Is Civilisation to be weighed against the dividend return

There is no doubt that your facts are correct and that our concept of African government, corrupt, riddled with nepotism is the template for much if not all of Africa. The problem as I see it is that as with everything we think about we judge every one and everything through the prism of our own up-bringing. We grew up about 400 miles apart as the crow flies but our background flavours every bit of our thinking and although we would agree in a general sense, there would be be many refinements to our actual view on any subject purely due to the way we have been influenced by our environment. Many things we in the West take for granted.  Parliament, rule of law, our definition of what is right and wrong is not set in stone but is learnt or absorbed from the society around us. Democracy is a fairly recent concept designed to reduce the power of a monarch and share it with the nobles, it has refined its-self to different degrees in different countries. In some countries there is no democracy and yet tradition has developed a way of ruling and sharing that is perfectly acceptable. Power of course corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely but there are signs of this in mature democracies if the Party elected wins a large majority. Unopposed we are in the hands of a few and dependant on the quality of the few.
SA has seen an enormous revolution, a complete flip flop in the ruling class and the people who are now the electorate. The hand over of power and the writing of a powerful constitution, the avoidance of blood letting that we see in Syria between the different sects, the demand from the electorate for change not micro change as we have in the West but fundamental change, for things that had been withheld, things that any citizen would demand in Europe and had to be built up from scratch. All this pressure counterbalanced by the pressure and the demands from the Market for a retention of the dividend and business as usual. The back ground of virtually all of the people who were thrust into power was that of servant to master and now they had to learn what the master actually did. Yes we have seen a fall in the Rand value, and the efficiency of the Rand Lords to exploit the pool of cheap labour is constricted by union representation, even by the Constitution so that gold production has to evaluate the living conditions and the wages of those who go underground. Is it so bad that these men now have at least some protection. Can any industrial process be immune from the people employed and the conditions of their employment. Is Civilisation to be weighed against unit output and dividend return.