Most of our so-called leaders have no idea how complex and challenging our world has become. Perhaps that is why we have so much populist rhetoric in our politics. The people at the top are just not equipped to deal with the complexities of our time.
I spent the first few weeks of this year in London. The city was like a morgue. There was very little traffic, few people were out in the streets, many shops were closed and offices were shut. The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic had the city and the country in its grip. Several times I ventured out for much-needed groceries. I would arrive at the supermarket, sanitise my hands, pick up a shopping basket, fill it up with necessities (mainly wine), and head for the tills. I would scan my products at the self-service pay point, pay and leave. I never spoke to a teller. The only human beings I saw in those stores were packing products on shelves.
The job of working at the till is becoming obsolete in the UK and many other places. This is nothing new for many readers of the FM, of course. It’s just been accelerated by the ravages of Covid-19. Why hire people who will get sick or demand worker rights when you can replace them with machines?
This week The New York Times’ business section carried an article that started with the words: "The robots are coming."
It was not about cashiers losing their jobs, though. That story is old hat.
It was about how recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning had created algorithms capable of outperforming doctors, lawyers and bankers at certain parts of their jobs.
"These robots are here to merge purchase orders into columns J and K of next quarter’s revenue forecast" the article said, "and transfer customer data from the invoicing software to the Oracle database.
"They are unassuming software programs with names like ‘Auxiliobits — DataTable To Json String,’ and they are becoming the star employees at many American companies."
The people leading our country are just not equipped to deal with the complexities of our time
It is when I read articles like these that I sometimes wonder whether some of our leaders realise the uphill battle we face as a country.
I am old enough to remember when thousands of jobs were lost in the early 1990s, when companies left the Babelegi industrial complex in Hammanskraal – and thousands of households were left without income. The story was repeated across the country as manufacturing jobs skipped the country and went to China. Leaders had somehow not thought about this side-effect of changes in SA. Are we thinking now?
A year ago this week I had a meeting at Tashas in Rosebank. Everyone at the table believed we would shelter from the pandemic for a few weeks and things would open up again.
We have learnt a lot since then. We know it was naive to think the lockdown would be short. The first lockdown was supposed to last a mere three weeks. Then there was an extension, and another, and a third – and they have not stopped. A year later, and SA is still under national disaster management laws. Covid-19 has not gone away.
That means we have to continue to take precautions: masking up, washing hands frequently, avoiding large groups and so on. If we don’t, there will be a third and fourth wave. Our pain will continue. Our losses will continue. Businesses will continue to be disrupted.
That presents a devastating reality. The country is totally broke. Jobs have been destroyed. Businesses have folded. Poverty, hunger and inequality have increased. Everything has changed.
What has remained the same is the juvenile politics of our ruling elite. Every day we see "leaders" undermine the rule of law, peddle populist and unworkable solutions for the economy, incite racial divisions and encourage corruption.
I am not talking here about leaders on the fringe. The guilty parties are right within the ruling party. Their dirty paws are just a hair’s breadth away from the levers of power.
The world is a complex, dangerous place. Listening to some of our leaders, one despairs at the level of their ignorance. Do they realise just how precarious our position is?
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