Failed state or state failure? What SA must do to change its future
It's hard not to feel despondent by the challenges facing the country.
Auditor-General Tsakani Maluleke's report on the financial and audit outcomes of South Africa's 257 municipalities in 2022 showed only 38 received clean audits, down from 41 last year.
Thirty-one people have died from cholera, a bacterial disease usually spread through contaminated water.
On the back of the cholera outbreak, the water and sanitation department last week released a series of reports on the country's water quality.
These preliminary reports show a decline in South Africa's drinking water quality since 2012.
Add to this ongoing load shedding.
According to the app EskomsePush, we have had 152 days of load shedding in 2023. This means we have only had eight days where we experienced no load shedding this year.
Then there is a growing unemployment, failing economy, increasing crime. The list goes on. No wonder business leaders have raised concerns about whether we are in a failed state.
The Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics has come up with definitions for crisis, fragile and failed states.
They define a fragile state as one that is significantly susceptible to crisis in one or more of its subsystems.
This is reflected in a low level of government performance, where state institutions are weak or on the verge of collapse and where the state either fails to perform core roles or performs them wholly inadequately.
A crisis state is a state under acute stress, where reigning institutions face serious contestation and are potentially unable to manage conflict and shocks.
Under this condition, a state can reach a "crisis condition" and recover from it or can remain in crisis over relatively long periods of time, or a crisis state can unravel and collapse.
A failed state is defined as a state that can no longer perform its basic security, and development functions and that has no effective control over its territory and borders.
A failed state is one that can no longer reproduce the conditions for its own existence.
South Africa might not quite be a failed state yet, looking at the above definitions, but it does appear we are getting closer.
The 2022 Fragile States Index by the US think-tank Fund for Peace ranked South Africa 79th out of 179 countries - where the higher the rank, the higher the risk of state failure.
In 2021, South Africa was ranked 89th. In 2012, we were 115th, while in 2007 the country was ranked 132nd.
In this week's Friday Briefing, we examine where we sit, when considering the Crisis States Research Centre's definitions, and what needs to change to ensure we become a more stable state.
Analyst and News24 columnist Mpumelelo Mkhabela reflects on how we got to this point, and what role poor leadership has played in our current situation.
The head of the Centre for Development and Enterprise, Ann Bernstein, also lays the blame with poor leadership. She examines 10 examples where bad policy and governance undermined growth.
Finally, Dr Se n Muller, a senior research fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, takes another view.
He writes that a state performing badly is quite different from a failed state in which basic functions collapse.
Muller, however, is concerned about the state being overrun by vested interests.
Hope you savour the read before your weekend.
Best,
Vanessa Banton
Opinions editor.
South Africa: A failed state of mind?
South Africa is stuck uncomfortably between the ideal type of state and the undesirable. Mpumelelo Mkhabela writes that with the right class of political leadership to guide the bureaucracy, the pendulum can be swung decisively in favour of the ideal state type.
SA's economy going nowhere slowly
If we want our economy to grow, we should stop repeating the policy errors of the recent past and we should demand better governance, argues Ann Bernstein.
Pulling SA out of a nosedive: The dangerous role of some vested interests
South Africa is not a failed state and nor is it like one, argues Se n Muller. He writes that he doesn't fear the country will eventually become a failed state, but rather that it will be overrun by vested interests, and that the bold democratic principles adopted 29 years ago are going to be inextricably undermined
