It has been 14 years since my employers persuaded me to become a desk-bound pen-pusher. This spelt an end to my career as a reporter, which I had thoroughly enjoyed, save for the all-too-frequent occasions when I would arrive for a government-organised event billed to start at a specific time, only for the main speaker to rock up anything up to two hours later. If I were the activist type, South African would have had a #TardinessMustFall campaign long before our youngsters, gatvol with the unrelenting rise in the cost of higher education, embarked on the #FeesMustFall push a few years back. The authorities capitulated when, as the last major policy move of his Presidency, Jacob Zuma proclaimed free university education for select categories of students in December 2017.

The lack of punctuality by our Ministers and civil servants fits in with the concept of African time – the perceived cultural tendency in parts of Africa and the Caribbean towards time, which results in tardiness in meeting appointments, et cetera.

Horrible time keeping is not a South African phenomenon only – it afflicts many other parts of the continent as well. If media reports are anything to go by, former Benin President Mathieu Kerekou would make participants wait for him to open international conferences for up to eight hours. To lessen the frustration, he would lay on traditional musicians and dancers.

Retired Ghanaian politician Elizabeth Ohene succinctly describes how the problem manifests in her native country in a piece published in the BBC’s Africa Focus magazine earlier this month: “I know how entrenched this is in our attitudes because, when I was a Minister of State, I would regularly arrive at functions at the scheduled time and find that nobody was expecting me to have arrived on time.”

African politicians must thank their lucky stars they were not born in Japan, where there are often consequences for failing to keep time. Last month, the country’s Olympics Minister, Yoshitaka Sakurada, was forced to publicly apologise for arriving at a Parliamentary meeting – wait for it – three minutes late. Opposition MPs felt so slighted that they boycotted the proceedings for five hours.

For those who believe there should be no hurry in Africa, the behaviour of the Japanese opposition MPs was totally uncalled for. But Japan is a punctual society. If your train runs late, the rail operator will give you an official excuse slip to show to your boss.

And, in May last year, a rail company in that country had to apologise when a train left a station seconds early for the second time in seven months. The first incident occurred in November 2017, when the train left 20 second early, while departure in the May 2018 incident was 25 seconds premature, which, to unimpressed passengers, was clear evidence of slipping standards.

The poor train driver explained that he thought his train was scheduled to leave at 07:11 instead of 07:12. After closing the doors one minute early, he realised his mistake, but, when he could not spot any passengers on the platform, decided to go ahead and leave early. That explanation didn’t wash, as it turned out there were still people hoping to get on board.

There are economic and other dividends to be reaped from the all-import cultural trait of punctuality, which African govern- ments must do their damnedest to nurture. According to a study conducted using cross-country regression analysis and published in the Journal of Social Science Studies in 2014, a lack of punctuality has a negative effect on economic development and on other important economic performance variables, including innovation, competitiveness and effective State functioning.

The study concluded with this warning: “Countries that value a slow pace [and] a leisurely lifestyle need to be aware of the real possibility that keeping this culture characteristic (in and of itself desirable) may slow their rate of economic development or reduce their chances of sustained development or even [hamper] their long-term development.”

Little wonder the Japanese are light-years ahead of many countries in terms of development and innovation.