When South African journalist Allister Sparks listens carefully on a quiet day in his country, he can hear a low whining sound. It's the murmur of discontent emitting from the mouths of many white liberals, who constantly critique the government's actions.
To those detractors in his own country, and to other nay-sayers around the world, Sparks cautioned yesterday afternoon in a Breedlove Room speech that progress would be slow and that the country's transformation is far from over.
"When you've just escaped Armageddon, that's no time to become a pessimist," he said. "I've heard a lot about the South African miracle and I don't buy that. I don't think it was a miracle."
As he wrote in his most recent book, Tomorrow is Another Country, Sparks said that instead of being a sudden transformation, the "miracle" was a result of numerous meetings over a period of years.
As a journalist, Sparks has chronicled South Africa for the last 49 years, serving as editor of two major South African newspapers, a correspondent for The Washington Post and a Duke professor in the late 1980s and early 1990s. While at Duke, he completed his first book, The Mind of South Africa.
Sparks believes that three revolutions-not just one-are necessary to transform South Africa completely. He said the first revolution was the process of politically and socially integrating the country, and the second and third revolutions involve transforming South Africa from isolation into a global economy and from a mining and agricultural base to one grounded in manufacturing and exports.
Because of the focus on social and political harmony, Sparks believes the economic problems were grossly underestimated. Now, those problems plague the country's development.
"Everyone has focused on the political and social revolution," Sparks said. "That has been the easiest of them all, by a long way."
Although he emphasized the remaining work to be done on the economy, Sparks pointed out the remarkable speed and depth of the social transformation. Specifically, he noted the end of Afrikaner nationalism, the desegregation of 28,000 schools and the ethnic and gender diversity in Parliament.
Sparks did note continuing social problems, such as crime and racism, and questioned the feasibility of a true rainbow nation.
"[Nelson] Mandela's vision of a rainbow nation-is it an attainable goal?" he asked. "Is it any more attainable than a rainbow? Can you reach it and find the pot of gold?"
In terms of South Africa's remaining economic transformations, he noted the unique difficulties of the country's emergence from an inward-looking entity facing economic sanctions into the global economy. He said South Africa's growth has been inhibited by the Asian financial crisis, which left many investors wary of foreign markets and the lack of technology.
"There are more telephones in the city of New York than the entire African continent," Sparks said. "That is the single most... crippling fact."
South Africa must also achieve the third transformation for a solid economy: the transition from gold and agriculture to manufacturing.
This transition is especially difficult because of the country's large unskilled African labor force, a result of apartheid laws.
"It is the only instance I know of when a government deliberately crippled the skills base of its own working class," Sparks said.
For those who thought the South African miracle was a done deal, Sparks had final words of caution. "Miracles don't happen," he said. "It's a long, hard slump. The task of building a new country is more difficult than any of us can imagine."
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