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"NEPAD is a long-shot, but no one so
far has come up with a better alternative," says John Stremlau,
co-director of the Centre for Africa's International Relations
at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand. Skeptics say
the international community should be cautious about rushing in
to back yet another new initiative to help Africa and that NEPAD,
for all its high-sounding ideals, may become just another exercise
in neocolonialist aid. After almost a score of African development
schemes that have been mooted and forgotten over the past 20 years,
they ask, why should NEPAD be any different?
Mbeki and his fellow architects say NEPAD is more than an idea
and already represents a solidarity of pan-African interests from
Cape Town to Cairo. It has also earned enthusiastic endorsement
from Britain's Tony Blair, the European Union, the U.S. and Canada.
"This isn't charity," says Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.
"Improving people's lives is an investment." Chrétien, as current
president of the G-8, will be unveiling the African action plan
at the group's summit in the western Canadian mountain resort
of Kananaskis. "What makes NEPAD different is its recognition
of past failures, its ownership by Africans themselves and, critically,
its timing in a post-Sept. 11 spotlight on global responsibilities
and core values," says Greg Mills, national director of the South
African Institute of International Affairs.
Whatever course the initiative takes, it constitutes a personal
challenge for the man who has played such a pivotal role in its
creation — Thabo Mbeki. So, will the South African President
soar to fame on the successful launch of the New Partnership for
Africa's Development, or will he watch his career crumble with
its failure? But even as Nelson Mandela's successor gambles his
international reputation on a world dispensation for Africa, he
remains something of an enigma among his own countrymen.
Mbeki, currently Africa's most eloquent voice , is still dogged
by the controversy that surrounds his eccentric views on Africa's
greatest pestilence, aids. His questioning of the conventional
medical conclusions on hiv, including the link between hiv and
aids and the efficacy of antiretroviral drugs, as well as his
government's unseemly battle with aids activists, became issues
that went beyond medical and scientific debate and threatened
to undermine investor confidence in South Africa. "What the world
wanted was to hear three words [BRACKET "hiv causes aids"], and
he is not a man of three words," said Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
"He likes to explain things.'' But according to a source close
to the A.N.C. leadership, Mbeki, who revels in Socratic, philosophical
debate, became so immersed in the nonconformist, dissident arguments
about aids that "he forgot he was President. He should have stepped
back and left others to argue the case.'' Mbeki's intellectual
approach also neglected the need for action, said the A.N.C. source.
"When a house is on fire you don't stop to argue the scientific
causes of combustion, you get in there, get the people out and
extinguish the blaze."
If Mbeki is not a man of three words, his government information
service is: "Our starting point is the premise that hiv causes
aids," says an official handout, noting that the country's total
health budget for HIV/AIDS has trebled since last year and by
2004 will be almost $2 billion. The government claims that its
comprehensive HIV/AIDS policy is one of the best in the world.
But skeptics in South Africa still wonder if the apparent turnabout
on aids is genuine. "Has Mr. Mbeki had a sudden change of heart?"
asks John Kane-Berman, director of South Africa's Institute of
Race Relations. "Or are we witnessing an exercise in damage control
in the face of overwhelming local and foreign pressure?"
Almost half-way through his first term as President, Mbeki is
having some measure of success on the economic front. Although
there is still a long way to go to alleviate poverty, the percentage
of people who are regarded as the poorest of the poor has dropped
from about 20% in 1994 to roughly 5% last year. The number of
workers earning more than $600 a month has increased from 10%
to 18%. Water delivery has improved by 85%, half of rural homes
now have access to electricity and the literacy rate has gone
up at least 10%. Most South Africans now have access to a telephone
link, and some 7 million actively use mobile phones. The Internet,
e-mail and e-business are widespread.
Unemployment, officially around 30%, unofficially 41.5%, continues
to cloud the horizon. A plan to address that problem by limiting
immigration will probably just worsen another one: a shortage
of skilled labor. Still, development projects in many major cities
are beginning to absorb some of the urban jobless. A huge convention
center being built in Cape Town is already booked until 2010.
And a planned deepwater port and duty-free industrial development
zone at Coega, near Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape —
probably the single largest long-term investment in the country's
history — is expected to provide thousands of jobs.
South Africa, meanwhile, is enjoying a tourist boom, with an increase
in airline passengers and travelers on cruise ships taking the
safe route around the Cape rather than risk the unrest surrounding
the Suez Canal. Next year, for the first time, South Africa will
host the international cricket World Cup. Two years ago, the South
Africans lost by one vote to Germany in the bid for the 2006 soccer
World Cup.
Although Europe remains South Africa's biggest trading partner,
commerce with Africa has been expanding. South Africa is Mozambique's
largest investor with more than 250 companies operating there.
Since 1994, trade with Nigeria has rocketed. South Africa's satellite
communications company MTN has invested more than $425 million
in the Nigerian cell-phone network. National power company Eskom
has secured contracts in several African countries, and South
African mining companies are operating all over the continent,
as is South African Breweries (SAB). Last week, SAB bought Miller
Brewing Co. for $5.6 billion, making it the world's second-largest
brewer.
Last week the partially privatized national landline operator,
Telkom, announced a partnership in a fiber-optic cable that will
link Africa not just with Asia, Europe, Australia and the U.S.
but also with itself. The link — Telkom has an $85 million
stake in the $650 million deal — involves an undersea cable
from Portugal to West Africa and Cape Town, and another from Cape
Town to India and Malaysia. "This is tangible proof of the continent's
determination to take its rightful place in the global economy,"
says Telkom's chief executive, Sizwe Nxasana. After a brief and
sudden plunge of the South African rand at the end of last year
— a phenomenon that resulted in a government inquiry into
foreign exchange and bank transactions — the currency has
recovered the almost 40% it lost to the U.S. dollar. South Africa
is still one of the world's biggest exporters of gold and other
precious and base metals. Both platinum and gold prices have soared
in recent months, boosting profits for local companies and tax
revenues for the state. "We have a much stronger economic climate
in South Africa than in many other developing countries,'' says
Revenue Services Commissioner Pravin Gordhan. A special fraud
unit improved tax collection by $430 million last year, enabling
the government to cut corporate income-tax rates from 48% to 30%.
As South Africa last week geared up for the wef meeting, which
will be heavily devoted to NEPAD, Mbeki, speaking in Parliament
in Cape Town, proudly outlined South Africa's leadership role
in the initiative. What remains now, he said, is for the principles
of NEPAD to be converted into action. Mbeki's job as a salesman
is nearly over. His dream of an African renaissance now rests
in the delivery.
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