ALEC HOGG: You're with the Moneyweb Power Hour and it's a warm welcome now to the former professor from UCT and from Stellenbosch University, Hermann Giliomee, one of our great historians in South Africa. Hermann, you wrote a piece last week for Die Burger and Die Beeld newspapers, and it's elicited a whole lot of interesting reaction. Let's just go back to it a little bit. As a historian you've been looking at South Africa and saying that we're now in the third major crisis of modern times, the first being the 1929 depression, and the other one between '85 and '90, which we all remember so well. I don't know how many people would understand, being right in the middle of it, that it's quite as serious as it is at the moment. How are you making this distinction?
HERMANN GILIOMEE: Well, I suppose one looks at some indicators. One looks at public confidence, one looks at the way in which the world assesses South Africa, and I think there's quite a lot in common between these three crises. The only thing is that at this particular time people still try and see the various crises like electricity, water supply, crime, corruption, as distinct crises - they don't see it as one general structural crisis.
ALEC HOGG: So overall, and the big question that's elicited so much debate is, you believe South Africa can get out of it?
HERMANN GILIOMEE: Well, I said "can", ja. Usually when people discuss the article with me, they say to me, "you said to me we will". I said, no, we can. And if I look at the previous crises, the 1929-33 and '85-'90, people were actually more gloomy than now. They were feeling to a much greater extent, you know, that things are out of control, that they don't control their own destiny any more. And everyone was sort of - we used to joke in the '80s about South Africa, that the problem with the South African crisis is that there's no solution, you know. And then suddenly, you get really wise statesmanship, Hertzog and Smuts coming together in '33, and taking some crucial economic measures. And then within a year, the whole climate changes, and then again in '85, '86, how many people said, look, there is no hope whatsoever for South Africa. I remember one night at a cocktail party I made a joke. They said, "Oh, what leader in the National Party is able of making this major move?" - and I said De Klerk, and everyone burst out laughing.
ALEC HOGG: Well, he certainly did it with the help of Mandela, and we turned that around. But why has it happened so quickly? Hermann, I left South Africa to go and do some business in Canada in early January, everything looked fine. I came back three weeks later and it was depth of depression.
HERMANN GILIOMEE: Ja, South Africa is like that. It is really a roller-coaster, and I think that 10 years of a fair degree of stability and economic growth has simply made us forget that we live in South Africa, and that South Africa does almost with a certain degree of regularity hit these major crises because of the strange nature of our economy, the strange nature of our population composition, and so on. And the worst things happen when things go so well. In the late '90s, we should have been much more alert to the power accumulation in the centre, but because it went so well we didn't worry about it. But in fact it was at that stage when we should have kicked up a major row and said, look, all the institutions of democracy are being eroded.
ALEC HOGG: So it's partly our own fault?
HERMANN GILIOMEE: I think the whites in South Africa - it's almost as if they feel that they are entitled not to be confronted with such a major crisis. But also this one, particular one, the biggest mistake would be to deal with it in a piecemeal way. What we have is really the major loss of capacity on the part of the state. Now, to some extent it forces us to try and exist outside the state, but the major thing is that this is one single interconnected crisis, and it doesn't help if the CEO of Anglo American, what's it, Carroll...
ALEC HOGG: Cynthia Carroll.
HERMANN GILIOMEE: Cynthia Carroll says, "Oh well, there's also electricity in Brazil or Chile, or whatever." The big thing is to look at it globally and say, look, we can't go on like this if we want to deliver. If we want to deliver to the poor, if we want to try and remain competitive, this actually is, as you say in Afrikaans, 'n langsame dood in die pot - you know, it's sort of a prolonged death. So people should get together and say, look, we must deal with this as a totality. And we're all in it, you know, whites and blacks and everyone, and we all need leaders. I mean, the one thing that makes me a bit worried compared to the previous crises, there don't seem to be leaders of magnitude, say a Mandela or a Smuts and Hertzog, you know. But I think we must realise it is in our hands. The most fatal thing for South Africa is to become fatalistic, you know.
ALEC HOGG: Hermann, you did say earlier in the conversation, and certainly that last line of your article, that we can get out of it. How?
HERMANN GILIOMEE: Well I think this is where people like you, who's got a [indistinct] block and so on, have got a duty. I think the newspapers and all that, there's all a lot of people grappling with this problem, and I think there's a couple of very courageous editors at the moment. And I think it should start with a couple of people coming together and saying, look, we are in it. First of all you must decide whether this is just a passing phenomenon, would we be OK in two years' time? And the answer probably is no. And you need some really important black and white thinkers and opinion-formers getting together and saying, what is the problem, how do we deal with it, and how do we communicate with the public? You see, at the moment you've got a government that is mainly interested just in handling perceptions. They aren't actually interested in the battle on the ground. They want to manage perceptions, and they say, OK, we are managing the electricity crisis, we are managing this, we are managing that. But the crisis is greater than that, and I think people must get together, people without any agenda or whatever must get together a small group and say, look, we are going to define this crisis. And then once you've got a definition, you can move forward and say, look, OK, what is the best way of dealing with that? But at the moment, because of the nature of a democracy and a free press and so on, you've got very sort of discordant voices. But there's no sense that when people, say for instance prior to the Second World War in Britain, or in the Depression with Roosevelt, that you say, OK we must now actually realise that the time for fooling around is over and we must actually get critically involved in this whole exercise.
ALEC HOGG: Hermann Giliomee, professor formerly at UCT and at Stellenbosch University, giving some insights into the crisis that South Africa faces at the moment. It is interrelated, as he was saying, and some very wise words indeed.
This is the transcript of an interview with Hermann Giliomee on the Moneyweb Power Hour February 13 2007
