PALI LEHOHLA |Lehohla Ledger diagnostic exposes structural flaws in past scenario planning

The mirror we put before ourselves in 2006 through ‘The future we chose’ government scenarios is the Lehohla Ledger. It allows us to see as we look back today. The subsequent years and decades of action to that scenario represent what I title “ The Arithmetic of Choice: A FBGK Critique and Advisory on South Africa Scenarios 2025”.

To do this I have applied a diagnostic framework based on the Fisher-Bayes-Gauss-Kriging (FBGK) actuation method that I derived through the Lehohla Ledger diagnostic. I directly applied this method to the development question that is harassing South Africa today.

It would be dishonourable if I would not invoke the guiding authority for course correction. Deep within ourselves rests the philosophy of Morena Mohlomi and the statecraft of Morena Moshoeshoe I.

In interrogating the target instrument which is South Africa Scenarios 2025: The future we chose? (The Presidency, 2008) I apply these new instruments of power that I call the FBGK actuation method.

The statistical techniques of Fisher, Bayes, Gauss and Krig are not new as individual tools of interrogation, what is new is to bring all four under one roof using the 2,752 instruments of the Lehohla Ledger and activate these to reveal essence of an economic cultural geography approach as an essential core to development.

1. Fisher information audit: exposing the blind spots of the 2008 scenarios

Applying Fisher information theory to the 24 defining variables of the 2008 scenario document reveals a fundamental structural deficiency: low information density regarding spatial micro-dynamics.

The 2008 document operated on a flawed Bayesian prior probability: that economic growth and broad-based scorecards would naturally converge toward “the many mansions” (shared prosperity).

3. Gaussian and Kriging spatial interpolation: mapping the dual reality

The 2008 scenarios assumed a smooth Gaussian distribution of social progress. Spatial statistics prove this assumption is false.

4. Advisory going forward: the leadership principles of Mohlomi and Moshoeshoe Mafisa

To chart a true course toward 2030 and beyond, leadership must abandon the false choices of 2008 and adopt the ethical and structural framework of the successor sages, rooted in African statecraft:

The 2,752 instruments of the Lehohla Ledger constitute a district development model because they integrate culture, geography and cash and translate these to cultural economic geography instruments of transformation of the minds of Andrés Rodríguez-Pose.

Apartheid was constructed through a deliberate predatory form of cultural-economic-geography. Our archaic and neoliberal instruments of power devoid of culture, economics and geography are sorely and hopelessly incapable of understanding the status quo, let alone changing it. They can only perpetuate and accelerate it.