There is an ancient ubuntu-Asian aphorism that says: “If you want prosperity for a year, plant crops; if you want prosperity for a decade, plant trees; but if you want sustainable prosperity for a hundred years and beyond, invest in people.”
When SA’s democracy took off in 1994, the hopes and dreams of many, particularly the historically oppressed during the years of legalised white and male supremacy, was that political and legal freedoms would translate to shared prosperity.
The goal of the constitution of 1996 was to “heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights” where everyone’s life is improved and their potential freed.
There is no gainsaying that, for many, this hasn’t happened.
As it stands, more than one in every three South Africans are unemployed, one in two are poor (and two in three indigenous Africans), and the gini-coefficient is 0.69.
With these markers of human deprivation and inequality, which are the highest in the world, the dream of establishing a society based on social justice is clearly a dream deferred.
So what would investing in people look like in practice?
For a start, it would require that people be healthy, educated, have infrastructure and be symbiotically and not extractively linked to the economic ecosystem.
But if we consider our unemployment figures, the state of our education and level of ownership of key economic levers, can we honestly say this reflects a deliberate investment in people with a view to improving their quality of life?
Today, the mood in the country suggests people are tired of want, in much the same way as people were in the years leading up to the French Revolution, and both world wars.
We saw this manifested in people’s susceptibility to being gaslit during last year’s July unrest, or the furore over the Limpopo MEC’s expression of her frustration with the health resources being stretched by our porous borders.
This isn’t altogether surprising: hunger is known to breed anger.
But if our political leaders, and we as South Africans, really want sustainable prosperity, we need to invest in people.
For how it could be done, consider the case of Rwanda.
In Rwanda’s Vision 2050, president Paul Kagame says this “has to be about the future we choose, because we can, and because we deserve it. Rwandans will not be satisfied to live pay cheque to pay cheque, harvest to harvest, without accumulating wealth and financial security. They want to live close to the families they love and watch them thrive. They want access to world-class education, right here at home.”
Kagame adds that Rwandans want to be able to travel the world in search of new ideas and experiences “and then fly proudly back home to Rwanda, because there is no other place they would rather live”.
I don’t want to delve into Rwandan politics, or its human rights concerns right now — not because those do not matter, but because the context is about what that country is doing right that we could adopt as a model.
In the same context, you could look to emulate US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal as a bottom-up model of taking a nation out of an immense economic quagmire. But that does not mean being blind to the fact that the New Deal ignored post-slavery racial disparities.
What is worth noting is that Kagame envisages a Rwanda where everyone’s potential is freed and their legitimate aspirations are met. Critically Rwanda’s Vision 2050 says that an unconventional approach would have to be adopted because “business-as-usual” won’t be sufficient to reach its objectives.
Whenever I visit Rwanda, the impact of this people-centric unconventional approach is evident in the improving quality of life. Increasingly, a diverse number of Rwandans have their hands on the levers of the economy.
As members of the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, we have witnessed support given to foreign institutions or businesses not based on political affiliation or kickbacks but on the space these institutions could fill in the mosaic of what they refer to as “the Rwanda We Want”.
SA could use these lessons, just as we could use the lessons from Covid to reverse our losing streak, and we could begin investing in people as these other countries have done.
Just as that aphorism suggests, investing in people does not mean ignoring the crops or trees; it just means you can achieve this by investing first in the people, who will then cultivate those crops and trees.
That’s how you build a just society.
*Madonsela occupies the Law Trust Research Chair at Stellenbosch University and is the Founder of the ThuMa Foundation
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.