South Africa and Guyana

An economist pointed out a recent article- Oct 2012 - in The Economist magazine about South Africa rife with parallels to Guyana:
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21564829-it-has-made-progress-becoming-full-democracy-1994-failure-leadership-means
http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2012/10/week-print-0#comments

The headline seemed to confirm this observation:

It has made progress since becoming a full democracy in 1994. But a failure of leadership means that in many ways, South Africa is now going backwards.

and seeing as Guyana regarded the restoration of democracy as 1992 it was eerily in the same time-frame.

Naomi Klein in her book 'The Shock Doctrine' alluded to a beaten Mandela touted as a hero worldwide, out of touch with the reality in 1994 and who tamely allowed Mbeke to promote thinly-disguised right-wing policies to basically chuck The Freedon Charter out of the window - she describes very well the heady sensation of the nouveau-economists signing away ignorantly the rights of the country's people and creating a new black elite.  Here the parallels to Guyana become frightening - a breakdown in Law and Order, a wrecked education system unable to produce graduates needed for the new economy- presumably cronyism being the order of the day, a president who ' He came to power promising to tackle unemployment and corruption, but has accomplished little. He owes so much to South Africa’s vested interests that it is difficult to imagine him embarking upon radical reform. If he is simply re-elected without promising anything new,'  (This would definitely apply to the nouveau post-Jagan PPP!)

sigh - the list can go on - maybe all unhappy countries are alike in many ways(apologies to Tolstoy)-- the Multi-nationals and other countries contributing to supporting the exploitation of the country and people, will reap the negative outcomes in nastier ways of destruction of the environment, Public Health issues and inundation by migrating peoples....