Too many people, politicians included, are mired in the past when thinking of Nigeria. Shysters, 419 scammers are images that come to the fore, yet any recent visitor to that country would rather have been struck by the extraordinary energy of the country and it’s peoples that have caused many serious analysts to predict that Nigeria is becoming Africa’s own China and will shortly overtake South Africa as the economic giant of Africa and our continent’s engine for further growth.
Some analysts have simplistically look at the population of West Africa, Nigeria included, and ascribe this as the reason for the extraordinary growth. But people’s without resources and wealth can buy little, and the real underlying reason that Nigeria is set to take off is not purely the numbers of its people, but rather the Nigerian people’s great energy, enterprise and “can do” attitude.
Visit the massive outdoor market in downtown Lagos; travel up country to Ibadan, Benin, Abuja and continue up to Kano in the Islamic north. Everywhere you see enterprise; front rooms turned into trading areas, people hustling, selling, transporting goods, sewing machines whirring at roadsides, vehicles being repaired, the list is endless and the energies created both exhausting and mesmeric. And big industries are flourishing too; CNN recently profiled Mr Dangote whose business empire is truly staggering and self-made, and there are many others.
No-one in Nigeria stands still; there are no safety nets, no government handouts, people need to generate their own wealth and they certainly do. The contrast with South Africa is stark and accounts to a large degree for the xenophobia that from time to time has erupted in our country. Many of our citizens simply can see no way to compete with these trading Supremos that visit our country, and therefore seek ways to kick them out.

It is this energy, this vibrancy and go-getting attitude that will lift Africa out of the mire of poverty and propel it forwards to a more prosperous future, driven not by politicians, but by ordinary Nigerians.
Nigerians I have talked to, and remember that Nigeria went through its own civil war in the 1970’s – the often called Biafra War – that pitched the Ibo tribe against society and in which over a million lives were lost and great damage done to the economy, look on in amazement at the culture of entitlement, the politics of envy that seeks less to grow the economy for the benefit of all, but more to take by means fair or foul the assets of a certain sector of South Africans who perhaps built up wealth in earlier times, and then seek by prohibitive taxation, both direct, indirect and implicit to transfer from one sector, feed it through the Government machine which itself has a voracious appetite to consume and then to feed it out the other side as patronage, welfarism or by other means to government sycophants. They know this is not the way to generate new wealth that feeds into growth.

They cannot fathom our forever looking backwards to our “civil war” that we called Apartheid, and that we too easily believe makes us the hard-luck story of Africa and that we believe somehow entitles us to a house, a car, a job, as if our Government has in any event the power, the capacity at its fingertips to conjure up by magic and distribute such alms. They look upon black South Africans as extraordinarily lucky to have been given on a plate such a functioning, powerful economy and cannot understand the policies we have put in place that drive our farmers to their country, that forever frame every action and decision, as if Apartheid were the only event in African history.
Rather than implicitly admitting the short-comings of black South Africans implicit in seeing the World through this prism, they fail to see why Black South Africans cannot see themselves as the most fortunate and work with those remaining melanin-challenged South Africans from whom they could learn so much. Nigerians, and others in broader Africa, understand that wealth is never created by Governments but by their own energy and enterprise and know only too well that Governments are just the pariahs that feed off these self-same energies, and as such they ignore their government as far as possible, looking to themselves to provide for themselves and their families.
Our politicians know little of this; too few have travelled into Africa and when they do it is to the comfort of the Federal Palace on Victoria Island rather than Ikeja, Apapa, Surulere. Their world view is seen purely through the twin prisms of Apartheid and entitlement.
We as South Africans need the same culture of enterprise but there is nothing to suggest from Government policy that our Government and the ANC itself understand this; rather we are embracing to a suffocating degree, the failed welfarist policies of Europe that even they, with the accumulated wealth over the centuries, cannot cope with, and now see choking them to penury.
If South Africa is to survive and flourish into the 21^st century we need a radical new political re-think. Our role models cannot be parasites like the Malema’s of this World who grow fat and rich by leeching off Government funds that are supposed to enrich the poor; we rather need our heroes to rather be like the Dangote’s of Nigeria that have developed whole new industries in cement, flour milling and manufacturing that have developed real jobs, deepened real opportunity and wealth for many and understand that sustainable growth is the key to a prosperous future.
Economics and not politics will provide us to a successful future and our whole emphasis and ethos need to embrace and reflect this.

Tags: #Africa, #ANC, #Dangote, #Ibo tribe, #Malema, #Nigeria