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Making way for the Modern

Our world is getting increasingly more complicated – no doubt about it. We talk about “globalisation” and “cosmopolitanism” and “integration”; but when we look at what is happening on our own South African shores with xenophobic violence or globally with religious extremism, we can hardly say that we are a world of integration of globalisation. I recently read an outstanding book discussing such issues of modernity, understanding, integration and acceptance of the other – it’s called Open City by Teju Cole, a Nigerian-American author. I would recommend it as a definite must read. In Cees Bruggemans’ piece below, he suggests that it’s time for South Africa to have a “thorough Modern”. We’ve had the “Icon” and the “Africanist” – and now it’s time for something new if we have want to experience “full” integration in our South African society. Food-for-thought, which is perhaps a bit too difficult to digest. There are whole disciplines at universities across the globe dedicated to discussing issues of modernity, integration and globalisation – is it really possible? Can we live side-by-side peacefully? Can we build together instead of destroy? Tough issues to chew on. – Tracey Ruff

By Cees Bruggemans         

We now nearly have had everything: the Icon, the Africanist & the Traditionalist. Wouldn’t it be nice to round this off with a thorough Modern?

Our Icon statesman gave us a global presence, a written Constitution and the Rainbow Nation. Above all, that we would outgrow enormous historic gaps & discrepancies. A fresh start for a tortured nation.

This promising honeymoon lasted far too short.

What we got next was much more complex, the suggestion of continuity and yet tremendous change as transformation was taken in hand, and the emphasis shifted to “I am an African” and ever after unleashing debate about what that actually meant.

What it precisely meant took time to take shape, but there was little doubt about the collegial intention throughout at the highest levels in Party and government. The public sector was driven to change its composition from the beginning, and enormous pressure put on private business to do likewise.

Perhaps because these changes were not carefully enough monitored by those in leadership positions, the nature of what eventuated was often rather extreme (unnecessary sacrifice of skills in the vigorous pursuit of quantitative targets) while corruption was given the (often unintended?) opportunity to flourish.

The Traditionalist, instead of moderating, actually accelerated many of these disruptive processes and practices, with the importance of personal, social and political outcomes of change apparently frequently outranking by far the national economic consequences.

In the process, the nature of society was invited to change yet more drastically, besides its Africanist character also getting its underlying traditionalist nature re-emphasized and this in direct opposition to most of the institutional Western heritage, much of which was retained even while it was being corrupted to give it a different, more acceptable flavour.

Expectations in 2015 are running high about these processes being far from complete, and these still having far to run, at least another four years (and possibly much longer) even as the economic stagnation, the absence of genuine structural change (lowering the extremely lopsided outsider ratio) and the breakdown in public services and disquiet with the absence of more progressive change has caused party and labour union fragmentation and general disquiet to steadily deepen.

Given this noticeable unravelling of a quarter century, in the process deeply challenging the Rainbow Nation concept and increasingly calling into question the inherited Constitution, wouldn’t it be nice to round off this turbulent period with a decade-long touch of a thorough Modern?

Why?

To arrest the corruption, reverse the drift away from meritocracy, clean out the Africa busines banking Augustan Stables, restore clean government dedicated to supporting a mixed economic system, meaning providing guidance regarding structural change while supporting private effort, getting it to do its level best in achieving most?

And restore a high performance system, bend on achieving high growth in national income, spreading it more widely through greater labour absorption, further enriched and stimulated by better human capital formation. And finally having the public means to focus on addressing lingering iniquities from the past, over time achieving a genuine sustainable structural transformation, as envisaged at the birth of our modern political enterprise in 1994, and throughout demanded by an increasingly impatient, urbanising and modernising electorate.

It is a matter of choice. But its coming may be closer than imagined, as early as the 2020s, by then coinciding also with a much more accommodative, less stressful global environment after nearly two decades lost to financial, economic, social and political upheaval in critical parts of the global system.

We would be so lucky to have it in us? But then such things are often not simply serendipitous, rather than a matter of hard choices and harder work.

Watch the vitals for evidence of this sea-change as we progress steadily through our latest “lost” decade. Are such changes already with us? Could be.

Inspiration

Paul Johnson “The Birth of the Modern – world society 1815-1830” HarperCollins Publishers 1991

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