South African struggle

Many nations find themselves in conflict with a variety of dangerous processes that have the potential of "trapping" the nation in poverty, should they take hold.  Maintaining an effective government, internal peace, sovereignty, and a path to the world market are not always simple tasks for a country to carry out, even though our nation often takes such things for granted.

Focusing specifically on the nation I was assigned, South Africa, we see that this nation defies the trend of most Africans and mostly avoids the four "traps" laid out by Paul Collier in his book, The Bottom Billion.  These traps are:  1.  Conflict (mostly internal) 2. Natural Resources (especially "Dutch Disease") 3. Landlocked with bad neighbors and 4. Bad governance.  In the eighteen years since Apartheid was lifted, South Africa has luckily avoided falling into any of these traps, but has flirted with all of them

I'll get the least threatening trap out of the way first:  landlocked with bad neighbors.  The majority of South Africa's border is coastline, so the landlocked part is far from true.  However, bad neighbors, especially Zimbabwe, put pressure on the South African government by forcing refugees into the country.  However, it is a bit of a stretch to imagine that an influx of refugees could severely damage and "trap" South Africa, so I'll go ahead and label this a nonexistent/very low risk.  This trap is effectively driven off by a strong economy and any kind of attention to the situation on the part of the South African government.

The bad governance trap is a significantly more legitimate threat, but still is not an immediate concern.  The African National Congress (ANC) has been reelected into power every election since the new government was created in 1994.  While the political situation is significantly better than it was under the system of Apartheid, South Africa is slowly falling into the problems created by a complacent government.  No political party has been able to genuinely challenge the vast support commanded by the ANC, which lifts some responsibility off of the current government's shoulders.  Left unchecked, the government may slide further into a state of inefficiency and allow the deterioration South Africa's infrastructure.  If this were to occur, South Africa would be at risk of being trapped by an infrastructure that does not allow for a sufficient number of people to contribute to the economy in a meaningful way, dragging the nation into poverty.  However, this trap is easily combated with an effective opposition party, which is beginning to form around Helen Zille's Democratic Alliance (DA).  As the DA garners more and more popularity, the ANC will be forced to improve or will be voted out of power, and either of these possibilities sidesteps the tiny pitfall that is the bad governance trap.

South Africa was fortunate to avoid the conflict trap in 1994, but is now at slight risk.  While internal conflict became prevalent in South Africa surrounding the end of the white regime, it was not sustained or repeated.  However, as made apparent by this 2010 BBC News report, racial tensions never completely dissolved in South Africa.  Especially noteworthy in the article linked above is the statistic, "South Africa is also among the most violent societies outside warzones with 18,000 murders a year".  If this violence became organized around a radical group, the South African government would have a legitimate problem.  As Collier effectively argued, internal conflict is devastating to economies.  Prolonged civil wars in African nations have often been driven by racial or tribal differences, and if South Africa were to join the ranks of these countries, it could easily become ensnared and quickly see the degradation of its economy and infrastructure.

Perhaps posing an equal risk as the conflict trap, the natural resource trap is threatening South Africa in a way slightly skewed from how Collier defined it.  South Africa boasts a powerful and influential mining industry that many European countries are heavily invested in.  While South Africa is not being clearly exploited by these foreign companies, the violent miner strike in mid-2012 shows that the South African workers may have been abused by the economic structure.  On a similar note, many South Africans do not see the profits raked in by the massive levels of foreign investment, and much of the nation still lives in poverty.  This reality is made clearer by South Africa's low average life expectancy (about 60 years).

While the risk of falling into either of the conflict or natural resource trap is somewhat low, it is a possibility that must be addressed by the South African government.  By improving infrastructure and education, the racial violence and economic inequality can be stemmed before the traps are sprung.