Africa has always found its political strength in the leadership of South Africa. In the absence of strong leadership in countries such as Nigeria, Senegal and Egypt, which have failed to be a voice for Africa, and in the absence of strong leadership from African Union, South Africa has attempted to provide leadership and represent the interests of the continent.
However, when South Africa is weak, it ripples across the continent. Is South Africa failing as a strong pioneer state?
In the famous Federalist Paper No. 51, one of the American Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, wrote: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels ruled men, no check on government would be necessary. In constructing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in the fact that you must first enable the government to control the governed, and then compel it to control himself.”
Allowing the government to control the governed means building a strong state. Forcing government restraint means establishing control of government through the rule of law and democratic accountability.
Hamilton says there needs to be a strong and capable government with a competent bureaucracy that is well conceptualized, well structured, anchored in good law, staffed by technically qualified people, well financed with a good evaluation system to ensure basic service delivery optimal for citizens.
When colonists set foot in Africa, most European nations had already built strong and capable states. This emerged after years of long and bloody war, beginning with the Habsburg attempt at European domination and consolidated by the French Revolution into the state that was later built by Napoleon Bonaparte.
The nations around France would later succumb to Napoleon’s conquest and those who resisted would later copy the Napoleonic state and its civil code.
Having overseen the dangers of extremely strong states without limits, in the early 20th century the debate in world politics focused on how to constrain and limit the powers of strong but autocratic states.
African states emerged in the first half of the 20th century when institutions of constraint and limitation, such as the rule of law and democratic accountability, were the primary concern of dominant powers.
Colonial masters no longer built strong states. They already had them in place.
In their colonial adventure, preoccupied with the limitation of strong states, they neglected the difficult task of building strong states and instead attempted to establish a few embryonic legislative councils and judicial administrations.
Some scholars argue that the colonists undermined and disrupted Africa’s traditional political systems before leaving, leaving our fathers of independence with the arduous work of nation building – most African people had political organizations at the time. level of bands, clans and tribes – and of the State, very different concepts.
So, whether authoritarian or democratic, what most European powers had and what some regions like Asia struggled to build and what Africa did not have was strong and capable states.
Measures of state strength
The strength of a state is not measured by its democracy or authoritarianism, but by its ability to protect lives and provide services to citizens.
It is also measured by the government’s ability to create an enabling environment for citizens to participate in wealth creation.
The World Bank states the following as measures of state strength:
1. Ability to enforce territorial integrity through military force.
2. Ability to protect lives and property by enforcing law and order through a strong police service and competent judiciary.
3. Ability to collect adequate tax revenue to fund government programs through strong tax administration and a well-thought-out tax code.
4. Ability to undertake and complete large-scale infrastructure projects.
5. Ability to control/remove corruption.
6. Ability to effectively regulate the economy to minimize exploitation and inequality.
States are established either by democratic (electoral) or authoritarian (revolutionary) means.
Likewise, a state, whether democratic or authoritarian, can be strong or weak.
There are four likely scenarios:
1. A state that is both strong and democratic – for example, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Belgium – which provides both strong governance and a well-established democracy.