Former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Thabo Mbeki share a light moment at a meeting of the G8 and developing nations in Tokyo in 2000.
EFE-EPA/Michel Euler
The concept of soft power has been part of the parlance of international relations for three decades. Soft power actors use non-coercive and persuasive means to achieve their objectives. Attraction rather than force is their preferred language.
The application of soft power remains focused on states because of their primacy in international politics. But, the increasing influence of non-state actors dictates a need to review this approach. Non-state actors on the international stage include international organisations, NGOs, multinational corporations, terrorist groups and individuals.
It is against this backdrop that I studied the power of attraction of non-state actors. I focused on the soft power credentials of former African presidents – Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria, 1999-2007) and Thabo Mbeki (South Africa, 1999-2008).
The two have made important contributions to the continent this century through promoting peace, democracy, pan-Africanism and regional integration.
The study captures the essence of their soft power. It also engages how it has rubbed off on their respective countries – during and after their presidencies.
I examined Obasanjo’s and Mbeki’s traits, ideas and policies. In particular I focused on their contribution to pan-Africanism and the idea of the African Renaissance. I argue that they successfully used their soft power and international clout to make significant contributions in Africa and beyond.
Obasanjo as a soft power president
After Obasanjo’s civilian administration ended in 2007, he attracted widespread criticism within Nigeria. This is perhaps best captured by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka’s description of him as a “master of hypocrisy”.
But, this underplays some of his accomplishments. The period between 1976 and 1979 when he was the military head of state is lauded by some as the most dynamic era of Nigeria’s foreign policy. And during his civilian administration (1999–2007) Nigeria was catapulted from a pariah state (due to gross human right abuses by successive military regimes) to a significant regional and, to a lesser extent, global player.
Thanks to Obasanjo’s idiosyncratic soft power, Nigeria, once neglected in global affairs, witnessed an influx of high profile visits, including US presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Its voice was better heard in such bodies as the Commonwealth, Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement.
Obasanjo was notable for his courage and decisiveness, particularly when it came to colonialism and, later, apartheid. His toughness on these issues, and his promotion of regional integration, had remarkable success.
A foreign policy that embraces genuine promotion of democracy and peacemaking generates soft power.
Obasanjo enhanced his, and by extension Nigeria’s soft power through his successful peacemaking and promotion of democracy. The former, in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. The latter, in São Tomé and Príncipe, Togo and Côte d'Ivoire.
In Liberia, he was instrumental in ending the war. Obasanjo also facilitated the resignation of President Charles Taylor who was granted asylum in Nigeria. He played an active role in the transition to democratic rule that ushered in President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson in 2006.
In São Tomé and Príncipe, Obasanjo ensured the reinstatement of President Fradique de Menezes following a military coup in 2003.
His reformist ideas, set out in the Memorandum of Understanding of the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa, was adopted by the African Union summit in 2002.
The memorandum has four cornerstones. These are security, stability, development and cooperation as prerequisites for good governance on which African states would be measured.
It is thus clear that Obasanjo’s towering personality and international stature have enabled Nigeria to shape African institutions. He is thus a wielder of soft power.
Since leaving office, Obasanjo has continued to exhibit this soft power through conflict mediation and humanitarian interventions, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2008–2009) and Côte d'Ivoire (2011).
But, a number of shortfalls blot his soft power credentials. These include his unilateral decisions and apparent disdain for the rule of law while in power.
Mbeki’s legacy
Mbeki was influenced by some of Africa’s great political minds, as well as pan-African thinkers, during his years in exile in the UK.
For example, while studying at Sussex University in England in the mid-1960s, he engaged the ideas of pan-Africanist luminaries Aimé Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Leopold Senghor and W.E.B. Du Bois. Arguably, all these individuals influenced Mbeki’s views as seen in his pursuit of pan-Africanism and African Renaissance.
Mbeki has often been labelled an “African intellectual” and “African philosopher king”. There is no gainsaying that his administration had the most impact of any post-apartheid government in international affairs – even more so than Nelson Mandela.
This was evident in his push for South-South solidarity and reform of old international institutions such as the UN Security Council. The African Union, despite its weaknesses, provided the platform for him to promote peace and security in Africa.
Mbeki was often called upon to mediate and find lasting solutions to conflict in Africa. In 2004, the African Union asked that he proffer a political solution to the conflict in Côte d’Ivoire. He was actively involved in mediation to end conflicts in Comoros, Rwanda, Sudan, Eswatini and Zimbabwe.
Some of the interventions turned out to be a mere plastering of wounds as countries such as the DRC and Sudan remained fragile.
Indeed, the calls for Mbeki’s mediation reflect recognition of his idiosyncratic soft power.
Mbeki’s administration demonstrated remarkable commitment to provide aid to Africa. The African Renaissance Fund was established in 2000 to disburse aid to fellow African states. This offered an alternative to Western aid laced with debilitating conditions.
Mbeki continued to play a significant role after his presidency. He was appointed chair of the African Union’s efforts to bring peace to Sudan and South Sudan in 2009. This culminated in South Sudan’s independence in 2011.
Due to their soft power resources, Obasanjo and Mbeki made their mark on pan-Africanism and conflict resolution in Africa. Their ideas remain deeply ingrained in the African Union.
Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari and US president Donald Trump during a press conference at the White House in 2018.
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Donald Trump was propelled to the US presidency by promising to rewrite globalisation rules. This included restricting trade when it directly hurt the US, clamping down on immigration, and reducing commitments to the global order. His administration’s “America First” foreign policy also meant disengaging from its obligations to Africa, which he infamously referred to as “shit-hole countries”.
Historically, the US foreign policy approach to Africa could be classified as benign neglect. This was characterised by a general lack of interest in the continent in the pre–World War II era. After World War II, US policy involved engaging or disengaging with individual countries, mostly defined in terms of counteracting the Soviet Union’s attempt to gain influence in the region.
A serious and sustained US–Africa engagement began under the Clinton administration. It subsequently deepened with significant bipartisan support. Indeed, the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations saw a remarkable continuity in both the Congress and the White House on the US agenda in Africa.
Africa’s share of annual US foreign assistance funding increased over the past two decades. Although US development and security aid to Africa grew, part of the increase was in support of President George W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), launched in 2003. Under President Obama US aid allocated to Africa fluctuated between $7 billion and $8 billion annually.
Trump’s election signalled a radical break with this consensus. His approach represented, in part, a return to the pre-Clinton era. Notwithstanding the administration’s rhetoric, however, Africa continued to receive roughly $7 billion in annual US aid allocations in its first three years.
US-Africa trade fell to approximately $41 billion in 2018, down from a high of $100 billion in 2008. On the whole, African countries have continued to export natural resources, such as petroleum and metals, to the US. Since 2000, the African Growth and Opportunity Act has been the main channel through which trade is conducted. It provides tariff-free access to 6,900 products from 39 countries.
In our paper, we show how the Trump administration’s policies affected Africa in detrimental ways.
Malign neglect of Africa
Under Trump’s administration, investment policy was driven by the push to open up markets for US goods and services. Its trade policy favoured bilateral, rather than multilateral, agreements. This shift, if sustained, could have undermined the growth of smaller countries, such as Lesotho. This is because such economies may not be of enough economic interest to the US to warrant a separate trade deal.
There were also punitive measures against countries that went against the administration’s expectations of reciprocal “free” trade. For instance, Rwanda was suspended from tariff free access to the US market after it introduced substantial duties on imports of second hand clothes. This came on the back of lobbying by second hand clothing exporters association in the US.
The administration’s largely uninterested stance may also have had detrimental effects on US foreign private investment to Africa. US foreign direct investment in Africa decreased from $50.4 billion in 2017 to $43.2 billion in 2019. This 14% decline came at a time when other countries like China were increasing their investments in the region.
The administration also crippled the capacity of the State Department and its international assistance agency by failing to fill essential positions in these agencies and through budget cuts. Such actions strained relationships and cut lines of communication.
Trump’s “Muslim” travel ban denied entry to nationals of a number of Muslim-majority countries, including several African ones. Imposed under the banner of US security, it had the effect of further reinforcing negative images of the continent as a place of insecurity and danger.
The Trump administration periodically expressed concern about the supposedly nefarious and negative impacts of Chinese engagement on the continent. Yet the impact of its own policies has been to reduce US influence in the region and further “open up the playing field” for Chinese actors.
The loss of US hegemony on the continent is evidenced by the diversifying of Africa’s foreign direct investment sources. It is also visible in shifts in its trade with key foreign partners, and increased diplomatic representation of other countries in Africa.
Biden’s administration
Joe Biden’s administration will likely result in some change and some continuity in Africa policy. Official ties are expected to become more diplomatic and certain policies – such as the so-called “Muslim travel ban” – may be reversed. But some significant questions remain as to its direction.
By and large, US policies towards Africa will likely be driven by a relatively narrow geopolitical gaze. This views the continent as a source of insecurity and site for humanitarian assistance. Combined with the scale of domestic problems arising from the COVID-19 pandemic and the perceived imperative to contain China, Africa will likely elicit only occasional strategic interest.
US focus on its national security imperatives will remain a primary policy area. New partnerships and initiatives – with Nigeria and Mozambique, for instance – are informed in large part by Islamic fundamentalist insurgencies there. The Trump administration greatly expanded the use of American air and ground strikes in hot-spots like Somalia. This is a policy that Biden is likely to continue, even if operations are scaled back somewhat.
Great power competition with China plays a significant role in US-Africa relations. The Trump administration’s “Prosper Africa” plan, meant to double US-Africa trade and investment, was presented as an American response to China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”. However, Prosper Africa lacked the funding to accomplish its goals. In reality, it amounted to a coordination and consolidation of the different strands of US bureaucracy on the continent.
Biden’s administration will likely continue the existing discursive pattern of great power competition. But the focus, given his policy history, may move to revitalising multilateralism and supporting the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.
With regard to trade, the big question facing the new administration will be the future of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which expires in 2025. Though tariff free access retains bipartisan support, the Trump administration was in the process of moving towards bilateral engagement, as evidenced by its ongoing attempt to create a “model” free trade agreement with Kenya.
Such free trade deals would change the nature of the US-Africa trade partnership in two main ways. They would give further emphasis to reciprocal trade concessions, and would likely require further watering down or elimination of policies designed to help nascent economic sectors in African countries, particularly manufacturing.
Finally, the US-Africa relationship has been characterised by “signature” initiatives. George W. Bush’s had the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief , Obama’s had “Power Africa” and Trump touted Prosper Africa. Biden will likely seek to continue this tradition, though exactly how remains to be seen.
Some hard decisions need to be taken about the future of the South African National Defence Force.
Nic Bothma/EFE-EPA
South Africa’s parliament has opened discussions about how to redesign the country’s lumbering military to make it fit-for-purpose for the 21st Century. To kick-start the process, a parliamentary committee charged with oversight over the military hosted a mini-symposium addressed by military leaders and experts, academics, political parties as well as civil society. Politics Editor Thabo Leshilo asked Lindy Heinecken, a military sociologist, for her insights.
Historically, a review of the country’s defence has been informed by a white paper or a defence review produced by the Ministry of Defence. What informs the parliamentary process?
The 1996 White Paper on Defence established a broad policy framework for defence in the country’s new democracy from 1994, while the 1998 Defence Review outlined the appropriate size, structure, force design and tasks of the South African National Defence Force.
But, as the force became increasingly drawn into peacekeeping and internal roles - such as fighting crime, the balance between what it is trained, funded and equipped for became misaligned.
While comprehensive, the 2015 review did not specify what the design and structure of the force should look like. This was left to the politicians, military leadership and ultimately society to decide upon. Five years later, there is still no clear direction and the military continues to muddle along.
What is wrong with the military that needs fixing?
Some hard decisions need to be taken on the future of the defence force. Besides the misalignment of its resources, design, equipment and its additional roles, the military has also been hobbled by misappropriation of funds.
The National Treasury highlighted in a briefing to the Joint Standing Committee on Defence that growing personnel expenditure was the main issue incapacitating the defence force, leaving little money for capital and operational expenditure. This has left the military with ageing equipment, and hardly any funds for maintenance. Meanwhile, the deployment of the military has increased substantially, both internal and externally.
The over expenditure on personnel stems from imbalances in the force design and structure. Over time, instead of having 40% personnel in the short term service (2-5yrs), 40 % in the medium term service (up to age 45yrs), an only 20% in the long term service (until 60yrs), 87% of the regular force personnel ended up serving on medium to extended long-term tenures.
This, together with the failure to implement effective personnel exit mechanisms, has led to deviation from the ideal situation of expenditure being 40% on personnel, 30% on capital, and 30% on operations. Personnel costs are now reportedly almost 80% of the defence budget.
Added to this, personnel expenditure has been driven up to unsustainable levels by increases in pay and benefits that have not been budgeted for, rank inflation and the stagnation of junior and middle ranking personnel. This means that people sit in posts for long periods at the top of their scale, or end up being promoted to a higher rank, beyond the post profile. Other anomalies are a high ratio of general officers and a failure to rightsize the forces in accordance with mission demands. These problems are eroding the defence force’s capital and operating budget.
There is a pressing need for the military to address its human resource management systems.
Going forward, this means accelerating the exit of unfit, overage, unhealthy and supernumerary personnel over the short to medium term. The longer term should see the military shedding all overage personnel, reversing rank inflation and rebalancing the force. This means looking at the ratio of officers to other ranks, and the ratio of support to combat personnel.
This is a difficult political decision. It entails putting former soldiers out onto the streets, with little other than military skills, making it hard for them to get jobs.
More attention needs to be paid to exit mechanisms for the short and medium terms in order to prepare them for a second career. Another problem is that there are not enough young people transferring from the full-time forces into part-time and reserve forces. This affects both the numerical and functional flexibility of the military in times of crises, when it suddenly needs extra personnel, such as during the Covid-19 crisis.
Why is there need for national consensus on the military?
Before the military can address these challenges, there is a need to reach national consensus on what type of defence force the country wants. At present there is a chasm between what the military leadership believes it should be doing, according to the constitution, what the government and politicians demand, and what the public considers important.
Transformation cannot happen without a clear understanding of the military’s future role. Without this, military leadership cannot design, plan, or train personnel for their future roles and missions.
The defence force cannot fulfil its obligations within the current organisational and budgetary constraints.
What should the future military look like?
The defence force is caught in a time warp. It still operates with a mindset and equipment geared for the 20th Century. It has not made the transition into the 21st Century in terms of how to combat future threats, and the use of technology as a force enabler and multiplier. Many tasks, like intelligence gathering and surveillance, can now be done by unmanned aerial vehicles, which are cost effective. But, there is no money for these.
Any restructuring should consider what the future military should look like. But right now, some pressing decisions need to be taken on whether to shut down the military, or channel it towards more pressing issues that affect the safety and security of the country’s citizens.
Given the current budgetary constraints, scaling down to playing only a developmental role is possibly the way to go. This means focusing only on border and maritime security, disaster relief and public order functions.
At the same time, there must be capacity to respond to other pressing geo-strategic security concerns unfolding on the country’s borders, and beyond, that may require a military response.
Does the country have the money to afford the military it needs?
The simple answer is “no”. But, the reality is that there needs to be a balance between the agreed mandate and budget. Within the current context, the mandate is budget driven, not the other way round, unless the security dynamics change dramatically. It is like taking a risk with an insurance policy, what to secure and what not.
Another way to cut costs is to reduce personnel expenditure to fit sustainably into a smaller funding allocation. This is a difficult political decision, but preferable to the military sliding into further decline.
The current impasse makes it the perfect time to march the defence force in a new direction in accordance with what the country needs, can afford, and deliver. Now, more than ever before, robust debate is needed on the future of South Africa’s military.
While the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are still unclear, it is certain that they are a profound shock to the systems underpinning contemporary life.
The World Bank estimates that global growth will contract by between 5% and 8% globally in 2020, and that COVID-19 will push between 71-100 million into extreme poverty. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be hit hardest. In developed countries health, leisure, commercial, educational and work practices are being reorganised – some say for good – in order to facilitate the forms of social distancing being advocated by experts and (sometimes reluctantly) promoted by governments.
Each of us has been affected by the changes wrought by COVID-19 in different ways. For some, the period of isolation has afforded time for contemplation. How do the ways in which our societies are currently structured enable crises such as this? How might we organise them otherwise? How might we use this opportunity to address other pressing global challenges, such climate change or racism?
For others, including those deemed vulnerable or “essential workers”, such reflections may have instead been directly precipitated from a more visceral sense of their exposure to danger. Had adequate preparations been made for events such as COVID-19? Were lessons being learnt not only to manage crises such as these when they happen again, but to prevent them from happening in the first place? Is the goal of getting back to normality adequate, or should we instead be seeking to refashion normality itself?
Such profound questions are commonly prompted by major events. When our sense of normality is shattered, when our habits get disrupted, we are made more aware that the world could be otherwise. But are humans capable of enacting such lofty plans? Are we capable of planning for the long-term in a meaningful way? What barriers might exist and, perhaps more pressingly, how might we overcome them in order to create a better world?
This article is part of Conversation Insights The Insights team generates long-form journalism derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.
As experts from three different academic disciplines whose work considers the capacity to engage in long-term planning for unanticipated events, such as COVID-19, in different ways, our work interrogates such questions. So is humanity in fact able to successfully plan for the longterm future?
Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford, argues that our obsession with short-term planning may be a part of human nature – but possibly a surmountable one. Chris Zebrowski, an emergency governance specialist from Loughborough University, contends that our lack of preparedness, far from being natural, is a consequence of contemporary political and economic systems. Per Olsson, sustainability scientist and expert in sustainability transformations from the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, reflects on how crisis points can be used to change the future – drawing on examples from the past in order to learn how to be more resilient going into the future.
We are built this way
Robin Dunbar
COVID-19 has highlighted three key aspects of human behaviour that seem unrelated but which, in fact, arise from the same underlying psychology. One was the bizarre surge in panic buying and stockpiling of everything from food to toilet rolls. A second was the abject failure of most states to be prepared when experts had been warning governments for years that a pandemic would happen sooner or later. The third has been the exposure of the fragility of globalised supply chains. All three of these are underpinned by the same phenomenon: a strong tendency to prioritise the short term at the expense of the future.
Most animals, including humans, are notoriously bad at taking the long term consequences of their actions into account. Economists know this as the “public good dilemma”. In conservation biology, it is known as the “poacher’s dilemma” and also also, more colloquially, as “the tragedy of the commons”.
If you are a logger, should you cut down the last tree in the forest, or leave it standing? Everyone knows that if it is left standing, the forest will eventually regrow and the whole village will survive. But the dilemma for the logger is not next year, but whether he and his family will survive until tomorrow. For the logger, the economically rational thing to do is, in fact, to cut the tree down.
This is because the future is unpredictable, but whether or not you make it to tomorrow is absolutely certain. If you die of starvation today, you have no options when it comes to the future; but if you can make through to tomorrow, there is a chance that things might have improved. Economically, it’s a no-brainer. This is, in part, why we have overfishing, deforestation and climate change.
The process underpinning this is known to psychologists as discounting the future. Both animals and humans typically prefer a small reward now to a larger reward later, unless the future reward is very large. The ability to resist this temptation is dependent on the frontal pole (the bit of the brain right just above your eyes), one of whose functions is to allow us to inhibit the temptation to act without thinking of the consequences. It is this small brain region that allows (most of) us to politely leave the last slice of cake on the plate rather than wolf it down. In primates, the bigger this brain region is, the better they are at these kinds of decisions.
Our social life, and the fact that we (and other primates) can manage to live in large, stable, bonded communities depends entirely on this capacity. Primate social groups are implicit social contracts. For these groups to survive in the face of the ecological costs that group living necessarily incur, people must be able to forego some of their selfish desires in the interests of everyone else getting their fair share. If that doesn’t happen, the group will very quickly break up and disperse.
In humans, failure to inhibit greedy behaviour quickly leads to excessive inequality of resources or power. This is probably the single most common cause of civil unrest and revolution, from the French Revolution to Hong Kong today.
The same logic underpins economic globalisation. By switching production elsewhere where production costs are lower, homegrown industries can reduce their costs. The problem is that this occurs at a cost to the community, due to increased social security expenditure to pay for the now redundant employees of home industries until such time as they can find alternative employment. This is a hidden cost: the producer doesn’t notice (they can sell more cheaply than they could otherwise have done) and the shopper doesn’t notice (they can buy cheaper).
There is a simple issue of scale that feeds into this. Our natural social world is very small scale, barely village size. Once community size gets large, our interests switch from the wider community to a focus on self-interest. Society staggers on, but it becomes an unstable, increasingly fractious body liable at continual risk of fragmenting, as all historical empires have found.
Businesses provide a smaller-scale example of these effects. The average lifetime of companies in the FTSE100 index has declined dramatically in the last half-century: three-quarters have disappeared in just 30 years. The companies that have survived turn out to be those that have a long term vision, are not interested in get-rich-quick strategies to maximise returns to investors and have a vision of social benefit. Those that have gone extinct have largely been those that pursued short term strategies or those that, because of their size, lacked the structural flexibility to adapt (think holiday operator Thomas Cook).
Our natural social world is barely village-size.Rob Curran/Unsplash, FAL
Much of the problem, in the end, comes down to scale. Once a community exceeds a certain size, most of its members become strangers: we lose our sense of commitment both to others as individuals and to the communal project that society represents.
COVID-19 may be the reminder many societies need to rethink their political and economic structures into a more localised form which is closer to their constituents. Of course, these will surely need bringing together in federal superstructures, but the key here is a level of autonomous community-level government where the citizen feels they have a personal stake in the way things work.
The power of politics
Chris Zebrowski
Where size and scale is concerned, it doesn’t get much bigger than the Rideau canal. Stretching over 202 kilometres in length, the Rideau canal in Canada is regarded as one of the great engineering feats of the 19th century. Opened in 1832, the canal system was designed to act as an alternative supply route to the vital stretch of the St Lawrence river connecting Montreal and the naval base in Kingston.
The impetus for this project was the threat of resumed hostilities with the Americans following a war fought between the United States, the United Kingdom and their allies from 1812-1815. While the canal would never need to be used for its intended purpose (despite its considerable cost), it is just one example of human ingenuity being paired with significant public investment in the face of an uncertain future threat.
“Discounting the future” may well be a common habit. But I don’t think that this is an inevitable consequence of how our brains are wired or an enduring legacy of our primate ancestry. Our proclivity to short-termism has been socialised. It is a result of the ways we are socially and politically organised today.
Businesses prioritise short-term profits over longer term outcomes because it appeals to shareholders and lenders. Politicians dismiss long-term projects in favour of quick-fix solutions promising instant results which can feature in campaign literature that is distributed every four years.
At the same time, we are surrounded by examples of highly sophisticated, and often well-financed, tools for risk management. The major public works projects, vital social security systems, sizeable military assemblages, complex financial instruments, and elaborate insurance policies which support our contemporary way of life attest to the human capacity to plan and prepare for the future when we feel compelled to do so.
In recent months, the vital importance of emergency preparedness and response systems in managing the COVID-19 crisis has come into full public view. These are highly complex systems which employ horizon scanning, risk registers, preparedness exercises and a variety of other specialist methods to identify and plan for future emergencies before they happen. Such measures ensure that we are prepared for future events, even when we are not entirely sure when (or if) they will materialise.
While we could not predict the scale of the outbreak of COVID-19, previous coronavirus outbreaks in Asia meant we knew it was a possibility. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been warning about the risks of an international influenza pandemic for many years now. In the UK, the 2016 national preparedness project Exercise Cygnus made abundantly clear that the country lacked the capacity to adequately respond to a large-scale public health emergency. The danger was clearly identified. What was required to prepare for such a calamity was known. What was lacking was the political will to provide adequate investment in these vital systems.
In many western nations the ascendance of neoliberalism (and accompanying logic of austerity) has contributed to the defunding of many critical services, including emergency preparedness, upon which our safety and security depend. This is in sharp contrast to countries including China, New Zealand, South Korea, and Vietnam where a commitment to both preparedness and response has ensured a rapid suppression of the disease and the minimisation of its disruptive potential to lives and the economy.
While such a diagnosis may first appear to be bleak, there is good reason to find within it some hope. If the causes of short-termism are a product of the ways we are organised, then there is an opportunity for us reorganise ourselves to address them.
Recent studies suggest that the public not only recognises the risk of climate change, but are demanding urgent action be taken to stave off this existential crisis. We cannot allow the death and destruction of COVID-19 to have been in vain. In the wake of this tragedy, we must be prepared to radically rethink how we organise ourselves our societies and be prepared to take ambitious actions to ensure the security and sustainability of our species.
Our capacity to deal not only with future pandemics, but larger-scale (and perhaps not unrelated) threats including climate change will require us to exercise the human capacity for foresight and prudence in the face of future threats. It is not beyond us to do so.
How to change the world
Per Olsson
As much as short-termism and structural issues have come to play out in analyses of the pandemic, those focused on the longer term keep arguing that this is the time for change.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a slew of people arguing that this is a once-in-a-generation moment for transformation. Government responses, these writers say, must drive far-reaching economic and social change relating to energy and food systems, otherwise we will be vulnerable to more crises in the future. Some go further and claim a different world is possible, a more equitable and sustainable society less obsessed with growth and consumption. But transforming multiple systems simultaneously is not an easy task, and it is worth understanding better what we already know about transformations and crisis.
History shows us that crisis does indeed create a unique chance for change.
A classic example is how the oil crisis in 1973 enabled the transition from a car-based society to a cycling nation in the Netherlands. Prior to the energy crisis there was growing opposition to cars, and a social movement emerged in response to the increasingly congested cities and the number of traffic related deaths, especially children.
Another example is the Black Death, the plague that swept Asia, Africa, and Europe in the 14th century. This led to the abolition of feudalism and the strengthening of peasants rights in Western Europe.
But while positive (large-scale) societal change can come out of crises, the consequences are not always better, more sustainable, or more just, and sometimes the changes that emerge are different from one context to another.
For example, the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami affected two of Asia’s longest-running insurgencies in Sri Lanka and the Aceh province in Indonesia very differently. In the former, the armed conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam deepened and intensified by the natural disaster. In Aceh meanwhile, it resulted in a historic peace agreement between the Indonesian government and the separatists.
Some of these differences can be explained by the long histories of the conflicts. But the readiness of different groups to further their agenda, the anatomy of the crisis itself, and the actions and strategies following the initial tsunami event also have important parts to play.
It comes as no surprise, then, that the opportunities for change can be seized by self-interested movements and therefore can accelerate non-democratic tendencies. Power can be further consolidated among groups not interested in improving equity and sustainability. We see this right now in places like the Philippines and Hungary.
With many clamouring for change, what gets left out of the discussion is that the scale, speed, and quality of transformations matter. And more importantly, the specific capabilities that are needed to navigate such significant change successfully.
There is often a confusion about what kinds of actions actually make a difference and what should be done now, and by whom. The risk is that opportunities created by the crisis are missed and that efforts – with the best of intentions and all the promises of being innovative – just lead back to the pre-crisis status quo, or to a slightly improved one, or even to a radically worse one.
For example, the financial crisis of 2008 was seized on by some as a moment to transform the finance sector, but the strongest forces pushed the system back to something resembling the pre-crash status quo.
Systems that create inequality, insecurity, and unsustainable practices are not easily transformed. Transformation, as the word suggests, requires fundamental changes in multiple dimensions such as power, resource flows, roles, and routines. And these shifts must take place at different levels in society, from practices and behaviours, to rules and regulations, to values and worldviews. This involves changing the relationships among humans but also profoundly change the relationships between humans and nature.
We see efforts now during COVID-19 to – at least in principle – commit to these kinds of changes, with ideas once viewed as radical now being deployed by a range of different groups. In Europe, the idea of a green recovery is growing. The city of Amsterdam is considering implementing doughnut economics – an economic system that is intended to deliver ecological and human wellbeing; and universal basic income is being rolled out in Spain. All existed before the COVID-19 crisis and have been piloted in some cases, but the pandemic has put rocket boosters under the ideas.
So for those that seek to use this opportunity to create change that will ensure the long-term health, equity, and sustainability of our societies, there are some important considerations. It is critical to dissect the anatomy of the crisis and adjust actions accordingly. Such assessment should include questions about what type of multiple, interacting crises are occurring, what parts of the “status quo” are truly collapsing and what parts remain firmly in place, and who is affected by all of these changes. Another key thing to do is to identify piloted experiments that have reached a certain level of “readiness”.
It is also important to deal with inequalities and include marginalised voices to avoid transformation processes becoming dominated and co-opted by a specific set of values and interests. This also means respecting and working with the competing values that will inevitably come into conflict.
How we organise our efforts will define our systems for decades to come. Crises can be opportunities – but only if they are navigated wisely.
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President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe and President Cyril Ramaphiosa of South Africa in 2018.
GCIS
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa’s despatch of envoys to Zimbabwe in a bid to defuse the latest crisis, in which the government has engaged in a vicious crackdown on opponents, journalists and the freedoms of speech, association and protest, has been widely welcomed.
Such has been the brutality of the latest assault on human rights by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s regime that something had to be done. And, as the big brother neighbour next door, South Africa is the obvious actor to do it.
It may be guaranteed that Ramaphosa’s envoys – Sydney Mufamadi, a former government minister turned academic, and Baleka Mbete, a former deputy president of South Africa, former speaker of the National Assembly and former chairperson of the African National Congress (ANC) – were sent off to Harare with a very limited brief. They were accompanied by Advocate Ngoako Ramatlhodi and diplomat Ndumiso Ntshinge.
Observers and activists are rightly sceptical about how much will come out of it. The best that is seriously hoped for is that South African diplomacy will bring about immediate relief. This would include: the release of journalists, opposition figures and civil society activists from jail; promises to withdraw the military from the streets; perhaps even some jogging of the Mnangagwa government to meet with its opponents and to make some trifling concessions.
After all, the pattern is now well established: crisis, intervention, promises by the Zanu-PF regime to behave, and then relapse after a decent interval to the sort of behaviour that prompted the latest crisis in the first place.
But in a previous era, South Africa once made Zimbabwe’s dependence count.
South Africa has done it once
Back in 1976, apartheid South Africa’s Prime Minister John B. Vorster fell in with US plans to bring about a settlement in then Rhodesia, and hence relieve international pressure on his own government, by withdrawing military and economic support and closing the border between the two countries.
Ian Smith had little choice but to comply. Today, no one, not even the most starry-eyed hopefuls among the ranks of the opposition and civil society in Zimbabwe, believe that Ramaphosa’s South Africa will be prepared to wield such a big stick. The time is long past that Pretoria’s admonitions of bad behaviour are backed by a credible threat of sanction and punishment.
So, why is it that Vorster could bring about real change, twisting Smith’s arm to engage in negotiations with his liberation movement opponents that eventually led to a settlement and a transition to majority rule, and ANC governments – from the time of Nelson Mandela onwards – have been so toothless?
If we want an answer, we need to look at three fundamental differences between 1976 and now.
First, Vorster was propelled into pressuring Smith by the US, which was eager to halt the perceived advance of communism by bringing about a settlement in Rhodesia which was acceptable to the West. In turn, Vorster thought that by complying with US pressure, his regime would earn Washington’s backing as an anti-communist redoubt. Today there is no equivalent spur to act. It is unlikely that US president Donald Trump could point to Zimbabwe on a map.
Britain, the European Union and other far-off international actors all decry the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. But they have largely given up on exerting influence, save to extend vitally needed humanitarian aid (and thank God for that). Zimbabwe has retreated into irrelevance, except as a case study as a failed state. They are not likely to reenter the arena and throw good money and effort at the Zimbabwean problem until they are convinced that something significant, some serious political change for the good, is likely to happen.
Second, South African intervention today is constrained by liberation movement solidarity. They may have their differences and arguments, but Zanu-PF and the ANC, which governs South Africa, remain bound together by the conviction that they are the embodiments of the logic of history.
As the leading liberators of their respective countries, they believe they represent the true interests of the people. If the people say otherwise in an election, this can only be because they have been duped or bought. It cannot be allowed that history should be put into reverse.
Former South African president Thabo Mbeki played a crucial role in forging a coalition government between Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) after the latter effectively won the parliamentary election in 2008. But South Africa held back from endorsing reliable indications that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had also won the presidential election against Robert Mugabe.
As a result, Tsvangirai was forced into a runoff presidential contest, supposedly because he had won less than 50% of the poll. The rest is history.
Zanu-PF struck back with a truly vicious campaign against the MDC, Tsvangirai withdrew from the contest, and Mugabe remained as president, controlling the levers of power. The ANC looked on, held its nose, and scuttled home to Pretoria saying the uneasy coalition it left behind was a job well done.
Third, successive Zanu-PF governments have become increasingly militarised. Mnangagwa may have put his military uniform aside, but it is the military which now calls the shots. It ultimately decides who will front for its power. There have been numerous statements by top ranking generals that they will never accept a government other than one formed by Zanu-PF. The African Union and Southern African Development Community have both outlawed coups, but everyone knows that the Mnangagwa government is a military government in all but name.
Lamentably inadequate
So, it is all very well to call for a transitional government, one which would see Zanu-PF engaging with the opposition parties and civil society and promising a return to constitutional rule and the holding of a genuinely democratic election. But we have been there before.
The fundamental issue is how Zimbabwe’s military can be removed from power, and how Zimbabwean politics can be demilitarised. Without the military behind it, Zanu-PF would be revealed as a paper tiger, and would meet with a heavy defeat in a genuinely free and fair election.
According to Ibbo Mandaza, the veteran activist and analyst in Harare, what Zimbabwe needs is the establishment of a transitional authority tasked with returning the country to constitutional government and enabling an economic recovery. Nice idea, but a pipe dream.
No one in their right mind believes that a Ramaphosa government, whose own credibility is increasingly threadbare because of its bungled response to the coronavirus epidemic, its corruption and its economic incompetence, has the stomach to bring this about. We can expect fine words and promises and raised hopes, but lamentably little action until the next crisis comes around, when the charade will start all over again.
Any relief, any improvement on the present situation will be welcomed warmly in Zimbabwe. But no one in Harare – whether in government, opposition or civil society – will really believe that Ramaphosa’s increasingly ramshackle government will be prepared to tackle the issue that really matters: removing the military from power.
The post-apartheid system of participatory democracy is generally considered to have failed.
EPA-EFE/Yeshiel Panchia
A common claim of the governing African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa is its commitment to participatory democracy: the involvement of citizens in decisions about issues that affect their lives. It is a principle and a system, primarily at the local government level, that has been institutionalised alongside representative democratic government.
The country has a prominent history of popular participation in the struggle for democracy. Under the largely ANC-aligned national liberation movement, mass participation and popular control characterised the struggle discourse. South Africans have shown, as opponents of apartheid and as free citizens, their desire to engage government.
Yet the post-apartheid system of participatory democracy is generally considered to have failed. This is evident in the weaknesses of institutionalised mechanisms and the growth of informal channels such as protests. Citizens still lack influence in governance processes.
It examines the ANC’s understanding of participatory democracy – first as a liberation movement, then as a government since 1994. It seeks to show how the failure of participatory democracy can be linked to the ideas that underpin it.
A precedent for participation
Founded in 1912 by a small group of educated, middle class Africans, the ANC grew into a mass movement in the 1940s. It later became an exiled underground organisation from 1960, after its banning by the apartheid regime. In exile, its roots in African nationalism merged with Marxist-Leninist ideology.
It draws on these intellectual traditions, but has always been a “broad church”. There has never been a singular, uniform understanding of participation within the ANC. Instead, during the struggle, multiple traditions and approaches to popular participation emerged.
In the 1980s, as the struggle heightened, one of these ideas took form in the “people’s power” movement. Rooted in local, informal structures of self-governance, it represented for some participants a form of prefigurative, participatory democracy, built from the bottom up.
From 1990, with the onset of talks to end apartheid, and after the first democratic elections in 1994, some of this inspiration was woven into public policy. This was often through participation of civic and labour movements in formulating policy.
But new ideas and influences also emerged – from development theory, governance discourse and international best practice. They can be seen in various consultative mechanisms, such as ward committees and municipal development planning.
Some discomfort has arisen between an impetus for managing the public sector efficiently and allowing citizens to participate. But South Africa’s public policy on participation does allow for some popular influence.
Separately, though, the ANC as a movement has a distinct discourse about participation.
The political vanguard idea
Emerging from its dominant intellectual heritage, the ANC’s very identity as a mass movement is rooted in the notion that it exists as a political vanguard. Associated with the ideas of Vladimir Lenin, the vanguard party is a vehicle led by an enlightened, revolutionary leadership through which the people can be led to freedom.
The adoption since 1994 of a largely market-oriented economic strategy makes this discourse meaningless at a policy level. Yet the narrative continues.
ANC documents, statements and commentary still refer to the governing party as “a vanguard movement”. For example, its discussion document on organisational renewal, presented at its most recent policy conference in 2017, stated:
The ANC has to operate as a vanguard movement with political, ideological and organisational capacity to direct the state and give leadership to the motive forces in all spheres of influence and pillars of our transformation.
Why is this a problem for participatory democracy?
Vanguardism holds that a dedicated movement – or party – is needed to give ideological, moral and intellectual leadership through a process of “conscientisation”. A vanguard views itself as a true representative, able to interpret the popular will. The people must not only see the vanguard’s objectives as in their best interests. They must also see leadership by that vanguard as essential for those interests to be secured. It implies a fundamental connection between the people’s collective needs and the leadership of their vanguard organisation.
An active role for the people is a critical component of vanguardism. But the movement must guide participation. It’s not the form of participation that’s usually associated with democracy. But the ANC understands it as being the same as participatory democracy.
Vanguardism versus participatory democracy
The challenge for South Africa’s democracy is that the very existence of vanguardism prevents citizens from being empowered. It keeps the party dominant. It also contains what the political theorist Joseph V. Femia, in his book Marxism and Democracy, p.136), said was an important tension in Marxism generally, between a desire for
political control from above and popular initiative from below.
This can be framed as a tension between vanguardism and participatory democracy.
The ANC has been found wanting as a leader of society. Rampant corruption and abuse of office have marred its claim to the rightful leadership of South Africa’s people. It was inevitable that citizens would lose faith in formal political processes.
The difficult path from liberation movement to governing party is well-trodden in Africa. Liberation struggles across the continent were conducted in the context of state repression. Political organisations were not free to operate openly.
But the requirements of underground operations and of unity in struggle are different to those of democracy. Organisational traditions focused not on empowering citizens but on maintaining movement hegemony do not allow democratic influence and agency to flourish.
Jails and prisons around the United States are considering freeing some of their inmates for fear that correctional facilities will become epicenters in the coronavirus pandemic.
As a prison scholar, I recognize a sad irony in this public health problem: The United States’ very first prisons were actually designed to avoid the spread of infectious disease.
Prisons as we understand them today – places of long-term confinement as a punishment for crime – are relatively new developments. In the U.S. they came about in the 1780s and 1790s, after the American Revolution.
Previously, American colonies under British control relied on execution and corporal punishments.
Jails in America and England during that period were not themselves places of punishment. They were just holding tanks. Debtors were jailed until they paid their debts. Vagrants were jailed until they found work. Accused criminals were jailed while awaiting trial, and convicted criminals were jailed while awaiting punishment or until they paid their court fines.
The British penal reformer John Howard visiting a prison. Wikipedia, CC BY-NC
The physical structure of these unregulated local facilities – often run by sheriffs or private citizens who charged room and board fees – varied. Jail could be a spare room in a roadside inn, a stone building with barred windows or a subterranean dungeon.
Fear of disease
Disease, violence and exploitation were rampant in these squalid American colonial and British jails.
John Howard, a British aristocrat whose ideas influenced American penal reformers, became concerned about living conditions in these “abode[s] of wickedness, disease, and misery” when he became a sheriff. In a 1777 book, Howard recounts smelling vinegar, a common disinfectant of the era, to protect against the revolting smell of the jails he visited.
Howard warned readers that jails spread disease not only among inmates but also beyond, into society. He recalled the so-called Black Assize of 1577, in which prisoners awaiting trial were brought from jail to an Oxford courthouse and “within forty hours” more than 300 people who had been at court were dead from “gaol fever” – what we now call typhus.
He also wrote of infected prisoners who, once released, brought diseases from jail into their communities, killing scores.
Disease also shaped Howard’s understanding of how criminality spread.
He described how young “innocents” – the children of people jailed for debt or those awaiting trial for a petty offense – were seduced by dashing bandits’ stories of crime and adventure. Thus “infected,” they went on to become criminals themselves.
America’s first prisons
Howard’s ideas, particularly the realization that jails posed a threat to the public, were brought to the U.S. by Philadelphia reformers like Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Following the recommendations in Howard’s book, American penal reformers pushed for new jails designed to ward off disease, crime and immorality of all kinds.
Howard envisioned new facilities that would be well ventilated and cleaned daily. Clothing and bedding should be changed weekly. There would even be an infirmary staffed by “an experienced surgeon” who would update authorities on the state of prisoner health.
Howard’s plan for a ‘County Gaol’ The Royal Collection Trust
American reformers followed Howard’s advice that “women-felons” should be kept “quite separate from the men: and young criminals from old and hardened offenders.” Debtors, too, should be kept “totally separate” from the “felons.”
Prisoners should be separated from one another, ideally in cells. Crowding should be avoided. All this would prevent the spread of disease and enable the prisoners’ repentance – and thus their rehabilitation.
Using Howard’s book as their guide, Rush and his colleagues transformed Philadelphia’s aging and overcrowded Walnut Street Jail into one of the country’s first state prisons by 1794. The Walnut Street Prison model was soon adopted nationwide.
Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail. Wikipedia Commons
Health care in prisons today
The U.S. long ago departed from the idea that prisons should protect both prisoners and society.
The biggest shift in prison health care occurred between the 1970s and today – the era of mass incarceration. The U.S. incarceration rate doubled between 1974 to 1985 and then doubled again by 1995. The number of people in American prisons peaked in 2010, at 1.5 million. It has declined slightly since, but the U.S. still has the world’s largest incarcerated population.
One consequence of overcrowding is that prison officials have a difficult time providing adequate health care.
In 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding undermined health care in California’s prisons, causing avoidable deaths. The justices upheld a lower court’s finding that this caused an “unconscionable degree of suffering” in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Amid a worldwide pandemic, such conditions are treacherous. Some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in U.S. prisons and jails are in places – like Louisiana and Chicago – whose prison health systems have been ruled unconstitutionally inadequate.
Criminologists and advocates say many more people should be released from jails and prison, even some convicted of violent crimes if they have underlying health conditions.
The decision to release prisoners cannot be made lightly. But arguments against it discount a reality recognized over two centuries ago: The health of prisoners and communities are inextricably linked.
Coronavirus confirms that prison walls do not, in fact, separate the welfare of those on the inside from those on the outside.
