Africa’s bumpy road to regional economic cooperation (5)

OF ALL THE FIVE COUNTRIES designated as the sub-region of Southern Africa in the southernmost part of the African continent, only one country overshadows the rest. Although made up of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Swaziland (now known as Eswatini), South Africa seems synonymous with all these countries put together for a number of reasons. Even when four additional countries (Angola, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe) are included to beef up the size, all the rest still remain in the shadows of South Africa. The picture only gets fairly diluted under a wider Southern African Development Community (SADC) as a Regional Economic Community (REC), comprising 16 member states, including also Angola, Comoros, DR Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Seychelles and United Republic of Tanzania.

In the Southern Africa region, South Africa as a country stole the show, with all the prominence on many, if not all, fronts. In that sub-region, with a combined population of 69,683,621 or roughly 69.7 million people, South Africa’s population alone is 59.39 million – a whopping 85.6 percent of that sub-region’s population. The remaining paltry 14.4 percent is shared between the other four countries, with Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia having population figures of 2.58 million, 1.19 million, 2.28 million, 2.53 million, respectively. Similarly, the economy of South Africa dwarfs those of the other countries. It was once touted as the biggest in Africa and assumed bigger than that of Nigeria until in 2014 when the rebased economic statistics of Nigeria revealed that Nigeria has overtaken South Africa in terms of the comparative sizes of both countries’ economies. For instance, South Africa’s GDP in 2021 alone was $419 billion, compared to Botswana’s $17.61 billion, Eswatini’s $4.74 billion, Lesotho’s $2.96 billion and Namibia’s $12.31 billion GDP within the same period. All put together, South Africa’s economy stood at 91.73 percent of the total sub-regional economy, while the other four countries shared the remaining 8.27 percent. It would, therefore, not be out of place to assume that Southern Africa is nearly the same as South Africa, viewed from any perspective – demographics, economics and even politically.

However, the advantages enjoyed by South Africa over the other countries – including those in the expanded context – are many. While nearly all the countries in that sub-region experience the same natural environment, South Africa has gone through years of economic transformations that have led to diversification and have stood it apart from others. South Africa is subtropical, with temperatures modified by altitude. Grasslands are a major component of South Africa’s vegetation. The interior, where the bulk of grasslands are found, is semi-arid to arid, with rainfall decreasing westwards. Grassland is mainly in the central, high regions. Savannah occurs in the north and east, while arid savannah extends to the Kalahari. The Kalahari Desert is a large semi-arid sandy savannah in Southern Africa extending for 900,000 square kilometres (350,000 sq miles), covering much of Botswana, and parts of Namibia and South Africa. The implications are many.

The climate is not favourable to agriculture and that has its impact on food security within the sub-region. In the Western Cape region where Cape Town is situated, the Cape Town water crisis is almost becoming perennial in the drought-ravaged Western Cape. According to South Africa’s 2021 public records, agriculture contributed a meagre 2.43 percent to the GDP, whereas industry and services respectively contributed 24.46 and 62.75 percent of the total value added. The other contiguous countries are not so favoured as population and consequent market sizes are not to their advantage, made worse by the prevalent climate. Although South Africa has a well-developed and advanced food processing sector, which drives strong demand for food ingredients, the country nonetheless remains a net importer of food ingredients and one of the top five African food importers accounting for 50 percent of Africa’s total food imports. In that cadre, South Africa comes third at nine percent after Egypt’s 15 percent and  Algeria’s 12 percent. Of the 1.2-million square kilometres area of South Africa’s land that is bigger than all countries  Europe – except Russia – and approximately approximately 175 percent of the land area of Texas, only 9.89 percent has been steadily arable since 2012, shrinking from 10.44 percent in 2009 to 10.33 percent in 2010 and to 9.92 percent in 2011. The implications for future food security are clear. But doesn’t it sound counterintuitive that such a country is a leading exporter of some agricultural commodities in Africa? For instance, in 2022, South Africa reportedly recorded a five percent year on year increase in agricultural exports in 2022, reaching $3.4 billion. The documented top exportable products were citrus, maize, apples, pears, wine, grapes, figs, dates, avocados, nuts, fruit juices, wheat, wool and sugar.

South Africa’s disproportionately huge economy compared to its population remains a magnetic force, attracting other Africans into the country. It is also a cause of turmoils in the country, albeit indirectly. The flip side of the white minority rule was that it brought tremendous economic and industrial development into the country even when it was at great human costs to the black majority. Gold mining, for instance, has caused many cases of birth defects to the local population within the precincts of the black communities. The colonial rule, like in many other African countries, created its sociological and economic adjustment crises after the exit of the oppressive regime. The glorious period that marked the immediate post-apartheid years under Nelson Mandela and his first Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki,  who later became his immediate successor as president was short-lived and soon began to give way to a period when the country ran into a tailspin. Before the inauguration of Mandela’s presidency in 1994, immigrants from other African countries faced discrimination and even violence from South Africans. Under the black majority rule since 1994, and contrary to expectations, the incidence of xenophobia has been on the increase. Local politics and politicians have fed on local sentiments to ramp up violence against African foreigners since then, raising the number of attacks and concomitant deaths. No fewer than 67 deaths related to xenophobic attacks have been reported between 2000 and 2008, and another set of xenophobic-related deaths involving 62 people occurred in May 2008 alone out of which 21 were South African citizens.

Clearly, local politics and sentiments have long impacted South Africa’s foreign policies in very negative ways since the exit of Mandela and Mbeki. To underscore the lack of proper understanding and readiness for continent-wide integration, the false narratives fed to ordinary South African during Jacob Zuma’s regime as the fourth African president of South Africa turned an average South African against other Africans who came into South Africa to seek asylum, fortune, jobs, investment opportunities or even marriage partners. Unseen official hands became evident as many cases of aggressive actions and brazen violence against foreigners of other African countries’ origin were recorded, time after time. It got so bad that foreigners were being hounded in thousands, with arbitrary arrests by police while the perpetrators often got away with the acts. In 2015, another bout of nationwide spike in xenophobic attacks against immigrants in general prompted a number of foreign governments to begin repatriating their citizens, particularly after South Africa and many other African countries have been involved in strained diplomatic ties and raising fears in diaspora communities.

The local sentiments were corroborated by the 2018 Pew Research poll which showed that 62 percent of South Africans considered immigrants as a burden on society, in which case they were accused of taking jobs and social benefits that otherwise would have been for South Africans. The poll also indicated that 61 percent of South Africans thought that immigrants were more responsible for crime than other groups. The years, between May 2009 and February 2018, under the presidency of Jacob Zuma were dark,  corruption-ridden and experienced a rise in xenophobic attacks against other Africans living in South Africa. In what could easily be described as complicity or conspiracy of silence, observers alleged that there was a protracted silence before President Zuma publicly condemned a rise in attacks on foreign nationals in two major cities. Critics also pointed out that the leadership in the “Rainbow Nation” — including Zuma himself — has been less than welcoming to foreign residents, and that a war of words triggered the 2015 conflagration. Julius Malema, a fiery opposition politician, was very direct in his accusations against Zuma as he blamed Zuma for the attitude that South Africans adopted in increasingly seeing violence as the solution to their problems. Under President Zuma’s watch, South Africa repatriated 5,645 foreigners at the end of the 2015 xenophobic attacks.

Zuma’s alleged corrupt personalisation of foreign policy, systematic government mismanagement and rising xenophobia were steadily marginalising African foreigners in South Africa. Once, King Goodwill Zwelithini, an ally of Jacob Zuma, reportedly said foreigners should leave the country. The stalwarts of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) were losing popularity, appeal and support, especially because of the official misconduct of President Zuma, his volatile years in office and accusations of corruption against him, which were already dragging the ANC through a reputational crisis. In February 2018, the party was left with the difficult option of having to force out Zuma from office, paving way for the emergence of Cyril Ramaphosa, the incumbent, under whom the country seems to be picking up again. Zuma initially defied an ultimatum from the ruling party to resign within 48 hours, initially pitching the “Rainbow Nation” into an unprecedented political crisis. He was told to stand down or face being stripped of his office at a specially convened emergency session of the highest decision-making body of the ANC upon which he succumbed to pressure from the party and then reluctantly resigned.

 A blind spot so large seems to have been in the vision field of South African politicians that held sway during Zuma’s regime. A combination of ignorance, complicity, inordinate politics and weak official oversight led to avoidable skirmishes that brought South Africa down from the crest of admiration to the pit of disdain by other African countries when angry Black South Africans reacting to the economic and living conditions went berserk, targeting and hurting African immigrants. There was hardly any emphasis on any supportive roles played by many African countries, especially Nigeria, in support of Black South Africans during the years of struggles for independence under apartheid regime as many citizens of the same South Africa would have none of those from elsewhere operating within their country. This led to widespread riots, which resulted in the killing of many African foreigners, looting and burning of their business premises and the eventual chasing away of the foreigners. The younger generation of South Africans have probably either been indoctrinated or brainwashed and taught resentment by the politicians that the foreigners were taking away their jobs, a mindset that was prevalent during the build-up to the major strikes, especially the one embarked upon by truckers and drivers, precipitating nationwide riots.

Meanwhile, soon after apartheid, many South African business entities moved operations into other African countries where they operate unfettered and make huge profits which are repatriated to South Africa. Not long after, South Africa soon dominated in regional, and – in some cases – continent-wide investments. In private telecommunications, MTN, a mobile telecommunications firm from South Africa moved from serving the less than 45 million South Africans to Nigeria in 2001 from ground zero to becoming a dominant regional brand having an investment worth N5 trillion (about $1 billion)in Nigeria, making it more valuable than all banks, insurance companies, and the entire financial services companies in the country. A number of Nigerian-owned enterprises in South Africa could not operate with such ease of doing business. The largest market for Multichoice, the leading African provider of satellite TV services in Africa, is Nigeria, having an estimated 20 million subscribers, provided with two options, namely DStv and GOtv. In the South African home base, Multichoice, at its peak, had nine million subscribers. In the hospitality industry, the Protea chain of hotels was dominant outside the South African home base. Operating in 80 locations in 10 African countries, Protea Hotels by Marriott, a South African hotel and leisure company headquartered in Cape Town, was the largest hotel company on the African continent as at December 2018. Until it began to pull out, South Africa’s Shoprite, a leading food retail supermarket chain, began operations in Nigeria in 2005, in Lekki, Lagos and expanding to 24 other locations, across 11 states including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. Although Shoprite’s blaming its current decline and discontinuation of Nigerian operations on COVID-19 sounds fairly plausible, a clearer picture could be linked with supply-chain disruptions and repatriation of funds as well as the post-South African 2019 xenophobic reprisal attacks in Nigeria in which many South African business entities were physically attacked, notable among which were several Shoprite outlets in Lagos. The 25-outlet enterprise was sold out in 2021 and the new owner appears content to continue operations as a franchise. Although South Africa’s Shoprite has 2.843 supermarkets operating in 15 countries, the company has discontinued operations in some other countries since 2019, due to what could be described as strong operational headwinds, leading to more closures. As of 2022, Shoprite has shut its shops in DR Congo, Kenya, Madagascar and Uganda in addition to Nigeria.

It is thus pertinent to ask if the promises of a southern Africa wealth hub would be sustainable or if intra-regional economic cooperation would be smooth sailing between South Africa and most other countries of Africa. It could therefore be safely inferred that South Africa is not yet ready except there are clear paradigm shifts that leave no one in doubt that South Africa is ready and committed to changing its people’s sentiments about other countries and their citizens that come to live, work and invest in South Africa. Whether Cyril Ramaphosa and whoever succeeds him will be able to turn the tide to ensure favourable perception of non-South Africans in South Africa is a major task that needs urgent action and attention now.

• business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com