the supposed “delay” or “incapacity” by certain parts of the world, not least Africa, to join the galloping march of “modernity” - a concept steeped in Eurocentric culture and thought. 

Entire societies and people groups have therefore been condemned to the status of perpetual inferiority on the basis of spurious measures, such as their level of technological advancement. 

“Christianity, commerce and civilisation”[1], David Livingstone’s rallying cry, was to be brought to them by the more “civilised”, for their own good, even if at gunpoint. Presumably, they would say their thank yous later. 

While neither endorsing nor disputing generally accepted definitions of progress, I do have a few questions. 

For one, can it be definitely confirmed that the level of personal fulfilment, contentment and happiness of the average New Yorker today is vastly superior to that of the erstwhile “savages”?

You ask, “What gives you the authority to use these measures as the basis of human advancement?” I ask you, in turn, what gives you the authority to consider economic and technological achievements as the true measures of progress?

The point is, whenever we use extrinsic measures to assess human value, we run into countless problems because we invariably use standards informed by our own myopic worldviews that are rooted in our unique cultures and histories. 

Their logical weaknesses notwithstanding, the impact of these views continues to afflict those from supposedly less developed societies, who must constantly prove their worth to an intransigently unconvinced world. 

I will spare you my thoughts about the hypocrisy of these perspectives for now, even when assessed within the confines of a disputable view of what truly constitutes progress. 

I’m therefore left deeply unsettled by the well-meaning but problematic view that the way Africans must dislodge these deeply embedded racist ideas is by first demonstrating equal or superior economic or technological capabilities to the West. As Japan and more recently China and the so-called Asian tigers have done, according to the argument.

While I have no problem with technological and economic advancement, in fact quite the contrary, we risk endorsing a deeply problematic premise when we suggest that the worth of Africans or anyone consists in the sum of their achievements. This stems from the inverted premise that to be, we must first do. 

I insist that the indisputable acceptance of our intrinsic value as human beings requires no extrinsic justification. 

In fact I argue that only when we refuse to accept the bigoted question marks about our worth, will our natural talents begin to freely find expression in innovations and economic progress, reflecting our unique history and cultures, which will astound the world. 

Both China and Japan, not unlike their European counterparts, built their achievements on deeply embedded mythologies about their supposed inherent superiority to other cultures. 

For them, from the onset, the question of worth was settled, even if on questionable grounds. 

This sense of worth naturally flowed into great economic and technological advancements. 

They were, first, and therefore they did. Not the other way round. 

Because of our (Africans) late entrance into a foreign socio-economic framework, with its own established rules that we had no part in creating, we have suffered too long from a misplaced sense of worth, which is rooted in the bigoted and deeply flawed ideas that still sadly thrive in the dark shadows of contemporary consciousness. 

This diminished sense of worth was systematised and concretised through historical crimes such as colonialism, slavery, apartheid, among other forms of servitude. Given the relative historical proximity of these injustices, it is understandable that Africans are still battling to extricate itself from their deleterious after-effects. 

It is up to us not only to refuse to accept these ideas, but to continue doing the hard work of immersing ourselves deeply in the truth that we are beautiful and worthy of dignity, honour and respect. 

Just as we are. Before we do anything. 

Otherwise, we risk placing ourselves on the perpetual treadmill of justifying our existence, on the basis of standards upon which there is no universal consensus and that are inherently unquantifiable. 

Among the weaknesses that accounted for our well documented historical reversals was that we took it for granted that humanity belongs to a common brotherhood that extolls neighbourliness as a virtue.

There is no need to forsake this “weakness”, as our worth as people should not be measured in relation to other people. It derives from no other pillar than our humanity. 

From this platform, as others have done, we cannot but naturally demonstrate by our lives that we are no less gifted, intelligent and innovative than any other people group. 

As we do that, the world will one day marvel as it witnesses the true glory of Africa emerging from its ashes.

Thus the battle cry must proceed from our beautiful continent. It must bellow and refuse to be restrained: We are, therefore we do!

[1] Those who personally know me may attest my deep commitment to Christ and his cause in the world. Though I have deep respect for great missionaries such as Livingstone, some of their beliefs left much to be desired. Among these is the inability to distinguish the message of the gospel from jingoistic cultural notions. To some of them Christianity equalled eurocentrism. I forgive them because, not unlike me, they too were prisoners of their times. This does not lessen the damage to the cause of the gospel as a result of these mind-sets, which lingers even to this day.