2024's Nobel Prize for Economics recipients Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson won it for research showing that countries - societies - with poor institutions and laws that exploit their populations do not generate growth or progress. The research is also based on Acemonglu's and Robinson's book Why Nations Fail (2013).
I'd heard they won the Nobel and why and thought little of it. But thanks to a YouTube video that explained their research, I understood it and knew it explained why SA has done so badly, except for the initial five years or so post-1994, and is continuing to do so: that institutions and the rule of law under the ANC has and is failing and shall continue to do so. SA shall reach near-failed state by 2030 as things are going.
Failing ANC-run municipalities, particularly in the Free State, illustrates this well, as have numerous examples over the last 30 years. It's something Greg Mills and others have written about too, eg Mills' book Why Africa is Poor.
Failed institutions affect every aspect of life and every state institution including political office and those that impose the state's control and authority and protect the population like SAPS, NPA, and to a lesser extent, courts. The reasons are corruption, incompetence, neglect, officials too lazy or indifferent to do their jobs. The reasons are as many and manifold.
It's not only these bodies that are failing but most, with a couple of exceptions, regulators including chapter 9 institutions.
A significant personal example about state failure that fills me with disillusion and depression is it's being seven years since an inquest into my late mother's "unnatural causes" death at Groote Schuur Hospital was called for but nothing since.
Every year I email the NPA and Cape Town Inquest Magistrate Court asking for its status. The NPA stopped replying in 2019 and court never bothered. But this year the former inquest clerk, unknown to me having moved to a different department, replied it was scheduled for 2023 (six years later!) but the magistrate and expert assessors refused to work for the "disgraceful" salary offered. At the same time the media reported the body representing magistrates said they couldn't live on about R1.1 million package a year.
SA's negligible growth and why its society is doing poorly, socially and economically, is for a reason. As the YouTube video explained, Acemoglu et al illustrate growth and prosperity have nothing, or little, to do with size of population and so on. Countries fail because the institutions that underpin growth and prosperity are either not there, have failed or are failing. If they fail or are absent, the population lack the means to improve themselves or society - their immediate community - social and professional - and nation at large.
In an E-TV programme recently about organised crime in Cape Town, a Cape Flats community worker said the occasional engineer or lawyer could come from crime-ridden areas but mostly there's no hope (I'm summarising what he said) living there - crowded, where children are victims of gang violence too. The city's JP Smith was also depressed about the low conviction rates for illegal firearms, which are drivers for the violence. Guns Law Enforcement confiscates somehow find their way back and used in crime again. He used a word like "depressed".
The mainstream media frequent Ramaphoria and GNU ra-ra fail to hide the real danger SA is in of slipping into failed state. (Btw it's given him a free pass over Phala Phala. While they're complicity and disgracefully silent, it's left to EFF to take him to court over it. Good for them, but the media won't say so.)
A "dip" lasting 15 years, half a generation (enough time to reduce much poverty and unemployment), that happens to coincide with the entrenchment of state capture that has almost completely strangled society and its productive capacity? You're optimistic. But I understand why. It's either that or permanent gloom. (Cyclical economic swings, assuming a "normal" well-run market economy, last what - three, five years?)
Recently Batohi the Weak said the country cannot prosecute its way out of corruption. She's self-serving and hopeless, as is the NPA. How else does society rescue itself if not strong institutions doing their jobs? She's given up, as has most of SA's institutions.
Indirectly related, a high school teacher friend said this year's matric maths marks (maths, mucho important for everything) are going to be (ie Education Department directive) "condoned", ie pupils with failing grades shall be promoted. Needless to say, other subjects too. How's that for developing a winning nation! Extrapolating to all spheres of public life, this is SA's recipe for success under the ANC.
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