Perverting social capital as people

Recently, a friend told me a story about how she was driving when she saw an Immigration officer walking by the street.

She told me about how her immediate instinct was to offer the lady officer a ride, not because she didn’t want her to walk, but because she never knew when she might need the help of an
Immigration officer. As a human society, the establishment of relationships are almost inevitable and for that matter, we are constantly encouraged to network and meet people, all riding on the notion that they might be able to help us out one day when we need it.

Those common practices we have termed “Protocol”, ”Links” and “Networks” or as we informally refer to it as “who you know” is just Social Capital.

What is Social Capital?

According to the Oxford dictionary, Social Capital refers to the networks of relationships among people who live and work in a particular society that enable the society to exist and be successful.

One would assume that with the definition stated above, networks would be used in a manner that derives development and brings about progress in society, like commonly practised in the West.

In established democracies like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and France, among others, social capital is a vehicle to drive progress, economic growth and social development.

Through acts like lobbying, people in these western countries are able to get their representatives, politicians and higher ups to deliver infrastructure among others for the benefit of society.

However, on this side of the Atlantic, we typically establish social capital and networks because we anticipate that we might need a favour sometime in the future.

Granted, it is fulfilling to know you have a contact that can make life easier in certain regards when the need arises — after all, they do say “everyone needs an advantage in life.”

Ordinarily, this is not a crime nor is it wrong, but in our part of the world, this practice of “who you know” has, most often than not, led to society having round pegs in square holes.

This is because many times, we end up having people in positions they may not be suited for, which has, in one way or the other, impeded our national development agenda.

We want to develop as a nation, yet a simple “tell them I sent you” from the right person is more powerful than a First Class Upper certificate.

Similarly, people in this part of the world also establish social capital so they can get away with doing the wrong things.

Just because they know the right people, by the press of a button, they would be on their merry ways even when they have committed offences.

Therefore, these links, networks and relationships, which ideally should have been established to ensure we thrived as a society, may have rather contributed to our downfall as a people.

We have normalised this concept so much that it has become a fundamental aspect of our everyday lives.

We have bought into the idea so much that we are now at a point where you must have a link in almost every facet of life to be able to do anything, thereby making it a basic necessity.

There is therefore the need for us, as a people, to take a critical look at our relationships and how we can leverage them for the betterment of society.

writer’s email: ddotse18@gmail.com