Epilogue
How do you Win a World Cup?
One of my favourite memories is taking a road trip with friends to watch four games of the FIFA World Cup in 2010. We started in Cape Town, drove via Gqeberha (then still Port Elizabeth) to Johannesburg, and on the way back stopped in Bloemfontein to watch South Africa’s Bafana Bafana beat a hapless France. The World Cup was a moment that brought South Africans together as only sport can do. Indeed, as Nelson Mandela said, sport ‘has the power to unite people in a way that little else does’.1 I experienced it very vividly that day in the City of Roses.
Throughout the road trip, though, I was thinking of a question that a visiting geography professor – whose name I, sadly, forget – had asked at a University of Cape Town seminar only a few months earlier: How do you win a World Cup? Do you, he suggested, appoint a very expensive coach? This is, of course, exactly what South Africa had done in preparation for the big event. The Brazilian Carlos Alberto Parreira was appointed in 2006 at R3 million per month – or almost $500,000 at the time. South Africa, although only losing one game at the tournament, could not reach the round of sixteen. While the event was a massive success, the performance of Bafana Bafana was somewhat disappointing.
Or do you, the visiting scholar continued, give every child in South Africa a soccer ball? That will not make much of a difference a year or two before a global tournament. It will also do little for South Africa’s chances at the 2014 or 2018 event, he explained. But by 2022 an entire new generation would have grown up playing football. Some of them would have excelled. They would have been recruited to play for South Africa’s premier soccer clubs, a few even for prestigious European clubs such as Arsenal, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. The Bafana Bafana team at the FIFA World Cup in Qatar would have been filled with young stars. By 2026, when Mexico, Canada and the United States play host to a 48-team tournament, South Africa would have had a World Cup-winning team.
The same can be applied to building a prosperous society. If history has taught us anything, it is that wealth is created by empowering ordinary people with the freedoms to help them build better lives. Technology can assist. Instead of building a big-budget coal-fired power station, we should give everyone a solar panel. Instead of funding a state broadcaster, we should provide free and fast internet access. Instead of designing another top-down economic strategy, we should get kids into good schools so they can design their own. Want to win the economic World Cup? Empower every kid with an economic soccer ball.
Where does one start? Quality health care and education – the building blocks of human capital – are an obvious first step on the journey towards economic freedom. Give women the freedom to make the family-planning decisions that are best for them. Give parents the freedom to choose which nurseries and schools to send their children to. Involve the private sector, but do not leave the task exclusively to it. The jobs of tomorrow cannot depend on children educated with yesterday’s tools.
Science and technology will play a pivotal role. We have become remarkably rich by standing on the shoulders of giants. We learn by trying things, testing our hypotheses against the evidence, and discarding what is wrong. In science and in life, pursue active incrementalism. Create safety nets and incentives that encourage even the poorest to invest, learn from failure and try again. Building a prosperous society is hard, but it is entirely achievable.
Artificial intelligence will make us even more productive than we can possibly imagine, allowing us to live longer, happier and more meaningful lives. But it will also exclude. Freedoms will become easier to give but also easier to take away. Nurture democracy. Make sure everyone counts. Be sceptical of those who promise too much or success that comes too easily. Big business can be just as evil as big government; both will want to control what we see and hear – and shape our behaviour accordingly.
Never forget that we do not have to play a game of Monopoly. Wealth begets wealth. The world is not a zero-sum game. We grow more prosperous, counterintuitively, the more we rely on others. Nelson Mandela recognised this: ‘For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.’2 Again, this is not easy. It requires trust, cooperation, even faith. The good news is that the more we interact and exchange – the more we break down barriers – the easier it gets.
And that is why the future belongs to the optimists. At the end of his magnum opus, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, the economic historian David Landes concludes: ‘In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right.’3
Madiba would have agreed: ‘Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward.’4 The future belongs to those who believe in a better tomorrow.
https://www.laureus.com/news/celebrating-the-legacy-of-a-hero-on-mandela-day↩︎
https://www.nelsonmandela.org/a-selection-of-nelson-mandela-quotes↩︎
D. S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Some so Poor (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 524.↩︎
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/07/nelson-mandela-south-africa-quotes-madiba-inspiration/↩︎