South Africa

The annual United Nations General Assembly debate, which brings over one hundred heads of state to NYC, ended today. As part of the series of speeches made by each country delegation, the foreign minister of Mauritania, Hamadi Ould Bab Oul Hamadi, and the foreign minister of Algeria, Mourad Medelci called, inter alia, for a permanent African seat on the UN Security Council. Their remarks are a reminder of the importance of this issue to African elites continent wide, who regularly cite the scope and importance of UN activities on the continent. But, leaving aside the multiple obstacles to any changes (or “reform”) in Security Council membership criteria, Africans are divided over which country would occupy a permanent African seat. Hence, discussion of a permanent African seat on the security council often has an air of unreality. The African media usually identifies Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt as the leading candidates for a permanent seat. Nigeria’s spokesmen refer to the country’s population–some 165 million–and its long history of leadership in UN activities, especially UN peace making and peace keeping operations going back to Congo in the 1960s. South Africans cite the size and modernity of its economy–the largest in Africa--and the country’s successful transition to “non-racial” democracy. Its elder statesman, Nelson Mandela, is probably the most celebrated African political figure now living. Egypt has a large population, a large economy, and a history of diplomatic activism. However, many sub-Saharans would regard the country as ineligible for an “African” seat because it is part of the Near East. (The U.S Department of State assigns Egypt to the Bureau of Near East Affairs, not the Bureau for African Affairs.) Though both governments downplay it, there is a rivalry between Nigeria and South Africa for leadership of sub-Saharan Africa. Its most recent manifestation was the contest for the position of Chairperson of the Africa Union Commission. After a long deadlock, it was won by Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a South African former minister of health and of foreign affairs. Many of the small francophone states opposed the candidacy of a South African, and Nigeria was unenthusiastic. Some Africans believe the rivalry between Nigeria and South Africa could be solved by creating two permanent African seats. That hardly seems likely. Indeed, there seems to be little movement on the broad issues of Security Council reform. But, for African elites, the issue will not go away, and it is a potential irritant in their relationships with the permanent members of the security council, whom they perceive as opposed or indifferent to reform. African intellectuals often looked wistfully for some alternative to the security council, but thus far have found none. South African enthusiasm for its membership in the BRICS owes more than a little to this frustration. Security Council reform is often seen as contingent upon wider reform of the entire UN system—including difficult issues such as funding or personnel. African states could make a better case for a permanent seat if they actively worked toward a broader reform agenda. For the most part, however, they have not.

The African National Congress’ (ANC) firebrand outcast Julius Malema has been formally charged with money laundering linked to state contracts in his native Limpopo province, probably the poorest in South Africa. Malema, former leader of the ANC’s Youth League, is a radical voice calling for nationalization of the mines and expropriation of white owned land without compensation. Formerly allies, he and South African president Jacob Zuma are now bitter enemies. The ANC expelled Malema from the party and the youth league in November 2011. However, many–perhaps most–of the youth league members still regard him as their leader. (The youth league is traditionally the most radical part of the ANC.) The current wave of industrial unrest in the mines is a political boost for Malema. He was the first politician to visit the Marikana mine during the strike, and subsequently addressed a small number of the South African Defense Force on suspension for rioting. Parts of the ANC appear worried about his influence, and whites in the investor class see him as a boogeyman. In the townships, however, he is a hero. Malema, born only in 1981, has a flamboyant lifestyle characterized by expensive cars, women, and the club scene. Born into poverty, he now has access to nearly limitless resources. The common theory is that his wealth originates in corruption. In politics, his black populism can be reckless; he has been convicted multiple times for hate speech against whites, and has revived the old liberation chant of “kill the settler, kill the Boer.” Undisciplined, he may well self-destruct—if the ANC and South African establishment do not overreact to him. Why is he being charged with corruption now? South African commentary ties the charges to his exploitation of mining unrest to advance his political career. The South African judiciary has a reputation of independence. But the prosecutorial authority is often politicized. Malema’s enemies within the ANC may have calculated that he should be brought to court now before the ANC party convention in December, where Zuma will likely face serious opposition to his continued leadership.

Moeletsi Mbeki, with Refiloe Morwe, has written a must-read piece for South Africa watchers: “Economic Growth in South Africa:  Has the ANC Got It Wrong?” His bottom line:  yes, it has. Like many other commentators currently writing about South Africa, Mbeki starts with the Marikana massacre, where he argues that the “ANC government demonstrated to the whole world that it is prepared to use all necessary force to keep South Africa’s…mines in operation.” He goes on to argue that the basic cause of instability in South Africa is that the “transition to non-racial democracy” in 1994 was not accompanied by “change in the underlying economic structure.”  A consequence, he argues, is that any government is hobbled in terms of what it can actually do. But, the “capitalists”—owners and investors in the productive sector, which remains predominantly white controlled—face continuing uncertainty over taxes, the threat of expropriation, and corruption, and are therefore unwilling to overtly upset the present situation. Until this dichotomy is addressed, Mbeki foresees continued, and increasing, instability in South Africa. The ANC has bought-on to the unstable status quo, even while resentment against it is building among the poor and dispossessed who continually vote them into office. But, Mbeki posits no easy solutions: he observes that government efforts to radically redistribute wealth as advocated by radicals like ANC Youth League Leader Julius Malema will simply lead to owners taking their money elsewhere–outside South Africa. And that would make a bad situation worse. With that as his central argument, he shares many other important insights in this short piece. One example: South Africa is an old country and an old society–that makes it very different from most other developing or middle income countries. He also highlights the failure of the education system to address the roots of structural unemployment–a major cause of poverty. It might be objected that Mbeki has produced an analysis of what is wrong without providing solutions.  I do not accept that implied criticism.  Mbeki has tried to analyze the problem.  It is only when we understand what has gone wrong that we can think about what to do about it. Mbeki is the deputy chairman of the South African Institute of International Affairs.  He is the brother of Thabo Mbeki, and was a frequent critic of the Mbeki government and of the ANC.  He is also a businessman.  He is the leader of an informal South African circle that is thinking hard about how to reform the South African educational system.

In all sub-Saharan Africa, only South Africa contributes universities to the top seven hundred worldwide.   In a recent report published by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a leading consulting firm on higher education and careers information, the University of Cape Town (UCT) ranks 154 out of seven hundred universities. The University of the Witswaterand (Wits) ranks 364. Also within the top seven hundred--but low down--are the universities of Stellenbosh, Pretoria, and KwaZulu-Natal.  Number one is MIT, followed by the University of Cambridge.  Yale is number seven and Caltech number ten.  The University of Virginia is 123.  Just before UCT at 153 is L’Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon and just after it at 155, the University of California at Irvine. University rankings are indicative, not definitive.  But the QS World University Rankings are usually regarded as one of the more influential and widely observed of the university ranking scales.  Its criteria is conventional:  according to its website, a score is determined 40 percent by academic reputation; 10 percent by employee reputation; 20 percent by faculty/student ratio; 20 percent by research and other citations; 5 percent by international faculty numbers; and 5 percent by international student numbers.  Nhlanhia Cele, director of strategic planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, is quoted by the South Africa Press Association as saying, "Rankings matter because they undeniably create a perception about a university.  For example, when top students, academics and researchers are looking worldwide as to where they would most like to study or work, they use the leading ranking systems as a key point of reference." All five South African universities were white only during apartheid times, but now have significant numbers of non-white students. University level education is mostly funded by the state and through tuition payments--there is little tradition of large, private endowments to educational institutions.  Nevertheless the absence from the QS list of South African universities that enroll large numbers of non-white students--University of Johannesburg, University of the Western Cape, and Ft. Hare University, etc.--highlights the persistence of apartheid patterns. Other historically white universities also failed to make the cut. University level education remains predominately a white prerogative.  Nearly 20 percent of all students enrolled in universities are white, while whites make up only 9 percent of the national population.  South Africans recognize that if their country is to compete successfully in the information-technology age, not only are more university graduates necessary, but the quality of the institutions that graduate them needs to be higher, with UCT and Wits being the exceptions.

The Zuma government is handling poorly the upsurge in mining unrest at the Marikana platinum mine, which is spreading to gold mines near Johannesburg. Julius Malema, expelled African National Congress (ANC) bad boy, is exploiting these government errors to discredit President Jacob Zuma in the run up to the African National Congress (ANC) December party convention. If Zuma is defeated in the contest for party leadership, the precedent is that he would resign as president of South Africa and there would be an interim government until the 2013 elections. Anger among the poor and dispossessed appears increasingly to be focused not on the big mining houses but on the tiny black elite that has grown rich because of its ANC connections. At Marikana, the police shot and killed 34 strikers and wounded an additional 178. The police then arrested 278, some at the mine, others at a nearby squatter camp. Though President Zuma immediately left a Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Mozambique and went to Marikana, he failed to connect on a personal level with the miners. Photographs of him under an umbrella in a western suit and surrounded by body guards and aids emphasized rather than mitigated the profound distance between him and the miners. To make matters worse, in the aftermath of the Marikana “massacre,” the acting director of public prosecutions announced the prosecution of 270 miners on murder charges under apartheid-era statutes—even though most of the victims had been shot by the police. In the face of widespread public outrage, she reversed herself, and those arrested are in the process of being released on bail. But, some of the newly released are credibly reporting in the media that they were subject to beatings and other forms of police torture. Julius Malema, long an advocate of nationalization of the mines and expropriation without compensation of white-owned land, is reported by the New York Times as saying “President Zuma has presided over the massacre of our people.” He has threatened to make the mines “ungovernable,” an echo of liberation movements’ threat to make the townships “ungovernable” during the waning days of apartheid. The episode is focusing attention on black elite links to the mining companies. Malema is directing his ire at a particular gold mined owned in part by Zuma’s nephew and a grandson of Nelson Mandela. Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the most important negotiators of the transition to non-racial democracy, is now a billionaire; according to the New York Times, he is on the board of Lonrho, the British based owner of the Marikana mine, and has also been a leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, which, in effect, participates in the ANC government. In the townships there are frequent outbursts of anger. But, up to now, the anger has largely been directed toward specific, individual officials known for corruption or their failure to deliver expected services—not the ANC or the government. That may be changing, especially if the ANC comes to be associated with black elite privilege. Indeed, there is little reported anger directed toward South Africa’s wealthy white minority, the principal beneficiaries of current economic arrangements. Malema’s political strength seems to derive more from his articulation of anger at the South African “system” than his calls for white expropriation, though that may change.

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers. Recently, Islamic cleric Ahmad Sheik Gumi criticized the government of Nigeria for its inability to fight terrorism and described Boko Haram as a "complex, interwoven social, religious and political disorder." He said the "social component of it was represented by criminals," and he stated that "Boko Haram is not an insurgency." Over the weekend, the Daily Trust newspaper reported that the government is engaged in "indirect discussions" with Boko Haram through "back channels."  Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati commented on Boko Haram’s concern that "persons who are using the name of Boko Haram for political and criminal purposes are identified and checked." Boko Haram’s amorphous nature has long frustrated security officials, observers, and analysts.  For example, presumed leaders and members are apprehended and detained, yet the group’s violent activities continue.  If Abati’s remarks are correct, the group’s unconventional form is now an issue for some elements of Boko Haram itself. The hacker insurgency Anonymous offers useful parallels, perhaps.  As explained by Wired writer Quinn Norton in "Inside Anonymous,"  that organization’s success is understandable only if "you forget everything you think you know about how organizations work."  Writes Quinn, "Anonymous is a classic ’do-ocracy’ ... that means rule by sheer doing: Individuals propose actions, others join in (or not), and then the Anonymous flag is flown over the result.  There’s no one to grant permission, no promise of praise or credit, so every action must be its own reward."  Many of Boko Haram’s "operations" seem to fit this model.  As for the view that common criminals are carrying out much of the violence attributed to Boko Haram, the alliance between Anonymous and the Occupy Movement, a group said to be composed of "society’s rejects," represents a further intriguing comparison. Ultimately, as Quinn points out, Anonymous became a "culture."  The implications are global.  Nigeria appears to be experiencing a manifestation, but in the shadow of Marikana, so too is South Africa.

South African president Jacob Zuma went to Harare on August 15 in his capacity as the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) “facilitator” for the implementation of Zimbabwe’s Global Political Accords (GPA), which ended the post-2008 elections violence. Zuma is expected to report on GPA progress at a SADC ministerial this weekend in Mozambique. SADC’s position has been that Zimbabwe should draft a constitution that would be ratified by the public. That process would be followed by the drawing-up of a new voters’ register, along with other reforms to enhance the credibility of elections. Only then would national elections take place, with foreign observers present. But, President Mugabe wants elections sooner rather than later. His opponents charge him with delaying the SADC-mandated political process so that elections take place without the necessary reforms being in place, thereby benefitting his ruling ZANU-PF. The parties had agreed July 18 on a draft constitution. Since then, however, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF has reneged, and is seeking revisions to the draft. It is likely that the purpose of Zuma’s visit is to try to break that impasse. The day Zuma arrived in Harare, South Africa media was reporting that “senior” South African diplomats stationed in Harare were saying that ZANU-PF “individuals” were “deliberately and systematically” obstructing Zuma’s GPA facilitation work. It is unlikely that these South African diplomats were talking to the media on their own, especially in conjunction with a visit by the South African president. What they were saying is almost certainly accurate, but President Zuma could not say so if he is to keep his channels open to Mugabe and ZANU-PF. Thus far, in public President Zuma has said only that there are “hitches” to be ironed out for full implementation of the GPA.

There has been a particularly nasty outbreak of violence lasting several days at a South African platinum mine that has left at least ten people dead, including two police officers hacked to death by machetes. Police weapons have been stolen. Media commentators see the bloodshed as the result of a struggle between the National Union of Miners (NUM) and its rival, Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), for members.  Predictably, each of the unions is accusing the other of fomenting the violence. A third union, Trade Union Solidarity, predominately white and highly skilled in its membership, is claiming that three of its members were assaulted when they tried to report for work, though it is unclear whether the perpetrators were NUM or AMCU. The mine is owned by Lonmin, the third largest platinum producing company in the world, and is located near Rustenburg in the Northwest Province. The company was formerly known as Lonhro, and had many ties to the British establishment. The platinum industry is facing the challenge of falling prices.  Earlier in the year there was violence at another platinum mine, also ostensibly fueled by union rivalry.  In the aftermath of last weekend’s round, Lonmin’s shares fell 5 percent on the London stock exchange. Part of the background to the struggle between the two unions is that platinum workers are agitating for higher wages and better safety standards.  AMCU is widely perceived as more militant and radical than NUM, which has long had close ties with the governing African National Congress. The local branch of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the umbrella union organization that is a partner with the ANC and the South African Communist Party in the national government, is calling for the arrest and prosecution of the killers and also of those who assemble without the necessary permits. Is there a political and/or ethnic dimension to this episode?   There appears to be growing grassroots discontent in South Africa, perhaps seen most clearly in the riots over service delivery in the townships. In South Africa’s history, labor unrest in some mining districts has had an ethnic dimension. And, with the ANC party convention coming in December with a challenge to Jacob Zuma, there may be a political dimension as well to the Lonwin violence. For now, however, these questions have no answers.

That Africa has a growing middle class has become conventional wisdom, and the prospect of a new and expanding consumer market excites investors. How to define the "middle class," to say nothing of how big it is remains unclear. Uri Dadush and Shimelse Ali show a way forward in their article, "In Search of the Global Middle Class:  A New Index," recently published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. They suggest that in developing countries, the number of cars in circulation is indicative of the size of the middle class. Car ownership indicates arrival at an income threshold (around $3400 ppp) where households can begin to afford non-essentials.  Further, they say car statistics are usually reliable. So study of car circulation statistics can indicate how rapidly the middle class in a given country is growing. Using the "car index" they conclude that of South Africa’s fifty million people, almost nineteen million are middle class. This is significantly larger than this African Development Bank’s  study on the size of middle class (PDF) (but smaller if you add the “floating class”—people living on $2-$4 a day). Given South Africa’s economic and racial inequality, the purchase of luxury cars can also tell us something about how the wealthy have fared.  Indeed, it appears they have done well. 21.5 percent of automobiles sold in 2010 were "luxury."  (Of G20 countries, in China, it was 2.8 percent;  in Mexico, 2.8 percent, and in the United States, 9.6 percent. Only Germany at 26.6 percent exceeded South Africa.) The car index appears to support the view that South Africa’s middle class is growing.  With eighty percent of the population black, most of that growth must come from blacks.  But the high percentage of luxury vehicles sold would imply that the nine percent of the population that is white is also doing well. Certainly the car index accords with what I saw during two trips to South Africa last spring.

Notwithstanding official rhetoric to the contrary, the bilateral relationship between South Africa and the United States is not as close as it ought to be.  The partnership has been thin on African regional challenges and the dialogue often superficial on issues ranging from reform of the United Nations Security Council to the leadership of international financial institutions or nuclear non-proliferation.  South African specialists in international affairs frequently see the United States as favoring violence over negotiation (as in the case of Libya) or as riding roughshod over the sovereignty of other nations (citing American-driven UN sanctions against Iran.) Americans, in turn, have seen South Africa as failing to assume a leadership role in Africa and too often inappropriately ascribing Western involvement in Africa merely to “neocolonialism.” In a Policy Innovation Memorandum the Council on Foreign Relations has just released today, I argue that a convergence of views between Washington and Pretoria on developments in Zimbabwe provides an opportunity to work together for a democratic transition and thereby establish a pattern of closer bilateral consultations and cooperation. I also argue that given Nigeria’s current difficulties, South Africa is now the only African country with the clout to partner with the United States on a range of African strategic issues. Read it here.

Laura Dimon is the Africa Studies intern at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Previously, she worked for the Clinton Health Access Initiative in Pretoria, South Africa.  She has entered the Columbia University School of Journalism. At the 19th International AIDS Conference, Secretary Clinton announced that the U.S. will give forty million dollars to South Africa to support a voluntary medical male circumcision program for almost half a million boys and men in the coming year. Why South Africa, and why circumcision? South Africa has the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the world. There are 34 million people in the world living with HIV/AIDS and 5.38 million of them are in South Africa; 16.6% of people ages 15-49 in South Africa are HIV-positive. Many South Africans are unaware of these staggering statistics. Further, South Africa’s general public is unlikely to be familiar with circumcision’s role in the prevention of transmission of the disease. But in the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci, circumcision is “stunningly successful” in preventing female-to-male transmission. His views are supported by various studies in Africa which have shown that circumcision cuts transmission risk by about 60%. Why is this? According to the CDC, the inner mucosa of the foreskin—compared to the dry external skin surface—has a higher density of target cells for HIV infection and higher likelihood of abrasion during intercourse, providing entry points for the virus. Further, the microenvironment of the space created by the unretracted foreskin may be conducive to virus survival. Finally, the higher rates of STDs observed in uncircumcised men may also increase susceptibility to HIV. Beyond the science, beliefs about circumcision are deeply rooted in cultural practice and tradition and vary greatly between regions and ethnic groups in Africa—and elsewhere (a German court recently banned circumcision of minors.) In South Africa, the Zulu have historically not favored circumcision, but the Xhosa and Sotho view it as a rite of passage into manhood and perform it traditionally, not medically. As the correlation between circumcision and prevention of the transmission of HIV/AIDS becomes better known, the number of procedures in South Africa is likely to increase, especially where it does not clash with deep-seated religious or ethnic values.  

At the just-concluded African National Congress (ANC) policy conference, the issue of land reform surfaced – but did not really go anywhere. There was a call for “review” of the principle of “willing seller, willing buyer,” and delegates complained that the pace of land redistribution has been glacial. As was true of virtually all of the other important policy issues, serious discussion of reform was postponed. The conference was mostly concerned with politicking, as rivals President Jacob Zuma, Deputy President Kgakema Motlanthe and Human Settlements Minister Tokyo Sexwale jostled for advantage, looking toward the December conference where the ANC will elect its top leadership. But the land reform is emotional and unlikely to go away. On July 2, I posted a blog “South Africa’s Land Issue Not So Simple” in which I tried to indicate some of the issues. Some of its readers raised questions about the racial breakdown of land ownership. I have tried to follow up and conclude that the question of which racial group owns what is not so clear, either. A spokesman for the Department of Land Affairs notes that the Deeds Registry Database does not record land ownership according to race. At the same time, he said that blacks owned 13 percent of the country’s surface area in 1994. Since then, he said, blacks had acquired 4.9 million hectares, or 4.69 percent, the result of government land reform and land restitution programs. (These programs do record the race of recipients; the former refers to broad-based changes in land ownership, the latter to restitution of land seized by the apartheid regime to separate the races.) That would indicate blacks own about 18 percent of the surface area. But this figure does not include private land sales by whites to blacks since 1994. At present, the number and amount of such transactions seems to be based on speculation. It is commonly assumed that South African governments (federal, provincial and local) own about a quarter of the land—which is comparable to the U.S., where the federal government owns about 30 percent—and, of course, such ownership is “non-racial.” Ownership by corporations is similarly “non-racial.” If these figures are correct, they indicate that private whites own or control perhaps half of the surface of South Africa. But, as a reader of the July 2 post pointed out, much of South Africa is semi-arid and not good agricultural land. So, the quality of the land that one group or another owns is an issue as well as the quantity. Commercial agriculture is important, but it is only 3 percent of the economy, as opposed to 20 percent of Zimbabwe’s before Mugabe expropriated white-owned commercial farms. Further, as another reader noted, South Africa’s population is predominately urban; many blacks accepted monetary payment in lieu of land as compensation for apartheid-era land seizures, presumably because they are now urbanized. Still, whites are 9.7 percent of South Africa’s population and own a disproportionate share of the land. That is an issue easily exploited by African populists when the overall economy is growing slowly and the lot of the disenfranchised is so slow to change.

More people are living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa than in any other country, according to UNAIDS. It is about 11 percent of the total population, 17.18 percent of the population aged 15-49 years. There has been progress, but HIV/AIDS remains a salient feature of the South Africa landscape. Its effect on the most productive part of the population is devastating. The disease grew to epidemic proportions during the term of President Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s first “non-racial” government (1994-1999.) As was true in other countries, the response of Mandela and Mbeki’s administrations to the epidemic included denial and confusion, and was often non-scientific. In South Africa, the official response to HIV/AIDS was also colored by quarrels with foreign pharmaceutical companies. The Mbeki government sponsored virodene, essentially a quack remedy, for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, and did not distribute antiretrovirals through the public health system and for a time even blocked AZT trials. It took years for South Africa to join the scientific mainstream in HIV/AIDS treatment. The disease remains stigmatized despite Nelson Mandela’s public acknowledgement after he had left office that a son had died of the disease. Dlamini-Zuma was minister of health from 1994 to 1999 and was a close political ally of Thabo Mbeki. When Mbeki became president in 1999, he named her foreign minister. She became probably the most powerful woman in South Africa. She is the ex-wife of the current president Jacob Zuma, but there is a consensus that her political success is not related to her former husband. Following South Africa’s six-month diplomatic campaign, she has been elected as chairperson of the African Union Commission, the chief executive position in the organization. This is seen in the media as a significant diplomatic achievement by the Zuma administration and opens the way for increased South African influence on the continent. The media is also portraying it as an accomplishment for Africa’s women. Dlamini-Zuma, who is an ANC activist, is a medical doctor trained in South Africa and the U.K. As minister of health, her achievements were numerous: she instituted free medical care for children and achieved progress toward dismantling the apartheid dimensions of the healthcare system. But her association with and support for Mbeki’s anti-scientific approach to HIV/AIDS is a blot. How to account for it? Part of the answer, I speculate, comes from her close political alliance with Mbeki; part of it from the general predisposition among the ANC to search for “unorthodox” treatments; and partly from the confrontation with foreign pharmaceutical companies that made her particularly open to an “African” cure. (Virodene had been developed at the University of Pretoria.) Whatever the reason, her approach to HIV/AIDS associates her closely with what was Mbeki’s greatest domestic policy failure. And that tempers my enthusiasm for her election as chairperson of the African Union Commission.

This is a guest post by Jim Sanders, a career, now retired, West Africa watcher for various federal agencies. The views expressed below are his personal views and do not reflect those of his former employers. In his July 1 Reuters piece, Tim Cocks states that despite "bomb blasts, gun attacks airline crashes, kidnappings, industrial-scale oil theft, armed robberies and fraud costing billions of dollars...investors just keep coming."  While acknowledging that violence and political instability have damaged PZ Cussons’ profit margin, for example, Cocks cites sources who believe "the demographic dividend is colossal."  That is, in the long term, "Nigeria’s big population will turn into a massive consumer market." But taxes on this supposed dividend are substantial.   One is diminishing life expectancy in the country.  Down to just forty-seven years, it is the lowest in West Africa, and thirty percent below the world average, according to Professor Abdulsalam Nasidi of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control. Another tax on the "demographic dividend" is growing poverty.  Yet Cocks quotes the CEO of South Africa’s Shoprite store chain as saying that "even if sixty percent (of Nigerians) live in poverty, the other forty percent still outnumber South Africans."  Such a view lays a foundation for deepening existing inequality in Nigeria, already a contributor to societal violence. A third tax consists of the possibility of a near-term recession.  Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala recently warned that the slide in crude oil prices (Brent remains below $100/bbl and Nigeria has lost seventy percent of its oil exports to the U.S.) as well as economic conditions in Europe, could serve as a "trigger for another round of global recession."  She emphasized that Nigeria might not be able to avoid a downturn, as it did the last time, in 2008. Most worrisome, however, is William Wallis’ report  that claims oil theft is sharply increasing and currently amounts to the equivalent of about 400,000 barrels per day, or more than $1 billion per month.  "It’s definitely spreading," he quotes a source as saying.  "There are far more people doing it than a year ago."  The practice is "infecting government at all levels, with senior military and political figures staking out a leading role," he writes, providing detail that supports Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change party’s allegation earlier this year that in the area of corruption and "sleazy tendency...Jonathan’s government transcends all others before it." While elements in the international investment community see Nigeria as a "massive consumer market," especially given poor growth prospects in developed markets, some in Nigeria, perhaps sensing the fin de siecle, appear to be siphoning as much of the national patrimony as they can, before it’s all gone.