The other day, I gave a presentation at the gathering of an international women’s association in Gauteng. Not too surprisingly, my topic was the US’s political process and the astounding things happening there now, especially in the wake of the appalling presidential debate between incumbent President Joe Biden and challenger and former president Donald Trump.
The organisers also asked me to offer some thoughts on recent political developments in South Africa. But rather than go into great detail about South Africa’s political journey, since everyone in the room was obviously familiar with it, at least as much as I was, I offered those comments within the larger context of the growing impact of several political movements globally (See our earlier discussion of these developments here).
To refresh, key reference points are the anti-incumbency fervour gripping nearly all of the elections in 2024 (except for the one in Russia), and the parallel rise of a combination of ethnonationalism and populism. Sometimes that populism has been on the left, sometimes on the right and sometimes it’s been a wild combination of ideas from both poles.
After my formal session ended, many members of the audience wanted to pursue some of those ideas further. One of them, an accountant originally from Russia, came over and said, in effect, “Enough with all that analysis; what would you do first — in South Africa, in the US, in Russia — if you were suddenly in charge and equipped with broad sweeping powers?” Now that is one fascinating, challenging question.
After a moment’s reflection, I began to realise there were no magic bullets. Waving one’s arms and saying, “Do this; do that” usually has little effect in moving vast bureaucracies.
There is the story repeated by the political scientist Richard Neustadt about President Harry Truman who had said at the end of his term that he pitied incoming President Dwight Eisenhower who — after a lifetime in the army — would find himself sitting at his desk and issuing orders, only to discover nothing actually happened. Neustadt concluded that even vast political power is just the power to persuade — and that takes work and luck.
End the war
And so let’s take the challenge I had been given. Regarding Russia, it seems that the answer is obvious. I would follow in the footsteps of Senator George Aiken’s supposed advice back in the early 1970s when he was asked what must be done in Vietnam at the height of the US’s obvious misfortunes there.
Aiken reportedly replied the navy should line up its ships along the coast of Vietnam; the military must march all US military personnel on to those ships; then the navy must sail those ships home. The president could then immediately declare victory. End of story — out of the “Big Muddy” before it further destroyed the fabric of US life.
In this case, in our present time, as supreme ruler in Russia, we would take a leaf from that purported advice and similarly declare all the military objectives had been achieved in Ukraine. That would mean turning every soldier and every piece of Russian military equipment around and making them come back home — before the society, economy and military were further damaged or destroyed by a continuing disaster that is without an ending.
My interlocutor smiled at me and said, yes, that would be a wonderful thing for her native land. But, sadly, I didn’t know the Russians very well — they would never do that. Too bad.
Okay, if our newly granted superpower would not work effectively in Russia, perhaps we could try South Africa and the US? Maybe we would have better luck there. The challenge, once again, was to find one intervention that could generate manifold beneficial effects within the society.
A passing fancy
So, let us tackle South Africa. I was intrigued by my Daily Maverick colleague Tim Cohen’s recent article about the challenges facing the new education minister, given the morass the national education sector has become, despite its massive budget and huge staffing levels.
In essence, Cohen described the array of issues and problems that confront the new minister of basic education, Siviwe Gwarube, now that she is part of the newly sworn-in government of national unity. In education, there are so many places where useful interventions can be made, it seems like a natural.
But, if we only had the franchise for one act, in my new power as president (but with only that singular bite at the apple), I would be compelled to select something so fundamental it would be a real shock to the rest of the sector.
With my grant of limited but unlimited power, I would reverse the excessively low passing standards for subjects and for graduation from one grade to the next and on to matriculation from high school. That one act would then demand higher standards of teaching; it would trigger more effort by learners; and it would force more effective school management, all from the stroke of a pen. Revolutionary.
Further, this would provoke new opportunities for more purposeful relationships between the educational sector and the parts of the economy increasingly requiring better-educated, better-skilled graduates. It would force the country’s universities to manage more effectively how they guide students to select their study programmes.
Of course, it would also put pressure on schools that had to hold back learners who had not met those standards. Yes, that would have an impact on classroom size, at least initially, but that would generate further pressure for reform. Such a change would probably put pressure on the sector (and the government) to up its game on facilities, equipment and human resources support, as the new, more stringent requirements kicked in. But as the new levels become the norm, problems should recede.
Naturally, there would be serious backlash from all the vested interests, teachers’ unions, student groups, some school governing bodies and perhaps even some education-oriented NGOs. But it would also deliver one hard jolt to the system, like a sudden voltage surge that leads to electrifying change.
But alas, here too, this one intervention is unlikely to be realised. There are too many counter-pressures and too much history going the other way. Sad. Another defeat for our thought experiment.
Civics classes
Well, what of the US, then? What intervention could make a fundamental, even earthshaking difference if I held extraordinary “dictatorial” power to carry out one big thing?
For years, social scientists, commentators and politicians in the US have decried the increasing disintegration of the connective tissue that binds Americans together in their public life.
A generation ago, Harvard professor Robert Putnam pointed out the growing disconnects between citizens in his provocative book Bowling Alone. Putnam had pointed to the demise of community sports leagues like bowling leagues and all the other civic associations that had been the foundation for social and political engagement by Americans.
By contrast, back in the 1830s, a French observer of the US, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote of that country’s civic life: “When citizens can associate only in certain cases, they regard association as a rare and singular process, and they hardly think of it. When you allow them to associate freely in everything, they end up seeing in association the universal and, so to speak, unique means that men can use to attain the various ends that they propose. Each new need immediately awakens the idea of association. The art of association then becomes, as I said above, the mother science; everyone studies it and applies it.”
De Tocqueville pointed to the myriad networks of such institutions in building libraries, schools and other public improvements, rather than waiting for a distant government to do it. Taken together, these built a sturdy, participatory civic culture. It was Putnam’s observation, even beyond sports clubs, that the whole fabric of such efforts was declining.
That has come in tandem with the decline (or total absence) of what we used to call civics classes in schools. There, students learned in significant detail about how governments work, how citizens interact with their government and how political parties and other movements engage with citizens.
More recently, we can see how the national culture has come to rely ever more on social media campaigns and instant information and opinions, rather than through the harder, more lasting work of building real associations. (Yes, it can be argued that political movements can now be built quickly via social media, but the deeper question then is whether such efforts can be sustained over longer periods and whether they bring people together or drive them further apart in the nation’s politics, economics and society.)
And so here is the space for my third wish or diktat. Henceforth, all US students will once again be required to take such civics classes. Easy enough to order that. Hire the textbook writers, retrain the teachers, prepare the lesson plans and develop the study guides. And put it all online, of course. There, that was simple — except for several crucial facts.
First of all, there are thousands of school districts in the US, along with the individual state commissioners of education. Moreover, the content of classroom education, as well as any readings, has become highly contentious in many parts of the country, often split along political party lines or based on deep suspicions about the intrusion of governments into what should be something between parents and students.
Meanwhile, the federal government’s role in primary and secondary education is quite limited, restricted to setting broad standards for educational quality, enforcing anti-discrimination statutes and opposing segregation attempts — and all of these remain contentious. Such fights over the educational universe have had major impacts on public support for education — and the taxes that need to be raised to support it.
At this point in such a contentious society, even finding broad agreement in a school district over the content of a new civics curriculum, no matter what it is called, would generate major fights that would become embedded or entangled in the larger political world and might lead to even deeper divisions between citizens, rather than bringing them together for common purposes.
Once again, it’s not so simple. Such a seemingly simple command could produce more rather than less social and political dissension in a country like the US that is already so riven by political disagreements over basic ideas about the nation.
Taken together, the likely failure of my putative interventions in Russia, South Africa and the US all point to the difficulties of achieving any kind of breakthrough, politically, economically or socially in a large, complex society that is vexed by many different challenges and problems.
Even an actual dictator could be at the mercy of larger forces or tempted to pander to divisive ideas. Our sad conclusion is that anyone who thinks there are simple solutions to societal problems in the way that a single sword blow can deal with a Gordian knot must yield to the hard realities. It is so much easier to just order that things be done — but they won’t be. DM
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