Yu. S. SKUBKO. SOUTH AFRICA ON THE PATH TO A KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY: NAUKA, UNIVERSITETY, INNOVATSII [SCIENCE, UNIVERSITIES, INNOVATIONS], Moscow: Institute of Africa of the RUSSIAN Academy of Sciences, 2011, 146 p., ill.

In the preface to the peer-reviewed monograph, L. L. Fituni wrote: "The book is devoted to the problems of developing the scientific and educational potential of South Africa and some advanced technologies. The author has collected and creatively analyzed extensive factual material, with many interesting observations and conclusions. Soviet science knew Yu. S. Skubko as a promising researcher, who for the first time in Russian African studies turned to the topic of scientific research.-

technological progress in then-racist South Africa. In 1985, he published his first monograph, "New Phenomena in the Economy of South Africa", a well-founded and thorough economic development, which in a number of aspects has not lost its scientific significance to this day. The new book has less economics, but more ideology. Judging by the text of the monograph, the author's views clearly fall out of the prevailing positive attitude to the anti-racist transformation in South Africa " (p. 9).

I want to argue here. The fact is that "anti-racist transformation in South Africa" is becoming more and more racist every year, although with the opposite sign, and Yu. S. Skubko wrote about this directly and frankly, ignoring hypocritical political correctness, what I consider to be the merits of his work. He's not the first. A. B. Davidson, I. I. Filatova, G. V. Shubin and others have written about the serious consequences of "positive actions" to squeeze white professionals out of various fields of activity, primarily from state structures, in recent years both in South Africa and in our country: but Yu. S. Skubko, perhaps, spoke more harshly and put dots over the "I". As for the world-wide positive attitude towards the new racial policy of the modern South African leadership, it is time to recall the global sanctimonious American morality, one of the tenets of which is: : Negroes (we can identify them politically correctly as African-Americans, Afro-South Africans, and even Afro-French) and gays are out of the question, no matter what they've done. The current fashion in the world is for double standards: you can throw a stone at white racists, but try to touch black ones...

The author's first monograph on the economy of South Africa (I am pleased that L. L. Fituni recalled this long-standing work) was really thorough, economically based, but that's all. It was created in the very" Orwellian "year of 1984, and all politics and ideology that went beyond the official one had to be purged from it, and the author (then a young, newly defended employee of the Southern Africa sector of the Institute of Africa of the USSR Academy of Sciences), who had never been distinguished by orthodox views, as a result was already" banned from traveling".

I will review in order some of the main sections and conclusions of the reviewed monograph. It is very interesting, and it is the first in Russian literature, an essay on the history of South African science in the first chapter. This relatively small country has ten Nobel laureates, including four who were awarded the world's highest award for scientific discoveries (the rest for literary achievements and contributions to peace) - more than in many developed countries. The author, who has undoubted literary aptitudes, spoke in a fascinating way about the prize-winning scientists (the winner of the yellow fever Max Tayler, the creator of computed tomography Alan Cormack, the developer of crystallographic electron microscopy Aaron Klug and one of the discoverers of "in the field of genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death" Sidney Brenner) and about no less outstanding scientists and organizers scientists - heart surgeon Christian Barnard and the inventor of radars and the creator of the largest IRGC research center in Africa, Bezil Schonberg. Don't miss Yu. S. Skubko also had a chance to show the "Russian trace": two Nobel laureates, Brenner and Klug, came from the Baltic States that were part of the Russian Empire, and Christian Barnard, it turns out, was working out his future heart transplant operations on experimental animals illegally (he came as a tourist) at the Moscow Institute of Medicine. Sklifosofsky together with Professor V. Demikhov, who was not allowed to perform such operations on the human heart at that time (Barnard started them in 1967).

All four South African scientific Nobel laureates, some earlier, some later, emigrated (to England and the United States). Recently, the "Nobel emigrants" were joined by the 2003 literature laureate, talented Afrikaner writer John Coetzee (who left for Australia), who was accused of white racism by the ANC.

During and after the Second World War, in the 1940s and 1980s, the country made a huge scientific and technological breakthrough, completed industrialization and became the only developed state in Africa (the author talks, in particular, about the organization of the production of liquid fuel from coal and the nuclear project). Usually this period is referred to as the time of the racist apartheid regime, of the overexploitation of the black population, which is certainly true, but not all of it. The author successfully fills in the "gap in the truth" and tells about the huge creative contribution of white scientists and IT specialists, skilled workers, entrepreneurs, teachers (and officials who sometimes are, as we have already forgotten, not thieves, but statesmen), without whom no industrial giant of the continent would have emerged. Ю. S. Skubko believes that the black labor force was necessary and widely used, but mainly in the form of

"driven, not driven wheel". This formulation of the question is still quite controversial. But what we can't disagree with is that today there are already competent and productive black scientists and engineers in the country, although there are only a few of them among the sea of half-knowns with and without diplomas. And more than 90% of scientific output is still provided by the same previously privileged, but now barely tolerated minority.

The chapter on scientific and educational potential reveals the great, but rather decreasing, rather than increasing opportunities of South Africa in these areas in the post-apartheid period, especially in terms of staffing science and high technologies, since, as already noted in the Conclusion, "replenishment from the predominantly "scientific plankton" is not useless, but real scientists are suitable for innovative breakthroughs." less and less remains" (pp. 122-123). The reason is the forced displacement of white qualified personnel, and somewhere already Indians, from various fields of activity (replacing the best specialists "with unnecessary skin color" with the worst "with the right skin color"), as well as a massive "brain drain", not only whites, in conditions of, in fact,, criminal lawlessness throughout the country. The main barometer of quality of life - its average duration-showed a sharp decline, from 64 to 43 years, in the post-apartheid period. The author notes that "while maintaining relatively good formal and economic indicators, the functional state of the country has clearly changed for the worse" (p. 19).

The chapter on the development of some priority technologies tells about the country's success and problems in the development of bio - and nanotechnologies, medicine, energy, space exploration, etc. The author also writes about the biggest failures of recent times: the severe energy crisis caused by the blatant lack of professionalism of the new heads of ministries, departments and state corporations who were hired "according to light criteria"; the closure of the country's largest innovation program (creation of modular nuclear reactors of the 4th generation) after ten years of efforts and multibillion-dollar investments; and the emigration of almost everything of the country's leaders 'prescriptive treatment with beetroot instead of antiretroviral drugs, and other "arts" of the ignorant and increasingly corrupt upper echelon.

Noting the outstanding success of the country's large Indian community, descendants of slaves on the sugar plantations of Natal, who managed in a very short historical period, even under apartheid and despite its discriminatory restrictions, to climb up the social ladder and occupy high professional niches next to whites, the author does not really believe in the ability of Africans to fully replace whites in science and high technology, at least for the foreseeable future. Our colleague L. A. Demkina wrote about the" lack of preparation of the overwhelming majority of African society for full participation and entry into modern society (economy, politics, social sphere) and the subsequent gradual slide of South Africa into underdevelopment in the post-apartheid period " back in 2006 in her work "Some aspects of the socio-economic development of South African Society after 1994."(Yu. S. Skubko repeatedly quotes it). Whether to blame here on colonialism and racism, or on the fact that at the time of colonization, the Africans were still at a very low stage of development (primitive communal system, the Indians still had feudalism), or something else, I can not undertake to judge. But I think that this is a reality that it would be foolish to ignore.

It is interesting to note that the author of the monograph and its executive editor give directly opposite assessments of the current socio-political environment for the development of science. L. L. Fituni writes that "for science in a country that is following the path of modernization, social "guarantor factors" implemented in the institutions of a successfully developing modern society are no less important than financial support societies, including modernized political institutions... It seems that the existing approaches of the ANC government to the long-term development of science in the interests of modernizing South African society, including expanding opportunities for black scientists in South Africa, are precisely focused on solving the tasks mentioned above" (p. 12) In my opinion, the fact that they are "focused", and this is reflected in government documents, is indisputable However, practice is increasingly demonstrating the immersion in underdevelopment.

Yu. S. Skubko speaks in detail about the degradation of public and state institutions, the increasing irresponsibility and incompetence of their policies, including in relation to the sphere under consideration (p. 14, 19, 122). However, L. L. Fituni himself recognizes the decline in living standards and the" failure to enter the third world " among whites, but not for black people. Take everything-

It is clear that among the hundreds of thousands of people killed (and if we talk about the millions robbed, maimed, raped and infected with AIDS) during the criminal lawlessness that swept the country in the post - apartheid period, only about a quarter of whites, and the rest also hardly got better.

Some general assessments and conclusions of the monograph are well illustrated in the Appendix section ("Degradation of a number of areas of the largest South African cities" - from the travel information site www.allexplore.com), which colorfully describes the state to which a considerable part of the country's recently magnificent cities have been brought today (pp. 125-126).

Previous unfair and discriminatory restrictions on movement and residence were lifted. Everyone felt bad.

Here you can see that the process of invasion of the "third world", albeit not so fast and clearly, is going on in Europe, America, and Russia, where in Moscow, for example, almost most of the crimes are committed by immigrants from the Asian republics of the former USSR. It is no coincidence that, according to recent opinion polls, the right-wing National Front, which proposes to expel Arabs and Africans who "light up in the suburbs" from the country, may win the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in France by a large margin.

In addition to criticism, Yu. S. Skubko also has constructive suggestions: "It seems that in the long-term interests of the country, it would be necessary to redirect the forces and resources of the South African state from "large-scale strengthening of black economic power" by introducing increasingly discriminatory racial quotas and artificially "feeding" a new class of black capitalists to really necessary reforms and practical measures for society.". For example, such as ensuring universal, free and high-quality education at all levels, universal health and social insurance, basic law and order, and the safety of life for people of all races. This would result in a real improvement in the situation of the poor majority of the country's population, as well as positive changes in its economic, scientific and technological development" (p.123).

However, the feasibility of these proposals is questionable, because even if we ignore internal obstacles and take a broader international context, the ANC's rise to power coincided with the collapse of the bloc confrontation and the establishment of a new class of global owners and managers standing above the traditional world. Caught in the field of global neoliberal monopolism, state management systems are being reborn, and the interests of nation-states and the urgent needs of their populations are increasingly ignored. But this is a separate topic.

The topic of parallels and comparisons with Russia is constantly present in Yu. S. Skubko's research. There are many similarities at the current stage of development, but some comparisons are clearly not in favor of our country. So, in South Africa there is a fairly powerful, and industrial, rather than comprador-parasitic, private business, and only about a third of South African companies" roll back " to officials when receiving government contracts, which is only a dream in Russia (although the level of corruption in South Africa is also growing rapidly).

In conclusion, the author expresses restrained optimism (they say, it can get worse): "South Africa has quite good groundwork in the development of bio-, nano - and information and communication technologies that form the core of the new technological order, and despite all the growing negativity, South Africa has still not lost certain opportunities for innovative development... the degradation and corruption of the power apparatus here have not reached the total stage, as in many African countries and some other places, when no successful modernization is possible at all without radical social reconstruction... Much more depends on the political will of the country's leadership" (p.123).

The world is entering a new era of great changes, and the most unexpected scenarios have become possible (an"explosion" in North Africa and the Arab East). The BRICS group with the participation of South Africa and Russia can remain just another club of meetings that claims to be important, or maybe, say, with the collapse of the financial pyramid of the dollar, it can become the center of crystallization of the world's gold, platinum, and diamond pools that support the new system of international settlements, and so on.

In general, I would like to envy the next and younger generations of social scientists in a good way: they have so much to rethink in the rapidly changing geopolitical picture of the world, to destroy mossy, and sometimes relatively new historical myths that are now afraid to touch. Otherwise, we'll all be forever in debt to u

Somali pirates freeing themselves from the legacy of colonialism, like the Russians in the Baltic States-from a small but proud local apartheid, like the white population of the former reactionary racist South Africa-from "progressive" black racists...

Among the shortcomings of the work, we can mention some haste and carelessness in writing individual sections of the book (somewhere the text is artistically polished, but sometimes there is a pile of "multi-story" sentences), it does not do without repetitions, sometimes, however, with the development of the ideas presented. All this does not detract, however, from the noted serious advantages of the monograph.

In conclusion, I will say that you can agree or disagree with the author of the monograph on certain issues, but in any case, the book is exciting because, as L. L. Fituni correctly noted in the Preface, "from the first to the last page, these are notes of a caring person."

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