'We can avoid our seemingly inevitable descent into more economic misery'
BUSINESS INTELLECTUAL: I interview André de Ruyter about Cleopatra, Franklin Roosevelt, JRR Tolkien, China and the last great South African speech...
Welcome to the first interview in a new series on Our Long Walk, my blog discussing the past, present and future of South Africa. Here, I'll be talking with South African business leaders to gain their perspectives on the lessons from history. Please consider a paid subscription to access the full interview and all of my twice-weekly content, including columns, guest essays, and summaries of the latest relevant research.
André de Ruyter, former CEO of Eskom from December 2019 to February 2023, has held roles at Sasol and Nampak. As of 2024, he is a Senior Fellow at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, with an additional appointment at the Yale School of Management and Environment.
1. In Truth to Power, your book on your three years at the helm of Eskom, you refer to several historical periods and people – Ancient Rome, for example, and the Copernican Revolution. How has your understanding of the past informed decisions you’ve made?
Hegel, the German philosopher, said cynically, if accurately, that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. For me, history gives a perspective that transcends the narrow focus of today. Understanding how seemingly insurmountable challenges, great evils or incredible odds have been overcome, more often than not by flawed individuals placed in a position of leadership and responsibility, is inspirational. Think of Churchill, a depression sufferer with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, who has been voted the greatest Briton ever for standing fast against the onslaught of Nazism, when appeasement and surrender would have been understandable choices. My challenges were, of course, not nearly of the same magnitude or complexity, but a historical lens gave me a perspective on making choices that I regarded as being for the greater good rather than what would please those in power. Historical figures who ascend from obscurity to glory only to be unceremoniously defenestrated when their moment has passed provide me with not only inspiration but a certain measure of comfort that others have trodden a far more difficult path than mine.
2. Who do you draw inspiration from in history? In your book you quote the American presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt, the Roman general Agricola, the Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl and many more. Which historical figures should South Africa’s business and political leaders study, and why?
Of all the leaders that I have read about, the one with the greatest relevance for South Africa today is Franklin D. Roosevelt. He took charge of a country stuck in an intractable economic depression, with devastating unemployment and environmental damage (so well documented by Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath) and then inspired a nation to rise to its potential. There are many parallels with South Africa’s current challenges: the loss of jobs, the loss of investment, the loss of hope for many of our people. Roosevelt was an incredibly progressive leader: he advocated social inclusion, and greater equality of opportunity and income. To achieve this, he created the New Deal, with the Social Security Act, to assist the elderly and the unemployed. He established the Civilian Conservation Corps, which not only employed legions of unemployed workers but also used artists, architects and engineers, whose legacy can be seen in a myriad of attractive bridges, schools, libraries, dams and other infrastructure projects. He created the Tennessee Valley Authority to provide water and electricity to historically deprived states. He led the world’s democracies to eventually triumph against the horrors of totalitarianism (even though he did not live to see the defeat of Nazism and Japan). Roosevelt was the supreme pragmatist: if a policy didn’t work, he ditched it with no ideological regret. He was a dealmaker, consummate communicator, and wily politician, and to top it all, he mixed a martini of legendary potency.
I don’t, however, believe that we have to wait for a Roosevelt to rescue us. I believe that South Africa has more than enough resources, both human and natural, to deflect from its current downward trajectory. But then our policies need to change in a fundamental way. Inequality has barely budged in three decades of democracy, unemployment is catastrophically high, and capital and people are leaving if they can, as quickly as they can. We need an inflexion towards policies that work, not double down on ideologically pure treatments that have brought the patient to its knees. This requires business, academia and civil society to speak up more vocally, even if the honourable minister’s feathers are ruffled. It requires us, as William Faulkner famously said, ‘to kill our little darlings’ and let go of preconceived notions and ideologies so that we can avoid our seemingly inevitable descent into more economic misery and, inevitably, more political instability.
3. As part of his Rubicon speech, Julius Caesar is said to have proclaimed, ‘The dice is thrown’: there was no turning back. Does the fall of Rome hold lessons for monoliths like the West or, closer to home, the ANC?
The study of the decline and fall of great civilisations is a cottage industry among historians. To quote another Latin aphorism: sic transit gloria mundi; thus passes earthly glory. From Gibbon to Spengler, the seemingly inevitable fall of mighty empires is a theme repeated with more than just a touch of schadenfreude. But the demise of empires more often than not contains the seeds of rebirth or substitution with another construct. Case in point: Caesar’s speech at the Rubicon presaged the fall of the Roman Republic, but did lead to the rise of the Roman Empire, which was one of the greatest the world has seen. It is, however, true that the interregnum between political systems can be chaotic, disruptive and painfully long: think about the Middle Ages or Japan’s long turn inward before the Meiji Restoration.
While reports of the imminent demise of the West are typically exaggerated, it seems clear that two major long-term trends challenge Western hegemony. The first is that Western lifestyles are not environmentally sustainable. If we all lived like Americans, the planet would be rapidly depleted and irreparably despoiled. The most critical challenge of our era is to develop economic systems that can address global inequality and development, while protecting the planet from human rapacity. While this certainly seems feasible, the likelihood of the West voluntarily sacrificing living standards in time seems improbable. Technological disruption can help us to achieve this if we have far-sighted leaders who are not beholden to fossilised fuels or petrified paradigms or both.
The second challenge is demographics, which, in my view, is grossly underestimated as a trend that can bring significant and very disruptive change to societies. Just because it takes place over generational timelines does not mean it can precipitate wrenching change quickly once a population reaches its greyness threshold. (Ed: See this and this post on Our Long Walk.) South Korea, Japan, Italy, China, and Germany – these countries all suffer from a veritable collapse in birthrates. Unless augmented by massive immigration, it is difficult to see how these economies can recover from plummeting birthrates. Of course, these two trends coincide, as economic, and increasingly environmental, refugees from the Global South wend their inevitable way to the promise of prosperity in the Global North. Immigrants are not, as many fear, only a negative influence, but can provide a much-needed injection of vigour and dynamism into moribund economies. However, the new arrivals also bring with them wrenching and disruptive changes in culture that create a fertile breeding ground for rightwing xenophobic parties, such as Alternative für Deutschland and Fratelli d’Italia. Nowhere is this tension better seen than in the United States, where caravans of economic migrants from Latin America are wending their seemingly unstoppable way to the southern border.
So nothing lasts forever, and nor will the ANC last forever, despite former President Zuma claiming that his former party would reign until the second coming. It is a truism that liberation movements make bad governments. Throughout Africa, the path of post-liberation euphoria was followed with inexorable predictability by a slide into increasing authoritarianism, endemic corruption and economic decay. When there has been a reversal of the decline, it has been patchy and slow. Countries that have adopted market-friendly policies and some measure of democracy, like Kenya and Zambia, have shown some encouraging signs of improvement, while others (Rwanda, Liberia, and Sierra Leone) have succumbed to the strongman syndrome or internecine struggle. Our own institutions have been under constant attack from looters of state resources, but if they can survive, and if we see more investor-friendly policies, and if we move away from redistributive to pro-growth policies, we have a chance of pulling back from the precipice.
4. JFK spoke of a ‘New Frontier’: a frontier of unknown economic, scientific, and socio-political opportunities. Do you share JFK’s vision of a New Frontier? What would you include in your vision of humanity’s ‘new frontier’?
Kennedy’s vision of a New Frontier called upon Americans to move beyond the bounds of current thinking to conquer political and economic problems, to solve conflicts and overcome poverty. What is interesting about JFK’s vision is that it combines two distinct facets: on the one hand, a conviction that humanity’s challenges can be overcome, while at the same time believing that solving our problems depends on working the problems through reason, science and technology, not by adhering to irrational precepts, ideologies or post-truth fads. This is certainly something that I subscribe to.
Leaders have a responsibility to create a vision for their followers that will allow them to transcend the constraints of their current circumstances, a picture of a City on a Hill, and then inspire followers with the confidence that they will be able to complete the journey. The last such speech we heard in South Africa was Thabo Mbeki’s ‘I am an African’, a rousing and inspiring piece of rhetoric that was sadly swallowed by the darkness of AIDS denialism, loadshedding and corruption. Time for a reset, clearly.
Humanity can overcome its challenges, whether they be problems of ethics, equality, environment or economics. This may open me up to accusations of Pollyannish optimism, but if we stop striving for steady progress, we run a real risk of regressing into a new dark age of irrationality and ignorance, where we believe in waving crystals and following those who delight in spreading falsehoods.
A moment spent in the darker corners of social media, or even just the comments sections of news sites, will show a concerning lack of scientific, economic and political literacy. Ensuring that we make data-driven decisions, backed by scientific analysis and supported by rational and informed decision-making, has to be better than the conspiracy theories, intellectual dishonesty and outright lies peddled by all too many politicians and their followers.
5. What can we learn from JFK’s focus on technological advancement in pursuit of his country’s competitive advantage? Do you think this is a mission that applies to South Africa today?
I think we first need to define what South Africa’s competitive and comparative advantages are. Many people say: we will build a lot of solar and wind farms, so let’s, therefore, start our own solar panel factories. This focus on local manufacturing, noble though it may be, misses the point. No country can beat China when it comes to low-cost and high-quality solar panels, so we have neither a competitive nor a comparative advantage. Building our own factories and then enforcing local content through trade policy will only result in a negligible number of jobs being created and an overall increase in the cost of energy for the entire economy, to the detriment of our competitiveness.
Let China, and now the US after IRA, rather subsidise our electricity cost, and let us focus on what we are good at. This is mining (provided we can approve more than one permit per year), tourism, agriculture, renewable energy, and potentially, provided we can loosen the chokehold of unions on employment and education, low-cost manufacturing. Someone else I quote in my book is Donald Rumsfeld, who said: ‘You don’t go to war with the army you wish you had, but with the army you’ve got.’ Our economic army is not in great shape, and we shouldn’t shackle it further by picking fights that we can’t win.
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