Hello loyal subscribers. You may have wondered what happened to me. Turns out I have been writing a book, which is now finished and is appearing on shelves as we speak. Exciting times.
The book is called How to Fix (Unf*ck) A Country: 6 Things to Reboot South Africa.
My blog subscribers will recognise a lot of what is in the book, indeed I tried out many of the big ideas in blog posts and your feedback helped a lot to refine what was going on.
In the next few months you will be getting expanded versions of each chapter. Sort of the director’s cut - the book itself is a slim 200 pages thanks to an excellent team at the publishers and two super duper editors that drove me to Hemingwayesque levels of writing. So I will use this blog to expand a bit a bit on each chapter and drag back the pre-edited things.
I love economics and I love how people like Steven Levitt, Malcolm Gladwell, James Robinson, Russell Bregman, Johan Fourie and others have made intellectual books accessible (and sometimes fun). So, the idea is that the book tries to be a story book, something that you can pick up and read and kinda maybe even enjoy? The medium is meant to be an accessible one, so that it conveys an important message.
But most importantly, I am like deeply worried about the persistent lack of economic growth, and quite angry about the slow pace of reform, so a large chunk of the book is about me writing down things to manage my worries and anger.
Ja, ja, ok, what is the book about?
There is a quote that has never quite left me. It is famous, and I use it to start the book. (It has launched a thousand articles, textbooks, talks and books on economic growth).
Is there some action a government of [South Africa] could take that would lead the … economy to grow like [India’s] or Indonesia’s? If so, what, exactly? … The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.
The quote comes from a 1988 paper by Robert Lucas called ‘On the Mechanics of Economic Development’.
Clever economists will know that the quote originally reads a little differently, to whit:
Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia's or Egypt's? If so, what, exactly? If not, what is it about the 'nature of India' that makes it so?
The India/Indonesia/Egypt thing no longer makes sense, which is itself a whole story. India is one of the booming economies of the world. India has taken action - basically they read Lucas’ article - something that I explore in a little bit of detail in the book. And, of course, to hold up Egypt as a case study may have made sense in 1988, but a decade later, in 1998, the story was quite different. And today, well, today Egypt is in a pickle. Indonesia is interesting in its own right and deserves its own blog.
And so the book follows Lucas’ lead and tries to answer to simple questions:
Why are some countries so much more successful than others?
How can we get South Africa to be one of the successful ones?
I wasn’t allowed any graphs in the book (I snuck one in), but if you play around on Our World in Data here, it is fxcking mindblowing how different the economic trajectories of different countries can be. I gooi some of these into the introduction.
It only underscores the point that some people live in countries that are successful. In these countries, average income is relatively high and distributed more or less equally. Few live in poverty. Health care is available. Education is of good quality. There is a plan for climate change.
Others live in countries that don’t work. Perhaps their incomes aren’t as high, or perhaps some people are very rich while others are very poor. Health care is weak. Education is expensive. They are at the mercy of climate change – they have neither a plan to slow it down nor a plan to deal with its effects.
There is a foreword by former boss, Tito Mboweni, and then there are ten chapters. The first three are introductory. The first one just sort of sets the scene for why this is so fascinating (basically what I have just said in this post), the second one takes a tour of some economic success stories from around world and the third one looks at a methodological framework through which we can think about growth.
Then the next six look at the six areas that I think we should be prioritising: Eskom, Education, Environment, Exports, Equality and Ethics.
And then there is an Epilogue, which grapples with why it takes us so long to get anything done.
I will use forthcoming blog posts to dig into each chapter. I will even have a post about the Foreword (which is a story in itself)…. and some random ones along the way.
One particular one - which is what I get asked a lot - is South Africa f#cked? I will answer in a little more detail in the post, but my short answer is ‘no.’ Indeed, my research into other countries suggests quite the opposite. We are nowhere near the economic crisis (yet) that India faced in 1991, nor we staring widespread devastation in the face and being locked out of the world economy (which pretty much describes Vietnam after the war).
A second one is - also a questions that comes up a lot - what did I miss. The answer to this is the water crisis, and I will have a post about that too, don’t worry.
I look forward to the journey of chatting about my book here on Substack. I will also post all the various reviews (good and bad), the podcasts and all the other media that goes along with these like this when you have an awesome publisher like Jonathan Ball.
In the meantime, feel free to order a book or better yet, come to one of the events - the book launches offer free wine!
RSVP asseblief, mainly so that we have enough booze:
Suidooster Festival, Artscape Cape Town, 28 April 10:00 in conversation with Dennis Davis and Tessa Dooms. The blurb is such gorgeous Afrikaans that it is worth repeating here: Staatskaping het Suid-Afrika laat shut down. Maar hoekom kan niemand ons reboot nie? Ons is immers nie die eerste land wat homself in ’n penarie bevind nie. Andere kon uit die puin herrys, terwyl ons in die as bly ploeter. Roy Havemann, hoof van ’n internasionale navorsingsmaatskappy wat gekonsulteer word deur private maatskappye en die Wêreldbank, sê die antwoorde skuil in ses dinge: Eskom, opvoeding, die omgewing, uitvoere, gelykheid en etiek. Kom luister en praat saam.
Rosebank Exclusive Books, Johannesburg, 16 May, 18.00 in conversation with Hilary Joffe
V&A Waterfront Exclusive Books, Cape Town, 21 May, 18.00 for 18.30 in conversation with Twanji Kalula
And the one in Cape Town
Cool, so let’s see how it goes and looking forward to the discussion on economic success.