The Trust Factor.

Hannes Wessels.

I see, in his recent address to the South African parliament President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke glowingly of the significant strides that have been made in the last 31 years under ANC rule that have improved the lives of the country’s citizenry. Unfortunately he did not go into a huge amount of detail in explaining what these ‘strides’ were, probably because he is not sure, but more likely because he has an elliptical relationship with the truth.

What we do know is the infrastructure of the country built painstakingly over hundreds of years at great cost in humanitarian and financial terms has been, or is, being destroyed. Only one example is the electricity supply. When his party came to power the national grid provided customers with some of the cheapest electricity in the world, in such abundance the government of the day was offering free electricity to start-up companies to encourage growth. The nation now lurches from one ‘load-shedding’ crisis to another. A sophisticated rail system has been ruined, and the harbours are increasingly chaotic. Unemployment is rising and crime is out of control.

But, as a politician who frequently strays from the truth, Ramaphosa is far from alone in the modern world and Britain’s prime minister seems similarly challenged when tasked with being honest with the people he has been elected to govern but it seems we live in a world where trust in politicians, business leaders, systems and institutions has been eroded to the point where people are looking outside the normal parameters for alternatives.

One example is the move to Cryptocurrency underpinned by the blockchain. Increasing numbers of investors have lost faith in bankers and the political leaders who impact upon currency values because they have been consistently lied to. Whether or not this is a wise move is beyond my understanding but it reflects a deepening unease about credibility permeating the societies of the world which cannot bode well for economic growth.

I understand very well all the issues of race, conquest, occupation, and colonialism, that come to the fore when examining what transpired following the establishment of European settlements in the territory once known as Southern Rhodesia, then Rhodesia and later Zimbabwe, but refection and comparison with the aforementioned modern-day malaise surrounding credibility, might be worth pondering.

I am no economist and barely a part-time historian but I think I am correct in asserting that few, if any, polities developed as rapidly, and few economies expanded as quickly as did Southern Rhodesia’s. From unexplored wilderness lightly populated by natives living a very rudimentary, subsistence-based existence to a country boasting systems and infrastructure bearing all the hallmarks of modernity in 60 years was an extraordinary, arguably unprecedented development in itself. More so when one considers that, apart from the benevolence of Cecil John Rhodes at the country’s inception, this astonishing endeavour was accomplished without any foreign largesse of any sort whatsoever. Britain, then the imperial overlord, although happy to take credit when it suited, contributed precisely nothing to this venture.

The truth is that it all happened due to the fact that initially a few hundred, then a few thousand enterprising adventurers sensed an opportunity, accepted the multitude of risks, not least to their personal well-being, and decided to muster all their muscle, fortitude and innovative ability to try and construct a country from scratch. And they succeeded in magnificent style, but it is instructive to be reminded how they did this, because the bedrock of their success was trust and the platform for building that trust came out of the institutions and clubs that sprung up throughout the territory based on a shared love of sport and beer-based good cheer. From the rugby fields and cricket pitches to the bars the men of Rhodesia developed a potent brotherhood based on inter-reliance and the knowledge that only through trusting one another would they prevail. So the country developed quickly because lawyers and lengthy contracts were seldom needed; a handshake and a note on the back of a cigarette-box was all that was required to set the wheels of joint endeavour turning.

But crucial to progress was the arrival of the bankers to provide the finance to  back the entrepreneurs, farmers and miners and again most of the credit was granted on the basis of trust; the bankers knew their clients, the fundamentals of their business operations, and money flowed fast stimulating rapid economic growth.

Something seems to have gone awry. Today commercial endeavour is bogged down in cumbersome contracts, lawyers are omnipresent and the courts are clogged up with litigants. Obtaining lines of credit from banks has become complicated and slow. With few exceptions trust no longer dominates in the human interactions that drive economic growth, strengthen countries and uplift people’s lives. Just how one reverses this process in an increasingly impersonal world is a question I am unable to answer.