What SA can learn from the US

by Dr Raymond Perrier · May 19, 2014

I have just returned from America – four weeks, seven states, lectures in business schools, visits to Church organisations, lots of tourism and lots of shopping.

Americans believe that nothing is impossible, just as for those who are with God nothing is impossible. (Photo: Mike Crupi, Catholic Courier)

I even was in a room with one ex-President and one possible future president – both of them named Clinton.

On returning I asked a born free friend from Soweto why the US was so enthralling to young South Africans. In America, he replied, nothing is impossible. People try everything – they never want to stop trying and they never want to stop learning.

Many commentators have noted this characteristic of the country. There is a boundless optimism, an almost unquenchable self-belief in the nation, a sense of manifest destiny. It is something I was aware of when I lived there and something that I saw again on these travels.

As South Africa, and as a South African Church, can we learn anything from that dogged determination? Political and public life is starting again now after the elections: we might be tempted to focus not on possibilities but on the closing down of possibilities, to look beyond our borders at the attraction of other countries or nostalgically to times past, or just to bury our heads in the sand (should the ostrich not be the national bird of South Africa?).

Many of the characteristics that drive America’s optimism are ones that we share and which should drive our own optimism.

Both countries have a physical boundlessness and natural richness to reinforce the sense that there are no limitations. Both have a young population, in stark contrast to countries in Europe. Both have infrastructure and institutions that are the envy of continental neighbours and are a constant draw for new immigrants. Both have vibrant media and a rich cultural heritage that is not afraid to absorb and be inspired by the culture of others. Both are nations full of people of strong faith who have learnt to live well (mostly) alongside others who do not share the same religious traditions.

Yet boundless optimism is not a phrase often used by South Africans when describing themselves. We are tempted to see a glass half-empty, not half-full; to view young people and immigrants as a source of crime or unemployment rather than as a source of new energy and growth; to fear that we cannot solve our own problems.

I lived in New York just before the 9/11 bombings. I visited only a few years later when the city was still shell-shocked and nursing its wounds. But on my return now I encountered a city which had regained its self-confidence, was spending money (and in doing so was making money), was re-building over the ruins of the World Trade Centre and everywhere else, was re-energising parts of the city for years marred by unemployment, drug abuse, violence and neglect.

Johannesburg, my adopted city, gives us glimpses of this same growing self-confidence, but then is set back by nay-sayers and told-you-so’s.

A recent survey of US students revealed that while they were not the best educated in the world, they were among the most self-confident. That can, of course, be a problem if people don’t know what they don’t know.

But as I worked with people who were studying – many in their later years I kept encountering a belief that education did matter and that hard work by students, dedication by educators, and tough grading that would hold all parties accountable would produce results. And if it didn’t, a competitive market (and the need to repay huge education loans) would reward the achievers and motivate those who did not.

This is also seen in the way that Americans complain about slow service, poor results, high prices, under-delivery. But when they complain it is not just to whinge but to demand more from their government officials, from companies, from individual service operatives and from themselves. And they make those demands with a belief that there is a better solution which would benefit everyone involved.

I am not saying that there are not problems in both places, nor that the movement of history in either country is always towards progress and development. But my sense is that the defining characteristic of Americans is that when faced with a problem they believe that there is a solution, if only they work hard, try alternatives, keep at it and rely on themselves. Might we as South Africans be tempted to the opposite?

As a nation we are perhaps struggling to discover (or re-discover) that same drive – the drive that brought and brings people here from across Africa and the world, that extracted mineral wealth and produce from the ground, that kept the oppressed going through years of apartheid, and that carried a Rainbow Nation through legendary elections 20 years ago.

As a Church we have an important contribution to make. For the defining characteristic of the Christian, according to the Dominican Timothy Radcliffe, is hope. Not a naive optimism but a belief that problems have solutions, that challenges are opportunities, that after Good Friday comes Easter Sunday.

My young friend said that nothing is impossible for Americans. As he said that, I was reminded that Scripture tells us that for God and for those who are with God nothing is impossible.