There is a simmering debate underway over whether or not South Africa is a failed state. Allusions are drawn, and pat lines are laid down, almost matter-of-factly, in discussions or in what passes for analyses about the country. Nowhere, at least not in what I have read, is there a discussion that verges on a set of objective measurements that stand on their own, and that take us close to agreement. Let us see, then, if we can make a half-decent argument why South Africa is not a failed state - not yet, anyway. We may do so by drawing on some fairly established, if conservative, measures by which state failure is determined.
As with most questions that are political, the answer to the question whether South Africa a failed state draws heavily on ideological assumptions, or by preconceived notions and sensibilities. There are the cranky Afro-pessimists who would imagine that everything African is necessarily bad, or wrong. Some folk may insist that black governance in South Africa has always been destined for failure. These views are increasingly anachronistic, and tend to be shaped by racist stereotypes and selective recollections. They tell bigger stories about the narrators than they do about the African state. The most dangerous of responses, given that they usually emanate from those in or close to power, are framed by a type of mantra that typically holds together unsavoury organisations: “Deny everything, admit nothing and make counter-accusations.”
If, however, we elevate the discussion, and ignore the predictable tropes, we may find a better understanding of the country, and of the problems and possibilities that confront us. What, then do we look at, to assess whether a state has failed? Staying with the most mainstream of indices, there are five institutions that are evaluated for evidence of state failure: political leadership, the military, the police, the judiciary, and the public service. Within each of these institutions, there are measurements that serve as reliable indicators of state failure, the most significant of which have to do with uneven access to, and the arbitrary use of power by particular groups within a national polity. These measurements are: demographic pressures on infrastructure; public service delivery - especially on food and water; progressive deterioration of public services; the rise of factionalised elites; high volumes of voluntary and involuntary movement of people; vengeance-seeking groups; human flight and the loss of skills; steep economic decline; deligitimising and criminalising of the state; wilful and arbitrary suspension and application of the rule of law, especially for political purposes; the operation of security and intelligence forces as a state within a state, or as instruments of political groups and unaccountable to the constitution and national legislature, and the foreign intervention in domestic politics.
What, then, does the evidence tell us? What we can set aside is the notion of a collapsed state. There have been at least three prominent cases of state collapse since the early 1990s: the former Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and Somalia. The latter remains the world’s poster-child for state collapse, and there is a rather low expectation of Somalia returning to its pre-1991 statehood. Never mind the bollocks emanating from cranky Afro-pessimists and humourless Marxists - South Africa has not collapsed.
The evidence of state failure in South Africa is mixed and inconclusive either way. There are certainly signs that the military, the police and the public service have become dysfunctional, beholden to political interests or simply unwilling or unable to do the jobs for which they are paid. Infrastructure and the general provision of public goods are in decline, or in advanced states of disrepair. Consider the state of Eskom, the Post-Office, the increasing scarcity of water and sanitation, the increased uncertainty of the national carrier, South African Airways, the diabolical state archival system that has been stripping the country of institutional memory since 1994, and constant changing of the deck chairs in the country’s intelligence infrastructure, which would be laughable if it were not so corrosive.
Most of the indices and measurements, above, are fairly technical. In more political terms, state failure can be put in motion by centrifugal and centripetal forces. With respect to centrifugal forces, power is drained from the centre and armed militia, warlords or disaffected satraps take control of a country’s peripheral areas. With respect to centripetal forces, the stability of the state is undermined when the beliefs and values, the sensibilities of people across society are shaped, through various means of coercion and consent, by the beliefs and values of the head of state, or the ruling party. Under these conditions, criticism of the head of state becomes criticism of the country, of society, of history and of democracy, and even of the Constitution.
These centripetal forces are subtle and insidious. They are strengthened when mandarins around the head of state conspire to a single objective: protecting the head of state, by any means possible. This loyalty can be explained either by fear, on the part of the mandarins who fear they may lose their income, or by terror from above, which may amount to the same thing…. This, anyway, was the combination of powers that ‘strongmen’ like Joseph Stalin (in the former Soviet Union) and Augusto Pinochet (in Chile) applied. One of the earliest signs of this protection is the portrayal of leaders as misunderstood victims.
Anyway, evidence from the more high profile cases of state failure and collapse – from Liberia and Somalia in the early 1990s, to Syria and, Iraq today – suggest that once these forces are in motion, it becomes difficult to hold a state together.
Discussions on state failure would benefit from a less hysterical discussion, one that is not shaped by Afro-pessimism, racism, or by party politics, although the latter may be impossible. All political parties would insist that they can do a better job at everything… For now, though, South Africa seems intact, as a state. The Igbo of West Africa have a belief, though, that no condition is permanent. DM