Harold Bloom died this week. He was perhaps the most well-known chronicler of the Western Canon over the past 50 years. His output was truly prodigious and according to his New York Times (NYT) obituary he was “the prodigious literary critic who championed and defended the Western canon in an outpouring of influential books that appeared not only on college syllabuses but also — unusual for an academic — on best-seller lists”. Sam Tanenhaus said of Bloom, “He is, by any reckoning, one of the most stimulating literary presences of the last half-century — and the most protean, a singular breed of scholar-teacher-critic-prose-poet-pamphleteer.”
He wrote two of my favorite books which detailed both The Western Canon and his love for Shakespeare. The Western Canon, published in 1994, was a survey of the major literary works of Europe and the Americas since the 14th century and focused on 26 works of the Western canon. For myself it was an eye-opening journey through the some of the greatest authors over the past 800 years. The Boston Globe summed it up the best from my perspective, when they wrote, “This book is terribly important — if you believe that literature itself is important, quite noble — if you believe that ‘nobility’ is still a viable concept in intellectual life.” Perhaps the most fun resource was Bloom’s appendix where, according to a blog post on Open Culture, he divided the “Western Canon into four “ages” or periods: The Theocratic Age (2000 BCE-1321 CE); The Aristocratic Age (1321-1832); The Democratic Age: 1832-1900); and The Chaotic Age (20th Century).”
The second book was Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human. The NYT review of the book when it was published in 1999 said that Bloom “takes as a given that “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” is a secular scripture from which we derive much of our language, our psychology and our mythology. He is interested in illuminating why this is so, and his bold argument in “Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human” is that Shakespeare remains so popular and his most memorable characters feel so real because through them Shakespeare invented something that hadn’t existed before. Bloom defines this as “personality,” inwardness, what it means to be human. In so doing, Bloom adds, Shakespeare invented us as well.” For me, it was one of the best single volume reviews of the Bard.
Bloom had many controversial opinions as a literary critic but for me, those did not detract from the greatness of these works. Bloom also emphasized individual greatness within an overall Canon. I thought about Bloom and these two works when I read an article in the Financial Times (FT) by Tom Wilson, entitled “Graft under Jacob Zuma cost South Africa $34bn, says Ramaphosa”. Wilson reported on a speech the current South African President gave at the FT Africa Summit in London on Monday.
In his speech, Ramaphosa “sought to reassure investors that sweeping reforms would revive the economy and bring perpetrators to account”. However, he “warned that the impact of years of graft under Mr Zuma, his predecessor, was even greater than previously thought.” Wilson quoted the South African President, “It was much bigger than I think most people could ever have imagined. “[The cost] runs way beyond, in my view, more than 500 billion. Some people have even suggested that it could be a trillion rand.””
This amount is far beyond what had been previously estimated. It points a total state capture culture of the former President Zuma and his main cronies, the Gupta Brothers, in stealing the country blind. The invidiousness of this was further acerbated by the lack of tax revenue from the purloined businesses and state-owned enterprises. Added to this was the lack of foreign investment because of this level of corruption. As Wilson noted, “The patterns of corruption that developed under the former president, widely described as “state-capture”, brought critical institutions including the revenue service and the state power monopoly Eskom, to the brink of collapse.”
The current President is trying to remedy the corruption of his predecessor, through legal process and business outreach. In his speech he committed that “those responsible would now be held to account, Mr Ramaphosa told the audience of investors, business leaders and senior African politicians. “I am more confident than I have been in the past that our prosecuting agents, in putting together everything they need to do, will definitely be going after those who are complicit in criminal activity,” he said. “Be they in the country or outside of the country, they will follow them up.”” He added, ““In the last year and a few months, we’ve made tremendous progress in turning our country around,” Mr Ramaphosa said. “We have stemmed that bleeding [and] we are now ready to open a new chapter.””
The designation of the Gupta Brothers were placed on the sanctioned parties list. US companies cannot do business with them going forward. The UK may move to impose its own sanctions on the Gupta Brothers. Wilson said, “The Guptas were “members of a significant corruption network” that diverted government resources to their businesses, the US government said.” The noose is tightening on the Guptas and with the diligent work of various national anti-corruption enforcement agencies and investigators, hopefully one day they will be brought to justice.
Wilson wrote, “Though the economic challenges facing the country are stark, the president wants to draw a line under the past.” Ramaphosa is also working on a business response, in addition to the legal response of the massive corruption. This is because Moody’s, the only leading rating company who has maintained the country’s credit rating at investment grade but is expected to evaluate that status this month. He said, “We are going to be making announcements of how we are going to deal with that debt in a few days,” he said, adding that “observers, including the rating agency Moody’s, would be “happy” with the changes.”
As the government seeks to raise revenues and steady the economy, Wilson also expects it “to invite new investment into other struggling state-owned enterprises, including South African Airways. Mr Ramaphosa said the government was already in discussion with “interested parties” about becoming a strategic equity partner in the airline.”
How does the South African story tie into Bloom? Just as Bloom can be read for the individual greatest of each book, he told a much broader and, indeed, universal story. The South African story is but one story on the invidiousness of international corruption. The $34bn the country lost pales beside the amount the United Nations (UN) estimates that bribery and corruption costs on an annual worldwide basis; that of $3 trillion. It is up to each and other compliance professional to help fight this scourge.
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