The BBC

A couple of days ago I posted a comment on the BBC 'Have your say' section of their website.

Today they phoned me to ask if I would take part in an on-air discussion. The researcher, a very nice young woman called Ellen asked me a bit more about my comments. Basically the 'have your say' topic was about literacy in Africa, and whether it was in decline. I said that Robert Mugabe had presided over the betterment of education in Zimbabwe which had made that country's citizens the most literate in Africa and this should have been his legacy.

However, this also made his subjects more difficult to rule and he has since set about dismantling this achievement.

I also said that the ANC in South Africa has not done enough to improve education in that country and I hinted that this might be deliberate.

Ellen asked me to explain what I meant, so I had to explain that I didn't really think that the failure of the ANC government to improve education standards in South Africa was a deliberate ploy, and was making a point.

She further asked me about the accessibility of books in South Africa, and in particular in Durban and I told her that there are libraries here, but they are very disorganised, books are dog-eared and tatty and are not properly sorted, shelves and trolleys indiscriminately piled high with books.

Furthermore, books here are extremely expensive, often costing double to buy as the dollar RRP printed on their jackets.

There are three reasons for this, I guess. Firstly, there is the additional cost of transport. Secondly, the major bookstores have a nice little racket going and very little independent competition. And thirdly, the ANC government charges Value Added Tax on books.

Anyway, I went home this evening and awaited the call from the BBC prepared for a heated debate and the chance to express my opinions live on the BBC World Service.

In the event I was simply asked if I was reading a book at the moment. To which I said yes, I was reading Michael Palin's Python Diaries, and that was it.

What an anticlimax.

So do I think that the ANC Government in South Africa is deliberately keeping the populace down by ensuring that they are not informed enough to question their rulers? I guess I don't. Well, not deliberately, anyway.

What I do think is that the ANC's priorities, particularly under Thabo Mbeki, have been largely self serving for the political elite.

The priorities have been about building business empires for themselves. BEE regulations (Black Economic Empowerment) have been about granting competitive advantages to companies with substantial black ownership. In order to comply, companies have been co-opting politicians and big wigs onto their boards.

Education has largely been neglected.

The internet has been made prohibitively expensive by the Government monopoly telco (Telkom), thus restricting access.

So there you go. As Mugabe learned, you don't really want your population to be too well informed if you want to be able to rule them effectively.