Andrew Kuper on Jacob Zuma and the Future of South Africa | Big Think

Andrew Kuper on Jacob Zuma and the Future of South Africa

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Andrew Kuper talks about the potential of Jacob Zuma.

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Andrew Kuper:

LeapFrog is the world’s first investment fund to focus on the insurance needs of low-income and financially excluded people. Launched by President Clinton and hailed by The Wall Street Journal and Private Equity International, LeapFrog has opened a new frontier for social investment and microfinance. Andy founded LeapFrog in January 2007, inspired by his extensive experience enabling entrepreneurs in emerging markets, and then co-built the firm with a team of former CEOs and pioneers in emerging markets insurance. Andy is a former Managing Director of Ashoka, which has financed and connected 2000 social entrepreneurs in over 60 countries. He worked with both Grameen and BRAC, the world's largest microfinance institutions, to market their social ventures. He also co-founded Kuper Research, which designed The Daily Sun, now sub-Saharan Africa's largest newspaper, with 5 million daily readers. Born and raised in South Africa, Andy is a serial social entrepreneur and author of books including Democracy Beyond Borders (Oxford) and Global Responsibilities (Routledge). He holds a PhD from Cambridge, where he was supervised by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, who first stimulated Andy’s interest in market-based solutions to poverty.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Can Jacob Zuma Transform South Africa?

Andrew Kuper: I think the future of South Africa really at this point is unwritten in a different way to in the past. We had very established dynamics in the past with the ANC Liberation Movement that successfully and rightly won the 1994 election, it was a tremendous moment. I was there at the Union Buildings when Nelson Mandela was inaugurated and the jets flew over trailing the new South African flag and all of us who are there basically hit the ground because we thought we were being attacked and suddenly realized, “No, those are out jets.” So I’ve been there at that moment, I have been there in the moment where Thabo Mbeki stood up and said, “He was the next generation, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was to be magical,” quoting Shelley. So I’ve been there on those moments, I’ve been there at the 1999 election when Mandela handed over power, an African head of state of the most powerful country in the continent handing over power to the next generation. I’ve been there at a time where Thabo Mbeki’s bizarre approach to AIDS had severe consequences but also where his remarkable economic stewardship help transform the country.

So there really is a mixed legacy there and people shouldn’t lose sight of that, we did go through very significant growth, a real African lion to match the Asian tigers and that was; Thabo Mbeki can claim a lot of credit for that so there is this terribly mixed legacy there. But the Jacob Zuma saga has kept the country going back and forth for the last two years, absolutely riveted and we haven’t known how this would pan out. Now, at least the landscape is a lot clearer, he is president, there is quite strong opposition, The Democratic Alliance which actually controls one province now, a very important province that holds Cape Town, there is a 2nd party that has grown up in opposition that consists of former liberation movement leaders who got 8% of the vote, it’s not a huge showing but they are truly a multiracial party and it’s quite possible that their holding is going to increase in the future and they actually are the official opposition in several provinces.

So you do see it both at the provincial level and at the state level, a very significant transformation of the landscape, there is an increasingly strong opposition that may get stronger in the future. The ANC did not quite get to its 2/3 majority and it’s not clear whether it will again. So you maybe moving towards a two or three party system that is more multiracial and it has a balance of power at the regional level that looks very much like many, many successful democracies so that’s tremendously exciting.

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