Africa, Brexit and Europe: why the EU can never be a model for African unity

Cape Town

South Africa watches Brexit with some fascination. Most English-speakers here have a fairly old-fashioned attachment to Britain and certainly among the older generation there was widespread support for Brexit – though this was quickly tempered by the fall of the pound, for many of them hold assets denominated in sterling. Among the younger generation there was a degree of puzzlement, as there was in Britain itself. There was increasing amazement and disappointment at the failure of the British governing class to deal with the situation, for that class had hitherto enjoyed a reputation for calm and sagacity. However, Brexit was quickly accepted as a fait accompli and attention turned to the question of how it would affect South Africa.

This is a subject of some importance here. Britain is by a considerable margin still the largest foreign investor here and an important import and export market. There is, too, a large South African diaspora in Britain. South Africans watching the Ashes Tests could not but be aware that there were South Africans on both teams (Jason Roy and Marnus Labuschagne), a fact which neatly expresses South Africa’s integration into the Anglosphere.

For their part British ministers are keenly aware that the South African connection could be useful to a post-Brexit Britain. Theresa May was an early visitor here to emphasise that fact, though she rather blotted her copybook by giving almost unthinking support to the new ANC doctrine of expropriation without compensation. Naturally, British investors here are as horrified as anyone else by this notion, for it effectively negates the property rights in the constitution. Given that the ANC has also torn up the investment treaties which used to protect foreign investors, this has left many feeling acutely vulnerable. Mrs May would have done better to note the furious German (and European) response to this move.

As South Africa’s finance minister has recently noted, the country lacks any sort of trade policy. But it is also in dire economic straits and will welcome any deals that either Britain or the EU put its way. Some here will hope that, for example, South African wine and fruit exports to the UK may start to displace similar products from the EU. Similarly, South Africa is a large exporter of motor cars (Mercedes, Fords, BMWs, Volkswagens and Toyotas) and Britain might wish to source some of its car imports from here rather than Europe. There is, though, such a lack of information and sophistication here, even at ministerial level, that the most important attitude is just wait-and-see. (A further illustration of this came this week with the speech to Australian mining investors by the South African minister for minerals and energy, in which he boasted of the importance of South Africa’s reserves of a new mineral, Hazenile. Unfortunately, Hazenile does not exist and was part of an old April Fool’s joke which the minister had unknowingly incorporated into his speech.)

On the other hand, like other Africans, the ANC government has been deeply impressed by the rise of the EU for, like other African radicals, it has a strong commitment to pan-Africanism and, at the level of rhetoric, at any rate, there is a strong commitment to African unity. It is no accident that Thabo Mbeki, when he was president, was responsible for replacing the old and discredited Organization for African Unity (OAU) with the African Union (AU), just as the EU had replaced the old EEC. He even set up a Pan-African Parliament (PAP) which met occasionally near Johannesburg. It is a completely absurd body with no powers at all. Its members quickly appropriated the computers and other gizmos provided for them and used PAP meetings mainly for shopping expeditions to Jo’burg malls. It was wholly subsidised by South Africa, has not met for many years and is now probably a dead letter.

Unfazed by this, pan-African enthusiasts determined to emulate the EU by creating a single African currency. This mad initiative actually received enthusiastic support from some states, before the IMF and World Bank both warned that the results would be catastrophic since there is little African economic integration and some states, like Kenya or South Africa, have relatively strong currencies, while others, like Guinea and Zimbabwe, have hyperinflation and currencies that no one else will have anything to do with. So, almost at the last moment, Nigeria backed out and the initiative collapsed.

Undaunted, in April this year in Kigali, Rwanda, 44 of Africa’s 55 states signed the African Continental Free Trade Agreement with free movement of persons, goods and capital, the idea being to pave the way for a Euro-style customs union. It is in the highest degree unlikely that this will get off the ground, although Ecowas (the Economic Community of West African States) has shown that regional trade pacts are a possibility. But over and over again, even regional agreements elsewhere have quickly broken down, as local interest groups demand (and get) tariff protection. Inter-African trade is in its infancy and most states have far more important trading relationships with Europe, North America and China. (South Africa’s biggest trading partner by far is China.) In addition, of course, many African states have seen xenophobic reactions to foreign immigrants.Nothing could be further from the popular mind than the free movement of labour. Even just business persons are a big problem: in the recent xenophobic riots in Johannesburg and Pretoria, businesses owned by foreign Africans were the target of choice. Somalis are particularly good traders – they were already experienced traders when Jesus was born – and South Africans find it all but impossible to compete with them. As a result many of these Somalis have been murdered and their shops ransacked.

Even inter-African travel is difficult, with a plethora of loss-making state airlines existing beyond protectionist walls. Not only does one have to travel between many African states via London or Paris, but it is actually far cheaper to do that than to pay the exorbitant fares charged by many African airlines. In practice most of these airlines, including (the effectively bankrupt) South African Airways, really exist in order to provide free travel for the political elite (South African MPs get 84 free flights a year plus much freebie international travel) and then have to charge top dollar to cut back on their mountainous losses.

African unity is virtually impossible for two other reasons. First, Africa is gigantic. You can fit the US, Western Europe and China into it and still have lots of room. The differences between the Arab north and the African south seem almost unbridgeable. And, after all, Latin America, which has only two languages and is much smaller, has never come close to uniting. By contrast Africa is a Tower of Babel.

Secondly, Africa’s population is rising fast and the continent will add another billion people in the next generation. There is no way in which Africa’s fragile (and often failing) states will be able to provide for the housing, food, education and other needs of this burgeoning population and the result is bound to be massive migration both to Europe and to other African states (like South Africa) which appear to offer more opportunities.

This population increase will be so vast and sudden that it is all too likely to produce a human tragedy on the grand scale – tribal conflict, wars, famines, chronic water shortages and more failed states. Indeed, this demographic explosion will be a time bomb for the whole world, just as potent as climate change. Already Africa is by no means short of war zones, but they could multiply. Not only will this doom any plans for economic integration – how do you integrate with a war zone? – but the new realities which this will introduce will have the effect of making today’s wishful planning for an Africa EU seem feckless and fanciful.