Blog #3 - How Linux can help or hurt the oppressed people of South Africa's post-apartheid neo-liberal government

Back on February 4^th, Drs. Neville Cote & Ann-Marie McKudu, of the University of Texas at Austin and Duke University respectively, came to SUNY Purchase under the auspices of Professor McGlotten as part of the African Diaspora Lecture Series to give a speech on how the Neo-Liberal governmental and economic policies of South Africa are allowing people on the outskirts of society to be shortchanged due to lack of assistance in healthcare and job opportunity issues. This poor relationship between the less fortunate on the outskirts of South Africa’s major cities and the gov’t that rules over them yet does not provide them with their basic needs for health, survival, & prospects for reproduction is contributing to what Profs. Cote & McKudu called “social death” on the outskirts of South African society in their lecture. What could possibly help the poor, destitute people? After reading chapter 10 of Ted Friedman’s book Electric Dreams, which is called “Linux & Utopia,” I was inspired to say that the implementation of the Linux computer operating system in educational settings for these poor people in S. Africa may be the key to allowing them to at least have a fighting chance (if their government allows it) at setting up businesses and to learning enough in school to get a higher education since Linux’s “open source” approach to software production & distribution makes the operating system free to use & modify under the GNU General Public License (GPL) (Friedman, p.202). Lots of third-world countries have already started using the free OS to provide computers to schools, libraries and government agencies (Friedman, p. 204), so why should South Africa’s outcasts not be allowed the same opportunity?

South Africa, in the sense of its constitution, has proven to be a very progressive country because of its promotion of diversity and efforts to diversify all of the country, according to Wikipedia. This can be seen in the country’s main philosophy, ubuntu , which is the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity (and is itself the name of a Linux distribution of software!), and in its motto “IIxara IIke,” which means “Unity in Diversity.” (from Wikipedia). It does not discriminate against people in its inclusion in its representative government and is one of only five countries in the world, along with Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Spain to allow same-sex marriage. This is in contrast to the apartheid government that lasted from 1948 until 1994 due to British and Dutch colonialism that had been there since the founding of the colony in the times of the Dutch East India company, where there was racial discrimination against the colonist minority and the oppressed indigenous peoples of South Africa.

Now, however, despite the progressive constitution of South Africa, the neo-liberal philosophy used in South Africa’s economy, which focuses on liberalization of trade, deregulation of businesses and privatization of state enterprises, has allowed for the exact oppressed people on the outskirts of S. African society to go without health care and other basic needs, and this is leading to the large rates of murder and rape that make S. Africa one of the most crime-ridden contries in the world (number 2 according to the U.N.) (from Wikipedia).

The open philosophy of Linux, then, could be helpful in providing the means for helping people gain access to technology, which is the key in today’s modern information economy to being able to make the money necessary to survive in the neo-liberal environment of S. Africa. Linux is a contrast for capitalism in that it does not provide for strict laws governing over intellectual property that require people to spend large amounts of money in order to be able to use other people’s ideas in their work, like Microsoft forcing its users to pay high premiums for their software. Eric Raymond and Richard Stallman, have opposing views on how Linux affects the economy. Both are important figures in the development of Linux, as Stallman helped to create the GNU operating system that preceded Linux (Friedman p.206), and Raymond wrote works such as “the Cathedral and the Bazaar,” which explained how Linux represents the next stage of capitalism. Raymond, however, promotes Linux as “the triumph of the free market,” while Stallman believes in the main philosophy of “copyleft,” where software programmers have complete freedom to edit and reproduce software released under the GNU general public license, a philosophy described by Microsoft representatives as “communism” (Friedman , p.203).

So, how should Linux and the open source philosophy help to affect change in South Africa? The philosophy of allowing the distribution of software for free will allow the poor, as said before, to have the means for education, starting a business and becoming more productive so they can have more social mobility to move from the status of criminals to civilians. If the philosophy of Eric Raymond is followed, however, the government could then abuse the privilege of having the poor be used as free labor, knowing how unregulated and privatized the neo-liberal system is, since Raymond believes that Linux is itself an extension of the free market. Stallman, on the other hand, could be more helpful to the people of the country but could cause unrest within the government as profits are severely hampered by the “copyleft” philosophy. Ultimately, the future is for South Africans to decide whether they can learn to take care of themselves in an open society, and the government can tolerate that prospect.