Mandela and Margaret

I have some thoughts about great leaders like Mandela.  Those movement leaders who seem to transcend the veniality of people and often inspire hope are forever celebrated by their countrymen. Such is surely the case of Mandela who, though imprisoned 27 years, rose to power and then constantly warned against destroying his country by letting the African tribes take out revenge on the Afrikanners who had ruled so long. (Though some would quibble with his heroism saying he was a terrorist and that is why he was in prison) A similar saga was our own Abe Lincoln who wanted the union preserved and tried to lay the groundwork for the re-entry of southern states soon after the war was over—a forgiving gesture.  Others like Churchill and Peter the Great had their good values as well.  Did they succeed?  Was the nation not only healed but enhanced?  Did the departed leader bring some magic to the kingdom? The answer depends on which side of freedom they align.

Consider South Africa today.  It is minerally and climatically blessed and like USA, has location that is both remote enough to avoid Eurasian Wars yet strategic enough to be vital.  It was governed harshly but market-wise under the Afrikans, so Mandela had the luxury of a good start and a country that had half the gross domestic product of all of Africa.  So what is happening today?

Here’s what the British magazine,The Economist, gives as the prognosis for growth prospects and political prospects for the coming year.  “The President, Jacob Zuma, is on course for re-election in the 2014 presidential contest but will struggle to unify pragmatists in the centre and interventionists on the left of his African National Congress-led government.  An authoritarian drift will be watched with care from outside the country and meager living standards will bring some protests.  An expanding black middle class will help growth.”  (I know, British spelling! Note that the ANC was Mandela’s former Marxist leaning party which operates so much like Chinese communists that the two countries have now allied closely) The GDP per capita is $7140. (yeah, an interesting way to measure income) where it is $54,000 in USA. Well, who does this compare to? Colombia = $8070 and Iraq is at $7410.

In other words, Union S. Africa has gone backwards since Mandela.

You say, okay, wise guy, who has done better? Well, Estonia, the poorest of the Baltic States emerged from Russia’s heavy hand with a quiet determination to become very capitalist, free market, and associated with their Finnish brethren again.  $18,260 per capita, better than Latvia, Lithuania or Poland and four times greater than Ukraine, six times that of Belarus.  Countries that go free, go up.

Let me give a historical example in a fish story.  Queen Margaret of Denmark/Norway/Sweden was acclaimed queen by all three countries in the late 1300’s, and she brought rule by law, solid Christian ethic and greatly increased trade in her noble reign.  That’s good enough to celebrate her reign.  But there’s more.  Europe had an dilemma with food shortage in her times.  About 1000AD, a lot of plentiful fish were harvested from the big rivers of the continent and supplied peasants and nobles alike with meat.  There were fewer forests which the nobles now claimed for their own exclusive use.  Of course, they lorded it over the peasants and hoarded the wild boar. But hunts were also mock war games for archers and knights and all their auxillary workers and supporters. Then by the late 1200’s heavy farming and erosion silted most rivers and so did toxins from mines all over the continent.  Freshwater fish died out in large numbers, especially salmon and sturgeon, just at the time of the Black Death. Famines broke out.  But the Scandinavians knew what to do.  They went to sea and caught herring, whiting, cod, and dried the fish for shipment.  Margaret’s genius was to disallow the nobles to charge tariffs or separation taxes on the fish.  That is, she denied government regulation.  100 years after her death, half of Europe was eating Scandinavian dried and salted fish.  By 1600 Sweden became the strongest nation in Europe.  Small population but big entrepreneurs. Don’t tell me capitalism doesn’t work.