QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say to it."
-- Voltaire, to Helvetius

Interview: Prof Deborah A. Brautigam

“Mauritius is not a revolutionary place”

* “I don’t see disasters on the horizon, this country is not going to be a Zimbabwe” 

* “You seem to have pretty much the same people in politics… May be that’s what people want…” 

Professor Deborah Brautigam teaches in the International Development Program, where she is an advisor for the concentrations in development policy, and in governance and democracy. She has also held faculty appointments at Columbia University in New York, and Silpakorn University in Thailand, and has also been a visiting fellow at the University of Liberia in Monrovia, the University of Mauritius, etc. She has served as a consultant for the United Nations, the World Bank, and the US Agency for International Development in Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Egypt, and various Sub-Saharan African countries.

Professor Brautigam is the author of some two dozen articles and book chapters on foreign aid, the political economy of development, and the politics of economic policy. She is currently working on a book about small states and globalization, with Mauritius as the central case and a book on China's 'new' aid program in Africa, and co-editing a volume on China and Africa. She spoke to the Mauritius Times about the economy, politics and China’s engagement here…

Mauritius Times: Mauritian economist Kee Chong Li Kwong Wing was telling us in an interview to this paper last week that Mauritius owes its success down the years to a lot of luck. Do you share his point of view? 

Prof Brautigam: I’m sure he is not serious in saying that luck explains everything, though he is right in some ways in the sense that you have been particularly lucky at certain points. Inspite of being a small island in the path of cyclones and so far away from many things, I think in some ways you are fortunate. First, you are fortunate in that there is no indigenous Mauritian, so everybody has to share this island and all of the different communities have to work together. Nobody can say, as they do in South Africa or in Zimbabwe: ‘We are the original South Africans or the original Zimbabweans, you are the ones who have to go.’ There is nobody here who can say that. So I think that helps. 

* We have nowhere else to go, we have to stay and stick together?

-- Well, a lot of Mauritians have gone -- to Australia, South Africa, France, Canada, America. So it’s not that you have nowhere else to go, but you can’t go up to the border, to South Africa the way they can and do in Zimbabwe. There is also the fact that Mauritians realize that they cannot take the path of the dodo, which could not adapt and died. The other thing is that you have been lucky in 1983-1984 because as you were coming out of the economic crisis and you were in your structural adjustment programme, the investments of the people from Hong Kong who were interested in finding some place to invest -- you are a small country, and it didn’t take that many of them to come -- helped create the then industrial boom. And that was pure luck. I’m not sure if the EPZ would have taken off the way it did if you had not attracted those investments from Hong Kong.  

* You are currently working on a book about small states and globalisation with Mauritius as the central case. What do your observations indicate about how we are doing with respect to globalisation?

-- Let me tell you just a bit about the other countries I study in that book. I’m also looking at Singapore, which is also a small state and which, you will agree, has done phenomenally well, economically. Of course their democracy is more constrained than yours and some might say they are not democratic. I’m also looking at are Costa Rica and Jamaica. Jamaica hasn’t really done well. Mauritius and Costa Rica have both done fairly well. So I am focussing on Mauritius but in comparison with the others. Now what makes Mauritius different? All of these countries share some similarities; they are all small, they all have made efforts to kind of ride on globalisation. Out of the four, Singapore has done the best; Mauritius has done quite well as has Costa Rica, and Jamaica hasn’t and this raises the question: Why? I think it’s political, that is how the people manage the economy but also the set of ideas that they have. Did you know for example that Lee Kuan Yew was a social democrat, just as your first Prime Minister. Costa Rica and Jamaica were equally social democracies. That’s something they have in common besides having all put up a welfare state in place. Yet one can say that the welfare state in Jamaica was one of the reasons why their economy didn’t work. It’s possible that they spent more that they could afford. I know that in Mauritius there is always a tension about how much of a welfare state the country can afford, how much can you redistribute without stifling growth, how much can the workers get as salaries with each pay review and the tripartite negotiations. It’s always a dilemma because you don’t want to choke off growth and you do want to have it shared fully.  

* Is there a common denominator among these four countries in the fact that in spite of all the bad-mouthing of the local politicians, the people have been lucky in having a group of responsible politicians at the head? Which goes on to explain partly the success of Mauritius, for instance?

-- I would say that’s definitely part of it. You’ve had responsible politicians and you have had responsible politics for a long time. It goes back before Independence. From the first elections with the largest suffrage in 1948, you have had a lot of experience in governance before the country became independent. It helps to have this kind of experience, but I have to add that it’s the people that made a difference. You were lucky in having Sir Seewoosagur as your first Prime Minister. He was a great negotiator and coalition builder -- he could reach out to people. I think he was very much shaped by his time in England, he was never a real enemy of the British. Of course, he wanted independence, but he didn’t want to sabotage the state apparatus; he wasn’t like Seko Toure in Guinea. He wanted to take what was good from the experience with England to build the country. Sir Seewoosagur was a great leader, and I think you have had great leaders since as well. You have had people who have worked well together.
One of the things I’m very interested in is how the government and the private sector work together. An economy has to be run by the private sector, and here’s where Mauritius has been very successful in getting the private sector to invest, in creating conditions in which they felt safe enough to invest. I think your second Prime Minister, Anerood Jugnauth, really strengthened those conditions for safe investment in this country. So when I look at it, I consider both Prime Ministers as being very important for establishing that foundation. Now I think, basically, it’s running, I don’t think people are going to be able to go too far off the track in Mauritius, I don’t see disasters on the horizon, this is not going to be a Zimbabwe. I think that even South Africa is a lot riskier than Mauritius. You are on the track and you are not going to fall off now. 

* We are not going to go the Zimbabwe way?

-- Oh, Heaven’s, no! I do not think there is a chance of that happening here. 

* Inspite of the present government’s democratisation agenda?

-- Everything happens gradually in Mauritius. Every time I come here, the same things, it seems, are still in the process of happening, like constitutional reform for instance. You had Albie Sachs here three or five years ago, and nothing really happened since, although people are thinking and having conferences about it. The same with regard to institutional reform: you had the MEDIA, you now have the Board of Investment and Enterprise Mauritius – it took a while to get that going. Things evolve slowly, but they do keep moving forward -- this is not a revolutionary place. 

* Are you suggesting that it is indeed a good thing that some things happen slowly in this country?

-- I think it is a good thing, I’m sure people get frustrated by how slowly things happen, but remember that your first Prime Minister was a Fabian socialist and that the current Prime Minister has also indicated that he shares those positions. Now one of the key characteristics of Fabianism is gradualism -- it’s about compromise, building alliances. This, I think, is something that is deep in the political culture here, and that’s, in my view, is a good thing on the whole. 

* You mean in terms of managing differences and society?

-- Exactly. Look at a place like Fiji: it’s also a sugar island and far away from everywhere except somewhat close to Australia. They haven’t had the vision for one thing, they haven’t had the leadership, but they have also been much more impatient to try to get things to happen much more quickly.  

* Aren’t there things that are happening too slowly in Mauritius?

-- Yes, the one thing I wish you would do is to really fix your educational system. I think it’s deeply flawed and it needs to be reformed. In order to become what you have the potential to be, you need to have people educated well at the secondary level in particular – of course the primary needs to fit into that -- but I think the level of skills you need for the modern services economy, for globalisation requires that your education system be fixed. I do think it’s a problem when parents have to pay tutors in order to get their kids to get good education. I do know people understand that, but I don’t understand why it doesn’t happen. 

* A look at your web page indicates that you have invested a lot of time and energy into studying the Mauritian case. You have written about ‘Mauritius: Rethinking the Miracle’, ‘A Franco-Mauritian becomes Prime Minister’, ‘The Paradoxes of Democratisation in Mauritius’, ‘Capitalist coalitions and the transformation of agriculture’, etc. What conclusions have you drawn about Mauritius from these various studies?

-- I was asked by the Africa Contemporary Record, a publisher of something like an encyclopaedia that they bring out every two years, to write the part on Mauritius. In each year they wanted a title that indicates what was the key thing that happened in that year, so that’s why I wrote about ‘A Franco-Mauritian becomes Prime Minister’. I thought that was an interesting thing that happened. I knew about the arrangement when the two parties came together to fight the election -- they were going to switch over mid-way to the term -- but I didn’t know that it would really happen because coalitions fall apart in Mauritius and lots of people told me that in order to become the Prime Minister here you have to be a Vaish. 

* That was a wrong premise…

-- That was what people said, but it was clear that it was wrong because that wasn’t what happened. The one about capitalist coalitions was my attempt to work out how the government and the private sector worked together to get the Sugar Protocol passed as part of the Lome Covention. So I was looking at the cooperation amongst people from the sugar industry and the government in getting that done. It was a joint effort and a lot of people in London, in Brussels and here in Mauritius were involved in that. There was a lot of back and forth; it wasn’t just one person or just three people, it was a whole group. It’s interesting because the government and the private sector worked very well together for something that was very important for the island.  

* What about ‘The Paradoxes of Democratisation’?

-- What’s interesting about that paper is that a lot of times people believe that democracies in the developing world have a hard time getting their economies going, for creating conditions for growth to happen. For instance, when Korea was first successful, it was not a democracy. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore were not democracies either. I know that in Mauritius you had a period quite like that -- I’m talking about right after Independence when there was the Labour Party-PMSD coalition and the elections were suspended from 1972-1976. You had your Singapore moment then. The leaders did that -- as I have been told and I believe it’s true -- for two reasons. One is that there was a new party out there that was considered to be a threat, and there was also a concern about keeping things stable so the economy could recover and take off. If that is why it was done, then it was a Singapore moment in which there was more of an authoritarian tendency in place in order to allow the economy to work well. And that’s the paradox of the democracy. 

* You mention in that paper that the Development Bank of Mauritius was set up in the 1980s order to help democratise the economy. Now, after some 25 years, we get an alliance elected to power on the platform of economic democratisation. Does it mean that the first attempt at democratisation has been a failure?

-- I would not say that it has not worked. In my country we have Republicans and Democrats. The republicans are always trying to build the economy up, and the Democrats are always trying to redistribute. In a way, you kind of combine in Mauritius those two tendencies -- sometimes in the same parties and certainly in coalitions. You have the tendency to build up the economy and the tendency to redistribute it. It’s in fact present in all political systems essentially, since the economy is never built up perfectly, and the economy is never redistributed perfectly. When you have redistributed perfectly, then you have communism and that did not work very well as we can see in China. But if everything goes too far into building up growth, then the people are not happy and in a democracy they vote you out.
When you say that democratisation hasn’t worked so far because the present government came to power on the basis of that platform, I would instead say that it’s never going to work completely. And that is good. You never want the economy to be completely democratised because then you wouldn’t have the accumulation of capital that you also need. What works well in Mauritius is balancing back and forth between those two tendencies I mentioned earlier. You do not want to alienate capital too much and you want to redistribute enough to keep the people satisfied. 

* It could also be true that there’s not much a government can do about democratising the economy inspite of its good intentions in a place like Mauritius, couldn’t it?

-- That’s one of the problems with democracy, if you want to put it that way: you always have to compromise in these kinds of things, and in a mixed economy which is what we all have now, you have to be sure that you have conditions in which investment and employment can happen. Don’t forget what people want, they want jobs. It’s not so much that they want to have necessarily a piece of land, though in a place like Mauritius where land is so scarce, a piece of land is a nice thing to have. But people want a job, a good salary and I think that that’s the same thing around the rest of Africa. People in South Africa do not necessarily say they want a piece of land. They instead say: “I want a job.” 

* The question of land issue is coming up in many places in Africa and elsewhere in the world, and in Mauritius as well. Do you think there is a case for land reform in Mauritius?

-- No. There may have been a case at one point and that point probably would have been around Independence. Because that was the time when there was an opening. The fact that it didn’t happen -- I think the issue of nationalisation of the land or of the sugar estate was taken off the Labour Party’s platform in 1959 -- helped to keep capital here. If you had scared away capital, you would not have had the Mauritius miracle, you would have had the Mauritius morass, the Mauritius mess. And it’s the miracle that you got that made the capital to stay while still redistributing enough. Look at who is in the government, at the educated people here, at the skills that there are in all the communities. 

* But, to come back to the Franco-Mauritian, do you think it has been a good thing for Mauritius to have elected Paul Bérenger as Prime Minister?

-- They did not elect him as Prime Minister. They elected a programme in which they thought there was a good chance that it would happen. I met Mr Bérenger several times, and I have a great respect for him. I think it is a good thing for the country that you have diversity in your leadership.
I would like to add that you seem to have pretty much the same people in politics – not necessarily the same people but the same families sometimes. And that has been happening for decades. I did speak to some young people who are frustrated because they feel that there are not really opportunities for them to get involved in politics. May be that’s what people want, to have the same people revolving around the top position, but it would be interesting if there were more turn-over. I would like to see what that would look like.  

* How about the same political families joining up in alliance with a few select families in business running the show in Mauritius, as trade unionist Jack Bizlall would tell you?

-- I have met Jack Bizlall for whom I have a lot of respect. But I would say that even in the trade union movement you see the same people running the show. People get to the top and they stay there -- whether it’s in business, politics or the trade unions… That seems to be how Mauritius works.

* So we have a problem of renewal in different sectors?

-- Well, may be that’s a good thing. Because it all seems to be working well, but it sure is frustrating for the young people who want their time and their opportunity 

* You have also written quite extensively about China’s economic interest in Africa. Why is there so much unease with China’s presence on the continent?

-- There are a couple of sources of this unease. One is the media which is very interested with this subject. What sells papers, yours included probably, is sensationalism, so a lot of reportage of what China is doing in Africa tends to accentuate the sensational. The other thing that has caused unease is that it is all happening so quickly. China’s engagement in Africa has become very big, very quickly. Now somebody like me who has been looking at it for a long time can see that this has been building up more gradually. But if you only start looking at it two years ago, you would just say: China is suddenly there, it wasn’t there before. But that’s not true. They have been in Mauritius for a long time; investment has been coming in and construction companies have been here since 1972. It’s the same with any country in Africa except for Swaziland. I can understand the reasons why there is unease, but I’m an optimist about this engagement. I think it has a lot of potential.  

* In your draft chapter prepared for ‘The Politics of Contemporary China-Africa Relations’, you quote Trevor Ncube saying: “If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have come and taken their place.” However, in your conclusions, you write that “skilled indigenous African entrepreneurs can take advantage of contacts with Chinese firms to produce on industrial transition.” What this means for Mauritius is that contacts with such firms as Tianli will be a good thing in that it may help us to achieve the kind of industrial transition you refer to in the same chapter, isn’t it?

-- Yes, I do think so. If you look Mauritius in the past, you will see that there were joint ventures that were set up by the Taiwanese and Mauritian companies in the textile sector in the past and the knowledge that came with these industries was transferred to Mauritian investors. And also some Mauritian investors bought textile companies from people from Hong Kong who were leaving, so there was a lot of cross-fertilisation. The Export Processing Zone was a Mauritian idea but it was the people from Asia that brought the textile industry here. That was a good thing for Mauritius. It’s also a good thing that you’ve moved to a much more diversified economy, but I also think that the time is not finished yet for the textile industry. The Chinese are moving up, as the Indians are, and Mauritius is well positioned to take advantage of its historic links with the Indians and the Chinese to move up with them.  

* There is nothing much that a country like Mauritius can do against the strength of low-cost producing countries like China. So we might as well join them, isn’t it?

-- In textile industry, the strategy is clear: you need to move upmarket, that’s exactly what you are doing, that is continue to work on valued added in the textile industry. You can probably compete in the business services sector and it seems to me that your government has already figured that out. I think you sold the Chinese on that, and they seem to agree that Mauritius can be a bridge between Asia and Africa, and you are well positioned for that. 

* In other words, Mauritius is right about looking towards the East in the present world trade environment?

-- This is where you are lucky again, because you already have a lot of the factors necessary for success. You have a culture in which you have people from the two great powers that are rising now -- India and China -- you have indigenous Mauritians who come originally from those parts of the world and that’s a big advantage. The people who come from those countries feel comfortable when they come here. If you keep on doing what you are doing -- you keep on with social stability, making sure that you are not going to have social upheavals, that you have stability in terms of the exchange rate (every time I come to Mauritius, the exchange rate seems to be the same), that’s important for people coming from outside. So in terms of how do you position the island to benefit from those connections, you are already doing that. And this idea of the government and the private sector working together and going on joint delegations abroad is a good thing. When the Prime Minister went to China, he took the private sector together along with him. Most countries of Africa don’t do that. 

* You seem pretty optimistic about the future for Mauritius, that is if we continue doing the right things, isn’t it?

-- If you talk to a pessimist, there’s always a reason to fear for the future. If you talk to an optimist, there’s always a reason to look forward to the future. You are talking to an optimist. But I do think it’s a balancing act here, you always have to keep balancing, to moving forward, changing, adjusting… 

* We are managing that quite well…

-- It must be exhausting, because you can’t ever stop. 

“You seem to have pretty much the same people in politics – not necessarily the same people but the same families sometimes. And that has been happening for decades. I did speak to some young people who are frustrated because they feel that there are not really opportunities for them to get involved in politics. May be that’s what people want…”

“Don’t forget what people want, they want jobs. It’s not so much that they want to have necessarily a piece of land, though in a place like Mauritius where land is so scarce, a piece of land is a nice thing to have. But people want a job, a good salary and I think that that’s the same thing around the rest of Africa. People in South Africa do not necessarily say they want a piece of land. They instead say: ‘I want a job’…”

“When you say that democratisation hasn’t worked so far because the present government came to power on the basis of that platform, I would instead say that it’s never going to work completely. And that is good. You never want the economy to be completely democratised because then you wouldn’t have the accumulation of capital that you also need. What works well in Mauritius is balancing back and forth…”

“The one thing I wish you would do is to really fix your educational system. I think it’s deeply flawed and it needs to be reformed. In order to become what you have the potential to be, you need to have people educated well at the secondary level in particular – of course the primary needs to fit into that -- but I think the level of skills you need for the modern services economy…”

“I’m sure people get frustrated by how slowly things happen, but remember that your first Prime Minister was a Fabian socialist and that the current Prime Minister has also indicated that he shares those positions. Now one of the key characteristics of Fabianism is gradualism -- it’s about compromise, building alliances. This, I think, is something that is deep in the political culture here…”

“You were lucky in having Sir Seewoosagur as your first Prime Minister. He was a great negotiator and coalition builder -- he could reach out to people. I think he was very much shaped by his time in England, he was never a real enemy of the British. Of course, he wanted independence, but he didn’t want to sabotage the state apparatus; he wasn’t like Seko Toure in Guinea…”

“You are fortunate in that there is no indigenous Mauritian, so everybody has to share this island and all of the different communities have to work together. Nobody can say, as they do in South Africa or in Zimbabwe: ‘We are the original South Africans or the original Zimbabweans, you are the ones who have to go.’ There is nobody here who can say that. So I think that helps…”