Former president Thabo Mbeki had clear ideas of economics for Africa while President Jacob Zuma has confessed to not understanding the concept — PICTURE: MARTIN RHODES

Our discourse on the African condition will remain incomplete until we address yet another essential dimension: the lack of a modern conception of economics.

When we tackled the first two aspects of this important discussion (intellectual culture and appreciation for legacy), we were shouted down by self-appointed spokespersons of black pride.

“I do not care for black pride that drugs us into a condition of stupor or inertia.” This is how Professor Es’kia Mphahlele used to deal with empty black pride.

Very often we hear agitated representatives of black pride dismiss Western economics (capitalism) as a bad system, calling on Africans to do things the African way.

When pressed hard, none of these pretentious patriots offer any coherent theory of African economics, which is supposedly better than capitalism.

Jacob Zuma’s innocence is breathtaking. He once confessed that he does not understand economics, and consoled himself that at least he knows what to do when his neighbour is hungry.

Other African leaders before Zuma propounded their more sophisticated versions of African economics. In 1967 Julius Nyerere introduced his Ujamaa programme in Tanzania, a hotchpotch of nebulous ubuntu, African communitarianism and a tinge of scientific socialism.

Before Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana moderated his pretentiousness by adopting full-blown socialism as the policy of his nascent state.

Like Nyerere, Nkrumah forgot that Marx and Engels taught that you cannot leapfrog a backward country into socialism before the productive forces are developed enough to produce the two antagonistic classes in a proper capitalist system: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Quirky African leaders — such as the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Mobutu Sese Seko and Angola’s José Eduardo dos Santos, for example — adopted a model that took kleptocracy to the highest level, milking their countries beyond recognition.

As you read this column, Dos Santos’s daughter, Isabel Dos Santos, is Africa’s richest woman. Khulubuse and Duduzane Zuma have a long way to go to reach Isabel’s league.

But we are still at sea regarding an African conception of economics, what passionate patriots call the “African way” of doing things.

During his day, Thabo Mbeki tried hard to dig his peers at the African Union out of economic confusion, by shoving Nepad (New Economic Plan for African Development) down their throats.

Although Mbeki garbed Nepad in African robes, the whole affair was a spectacle of capitalism smuggled through the back door into Africa by a black Shakespearean who had received good training at Sussex University.

Unlike Mbeki, Western thinkers don’t play hide-and-seek when articulating the economic system behind the success story of their societies.

In his book Civilization, Niall Ferguson identifies six aspects that constitute Western capitalism: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and work ethic.

Some countries in Africa, such as Botswana, have tried to adopt capitalism as their lodestar, but an in-depth look still reveals a core of African traditionalism.

Across the continent, communal ownership of land is extolled, thereby foreclosing the development of a new culture of individual property rights.

Competition is not the motor that propels African economies. Either you pay a bribe or partner with politically connected thugs to do serious business. Read It’s Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong for more evidence.

Yes, we Africans are voracious consumers.

The problem is that science has yet to penetrate the core of our culture, which is why we do not produce what we consume.

Woe betide he who insinuates that Africans have a bad work ethic! But those who have observed other societies — such as East Asians — know that we are far behind.

Due to the alien status of science among Africans, it is hardly surprising that, in the field of medicine, we are nowhere to be found.

When ebola wipes our people out, we stampede to the Americans for a vaccine. At night we visit our traditional healers in the name of culture.

To a victim of empty black pride, all this might sound like the vile concoction of a self-hater. But those who have allowed reason to direct their lives will not fail to discern patriotism in the criticism of critical criticism, to borrow Marx’s witticism.

It is easy for us to lock ourselves in a dark room and spend hours in a trance, induced by chants of self-praise. It is harder to tell each other that things are not well.

It could be that, at some point, we will smash our heads against the wall, bitterly regretting that we did not heed the noise outside, trying desperately to alert us that we are drowning in our own pride.

To avert such a possibility, we must acknowledge that we have a problem, and begin to search for solutions, individually and collectively.

The best starting point, perhaps, is to survey the rest of the world, and borrow what works. This is how East Asians turned their own economic corner. We too can do it.

This article first appeared in Sowetan

http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2015/09/08/where-s-the-proof-that-african-economics-is-better-than-capitalism