This article was first published by Rational Standard on 15 May 2025
“In my African Dream there’s a new tomorrow
My African dream is a dream that we can follow…
And though it seems my hope is an illusion
My African dream brings an end to the confusion…”
– Alan Lazar
South Africa; the most prosperous country on earth. Hard to imagine? South Africa can become that country in the lifetimes of those born today.
Two million years ago our ancestors, lived in small groups, sharing what they found. Survival depended on foraging, hunting, fishing, and searching for shelter. Tribes were vulnerable to attacks from enemies and predators. Droughts, floods, and lack of food could wipe them out.
Advances in knowledge and skills took tens of thousands of years. Customs, habits, and morals too, evolved over centuries. Respect for life, cooperation and sharing resources likely emerged within tribes. Interaction between tribes led to respect for territorial boundaries.
Between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago a revolutionary custom, barter, appeared. Instead of sharing, individuals exchanged food or things they made for other things. Exchange became widespread about 8,000 years ago. Over time, easy to exchange, durable commodities, like silver and gold, became used as money.
Trade negotiations led to agreements about property and the settlement of contracts. Over time verbal agreements became codified into law. The earliest known codes date back 4,100 years to Mesopotamia. The Code of Hammurabi dates to Babylon about 3,700 years ago; it formalised property, contract, and personal injury laws.
Roman Law was first codified about 2,500 years ago. It laid the foundations for modern contract and property law. Ideas about freedom of speech and individual rights emerged around the 1500s.
For most of history authority and superstition ruled human affairs. This changed from the 18th century onwards during the Age of Enlightenment. Inquiry and experimentation began replacing authority and superstition. The scientific method, as it is known today, led to an explosion in knowledge and inventions. Rapid advances in social conditions, scientific discoveries and technological development became the norm.
The Enlightenment led to the Industrial Revolution. The steam engine and advances in metallurgy transformed transport and steel production. Mechanised weaving and chemical manufacturing brought large-scale production of affordable clothing. Electricity brought lighting. Steamships and railways linked markets across oceans and continents. Improvements in sanitation and water supply improved public health.
For millennia little changed from one generation to the next. The Enlightenment accelerated human rights, scientific discovery and technological inventions.
Before the Enlightenment most everyone was poor. Estimates are that in the 1800s between 80 – 85% of the world’s population lived in poverty. By 1900 poverty levels fell to between 60 – 70%. Health and technological advances since the 1950s caused poverty rates to plummet. Today, 8-10% of the world population (650-800 million people) live in extreme poverty.
Human ingenuity and scientific and technological discoveries played their part in overcoming poverty. But the greatest advances were in the laws of the countries that became the wealthiest. The United States of America led the way. Its Constitution, adopted in 1789, enshrined citizens’ rights to life and liberty. The law protected property, freedom of speech and religion. Citizens were free to produce and to trade with anyone. The United States became the wealthiest society ever. Its population tripled between 1850 and 1900 while wealth increased thirteen-fold.
Imagine a world without electricity, computers, cars, airplanes, television, fridges, and air conditioners. Imagine healthcare and dentistry without anaesthetics, modern medicines, MRI, CAT, and ultrasound devices – that was the world before the 1900’s.
Invented two decades ago, we use smartphones to listen to music, watch movies, and talk to friends. We read books on them and use them for navigation. We take photographs, record videos, and in seconds send them to friends in other countries. Before smartphones a separate device performed each of these.
Humans prosper when they produce, trade, invent, and cooperate. We see this wherever people are free. Compare North Korea to South Korea, Botswana to Zimbabwe, and Africa to North America.
A government cannot make people wealthy by giving them goods and services. It cannot make a country prosper by nationalising mines, farms, airlines, and industries. If it could, dictatorships and communist countries would be wealthy. Instead, they are the poorest. Their governments are poverty generators.
Most would agree that harming or killing others, or taking property from them by force, is immoral. More difficult to see are the government’s wealth-destroying actions. These include increasing the money supply (inflation), price controls, taxes, and employment quotas. People do not create wealth when expropriation threaten their property and businesses.
Government handouts cannot lift the millions of poor South Africans out of poverty. Prosperity follows only when citizens are free to own, produce, invent, and trade. The government’s role is to maintain laws that protect the citizen’s rights do that.
The road to prosperity is a choice. South Africa’s government can choose that road today. It can choose to remove all laws that limit the production and exchange of goods and services. It can choose to get rid of all race-based legislation. It can choose to limit taxes to that required for defence, police and the legal system. It can choose to protect the life, liberty, and property of all is citizens.
South Africa, the freest and most prosperous country on earth: that is my African dream.
