| 8-12-2004 |
| CHALLENGES OF TRANSFORMATION AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: OUR SEARCH FOR RELEVANCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY |
STELLLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY CHALLENGES OF TRANSFORMATION AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: I have been asked to offer some personal background to the influences that have shaped my life as individual, engineer and contractor. As such I dedicate my honorary Doctorate in Engineering to the 80% of our global society that await with a mixture of hope and desperation, for the benefits of science and technology to reach out and improve their quality of life. Over the years I have developed some principles for debate covering an area of philosophy that I believe commands important consideration by engineers in particular, and for business, academia and industry in general. Socio-economic development has become more than just an issue on the South African national agenda. It has become a global challenge of unprecedented scale that I believe will require a greater understanding of such concepts as faith, resilience and transformation. In 1994 I was elected President of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering. This was a year of both hope and uncertainty in our lives and at 42 years, I felt so young to lead a profession that seemed to have aged ahead of me. But the challenge as I saw it was “Relevance in a New Society” and this became my message for the year, crystallizing a new trajectory of thought and learning in my life. My primary subjects at school were English, History and Latin. My decision to study engineering was facilitated by an unexpectedly good matriculation in Mathematics and Science that enabled a bursary from Murray & Roberts. I suspect this combination has helped me to be less than the philosopher I might have been and more than the engineer I was trained to be. I recently developed a simple proposition that defines our developmental challenges. I suggest that over the 100 years between 1900 and 2000, the Net Present Value (NPV) of society’s expressed aspiration for quality of life has significantly outgrown the NPV of business and government capacity to deliver on that aspiration. Due to geographic and cultural isolation, it is probable that only 20% of the 1,5 billion people inhabiting our planet in 1900 were relatively dissatisfied with their quality of life. It is likely, however, that of the 6,0 billion people inhabiting our planet in 2000, more than 80% could be relatively dissatisfied with their quality of life. This is the consequence of globalisation where almost everyone knows about everyone else. Therefore only the same absolute number of 1,2 billion people are as satisfied today as in 1900, relative to all other people inhabiting our planet. This means that the total population growth over this period has been born into relative dissatisfaction. This defines for me our collective and major challenge for the 21st Century. As South Africans we have nothing to fear but ourselves. We may be confused by the events of the past 15 years, relative to the four decades that preceded 1990. We are not alone. Virtually unbeknown to us in South Africa's geographic and political isolation during the 1980's, a number of pressure points had developed around the world. Do you remember the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square? It is my conjecture that the Millennium change was preceded by a natural shift in the direction of human endeavour. It is deep-rooted human nature to be influenced by such milestones. It is the mathematical inevitability of the event that sets a natural process to work, the consequences of which are greater than society of the time can change. Our great challenge is transformation, not migration. But to transform effectively requires that we have a deep understanding of who and what we are, the consequence on our lives of those development influences I spoke of earlier. We have learned that there is no utopian paradise where the state provides and the people thrive. Competition is the driving force for growth and development. The laws of natural selection popularised through the works of Charles Darwin ensure that only the fittest and most adaptable survive in the long-term. Migration is a beginning, not an end in itself. After all, our South African society today is the consequence of various migratory forces over the past 500 years. The debate is not who arrived first or when, but how each applied itself to the challenge of growth and development in a new and often hostile environment. The transformation of our society has released the natural energy and resilience of our people, but presents a challenge to traditional tenets of business and industry culture. Canada and Australia are to my mind South Africa's benchmark global competitors. We have some common migratory origins with each located at the extremities of world geography. Our current status is more the consequence of the markets we serve than our common origin. For Canada it is the United States. Australia although isolated politically from Asia, has become economically integrated with the region. South Africa is now an integral part of Africa, which brings both challenge and opportunity. This is Darwin on a grand scale and South Africa has some advantages. The markets of our competitors are within easy reach and we have something to sell – our resilience as a nation, evidenced over this past decade, and our growing faith in societal diversity. We are the product of influence in our lives. At first there is genetics, where we each carry the collective gene-pool of all our ancestors going back to the beginnings of time. Thereafter it is environment, where our experiences in this life shape who we are and to a large extent what our children will become. Faith and Resilience embodies a philosophy of my life inculcated in me by my father, who was born and raised in Scotland and as a natural storyteller he enthralled us as children with the history, mysteries and legends of that land. Genetically I can claim descendency from one of Scotland's greatest freedom fighters, Robert the Bruce, whose lineage can be traced back into the Dark Ages of the first millennium. A famous story of Robert Bruce is his encounter with the spider. Following the defeat of Wallace (of modern Braveheart fame!) and having sat on the political fence for some time, the wealthiest and largest landowner in England as well as contender to the throne of Scotland, Bruce killed his only competitor during an argument in a church. He had himself crowned King of Scotland in defiance of the English King Edward I. Outlawed by Edward and excommunicated by the Pope, Robert took-up arms against the English but was defeated in battle, stripped of all his lands in England, deserted by his friends, hunted by English loyalists and Scottish traitors alike. His family was systematically murdered with the women incarcerated in cages hanging outside the walls of English castles. Alone and near personal defeat, an exile in his own land hiding in a cave on the Scottish west coast, Robert observed a small spider struggling to build its web. Many times it tried and failed, until after numerous attempts it succeeded with its objective. "If at first you don't succeed try, try and try again" are the words of Robbie Burns the poet. With renewed faith and resilience, Bruce re-engaged and eventually defeated the English in battle at Bannockburn, securing full independence for Scotland twenty-one years later. The struggle for freedom is not a modern phenomenon. It is as old as history. The Declaration of Arbroath of 1320 is unequalled in its eloquent plea for the liberty of man and is a most powerful constitutional statement of support for a revered king (Bruce) and for freedom from all forms of oppression. From the darkness of medieval minds it shone a torch upon future struggles which its signatories could not have foreseen or understood. Written in Latin, it includes this statement, the final sentence of which is borrowed from the early Roman writer, Sallust.
Our revered ex President Nelson Mandela can associate with this historic precedent. But does this mean history alone determines between right and wrong or good and evil? That it alone decrees on Stalinism, Nazism, colonialism or imperialism; between democracy and autocracy; occupation and liberation; or maybe even apartheid? What about the decisions so many people must face during their own lifetimes?
Pay the fine or pay the policeman? Wait in line or expedite the process? Ignore
ones conscious or follow ones truth? Perhaps this brings some perspective on the
late Bram Fischer and the furore over his posthumous honorary doctorate. I know
that I am honoured to share the platform with his memory, because it is a part
of me as well. In the mid 1950's, when the Matabele were expelled from Port Elizabeth back to then Rhodesia, there were riots in the townships, with my father on neighbourhood patrol. We debated these issues in my home and hear stories of his childhood in Scotland. My brother and I not yet ten years old, quietly talked in bed at night, concerned at the plight of black children in the townships, promising to do something when we grow up. In the early 1960's the Winds of Change blew through our land and our lives. Remember Sharpeville? The debate in my home moved from the emotion of empire or independence in 1961, to the challenge of self-expression or conformance. Children demanded alternative education in the arts and many "leave home" creating the “flower generation”. Parents were unprepared and siblings confused. The new music of the day is performed by Beatles, Rolling Stones, Moody Blues and Zombies. My prodigal sister returned home with records by Miriam Makeba and engaged to a man who would crystallize my life: Peter Rodda (No 275), English lecturer, brilliant scholar, writer, liberal leader, activist and friend to an array of intellectuals. The debate changed once again. We argue personal responsibility for change: revolution vs. evolution; activism vs. pacifism and that trap of the ever-present, patriotism. We soon found out. Married only one week, Peter was arrested, tortured, transported, incarcerated and lost. Released and then arrested again, as were many of his friends and other patriots like him. Peter died just a year ago, still in exile. He taught me about choices and suffered greatly on behalf of us all. I wrote an article for the print-media on Peter and his friends for some years ago. Who are today’s patriots and where are they, I asked? Do ordinary people still step out of line on behalf of us all and at the risk of their own future? I found one in Taddy Bletcher and his CIDA City Campus, a university where impoverished black children are given the opportunity to dare aspire for a different future. I have learned that the drive for freedom of expression and independence from oppression is a natural and constant human force; that history does not repeat itself, but that human nature does. The challenge you face today as graduates is different to what my peers and I faced following the end of the 1960's, which was also a time of profound global change and preparation. Your challenge is in the new millennium. I feel as if my life started through a period of embryonic confinement in the 1950’s. I sensed rather than knew that the advent of People Power in the USA and Europe would bring increasing resistance to authoritarian democracy. That Harold Macmillan's prediction of the Winds of Change signalled Uhuru and the spectre of civil war to our African continent. I developed awareness through the turmoil of the 1960’s and its wonderful music. Civil rights become a global issue enshrined in the Dream of a Promised Land. I remember how Martin Luther King epitomised this challenge and mobilised the best in a nation and in reaction, some of the worst in the world. We have learned to our cost that when it comes to issues of race, ethnicity and religion, there are no boundaries to the potential for human conflict and suffering. On a different stage, American President John F Kennedy was promising new horizons for society. Man on the moon! He stood as an icon to the peoples of the world, stretching our faith in the possibilities of science and human endurance, building on the pioneering spirit that had first settled America and then opened its western frontier. Here at home, Hendrik Verwoerd had promised a pure and orderly inner society. Separate development. He was an intellectual giant to an ethnic minority, exploiting a desire for cultural autonomy and expansive land, extending the great migration from religious oppression that had first settled southern Africa and then with subtle similarity, forced the opening of its northern frontier. It is events and circumstances like these that shape our lives and times. My taste in music underwent a transformation. I became attracted to the protest songs (poetry?) filled with raw emotion and clever messages. I used the words of the Bob Dylan song “The Times they are a'Changing” to close my term as President of the South African Institution of Civil Engineering. My 12-year old daughter diligently copied the words for me, making her part of this transformation process. Barry McGuire, Buffalo Springfield, Joan Baez and Leonard Cohen were amongst those spreading the message of a cultural revolution. Back home, Chris Barnard made world news, Sharpeville was replaced with Vietnam and Kent State, San Francisco became a new migratory destination and the decade of the 1960's ended with Woodstock. Today we are experiencing a new and very different wave of unprecedented migration in modern history. The developing world is on the move.
Most migration is still intra-national and intra-regional in the developing world, where governments are not able to do enough to prepare for the human deluge. In Africa, where Johannesburg is projected to see only a small increase in population to just less than 4,0 million people, Lagos in Nigeria and Cairo in Egypt will have to accommodate urban populations in excess of 20,0 million each! What are the consequences if there is less investment than meets the demand for new urban facilities in these cities and many others in the developing world? Is it possible to do so without the participation of developed world economies? If not, can it be done without creating a new form of economic colonialism? I fear that unless we find a way to solve this conundrum, we will see in this century a new Diaspora from developing to developed world. Can we even begin to imagine the consequences of such an outcome? The basic battle will be for opportunity. If the incremental gain of a hundred people from the developing world is to be at the cost of an incremental loss of a single person in the developed world ($30 000 GDP per capita against $ 300 GDP per capita) then we have a challenge on our hands. But do we have the aspiration? There is a painting in the South African National Gallery dating back to 1899 and titled “Holiday Time in Cape Town”. This painting by James Ford depicts his aspiration of what Cape Town might look like as a holiday destination 100 years later in 2000. Interestingly, it really reflects the building and architectural style of the London he left in 1895 and makes no allowance for technology development. It seems to me therefore, that globalisation (previously access to markets in the form of conquest and colonialism) should be considered a primary driver of aspiration. We have experience in South Africa (and have ample historic evidence from elsewhere) of the level of development that results from the mass migration of society from a “more developed” to a “less developed” environment. We have ample historic and increasing current evidence that this model also works in reverse, where the migration of society to a “more developed” from a “less developed” environment results in habitat degradation at both ends. We need look no further than inner-city decay and rural impoverishment for this evidence. I was privileged to work with Emeritus Professor Jay Forrester at MIT in Boston in 1985 where he introduced me to advanced Systems Dynamics. He had developed simple modelling techniques for complex systems such as industrial, organisational, urban and cultural cycles, armament build-up, epidemiology, etc. I learned that the same models used to define business cycles have application in predicting the progress of HIV/AIDS. But this leads to another question. What is the aspiration of as yet undiscovered indigenous societies? Think of communities in the Amazon, or Papua New Guinea or in Central Africa. What aspiration do they harbour for the future? Or are they challenged each day to be at least the same as or a little better than yesterday? These are challenging questions for which we need a better understanding of demographics and psychology. But engineers and accountants are not taught these subjects that are so essential to understanding the markets they will one-day serve. It is these challenges that have caused me to become interested in the connection between aspiration and development. What learning as a society will help us make our choices for the socio-economic challenges that lie ahead of us in the 21st century? Do we understand how the engineering concept of the Stochastic Behaviour of Particles influences the consequence of any interaction between two or more societies? Was it dreams or intervention that inspired the early civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China, the Aztecs and others, to build and develop? And what caused their eventual degradation and demise? Could it have been a combination of reduced aspiration (defending the status quo!) and high cost of maintenance? We already see the signs in our own society. The backlog in transport infrastructure maintenance is clearly evident, as is the extent of degradation of the national property asset. And this coincides with a need for even more investment into infrastructure and property to meet new demands for socio-economic development, which brings me to the challenges of my present life. I was asked by government in 1996 to lead a process of fundamental transformation in the construction industry. As chairperson of the Inter-ministerial Task Team on Construction Industry Development and the Construction Industry Development Board, I have been privileged to lead a process over the past eight years with the principle objective to ensure a total capacity in South Africa to meet the built environment needs for development of a whole society; to ensure that the construction industry in its broadest definition offers access into the mainstream economy for those sectors of society disadvantaged over decades and centuries by the policies of apartheid and the forces of colonialism respectively; and to ensure a construction industry that meets global standards of performance from both a quality and productivity perspective. I entered the construction industry as a young engineer in the early 1970's, an industry then experiencing unprecedented growth and development. South Africa was in an investment boom and the two decades leading to this new millennium delivered a variety of projects that engineers only dream of today. I was fortunate to be involved in some of the best. In 1980 at the age of 30
I accepted the challenge to lead the construction of a contract I had dared
dream to manage. The Bloukrans Gorge Arch Bridge was the largest in Africa and
fourth largest in the world. Ten years later we completed the US$ 2,0 billion Hillside Aluminium Smelter in world record time and cost. In all, eleven thousand South Africans worked on this project over a three-year period, and it was repeated with greater success at Mozal in Mozambique, indicating to me that we deserve a better rating than afforded us by the World Competitiveness Report. At the same time we commenced construction of Burj al Arab in Dubai, Middle East. This project was won through the application of South African innovation and today represents a global icon of construction achievement. But it is my association with Murray & Roberts that has provided the vehicle for much of my development. I had joined as a wage clerk in 1967 with the intention to apply for a bursary to study civil engineering. The company had been established in what was then the Cape Colony in 1902 and has developed into a global engineering contractor over the past 100 years. I had never doubted that I would be Group Chief Executive when the company celebrated its centenary, although there have been times when internal politics and other circumstances did make this an unlikely outcome. I have been privileged to work with many of its founders and leaders over the years, more recently including Brigalia Bam who also receives an honorary doctorate today. As a director of Murray & Roberts, Brigalia ensured that even through difficult times, the company and I retained focus on the challenge of being South African. By 2000 Murray & Roberts was in trouble and looked unlikely to reach its
centenary. I held a deep understanding of the potential inherent in the Group
and so developed a radical plan for Rebuilding Murray & Roberts that accompanied
my application for the position of Chief Executive. Once again I found myself in
a position where my future was at stake. The process was difficult, but with the
support of Brigalia and others, I won the appointment with a clear mandate to
take whatever actions were necessary to ensure the potential of Murray & Roberts
for another century at least. If at a loss and struggling for a way forward, the world seemingly stacked-up against you, think of Robert Bruce and the spider. Never give up on a dream or noble purpose. If resistance to change is slowing you down, remember Hendrik Verwoerd and Charles Darwin. Know that time and environmental forces will prevail. If you really wish to understand the power of faith and resilience at a personal level, and the terrible short-term consequences of resisting inevitable transformation at a national level, read the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. If you wish to learn the power of faith, read Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. And there is always some mystery in the words of that greatest of all English writers “There is a tide in the affairs of men William Shakespeare
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