Off the main drag in Boudhanath

Sometime ago as I was strolling the main street in Kathmandu’s Boudhanath neighbourhood looking for things to shoot with my camera, I was accosted by a small woman with an even smaller girl in tow. Both were dressed in traditional Indian outfits. Their line was—as I heard it often is—we don’t want money from you, but can you please buy some milk for the child. This is supposed to be a scam. An unsuspecting foreigner buys the milk, but there’s an elaborate scheme by which the woman will then sell it further for a profit. Irrespective, I figured, these are poor people; if they turn a small profit, good for them! The child, Shalu, didn’t look like she was suffering from malnutrition because her mother traded away her milk. So I agreed to follow them to a convenience store and bought some milk powder for them. The lady, Kamala, professed thankfulness and said they lived in the nearby shantytown. If I would be so kind as to follow them, she would make me tea. I again agreed, this time also indicating that I had my camera and would like to take some photos there.

I followed  Kamala and Shalu to a side street down from the Boudhanath main drag and just within a couple of blocks we left the officially built area and entered an open field with makeshift shacks covered with tarpaulins. Just below the busy main street there was a shantytown where lots of people lived. Beyond the area was the Tribhuvan International Airport. Kamala led me to her hut. It was neat and tidy, with a variety of coloured posters on the walls. Some had Jesus Christ on them (others had Hindi models and Bollywood stars), so I asked her whether the family were Christians. Not at all; the pictures just looked attractive.

Other family members started showing up: Rakesh, a young man dressed in red jeans and a baseball jacket, said he was an art student; Rahul a smiley boy of 10; Kadjel, a beautiful young woman with an infant boy, Golu. Shalu made the promised tea, which I gladly accepted. Sitting down on one of the beds I heard the family story, which involved drunken and abusive husbands who consumed the money the ladies and the young man scraped together. The family was from Rajasthan and frequently made the trip between their home country in India and Nepal. They earned their living through shining shoes, doing some other odd jobs and, obviously, by getting foreigners to support their milk habit.

Kadjel offered to take me around the shanty. The place was rather well organized and orderly. In the centre opening there was a well with fresh water for the residents to use for cooking. Laundry was hung between the huts. One of the huts contained a small shrine. Kadjel told me that the land was owned by a Nepali landlady who collected Rs. 1,000 (about US$11) per month from each of the families, a significant amount in a country where almost a quarter of the population lives on less than the equivalent of $1.25 per day. There were rather many children, as could be expected, but nobody looked destitute. In fact, I saw one young man in white trousers and red shirt emerging from one of the abodes and walking determinedly towards the main street while talking to a cell phone.

Informal settlements, such as this—many much larger and much more messy—are springing up everywhere in the developing world as people move into towns. Despite the dire situation many countries face, with poverty, high unemployment, poor or non-existent social services, crime and other troubles, cities still provide more opportunities for people to improve their lives than the stagnating countryside. One of the greatest false myths of capitalism is that countries and people are poor because they are lazy.  People in the West would be hard pressed to work as much and to be as entrepreneurial as these slum dwellers.

Shooting America

On Friday, 14th of December 2012, a young gunman walked into Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, and proceeded to shoot and kill 26 people, including 20 children in the ages of 6 and 7 years. This horrific incident was one of the worst mass murders even in the violent history of America. Unfortunately, however, it wasn’t entirely isolated. In fact, this was the third incident of a similar kind to take place in the United States just in 2012. These recent cases include the movie theatre shooting in Aurora, Colorado, on the 20th of July 2012, in which twelve people were killed and 58 injured; and the shooting at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on August 5, in which a white supremacist killed six people, possibly mistaking the Sikhs for Muslims. Six of the worst mass shootings in America have taken place since 2007.

Could this finally be a turning point—the straw that broke the camel’s back, in the words of Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California—in the American attitude towards gun violence? There are signs of outrage that seem unprecedented; after all, the horror of the slaughter of these little children is just too painful, too hard even to imagine. But don’t hold your breath.

There is much focus on the mental health of the shooter and on providing increased security in schools. This is understandable. However, I do not see this primarily as a mental health issue. This is not meant to belittle the importance of psychological factors or to deny the importance of mental illness as an explanatory factor. America’s mental health care system is clearly broken and there seem to be extraordinarily many sick people who turn to violence. However, there are crazy people everywhere, but in most other places they can be stopped before they are able to commit mass murder. Just recently, a Chinese nutcase attacked a school in his own country. Armed only with a knife, he was able to injure a number of people but not to kill anyone before he was apprehended.

In this latest case in Connecticut, the assailant was in the possession of three advanced pieces of weaponry: Glock and Sig Sauer handguns and an AR-15 Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle. He used this firepower to enter the school and then to kill the kids and their teachers. It is worth noting that apparently he had acquired access to these guns from his mother (who was the first victim of his killing spree), a gun enthusiast.

What surprises me is that so relatively few Americans have arrived at the inevitable conclusion that access to high-powered firearms itself is a threat. While a few people like Feinstein and Dan Gross of the anti-gun violence Brady Campaign have systematically brought the issue of stronger gun control up, the debate still seems to be up in the air. Although most pro-gun politicians have had the sense of laying low since Friday’s tragedy, a number of gun activists, sensing a threat to their God-given right to carry any weapon, have again decided that attack is the best defense. People like John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, has been seen on a number of TV talk shows peddling his claim that everywhere where stricter gun controls have been effected, murder rates have gone up (would someone please look at the statistics behind this implausible claim). Citing the Aurora example, Lott asserts that the shooter actually chose that particular movie theatre because it didn’t allow guns. There were other theatres closer to the murderer’s home but, Lott implies, there might have been armed people there who would have returned the fire, so the shooter was afraid of attacking them. Just imagine a gunfight in a crowded and dark movie theatre.

Another creep, Philip Van Cleave, president of the sinister sounding Virginia Citizens Defense League, actually had the temerity to tell Washington Post on Sunday after the Newtown massacre that guns are fun. Defending the people’s wish to own semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 (implicated in the three latest massacres mentioned above), he was quoted by the newspaper as saying: “I could ask you why should anyone want a Ferrari? [Bushmasters] are absolutely a blast to shoot with. They’re fast. They’re accurate. … Guns are fun, and some of them are much more cool than others.” Apart from the stunning insensitivity, Van Cleave’s views may not be that rare amongst Americans.

Who exactly Lott, Van Cleave and their ilk envision could have been better armed to fight back in the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown is not clear to me. The young teachers who died with their students? Or perhaps the children themselves? Employing armed guards and arming teachers or movie goers or citizens in general so that they can return fire when a deranged person starts shooting at them is such a dystopian vision that few of us I imagine would cherish. And would all of us really want to be trained in handling guns?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe many Americans do see this as a desirable way of protecting oneself and one’s liberties. After all, this is a country where large groups of people arm themselves in preparation against a takeover by the socialists in the Federal Government (or even—gasp!—the United Nations) . It would seem inevitable that an even larger number of people walking and driving around with concealed weapons would result in those guns being used when things heat up in, say, a traffic jam or a supermarket line. And the risk of innocent bystanders getting hurt in these altercations seems high.

This happened on Friday, August 24, 2012, when a man shot his former co-worker near Empire State Building in Manhattan. The police killed the assailant immediately following the incident, in the process injuring eight innocent bystanders with ricocheting bullets—and remember, these were highly trained law enforcement officers who are experts in handling firearms.

“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people,” has long been the rallying call of the supporters of the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful pro-gun lobby. Regretfully, that’s just not true. There will always be nuts who want to kill people. However, their ability to do so is significantly increased by the availability of guns. Later the same evening, the brother of the Empire State Building victim was interviewed by CNN. His opinion: Don’t turn this into a referendum on firearms; if the killer hadn’t had a gun, he could have used a “baseball bat or whatever.” Perhaps so. People who are inclined to commit premeditated murder do find a way to do so. A baseball bat would do the trick, but it just might be more difficult to carry it concealed to the spot, then un-shield it rapidly when the intended victim is in sight, and to wield it to his head—all on a crowded city street. The intended victim might have a higher chance of escape, too, when he sees the batter approaching. In this particular case, the victim was also physically larger than the assailant, which might have made a difference in a fight without guns.

A more important point is that premeditated murder is, by definition, usually targeted towards a specific individual against whom the would-be murderer bears a grudge. Such murders occur in all countries.

There are two very obvious cases where the availability of guns does create a much larger hazard. One, as we have seen, is indiscriminate mass murder by a lunatic. An individual’s ability to massacre a large number of people is directly correlated with the availability of guns, especially powerful assault weapons. In this year’s cases, the madmen’s ability to kill was multiplied by the availability of such automatic weapons, with clips holding more than 100 rounds of ammunition reducing the need to reload. Such weapons and clips have no legitimate use in private hands, as they are by no stretch of imagination needed for hunting or target practice. Their only purpose is to enable the killing of as many people as possible in close combat.

The other case, which so obviously speaks against having guns around is that the majority of killings in the US happen between family members and people who know each other. Only a small fraction of these are premeditated murders. Most are either accidents (every year many people shoot themselves or their dear ones accidentally when fondling their beloved guns) or happen when arguments—between spouses, friends or colleagues—heat up and a loaded gun happens to be handy. Guns kill people, even when people don’t intend to do so.

In the December 2012 issue of The Atlantic, that appeared on newsstands just before the Connecticut massacre, Jeffrey Goldberg argues that it is too late to install any further gun controls in America. There are already some 280-300 million guns owned by private citizens in America and each year this number is increased by more than 4 million. These are of course stupendous figures, given that the total population of the USA is just around 311 million. I have recently heard that slightly less than half of American adults own a gun. Simple arithmetic thus implies that these people have multiple guns at home. Goldberg draws the conclusions that it would be impossible anymore to regulate the situation through democratic means and, therefore, it would be better to give more guns to law-abiding citizens so that they can defend themselves. This is a saddening view, although it does have a certain logic. Yet, by the same logic it would be futile to attempt to address any similar issue that involves an advanced situation, including nuclear disarmament. His solution would also bring back the Wild West in which disputes were settled with six-shooters.

Except that in the Wild West, guns were quite strictly controlled in towns where the sheriff made sure that gunslingers would check their weapons at the gate. Joe Klein in Time magazine (August 6, 2012) outlined how this free-for-all guns-galore is not an American tradition or what the Founding Fathers expected. Rather it’s a result of a concerted advocacy effort by all kinds of right-wing groups since the 1970s to overturn gun control legislation. In 1993, during Bill Clinton’s presidency, legislation was passed to ban assault weapons, but that too was let expire a decade later.

Of all industrialized countries, the United States has by far the largest amount of guns per capita: 88.8 firearms per 100 people. This is far more than the 54.8 in the second most gun-heavy country in the world, Yemen. America has some 5% of the world’s population but, depending on the estimate, up to half of the world’s firearms in the hands of private citizens. Topping the list with Yemen, which many consider en route to becoming a failed state and which now is the principal host of Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula, should not be an accolade most Americans would want. Still a large number of Americans seem to be perfectly content with it.

Unfortunately, my own country of origin, Finland, is number 4 on the list (the third place goes to Switzerland, where most men who have served in the army have a rifle in their closet). Why Finland, the seemingly tranquil Nordic country known for its peace-making efforts on the world scene? I suppose the reasons are something similar to those that would be applicable to America, too: a macho culture of rugged individualists. There, too, men go on rampage shooting people.

Another factor that militates against gun control in America is (you guessed it) money. There is a lot of money involved in gun sales and they are not limited to domestic sales, as if the 4 million guns sold in the US annually wouldn’t be enough. Mexico’s drug war is largely fought with American guns: it is estimated that 80% of the guns confiscated from Mexican gangs have been bought legally in the US.

In the American political system, lobbyists for special interest groups play a central role. Politicians find it hard to go against the lobbyist if they want to stay in power. According to the Time article by Joe Klein, NRA has funded a total of US$18.9 million to political parties and candidates running for federal office since 1990. Of this amount, 82% has gone to the Republicans. The New York Times columnist Charles Blow has calculated that the NRA’s financial contributions to politicians in Washington are 4,100 times larger than those by the largest anti-gun organization, the Brady Campaign.

When culture, tradition, corporate interests and money come together, it will be a tough job to go against them and change things when it comes to the prevalence of guns and the ensuing gun violence. This is the reason for my pessimism, but I do hope that I am proven wrong. Perhaps, in the unspeakable tragedy of the Sandy Hook elementary school, there lies a seed of hope for some modest reform. If nothing more, it would seem reasonable to start by banning semi-automatic assault weapons and clips containing tens or hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Sandy farewell

Monday, 29 October 2012

On Monday morning New York City is closed down. I’m staying at home as my office, like most others, has been forced shut. Without transportation it would anyway be impossible to get to Manhattan. It doesn’t look too bad outside, though. It’s grey and the rain is falling, but it all looks rather calm. The wind comes in gusts that violently shake the trees outside. Some leaves have already turned yellow and are flying off like wet rags.

By noon the situation is starting to look more serious. According to the reports, the storm has been moving faster than anticipated and therefore has arrived earlier than expected. Its power has intensified. There’s by now no doubt this’ll be the worst storm to hit New York since the 1938 hurricane. The TV shows images from Atlantic City, NJ. The famous boardwalk and the casinos are being pounded by heavy winds and the waves from the open ocean are splashing forcefully onto the shore. I remember my brother has a vacation property on the Brigantine Island not far from Atlantic City. I also remember it faces the ocean. There’s only the sandy beach and a narrow street between the building and the Atlantic. In good weather, the location is lovely.

I correspond with my colleague Chona who lives in New Jersey. She is lamenting the pictures of her beloved Jersey Shore being eaten up by the waves. The TV meteorologist explains how New York City is squeezed in between New Jersey and Long Island, which means that in an Atlantic storm situation like today, the water has only one way to go: inland towards the city via the inlets. Therefore, the storm surge forecast for New York harbour is grim.

The most threatening situation starts unfolding in mid-afternoon on the west side of Manhattan. A crane on a high-rise construction site on the 7^th Avenue at 57^th Street has collapsed and is hanging upside-down at the height of the 90^th floor above the city. There is no way to stabilize it, so it’ll be pure luck if it stays up and doesn’t fly smashing into neighbouring buildings and onto the street.

Around 4 pm Governor Andrew Cuomo holds another press conference flanked by NYFD and other emergency personnel. A troop of National Guardsmen dressed in camouflage uniforms stands guard behind them. There is a life-threatening situation on Fire Island, a thin barrier island off Long Island. Fourteen people who refused to obey the mandatory evacuation order last night had to be rescued today. Having spent some good summer vacation time on the island, I can’t even imagine anyone wanting to face a hurricane on that thin sliver of sand in the Atlantic. In the process a rescue vehicle has been lost. Luckily there were no personnel losses. Cuomo quotes Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who accused people who refused to leave of being selfish, putting others at peril. The emergency chief tells in no uncertain terms that the window to evacuate is rapidly closing. Sandy is now expected to make landfall around 18:00, which will coincide with the peak of the tide coming in. When that happens, it won’t be possible to get out of the islands that surround New York City.

I also correspond with my other colleague Indran who lives high up in one of the high-rises on the East River waterfront in Manhattan. It is Zone A, but the building complex is very solid and the water would anyway never reach that high up, so he had chosen not to evacuate. He and his family moved here from South Africa only earlier this year. They are awed by the storm which they can observe through rattling windows from a vantage point tens of stories above sea level.

Our building is faring well, too. We stay in our warm apartment and enjoy the food we stocked up on before the storm: steaks and asparagus for lunch, followed by coffee ice cream; grilled chicken and salad for dinner. Do we normally eat this well? Nowa sleeps through much of her first hurricane. I go down to the basement, which looks dry—so far. 

Around the time of the landfall, I venture out briefly to snap these photographs. From the balcony the southwestern sky looks menacing. On the street side, the large trees are bending with the gale force winds. Luckily, the rain remains surprisingly moderate.

In early evening, the communications start to falter. The cable network on which our building depends on for the Internet, TV and telephone landline goes dark. The elevator also becomes unsafe to use. We’re cut off from information and communications. Well almost, as Yoko’s iPhone can still send and receive messages (my older model went blank). Some neighbours in the building report water leaking from their a/c vents. Apparently, water is also starting to gather in the basement.

Around 21:30, Yoko reads on the iPhone that Sandy is no longer a hurricane. The National Hurricane Centre has reclassified it because it “has continued to lose tropical characteristics”—no wonder at these latitudes. It doesn’t mean that its power is waning. Sustained winds of more than 120 km per hour remain. The wind and rain continue late into the night.

Tuesday, 30 October

We survived the storm with minor personal inconvenience. In the morning the winds are still high and there are heavy showers. At the JFK airport, top wind speeds recorded were 127 kph. Our cable service is restored and we never experienced a power outage. Not everyone was equally lucky. The storm left some 7 million people in 11 states and the District of Columbia without power. In New York, power outages are widespread and currently 1.8 million people are without power. In the New York University Langone Medical Centre even the back-up generator system failed. Some 260 patients, including four newborn babies, had to be evacuated.

ConEdison, the power utility, made a statement that this is the biggest storm-related problem in the company’s history. A representative couldn’t give a timetable for fixing the problems but suggested it may take a week to fully restore the service. It's going to be a cold and dark week for those affected. 

The initial reports by the police talk about seven Sandy-related deaths in the city, but there is no information about how these happened. The national death toll from Sandy is currently put at 16. According to news reports, more than 80 homes have burned down to the ground in a fire in Breezy Point, Queens, due to electric fires. One can imagine insurance companies studying the hurricane causes in the policies for loopholes to avoid payment to the home owners. A building in Chelsea collapsed partially because of the wind. The crane in Midtown West is still hanging there, but the situation remains dangerous and the police have evacuated buildings in the neighbourhood.

There is massive flooding around the city. The National Hurricane Centre recorded storm surges of up to 3.8 metres in Kings Point. The storm surge in southern Manhattan’s Battery at 4.3 metres, was the highest ever on record, beating that caused by Hurricane Dana in 1960. In the South Street Seaport waves with a height of 9 metres were measured. Residents on Staten Island report that they have never seen anything like this. Coney Island waterfront is still inaccessible even to eager reporters. Streets look like rivers with cars floating on them. Cars have been crushed under felled trees. One car spontaneously combusted in a fireball, possibly caused by salt water getting into its battery. A huge tanker has washed ashore on Staten Island.

Reports are coming in and are being updated as more information becomes available. The economic impact has not yet been assessed.

The system-wide shutdown of mass transit—both local and long distance trains, subways, buses, ferries—continues. Seven subway tunnels are severely flooded. One can only imagine the hordes of rats sprinting across the debris in the deluge. Apparently MTA had managed to get all subway cars on higher ground in anticipation of the storm, so the trains have been spared damage. MTA calculates it’ll take four days to pump out the water from the tunnels. The rain continues to fall.

It seems that we’ll spend some more time indoors.

Waiting for Sandy

Sunday evening, October 28^th

Sandy is again a hurricane. Having already once been downgraded into a tropical storm, Sandy is back as Category 1 hurricane—and it’s heading north along the Atlantic coast. The storm system is slow-moving and massive, ranging some 1,200 km across. The eye is still far out on the Atlantic off the Carolina coast some 800 km from New York, but despite the distance, the winds are picking up even here in Brooklyn. The rain is starting to fall and the Rockaway shore is already getting soaked. The hurricane is calculated to make landfall well south of New York tomorrow night and is expected to pass the metropolitan area south-southwest from here across the garden state of New Jersey.

Although New York will likely not be hit directly, the expectation is that the city will receive its share of rain and wind. In fact, the biggest threats would appear to stem from wind and the associated storm surge. The rainfall on Monday-Tuesday is expected to be just 50-120 mm—enough to give us a good washing, but not huge in historical terms. However, by noon tomorrow, the winds are expected to blow at 80 km per hour, with gusts going up to 112 km per hour. That’s strong enough to fell trees and power lines and to throw leisure boats off the East River on the banks.

This afternoon we walked down from our house to Bedford Avenue and the main shopping area of Williamsburg to get supplies so that our daughter Nowa would be able to ride out her first hurricane in comfort. It should have been no surprise, but we were still taken aback at seeing how many others had had the same idea. There were crowds of people in all shops and at least three dozen people were queuing on the pavement outside our favourite supermarket. Two bouncers were admitting people in an orderly manner, so that inside the store things didn’t get too chaotic. After a brief wait we were able to stock up with enough of bottled water and cooking ingredients should we be unable to shop for a few days.  It is interesting to note the types of items that people buy in these kinds of situations. Apart from bottled water, the first things to go seem to include canned tuna. This I noticed 14 months ago when we were bracing for Hurricane Irene, and could reconfirm today. As we headed back home, we could feel the humidity condensing in the cool wind.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been visible in the media today assuring people of the state of preparedness. All public transportation—subway, local trains, buses, ferries—will be shutting down tonight. The area airports—JFK, La Guardia and Newark—have also instructed flights to be directed elsewhere and  Amtrak trains will be avoiding New York’s Penn Station. The bridges and tunnels connecting the five Boroughs may be closed up to avoid accidents caused by heavy winds or flooding. New York will be cut off from the world.

The decisive Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacuation of all vulnerable low-lying areas on the coastline by 7 pm tonight. Zone A—which includes most of the shores of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island—may be facing huge storm surges. The forecast at this time is mostly 1-2 m above normal—high in its own right—but some areas around East and Hudson Rivers—and especially Long Island Sound—may face a storm surge of up to 1.8-3.3 metres. It’s almost full moon, which worsens the effects as the tides are naturally high at this time.

While the city hurricane shelters are slowly filling up, many citizens are also planning on challenging the evacuation orders and riding out the storm. The local TV station NY1 sometime ago broadcast a report from the Rockaways where some of the 130,000 people living there were gathering for hurricane parties. A somewhat wobbly gentleman declared firmly through a nearly toothless grin that he would not leave his home of 35 years: “The captain must go down with his ship!” True to his style, Mayor Bloomberg justifies the mandatory evacuations, not because of his concern for the stubborn residents, but because their intransigence may eventually put rescue personnel at risk if they need to go out to salvage foolhardy partyers from storm hit areas. He also made a decision to shut down elevators and hot water in public housing—many tall high-rises—to prevent people from getting stuck in elevators and other mishaps if and when there are power failures.

This is not the first time New York City will experience a hurricane, although they certainly are not regular events. By definition, hurricanes are tropical storms, and New York is far from tropical, as anyone having spent a winter here would attest. However, just last year, in August 2011, the city was hit by another hurricane, Irene. It was the first since Hurricane Floyd in 1999. The one before that had been Agnes in 1972. Whether this repeat just a year later would be any indication of intensified storm activity linked with climate change is of course impossible to tell. Two events in a row don’t provide any statistically significant trend. The most destructive hurricane that New York has had to deal with in modern times took place in 1938 when the eye of a Category 3 storm passed straight through Long Island killing ten people. Damage from Irene last year stayed quite limited, although much of Lower Manhattan—the Financial District and the Battery—were severely flooded. Even then, the Far Rockaways took the brunt of the storm that damaged the piers and boardwalks there. Here in Williamsburg, the visible damage was limited to some flooded basements and a few felled trees (see the photos from the aftermath of Irene).

 

Sandy is different, though. It’s been termed ‘storm of a generation’ to reach this far up on the East Coast. Last week, it already killed at least 60 people and caused large-scale homelessness in the Caribbean. President Barack Obama has just signed an emergency declaration for New York State in anticipation of Sandy’s arrival.

For now, we are tucked in comfortably in our apartment in Williamsburg. We are close to East River, but just outside of Zone A by virtue of our building standing on a small knoll. It will not prevent the winds from rocking the windows here on the 4^th floor or preventing flooding in the basement storage areas. But all the plants have been moved inside from the balconies. We expect to stay safe and dry, although the thick clouds hide the full moon and the wind is increasingly throwing raindrops our way..

Development with growing inequalities: Johannesburg

“The murder rate is down to some 15,000 per year—and they’re proud of it.” This was Indran speaking as we were driving on the highway from Sandton in northern Johannesburg towards Pretoria past some areas that were not quite as nice as the sunny suburb. At each junction there were men selling anything between bath toys to paper towels to the passing cars. All of the men were black. Indran clarified: “Of course it’s progress. The murder rate used to be 30,000 a year just in the 1990s. But it’s still pretty high for a nation of only some 50 million people!” According to him, class had replaced race as the new distinguishing factor in South Africa, a country with one of the highest rates of inequalities in the world. And there was a lot of alcohol abuse, which led to aggression and many other problems. Having consumed adequate quantities of good South African wine with him over the past three nights, I knew Indran was no prude. His judgement was a factual assessment of what was happening. As Deputy Director-General of the country’s Public Service Commission, a serious watchdog, he knew what he talked about.

We had just spent some days in an international conference that our respective offices co-organized around the topic of national evaluation capacity and how evaluation can be used to enhance accountability in public administration. We organized the conference in Sandton at the oddly named sprawling hotel complex Balalaika. Sandton is a nice place, perfectly safe to walk around along its clean streets. Even the stalls selling African trinkets around Maude Street, across from Deutsche Bank and HSBC head offices, are neat and orderly. Like in many other places where the original city centre has become too dangerous and unruly, a new centre has evolved on the outskirts where things are kept more under control (Gigiri with its Village Market outside of Nairobi comes readily to mind).

On Sunday, I walked over to the Nelson Mandela Square, a huge complex of shops and restaurants that would put any American or European mall at shame with its style and sophistication. At the centre of the large square surrounded by tempting terraces serving food and drinks stands a six-meter tall statue of Nelson Mandela. On this Sunday, a live band was playing smooth jazz and bossa nova on the balcony of a Thai restaurant just behind the great leader’s bronze head. Talk about globalization!





South Africa’s divided history is equally well-known as it is brutal. The conservative Dutch settlers moved into the Cape of Good Hope already in the mid-1600s creating a society where time had stopped for three centuries. They started spreading across the southern cone of the continent through their Great Trek of 1836 getting into conflict with pastoral tribes herding their cattle in the areas the Boers wanted to settle in. Then there was the gold rush of the late-19th century and the ensuing Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. South Africa was contested land between the blacks and the whites, between the Boers and the British (and before that the fight included the Portuguese, the French and the Dutch, while the alliances constantly changed), and between different African population groups (who also were occasionally recruited to support one side or the other).

The Union of South Africa was finally formed in 1910 uniting Boer and British controlled areas, soon restricting black people to specific reservations. The official policy of racial discrimination, apartheid, was finally formalized legally following the electoral wins (of course, only the whites had the vote) by the National Party in 1948. What followed was a decades-long period of systematic discrimination and racial hatred that only ended when Nelson Mandela, the leader of the banned African National Congress (ANC), was released from jail where he had spent 27 years by 1990, and then democratically elected as the first black President of the Republic of South Africa in 1994. Mandela, now 93, became an iconic figure, perhaps the most admired leader in the world, by his visionary leadership, clear thinking and braveness. With associates, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he made the case for reconciliation, and against all odds was able to avoid major civil unrest or bloodshed in post-apartheid South Africa.





Mandela stepped down from the presidency in 1999 after just one term and nobody can blame him for giving up official duties too early. He clearly had done more than anyone could reasonably expect from one individual. Furthermore, he had seen so many African liberation leaders become ‘Big Men’ and never voluntarily leave office. In all fairness, there are a few exceptions amongst the first generation of post-colonial leaders, such as Tanzania’s Mwalimu (‘Teacher’) Julius Nyerere and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda. Regretfully, both had largely run down the economies of their countries, not through self-aggrandisement but through misguided economic policies; both nevertheless achieved ‘elder statesman’ status by gracefully withdrawing when the time came.

The worst remaining offender is the leader of Zimbabwe, South Africa’s neighbour, Robert Mugabe. When he led his country, then Northern Rhodesia, to independence in 1980 after a prolonged civil war with the privileged white settlers, Mugabe was seen as a freedom fighter with serious ideals and credentials. Alas, history has proven otherwise and the ruthless old man has not hesitated to use extreme violence to kill and intimidate his own people who have dared to protest the economic ruin and starvation that his policies have caused. Recent reports indicate that the now 87-year-old dictator has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and has about 1.5 years to live. His departure will solve a problem that has been an embarrassment to South Africa, as the bigger neighbour has not been able to influence Mugabe to step down or at least change his policies (the mediation efforts of Mandela’s successor Thabo Mbeki were widely regarded as half-hearted).

Unfortunately, ANC leadership after Mandela has not been equally wise as Mandela was. The political leaders of the party that dominates South Africa have assumed features that Mandela wanted expressly to avoid. To him, it was important to ensure the independence of the judiciary and freedom of press. His heirs have increasingly succumbed to the temptation to control these sometimes inconvenient institutions.

At the time of the shift from the first majority president to the next, the Republic of South Africa was developing surprisingly harmoniously, given the extent of hatred, violence and discrimination of past decades, and experienced a steady economic growth of 5-6% annually year after year. The past racial injustices were being acknowledged and addressed to the extent possible and a democratic society was being built (although in all honesty, Mandela and Tutu’s ‘reconciliation’ were a compromise and seen by many as not dealing adequately with past injustices, as explained by Alec Russell in his superb new book, After Mandela: The Battle for the Soul of South Africa).





The fundamentals of the economy are still quite strong, thanks largely to the rich mineral resources (including diamonds, gold and many other minerals that are in high demand) that have protected the country against the global economic crisis. Mandela also succeeded in avoiding an exodus of skilled professionals, most of whom were white or Asian, experienced by other countries, such as Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, poverty is rampant amongst people, while a minority is getting richer by the day The UN ranks South Africa as a middle-income country with a medium level of human development based on health, education and income statistics. In 2010 South Africa ranked 110th in human development amongst the 169 countries ranked. What brings down South Africa’s ratings are a low life expectancy of just 52 years (largely due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic) and inequality in opportunities to education, health and economic development. The mostly black underclass still suffers from powerlessness, with unemployment rates of some 30%. Russell quotes a 2008 employment report by the United Association of South Africa, a trade union, that found that at that time, 14 years after the democratic shift, whites’ incomes on average were 450 times higher than those of the blacks—and economic inequalities had actually been rising, despite the increasing number of blacks entering the middle class. It is not saying that the different groups would not have equal access under the law. It’s more like in the USA: opportunities for liberty and the pursuit of happiness are limited for a large number of people by structural constraints.

Of course, affirmative action was necessary after decades of legislated and harshly enforced racial oppression. The whites and the Asians are still doing fine, largely thanks to Mandela’s insistence on national reconciliation. I certainly have no intention to imply that all black leaders would be corrupt or incompetent. There is a highly professional black middle class, steadily growing, with a strong role in both the private sector as well as public administration. One good example is Mashwale Diphofa, the Director-General of the Public Service Commission (and Indran’s boss). With a strong ethical backbone, high professional skills and political savvy, Mash is a model that many officials from the so called ‘developed’ countries could emulate. What’s more to emulate is that the stylish and smooth man knows his music. I was amazed how we could discuss jazz together after we had witnessed an exciting dance and music performance at Balalaika (no Russian triangular string instruments included).







One of the greatest challenges to South Africa is the high prevalence of HIV infection and consequently AIDS. The disease affects very much the middle class and professionals in their prime who would be so badly needed to contribute to the economy and to enhance the performance of the civil service. One evening over some excellent local Pinotage, Indran told me how he had recently lost an assistant, a young and highly capable woman in the Office of the Public Service Commission. Initially, one does not notice anything and for a long while the only visible change is that the person starts losing weight (not necessarily a bad sign in this country of many large people). But at some point of time, after months, it starts to become evident that something is seriously wrong. The victim becomes lethargic and loses energy. Then the cheeks sink in and a special look appears on the person’s face. It’s like her eyes had gotten bigger and they just stare out of the increasingly skull-like visage. After that, the end often comes quickly.

The topic of AIDS has been a political hot potato in South Africa, to a large extent for political reasons. Initially Mandela attempted to address it, but faced so much resistance from his audiences that even he had to make a calculation of the trade-offs between pushing the issue and political survival. The societal forces were just dead against him. Regular people would accuse him of encouraging promiscuity as he advocated for condom use, while the truly promiscuous politicians and power-brokers certainly did not want to hear about the topic. Mandela’s successor as President, Thabo Mbeki, notoriously questioned the causal linkage between HIV and AIDS. The current President Jacob Zuma was accused of (and acquitted from ) raping a daughter of a political ally—more than 30 years his junior—she herself an HIV positive AIDS activist. Zuma has some twenty children from five wives. In the meantime, this conspiracy of silence continues to kill people and take a toll on the very development of the society.

After somewhat complicated shortcuts Indran had followed upon instructions from the GPS, we were approaching Lanseria International Airport constructed only years ago in the middle of the rolling hills between Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria. Indran turned the BMW to an apparent entrance to the airport and we suddenly hit a checkpoint with two uniformed guards. One of the guards, a friendly black woman, approached us and explained that this was a special entrance and one needed a permit to pass through here. The alternative was to continue on the main road and go through the main gate, but that would be another 19 km. We opted for getting the permit, which was free but only obtainable by driving to a trailer parked some way at the side. There we found two more uniformed officers, one resting his head on his arms apparently asleep in the afternoon heat pounding on the container they called office. Paperwork was filled for both of us by the more alert officer, while the sleepy one took my passport and studied it at length, holding each page against the light wondering at the perforations and watermarks that were supposed to make it counterfeit-proof, before handing it back to me. The alert one asked me whether I was carrying any fire arms. “Not today,” I responded, but wondered whether this was a relevant concern upon entering an airport (“Oh yeah, they’re obsessed with firearms,” responded Indran casually).






Off we sped and after several twists and turns around airline offices, hangars and cargo areas we reached the spanking new terminal building. From there on, everything was smooth as silk. While I sat on the observation deck waiting for the departure of my Kulula jet towards Cape Town, I considered the balance between the benefits of keeping four uniformed personnel filling in forms for non-fee entry permit to the premises vs. the need for expediency to attract more passengers to use this new airport instead of the established O.R. Tambo International Airport serving the twin cities. Clearly, this was an employment scheme and, as such, it had much merit. At least these guards were proudly wearing their uniforms and receiving salaries, thus not entering the ranks of the unemployed, desperate and potentially violent. To me, there is great value in that for human dignity and contributions to society.

I also pondered what the word ‘international’ actually referred to in the case of the Lanseria airfield where tiny Cessna and Piper aircraft kept landing and taking off while I sipped my cool drink.