A lot of attention has been placed on the “developmental state” in South Africa recently, and the subject of skills in connection with that concept.
However, skills are not education and yet education remains the cornerstone of the success of any nation, developmental or not.
A lot of attention has been placed on the “developmental state” in South Africa recently, and the subject of skills in connection with that concept.
However, skills are not education and yet education remains the cornerstone of the success of any nation, developmental or not.
When I mentioned to a friend that I had attended the launch of a book on the South African developmental state, I expected him to raise the usual objections to the possibility of copying the economic growth path of Japan and the Little Tigers of the Far East and, more recently, China.
These objections are that the power of the union movement and the incapability of South African bureaucrats will torpedo any attempt to duplicate the Far East development success story.
Instead, he told me of the experience of a Chinese manufacturer who had imported an assembly line to make a particular product in South Africa.
The assembly line was identical to those used by the manufacturing group in China. The company in China produces around 700 units a day so it set a target for the African operation of 400 a day.
But the South African plant was never able to achieve more than 350 units a day so the inability of the South African workers to achieve the target was put down to a culture of low productivity.
Because it can be code for racial superiority and inferiority, as well as a defence for indefensible behaviour, I have long been suspicious of the use of the word ‘culture’.
It is a vague word, which on inspection can mean little more than the way we are used to doing things as a race, people or ethnic group, right through to the ability to appreciate the more intellectually framed arts, such as orchestral music.
But in the sense of a habit of doing things in certain ways, culture is surely observable in specific contexts such as the workplace and in communication.
We have a legacy of oppositional relations in the workplace in South Africa. Perhaps this is the reason for low productivity, and but even the concept of productivity needs to be examined more carefully.
How much of it is due to poor management? In a Chinese factory, for example, communication between management and workers on a very basic level must be easy, thanks to common language and the understanding of accepted and acceptable behaviour.
Transpose that to South Africa without ensuring that managers don’t take anything for granted, and you are bound to encounter workplace problems such as low morale.
And how are workers supposed to contribute to productivity through ideas and involvement when they lack the education to do so, even ignoring other things that weigh workers down such as poor housing and transport?
There must be a way to unlock a virtuous circle of better productivity, better wages, and better working conditions. Naturally, education is the key.
Not simply training, mind you but education, which offers to open the mind rather than close it. Training is essential, but it can also entrench class differences.
The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamed, in a foreword to a book on BEE edited by Duma Gqubule called Making Mistakes, Righting Wrongs has some interesting insights on productivity.
He recounts how Malaysians concluded in studying successful races that the difference boiled down to culture. “The real cause [of the success of races], we discovered, was the culture or more correctly the value system.
If the value system is right, then success will follow, but if the value system is wrong, then failure will be the result.
The main components of the value system are attitude towards work, and acquisition of knowledge and skills.” A number of things may change value systems on a wide scale. Education, however, in the true sense of the word, is the key to unlocking in people’s minds the possibility of doing things differently.
Moreover, it is inconceivable that a developmental state will get off the ground without an effective, and therefore educated, army of bureaucrats.
While it is true that the developmental states of the Far East did not start with highly qualified state employees, or perhaps even a highly educated population, they soon realised theneed for this.
Mahathir goes on in his foreword to point out that in pursuit of its affirmative action programme: “Malaysia put a premium on education and skills training.
At the time almost 25% of the national budget was allocated to education and training. Many universities were set up and skills training at all levels was provided at innumerable institutions.”
Other African countries outdo South Africa. Zimbabwe used to be such a centre of educational excellence, and it is ironic that the country has provided South Africa with a windfall of educated migrants fleeing political and economic turmoil.
In South Africa, around 18% of total government spending is devoted to education this fiscal year. This is still a sizeable chunk, but whatever the figure, the spending is not effective, for a variety of reasons.
Despite the spending, every year there is a litany of complaints about poor teaching in schools and drop-out rates at universities.
The problems are well known. South Africa now has a National Planning Commission, which is another important part of any state intervention in changing South Africa’s economic growth path.
I hope it will put education first on the list of what has to be massively improved. This includes what are known as the “liberal arts.”
The distinction between these and the sciences and disciplines such as economics is not as clear-cut as sometimes imagined.
Above all, education can change the self-perception of a nation or a people and help throw off the invisible chains of eelings of inferiority that bind us all to destructive behaviour.
That in turn may be a better motivator for positive change in the way we do things, in a word: our culture.
This article originally appeared on the Reporting Development Network Africa (RDNA). Reg Rumney is the Director of the Centre for Economics Journalism in Africa at Rhodes University.
