A New African Pragmatism

Natalia Goncharova, Exhilarating Cyclist, 1913.

By Sifiso Mkhonto *

Allister Marran, addressing himself to older people in these pages, wrote: 'Your time is over.'  Far from representing ageism, his attitude represents a new pragmatism in Africa. 

For the past few years, a question has lingered in my mind: are African political and business leaders concerned about the future of this continent, or are they concerned about their turn to eat, and how those in their lineage may benefit from the feast that is dished out in the back kitchen? Judging by the obvious evidence before us, we can only conclude that they are far too often unconcerned. 

We shall not delve into each problem, because history teaches us that we have a tendency to spend our resources and energy on discussing and unpacking problems, rather than executing the solution. In business, leaders do not appreciate you knocking at their door with a problem. They prefer a mere brief of the problem, and a detailed plan of the solution. This philosophy can and should be adapted to our approach to social issues that we face as a continent.

In my understanding, we should pragmatically ask at least four ‘whys’. These should be good enough to assist us in thinking of an amicable solution to major issues, among them the following:

• unemployment

• crime (including femicide, xenophobia, and gang violence)

• poverty, and

• lack of quality education

Here is a basic example of applying the first of these four points:

• Why do we have such a high level of unemployment amongst the youth?

• Because there are no jobs.

• Why are there no jobs?

• Because policy is not business-friendly, start-up businesses fail to create jobs, there’s too much red-tape, and young people studying in fields that are scarce of jobs.

Why, and why. All answers derived should lead us to basic solutions. We do not need ideology and political identity as a continent. These preoccupations set us ten steps back each time a pragmatic, sustainable solution is brought forth. It is the youth, today, which is determined, against all odds, to change the narrative of corrupt States, high crime levels, the stigma of stereotypical prejudices, and many other issues.

Against all the red tape, they still start businesses with no funding, they still pursue education with great sacrifice, to escape the reality of poverty. However, because of those who enjoy the buffet that is prepared and dished out in the back kitchen, many young lions and lionesses are doomed.

The solution is simple. Give young people the space they deserve – they think differently, and they are determined – to advance this continent into one of the most prosperous in the world. 'Grant an idea or belief to be true,' wrote William James, 'what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life?' Ideology and political identity have failed us. We need a new African pragmatism.

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* Sifiso Mkhonto is a logistician and former student leader in South Africa.

Turkey, Nuclear Energy and the Remarkable Power of Money

All friends again. Recep Erdogan and Vladimir Putin at the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant ground-breaking ceremony this month

By Martin Cohen

This week saw Turkey officially 'launching' it's first nuclear reactor, Russian-designed, with specailly invited guest, that country's president, Mr Putin. Which in itself is quite a turn-around since it was only on the 24 November 2015 that a Turkish combat aircraft shot down a Russian jet on the Turkish-Syrian border. After this incident, President Putin spoke of  'a stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorists' and warned that it would have 'significant consequences including for relations between Russia and Turkey. And yet, and yet...  two and a bit years on all is smiles and sunshine again in the relationship.

What could have created such harmony from discord? And the answer, as ever in international and domestic politics alike, is money. For the Russians, the rapprochment has other strategic benefits too, yet for Turkey, the nuclear deal looks at first glance odd. But I wrote a book* a few years back about nuclear energy and in the process of researching it, I realised that with nuclear power nothing is as it seems.

And in Turkey, nuclear politics is really about money. Or perhaps we should say the lack of it. Because Turkey has made four attempts to start a nuclear power program, beginning in the 1960s, and still is nowhere near to generating any nuclear electricity.

The problem is not about the political will - Turkish governments whether civilian led or military-led have long hankered after the idea of being a 'nuclear power', and it certainly is not due to any respect for safety or the environment. The complete deafness to safety considerations is shown very clearly by the fact that the signed and sealed plan for Turkey's first nuclear reactor at Akkuyu Bay on the Mediterranean coast is located smack bang in the middle of an earthquake danger zone. If the plant is built (see below) and if it ever starts operating, then it is highly likely to be the first one destroyed by an earthquake.

Should the Turkish government care? Yet environmental factors have always counted for little in that country's drive for hydro-electric power.. Thus, the massive Ilisu dam project on the Tigris river, was after an international outcry over the flooding of the ancient city of Hasankeyf and yet the Ilisu dam is dwarfed by the Beyhan project on the Euphrates, also in the Kurdish south-east, where fears of the forced evacuation of the local population evoke particularly bitter memories. Here an energy project is in reality part of amore sinster destruction of that much-oppressed stateless people.

No, the big questionmark and problem that dogs the nuclear industry in Turkey is simply that (behind the smokescreen) both the reactors and the electricity produced are very, very expensive. Thus the only way the Turkish government can afford nuclear plants is to get outside countries to pay for them - and then let the foreign investors charge premium prices to the power consumers for years to come. A similar foolish contract has recently been entered into by the British in order to persuade someone to fund a new nuclear reactor for the UK.

The UK had great difficulty persuading anyone to sink money into nuclear - but got around the doubts by making the taxpayers ultimately liable for all the risks. Alas, from the perspective of the nuclear industry, Turkey does not provide what the professionals like to call 'a secure environment' for risky, multi-billion dollar, investment. Inflation is high, the economy is in deficit each year, about half of it due to energy imports, and the country's debt is well over $100 billion. 

In Western countries governments change, but contracts once signed are sacrosanct. However, in Turkey, political change is more violent. There is the history of military coups d'état in recent years - in 1960, 1971, and 1980 - while the forced resignation of Necmettin Erbakan in 1997 did not do much to reassure investors either. On the other hand, the Turkish electricity sector is effectively a state monopoly,  and  the possibility of Turkey being allowed to join the European Union, remote though it ever seemed, barely threatens that these days, even over a timescale of 40 years which is the time-scale necessary for the moneymen who fund nuclear plants to feel confident they can make their profits.

All of which is to say again that Turkey's nuclear program is about cash, not to say wheeling and dealing. The energy minister, Berat Albayrak, who is also Erdogan's son-in-law, just fancy that! called the start of work on Akkuyu the realisation of a national dream. Not to say that the vast sums of money involved in unuclear projects tend to stick to the hands of all those involved.

Turkey is located at the centre of transport routes between the vast oil and gas reserves of the Middle East and Central Asia, and the markets of Europe. Logically speaking then, it would seem that the country would is in a unique position to benefit from low-cost fossil fuels, without even mentioning its own hydroelectric, fossil, and renewable energy resources. Yet somehow Turkey has ended up being dependent on cheap gas imports from Russia and Iran, the arrangements with whom (in the manner of all bargain basement deals) have in recent years proved 'unreliable'. At one point Turkey even broke off one contract with Russia, its biggest gas supplier. If the plant is ever built, Turkey will be dependent on Russian support to fuel and run it.



At least there seems to be no real sense that Turkey is still working towards a nuclear bomb. Indeed, there is the strange historic role of Turkey as a conduit of nuclear secrets from the US to Pakistan and - of all people - Israel, a country which the government regularly rails against for having driven the proverbial truck through the principles of non-proliferation. Commenting on this, one CIA operative told the London newspaper, The Sunday Times:

"We have no indication that Turkey has its own nuclear ambitions. But the Turks are traders. To my knowledge they became big players in the late 1990s,"

More 'wheeling and dealing' has resulted in several cases of highly toxic nuclear waste turning up in Turkish industrial zones, apparently brought in surreptitiously in return for corrupt payments.

Over the years, Turkish nuclear power projects (as with nuclear projects in many countries) have come and gone, announced with a fanfare only to disappear without trace. Yet it looks like things are more serious now. Russia’s President has promised to back the project with more than $20 billion, while Turkey’s prime minister planned to borrow another $2.5 billion on the financial markets.

How can such extraordinary sums be repaid? The project represents a ball and chain being tied to the Turkish economy, a burden on the many that likewise will make the governing clique fantastically wealthy.

The Turkish public are apprehensive about nuclear, looking warily over their shoulders at the plants run in Armenia and Bulgaria which are generally thought of as dangerous. And Turkey is the one of the countries which was affected by the disaster of Chernobyl, even if the accident has always been kept out of the public debate about energy policy. Instead, the discussion has been focussed on the economic arguments. But here too, nuclear power has a lot of explaining to do.

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* The Doomsday Machine: The High Price of Nuclear Energy, the World's Most Dangerous Fuel

Discerning the Intent of State Power

Posted by Sifiso Mkhonto

The fear of losing State Power corrupts those who wield it, and the fear of the scourge of State Power corrupts those who are subject to it. It is not State Power which corrupts, therefore, but fear: fear within the State, and fear among those who are subject to it.

How does one measure such fear? One measures it by the State’s dependency on the favour of the people, and by the people’s dependency of the favour of the State.  Such dependency further determines, on both sides, people’s ability to attain the things they desire.

The State, then, having a dependent people, may come to see itself as having Power in itself. But this is an illusion. Even if the State looks invincible, it is always dependent. It must mobilise, among other things, economic, social, and political forces in order to achieve a result.

This dependency may be good or it may be bad – depending on the reasons for the State’s dependency – and again, the reasons for the dependency of the people it governs.

In the country of my birth, South Africa, the State desires the seductions of power, while the people desire excessive goods and wealth. On both sides, we find a narcissistic impulse, therefore, which defines the reasons for dependency. This has gone so far as to earn the description ‘State Capture’ – in which the people, too, find themselves captured. 

In a sense, a new balance of power has been created, which is driven by people’s passions on both sides. This has so advanced that the traditional balance of legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government seems lost. Instead, one finds a balance of desires: the State on one side, the people on the other.

There is a critical difference, however, between the dependency and desires of the State, and the dependency and desires of the people.

The dependency and desires of the State – and with that, the source of its Power – may be largely unknown and unseen. When a new government is installed, this waits to be revealed. Besides which, the State has the means and the power to withhold and frustrate such revelation, up to a point.

Society, on the other hand, has little means of hiding its transparency from the State. Its power – that which it has – is exposed at all times, because it is exercised in the open. Also, unlike the State, its power is not defined by its ability to prevent people from doing things, but includes an open process of self-definition and lifestyle preferences.

What to do, then, where there is an unhealthy dependency on the part of the State, not to speak of the people?

In such a situation, enlightening the State as to its true and noble purpose is futile. Informing bad Power about good Power is giving truth to those who do not love it. Besides, a State which is bad Power has already created the dependency on bad powers which perpetuate its desires – a further reminder that State Power is dependent, and only has the illusion of power.

Where could a solution lie?

The solution may lie in the distinction just traced above.  While the source of State Power may be unknown and unseen, that of the people is at all times laid bare, and is subordinate to the State. If there were no such openness among the people, the State would risk insurrection for its lack of knowledge.  At the same time, without openness on the part of the State, a nation risks a corrupt State.

What is true of the people needs to be true of the State. To obliterate the myths and assumptions which underlie a State corrupted by fear, we need truth – truth of the kind which reveals the true dynamics of State Power. More important even than the democratic process, the separation of powers, the rights of the people, may be the transparency of the State.

Doublethink 21 - Cost of Crime

 

The Unelected Super-Rich Showing Brits to the Exit

Posted by Martin Cohen

On the 23rd of June 2016, the UK votes on whether or not to 'leave' the European Union and regain full control over its own affairs instead. At least, that's how the argument is put by those in favour of the move. 

For humdrum workers in industries that actually import or export products or materials to the EU, it only means higher tariffs and complicated paperwork. For bosses it means increased costs and uncertainty – and reduced investment. But for one group, it does indeed promise a splendid new dawn of 'freedom'. This group is the super-rich, and they work in financial services in the City of London.

For them the battle lines with the EU were drawn after the crash of 2007/8 which so nearly collapsed the entire Western banking system. The response, apart from pouring billions of taxpayer dollars, euros and yes, British pounds into the pockets of the injured speculators, was increased regulation.

And so the dirty secret, as I see it, of Brexit is the financial services industry jockeying for 'lighter touch' regulation. But this issue has not been given prominence - instead we have talk about conventional business, trade flows, workers rights and currency rates. A constant complaint has been that EU laws are made by people who are unelected – which is simply not true. The real levers of power in the EU remain firmly in the hands of the national governments. But no one is interested in how the EU really works, they just want to stop the 'migrants'.

The UK is obsessed with keeping out migrants. Indeed, waves of Somalis, Afghans, Iraqis and now Syrians are rather alarming – and certainly include a whole host of issues about conflicting social values. But what people mean by this is fellow Europeans. People who are better educated that the average Brit, and far more cultured, all they want to do is work hard and be useful members of the community. But many British resent or even hate them in just the same irrational way as uneducated whites hate people of colour. Because they're 'different'. This is why the British are such poor members of the Union, and if they vote themselves out of it in June, it will be this kind of nationalism that will have won it for 'Leave'.

But giving 'the great unwashed' – the lower classes – this power is not usually done. Indeed the UK is primarily voting in a rare referendum because for decades leading the (ruling) Conservative party has been impossible without assuaging the demands of a noisy Europhile group. Even now, if the UK Parliament had an unencumbered vote, they would not hesitate but to continue working within the EU. In this way, the unelected bosses of the hedge funds and spread-betting firms who have been backing the 'Leave' campaign  are driving the British where they want.

These are people like Richard Tice, co-chair of Leave; Crispin Odey, Peter Cruddas, a former Conservative Party Treasurer; Stuart Wheeler of IG; Michael Hintze, Conservative donor; not to entirely forget Edi Truell, Brexiter and again a major Conservative donor.

For these city speculators – 'value trashers', in City jargon – the possibility of the pound plummeting, of share prices collapsing, of market and political dislocations with dire and unpredictable consequences – all represent big opportunities and easy money.

Market disruption is excellent news for them, and so will any longer-term  post-Br exit dislocation.

And so, to sum up, the 'real story', as I see it, of Brexit is the worst elements of the financial services industry jockeying for 'lighter touch' regulation. It's the poachers tricking the rabbits into letting them be the gamekeepers.

Deconstructing Boris

By Martin Cohen 

'Deconstruction,' wrote Jacques Derrida, 'is justice.' Yet deconstruction's effectiveness has been questioned as a political tool. Often it has been accused of political quietism. No clear political consequences may be drawn, it is said, from an interpretive theory that claims that all meanings are unstable. Chomsky condemned Derrida as 'plain gibberish'.

But watch, as we apply some deconstruction to a topical issue in the context of British politics. There's plenty of gibberish emerging, and that fact reflects not a fault in the deconstructionist technique but rather that a great deal of political language is, as deconstructionists might say, 'at variance with itself '. Put another way, there are contradicitons and exposing contradictions is the proper task of both politics and philosophy.

Now to the case in point. 

Earlier this month (May 2016) Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson stepped down as Mayor of London – his eyes apparently firmly set on becoming the next Prime Minster of England. As leading light of the British campaign to 'free itself' from the European Superstate, his fate depends now on public pereceptions of his good character and honesty. And a central element of his political platform – his explicit policy – is to speak out determinedly against political leeches – famously referring to those who have 'their little jaws wrapped blissfully around the giant polymammous udder of the state'. It is a comment which may come to follow him around for some time to come.

Now, in terms of deconstruction, what one does is to examine Johnson's stated policy for any signs of oppositions which may be at variance with it or work against it. Happily – though not for Johnson – we do not need to look far. Johnson himself has not been above appointing cronies to publicly funded positions as special advisors.

There are, on the one hand, the unpaid advisors who come from the ranks of the great and the good. Then there are the paid ones, the media moles, the political cronies … and the City financiers lining their own nests. They are paid, despite seeming often to have few special duties or responsibilities other than to make up a kind of political court for Boris Johnson.

Some examples already in the public eye:

• Political

Ian Clement, conservative apparatchik (government and external relations, £124,364) who was forced to quit over the misuse of a corporate credit card, and for claiming back expenses for a business dinner with the Tory leader of Barnet council Mike Freer, which appears not to have taken place. Just days after his boss, Boris Johnson, publicly stood by him.

Richard Barnes, (Deputy mayor for communities, salary £92,594)
Conservative London assembly member for Ealing and Hillingdon and previously leader of Hillingdon borough council.

• Media

Guto Harri, The former BBC political correspondent (£124,364).

Anthony Browne, Policy director (£124,364), former Observer and Times journalist, director of the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange,

Andrew Gilligan, senior reporter for the Daily Telegraph, and his cycling advisor whose meagre workload in 2015 included 'Lunch with Chief Reporter Telegraph re Mayor's cycle vision' … for which he claimed back £80. His modest special advisor salary of £50k (pro rata, but in addition to his Telegraph one) notwithstanding.

But above all it is the City connections that are most alarming. And here the sums of public money flowing towards private wallets run into the millions and multimillions.

• City Chums

After his victory, partly based on protecting the City of London from EU regulation, he appointed one of the City donors to his election campaign, Edmund Lazarus, to a £14,000-a-year spot on the board of the London Development Agency.

With so many dodgy appointments, attention has hardly been focused on one unpaid advisor: Edi Truell, a multimillionaire city financier who the Mayor appointed as his unpaid special advisor for pensions. However, Edi Truell is perhaps the most dangerous appointment of them all.

At his confirmation hearing in London, it emerged that he was being confirmed without providing a CV. 'We asked about a CV and we were advised by the Mayor’s office that his letter recommending appointment gave a summary of what he felt were the qualities of the candidate.'

Nor, worryingly, did he provide the committee with a list of possible conflicts of interests. Apart from the one about selling insurance to pension funds, and the strange project to sell 'sustainable renewable' energy to the UK via a fantastically long cable from hot springs in Iceland.

It all gets rather too complicated. The details are in the public domain for those who should wish to unravel them and I've written a bit more here. But the long and the short of it is that Truell would seem to have his  little jaws wrapped blissfully around the giant polymammous udder of the state. At the city financier's confirmation hearing to become Boris's pensions guru, it emerged that in at least one case – pensions management – he stood to make millions of pounds from his new role. This money however, Truell reassured the committee, was pledged already to charity.

To return to the beginning. Has some simple deconstruction proved its political punch? Surely yes. Whatever we thought of Johnson, we cannot think the same after the application of the technique. In fact we would do well to apply it in every political arena. One may easily take politics at face value – just as one may take Boris at face value – digging no deeper than his vivid objections to political leeches, and in the next few weeks his loud and apparently passionate denunciations of the European Superstate as the home of elitism and the enemy of democracy.

Whatever Derrida may have meant by the term,  deconstruction, in such cases, is an essential political tool.

An Information Society

A Proposal For a New 'Checks and Balances'

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

“Power checks power,” wrote Charles de Montesquieu.  Yet power, to check power, rests on the disclosure of information.

The political philosopher Montesquieu, in the early 18th century, developed the political theory of the separation of powers, and with it, of checks and balances.  Through such a separation of powers, a government would be divided into three separate branches, each of which would serve as a check and a balance to the other two. Subsequently, Montesquieu's ideas have had a major influence on political philosophy – so that, today, democratic governments will typically (though not always) separate their legislative, executive, and judicial branches to guarantee continued stability and good governance.  It may seem a primitive notion today – namely, that power checks power – yet it really is the only way that we have.

However, given such a separation of powers, how should a nation know that this arrangement is working? How should one assess it? How should one confirm it? Separate powers can unite. Individual powers can gain the ascendancy. The answer is plainly: each branch of government needs to know what the others are doing – not only in terms of the various decisions which they take, but in terms of keeping open account of the way in which these decisions are carried out. And this needs to be public, or one loses not only public accountability and confidence, but the rich resources which are public thinking.



To put it another way, it is as simple as the disclosure of information. In fact, without the disclosure of information, there really can be no separation of powers. Therefore, the requirement for information is prior to the separation of powers. For this very reason, the various branches of government publish their information through government printing works – and more recently, through web portals.

But now, notice something about this information, which is of crucial importance to a nation. One doesn't need to go banging down any doors to obtain it. One doesn't have to apply for it. One doesn't need to pay for it. The basic information of government is ours. Not only do we have the right to such information – we have the information.

If only all of society would work in this way, from top to bottom: public officials, civil servants, professions councils, board members, business people – in fact, throughout. We know, from recent empirical advances, that transparency greatly moderates the exploitative power of individuals – and in so doing, greatly reduces the distress of a nation. Yet today, by way of specific example which is by no means unique, access to a single page of information in my home town Cape Town, through the provisions of a liberal Access to Information Act, may cost R30 000 in counsel fees alone – if anybody should be feeling clingy. This is well above the average monthly income, and an impractical prospect for most.

Yet information is critical to society. In the words of the philosopher Frederick Adams, it enables us to get “a fix on the way the world is objectively configured”. We need information before we can manage and grow a nation in an informed, considered, and impartial way.

In fact it may be the difference between the success and failure of a state. Wherever information is concealed, politicians accumulate personal fortunes, crimes are swept under the carpet, buildings rise without permissions, the poor are exploited, foodstuffs are unsafe – and a thousand things besides. In my own country South Africa, a bubbly young reporter pushed her way into a country estate, where she discovered blueprints on a wall. It was Nkandla – the beginning of a major information scandal, and unprecedented turmoil in the national parliament.

It is therefore critically important that there should be a way to shed light – through the disclosure of information – on rules, plans, processes, and actions, throughout society. Which is, one needs to know the why, how, what, and how-much in every sphere.

How far should this go? It needs to go far. Yet the application of the principle would be for each society to negotiate in its own unique situation. The bottom line is the need for information – not merely the right to it. And for the first time in human history, in our information society, this has become a real possibility.

Parallel to a three-fold separation of powers, therefore, it would seem crucial to propose another kind of separation: the separation of information. Duplication of information is not enough. Alter one copy, or destroy it, and the value of the other may be lost. In triplicate, information is secure. Three separate information databases would seem essential to secure the disclosure of vital information.

This should not be confused with a surveillance state, where the few have special access to information, and the power to exploit it. By and large, the concealment of information holds greater dangers than genuinely opening it up.

In early societies, houses and huts were often arranged in circles. So, too, were wigwams pitched in an oval, and wagons drawn up in a laager. Everyone was able to see into the heart of everyone else's world.  Yet through the course of history, this changed – and in many ways it has been to our detriment. While it is impossible, now, to return to such a society, it is possible to recreate one of its central features: namely, transparency. Nations, in order to thrive and survive, must have a high order of transparency.

An Information Society

A Proposal For a New 'Checks and Balances'

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

“Power checks power,” wrote Charles de Montesquieu.  Yet power, to check power, rests on the disclosure of information.

The political philosopher Montesquieu, in the early 18th century, developed the political theory of the separation of powers, and with it, of checks and balances.  Through such a separation of powers, a government would be divided into three separate branches, each of which would serve as a check and a balance to the other two. Subsequently, Montesquieu's ideas have had a major influence on political philosophy – so that, today, democratic governments will typically (though not always) separate their legislative, executive, and judicial branches to guarantee continued stability and good governance.  It may seem a primitive notion today – namely, that power checks power – yet it really is the only way that we have.

However, given such a separation of powers, how should a nation know that this arrangement is working? How should one assess it? How should one confirm it? Separate powers can unite. Individual powers can gain the ascendancy. The answer is plainly: each branch of government needs to know what the others are doing – not only in terms of the various decisions which they take, but in terms of keeping open account of the way in which these decisions are carried out. And this needs to be public, or one loses not only public accountability and confidence, but the rich resources which are public thinking.

To put it another way, it is as simple as the disclosure of information. In fact, without the disclosure of information, there really can be no separation of powers. Therefore, the requirement for information is prior to the separation of powers. For this very reason, the various branches of government publish their information through government printing works – and more recently, through web portals.

But now, notice something about this information, which is of crucial importance to a nation. One doesn't need to go banging down any doors to obtain it. One doesn't have to apply for it. One doesn't need to pay for it. The basic information of government is ours. Not only do we have the right to such information – we have the information.

If only all of society would work in this way, from top to bottom: public officials, civil servants, professions councils, board members, business people – in fact, throughout. We know, from recent empirical advances, that transparency greatly moderates the exploitative power of individuals – and in so doing, greatly reduces the distress of a nation. Yet today, by way of specific example which is by no means unique, access to a single page of information in my home town Cape Town, through the provisions of a liberal Access to Information Act, may cost R30 000 in counsel fees alone – if anybody should be feeling clingy. This is well above the average monthly income, and an impractical prospect for most.

Yet information is critical to society. In the words of the philosopher Frederick Adams, it enables us to get “a fix on the way the world is objectively configured”. We need information before we can manage and grow a nation in an informed, considered, and impartial way.

In fact it may be the difference between the success and failure of a state. Wherever information is concealed, politicians accumulate personal fortunes, crimes are swept under the carpet, buildings rise without permissions, the poor are exploited, foodstuffs are unsafe – and a thousand things besides. In my own country South Africa, a bubbly young reporter pushed her way into a country estate, where she discovered blueprints on a wall. It was Nkandla – the beginning of a major information scandal, and unprecedented turmoil in the national parliament.

It is therefore critically important that there should be a way to shed light – through the disclosure of information – on rules, plans, processes, and actions, throughout society. Which is, one needs to know the why, how, what, and how-much in every sphere.

How far should this go? It needs to go far. Yet the application of the principle would be for each society to negotiate in its own unique situation. The bottom line is the need for information – not merely the right to it. And for the first time in human history, in our information society, this has become a real possibility.

Parallel to a three-fold separation of powers, therefore, it would seem crucial to propose another kind of separation: the separation of information. Duplication of information is not enough. Alter one copy, or destroy it, and the value of the other may be lost. In triplicate, information is secure. Three separate information databases would seem essential to secure the disclosure of vital information.

This should not be confused with a surveillance state, where the few have special access to information, and the power to exploit it. By and large, the concealment of information holds greater dangers than genuinely opening it up.

In early societies, houses and huts were often arranged in circles. So, too, were wigwams pitched in an oval, and wagons drawn up in a laager. Everyone was able to see into the heart of everyone else's world.  Yet through the course of history, this changed – and in many ways it has been to our detriment. While it is impossible, now, to return to such a society, it is possible to recreate one of its central features: namely, transparency. Nations, in order to thrive and survive, must have a high order of transparency.