Empowered citizens are better than Big Men

14 May 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

Perhaps big-vision leadership is less important than empowered citizens, writes Tony Leon

MY 88-year-old father has been supporting Manchester United, from Durban, since circa 1935, and he still does. My 25-year-old Israeli stepson became a Red Devil fan before he could speak English.

When, after 26 years of leadership, Alex Ferguson, dubbed "the ultimate manager", announced his retirement last week, there was a cascade of bouquets and no brickbats for the Scot who, like his team, had risen to the summit of sporting excellence as perhaps the greatest, and most valuable, brand in sport. Although the product of a hardscrabble upbringing in Glasgow’s Clydeside, and a committed Labour Party man, Ferguson’s redness in his politics and football allegiance did not preclude his adapting to the global requirements of modernising the "beautiful game". Indeed, last year, he gave a lecture in the citadel of capitalism, the Harvard Business School, where he preached the virtues he had so assiduously practised: the importance of openness and adaptability in making even the most venerable brands — countries, companies and professional football teams — fit for purpose. Not for nothing is Manchester United the first team in the world to be valued at more than $3bn.

Doubtless the "team that will never die" will continue winning under new manager David Moyes, but we can’t know whether he will achieve Ferguson’s success.

Quite how central human agency is to corporate success is underlined by the vertiginous fall of Apple. US financial analyst James Surowiecki laments that, until recently, the global technology leader was almost universally venerated. It was the most profitable hi-tech company in the world, with many predicting it would be the first trillion-dollar US company. But: "Since September, the stock has tumbled more than 35%, losing more than $200m from its market cap." Its sudden fall from grace is attributable to many reasons, not least the premature demise of its iconic founding genius, Steve Jobs.

The departure of Ferguson occurred when an event of less global significance but of some local importance was convened in Cape Town, the World Economic Forum on Africa. But, even here, the lessons of Ferguson’s legacy resonated. As Business Day editorialised, for Africa to maintain and extend its flavour-of-the month status with global investors requires dollops of vision and ambition and the discarding of outdated mind-sets: "If Africa is to use its resources to develop itself, it must discard its victim mentality and grasp the opportunity to maximise the benefit from the billions of dollars in investment the world is ready to deliver."

Does the present crop of continental leaders harbour the political equivalent of a Ferguson or a Jobs? I was recently rereading Martin Meredith’s magisterial account of our continent’s post-colonial history, The State of Africa. It commences with his account of the 1958 All-African People’s Conference, hosted by the first head of a decolonised African country, Kwame Nkrumah, in Accra. The key guests went onto become the leading lights of African liberation: Julius Nyerere, Joshua Nkomo, Kenneth Kaunda, Hastings Banda and Amilcar Cabral.

Yet, none of them — especially Nkrumah, whose megalomania resulted in his later ousting — achieved the sort of economic success and democratic governance today routinely predicted and practised on the continent. Some plundered their countries, or in the case of Nyerere, were personally incorruptible but practised ruinous economic grand experiments. The African leaders who gathered in Cape Town last week are of a lower wattage than their forebears. And the world in which they lead is vastly changed from the superpower conflict that formed the template, and often provided the cover, for their predecessors’ misgovernance.

One such moderniser today, who benefits from the investor search for yield rather than a Soviet or US quest for a Cold War ally, is Paul Kagame of Rwanda. His country recently floated its first dollar bond of $400m, or almost 6% of its annual output. From the ravages of genocide in 1994, he has constructed an economy that is the seventh fastest growing country tracked by the International Monetary Fund. But he is equally noted for his authoritarian streak. In contrast, Malawi’s President Joyce Banda is admired for her democratic instincts and poor economic prospects.

Here’s a thought: perhaps big-vision leadership is less important than empowered citizens. The spectacular growth of mobile telephony on the continent, for example, has brought social and economic goods within reach of one in two African homes. And social networking famously helped topple ageing North African dictators.

Global and country brands, like football teams, are augmented by great leaders. But you still need the players, the market and the fans to win the game.

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA.

Sun City shenanigans give ‘Gupta’ new meaning

07 May 2013 | Tony Leon  | Original Publication:  BDlive

'Gupta' has become a verb denoting the selling of a country’s soul and patrimony to foreign bidders with deep pockets, writes Tony Leon

A FOREST’s worth of paper and gridfuls of electrons have been expended on commenting on Sun City’s version of our very own Monsoon Wedding. There is something appropriately Bollywood about the Gupta nuptials and the drama evoked in their breaching of national security, flouting of protocol and the sheer excess of the event. A comedy of errors and the symbolic shaming of a nation evoked a chorus of condemnation which, just for once, united the "usual suspects" in the opposition and media together with the paladins in the highest reaches of the governing alliance.

According to my old Collins English Dictionary, "Gupta" is a noun denoting "the dynasty ruling northern India from the early fourth to the late sixth century AD, a period of famous achievement in the fields of art, science and mathematics". However, according to the more contemporary blogosphere and Twitterverse, Gupta has become a verb denoting the selling of a country’s soul and patrimony to foreign bidders with deep pockets and close connections to the ruling family. Or perhaps a synonym for the crony capitalism embedded in the paraphernalia of black economic empowerment and the vertical nature of power — where "know who" trumps "know how" and personal enrichment is acquired through political access and greasing the wheels of political parties.

But the uncharacteristic speed and decisiveness of the government’s response to the outrage evoked by the Gupta wedding saga suggests other forces are at play.

Arguably, the arms deal scandal is of far greater weight than the unauthorised landing of one plane at an air force base; or the serial revelations concerning the communications minister and her apparent confusion between her public duties and her private relationships, not to mention her inability to manage her own office, never mind South Africa’s barely built digital highway. Yet, in the first case, the judicial commission of inquiry has become a site of internal controversy and nonperformance. In the second, the Presidency, in whose gift the appointment of ministers lies, seems unconcerned about the damage caused by a key presidential lieutenant.

None of this suggests that the intensity of the scrutiny and the response to the Gupta affair is either unwelcome or unnecessary. But perhaps Gupta has also become a byword for a growing unease about the meshing of commercial power and political influence, with a dash of xenophobia adding some spice to the mix. Then there is what the African National Congress (ANC), borrowing from the language of Stalin, called in the Mbeki era, "the national question", code for dealing with ethnic minorities in our racial mosaic.

Stephen Ellis’s masterful recent book, External Mission — The ANC in Exile, provides a compelling account of the often tortuous interplay between the Africanist forces in the ANC and the explicitly multiracial South African Communist Party, before and after the ANC opened its ranks to non-Africans. On his account, deep suspicion by ANC security chiefs of a largely Indian and derisively named "cabal" during the heyday of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the 1980s owed a great deal to the fact that the UDF in Natal "owed its strength to the Indian constituency especially".

But if some of the Gupta finger-pointing has an ethnic dimension, what of another national minority, the coloureds? Rapport newspaper on Sunday headlined a case in the Labour Court. It concerns the underpromotion of 10 coloured officers in the Department of Correctional Services in the Western Cape and revolves around the department using national rather than provincial demographics to determine its equity targets. One of the complainants, Geo-Nita Baartman, testified that not only was she both previously and severely disadvantaged but, as she put it: "I fail to understand why I sit here today … to defend myself over policies I have no control over." She was referring to the "coloured labour preference policy", which the National Party enforced in the Cape to keep Africans out of the province.

The Gupta affair provides, ironically, both a distraction from and another perspective on an intense national debate.

But there is something also rather universal about it. Last week, for example, The Economist published a searing critique of South African-style affirmative action under the headline, "Fool’s Gold". In this week’s edition, a correspondent’s pithy response was published as the "featured comment". CA-Oxonian wrote: "SA is doing a replay of the Russian game whereby a tiny number of well-connected people become fabulously wealthy through the acquisition of assets other people have created, and then entrench themselves in both the economic and political hierarchies. We’ve seen it before and we’ll see it again."

Another definition, perhaps, for Gupta.

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

Tony bewys hom as ’n verteller soos min

5 May 2013 | Jan-Jan Joubert  | Original Publication: Beeld

 

The Accidental Ambassadoris ’n subjektiewe vertelling deur ’n fyn waarnemer wat ook maar mens bly, skryf Jan-Jan Joubert.

Wat gebeur agter die mure en deure van ’n hedendaagse Suid-Afrikaanse ambassade? En wat is die aard en doel van ons land se buitelandse beleid?

Dit is die twee vrae wat Tony Leon, jare lange opposisieleier en tot onlangs die Suid-Afrikaanse ambassadeur in Buenos Aires (verantwoordelik vir Argentinië, Uruguay en Paraguay), trag om te beantwoord in hierdie boek waarvan die titel terugspeel op die ekonoom John Kenneth Galbraith se beskrywing van sy termyn as Amerikaanse ambassadeur in Indië in die Kennedy-era.

Die boek is ook ’n voortsetting van Leon se omvattende outobiografiese vertellings, On The Contrary, wat in 2008 verskyn het.

Daarom is daar ’n lang aanloop tot sy vertrek na Argentinië, waarin sy laaste twee jaar as parlementslid (ná sy uittrede as DA-leier in 2007) en sy betrokkenheid by Harvard en by die Cato-instituut in Washington DC beskryf word.

Hierdie vroeë deel van die boek is nie die sterkste deel van die vertelling nie, en dit sal die skrywer dalk gemoedsrus gee as hy besef en aanvaar dat sy opvolger, Helen Zille, nie betrokke was by die groep wat in 2006 begin geluide maak het dat hy as partyleier moet terugstaan nie. Daardie groep se hoofspeler, die Oos-Kaapse woelgees dr. Tertius Delport, is heeltemal goed daartoe in staat om selfstandig en om sy eie redes die politieke water op te klits, soos hy ook sedertdien bewys het.

En om te impliseer dat Zille selfs sou twyfel daaroor om vir Sandra Botha te stem as parlementêre leier is ’n mistasting.

Leon was versigtig om in 2007 nie die stryd om sy opvolger aan te wys te oorheers nie.

Dieselfde geld Zille se rol in die wedloop om die DA se parlementêre leierskap tussen Botha en Delport.

Waar die boek vlam vat, is wanneer Leon vertel van sy tyd in Argentinië.

Enigiemand wat hom ken, weet sy belesenheid, intellektuele skerpheid, humor en taalvaardigheid maak hom ’n gespreksgenoot en verteller soos min.

Hy het ook die sonderlinge vermoë om op papier niks van sy impak as raconteur in te boet nie, so die boek lees heerlik.

Boonop is sowel die Suid-Afrikaanse diplomatieke korps as die huidige Argentynse bewind van pres. Cristina Kirchner absurd genoeg dat Leon se skerp waarnemingsvermoë en selfs skerper tong tot hul reg kom deur die oorvertel van sappige vignettes wat die tone laat krul.

Om dit hier oor te vertel, is om dit te bederf, so ek gaan nie, maar ek het dikwels hardop gelag by die lees van die boek. Sy beoordeling van ’n Argentynse skoonheidskompetisie, sy vertellings oor die ampswoning en sy beskrywings van die Argentynse staatsdiens is die beste. Sy uitwys van parallelle en verskille tussen die Suid-Afrikaanse en Argentynse samelewings stem mens tot instemmende nadenke. Die pit van die boek vind jy teen die einde wanneer Leon op sy kenmerkende en kosbare reguit, priemende wyse Suid-Afrika se buitelandse beleid ontleed.

Sy oorwoë en toegeligte gevolgtrekking dat ons buitelandse beleid koersloos en beginselloos is, en dat dit ’n bespotting maak van oudpres. Nelson Mandela se onderneming dat dit op die uitbreiding van menseregte sal berus, is ongelukkig heeltemal in die kol.

The Accidental Ambassador is ’n subjektiewe vertelling deur ’n fyn waarnemer wat ook maar mens bly.

Beslis die moeite werd om aan te skaf. ­

– Jan-Jan Joubert is Beeld se politieke redakteur

Don't cry for me, Argentina

30 Apr 2013 | Stephen Coan | Original Publication:  The Witness

 

 

ANYONE who has visited Argentina, especially its capital, Buenos Aires, will likely agree with Tony Leon that it is a place where “magic realism is reality”.

Dubbed the “Paris of the South”, this bustling city sports a sophisticated façade, reflected in the wide boulevards of the city centre, but edge beyond the sound of the tango and the smell of coffee, and you find a disconcerting blend of rich and poor: dilapidated buildings, broken pavements, and ubiquitous reminders of the country’s chequered past, not least in the kaleidoscope of races and cultures walking the streets — from the indigenous Indians, decimated by the Spanish conquerors, to the immigrants of the 20th century.

Leon, former leader of the opposition and head of the Democratic Alliance, enjoyed a deep immersion in the beguiling melting pot of Buenos Aires, thanks to serving three years as the South African ambassador and plenipotentiary to Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, now  chronicled in his book The Accidental Ambassador.

To explain the country’s racial jigsaw, Leon quotes its most famous writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who described Argentina as “an imported country — everyone here is really from somewhere else”.

The first half of the 20th century saw a huge immigration of people from Europe — English, Irish, French, East Europeans and a large proportion of Italians — who all became part of a boom economy, largely based on beef. An “emigrant mélange” that is acknowledged in the national joke: an Argentine is an Italian who speaks Spanish, acts like a Frenchman, but secretly wishes he were English.

“There is no escaping the country’s half-baked identity,” says Leon, “thanks in part to its mainly imported population. And it’s still not come to terms with that.”

Nor has Argentina comes to terms with its violent past, especially the Dirty War of 1976 to 1983, when a military junta stepped in after a series of quasi dictators — including the Perons — had plunged the country into chaos. This was the time of “the disappeared”, a time of torture, state-sponsored killings and murder — “9 000 was the verified figure, but some estimates suggest nearly 30 000,” says Leon. “It was apartheid on an industrial scale.”

The truth of much of what happened has never come out. “They never had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission or its equivalent,” says Leon. “I’m not saying that everything came out via the TRC, but we made a much better fist of it than the Argentinians.”

One of the problems of not having had some sort of TRC process is that nothing was officially disclosed, says Leon. “So when anyone of note from that period comes into high office, the question is ‘What did you do in the war?’” says Leon.

As it was with Pope Francis, who, until his election as pope earlier this year, Leon had known as the Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. “He is a very good man, but there are questions hanging over him.”

In 2011, thanks to Bergoglio’s outspoken criticism of Cristina Kirchner’s current government, Leon found himself and other diplomats flown to the city of Resistencia in the far northern province of Chaco, to listen to Kirchner’s address marking the 201st anniversary of the Day of the Revolution, after having earlier visited the city’s cathedral for a religious service.

“It was all because Cristina wouldn’t cross the road from the Pink House [the seat of government] to Bergoglio’s cathedral across the square,” says Leon.

“She hated Bergoglio because of what he said. When he became pope, she flew to Rome to bend the knee, but back home she wouldn’t cross the road.”

One topic that will get Argentines to cross the road together is the Falklands, or the Malvinas as they are known in Argentina. “It’s something that all Argentines cross the divide and unite around,” says Leon, as he found to his cost when hosting a dinner for his Argentine friends and jocularly asked one of them: “What is it about Malvinas that makes all Argentines so agitated? After all, you wouldn’t want to go and live on that windswept archipelago?”

The fiery response saw Leon thereafter determinedly maintain the recommended South African policy of “strenuous neutrality” on the subject. At least he didn’t add Borges’ famous comment on the 1982 war between Argentina and Britain as a “fight between two bald men over a comb”.

Leaving aside the legacies of the past and questions of identity, the big question is how Argentina went from boom to bust so quickly. “I was reading an essay by Marios Llosas Vargas last night, in which he is appalled by Argentina,” says Leon. “Here was a country ahead of its time, that had a functioning democracy before Europe. Now it has an economy a quarter that of Brazil and it’s heading off a cliff.”

Leon was especially chuffed at having read the essay in the original Spanish, a language, as he admits in the book, he battles with, as on the occasion he risked speaking it to welcome 250 Argentine guests visiting the South African ship Drakensberg: “Good evening and welcome, ladies and horses” — substituting the word caballos (horses) for the word caballeros (gentlemen).

As is evident from such stories, The Accidental Ambassador is an entertaining account of Leon’s three years as ambassador, in a posting that saw the poacher turn gamekeeper, “representing a government I had resolutely opposed”. One senses it’s a paradox he never quite resolved.

When an ambassadorship was first mooted, Leon decided he would only accept a posting where he would not have to promote policies he did not agree with. “Argentina was a comfortable fit,” he says. “There were no issues to contend with. It would have been a different matter if it had been Tel Aviv or Harare.”

Ironically, it was probably South African foreign policy that played a role in shortening his stay from four years to three.

“On the other hand, I didn’t want to watch the clock,” he says. “Also, my wife couldn’t work, I have an ageing father in Durban, and I felt I had done what I set out to do.”

What did he set out to do? Boost trade between the two countries. “There was an 80% improvement while I was there,” he says. Quite an achievement in a country that imports as little as possible.

“I looked for niches,” Leon says. “Argentina is the most protectionist country in the world; there are no foreign goods. But the pampas came to our rescue. Argentina is one of the most fertile countries in the world.” And the boom in soybean production meant there was a need for fertiliser. “We had something they wanted.”

But when Leon spoke out on foreign policy — on Syria, Libya and the refusal of the Dalai Lama’s visa — there was a change of attitude towards him back in Pretoria. “Whenever I spoke on the phone to them, it was no longer ‘Hello Tony, how are you?’ but ‘Hello Tony, when are you coming back?’ I waited until the Springboks came, then I left.”

In 2012, the Springboks played in the Rugby Championship, the former tri-nations with Argentina on board, a satisfying coda to the Argentine premiere of the film Invictus, hosted by the South African embassy shortly after Leon’s arrival in 2009.

Living far from South Africa, Leon was able to view events here more dispassionately than he would have in the past.

“But I would still see things and gasp and gulp. But then, looking at Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, I’d realise we had still got a lot of things right.”

Now Leon is back, writing a regular column for Business Day, consulting to potential trade partners and busy on “the paid lecture circuit, as opposed to the unpaid lecture circuit I was on as a politician”.

Is he having any second thoughts on his political career, his style of confrontational politics for example? “Compared to what’s happening now, I think I was rather an amateur. Now it’s like two parties are going through a really bad divorce.”

Leon’s past outspokenness on corruption and growing authoritarianism now looks prophetic. “I realised what we were up against when the sainted [Nelson] Mandela made a speech written by [Thabo] Mbeki, in which he said the opposition is destroying our society.”

“Back then, there was a strange acquiescence. Perhaps people thought they should give the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t apologise for what I said.”

Writing about South Africa in the present, Leon notes the gulf between “the fine prospectus for a better South Africa, offered by the National Planning Commission, and the dismal events at Marikana”. For Leon, crossing that gulf safely and timeously “remains the essential challenge for the future”.

As far as Leon is concerned, the jury is still out on the National Development Plan. “We need a Thatcherite determination to take on the unions in this country,” he says, “to get them on board the NDP because they seem to have declared war on it.”

But is the government itself on board? “[Jacob] Zuma told me that the NDP is front and centre of everything the government does —but he has to make it happen. We need to see it. In deeds, not words.”

• The Accidental Ambassador — From Parliament to Patagonia by Tony Leon

Tony's walk down Memory Lane at Kearsney College, Durban

April 2013| Original Publication:  http://www.kearsney.com

We are delighted to congratulate Tony Leon (1974) on the release of his book The Accidental Ambassador, From Parliament to Patagonia.

 From the ‘Job Interview’ with Jacob Zuma in 2008, a three week crash course on “How to be an Ambassador” to his cultural immersion in everything Argentinean, he will entertain us with his anecdotes and insights.



Tony met sons of fathers he knew at Kearsney

Andrea Nattrass, Pan Macmillan Publisher introduced Tony at his 1^st Durban book launch at Adams as follows: "On behalf of Pan Macmillan and Adam’s Bookshop here in Musgrave Centre, I’d like to welcome you to the first KZN launch of Tony Leon’s newly published title, The Accidental Ambassador: From Parliament to Patagonia.

Tony Leon is someone who needs very little introduction. He served as South Africa’s ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay from August 2009 to October 2012. Prior to this Tony was a member of the South African parliament for nearly 20 years; for 13 of those leading the Democratic Alliance, making him the longest serving leader of the opposition in parliament since the advent of democracy in 1994. He led and grew his party from its marginal position on the brink of political extinction into the second largest political force in South Africa.

Tony has now returned to South Africa, and is consulting to business, writing a weekly newspaper column for Business Day and, of course, has recently published this, his third book, following on from Hope and Fear: Reflections of a Democrat(1998) and the South African bestseller On the Contrary: Leading the Opposition in a Democratic South Africa (2008).



Elwyn van den Aardweg hosted Tony to tea with Janine O'Connor,

owner of Books & Books http://www.booksandbooks.com/

Pan Macmillan was delighted to be approached by Tony back in early 2012 while he was still based in Buenos Aires to consider publishing the memoir he was writing about his time in the position of ambassador. We expected to read an interesting and informative manuscript, but I have to confess we were completely unprepared for how delightfully humorous and self-deprecating many of Tony’s anecdotes proved to be. From his account of somehow losing his own socks on the aeroplane en route to Argentina and having to go through his official welcoming ceremony trying to hide the “vomit yellow” airline socks he was forced to wear, through to his discussions of the ageing lift system at his official residency that saw his efforts at sports diplomacy experience a slight setback when the Springbok rugby players couldn’t be accommodated in the elevator more than two at a time because they were such strapping specimens, my MD Terry Morris, and I, soon realised that we were dealing with a gem of a book that offered both entertainment as well as more serious reflections on issues such as misgovernance and politics in his host and home countries.

We are so pleased with the end result and want to thank not only Tony for making the writing and publishing process such a smooth-sailing one, but also, in her absence, his wife Michal, without whom we would not have successfully navigated the initial technological difficulties experienced by an author who was writing at some physical remove and wasn’t always completely comfortable with twenty-first century computer innovations. In addition, Michal compiled a “Must-See List” that can be found as an appendix to the book and details some of the highlights for any visitor to Argentina. Thank you for both your efforts, which have resulted in a highly readable book that Pan Macmillan is proud to have as one of our key titles for 2013".

A way to keep memories of Freedom Day alive

30 Apr 2013 | Tony Leon | Original Publication:  BDlive

A vigorous press routinely reports corruption and, with an equal resoluteness, little of it is interdicted or punished, writes Tony Leon

DURING the 1990s, the hinge years of South Africa’s democratic transition, Bill Keller was based in Johannesburg as the correspondent for the New York Times. He recently revisited, in the pages of the New York Review of Books at least, our republic and penned a pithy and acute diagnosis of South Africa now and then. He described our story as simultaneously "dispiriting and inspiring".

The Freedom Day weekend provided evidence of both aspects of this paradox.

On Friday, the Mail & Guardian unveiled yet another corruption scandal — it’s almost like a weekly horror series of skulduggery in high places — concerning the alleged looting of parastatal PetroSA, and not for the first time either. My mind cast back to the 2004 general election, when the same parastatal was used as the vehicle for gross overpayments to a politically connected supplier, who promptly paid over the proceeds of his enrichment to the campaign coffers of the ruling party. Then as now, action was promised but no cuffing and charging the culprits actually happened. Thus when, on Friday, the present board airily promised to take action "to the extent that any impropriety has taken place", readers are cautioned not to hold their breath.

Keller cited as one of the crowning ironies of the new South Africa the fact that a vigorous press routinely reports corruption and, with an equal resoluteness, little of it is either interdicted or punished. Freedom of speech coexists with impunity to plunder. But had the Protection of State Information Bill been enacted in its original 2009 form, it is doubtful that even the reporting of the PetroSA saga would ever have seen the light of day.

The final passage in Parliament last week of a watered-down version of this legislation is proof of the worth of an engaged push-back by a vast sway of civil society and opposition forces acting in concert — and, to be perfectly fair, evidence of a governing party prepared to listen and act on many of the objections.

An even more ancient aphorism came to me on Freedom Day, Saturday, when the aircraft from Cape Town touched down at OR Tambo International Airport. Germany’s "Iron Chancellor", Otto von Bismarck, apparently once said: "If you enjoy eating sausages, don’t watch them being made." Undoubtedly, this has highly contemporary relevance to another current scandal, the labelling and mislabelling of our local boerewors and other meats. But Bismarck was referring to less savoury aspects of the political process. And it is a useful reminder of just what a close-run thing today’s freedom and democracy, with all their imperfections and slippages, were at the time of its bloody birth.

For example, 19 years ago to the day of our arrival, when OR Tambo International was plain Jan Smuts Airport, it was the site of the last gasp of the right-wing violence that promised to destroy our new democracy before it had even taken root — a car bomb rocked the airport, the last of a series of fatal urban explosions.

It was so loud that we even heard it at my polling station far away in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.

"The struggle of memory against forgetting" was how author Milan Kundera described the struggle of man against power. It is also a very powerful antidote to the cynicism and ennui that beset even the most engaged local, small "d" democrats.

But then I arrived at a site of inspiration. Bobby Godsell and James Motlatsi had gathered 100 patrons at the Johannesburg Country Club to sign The Citizens Charter. Their own improbable partnership tells its own story — they first met as hostile adversaries across the great divide, which then and now separated mine management and their striking workforce. And their early encounter in 1987 took place when bad politics — South Africa was in the midst of a state of emergency — conjoined adversarial labour relations.

And yet, in the intervening 25 years, they have forged a durable partnership and they summoned us on Saturday to partner in spearheading "active citizenship".

In a word, Godsell described the time as ripe, amid all the doom and gloom gripping the land, for people "to leave the spectators’ bench and to get onto the playing field".

It is easy to dismiss the initiative as a sort of high-minded do-goodism.

Yet the very simplicity and practicality of the charter and the impressive (excluding this columnist) and hugely diverse patrons who enrolled for it, and who pitched up on Saturday afternoon, offer all South Africans the chance to do some good by doing right; from volunteering for a modest four hours of community service a month to being responsible and law-abiding citizens.

Before a feeling of hopeless indifference sweeps away the majestic promise of April 27 1994, and some of the grim events that went before it, read the charter, sign it and join in — www.citizens.za.com.

 

• Follow Tony Leon on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA

 

‘Dismal science’ misled efforts to fix economy

23 Apr 2013 | Tony Leon  | Original Publication:  BDlive
Our policy makers can’t do much about the debunking of academic economic debates but they can fix risk sovereign factors, writes Tony Leon

THE old joke about economists having called nine of the past five recessions wrong seemed especially true of the "dismal science" and even its most illustrious practitioners in recent days.

Two of the wisest owls in the Harvard aviary were recently proved wrong on a central assumption. Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart were apparently checkmated by a doctoral student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. According to reports, Thomas Herndon, 28, said of his exposé of the basic flaws in the influential Rogoff-Reinhart 2010 study: "I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the basic spreadsheet error."

The paper in question is not of mere academic interest only. It has been at the heart of the recent debate on how to repair the world economy and revive it everywhere: in essence, do we spend and reflate our way out of recession or do we pull in our horns and cut public expenditure, repair national balance sheets and escape "the black hole of debt"?

Rogoff and Reinhart gave comfort and apparent empirical cover for rapid fiscal austerity, the path preferred by so-called deficit hawks, such as the US Republicans and the UK coalition government. Now, it appears that contra the central finding of the Rogoff-Reinhart study, economic growth does not fall sharply when national debt reaches 90% of gross domestic product, the percentage they had cited as the tipping point at which the walls of a national economy collapse. In other words, countries do not need necessarily to don the austerity hair shirt to boost growth on the basis (in the words of another economist, Adam Posen) that "not all debt accumulation is bad for growth". And very often, low growth heightens indebtedness rather than the reverse.

All this seems ancient and obvious history to those of the Keynesian persuasion locally and abroad. But before its local adherents from the Congress of South African Trade Unions and others in the left field apply even more pressure for looser fiscal and monetary policies, another global economic event last week, which received muted attention here, compels attention. This time it wasn’t a dispute among economists, but a message from the markets, which an aeon ago Trevor Manuel moaned were "amorphous". Formless or not, the markets decided to end the decade-long gold bull run, dropping the price of our key metal export so violently that early last week it sustained its sharpest two-day fall since 1983. If not quite amorphous, then markets crystallise, in the words of Financial Times maven John Authers, "in sharp and violent moves" as shareholders know only too well. Low Chinese growth, Japanese quantitative easing, and the Cyprus gold sell-off and less fear of inflation all played their part. Overall, the markets have taken a gloomy view of the prospects of global growth doing anything remarkable soon and have discounted the price of commodities accordingly.

Where does that leave South Africa? With skittish post-Marikana investors and a mineral regulatory regime "struggling with international best practice principles", to quote mining lawyer Peter Leon, our space in the fight for diminished investor enthusiasm was very tight. Now with a plunging gold price, it has just tightened even further.

There is a fascinating article by William Finnegan in the March 25 edition of The New Yorker about Australia’s richest, and probably most unpleasant, person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart. Buried in the account of her rise to further riches, as a result of her father Lang Hancock’s iron-ore empire, is a compelling insight into how Australia has enjoyed, despite the great recession, 21 straight years of sustained economic growth and running up big national debts to sustain its generous welfare provisions. It is also a high-wage country, whose minimum wage in US dollars is twice the federal minimum wage in the US. Yet its export growth and prosperity is significantly dependent on its mineral resources. In a word, it offers three basic factors that are glaringly absent here and in neighbouring jurisdictions: high efficiency, low sovereign risk and excellent infrastructure. Addressing the relative attractiveness and disadvantages of a developed versus frontier places of doing business, Finnegan offers this comparison: "The idea, a threat really, much repeated — that the mining multinationals will soon pick up and leave (Australia) for Africa in search of cheaper labour — ignores basic factors such as efficiency, infrastructure and sovereign risk."

He reminds readers and investors, that in January, Rio Tinto was forced to write off a $3bn investment in coal in Mozambique, largely because of infrastructure problems. It also cost the CEO his job.

Our policy makers and regulators can’t do much about the rise and later debunking of academic economic debates. But they sure can, and must, fix the risk sovereign factors which attach to our country.

• Leon is the author of The Accidental Ambassador (Pan Macmillan). Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA