South Africa 2010: Field of dreams?

By the time this article is published, the fate of Bafana Bafana in the 2010 World Cup will be known. South Africa will either be destined for the second round or will be the first host nation not to make it to the knockout rounds.

Like most South Africans, I am a naive optimist and dream of seeing my team progressing deep into the tournament.

Realistically, this will not happen. But does it matter? Of course, in the biggest global tournament of them all, winning matters, but something much more significant than victory on the field is at stake for South Africa and the African continent. Since the first Europeans set off for Africa hundreds of years ago and returned home with tall tales, Africa has been embedded in the European consciousness as the dark continent.

Credit: Junior Mukeba / CC BY-SA

Colonialism not only devastated the continent economically, politically and culturally but left an idea of Africa as backward and incapable of getting its own house in order. Corrupt African leaders compounded the situation. This is where the World Cup in South Africa is important.

The World Cup may minimally contribute to South Africa’s economy and has, no doubt, created some employment, even if only temporarily, but it is in terms of image that it can have a real impact.

In a 2007 paper, in the journal Contemporary Economic Policy, Maenning and Du Plessis argue, after reviewing the impact of the 2006 World Cup on Germany, that the “public-image effects of sports events should no longer be neg- lected in cost-benefit studies of large sporting events”.

But how can image make a difference?
The World Cup highlights the dilemmas faced by many developing countries. Job creation and reducing poverty are a main priority, but selling your brand (your country) is part of building the economy in a globalised world. Poverty reduction is dependent on a strong economy.

Watching the football festivities from Europe, there is no doubt that South Africa, and the African continent to a degree, has received some positive marketing. Every day, for a month, South Africa is on television. I hope this leads to increased business and tourism.

However, I have another wish it terms of global marketing. I hope the event allows for a more nuanced view of Africa to develop and that South Africans get the confidence to embrace this. Let me explain. As I read newspaper articles about South Africa in the European press, they seem to oscillate between football, economic and political progress in South Africa, and visits by high-profile Europeans doing charity work. Implicit is often a simplistic script for what they think South Africa is about. In a nutshell, South Africa is in the initial postindependence phase but will, ultimately, go the way of other African countries. This will be characterised by corruption and civil war, with European do-gooders trying to help from afar. The World Cup offers some hope, but the big story will be when it comes to nought and the postindependence script plays itself out.

But I want the real legacy of the World Cup to challenge this. I hope the space can be found between all the vuvuzela blowing and soccer drama to see the real face of Africa, and of South Africa, in particular.

Africa is a continent that is more than war and starving babies but rather a place where deprivation and ineptitude exist alongside resilience, capability and determination. Development will never be linear on the African continent, given its history, and it is a mistake to measure South Africa and its progress within a pure Western model.

In this context, the test of the World Cup is not whether South Africa can show it is capable of hosting a world-class event, but rather that it helps South Africa realise it is not Germany and finds its own voice and path to political and economic progress.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 2 July 2010 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

The curious case of voting for no one

The gap between my writing this article and your reading it will be an interesting one. Right now, I am sitting in Belfast, watching the outworking of the 2010 British election as it swings from one potential outcome to another. By the time you read this article, however, the question of which poli- tical parties will be ruling the country will, more than likely, be resolved.

The 2010 election result in the UK, as everyone knows by now, produced a hung Parliament. This means that, of the 650 seats up for grabs, no single party managed to secure a majority of 326. The Conservative Party won 306, the Labour Party 258 and the Liberal Democrats 57. Faced with this scenario, either the Conservatives could have formed a minority government or at least two of the parties had to form a coalition to make an overall majority.

At the moment, that is while I write and not as you read, there is no coalition deal or minority government. The Liberal Democratic Party is locked in negotiations with the Conservative Party and the Labour Party.

The point I wish to make, however, does not concern my political soothsaying abilities (or lack thereof), or ultimately who gets into bed with whom, politically speaking, but rather concerns why Britain found itself in the curious predicament of a hung Parliament in the first place.

Clearly, no one really won the election. The coalition that is inevitably running the show as you read this article no doubt told the British electorate it has a mandate to govern, but the truth is this mandate exists only if the political parties in question work together. On one level, this is a ringing endorsement for consensus politics; on another, it points to the fact that the British public largely did not trust any one party to govern.

Given the recent history of British politics, this is not surprising. Tony Blair systematically undermined public confidence by driving home decisions that the majority did not support, such as the Iraq war. Gordon Brown was gifted the office of Prime Minister without an election, and dozens of MPs were shown to be systematically feathering their own nests during the expenses scandal. This has left many people in the country feeling profoundly distrustful of politicians, or, at the very least, the political parties they represent.

This distrust has even deeper historical roots. There obviously was a desire to do away with the Labour Party and Brown’s bumbling style of governance. But, equally, given the long shadow of Margaret Thatcher and the drastic impact her reign had on the poor in Britain, no one wanted to give the Conservatives an unfettered opportunity to dominate government either.

In Northern Ireland, the picture was similar. Although people continued to vote for the large parties like the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), at the same time, the people chose to decapitate some of the very same political parties. For example, the leader of the DUP, and First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, who has been defend- ing himself over various financial and other scandals, lost his seat after holding it for three decades.

So, I do not know what the new coalition in the UK will look like, but I imagine it is in place by now. No single party will be able to legislate freely. Compromise will be the order of the day. This could prove to be the ‘third way’ Blair was always looking for or an unmitigated disaster as previous political enemies try to work together.

Either way, the people have spoken. The message is clear: if politicians want an unequivocal mandate, then they need to govern for the people and not for themselves. I wonder how long it will take for the South African electorate to figure that out.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 21 May 2010 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Crying wolf and legalised theft

Recently, we bought a new family car. The car is great but the process was surrounded by numerous dodgy ways to part us with our money.

Several car loans, for example, came with hidden fees. Car dealers would offer a reduced interest rate to get your business and then, at the time of setting up the finance, inform you there is a set-up and closing cost to the loan. Fees in one case were equivalent to 20% of the total amount of interest one would finally pay. In other words, the discount was not real – simply redistributed.

Insurance is seemingly another way to fleece the customer. I could not believe the number of insurance policies thrown at us: tyre insurance, gap cover and sickness payment indemnity. Of course, insurance is necessary when buying a car, but all the additional products and the relentless attempts to flog them left me queasy. I think someone even tried to sell me insurance to insure my insurance.

But the insurance rip-off extends well beyond car dealerships. The extended warranty is the cream of the con crop in the retail sector, especially in the UK and Ireland. Extended warranties promise repair and sometimes replacement cover in the event of an unexpected breakdown of electrical goods after the normal one-year warranty expires. About £900-million worth of extended warranties are sold to consumers in the UK each year, according to Which magazine.

However, Which also concludes, after detailed investigation, that most of these insurances are worthless. It found that, in some cases, the extended warranty premiums cost over 50% of the value of the original products, some of which had a 97% reliability rate. Many of these electrical goods were also dropping in price and, in two to three years, a new product would often cost the same as or less than the insurance premium paid out.

And who can forget cheap airline scams advertising low-priced flights that exclude taxes, costs for paying with a credit card, additional fees if you do not check in online, not to mention charges for bags and seats? Ryanair is even considering charging for the use of onboard toilets.

Then, of course, there is the swine flu swindle. Some £11,3-billion was spent on the pandemic worldwide. The UK alone overstocked 30-million doses of the vaccine and spent £150-million. It now emerges countries that spent considerably less have similar infection rates.

Many now claim the pharmaceuticals companies duped the World Health Organisation (WHO) about the extent of the risk in order to make money. The European Council is investigating the matter. The WHO refutes claims that it was influenced and the drugs companies assert they responded effectively to an impending threat.

Two facts, however, are indisputable. Firstly, swine flu made some people very rich, or at least richer. And, secondly, public confidence in professional institutions has been severely undermined.

How can anyone take the scientific profession seriously after it cried wolf in relation to swine flu, bird flu, mad cow disease, holes in the ozone layer and the millennium bug, all of which largely came to zilch? How can one trust insurance companies when their profits outstrip payouts so obscenely?

But then again HIV threats turned out to be correct, and climate change scares are already proving accurate. If you lived in New Orleans in 2005 and failed to renew your household insurance, you would be blaming yourself, not wealthy insurance companies, right now.

The problem, however, is that making an informed decision about buying insurance or following professional advice is impossible when the process is constantly surrounded by a cacophony of truth and lies, good and bad science, informed and self-interest-driven guidance, as well as ruthless businesspeople and a constant barrage of advertisers aggressively selling us what we do not need. In this context, the issue is not about crying wolf, but spotting the wolf, in the first place.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 23 April 2010 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Masculinity and Transition in South Africa

Hamber, B. (2010). Masculinity and Transition: Crisis or Confusion in South Africa? Journal of Peacebuilding and Development, 5(3), 75-88 [Access in the Journal]

Is bling the new opium of the people?

I recently spent time back home in South Africa. It was fantastic: family, friends, sunshine, fine food and wine. I also visited various community projects in areas such as Crossroads. The way many people are overcoming poverty through local sustainability projects, education and hard work is an inspiration. Progress is evident every-where, whether it is shacks that now have electricity or new low-cost homes for those lucky enough to get them.

But, at the same time, as everyone knows, serious problems persist. It seems that, for every person moving out of poverty, another person is languishing in squalor. In this regard, I concur with veteran journalist Allister Sparks that “it is not that nothing has changed, but that things have not changed for enough people”.

I do not, however, want to get into a debate about whether government’s economic policy is correct, or whether government is doing enough. Rather, I would like to talk about how people react to all this. And, if I am frank, and I acknowledge that what I am about to say may be a symptom of my own coming and going from South Africa – there is something about my home society that disturbs me deeply.

I lived most of adult life in South Africa. I know what it is like to be confronted on a daily basis by pervasive poverty, crime, violence and social disintegration. For most people, and I am not blameless in this regard, the best way to deal with this is to ignore it, get on with your work and life, and, perhaps, make a small difference where you can.

Obviously, this is inadequate, but there are trends in South Africa that I find more troubling than the ostrich syndrome of survival. It seems that people are using the trappings of wealth as a way of anesthetising themselves from noticing the poverty that is all around them.

Karl Marx thought religion was the opium of the people, but in South Africa it is bling and shopping malls that are the new temples. The bigger your car, the heavier your wallet, or the more flashy your house, the easier it seems to avoid everything around you. Wealth can insulate you from an insecure world, but I fear the obsession many people have with the green stuff in South Africa extends beyond the basic need for security.

Of course, people living in places like Ireland and the UK are materialistic, and most of us aspire to living well, but, in South Africa, I am always struck by how much people talk about their salaries, their cars and their houses, and how they like to show it all off. People clearly aspire to being rich, not to simply being comfortable.

I think this is because the apartheid system perverted the idea of what success means. Since the system was founded on privilege for some and not for others, it appears that being privileged has become the yardstick of success. If I am direct, for many black South Africans, overcoming the indignity of apartheid means one has to become super privileged. For many white South Africans, the best way to defend yourself against potentially losing your gifted privilege is to not merely maintain a certain lifestyle but to become superrich.

The matter is further complicated in South Africa by the apartheid past, which has rendered people incapable of having a discussion about ostentatious wealth and the desire for it without it becoming a political or race issue.

But, surely, it does not matter whether you are black or white, a South African or an American, a politician, a popstar, a banker or a poor man made good – buying a R1-million sports car or wearing a R250,000 watch is downright sickening in a world where some people cannot afford one meal a day.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 26 March 2010 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

With great power comes great obfuscation

With great power comes great responsibility” is one of those lines that, despite being uttered in a Spiderman movie, will linger on in social consciousness.

The statement is a catchy version of a line in a Roosevelt speech (which, incidentally, he never gave because he died the night before): “Today, we have learned in the agony of war that great power involves great responsibility”.

This may well, in turn, come from the Bible, which, in the book of Luke, states: “From the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Whatever its origins, the assertion is evocative and, as I sat watching Tony Blair give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war, I could not get the line out of my head.

The quote came to mind for three reasons.

Firstly, the way George W Bush and Blair painted Saddam Hussein as the incarnation of evil and the West as the saviours of the Iraqi people was as fantastical as a Hollywood blockbuster.

Secondly, the full quotation in the movie, although cheesy, is rather profound in the context of the Iraq war. In the film, the line is used in relation to a school bully who used to torment the young Peter Parker before he transformed into Spiderman. Spiderman’s uncle warns: “But just because you can beat him up doesn’t give you the right to. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility”. This is a warning Bush and Blair would have done well to heed in relation to the bully, Hussein.

Finally, Blair’s blind obstinacy that he did the right thing and had no regrets about his actions has left me questioning if he really does take responsibility for his actions. In the Chilcot Inquiry, Blair claimed that “there is not a single day that passes” without him thinking about his responsibility. Blair claims he had multiple responsibilities, including the responsibility to protect the country. But everyone now knows that Hussein was not a threat to the UK. Yes, Hussein was harming his own people, but it is difficult to sustain an argument that you care about ordinary Iraqis with over 95 000 civilian deaths on your hands.

Based on Blair’s insistence (on another TV show) that, even if there were no weapons of mass destruction, he still would “have thought it right to remove [Hussein]” one can only conclude that Blair sees responsibility as being tied to his personal opinion of what was right or wrong. But taking a difficult decision because you think it is right and you have the power to do it, particularly when most ordinary people could see it was ill advised, does not negate the real responsibility that comes with such actions.

I find it hard to understand how one can feel responsible for, yet not regret or feel the need to apologise for, an ill-planned and ill-executed war that has by all accounts been a disaster.

When asked recently about the number of inquiries into the war by a US channel, Blair commented that he felt it was hard for people to simply disagree on a matter these days. Rather, he added, people had a tendency to think there was “some great deceit” or “conspiracy” rather than just to accept that people “have different points of view and hold them reasonably for genuine reasons”.

But what Blair does not appear to understand is that we are not talking about a disagreement about whether Pepsi is better than Coke, or whether Batman would beat Spiderman in a fictitious fight. Disagreement in the Iraq case meant that politicians, led by Blair, rammed through a political decision to kill thousands of people – a decision that millions of ordinary people in the UK and in the rest of the world opposed. Taking responsibility, in this case, means accounting for the deaths that followed one’s decision – not rationalising why you thought it was a good idea.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on 26 February 2010 as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.