Much of what Moeletsi Mbeki says in his book, Architects of Poverty, we already know. What is enjoyable is its collection and aggregation. Mbeki uses fresh descriptions to argue a cogent thesis that runs through the book like a thread of fine stitches. He's undidactic and intelligent without being formulaic. Simply put Mbeki's thesis can be captured as this:

• Africa, after its colonial past, has been governed by political elites who ended up copying qualities of colonialists in the name of African nationalism
• African elites, who are mostly black, are a non productive group, and live by a symbiotic parasitic relationship to state's resources through political connection (they see the state as essentially distributive rather than developmental)
• They blackmail capitalist oligarchies to give their profits windfalls, otherwise known as BEE
• Political elites have little to no original innovation (business wise) and have no control over productive economy; their thinking is largely controlled by foreign forces in the form of global corporations, or capitalist oligarchs
• Models of solutions provided by institutions like World Bank or IMF have not been good for African development
• The rule of political elite in Africa has so far led to initial development after independence, but that petered away after a few years, living behind deteriorating to collapsing infrastructure, massive brain drainage, and capital flight
• When threatened by the political forces of change the political elites suppress them, with violence if need be; and are not averse to using their political power to advance the tyranny of their big men rule to preserve the status quo of their power
• Or they make cosmetic changes, replacing one big man with the other that serves a different group of even greedier political elites

Mbeki thinks "Is a new middle class emerging in Africa that can provide the leadership required to drive the continent's industrial and agrarian revolutions in the face of foreign interventions that foster the continent's traditional role in the world economy as a source of raw materials and cheap labour?" Is his hope on the new emerging African middle class justified?

Sometimes when I see how the black middle class, especially, has fallen for the consumerist culture at the expense of real innovation and development, I feel Mbeki's hope is far fetched. But the good thing about middle class consumerism is that, by default, it demands innovation to keep up the demand and supply. So the question is whether we have what it takes to become a real productive class. There's a certain mental attitude we should adopt to fulfil this challenge; liberty driven thinking is at the centre of it. Liberty is a revolutionary doctrine that sometimes develops through vaunting out regressive tradition.

Another fresh quality in Mbeki's narrative-a scarce resource in African analysts who are forever looking over their shoulders to see how their argument will be understood in black political circles-is the manner by which he's not afraid to venture to wherever logic leads him, and makes no apologies for it. "Many foreign businesses survived as best they could by corrupting the new elite or finding ways of ingratiating themselves with their new masters. In some Western countries companies got tax breaks if they were able to bribe African government officials."

Mbeki says African elites foster the continent's underdevelopment with their operations of diverting economic profits to ‘consumption and capital flight' while assisting the axe of de-industrialisation by not investing in the manufacturing sector. Mbeki is not a rigorously analytical scribe. This does not necessary belittle the merits of his book, after all obsessive analysis can sometimes stupefy. But cogent as his argument might be sometimes it feels rushed. The history of our country is certainly hushed and abridged, which is understandable for the book of such small length.

Mbeki helped at least one reader to understand the prevalence for socialist rhetoric in disguise of vacuous capitalist consumerism within the Liberation Movement (LM) itself. "The social democracy of black elites was, however, not influenced by the doctrines of socialism. Rather, it was based on statist economic models which its creators saw as a way of breaking the power of the white owned corporations, thus creating the possibility of the black elite entering the business." It is just another trick of the black elite.

The quality that most distinguishes Mbeki's writing is its clarity. It sparkles like pellucid water, running shallow and wide. You can see every pebble on its bed. He has investigative journalist's talent for distilling scattered information, especially that of economy-historical milieu, into pithy passages and engaging sound bites. From his tone you can realise he disdains snobbery and has an affirmed broad affection for grassroots democratic processes, something obviously worrisome to the dysfunctional collective elitist schemers who climb the greasy pole of our politics.

Although not meticulously systematic, Mbeki's book proceeds with the lucidity that characterizes a journalistic need for clarity. His thinking is marked by a positive and objective looking self-consciousness. Take for instance how he speaks about aspects that directly involve his brother, the former president of the republic, Thabo Mbeki. There's a dry emotive outpouring only an Mbeki is capable of; a loosening up of tension that is not mawkish, and is soon relieved to move beyond the personal instead of exploring it. He's critical of him without condemning; complimentary without bias.

In the end what Moeletsi Mbeki favours is a capitalist economy that would generate economic growth and create a community of interests between the more and less prosperous. He wants to see more virtuous and well-educated South Africans, with a general respect for tradition and morality that underlay the economics and politics of a free society. "A country develops when its able to harness the energies of its people and put them to productive use." That's my favourite quote of the book. He makes suggestions on how to embark on this journey, but emphasises that innovation and competence is what'll see us through, not, for instance, regulation against foreign competition, or wasting resources on impotent projects.

Far too many people that should be artisans, technicians, professionals, engineers, scientists, managers, etc, end up falling through the cracks of our education system for one reason or other. Part of the problem is our apartheid inheritance; but we cannot keep blaming apartheid for everything forever. We need to pull ourselves by our own boots straps. Expecting help from the outside is self-defeating; even when not looking after its own vested interests foreign help stunts internal innovative capacity. We must be our own heroes, and the most secure and quickest way to develop ourselves is education, education, and more education. We must intensify drives that'll produce qualified people we need to eliminate the artificial shortage of skilled labour, etc.

All these things can never succeed until we do some serious soul searching and change of especially our entitlement attitude. There is, for instance, a wrongheaded notion that has recently taken root in the Liberation Movement - that to be educated is to be elitist. You hear people praising uneducated people as if this automatically brings them closer to the people. This lack of aspiration for excellence is one of the things that stunt our development. There's nothing wrong with being educated, especially if those fruits of that education are ploughed back into one's community.

Instead of fearing excellence and democracy we should rather be concerned with symptoms that point to the fact that we are a civilization in decline, dominated by consumerist greed, given over to public vulgarity, and rapidly descending into collective barbarism, especially during the exercise of our right to protest. We should be teaching our people to be citizens; which is free individuals that are part of something bigger than themselves, in this case happens to be a republic. Not only just citizens, but enlightened ones that'll build a society that take form, character, from our collective experiences as the people of this country. Anything else is just hot air.

Mphuthumi Ntabeni is editor of http://copetown.org/ and COPE's head of research in the Western Cape legislature

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