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Keep South Africa green. Bring money!Green, the colour of money, will push the green revolution. The speed of our greening culture will be determined by new investments and the profitability of change.
But one snag I want to focus on in this short piece is one of the biggest problems we face as a developing economy: corruption.
In the Brazil, Russia, India, China bloc of countries to which we wish to add ourselves (BRICSA), the surge of economic growth has been seriously burnt by the foul dragon’s breath of corruption on a grand scale.
In China, a minister in charge of high-speed rail projects cornered $152 million for himself before being caught. In Russia, fraud of $4 billion was uncovered on a Siberian pipeline project. India’s telecommunications lost a staggering $30bn organised by the minister in charge.
Premier Wen Jiabao told the National People’s Congress that corruption is the biggest threat to China. But it does not have to be, and should not be so.
Hong Kong’s administration cleaned up its act within a few years.
Singapore did the same, with staggering end results. Both countries created clean ethics, which resulted in robust economies that are great places in which to do business.
Right now, the Arab Revolution, as much as anything, is propelled by the corrupt stranglehold created by those leaders in power – a lesson for the arrogance of politics in South Africa.
Worse than the financial implications are the degradations of social behaviour. Respect for authority goes down the drain. Anger simmers. Initiative shrinks. Why put in honest effort to achieve success when snake-in-the-grass dealings give you a shortcut to wealth beyond
your capabilities?
The very fabric of society is tempered by the actions of its leaders, and heartened by the uncovering and corrective measures taken
on miscreants.
For anyone who has ever shoplifted (in its simplest form: a gain of goods to which you were not entitled), I came across this sign in a surf shop in Plettenberg Bay: “Free... your... mind... don’t... steal.”
It takes a brave person to avoid yielding to a high official’s demand for an underhand kickback to a contract, and a fool to accept this as normal practice.
