August 28, 2003: Susan Rice discusses South Africa and black economic empowerment with host Mishal Husain.
Mishal Husain: Welcome to Wide Angle, Dr. Susan Rice.
Susan Rice: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Mishal Husain: I wanted to just ask you for your perceptions of how far South Africa has come because this film was made almost 10 years since the end of apartheid. What are your thoughts on the progress South Africa's made?
Susan Rice: Well, I think by any expectation South Africa has come a tremendously long way. We've seen a society that many people thought couldn't withstand a peaceful transition to democracy without a great deal of violence, in fact, make that transition and do it in relative peace and security. Politically, South Africa is a relatively stable democracy now with a flourishing press and a vibrant civil society. It's achieved, I think, a remarkable degree of racial reconciliation given the tremendous burden of history and of the apartheid regime. And economically the government is pursing the sorts of strategies that have proven successful in stimulating economic growth in other developing economies. So the polices are correct, but in the short less than 10 years since the end of apartheid, there's still huge economic disparities and one has to expect that. One can't erase the tremendous burden of apartheid in 10 years, 20 years, I believe, even 30 years. It's going to be a long-term proposition. So the economic challenges and the social challenges remain huge.
Mishal Husain: Do you think the government's done as much as it could have to address those economic unrealities, because some of the figures are really quite shocking? The fact that for many black households, their income has actually dropped by some accounts about 20 percent in the last five years or so.
Susan Rice: Well, I think the government policies, broadly in the area of economic growth and development, have been laudable ones. It's not perfect. I don't know any government whose economic policies one could say are perfect, certainly not our own. So I think we have to step back and be a bit reasonable and objective. But what the government has tried to do is to balance, on the one hand, the tremendous needs of the majority population, which were disenfranchised -- many of whom had no housing, no running water, no electricity and had great political expectations that, when democracy came, so would all of the burdens of their lives be lifted, which is one set of expectations obviously unrealistic but nevertheless real. On the other hand, the government is trying its utmost to manage the economy in a responsible and efficient fashion. This is a closed economy that was one of the most backward under apartheid. The way the white regime survived was to become extremely insular -- to protect with all sorts of tariffs and subsidies and the like. And so they're now trying to open that economy, attract foreign investment, pursue policies that domestic and foreign investors will see as worthy of their capital inflows. And balancing those two imperatives is extremely difficult.
Mishal Husain: However difficult it is, though, they have got a limited time frame to actually put that into practice. I mean the black majority is going to demand results. They're going to demand to see the economic imbalances redressed.
Susan Rice: Absolutely and the government, which is a government of the ANC of the liberation struggle, is acutely aware of that and I think that's in large part of the rationale for black economic empowerment. When you look at their progress on the social front -- even though there's a huge long way to go -- what they have accomplished in the short nine and a half years since the end of apartheid -- not quite nine and a half years since the end of apartheid -- is remarkable. They've built millions of houses. They've brought electricity to areas that never had it. They have done a great deal in terms of trying to improve the basic standard of living for people. But this is a long-term proposition, and it's going to have to continue. And no matter how fast the government was able to go, or is able to go, while on the other hand, balancing the larger macroeconomic challenges, it's never going to be fast enough for the people of South Africa who've suffered so long and whose expectations are so huge.
Mishal Husain: How long do you think they'll actually give their government to deliver before discontent sets in and the ANC is actually judged on this issue alone?
Susan Rice: I don't think you can begin to quantify that. Nobody knows. The ANC has already stumbled on some other important issues and is being judged on it, mostly notably on HIV/AIDS. And until recently, until very recently a few weeks ago, their failure or refusal to provide anti-retroviral treatment broadly to people with AIDS -- and you have five million people in the country, the largest population in the world, suffering from HIV. And so the people are already in a mode of looking at their government and being prepared to criticize it when they believe it to be wrong. I think the people of South Africa will not have limitless patience with any government that fails to deliver over the medium to long term on bridging these, reducing these economic disparities. On the other hand, I don't think that one needs to measure the time bomb in terms of months or even a few short years. I think there is time, but the key is that the government indicates that it's serious about it, that it has a strategy, and that there's beginning to be evidence that the strategy's working.
Mishal Husain: What do you think of the overall strategy, the way that the government has decided to try and address this inequality, the black empowerment strategy? I mean do you think that it is one that is going to work in the long term because it's a difficult balancing act? I mean it's, on the one hand, it's radical intervention. On the other hand, some would say it doesn't go far enough.
Susan Rice: Well, I think first of all you've got to look at black economic empowerment, the government's program, in a larger context. It's one piece, albeit a very important piece, of a larger economic growth strategy. There is the strategy of attending to the basic needs of the population -- building houses, doing the rural electrification, all of those sorts of things. Actually I should say rural and urban electrification. Then there's the larger macroeconomic policy and the fiscal policy in which this black economic empowerment fits. And there the huge piece of the strategy has been to attract greater quantities of foreign as well as domestic investment so that jobs can be created. Because you can have black economic empowerment, but if the economy as a whole is not growing, there are limits to what that can achieve. You're redistributing, in the best case, a stagnant pie. So you've got to grow the pie, which is part of the larger economic strategy, even as you change within that pie the resource allocation, the distribution of income. So to look at black economic empowerment, there is, within that piece of the larger whole, a tension, as you suggested, between, on the one hand, trying to give the disenfranchised and powerless majority -- not a minority -- a real stake in the economy, and not doing it in a fashion that scares off domestic or foreign investors. And so you're always calibrating. You can't quite go full bore in one direction or another. But I think having said that, the program is well conceived. I think it has largely walked that fine line to good effect. But the people are going to have to be somewhat more patient and one has to recognize that no program of affirmative action, and this is perhaps the most massive and ambitious ever accomplished, yields results in 5 to 10 years. Look at our country, we're still very much in a circumstance where there's a huge long way to go to close economic disparities and educational opportunities and opportunities on the economic side.
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