Could the price of a British pint, now nearly 90 times as much for South Africans as it was a while back, give a clue? I ask this question because there’s been a hissing and spitting amongst the chattering classes over a comment by US celebrity lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, that South Africa is a ‘failed state’. Dershowitz made the remark ahead of the Oscar Pistorius trial, suggesting that Pistorius would not get justice as a result.
Several prominent commentators – Simon Barber in Washington (who is, admittedly, on the government’s payroll) and Max du Preez locally (who most certainly is not) – have leapt to defend the country and its legal system. Fair enough – in this case, I think they’re right, although a far better question would be whether or not Reeva Steenkamp will get justice, in the light of police investigative incompetence, especially in the forensics field?
But the debate comes at the same time as a warning by Remgro CEO, Jannie Durand, that we risk becoming the Argentina of the 21st Century, if we carry on as we are. Durand, speaking to the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut in Cape Town, reminded his audience that exactly 100 years ago, Argentina was one of the most admired countries on earth and among the ten richest.
I have no doubt that Durand’s thoughts were inspired by a recent edition of The Economist, which noted that for Argentina, “In the 43 years leading up to 1914, GDP had grown at an annual rate of 6%, the fastest recorded in the world.” The same newspaper points to an economy in 1914 that was lacking modernity, made poor trade policy decisions and had a lack of “the institutions to create successful policies”. It describes the process that has led to Argentina’s subsequent decline as “One hundred years of ineptitude.”
Durand is less polite, describing Argentina as “a wreck and once again at the centre of an emerging market crisis.” His point is that “South Africa’s slipping into a steady decline would not be hard.”
He draws clear parallels between Argentina’s disastrous leadership over the past 70 years and South Africa’s now: “Tolerance for leaders who abuse their discretion and selectively enforce the rule of law, interpret it in illogical and corrupt ways or use the laws to benefit their cronies and punish those who do not play ball, is the road to ruin, autocracy and/or revolution for any democracy.” Was Durand referring to Juan Perón or Jacob Zuma, I wonder?
But read together – The Economist, Jannie Durand, Alan Dershowitz, Simon Barber and Max du Preez – I started to wonder about what constitutes a failed state? When can we say such-and-such a state has failed and when not?
Argentina, for example. A colleague and noted travel writer, Caroline Hurry, has just written a piece on its capital, Buenos Aires for the magazine I edit, Acumen. She describes a rather wonderful place and one I’d like to visit.
Google the phrase ‘failed state’ and immediately you’ll see that there is no real agreement on a definition. Some of those offered include things like loss of control over territory, erosion of authority to make collective decisions, and an inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community. None of those apply in South Africa. One area of concern: an inability to provide public services. Yes, that’s a problem but it doesn’t constitute failure of the state.
Allow me, then, to make it selfish and personal. What does ‘state failure’ feel like to me?
When I finished my studies in the UK in 1976, the rand sat at R2.00 to the pound. At that time, I drank beer and a pint of the horrible, warm, English stuff cost me 32p – 64 cents in rands. Fast forward to 2014. The same pint now costs an Englishman £3.20, an increase of 900%. But my rand has fallen against the pound from R2.00 to R18.00, a decrease of 800%. So were I to travel to the UK and buy a pint, it would now cost me R57.20, which is, believe it or not, an increase of over 8,800%.
OK, various other things have also changed over that time, including salaries. So let’s try another personal comparison. Shortly after coming home, I started working at the SABC as a junior reporter. My salary was R600 per month. So the 64 cents I would have paid for an English pint on my next trip represented 0.11% of my monthly income. A young reporter in this day and age might expect to earn R12,000 per month, perhaps. Were that same person to travel to the UK and buy a pint at R57.20, he or she would be spending 0.48% of monthly income.
That’s a bit over four times as much as I did all those years ago as a student. Put it another way: by my crude measure, South Africans travelling abroad are now four times worse off than we were in the 1970s.
I know there are millions of fellow South Africans who can’t afford the price of a bus ticket or taxi fare out of hugely squalid informal settlements, let alone the price of an air ticket to London. But I did warn you that this was a selfish example. To me, it starts to feel as though overseas travel, something I have been privileged enough to take for granted all my life, is now slipping from my grasp.
That’s not state failure by a long chalk. But it does see me line up behind Jannie Durand and look towards Argentina. In fact, just that simple comparison – a rand that has slowly slipped from R2.00 to the pound to R18.00 tells me that we may be further along the road to failure than we imagine.