An Experiment: Video Bio

Recently I visited professors in the School of Communications at nearby American University. Scott Talan, a specialist in understanding social media and personal branding, showed me a remarkable two minute video posted on the AU site that introduced him not just to prospective students but the world.

Within minutes Scott had put me in touch with Jesse Strauss, a recent AU grad, whose company put together these video bios. We arranged to meet and only days later Jesse was at my house with his equipment. Thankfully I had thought of what I wanted to present, collected photos and written a tentative script. Jesse kept me grounded saying the critical factor was explaining who I am.

Three days later he was done. He emailed me a link to a rough cut . For several hours I didn't dare open the link, dreading seeing it both because I'm uncomfortable promoting myself and I thought Jesse couldn't possibly get it right since we spent so little time together.

Of course, I did open the file and was pleased--even astonished--with the result. The entire process took two 1/2 weeks.

Here it is:

South Africa's Pravin Gordhan: Grace Under Pressure

WASHINGTON: South Africa's finance minister Pravin Gordhan is at the center of a political storm. 

Four months ago he was brought back to head the finance ministry when his successor was abruptly fired by president Jacob Zuma and replaced with a little known lawmaker. That move shook investor confidence and sent the currency tumbling.  Four days later business leaders and senior ruling party leaders forced Zuma to reverse course and return Gordhan to the position he held from 2009 to 2014. 

In Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, Gordhan was relaxed and gave no indication of being a man under immense pressure. A longtime member of the ruling African National Congress, Gordhan is popular in the business community but opposed by loyalists to the embattled president. Enmeshed in numerous corruption scandals, there are increasing calls for Zuma to resign. He has three years remaining in his second five-year term as president. 

In presentations to two think tanks, the Center for International and Strategic Studies and the Brookings Institution, Gordhan described South Africa’s political crisis as the normal workings of a young democracy.  He suggested that the financing scandal about Zuma's personal estate is being resolved. He said the country's public protector--who ordered Zuma to pay back state funds-- had done her job appropriately. He did not comment on the recent sudden departure from South Africa of two Indian born brothers, businessmen who have been close associates of Zuma.  

Gordhan said South Africa wants foreign investment and a strengthened private sector. He expressed concern about a possible downgrading of South Africa’s credit rating to junk status.

In an interview, Gordhan emphasized that South Africa has a good story to tell.  He emphasized the 16% increase in tourism last year.

Asked about the recent rebound in the rand exchange rate to pre-December crisis levels, Gordhan said there is still additional work to be done to restore confidence. The IMF projects that South Arica will grow by less than 1% this year.

Gordhan expressed frustration with global economic policy saying, “no one seems to know what to do to restore growth and investment.” He said South Africa like other emerging economies is a victim of the 2008 and 2009 financial crisis in Europe and America. “These problems,” he said, “came from your shores and were exported to us.”

Gordhan gave every indication that he is delighted to be back at his old post after two years of heading the provincial relations ministry.  

 

Remembering Mozambique Independence

My, how the world has changed. 

Mozambique independence in 1975 was a kind of high water mark of communism. Fresh from victory in Portugal’s 1974 military coup and its triumph in Vietnam, 'world revolution' arrived in southern Africa on June 25, 1975 with the People’s Republic of Mozambique.

In the days before the Portuguese handover, pundits in what was still Lourenco Marques wondered whether the Frelimo liberation movement would embrace Soviet communism or its rival Chinese variant. Newly arrived foreign correspondents counseled that clues would be revealed by where dignitaries were placed on the dais. Would the Russians or Chinese be seated closest to Samora Machel and Frelimo leadership?

Ian Smith in a Rhodesia, awkwardly perched between Mozambique and soon to be independent Angola, warned that the Kremlin’s objective was a belt of compliant states stretched across the subcontinent. In South Africa the Financial Mail worried that Frelimo would squeeze Smith economically by closing Mozambican ports to Rhodesian commerce.

It was in Mozambique that I observed my first revolution, if that’s the right term. In late 1974 and 1975 I made three trips to the country, always exhilarated by the ease with which blacks and whites interacted compared to the stifling constraint of apartheid. 

But the shortcomings of Portuguese rule were equally visible. Why were the cab drivers in a black majority city almost exclusively white? Why in 300 years had the Portuguese failed to build a highway between the capital and Beira, the second city 1200 km north?

Mozambique and Angola were rushed to independence because the coup plotters in Lisbon wanted a quick end to Portugal's African wars. For all of its bluster Frelimo had liberated very little Mozambican territory. By its own admission the liberation group was ill-prepared to assume power. Significantly the independence agreements for Mozambique and Angola made no reference to free elections or democracy. Mozambique was to be a one party state ruled by the vanguard party.

As independence approached Beira was curiously silent. The only activity was in the port. British frigates could be seen off shore. At the airport despondent settlers lined the tarmac awaiting refugee flights to Portugal.  On the train to Rhodesia I was one of only a dozen passengers.

Mozambique independence was my first assignment for NBC News. As the midnight hour approached for the celebratory hauling down of the Portuguese flag seasoned correspondents headed not to Machava Stadium but the suburban home of Fernando Fernandes, everybody’s L.M. stringer, to be in the queue for the telex machines that would get the story out.

Returning to Johannesburg it was strange to listen to Radio Beijing where the English program consisted of reading verbatim from Chairman Mao’s little red book. ANC broadcasts from Dar es Salaam voiced the empty rhetoric of imperialism’s retreat and the certainty of African revolution.  

Fast forward 40 years and 1975 is a time warp. Portugal rather quickly abandoned socialism and moved to democracy and eventual membership in the European Union.

Communism was repudiated by its main practioners, China and Russia.  A modernizing China moved towards a market economy in the late 70s while maintaining only the trapplngs of communism. Mikhail Gorbachev said the Russians had tried but failed to make communism work. In 1991 the Soviet Union imploded and fragmented into multiple states.

For its part Frelimo abandoned communism in 1990 and dropped ‘peoples republic’ from the country’s name. Property and enterprises that had been nationalized were privatized. With huge gas and coal deposits in the north, foreign investment is propelling rapid economic growth.

In the globalized world China has emerged as the biggest winner. Millions have been lifted  out of poverty not by communism but by free market capitalism.  China has risen to be the world's second biggest economy.

A visitor to Mozambique today witnesses a Chinese presence that is large and growing. The Chinese built Maputo’s modern airport. They are big investors in liquefied natural gas, minerals and agriculture.

One doesn’t have to see where they’re seated on the dais to know that the Chinese are winners. Hopefully, the Mozambicans are making up for lost time are becoming winners as well.

South Africa’s Nuclear Agreement with Russia Raises Questions

WASHINGTON: On the sidelines of a conference in Vienna on September 22d, South Africa signed an agreement for Russian nuclear power plants to be built in the country. The deal could be worth $50billion.

Signing ceremony in Vienna: South African Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson and Rosatom CEO Sergei Kirienko (photo: Rosatom)

Assuming the deal goes forward, they would be the first Russian nuclear reactors in Africa, joining the continent’s sole nuclear facility, the French-built Koeberg power station near Cape Town. 

South Africa badly needs additional generating capacity. Its power grid is overstretched and rolling brown outs have become common. The African National Congress (ANC) government has long favored additional nuclear plants to augment coal-fired facilities. The Russians would build eight VVER reactors with a combined output of 9.6 giga watts by 2030. It would be one of South Africa’s biggest infrastructure projects.

The opposition Democratic Alliance is calling for details of the strategic partnership agreement to be made public. The South African energy department says the accord is preliminary and that constitutionally mandated procurement procedures will be followed.

With the government having a history of shady business transactions, the Russian nuclear deal has set off alarm bells in the South African media. Commentators are calling attention to President Jacob Zuma’s surprise five-day visit to Russia last month, for which no official program was released.  It is known that Zuma met with President Vladimir Putin but it is not known if the nuclear framework was discussed.

Zuma is already under fire for financial irregularities in a $20 million upgrade to his private residence.  In 1999, long before he became president, there were charges of kickbacks to ANC officials-- including Zuma—as part of a $5 billion arms deal with Sweden.

Following the ANC’s victory in last May’s parliamentary election, Zuma reshuffled his cabinet, surprising analysts by elevating his lightly regarded agriculture and fisheries minister, Tina Joemat-Pettersson to the energy portfolio. Last year Ms. Joemat-Pettersson, a communist from Kimberly in the Northern Cape, was investigated for unethical conduct after awarding a fisheries contract to a company  inked to the ANC but with  no experience in commercial fishing. She turned aside opposition calls to resign.

At the signing ceremony in Vienna, Ms. Joemat-Pettersson said the accord “opens the door for South Africa to access Russian technology, funding and infrastructure.”

By signing with Rosatom, South Africa is ignoring the punitive sanctions levied against Russia by Europe, America and Japan to protest Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine. While in Washington in early August for President Obama’s African Leaders Summit, Mr. Zuma called for increased US investment in South Africa.  The Westinghouse unit of Japan’s Toshiba, as well as French and Chinese firms, have wanted to build nuclear plants in South Africa, but analysts say the Russian technology is cheaper.

South Africa is the leading beneficiary of AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunities Act, that allows most African products duty-free entry into the US market.  

The May 7th Vote in the New South Africa

To understand the new South Africa, look no further than the red-robed female jurist presiding at the televised trial of blade runner Oscar Pistorius. “My lady,” as she is addressed in court, is Thokozile Masipa, a 67-year-old lawyer from Soweto. In 1998 she became only the second black woman appointed to a South African high court.

Judge Thokozile Masipa (photo: SABC) 

Here is a judge who in apartheid days in Pretoria could have aspired to being no more than a “tea lady,” or at best a secretary. Now, 20 years after South Africa’s first free elections, it is she who will decide the fate of an Afrikaner Olympian who 18 months ago was a national and even global hero. As an effusive Archbishop Desmond Tutu likes to say, “what a country!”

On May 7th South Africans vote in the fifth parliamentary election since the end of minority rule in 1994. It is the first test of voter sentiment in the land of 51 million since the death last December of Nelson Mandela, the iconic father of South African democracy.

This is likely to be the last election in which Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) wins a landslide victory. Polling data suggests that the ANC, which has ruled for 20 years, will again receive over 60% of the vote. In 2009 it got 65%, and the IPSOS polling organization predicts that with a high turnout the ANC majority this time could reach 67%.

But polling data doesn’t tell the whole story. The current ANC leader, President Jacob Zuma, is unpopular and has been booed at public events. His sexual indiscretions and lengthening corruption trail embarrass many. The ANC’s alliance with the communist party and trade union federation is unraveling. To its right, the pro-business Democratic Alliance is making gains and its tally could reach 23%, while on the left the new Economic Freedom Fighters of firebrand Julius Malema is projected to get 5%.

The ANC campaigned on the theme “we have a good story to tell.” In many respects this is true. The South African Institute of Race Relations says ANC support rests on its success in improving living conditions of the poor. Since 1994 three million housing units have been constructed, electricity and water connections have been extended into rural areas, and welfare grants have increased from three million to 17 million poor people. The number of blacks in the middle class has doubled to 10%.

But arrayed against this are huge negatives. Corruption is widespread at the top, swirling in particular around the president. A report from the public protector says Zuma personally benefited from $20 million of public money spent on “security upgrades” at his rural Nkandla residence. There are multiple cases of theft in state enterprises and no bid contracts have gone to unqualified ANC cronies under the country’s flawed black economic empowerment program.

Public primary and secondary education has deteriorated with opposition leader Mamphele Ramphele saying, “it is worse now than it was under apartheid.” Crime is endemic, particularly in Johannesburg, although statistics indicate an improvement over the past two years. The biggest deficit for the ANC is the economy. Unemployment remains stubbornly high at 24%, with several economists saying the real rate is closer to 35%.

South Africa’s economy grew by only 2% last year while 5% growth is required to reduce joblessness. There is persistent labor unrest and strikes are typically settled with wage hikes well in excess of inflation or productivity gains.

For me, having spent considerable time in both the old and the new South Africa, the country’s long-term future is bright. Its institutions are proving to be surprisingly robust. All major groups in the rainbow nation of 11 official languages affirm allegiance to the 1996 constitution that US Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg extols as “a great piece of work,” embracing “fundamental human rights and independent judiciary.”

South Africa’s media is vibrantly free as evidenced by daily accounts of official corruption and wrongdoing. Despite the ruling party holding 2/3’s of parliamentary seats, debate is far ranging and contentious. South Africa has its version of C-SPAN where viewers last month could watch an opposition leader speak directly to the president, accusing him of having failed and “ hideously transforming” the party of Nelson Mandela.

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela is identified by Time magazine as among the 100 most influential people of 2014. In March she released a scathing 400 page report of upgrades to the president’s home that was broadcast live even on state television. Constitutional lawyer Izak Smuts calls the report “an outstanding example of the strength of our democracy.”

Property prices, always a good barometer of confidence, are rising in urban centers, particularly Cape Town and the adjoining Western Cape, the only South African province not governed by the ANC. White flight is negligible, an important factor as five million whites disproportionally possess skills needed to efficiently operate Africa’s biggest industrial economy.

Two decades ago South Africa was blessed with visionary leaders who built a foundation for future progress. The essential deal between Afrikaner president FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela was majority rule—full democracy and an end of white rule—in return for constitutional protection of individual freedoms and property. The civil war that had long been predicted was avoided. Immense problems remain, not least income inequality. But as countries as disparate as the US and China are finding, there are no quick fixes, although education and equal opportunity are essential.

Should the ANC vote fall below 60% or if it loses its majority in Gauteng where Johannesburg is situated, Jacob Zuma will likely be recalled by the party, just as his predecessor Thabo Mbeki was unceremoniously ousted by a leadership group headed by Zuma.

I think of South Africa as a land where two mirrors are visible to all who care to look. One is Zimbabwe, the rich country to the north that under Robert Mugabe 30 years ago made a strong start and then descended into despotism and collapse. The other is the Western Cape, whose bright image the ANC would extinguish because since 2009—unlike the rest of South Africa-- a multi-racial coalition has succeeded in providing quality services while minimizing corruption.

Barry D. Wood was a reporter in South Africa in the 1970s and has returned regularly since 2010. Follow him on twitter @econbarry.

Remembering Portugal's Revolution That Changed Africa

Forty years ago a brave band of junior officers overthrew Portugal’s dictatorship. On April 25th, 1974 thousands poured into Lisbon’s plazas in celebration. Flower sellers did a brisk trade in red carnations that poked from the barrels of soldiers’ rifles. Marcelo Caetano, the despot who headed the fascist government in power since 1932, fled to Brazil.

The young captains behind the coup had seen for themselves that the colonial wars in distant Guinea Bissau, Angola and Mozambique could not be won. To me, an aspiring journalist eager to get to southern Africa, the carnation revolution was a signal that dramatic changes lay ahead. A glance at the map suggested that the white Rhodesians who had defied Britain by declaring independence in 1965 would face increased pressure as their Portuguese allies departed from Mozambique.

Arriving by ship in Cape Town in late 1974, I became a writer at South Africa’s Financial Mail magazine. I soon traveled to Lourenco Marques and Beira and from there by train to Salisbury, the colonial name of Zimbabwe’s capital. In Mozambique I found a white community divided between those welcoming independence and those who wanted out as quickly as possible.

Interviewing Portugal’s last governor-general and one of the coup plotters, Victor Crespo, it was clear that haste not caution guided the revolutionaries in Lisbon. Mozambique’s Frelimo insurgents were similarly surprised by the speed of Portugal’s planned withdrawal. Negotiations in Zambia quickly produced an agreement to hand over the territory that is twice the size of California to the Marxist guerrillas. The accord contained no provision for elections.

An eerie calm settled over Mozambique in early 1975. A transitional government went about its business but big decisions like nationalizing banks and industries were put off. Tensions rose. Fear was near the surface. Radio stations and newspapers rehearsed citizens on the texts of Frelimo’s socialist anthems while the middle and upper classes worried their property would soon be seized. Refugee flights to Lisbon became more frequent.

Back in Johannesburg on the anniversary of the first Portuguese coup, I put a red carnation in my lapel and went to the offices of a Portuguese bank. Stepping from the elevator I met a banker who upon seeing my carnation tore it from my jacket and crushed it. He fumed, “Eu sou um fascista (I am a fascist).”

As independence day (June 25th, 1975) approached, Frelimo leader Samora Machel left Tanzania and journeyed the length of Mozambique, as Frelimo rhetoric described it, “from the Ruvuma to the Maputo.” When he reached the capital I was among the crowd at the airport observing the charismatic leader in battle fatigues step from his plane.

There was torrential rain the night of independence, soaking the thousands at the soccer stadium watching the Portuguese flag lowered and Frelimo’s banner for the People’s Republic of Mozambique hoisted. At city hotels war reporters, several fresh from Vietnam in flak jackets, clustered at telex machines that clattered with their dispatches. The experienced among them called out the calibers of the celebratory gunfire heard in the distance.

Returning to Johannesburg there was confusion over the name of the Mozambican capital. The notice board at what is now Oliver Tambo airport mistakenly spelled out “Can Pfumo,” as it was not yet known that the name was Maputo.

In Angola, the even larger oil rich territory on the Atlantic, official Portuguese conduct was disgraceful. Unable or unwilling to seek cooperation among three rival guerrilla armies, Portugal chose simply to sail away when their flag was lowered on November 11, 1975. Terrified of ethnic conflict, thousands of settlers fled, many crossing into Namibia with the few possessions they could carry. The stage was set for great power intervention, including later ferocious clashes between South Africans and Cubans. Angola’s cruel civil war went on for two decades.

Upon independence Mozambique made good on its promise to close Rhodesia’s vital rail links to Beira and Maputo. Still defiant, the Ian Smith government responded by stepping up its war against insurgents, a brutal conflict that killed thousands and continued several more years until Smith sued for peace and Zimbabwe won independence in 1980.

In the 1980s South Africa assumed from Rhodesia the supplying Renamo rebels that wreaked havoc and destabilized Mozambique’s government. In 1986 Machel was killed when his plane mysteriously crashed inside South Africa on its approach to Maputo. His successor Joachim Chissano was less of an ideologue and in 1989 Frelimo abandoned socialism and gradually embraced multiparty democracy and a market economy. There is a competition to replace the Mozambican flag still emblazoned with an AK 47 rifle.

Mozambique flag, 1975

Mozambique is in the midst of economic boom with foreign investment pouring in to mineral and natural gas resources in the north.

Buffeted by crippling sanctions and mounting unrest, South Africa’s last apartheid leader F.W. DeKlerk shocked the world in 1990 by ending apartheid and freeing Nelson Mandela. He began negotiations with the ANC. The result was the new constitution and South Africa’s first free elections whose 20th anniversary has just been observed.

In Portugal the flirtation with Marxism was of short duration. Banks and big industries were nationalized just as in Mozambique and Angola. But in Portugal they were privatized in the 1980s as Western Europe’s poorest country opted for modernization and membership in the European Union, which it joined in 1986.

Now in his ‘80s, Victor Crespo, the Portuguese naval officer I met in 1975, has been reflecting on the 1974 revolution. He told a Lisbon broadcaster that democracy overcomes all adversity and that the will of the people will triumph over today’s economic hardship. Crespo didn’t speak of democracy in 1975.

The Portuguese revolution set in motion many events, most immediately in the African colonies. It importantly hastened independence in Zimbabwe and Namibia and contributed to the coming of democracy in South Africa. In Europe the carnation revolution inspired the Spanish and Greeks who similarly overthrew their own dictatorships.

Up Against the Wind in Cape Town

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA The 65-mile Argus bicycle tour has been an annual fixture in Cape Town since 1978. A charity event run in part by the local Rotary Club, the Argus has evolved into the world’s biggest timed bicycle race.

This year’s event on March 9th drew 35,000 cyclists, 90% of whom were South African. This year’s winners completed the scenic circuit winding around Table Mountain between the Atlantic and Indian oceans in less than 2 hours and 51 minutes. Riders battled the stiffest winds in five years that made climbing perilous with a risk of being blown over.

 Despite adversity 90% of entrants—only a fraction of which are professionals—finished the race, with most getting around the course in under 6 hours. About 20% of the riders were black, and somewhat over 30% women. The oldest riders were in their 80s and the youngest not yet teenagers.

Tour director David Bellairs said the 30 mph gusts actually made the race safer. “The wind slowed people down,” he said, “it almost seemed to reduce the number of crashes.” The three medical helicopters constantly overhead took only 59 riders to hospital, most of them with fractures.

Craig Leithwhite

Noting the growing popularity of cycling, Johannesburg rider Craig Leithwhite says, “cycling is the new golf.” People, he says, want to be fit and test themselves. Most riders train many months for the Argus and come back year after year. The Argus is big business for Cape Town, South Africa’s most prosperous city. Alan Winde of the Western Cape Tourist authority says the bike race brings $50 million into the local economy.

As it has exploded in popularity, cycling has become expensive. The cheapest bikes on display in the exhibit hall where riders checked in for race numbers and electronic chips cost $2,500.

Duncan Bell and wife

The one-day event over, riders already are turning their attention to next year’s race. Businessman Duncan Bell, 69, finishing his 20th Argus, is hopeful that in 2015 he’ll improve on this year’s time of 4 hour 20 minutes. #