Gifted African thinker reminds us the privileged always fight change

By Alec Hogg

The most bizarre media campaign of the past year was surely Business Day's successful retention of an archaic law on compulsory financial advertising in newspapers. After a couple years' notice, the JSE finally passed a resolution making these ads optional rather than compulsory. After Business Day got 100 or so luminaries to write letters of objection, the JSE's ruling was overturned.

In the newspaper's defence, beneficiaries of the status quo have a long history of hypocritical defence of their privilege. A lauded book by African innovation guru Calestous Juma offers numerous examples: The Horse Association of America's long battle against tractors; a dairy industry which kept margarine out of the circulation for decades; and the US musicians' trade unions which, for a time, had music banned on radio.

Topping those was the outlawing of coffee for two centuries in parts of Europe and the Middle East because of its "intoxicating" qualities. And the Islamic world's four century long ban on printing. In both cases, the real motive was to suppresses free sharing of thoughts – by attacking the social phenomenon of mushrooming coffee shops; and mass cheaply-produced pamphlets.

The gifted Juma, a Harvard Professor who rose from poverty in Western Kenya to become one of the world's foremost thinkers in his field, succumbed to cancer last week. He was 64. His last book, Innovation and its Enemies, was published earlier this year. It's on my Christmas list.