On the question of income distribution, which I knew was a pressing issue in South Africa, I had argued that African cosmology had the capacity to deal with holistic-complexity, such as found in economics, that European cosmology does not; hence Europe has imposed a psychiatric economic thoughtway and order on the world (My general academic vocation is the search for the solutions to any of Africa’s problems I can, from a scientific point of view, deal with; hence interest in subjects such as this). The title of the economics paper I presented is ‘Quantized World Incomes Order and Africa’s AIDS Burden (The AIDS referring to the two scourges of foreign aids as charity to Africa in lieu of economic justice, and AIDS, the disease of HIV in Africa). Below, quoted, is a segment of that paper:
“Long-term data on worldwide quintile income size distribution was investigated and shown to be, mathematically, systematic. The averaging of group (quintile) shares over more than a century showed the relative shares to approximate 3:5:9:17: -: 65 … 2n* + 1. Over time, the percent share of income for the four bottom quintiles decreased while the share of the top quintile increased. This paper points out that the dynamics of marginal utility laws, applied to unregulated market economic system, would yield the size distribution pattern observed. The mechanics of this system would, systematically, transfer income from the poor to the rich over time. Therefore, poverty and debt enburdenment of some people are inevitable in the extant world economic system. Unregulated market economic system is, therefore, inconsistent with sustainable human society.”
The data for the analysis cited above comes from the remarkable studies of the current World Bank vice-president and chief economist, Francois Bourguignon, and his co-researcher, Christian Morrison.
They investigated the pattern of income distribution among segments of the whole world population. I re-arranged their distribution data for five equal segments (20 percent each) of the world population, called quintiles. The shares of the five segments gave the ratios and organizing equation: 3:5:9:17: -: 65 … 2n* + 1. The poorest four groups or 80 percent of the world population got, together, only 34 units, when the richest 20 percent got 65 units; roughly twice as much. Presently (2008) the share of the top 20 is more than 73 percent.
Of interest to this paper is that the pattern of income distribution in South Africa, when Africans took over power in 1994, is roughly: 3:5:9:17: -: 65 … 2n* + 1. Same as the whole unregulated world! The more getting less income and less getting more, just as with land, is apartheid: justice upside-down! So, the crisis we see in South Africa is a local version of the crisis we see with the world financial system: crisis of justice upside-down. People are not used to demonstrating against an unjust world; they will demonstrate and, if possible, destroy unjust nations.
Like those on Wall Street, Mbekists want to solve the problem by growing the economy, as proper economists, trapped in European worldview, are wont; Zumaists want to share what’s on hand, as politicians with rough insight into human nature and condition are wont. To efficiently resolve the socioeconomic problem in South Africa, and Southern Africa, and avoid some major crisis, as currently in Zimbabwe, is to brilliantly resolve this dilemma. How does one redistribute land and income, objectively end apartheid in South Africa, while avoiding social meltdown?
The answer to this question was in fact the purpose of my economics paper and lecture, which I doubt that either Mbeki or Zuma heard about (Black South Africa, I found out, has little effective influence in the South African press, as at 2006). It is easy to see, for instance, that the organizing distributive equation for incomes in South Africa can be conserved while closing the income gap, in the first instance, by moving ‘65’ to the open ‘hole’, where ‘33’ should be in the sequence, getting a new distribution ratio: 3:5:9:17: 33: … 2n* + 1 (that is shift from roughly 3, 5, 9, 17, 67 percent to 4.5, 7.5, 13.4, 25.4 and 49.3 percent) with minimum disruption. Within reasonable progressive income tax and social welfare scheme, the gap will close further. Latter, the state can operate on the equation, to degeometrize it; reduce the income gap further from canyons to ordinary gutter-size.
Lessons from the Zimbabwe solution model
At independence in 1980, a solution was proposed for the problem of gross land and income inequity in Zimbabwe. A generation later, there is crisis in Zimbabwe over these issues. What happened? Lessons learnt here can apply to South Africa and help explain Mbeki and Zuma’s attitude towards Mugabe.
Robert Mugabe, exploiting unfounded messiah complex, as a national liberation hero, has been in power since independence, 28 years, in Zimbabwe.
Independence for Mozambique from Portugal in 1975 had freed western Mozambique, populated by his Shona tribesmen. This had given his Patriotic Front useful military bases and advantage in the liberation war against Rhodesian white colonialists supported openly by apartheid South Africa and less flamboyantly by Britain, whose subjects they originally were. After independence, Mugabe’s ruthless deployment of North Korean-groomed military force against the Joshua Nkomo’s Ndebele smacked, also, of tribalism. Nor does Mugabe’s cultivation of a ‘Hitler-moustache’ do anything good to his image as a misguided tyrant; as all such with messiah-complex are. But these are not the main reasons for the crisis in Zimbabwe now. Something more solid is at stake: land and other resources!
When the colonialists found their situation hopeless, they decided to negotiate in order to, as they say, cut their losses. They were not anxious to let go, otherwise, and would hang on long as they could, under different guises. The so-called ‘Lancaster House Agreement’ was the result. Under this agreement, Britain was to provide money for Zimbabwe to use in buying back land held by white colonialists for redistribution to the disposed, landless, African people. Britain failed to uphold this agreement; refused to supply the agreed money, while manoeuvring to ensure whites kept the land. This is half the problem in Zimbabwe; British perfidy is one half the problem of Zimbabwe today. So, when the British Establishment makes it their duty to heckle Mugabe around the world, they are being disingenuous; singing the noxious song of abbreviated truth.
The other half of Zimbabwe’s problem is income inequity. Under the Mugabe regime, the income to share disappeared altogether. The economy collapsed! But the world’s understanding of this phenomenon has been quite unfair to Robert Mugabe. The economy collapsed because: (1) When Britain, after a long wait, refused to send the money agreed on at ‘Lancaster House’, Robert Mugabe lost his patience and started seizing the land by force. Frightened white people, capitalists, who controlled the capital for the economy, started divesting and moving their money out of the Zimbabwean economy; massive capital flight. Britain, therefore, shares the blame for capital flight from Zimbabwe, which set the economy on the road to collapse, more than Mugabe. (2) The Great Lakes War drained what was left of Zimbabwe’s wealth.
Postscript: This article was first published in 2010. It is republished here in light of the recent xenophobic attacks in parts of South Africa.
Chidi G. Osuagwu
