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+{"doc_id": "01db918879ac260641569f46a5662e90", "text": "An excellent credit score is one of the most priceless assets a potential home buyer can have. This tool has the power to secure favourable mortgage and refinancing rate, influencing everything from the size of the loan repayment to the interest rate on the home loan.\n“It is advisable that potential home buyers check their credit score before even starting to look for homes or applying for a home loan, as the banks will look into your financial history and the application will be declined if you have a low credit score. The important thing is that your accounts are up to date and that you have the ability to afford the bond,” said Craig Hutchison, CEO Engel & Völkers Southern Africa.\nSouth Africans are entitled to a free copy of their credit record every year.\n“Many South Africans are surprisingly unaware of the importance of a good credit profile, many do not know what a credit profile even is, and even if they do, they seldom check their own personal credit profile. Today many potential employers look at credit profile reports as a way to judge a person’s character and level of responsibility,” said Mellony Ramalho, group executive African Bank.\nYour credit score is typically a number from 0 to 999 and is calculated by using all the details on your credit profile. “It reflects a ‘score’ summary of all your financial decisions, it is often used by lenders, such as home loan and personal loan companies, to make accurate decisions on whether they should lend to you or not,” said Michael Bowren, CEO and founder Fincheck.\nOverall, a credit score measures the amount of potential risk the consumer is to the creditor.\nHow does a credit score work?\nThe higher your score the better your credit health will be, which will be an advantage when applying for a home loan, making it easier for you to borrow money at lower interest rates.\n“The lower the score, the higher the risk which then influences the outcome of the credit application,” advises Andile Fulane, CEO, Seed of Prosperity.\nBy managing your credit profile effectively, you can ensure your image and profile is viewed favorably by lenders or other organisations. A bad credit score would mean the exact opposite of this and result in almost no financial institution willing to offer you a home loan.\nHow do they calculate your credit score?\nYour credit score is calculated by a credit bureau based on your credit report. They consider how you pay your bills, how much debt you have and more importantly, how all of that compares to other credit active consumers.\nEach bureau has a different way of calculating your score and take into account different forms of information, including information their organization already holds on you, or your employment circumstances.\nYour credit score is only one part of your credit report although it is almost the single most important item on your credit report; the full report gives you some handy information. Your credit report is a combined summary of your financial background with an overview of your credit score, financial accounts, profile, and rating.\nWhat influences your credit score?\nAs you start transacting with various banks, retailers and other financial institutions like lenders, you start building a financial history. Your credit history will be determined by the amount of money you have borrowed in your life and how much of it you have diligently paid back on time.\nCredit score is affected by the following:\n- Missing payments or not paying on time, even if you make double payment the following month the score will affect your credit history. “While adverse legal information is cleared as soon as the account is settled, the negative repayment history however remains for a couple years,” said Ramalho.\n- Too much debt – how much you owe and how much of your available credit you’re using – it is advisable to try to keep the use of your current credit facilities to less than 35% of your limit.\n- Negative information like a court judgment taken against a consumer’s name (commonly known as blacklisting).\n- Length of credit history.\n- Account application and enquiry activity – within a short period of time, how many account applications the consumer submitted and how many new accounts you opened.\nMy credit score is lower than I expected. Why is this?\nFincheck provide some reasons:\n- A credit history of fewer than 6 years, which is the time frame used to calculate your total credit score.\n- Missed or late payments over the last 6 years.\n- Holding very few credit accounts means there will be less credit history available on your profile.\n- Court judgments or record of insolvency.\n- Having a lot of unused credit available could lead to a large balance of debt if you decided to use it all at once.\n- Balances on your accounts that are very close to the credit limit indicate that you rely on credit to get through each month.\nWhy improve your credit score?\nCredit providers measure their risk in taking you on as a client before they approve or decline your application for credit, so improving your credit score increases the chances of being granted credit on favorable terms.\nHow to improve your credit score\n- Regularly checking your credit report to confirm all the details are correct.\n- Making sure you make payments on any outstanding credit accounts on the due date. (Should you have difficulty in making your payments, you should contact your credit provider to agree on a payment plan, or to reduce your regular payments to an amount that you can afford to pay).\n- Consider setting up regular automated payments rather than doing manual payments.\n- If you have too many old, unused credit accounts, consider closing them.\n- If you are almost reaching your credit limit on one or more accounts, try and reduce your balance. Outstanding balances mean you have a lot of outstanding debt in your name.\nHow long does it take to improve your credit score?\nIt depends on how long it will take to improve areas that need attention and maintain them, real improvement will start showing after three months of consistency, as you show progress your credit score will automatically get updated.\nIf you have had a couple bad experiences with your credit health, it is helpful to know that, credit inquiries stay on your credit report for up to two years, whereas more serious activities that incur namely late payments, lawsuits, bankruptcy and tax liens will stay on your credit record for up to ten years.\nHow to build up a credit score if you don’t have debt\nUnfortunately you won’t have a credit score if you don’t have any debt because your credit score is calculated and based on your credit habits. This doesn’t mean your financial health is bad, there’s just simply not enough data to give you a credit score.\nThis can be bad news if you’re looking for a home loan though, so your first steps will be to apply for financial products where you can start building a credit record.\nThese can include:\n- Credit card\n- Vehicle finance\n- Phone contract\n- Clothing accounts\nConsequences of a bad credit score\nNot paying your account on time or at all which can result in you not getting further or desired credit when needed.\nLenders will see you as a high risk meaning that should they decide to take on that risk, they will charge high interest rates compared to someone with a good credit score.\nDepending on what industry you are in – some industries such as banking – check a potential employee’s credit report and score. They consider a bad credit score as someone who is not trustworthy to work in a banking environment.\nConsequences of not checking one’s credit score\nIt is advisable for a consumer to check their credit report every 3 to 6 months. Statistics show that only 3% of the 24 million credit active South Africans have seen and understood their credit report.\nThis comes as a threat of potential identity theft where someone can use a consumer’s ID to clone their profile and open lines of credit. A credit report contains so much personal information including addresses, phone numbers and employment that the leak of such information poses a big risk of fraud to the individual.\nHow a credit score affects you when applying for a home loan\nWhen it comes to taking out forms of credit like a home loan, your credit score plays a vital role in your eligibility for a home loan, however it’s not the only factor to affect your application, your debt-to-income ratio will also play a big role.\nWhat score do you need to qualify for a home loan?\nThere’s no specific score which will qualify you, if you follow the step to build a healthy credit score and maintain a healthy debt-to-income ratio, lenders will see you as eligible for things like home loans. Most lenders prefer to lend to an individual whose debt is less than 36% of their gross income.\nThis, along with healthy credit habits that keep your score in the ranges above 650 will put you in a good position to secure a home loan.\nIf you are declined for a home loan, what should you do and when do you apply again?\nIt’s important to know that if you apply for any hard forms of credit like a personal loan, credit card or home loan, you will get a hard inquiry against your credit report, too many of these are a red flag to lenders.\nIf you have had an unsuccessful home loan application, take a step back and start improving your credit health. There’s no fixed time frame for this, it will take as long as you take to form healthier credit habits, pay back debt and wait for that very happy green indicator on your credit report.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/227249/how-to-calculate-you-credit-score-and-how-to-improve-it/"}

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+{"doc_id": "01e910acd797ca73f0ca265c0a976ef4", "text": "MPs call for investigation into “delays by SASSA” in appointing the Post Office. By Barbara Maregele for GROUNDUP.\nFirst published by GroundUp\nBy Friday 17 November, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) will have signed a contract with the SA Post Office (SAPO) for the payment of over 17 million grants. The “hybrid model” will include SASSA, SAPO, Home Affairs and the State Security Agency.\nJeff Radebe, minister in the Presidency and chairperson of the Interministerial Committee on Comprehensive Social Security, made the announcement at a joint meeting with Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) and the Portfolio Committee on Social Development on Wednesday.\nNegotiations between Sassa and SAPO deadlocked last week when the Post Office was only awarded one of the four services needed to pay social grants. Last Wednesday, MPs instructed National Treasury to intervene and mediate between the two state entities.\nOn Wednesday, Radebe told MPs that by 17 November, they would have a better understanding of the costs, technical requirements and other details. He said a dedicated team of representatives from SASSA and the Post Office would report to the committee weekly and “commit resources for the execution of the project”.\nHe said his committee had noted “the public anxiety” that had arisen as a result of the delay in signing a new contract for the payment of social grants.\n“We are working around the clock on this issue. We want to ensure that by next Friday, all of the cooperation agreements will be signed.” The State Security Agency would “play a role with cybersecurity,” he said.\n“Additional capacity will be determined next week but we intend to meet other parties as well. We will leave no stone unturned on this project but give us time to ensure that all details of the plan are clear,” he said.\nMost MPs in the meeting welcomed the announcement, calling it “a light in a long tunnel”. MPs also clapped and cheered as Scopa chairperson Themba Godi announced that the Hawks were present.\n“Where are they [the Hawks] sitting because we want to know who was engineering this delay? Whoever was dealing with the specifications in SASSA, is the person who wants to hold the state to ransom? This is crime,” said EFF MP Ntombovuyo Mente.\nDA MP Tim Brauteseth said that the intervention was “a victory for oversight”. He said that SASSA “created this crisis” and should not have excluded SAPO. “I just hope the Minister will reflect on the errors of her ways. I also want to know when we will start getting details of the cost for this hybrid model?” he said. To which Radebe responded: “We will know the cost and everything else needed by Friday.”\nIFP MP Mkhuleko Hlengwa said he remained sceptical until the contracts were signed. “You are dealing with people who lack the commitment and political will to get this done.”\nReferring to a letter by Treasury to the acting CEO of SASSA, which was handed out to MPs before the meeting, Hlengwa said, “This letter needs to be unpacked. We are dealing with a criminal element here which was deliberately designed to derail the process. We need to get Treasury to explain this letter.”\nIn the letter, Dondo Mogajane, Treasury’s Director-General, states that: Sassa should not have disqualified SAPO on the three other services; the specification developed by SASSA was biased; and SASSA took more than 60 days to evaluate and adjudicate one proposal. Treasury also suggested that SASSA “make arrangements with a clearing and settlement bank” to use the national payment infrastructure to assist with distributing grants.\n“We hope that there will be mutual respect between SASSA and SAPO,” said DA MP David Ross.\nGodi asked Radebe and the officials responsible for “getting things done” to return to Parliament on Tuesday, 21 November to update MPs. DM\nPhoto: Minister Jeff Radebe (GCIS)", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-08-groundup-post-office-to-pay-social-grants-after-agreement-reached-with-sassa/"}

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+{"doc_id": "023c9b76bea76300028dced0528a9273", "text": "The new Mining Charter was destined to end up in court. On Monday, the Chamber of Mines filed papers that tore into the controversial plan. GREG NICOLSON looks at the founding affidavit seeking to interdict the plans.\nThere’s a rare line in the court papers. “The Chamber supports the values expressed here,” writes the Chamber of Mine’s senior executive of public affairs and transformation Tebello Chabana. He was talking about the Mining Charter’s provisions on housing and living conditions. It’s one of the only points of agreement and Chabana still found issue – “but this topic is already regulated by the Housing and Living Condition Standard developed by the Minister”.\nIn court papers filed on Monday seeking an urgent interdict on the implementation of the third revision of the Mining Charter, announced by Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane recently, the Chamber of Mines tears through the new provisions on transformation in the mining industry. The Chamber savaged the new charter, claiming it was illegal and could destroy South Africa’s mining industry while actually undermining transformation attempts.\nThe 274-page founding affidavit submitted to the North Gauteng High Court starts with Chabana’s affidavit. “The publication of the 2017 Charter had, and continues to have, a disastrous effect on the mining industry as a whole as well as investors and employees of that industry,” he said, noting how over R50 billion was wiped off mining stocks and rating agency Moody’s calling it a “credit negative”. “In short, the publication of the 2017 Charter has been an unmitigated disaster, both for the mining industry as a whole and for South Africa.”\nThe Chamber, which by value represents 90% of South African mining companies, did not attend Zwane’s 15 June launch of the Charter and claimed it was released without appropriate consultation. Zwane and his supporters claim the new provisions are a necessary instrument to transform the economy. The Chamber has asked the court for an urgent interdict pending a judicial overview of the document.\n“In summary, the 2017 Charter represents a most egregious case of regulatory overreach,” says Chabana. “It amounts to law-making without going through the legislative process.” He claimed Zwane had introduced new provisions that go against the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) and, in the case of a 1% tax imposed on foreign-owned companies, attempts to usurp the Treasury and Parliament’s powers.\nChabana said “every commentator – be it economists, ratings agencies, share analysts or mining lawyers – has concluded that the implementation of the 2017 Charter will be massively detrimental to the mining industry”.\nThe Mining Charter says companies must be 30% black owned, up from the previous target of 26%. Chabana says the Chamber supports transformation but the new provisions are confusing and contradictory to core provisions of the MPRDA’s transformation goals.\nOn ownership, he says that Zwane has no legal right to impose new regulations on existing mining right holders and threaten their licences. The Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) and Chamber have long disputed issues of “once empowered, always empowered” rules. The Chamber believes companies that have previously reached empowerment targets shouldn’t be repeatedly required to “top-up” black ownership if their BEE partners sell their shares. The DMR is adamant companies should continually be required to reach black ownership targets, regardless of what previous deals may have been done.\nIn another court case, the Chamber is seeking a declaratory order on the matter, but Chabana also touches on it in his affidavit. He claimed the MPRDA doesn’t include anything requiring companies to “top up” and the new regulation will risk investment and jobs. “It confuses quotas with empowerment objectives. It also fails to have any regard to the economic consequences thereof. It is submitted that it is simply not sustainable for any business.” He said black shareholders needed to be able to cash-out on their investments for transformation to be successful and the continued top-up requirement would dilute shares and arbitrarily deprive non-black shareholders of their rights. It is “unconstitutional, otherwise unlawful and liable to be set aside”, he said.\nThe Chamber took issue with the one-year requirement to reach the 30% targets. It also criticised the requirement to fundamentally transform company boards. There was no transition period included in the Charter and it would take time to train black leaders.\nThe Chamber also attacks more specific aspects of the Charter. The revised document changes the aim of empowering “historically disadvantaged South Africans” to “black persons”, which includes naturalised citizens. The most famous naturalised citizens come from the Gupta family. Zwane has been implicated in trying to financially benefit the Guptas. “In other words, for reasons best known to himself, the minister, through the publication of the 2017 Charter, now seeks to benefit a category of persons who were never disadvantaged by unfair discrimination before the Constitution took effect.”\nThen there’s the issue of transport. The Charter makes provisions for black owners to transport their share of the mine’s minerals. Chabana says “the notion that a black person shareholder must trade, market and transport his/her/its proportionate share of the production of the company in which the shares are held is stupefying.” He claimed it discriminates against other shareholders, violates the Companies Act, and the role of shareholders versus management.\nRepeatedly, the Chamber attacked the poorly drafted document, which fails to clarify its goals. “It is simply impossible to understand what is meant by the phrase ‘Black Owned Companies with a minimum of 50%+1 vote female Black Person owned and controlled and/or 50%+1 vote Youth owned and controlled,’” said Chabana. Yet 5% of procurement is meant to go to the category.\nIn a statement Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane(MP) said he noted the actions taken by the Chamber of Mines.\n“It is our view that those who support this Mining Charter support our quest for transformation, and those who are in opposition to the Charter are in fact opposing the transformation objectives of Government, and we stand ready to defend the interests of South Africans in this regard,” Zwane said. “As with any legislation that is developed, it is virtually impossible to please all parties. It is unfortunate that the Chamber of Mines has chosen to take this route, but their decision is respected… We have confidence in the courts’ ability to act with diligence on this matter,” he concluded.\nThe new Charter has its supporters, particularly from President Jacob Zuma’s allies, but also a number of civil society groups have welcomed aspects that could promote transformation and improve conditions for communities and workers. Last week, Zuma said the Charter would lead to the necessary transformation in ownership and would not adversely impact the industry. The ANC Women’s League said it would rally to defend the Charter.\nIn its current form, however, the Mining Charter has a singular destiny. It’s going to be tied up in the courts, where the government has struggled when challenged recently. DM\nPhoto: Minister Mosebenzi Zwane visits Harmony Gold’s Doorknob Mine, 20 Oct 2015 (GCIS)", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-06-26-chamber-of-mines-mining-charter-is-illegal-unconstitutional-and-stupefying/"}

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+{"doc_id": "02e4e23b9a98747e36540f23e2606b37", "text": "For as long as South Africa has been around, it has tempted soothsayers, journalists - and, now, increasingly, scenario planners to give us a glimpse of what will happen. J. BROOKS SPECTOR takes a look at the work of the newest scenario planners - this time from the Institue for Security Studies.\nHistorically, back in the middle of the 19th century, the country’s most famous soothsayer and prophet, Nonquause, had predicted a redemptive future for her people (and the demise of the invaders who had been torturing her nation) if they could but accept her guidance and rid themselves of all their cattle and other possessions. Thousands, of course, did just that, but, like the predictions of most such oracles, sadly, things did not go precisely according to plan.\nVirtually every journalist since Winston Churchill who has visited South Africa has, after completing his time in country, written a volume that follows the trope: South Africa was fissured, angry society, posed on a knife edge or the lip of the volcano (depending on which metaphor they thought of first) and awaiting an explosion. This writer’s bookshelves hold many works of this type, some beautifully written with evocative, poetic moments, others dark and angry like the warnings of an Old Testament prophet.\nA subset of writers, novelists, rather than journalists, per se, have also been greatly tempted by the potential South Africa has presented to allow them to deliver severe apocalyptic warnings as well. Works like Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People, JM Coetzee’s The LIfe and TImes of Michael K and Waiting for the Barbarians, and Karel Schoeman’s Na die Geliefde Land – along with an earlier volume, historian Arthur Keppel-Jones’ When Smuts Goes, have delivered the dystopian warning with fervor as well. The purpose of such novels seems to have been a kind of secular warning in the manner of the secret writing interpreted by Daniel to the Babylonian king – just before the warning was implemented by the invading Medes and Persians.\nAnd there is now a growing legion of scenario planners as well. Something more rigorous than soothsayers inhaling mysterious gases from Delphi and uttering ambiguous guidance, scenario planners are akin to business and financial risk analysts or any other social scientist trying to take on board the relevant data and extract logical trends on the basis of the inputs – plus a hunch or two. Here again, South Africa has proved to be fertile ground. Chantell Ilbury and Clem Sunter have made a good living doing this for businesses, investors and others keen to know which way to jump – with their money – or their lives.\nIn theory, the methodology is deceptively simple. The scenario planner identifies the crucial make-or-break variables, seeks out key long term trend lines and then determines when one of those crucial variables has become a flashing red light, or what the Ilbury/Sunter team calls red flags. In theory, that is. The difficult parts are in identifying what constitutes a crucial variable, and what represents a long term trend line – as well as what equals the phase shift moment for those variables – or, put another way, which variables represent a societal canary in the coal mine. There is the little matter of having the right hunches about trends – which ones will continue without disruptive changes or sudden disjunctures.\nAlong the way, too, a few years ago, Dr Mamphela Ramphele, before she fell in and out of love with the Democratic Alliance, had helped organise and carry out the widely reported-on Dinokeng Scenarios project that had also tried to define South Africa’s possible future. Like almost every other planner, her scenario exercise saw three different possible futures – walking apart, walking behind and walking together.\nApart represented a drift towards a universe Thomas Hobbes might have recognised; walking behind pointed towards an increasingly authoritarian government that does all the allocations of resources and sets all the courses; while walking together was something rather more positive – a state where government, business, ordinary citizens and civil society all were party to the process of making decisions for the greater good. No points for guessing which one of the alternatives those preparing the Dinokeng scenarios were rooting for to come about.\nThere must be something magical about a triplet. One finds them as a central feature in most religions and they seem to resonate comfortably with advertisers as well. There is the trio of Judeo-Christian patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – as well as the old American commercial refrain – courtesy of Superman – of truth, justice and the American way. Or maybe things just rightly and naturally do fall along into three choices when it comes to people and their choices in life – even if the binary world – on or off, yes or no, black or white – operates the computers.\nAnd so it has been, too, with the most recent scenario exercise – this time provided from the Pretoria-based think tank, the Institute for Security Studies, entitled South African Futures 2030. In their study, released over the weekend, the ISS outlined three distinct choices for South Africa – Bafana Bafana, Madiba Magic – or a Nation Divided.\nYou have to hand it to ISS, they’ve figured out a very clever way to encapsulate the three choices – Bafana Bafana speaks to a nation – and a football team – that continues to perform well below its capacity, let alone the hopes of its fans. Madiba Magic obviously harks back to that increasingly mythic time when the country was seized with a sense of common purpose and made progress on many fronts. A Nation Divided, of course, is the great national nightmare come to life, as things truly fall apart and we’re heading back on the road to that nasty Thomas Hobbes country again and its war of all against all.\nThis scenario exercise is written by individuals who provide a nice potted history of scenaio planning in South Africa, as well as a good, tight survey of the nation’s current problems and possibilities. And the writers of this study pull very few punches – the current glide path, they believe, is the Bafana Bafana one – a South Africa punching well below its weight. As they argue: “This is essentially a forecast of ‘more of the same’. It is important to emphasise that South Africa is not doing badly compared with international standards. Bafana Bafana is simply the well-known story of a perennial underachiever, always playing in the second league when the potential for international championship success and flashes of brilliance are evident for all to see. ‘Mandela Magic’, on the other hand, is the story of a country with a clear economic and developmental vision, which it pursues across all sectors of society. In this scenario, Team South Africa play to a single game plan and are consistent in execution during every match, refining and harmonising their strategy as they go along. Changing the productive structures of South Africa’s economy is complex and challenging, however. Competition is stiff and the barriers to success are high.”\nBy contrast, A Nation Divided ” reflects a South Africa that steadily gathers speed downhill as factional politics and policy zigzagging open the door to populist policies. It is not one set of decisions or developments that might cause the former Rainbow Nation to spiral down to even worse levels of social violence, unemployment and poor performance. This is a story of the absent coach, no game plan and individual players who rely only on themselves, sometimes passing the ball, but only when absolutely necessary.”\nThe researchers for ISS who drew up this study are very clear as to where the current difficulties lie in getting out of the second division with the country’s current lackluster play. Specifically, they point to the well-known failures of the country’s educational system, despite the major resources devoted to it. South Africa spends more per capita on education than any other African nation besides Morocco, and a higher percentage of its GDP than either the Netherlands or Canada – but the output is weak and this can fatally compromise any efforts – regardless of political cohesion or national will – to up the country’s national game. As the study’s writers note:\n“South African state schools generally rank at the bottom of the pile when compared with education in other countries with schools in poor areas (therefore largely black) doing worst of all. The grade-12 pass rate has steadily improved year on year to a figure of 78,2 per cent for 2013, but this is not only due to improvements and stability in the system and comes with a dropout rate of 60 per cent from grades 1 to 12. In a process known as ‘culling’, weak pupils in grade 11 are dissuaded from continuing to grade 12. Meanwhile, about half a million learners who started in grade 1 failed to reach grade 12, despite efforts to reduce pass rates to 30 or 40 per cent in some subjects. Key subjects such as mathematics have been dumbed down to a choice between mathematical literacy (simple maths) and ‘normal’ maths. Even so, only 3 per cent of grade-9 pupils scored more than 50 per cent in maths, with a disappointing national average of 14 per cent in this key subject. Recent studies calculate that with a 50 per cent pass mark on all subjects, the actual matric pass rate for 2013 would be between 22 and 24 per cent.”\nThe ISS team has not been a bunch of Pollyanas. As they, themselves, calculate it, “Bafana Bafana is probably the most likely scenario to emerge, in the sense that the current disaffection with the ANC leadership may result in a steady decline in voter turnout, but, simultaneously, none of the established opposition parties are able to capitalise on this disgruntlement and none are able to galvanise South Africans into voting for them in sufficiently large numbers.”\nNaturally, too, the study’s creators offer recommendations which, ultimately, boil down to a case of what is to be done to avoid the pitfalls of a nation divided. As the authors argue “The NDP 2030 notes three first-order priorities and lists them in appropriate sequence: 1.Raise employment through faster economic growth; 2.Improve the quality of education, skill development and innovation; and 3.Build the capability of the state to play a developmental, transformative role.”\nThey go on to argue, “As the country heads for elections in 2014, there is much that the South African government can build upon, including the Treasury’s counter-cyclical budgets, the recent focus on investment in infrastructure, the effort to revitalise industry, measures to create an enabling environment for small and medium-sized business, success with encouraging tourism, broadening economic empowerment of the poor and dispossessed, and the move towards monitoring service delivery across departments.”\n“The promises and agreements made in the run-up to the 2014 elections, including the implementation of a clear growth path, will determine the future prosperity or poverty for many South Africans. South Africa’s current pathway, ‘Bafana Bafana’, partly reflects the lack of a systematic, determined implementation of a clear growth path. Despite this, ‘Bafana Bafana’ still brings steady growth in South Africa at rates well in excess of its European and North American trading partners, since the fundamental drivers of growth, such as a large demographic dividend, are all in South Africa’s favour. If, in accordance with the ‘Mandela Magic’ scenario, the government implements the NDP in a determined and focused manner, drawing upon elements of both IPAP and the NGP in the process, a very different future is possible – one that sees the economy expand significantly and, consequently,ushers in higher employment levels and better opportunities for many. On the other hand, in a ‘Nation Divided’, government discards the NDP and succumbs to populist policies as its focus is directed at the internal political battles within the TripartiteAlliance with attendant higher levels of unemployment and social turbulence in the longer term.”\nWhile no one should expect that the ISS’ new publication will wrench the country away from its current far less than optimal path, it could actually provide the kind of material needed to energise the current election campaign, helping provide a real set of ideas for discussion. At the minimum, it would help replace things like the astonishing statements heard last week that the country’s rising tide of civil protest is simply the final kicks of malcontents among the remaining 5% who have not yet gotten their ration of piped water or electrical reticulation. That addition to the national dialogue alone would be a signal service to the national debate, but the authors clearly hope for more. In that sense they are trying to emulate the way of think tanks in America that make a regular practice of issuing policy discussions in advance of an election, in an effort to have an impact on the debate – and on the poicies adopted by the electoral winners. The ISS seems to be aiming for that same place in the South African political universe – and good luck to them! DM\nRead more:\n- Three Futures for South Africa\n- South African Futures 2030: How Bafana Bafana made Mandela Magic\n- ThinkFest: Clem Sunter on SA’s possible future(s)\nPhoto: South African state schools generally rank at the bottom of the pile when compared with education in other countries with schools in poor areas (therefore largely black) doing worst of all. (REUTERS/Mike Hutchings)", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-02-17-new-iss-study-charts-sa-future-and-presents-a-fable-of-the-three-choices/"}

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+{"doc_id": "0397bf2c8a815d3ce80f2771a69f12da", "text": "South Africa has one of the highest rates of absentee fathers in the world. But one group of local (present) fathers has designed an award-winning application that will incentivise dads in the rest of the country to be more involved in their children’s lives from early on, stimulating children’s emotional and intellectual development and providing support to both fathers and mothers along the way. By MARELISE VAN DER MERWE.\nNappiDaddi, the mobile application (app) in question, walked away with the top innovation award and was designed under enormous pressure in a 24-hour period at the recent South African Innovation Summit 2015 hackathon for early childhood development (ECD). It was one of a number of innovative designs that aimed to tackle pervasive problems facing South Africa’s children.\nOther winners included Music Garden, a mobile app designed to incorporate music into the development of young children, teaching them dance, sing, and learn words, letters and numbers; Project Enable, a concept which would allow ECD practitioners to adapt toys and games for use by children with various disabilities via an idea-sharing platform; and HearScreen, an already fully-functional mobile app that converts smartphones into hearing screening devices using off-the shelf headphones. HearScreen was developed by audiologist De Wet Swanepoel.\nFor the uninitiated, a hackathon – also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest – is an event at which computer programmers and others involved in software development and hardware development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects. At this particular event, which was held on the last weekend in August and developed by the Silicon Cape Initiative for tech entrepreneurship and the Innovation Edge, participants were challenged with a number of questions, such as: How can we use technology to encourage fathers of young children to be more involved in their children’s early care and development? How do we use technology to stimulate problem solving or adaptation skills in parents? How can we use technology to promote reading and storytelling to young children? There were seven questions in all, but the NappiDaddi team focused on the first.\n“All the team members are fathers,” team member Sello Lehong told Daily Maverick. “We were naturally drawn to the question as fathers, and as such, understanding of some of the challenges fathers face when raising their children.”\nNappiDaddi gives fathers a platform on which to engage with each other and share ideas, information, frustrations and victories; even – according to team member Kanya Msila – “bragging rights”. It’s essentially a facilitated network targeted at millennials and Generation X, and includes an integrated gaming element as extra motivation, relying on the competitive instincts of participants to engage them further. Features include milestones (with achievement unlocking), challenges (with leaderboards – the ‘bragging rights’ mentioned earlier, which are vetted by mothers), an ‘adopt’ feature for immediate families and relatives, automatically generated programmes according to proximity to the child – which are shared with mothers – and a number of sharing and sharing/exchanging support features including peer-to-peer, group support and support from mothers.\nJudging by the response received in the few days since winning the prize, says Lehong, there is a major need for more engagement with fathers, and since South Africa’s mobile penetration is so high, a mobile app is a useful tool. “From the feedback we have received thus far it seems as though there is a definite need for this sort of app, which was a bit of a surprise for us. Fathers are clueless out there and it seems this app might make a difference in fathers contributing positively towards their children’s upbringing,” he says. “The opportunity to build connected communities through technology is a definitely within our grasp. We are of the view that a powerful African concept such as Ubuntu can find resonance through technology.”\n“NappiDaddi will encourage dads with various child care challenges,” Msila adds, explaining that the leaderboards, bragging rights and sharing and knowledge exchange were geared specifically towards encouraging friendly competition, which he believes will be very motivating.\n“NappiDaddi eases the transitioning into parenthood through clear pattern recognition and rule-based guidance, as well as democratising the process of raising cognitively strong and healthy children through a facilitated network,” he explains.\nThe app’s design is not a minute too soon. South Africa is facing a crisis in terms of absent fathers. Just a third of our children live with both parents. Children from fatherless homes are more likely to face poverty, become involved in substance abuse, drop out of school, and suffer from health and emotional problems. Boys are more likely to become involved in crime, and girls are more likely to face teenage pregnancy. Female-headed households typically earn lower incomes. In a 2012 study by Linda Richter et al, entitled Fathers and other men in the lives of children and families, the authors point out that often circumstances exacerbate the problem: where employment and other conditions are favourable, they write, engagement by fathers tends to be higher. Where conditions are not favourable, the reverse is true.\n“International research and some studies from South Africa indicate that children whose fathers are present achieve better at school, have higher self-esteem and are more secure in their relationships with partners of the opposite sex,” the authors write. “Women who are supported in stable bonds with men experience lower levels of family stress, are less likely to suffer mental health problems and derive greater satisfaction from their roles as mothers … Importantly, men not only contribute to women’s wellbeing and happiness, but in several studies men have also been found to buffer children against neglectful or harsh parenting by a distant, demoralised or overburdened mother.”\nA 2013 study by Mazembo Mavungu Eddy, Hayley Thomson-de Boor, and Karabo Mphaka entitled So We Are the ATM Fathers notes that around half the country’s children live without daily contact with their fathers and that this presents serious social and developmental challenges. “Although a father’s physical presence alone is not necessarily a positive outcome in itself, widespread father absence has detrimental consequences for families and for society as a whole,” they write. “Responsible and engaged fathers, who do their share of parenting work, are beneficial to the development of children and to building families and societies that better reflect gender equity and protect child rights.” The abovementioned study differs from most other studies in that it actually gives voice to the absent fathers themselves, giving perspective to their feelings, viewpoints, and the reasons for their absences. The study found that in many cases, there was “acute awareness of the detrimental consequences of their absence, […] concern over their estrangement from their child/ren, as well as their readiness to participate in the restoration of broken ties and the prevention of the repetition of similar harmful parental behaviour by their children.”\nA 2013 policy brief by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) suggests that “fathers want to be active parents” and “have a strong sense of responsibility towards their children” but experience a number of barriers. The policy brief contradicts stereotypes that portray fathers as negligent, and typically choosing to be absent and uninvolved. Barriers, the authors found, were often financial, cultural or relational (for instance, a bad relationship with the child’s mother).\nThis suggests, then, that given the opening, some assistance, and a point of contact, there is in a number of cases the possibility that relationships can be repaired – that in the above sample group, at any rate, there is a fairly large portion of fathers who are willing to work at their relationships with their families. But of course, that is only the first step.\n“Any programme seeking to address the widespread absence of fathers will have to tackle both the predominant restrictive notions of masculinity and fatherhood, and the current problematic dynamics that exist between men and women,” the study notes.\nCertainly, it is far-fetched to imagine that a completely absent father will come home and reform after simply downloading an app. But it is also far-fetched to imagine that this is what the designers of the app are saying. It is rather, one imagines, that they would like to place a tool in the hands of fathers whose spirits are willing, but who feel they are lacking support or knowledge, and don’t know where to start. The HSRC policy brief, as a matter of fact, recommends that national legislation focus on defining fatherhood beyond simply providing for children, and drive the education of fathers in other areas such as physical and emotional support, much like the areas of education and engagement targeted by NappiDaddi. It also suggests driving interaction with, and support from, other members of the family – much like the peer and family support networks provided by the app. It’s not a solution, no, but as a support tool, there may be many a father who will find it useful.\nAsked what motivated them to enter the competition, Lehong simply says: “The opportunity to use technology to alleviate some of the challenges within early childhood development.” There’s a sense that he and his team, as fathers, want to do what they can to help as many children as possible; and as their field is technology, they’re going to give that all they’ve got.\nThe team are going to spend their prize money on development, and aim to have a viable product within six months, Lehong says. The next phase is to test both market feedback and the most efficient way to make it available. Ultimately, they wish to rope in as partners ECD practitioners, healthcare professionals, social workers, other parenting groups, and key figures from the retail sector, such as baby-product retailers. Until then, it’s eyes on the future. DM\n* NappiDaddi was designed by Kanya Msila, Batandwa Baba, Sello Lehong and Samuel Molahlo, all pictured. (Photo: ITWeb)", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-09-03-nappidaddi-smart-child-rearing-for-dads-is-heading-this-way/"}

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+{"doc_id": "0652538cee235a5056a90a0f22fd6fd0", "text": "Last week, a report produced by the University of Johannesburg claimed that the police and leading figures in government were misrepresenting the number of protests SAPS deals with annually. The suggestion is that this is being done in order to bulk up the amount of money spent on public order policing. Police management deny the claims. By REBECCA DAVIS.\nThe SAPS has been indicating for some time that they intend to seriously beef up the police force’s public order policing capacities. In September 2014, SAPS top brass appeared before Parliament’s police committee and announced that the ongoing “upsurge against state authority” required urgent “additional interventions”.\nBecause they were dealing with so many more protests than previously, police chief Riah Phiyega asked Treasury for R3,3 billion over four years to almost double the number of riot police and procure more equipment like armoured vehicles and water cannons.\nAt the time, civil society activists expressed concern, pointing out that SAPS’ own figures showed that the overwhelming majority of protests in South Africa were peaceful.\nNow, University of Johannesburg academics say that these figures are misleading anyway.\nA report by the Social Change Research Unit’s Peter Alexander, Carin Runciman and Boitumelo Maruping has interrogated the records of SAPS’ Incident Registration Information System (IRIS), after a successful Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) request. The report finds that a proportion of what IRIS classes as “crowd-related incidents” are not, in fact, protests at all – simply occasions on which large numbers of people gather together, such as sports matches.\nTen percent of all “incidents” between 1997 and 2013 were recorded as “sporting event” or “social event”. By way of comparison, “dissatisfied with service delivery” accounted for 4% of incidents – though it was only introduced as a category in 2008.\nIRIS distinguishes between incidents which involve “crowd (peaceful)” and “crowd (unrest)”. The latter category refers to incidents which require “some form of police intervention”. The researchers point out, therefore, that events are classified as being characterised by peace or unrest based purely on what police do, rather than what the protestors do.\n“With specific regard to peaceful/unrest, IRIS data should be interpreted with caution,” they write. “Unrest cannot be equated with violence.”\nThey also note that it is difficult to determine a coherent set of criteria for the deployment of public order policing, because more than a third of all recorded incidents are not assigned a motive. Moreover, “recreational, religious and cultural events and official government and party political events also take up a large proportion of the incidents recorded by public order policing”.\nOverall, 90% of incidents between 1997 and 2013 were peaceful.\n“The longer we worked on this report the more it became clear that top South African Police Service (SAPS) officials and government ministers misconstrued IRIS data and in consequence misled Parliament and the public,” the report concludes.\nThey cite President Jacob Zuma’s 2015 State of the Nation Address as an example. “We are a democratic state and recognise the community’s right to protest,” Zuma said. “The police successfully brought under control 13,575 recorded public order incidents, comprising 1,907 unrest-related and 11,668 peaceful incidents.”\nThe phrasing “successfully brought under control” gives the impression that these events were otherwise out of control and perhaps violent, which is not the case. The vast majority of the “public order incidents” the President is referring to there were events like “football matches, religious events and self-marshalled protests”.\nSimilarly, Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko said in his department’s budget vote speech in May that police had to attend to 14,740 incidents last year, and that “the fact of the matter is that these protests continue to strain the resources of the SAPS”.\nThe implication there is clearly that “protests” and “incidents” are the same thing, while in reality they are very much not.\nIt’s important to note that the report’s authors do not dispute the idea that, in general, the number of violent protests in South Africa has increased in recent years – though the scale of this increase remains unclear. What concerns them is the notion that the President and police officials might be motivated to inflate the figures of protest action in order to justify the expansion in riot policing capacities.\nIn the wake of the report’s release, SAPS put out an angry statement accusing the researchers of a “deliberate misinterpretation of facts”. Spokesman Solomon Makgale wrote:\n“The SAPS […] did not conflate ‘incidents’ and ‘protests’. Any crowd management action is defined as an incident, which will either be peaceful or termed as unrest. In other words ‘incidents’ include all protest actions, peaceful gatherings and pure unrest incidents that cannot be justified as crowd management incidents like taxi violence, gang violence, ethnic and racial violence, demonstrations, political meetings, road barricades and revenge attacks by a small group of people.”\nThe police response did not explain why government officials do keep conflating “incidents” and “protests” in their utterances to Parliament – as the examples of President Zuma and Minister Nhleko suggest.\nOn Sunday, a statement released in response by the University of Johannesburg’s Social Change Research Unit said that the researchers stood by the report: “We refute [SAPS’] distortion of analysis found in our report”.\nSAPS also denied that their September 2014 presentation to Parliament made it sound as if all the violent protests warranted more funding: “The motivation provided for the additional funding was not just for additional capacity to do crowd control management during violent protests, but for crowd management in general”.\nThe tone of the September 2014 presentation – attended by the Daily Maverick – distinctly put the emphasis on violent protest, however. You can read our report on that meeting here. Lieutenant General Elias Mawela introduced his presentation by saying: “The Republic is currently experiencing an upsurge in violent incidents which is requiring urgent additional interventions from SAPS”.\nIn the same meeting, Malewa said there was an “urgent need” for nine water cannons to be allocated to each province. Presumably he didn’t mean that they would be wheeled out for every soccer match and religious festival.\nGroups like the Right2Know campaign have for some time being voicing concern about the growing crackdown on South African protest and dissent, as well as the increasing surveillance of activists. What the UJ report suggests, disturbingly, is that this crackdown is being bolstered through the presentation of patently misleading information.\nIf top government officials are deliberately feeding the public skewed data in order to justify pumping money into riot police and water cannons instead of housing, we should all be deeply concerned. DM\nPhoto: Rioters throw stones during a protest at the Phomolong informal settlement, outside Pretoria, March 23, 2010. Reuters/Stringer\nRead more:\n-\nParliament, public misled on policing stats: report, on ENCA", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-05-31-is-saps-cooking-the-books-on-protest-numbers/"}

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+{"doc_id": "0a366710774d12b48fd473bc1b3340de", "text": "Protecting refugees is a common human responsibility, and yet developing countries shoulder the burden. By Tsion Tadesse Abebe, ISS TODAY.\nMore than 65.6-million people around the world were forcibly displaced by the end of 2016 – the highest level ever recorded. Of these, 84% were hosted in developing countries. This contrasts with the media’s focus on the burden of this crisis on developed countries, especially in Europe.\nDivisive political rhetoric on migration issues has prompted many rich countries to try to close their borders on people fleeing danger and in need of international protection.\nHungary’s new migration law passed in March this year requires all migrants coming to the country to be held in two camps in Serbia while their cases are decided. The camps are built from shipping containers and surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. Up to 7,000 migrants are currently stuck in Serbia, waiting to hear their fate.\nMeanwhile Rome’s mayor, Virginia Raggi, has written a letter requesting the government of Italy to stop sending refugees to Rome. Last month it was reported that Italy planned to build detention centres to facilitate the deportation of migrants.\nSimilarly, Donald Trump’s US administration proposes to cut immigration and refugee assistance by 11% and refugee and entrant assistance by 39% by 2018. The US president’s proposed travel ban targeting six majority Muslim countries could cut expected refugees to the US to 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year. This is from the 110,000 ceiling put in place by former president Barack Obama’s administration.\nDeveloping countries, by contrast, continue to show the most generosity towards refugees. Ethiopia, for example – one of the poorest countries in the world – already hosts one of the highest number of refugees globally, and maintains its open-door policy.\nIn May this year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that Ethiopia hosted 838,722 refugees from neighbouring Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan. Almost half – 45% – originate from South Sudan due to ongoing internal conflict and violence in that country.\nThis comes as Ethiopia itself struggles to provide for its population. Despite the huge economic progress the country has made over the past decade, it is still one of the poorest globally, ranking 174th in the 2016 Human Development Index. The World Food Programme reported in May that 7.8-million Ethiopians need emergency food aid.\nBased on Ethiopia’s Central Statistical Agency’s 2013 report, the urban unemployment rate is 16.5%. Limited job options drive hundreds of thousands of young Ethiopians to migrate within and outside of Africa, including an estimated 750,000 irregular migrants in Saudi Arabia.\nSince the Ethiopian government’s temporary ban on labour migration in 2013, many Ethiopians have resorted to irregular migration channels. They follow three major routes: the southern route (via Kenya en route to South Africa), eastern route (via Somaliland headed towards Saudi Arabia), and northern route (Sudan to Europe).\nThe government introduced the ban in response to repeated reports of abuses including loss of lives of Ethiopian migrants in the Arab world.\nNonetheless, these struggles have not changed Ethiopia’s generous policies towards refugees. The UNHCR indicates that the country continues to receive on average 10,821 refugees a month so far in 2017.\nEthiopia’s commitment to protect refugees was further strengthened by its pledges made at the September 2016 Leaders’ Summit on Refugees. These focus on facilitating job and education opportunities and expanding social services. The list includes expanding the Out of Camp Policy, which currently applies only to Eritrean refugees. These aspects are expected to be reflected in the revised refugee proclamation.\nThe pledges signal an openness not only to ease the current restrictions on refugees’ access to employment, but also to offering local integration. They also address the challenges refugees face in Ethiopia.\nCurrently all registered refugees in the country are required to stay in refugee camps, except those with medical or protection concerns that can’t be resolved at camp level. These refugees are allowed to reside in Addis Ababa, under the urban assistance programme.\nAlthough the government issues pass permits to refugees who wish to travel out of the camps temporarily, the policy restricts the rights of refugees to move from place to place, which is a fundamental human right.\nThe government’s move to facilitate job opportunities for refugees and to expand the out-of-camp policy is expected not only to relax the movement restrictions but also recognise the right of refugees to work in the formal sector. The inability to engage in wage-earning employment has led to refugees depending on humanitarian aid to sustain themselves.\nEthiopia is revising its refugee legislation to enable refugees to enjoy more rights, including the right to work and attend schools in the country.\nIn 2016, nine out of 10 refugee host countries were in the developing world, and most of the world’s refugees were found in developing countries.\nThe protection of refugees is a common human responsibility. This means all countries need to work together in a spirit of internationalism and burden-sharing. And in particular, developing countries such as Ethiopia – that stand with refugees despite struggling to meet their own populations’ basic needs – must be better supported.\nOn 20 June – World Refugee Day – we all need to stand together #WithRefugees. DM\nTsion Tadesse Abebe is a Senior Researcher, Migration Programme, ISS Addis Ababa\nPhoto: A Somali refugee stands inside a tent with her baby in Dollo Ado, Ethiopia. 25/08/2011. Dollo Ado, Ethiopia. UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe. www.unmultimedia.org/photo/", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-06-19-iss-today-as-doors-close-to-refugees-ethiopias-stay-open/"}

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+{"doc_id": "0b64569cd127caa47f97e87b23247ac1", "text": "Eighty20 and Tritech Media have published a new report looking at the impact of various rewards programmes in South Africa, including which one have the most active users.\nThe report is based on a consumer survey, which was completed by a total of 1,413 respondents, gauging rewards members’ perceptions of, engagement with and behaviours influenced by the various programmes.\nIt covered 26 of the biggest loyalty programmes out of a possible 100+ in South Africa, including the big names like eBucks, UCount, Smart Shopper, Vitality and others.\nThe report found that the average consumer is subscribed to about 9 different rewards programmes, covering various sectors, from retail/grocery programmes to banking rewards. While South African consumers were highly subscribed, they weren’t necessarily very active.\nIn determining the most successful programmes, the analysts looked at three major factors:\n- How many respondents indicated they were registered for the rewards programme;\n- How many respondents were active on the rewards programme; and\n- How the programmes changed their spending habits.\nThe graphs below outline activity on the major programmes covered, as well as a closer look at how the retail/grocery and banking sectors compare in terms of registered vs active users.\nIn the retail banking sector, while FNB’s eBucks shows activity levels not that much higher than Investec’s rewards programme, it has a very high level of subscription, compared to its competitors.\nMeanwhile, the grocery/health sector has a much higher subscription rate overall, but also produces a clear winner in Pick n Pay’s Smart Shopper scheme.\nAccording to the survey respondents, the schemes that members say give them the most value are Clicks ClubCard, Pick n Pay Smart Shopper and Dis-Chem Benefits. With the retail banking sector, the loyalty programmes that members say have an influence on their shopping behavior are Standard Bank UCount, FNB eBucks and Absa Rewards.\nChanging behaviour\nAccording to Eighty20, the self-assessment data – like behaviour changes – will always come with caveats, but still provides insight into how partnerships between brands and rewards schemes can push consumers to change their shopping habits.\n“The top performing retail programmes all have strong partnerships with other programmes which are clearly helping to drive behaviour change,” the group said.\n“For example, Dis-Chem Benefits is a reward partner on the Discovery Vitality, Momentum Multiply and FNB eBucks programmes. Similarly, Pick n Pay Smart Shopper has partnerships with Absa Rewards, Discovery Vitality and Momentum Multiply.\n“Fuel retail partnerships are also likely to be a strong factor for behaviour change, particularly for banking programmes and a few retailers. Discovery Insure and Standard Bank UCount pioneered the aggressive marketing of exclusive fuel retail partnerships in 2011 and 2013 respectively.\n“Since then a number of banks, retailers and airlines have emulated this approach including Clicks ClubCard and Shell, SAA Voyager and Total, Absa Rewards and Sasol, Dis-Chem Benefits and Total, Avios and BP, and Edcon Thank U and Engen.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/255699/the-most-popular-rewards-programmes-in-south-africa/"}

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+{"doc_id": "0c0a57439c06a3c14d7d5cda1403168d", "text": "President Jacob Zuma has directed the Minister of Finance, Malusi Gigaba, to trim down expenses and increase revenue in order to find a solution to the R40 billion gap identified in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement.\n“The President [and] Cabinet have reaffirmed government’s commitment to maintain a sustainable fiscal framework and ensure that a solution is found to address the roughly R40 billion gap that has been identified, through a combination of expenditure reductions and revenue-enhancing measures,” said the Presidency in a statement.\nThe Presidency on Monday released a statement on the measures being taken to address economic challenges after Standard & Poor’s lowered South Africa’s long term foreign and local currency debt ratings by one notch each to ‘BB’ and ‘BB+’ on Friday.\nOn the other hand, Moody’s gave South Africa some reprieve by maintaining the country’s credit rating above junk at Baa3. The ratings agency placed South Africa’s long-term foreign and local currency debt ratings of ‘Baa3’ on a 90-day review for a downgrade.\nThe Presidency on Tuesday said the Finance Minister will be assisted by the Presidential Fiscal Committee to find solutions to the challenges.\nPresident Zuma has directed that technical discussions of the Presidential Fiscal Committee take place, led by Minister Gigaba and National Treasury. These discussions will focus on four areas, which are:\n- To identify and finalise proposals for cuts in expenditure amounting to about R25 billion. Such proposed cuts should not be in areas that will negatively affect economic growth prospects and job creation;\n- To identify and finalise proposals for revenue-enhancing measures amounting to about R15 billion, including where appropriate, tax measures;\n- To develop a phased-implementation plan to enable the proposal for fee-free higher education for students from poor and working-class backgrounds, to be implemented in a fiscally-sustainable manner, and\n- To identify the package of economic stimulus measures that will be implemented to enable the economy to grow at a faster rate.\nThe President has directed that the contents of these discussions should be considered for preparations of the 2018 Budget.\nPresident Zuma will in the coming days meet with the Presidential Fiscal Committee to receive a progress report on the work done on the above.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/213313/zuma-considers-tax-increases-and-spending-cuts-following-ratings-downgrades/"}

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+{"doc_id": "0d80a584a0fa60e5e0e74b61d1391e1c", "text": "Ratings agencies Moody’s and S&P Global will be announcing their rating decisions for South Africa on Friday evening, which could have massive implications for the country’s government bonds, should it go the way many expect.\nCurrently, both Moody’s and S&P have South Africa on a negative outlook, with the former keeping the country’s local and foreign currency debt one notch above junk, and the latter keeping local currency debt above junk, and foreign currency debt in junk.\nFitch, the other large global rating agency, has South Africa in full junk. Fitch does not publish its review dates, but its ratings are arguably less significant as its rating is not a determinant of a country’s bonds in the Citigroup World Government Bond Index (WGBI).\nThe WGBI is the most used global bond index for both indexation and benchmark purposes and requires at least one rating agency between S&P and Moody’s to assign an investment grade credit rating to the local currency government bonds for inclusion in the index.\nShould this happen, over R100 billion will be wiped from the economy.\nThe current outlook\nAccording to analysis by Ashburton Investments, following the delivery of the medium-term budget speech by Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba on 25 October 2017, all the major rating agencies expressed concern regarding the deteriorating finances of the South African government.\nThese concerns stemmed from the slippage in fiscal revenue and resultant increase in the forecast budget deficit.\n“The lack of a concrete plan to remedy the situation was one of the primary differences between this MTBPS and those of other finance ministers, and that has greatly contributed to the slippage in the bond yields and exchange rates,” the group said.\n“Although most market commentators expected a downgrade to the South African credit rating, most anticipated this to occur following the ANC elective conference in December 2017 and the delivery of the full budget in February 2018.\n“However, the recent statements by the credit rating agencies have raised the probability of further rating downgrades occurring on Friday,” it said.\nThe announcements on Friday have four notable outcomes, Ashburton said.\n- Neither Moody’s or S&P takes any further action on the South African credit rating;\n- Moody’s downgrades the local currency and foreign currency international scale rating from Baa3 (BBB- S&P equivalent) to Ba1 (BB+ S&P equivalent), while S&P’s rating remains unchanged;\n- S&P downgrades the local currency international scale rating from BBB- to BB+ while Moody’s rating remains unchanged; or\n- S&P downgrades the local currency international scale rating from BBB- to BB+ and Moody’s downgrades the local currency international scale rating from Baa3 to Ba1.\n“Our base case scenario is that the agencies will either place the rating on review for downgrade or pause until post February next year, making the double downgrade by both agencies a lower probability event. We do, however, expect a downgrade by both before June of next year unless we see significant alterations in policy and the local economic forecasts,” the group said.\nFor each of the above outcomes the market would react differently, it said.\nWhat will happen to government bonds?\nBy far, the worst outcome would be if both S&P and Moody’s cut the local currency rating to sub-investment grade – South Africa would then fall out of the WGBI and the funds tracking this index as a benchmark would become forced sellers.\n“The magnitude of this forced selling is difficult to determine, but could be as high as $8 billion (R112 billion at R14.00 exchange rate),” the group said.\n“While we believe that most yield reaction of the downgrade to junk has already occurred, we would not be surprised if the benchmark R186 Government Bonds experiences a further sharp selloff to 9.85% or even higher over the short-term.\n“Historically, yields have recovered in the weeks and months post a downgrade to junk status and it is likely that we would see a similar effect. What could hamper this, however, is the political and policy uncertainty that is likely to remain until the budget next year February,” it said.\nA short-term relief rally of 25 basis points or so would, however, probably materialise if South Africa manages to retain its position in the WGBI post the ratings release on 24 November.\nOver the medium-term, the primary factor determining where our yields settle will be the global backdrop and the risk on/off appetite.\n“Given that South African bonds currently yield in excess of CPI +5%, we at Ashburton Investments remain fairly constructive on bonds for as long as global inflation remains under control and central banks globally taper their buying programs very gradually,” the group said.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/212521/r112-billion-could-be-wiped-as-junk-status-looms-for-south-africa/"}

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+{"doc_id": "100d277b06b98ef2c627fd696600da34", "text": "by Reagan MASHAVAVE Zimbabwe announced Thursday it will introduce next month \"bond notes\" equivalent to the US dollar, sparking fears of a return to the hyperinflation that wrecked the economy several years ago.\nThe country, led by authoritarian President Robert Mugabe, adopted the US dollar and South African rand in 2009 after inflation — which peaked at 231 million percent — rendered the local dollar worthless.\nBut Zimbabwe has run out of US dollar notes in recent months, and hopes to ease the cash crunch by printing its own “bond notes” that will be valued in denominations of $2, $5, $10 and $20.\nThe plan immediately attracted criticism, with analysts saying the token currency would not hold its US dollar value and would be seen as a new version of the valueless local dollar.\nA wave of protests has shaken Mugabe’s regime this year, with “No to bond notes” among the regular slogans expressing grievances against the government amid a worsening economic crisis.\n“The bond notes will start to circulate by the end of October and will be at par with the US dollar,” Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya said in Harare.\n“We anticipate by the end of the year $75 million will be in the market.”\nThe cash shortage has forced the ZANU-PF government to delay paying salaries each month to civil servants and the military.\nWith the government again printing its own money, many Zimbabweans fear a repeat of the excessive printing that led to hyperinflation.\n– ‘No trust’ -“It will immediately destroy trust. The trust is not there and the value of the bond note will not be sustained,” Harare-based economic analyst John Robertson told AFP.\n“There is no money because there is no new investment. There is no investment because there is no trust — and you can’t fix that by printing more notes.”\nZimbabwe once removed 12 zeros from its battered currency at the height of hyperinflation in 2009 when the largest note was the $100 trillion denomination.\nMangudya denied the new bond notes would be rejected by many Zimbabweans.\n“It is critical to emphasise that the introduction of bond notes does not mark the return of the Zimbabwe dollar through the back door,” he said.\nThe new notes will be printed in Germany and backed by a $200-million support facility provided by Afreximbank (Africa Export-Import Bank), the government has said.\nFurther anti-Mugabe protests are planned on Saturday, despite a police ban on rallies in Harare.\nThe president, 92, has often used brutal force to silence his opponents, and he recently warned the protestors they were “playing a dangerous game”.\nThe Tajamuka protest group said Wednesday that one of its activists, actor Sylvanos Mudzvova, was being treated in hospital after being abducted, beaten up by assailants and dumped outside the city.\nMugabe, who looks frail but still gives long speeches in public, has vowed to stand for re-election in 2018, while his wife Grace, 51, is seen as one of his possible successors.\n“It is clear Mugabe’s capacities have diminished significantly, his ability to hold things together is doubtful,” Piers Pigou, of the International Crisis Group, told a briefing in Johannesburg this week.\n“I don’t think (Mugabe) has faced this kind of pressure before. The state of the party has never been so fractured and the state of the economy — some are arguing that it is worse now than it was at the height of hyperinflation.”\nLast week, the government revealed that nearly 97 percent of its revenue goes to paying public workers’ salaries.\nBond coins valued in US cents were introduced in Zimbabwe in 2014 to tackle the problem of small change.\nrm-fj-sn/\n© 1994-2016 Agence France-Presse", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-09-15-zimbabwe-to-issue-bond-notes/"}

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+{"doc_id": "10a1d70ffa999d8d480c3076bd962949", "text": "President Jacob Zuma is reported to want to introduce free higher education. The poor and middle-class might rejoice, but Zuma’s plans will only worsen their plight. By GREG NICOLSON.\nPolice dressed in riot gear and behind a wall of shields let off one stun grenade after another as students pushed forward to tear down the fence at the Union Buildings. The phalanx of cops huddled together as they were pummelled with stones. Portable toilets were burning in the gardens at the home of the Presidency. Students demanded that President Zuma address them, but he never came.\nThe #FeesMustFall movement shook both the President and his government when tens of thousands of students marched on the Union Buildings over two years ago. The large majority were peaceful. They were motivated, on that day and in the many protests at institutions across the country since the arrival of democracy, by the promise of free, quality, decolonised higher education.\nThey either were, or stood in solidarity with, students from poor and middle-income homes who have to sleep in the library, who regularly have to skip meals, who have to delay or drop out of their studies because their families can’t cover their fees. They wanted the ANC to deliver on its promise of free education.\nThe country needs to revise its higher education funding model. That’s never been in question. Students, administrators and the government agree that the current system needs to be improved. The question is, how?\nPresident Zuma established a commission of inquiry, as he likes to do, to assess the feasibility of fee-free higher education. You can read the submissions. The report hasn’t yet been released, but according to City Press retired Judge Jonathan Heher recommended that the government spend a fixed 1% of GDP on universities and implement an income-contingent loan system, with students repaying the costs of their studies depending on their salaries once they find employment.\nPresident Zuma, as he likes to do, appears to want to bypass the recommendations of the inquiry he established. It’s been reported that he plans to introduce free higher education for students from households with an annual income of up to R350,000, beginning in 2018. Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, who heads the higher education funding task team, and Zuma’s director general Mpumi Mpofu, have been tasked with finding the money to pay for the plan.\nZuma denied on Sunday that he wanted to announce free education in the February State of the Nation Address. “At no stage did he plan to make any announcements that would undermine the work of the commission,” said a statement from his office.\nBut reports said Zuma’s demands that officials find the money to fund his plan have further strained his troubled relationship with the Treasury. According to the Sunday Times, Michael Sachs, the Treasury’s deputy director general of budgeting, threatened to resign if forced to implement the plan, while there are other claims that the President is undermining Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS).\nGigaba’s Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, tabled in October, estimated that free higher education could cost between R17.7-billion and R40.7-billion depending on how it’s implemented, which would increase if the government implements plans to get more students into higher education institutions. Gigaba said further announcements on the issue would be made in his February Budget speech.\nThose students who marched on the Union Buildings, their institutions, civil society organisations and government departments probably spent weeks preparing their submissions to the Heher Commission. The judge dutifully interrogated dozens of submissions in public hearings. His report runs to 748 pages.\nBut Zuma placed his future son-in-law’s advice above Heher’s recommendations and those submissions. Zuma’s “adviser” Morris Masutha, a founder of the Thusanani Foundation, which works to assist youth in accessing and succeeding at university, appears to be the sole voice the president is listening to. He’s claimed the state can provide free university education at a modest R7.5-billion.\nMany protesting students have said they aren’t fighting for themselves but the next generation, so their prospects of success aren’t limited by their background, be it race, culture or class. But as they write their exams and look to a new academic year, they should be sceptical of the President’s plans.\nZuma didn’t address them that day at the Union Buildings in 2015, which ended with rubber bullets and tear gas being fired at students by police. While the ANC has long said it supports free education for poor and working-class students, Zuma appears to have disregarded submissions by those very same students and their institutions. He’s ignored the advice from his own government and even his own party.\nMost worryingly, there’s been no public discussion on where the money will come from to fund the additional budgetary expenditure of up to R40-billion. The state already has a revenue shortfall of R50.8-billion and potential credit downgrades could ensure that economic growth remains stagnant.\nThe government could save billions by reducing irregular, wasteful and fruitless expenditure, but if he wanted to, Zuma could have implemented measures to enjoy those savings years ago. Instead, officials are looking to slash budgets across already under-resourced government departments.\nThe Mail & Guardian reported: “Cuts to grants and housing, halving the armed forces budget, curbing infrastructure spending and freezing civil servant wage increases are some of the options that have been put forward. An increase in the value-added tax rate is also a possibility, as is the sale of state assets and reducing the number of departments.”\nCutting social grants, freezing RDP housing developments and increasing VAT to fund free higher education would debilitate the families who need free education the most.\nZuma may want to proceed with free higher education despite Heher’s recommendations, but there must be a transparent discussion on the details of who will be funded and where the money will come from. Zuma neither listens to his own party nor the recommendations of his Cabinet. If he’s allowed to implement his plan in isolation, higher education will probably end up in tatters, burnt at the altar of his ego. DM\nPhoto: Protesters gather at the Union Buildings, during ongoing demonstrations against fee increases at universities, in Pretoria, 23 October 2015. Photo: Kim Ludbrook/(EPA).", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-13-analysis-zuma-risks-sacrificing-higher-education-at-the-altar-of-his-ego/"}

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+{"doc_id": "10f29fb65951460b1edf1499835c21f2", "text": "South Africans are often guilty of being insular and inward-looking. After talking to Morgan Stanley's Ruchir Sharma, CHRIS GIBBONS believes it can be a very bad - and costly - habit.\nAs cheeses go, Ruchir Sharma is a big one. Based in New York, he’s head of emerging market equities and global macro at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Sharma has what many would consider a dream job: he spends his life on an airliner, travelling the world, examining those global markets in intimate detail, and deciding where to invest the billions entrusted to him by Morgan Stanley and its clients.\nThis means Sharma cares very deeply about what happens in places like Moscow, Beijing, Bangkok, Jakarta – and Johannesburg. He’s visited each one many times and assembled his observations in a new book, Breakout Nations – In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles. He looks at which of the emerging markets have done consistently well over the past 50 years, explains why, and then uses the historical observations as a basis for forecasting whether or not their success – or lack thereof – is likely to continue.\nOn that basis, Sharma makes his investment decisions. A billion here, five billion there. Dollars, that is.\nHe is completely dispassionate. That’s because he has to be: a wrong decision would not only cost the bank a great deal of money and reputation, but would doubtless also see Sharma cast into outer darkness, far away from New York and luxury international hotels. He might even have to fly economy.\nThe bad news is, Sharma is not impressed with South Africa.\nThe chapter on this country in Breakout Nations is bitingly called The Endless Honeymoon, and Sharma’s opinions flow thick and fast: “So much stability and such modest progress…” or “…the new South Africa looks too much like the old South Africa…”\nWhen I spoke to him earlier this week in his Manhattan office, he told me that he has “a strange relationship with South Africa…” When asked which is his favourite country to visit, he always says “South Africa ranks right up there… it has always been very close to my heart.” But the health warning for investors, he cautions, is “that you can’t let your heart rule your head.”\nOn an earlier visit 10 years ago, Sharma was “quite impressed”. Sentiment on Wall Street had been that the country would blow up because of the racial divide and its history in the 1970s and 1980s. “But when I came to South Africa and saw the mood of reconciliation and the peace that existed despite the fears on Wall Street, that was a very positive sign.” It showed him that this was “a very positive economy in the way that it had progressed”.\nIt’s different now, though. “What I’m seeing now is that there has been very little progress beyond that stability. It’s great that you achieved stability after a long period of all sorts of conflict, but now I see a period where economic growth really appears to be disappointing and not much progress is being made. There is a limit to how much you can keep banking on stability to take you forward.”\nIn his book, Sharma goes into more detail about South Africa’s problems. One key observation is that “South Africa has powerful private companies that still steer clear of South Africa.” He’s referring, of course, to the likes of Anglo American, Old Mutual, SABMiller – the long, familiar list of companies that have divested and see their future far away from their Johannesburg or Cape Town roots. Sharma observes acutely that this kind of external, international growth can be interpreted as either a mark of great corporate strength or a vote of no confidence in the home market by those same strong corporates. In our case, he’s in no doubt that it’s the latter.\nSharma is scrupulously polite and when we talk I can hear that he is trying not to give offence. But after reading The Endless Honeymoon chapter of his book, the tone of disappointment in his voice is plain: he thinks we have missed a major opportunity.\nWe need to add to this his bearish view on the commodities cycle – “two decades down, one decade up and we’ve just had the ‘up’ decade.” He calls it “commodity.com” and believes that, like investors at the turn of the century who were burnt when the dot.com bubble burst, those who think commodities will run forever – the so-called “super-cycle” – are also destined to end up with singed fingers. (South Africa is heavily reliant on commodities so don’t say you haven’t been warned.)\nA country of missed opportunities that is over-dependent on commodities? It’s a fair bet that we’re not high on Sharma’s must-invest-there list.\nOkay, so if Sharma is not keen on South Africa, what is his top pick? He says his “Gold Medallists” are South Korea and Taiwan, the only emerging markets to have achieved five consecutive decades of +5% GDP growth. Of the two, he much prefers South Korea’s “rare ability to stay at the cutting edge of fast-changing industries (which) has put it in a class by itself.”\nSharma is at Morgan Stanley. He’ll have counterparts at JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, HSBC, Barclays, Standard Chartered and… well, you get the picture. They all spend their lives in the sharp end of airliners, jetting about, looking, searching, sniffing, assessing, deciding. A billion here, five billion there. Line them all up and it quickly becomes 10 billion or 50 billion or more. Or not.\nThose are the billions that Transnet and Eskom will be trying to access for their big new build programmes, that government would like to borrow for its financing requirements, hat our larger corporations – those that are still based here – use for their expansion plans. But if Ruchir Sharma and his colleagues decide that South Africa is no longer likely to be a breakout nation, the price of that money increases accordingly.\nWe’ll still get it – don’t worry about that. Governments, unless they are Zimbabwe or North Korea, can almost always raise money, as can government-backed enterprises. It’s just the cost that goes up. It’s no different from your overdraft at the bank, really. If the bank manager likes you and likes your balance sheet, you might get prime. If not, then it will be prime-plus-one or two or more. In both examples, you also know who pays that additional price, don’t you? It’s your overdraft and you’re a taxpayer, so you’ll foot the bill both ways.\nConsider Sharma as a sort of super bank manager then. And in that case, yes, it certainly does matter what he thinks of us and our country. DM\n*Breakout Nations – In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles by Ruchir Sharma, published by Allen Lane.\nPhoto: Morgan Stanley’s New York headquarters are seen at the corner of 48th Street and Broadway in New York May 22, 2012. REUTERS/Andrew Burton", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-07-11-analysis-south-africa-the-world-is-looking-and-its-not-liking/"}

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+{"doc_id": "121df2984be9ccf0a3e8fb938712221e", "text": "Many investors who run their own portfolios via their stock brokers often end up with a “neglected portfolio” or become frustrated with the performance of their portfolio, according to Geoff Blount, MD of BayHill Capital.\n“In my experience, one of the key drivers of this frustration is that most portfolios managed by private investors suffer from both over-concentration and over-diversification,” said Blount.\n“How is this contradiction possible? They typically have a few shares that have done very well and come to dominate the portfolio and many shares that have done very poorly and start to become insignificant in the portfolio,” he said.\n“It is important to examine and assess your portfolio at regular intervals to ensure that it remains true to its goals.”\nWith that in mind, Blount provided eight ideas on what to watch for in your portfolio to avoid potential frustration.\nReview winners to avoid over concentration\nIf shares perform well, don’t be afraid to take some profits, said Blount.\n“If the share continues to do well, you still have some in your portfolio, but if its fortunes do decline, at least you have taken some money off the table. No share can outperform the market indefinitely and even the greatest companies will eventually give market-like returns.”\nAvoid “Long Tails” through not selling out and buying more losers\nMost investors like to look for new ideas in their portfolios and they typically don’t like to sell shares because they reason that either it has done well so don’t sell it, or it has performed poorly so don’t sell as it might bounce, noted Blount.\n“Hence, over time, the portfolios get more and more names in them, with smaller and smaller weights. This is called a “Long Tail”.\n“You want to avoid long tails.”\nTo avoid these long tails, Blount recommended that you look at the holdings that make up small fractions of your portfolios, for example 0.2%. This is because even if these shares double in price, they won’t make a material impact on the portfolio’s performance, meaning you should either sell or take them up to a material weight in the portfolio (at least 2%).\n“If the original motivation for buying the share is intact, and it’s near term sentiment that has pushed the price down, then top up. If, however, the price has fallen because the original motivation to buy the share has gone, then sell,” he said.\nAvoid biases towards well-known large cap shares\n“Most investors often have a strong bias to large cap, blue chip shares,” said Blount.\nHowever while they give security, over time, mid cap and smaller companies often outperform large companies so it is vital to ensure you have a few good quality mid and small companies in your portfolio that have attractive growth prospects.\nBe aware of single factor drivers in the portfolio\nThe reason for a diversified portfolio, with several different shares, is to diversify one’s risk: if one share blows up, it won’t sink the whole portfolio. However, make sure that there is not a single common theme or driver of the portfolio, said Blount.\n“Common themes to watch out for are a weak rand view (favours rand hedge stocks), consumer stocks (very popular until recently), resource shares, banks and financial stocks, Africa-facing companies, property and so on.”\n“This is not to say you shouldn’t take a view on a theme and build a portfolio around it, but just be aware of the risks if a theme dominates the stock selection. A high quality portfolio is one that owns many shares that have different drivers, rather than a single-factor driver.”\nWatch rights issues and other corporate activity\n“Don’t ignore correspondence that your stockbroker sends you,” warned Blount.\n“Sell rights issues or use them to buy more stocks. Understand the impact of mergers or other corporate activity, or taking scrip dividends or cash. Whenever you get some correspondence about a share that you own, call your broker and ask them for an opinion on what to do.”\n“They are paid to help you with this.”\nBe aware of cash and dividends\n“Over the last 60 years, the South African stock market has delivered a total return of 7.7% p.a. ahead of inflation. But only 3.3% of that came from capital growth and, staggeringly, 4.4% of this growth came from re-investing dividend flows. Put your dividends back into your share portfolio.”\nA corollary of this is: don’t forget to include companies in your portfolio that have a high, sustainable dividend yield, even if they are not as sexy as the “hot stocks” said Blount.\nBeware of minimum trade costs\n“Stockbrokers charge a stockbroking fee as well as a minimum fee per transaction. For smaller investors, or smaller trades, beware that the minimum charge does not make the transaction unviable.”\n“For example, a R100 minimum charge on a R5,000 trade is a 2% charge. If you are both selling and buying another share, that implies a 4% trade cost which means that the share you are buying needs to go up 4% before you start making a profit.”\nConsider your time frame for each share\nWhen you buy a share, note if you see this as a long-term investment holding or a shorter-term speculative trade – this allows you to manage your emotions and better guide your decision if there is a big price shift, said Blount.\n“If the share rallies and it’s a speculative holding, exit the share rather than keep hoping for more. Likewise, if it falls and it’s a speculative share, sell out. But if it is a long-term investment, consider buying more.”", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/180889/tips-you-can-use-to-avoid-ending-up-with-a-neglected-portfolio/"}

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+{"doc_id": "12d4725d8bce5c63cd4cf5d997b11bdd", "text": "South Africans have been spared major pain in the 2016 Budget but Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has announced tax increases to add R18 billion to revenue. While growth is expected to be just 0.9% this year compared to 1.3% in 2015, Treasury has not opted for dramatic policy changes to raise revenue. Gordhan has announced a cut the expenditure ceiling by R10 billion but there is an increase in spending in higher education, economic infrastructure and social protection – made possible through the Treasury’s new catchphrase: “reprioritisation”. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY and MARIANNE MERTEN.\nPravin Gordhan starts of this year’s Budget speech by saying he has a “simple message”. “We are strong enough, resilient enough and creative enough to manage and overcome our economic challenges”. At a media briefing ahead of the Budget, Gordhan said government aimed to deliver a “credible” Budget in a “very difficult environment”.\nThe 2016 Budget certainly does reflect “creativity” with “reprioritisation” being the key word to enable funding for South Africa’s crisis and priority issues such as higher education and training, drought relief and the social wage.\nThe budget deficit will fall from 3.2% in the 2016/2017 year to 2.4% in 2018/2019. Unlike last year, there is no blanket percentage increase in personal income tax but there are adjustments to personal income tax brackets and rebates for inflation. “Taxes are raised moderately, across a broad base, while limiting the impact on lower-income families,” Gordhan said.\nAt the pre-Budget media briefing, Gordhan said the Treasury had opted to be “creative” with tax proposals rather than to introduce a wealth tax or increase Value Added Tax (VAT) to raise revenue. There will therefore be an increase of 30 cents a litre in the general fuel levy, a new “tyre levy” introduced from 1 October 2016, an increase in the incandescent globe tax to promote a turn to more energy efficient lighting, an increase of the plastic bag levy from six cents to eight cents and increases to the motor vehicle emissions tax. While sin taxes – alcohol and cigarettes – go up as usual, between 6% and 8.5%, Gordhan has also announced a brand new tax to fight obesity. A tax in sugar-sweetened beverages is aimed at reducing excessive sugar intake.\nGordhan said transfer duties on properties above R10 million would increase from 11% to 13%.\nGovernment still looks to raise revenue by a further R15 billion a year in 2017/2018 and 2018/2019. This might see reconsideration of tax proposals not opted for in this budget. Gordhan said decisions would be made in the next budget cycles about which tax instruments to employ. When asked about the possibility of an increase in VAT, he commented that he viewed this as a “regressive tax”.\nDue to slow growth, rising debt and higher interest rates, fiscal consolidation will be accelerated, Gordhan said.\nGovernment aims to cut R10 billion from its expenditure in the 2016/17 financial year, predominately by limiting state salaries, officially known as “compensation”. From 1 April “appointments for non-critical vacant posts will be blocked on government’s payroll system”, says the Budget review document. This is aimed at “unnecessary” administrative and managerial posts identified in revised departmental staffing plans. Teachers, nurses, police officials, and other critical posts, will not be affected by this block. In the pre-Budget briefing, it also emerged cars for public representatives will be capped R750,000, but further details would emerge later.\nTreasury has responded to new spending requirements within the reduced expenditure ceiling. An amount of R31.8 billion has been “reprioritised” over the next three years. This includes allocations of R16.3 billion for short-term funding challenges in higher education.\nAs the drought continues to bite, the operational costs to distribute water may now be offset against the provincial and municipal disaster relief grants, which previously were dedicated to infrastructure and rehabilitation. However, no new funds have been allocated specifically for drought relief efforts.\nInstead, the Budget notes the “reprioritisation” of around R1 billion within the 2015/16 financial year. This includes R502 million from the water and sanitation department to drill bore holes and to buy water tankers, R318 million of the agriculture department’s Ilama/Letsema projects is redirected to move cattle to graze on state land and to bring safe drinking water to drought-stricken areas, and R187 million from the rural development department to acquire animal feed.\nThe Land Bank has set aside money for concessional loan facilities to “assist farmers in recovering from the impact of the current drought conditions”, according to the Budget. However there is some good news in the Budget: the contingency reserves have been pushed up to R6 billion, giving government the flexibility to respond to emergencies and disasters, the drought included.\nThe Budget will contribute R880 billon to the social wage in 2016/2017. R11.5 billion will provide for inflation-linked adjustments to social grants and growth in the number of beneficiaries. This will allow old age, disability and care dependency grants to rise by R80 in April and a further R10 in October. The child support grant will rise by R20 in April and foster care grant by R30.\nThere remain risks to the fiscal outlook. Food inflation has increased, and higher electricity tariffs are in the making – thus increasing pressures on consumers and inflation-related expenditure by government. The weaker than expected economic growth remains a risk over the next three years, but as Gordhan has pointed out in his pre-Budget briefing: there are many factors internationally and domestically that could change dynamics at very short notice. Thirdly, the precarious financial health of several state-owned entities remains a risk factor. DM\nPhoto: Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan delivers his Budget speech at Parliament in Cape Town, Wednesday, 27 February 2013. Picture: GCIS/SAPA", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-02-24-budget-2016-no-austerity-some-tax-increases-slash-in-expenditure-deficit-down/"}

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+{"doc_id": "1316d90728a9f72b4b58a78c74ed3b52", "text": "South Africa’s most prestigious university is in danger of losing its undergraduate law degree. In a move described as \"unprecedented\", the Council for Higher Education has served the University of Cape Town with notice of the withdrawal of accreditation for its LLB programme unless certain conditions focusing on transformation are met. Without this accreditation, universities are not permitted to offer the degree in question. By REBECCA DAVIS.\nWhen it comes to teaching law, the University of Cape Town is ranked in the top 100 universities internationally. Yet in a shock move, the Council of Higher Education (CHE) this week informed UCT’s law faculty that it is in danger of losing accreditation for its LLB programme.\nIn an email distributed to law faculty staff this week, seen by Daily Maverick, it is explained that the CHE’s Higher Education Quality Committee has downgraded UCT’s LLB programme status to “notice of withdrawal of accreditation”.\nThe CHE’s website explains that “only programmes accredited by the (Higher Education Quality Committee) can be offered by a higher education institution, whether public or private”. It states that accreditation is only given to academic programmes which meet “minimum standards of quality”. For UCT to have its LLB accreditation withdrawn would mean that the university would no longer be able to offer an undergraduate Bachelor of Laws.\n“Obviously the action of the CHE is alarming,” the email to staff states, explaining that the faculty is “seeking guidance on this unprecedented step”. The email concludes: “This is a serious matter and needs our urgent attention.”\nThe Higher Education Quality Committee’s report on UCT’s LLB focuses on the programme’s curriculum design, transformation and graduate rates. Its wording is damning.\n“There is no indication of proper and sound planning, no clear targets and timelines provided to convince the Higher Education Quality Committee of the urgency and commitment to address the stipulated conditions,” it charges.\nAmong the criticisms it levels is that “there is little evidence of formal tracking and monitoring of student performance with a view to improvement”. It states that the faculty “must report on plans to enhance throughput and graduation rates (including race and gender equity)”.\nUCT’s law school has received criticism since the student protests began two years ago for its slow pace of transformation. In an op-ed written by former UCT law students in 2015, the faculty came under fire for graduating relatively small numbers of black South African students.\n“Recent statistics showed that between 2006 and 2013, the percentage of black South African graduates (students who would have been categorised as apartheid-era ‘black’) ranged from 4% to 14%,” the authors wrote. “In a country where the legal profession is still radically untransformed, the fact that UCT is producing so few black lawyers only serves to compound that larger social problem.”\nThe Higher Education Quality Committee report also found problems with the LLB curriculum design, suggesting that the programme failed to demonstrate evidence of “the diverse purpose of the qualification… for educating a well-rounded law graduate”.\nIt suggests that the law school’s “Improvement Plan” – supposed to address these issues over the last six months – is “insubstantial” and “very little has been achieved”. A further criticism is that it has been drawn up with a “lack of consultation with key stakeholder groups, especially students”.\nUCT now has six months to address the Higher Education Quality Committee’s concerns to the body’s satisfaction. If it fails to do so, the committee warns that the LLB’s status will be further downgraded – from its current “notice of withdrawal of accreditation” to “confirmation of withdrawal of accreditation”.\nDaily Maverick’s attempts to reach the CEO of the Council on Higher Education, Professor Narend Baijnath, were unsuccessful on Wednesday.\nIn response to a request for comment, UCT provided a statement on behalf of Law Dean Penelope Andrews saying that the faculty was “surprised and concerned” by the outcome of the report, which it termed “alarmist”.\n“As a global top 100 law school and as the top law school in South Africa, we note that our graduates are in high demand from law firms across the country, and the findings are at odds with the performance of our graduates,” Andrews stated. “This long-standing reputation stands in stark contrast with this first ever accreditation process of law degrees by the CHE.”\nNonetheless, the dean expressed her confidence that the LLB programme would be able to retain its accreditation.\nShe said that the law school would be submitting a revised “Improvement Plan” in the next few weeks which it was hoped would address the report’s main concerns – particularly “the critical need for transformation across the industry”.\nAndrews says that these are issues that the faculty is “already deeply immersed in and almost takes for granted”, and suggested that their previous report-back to the Higher Education Quality Committee “did not necessarily capture those activities, discussions and reflections”.\nProfessor Andrews herself came in for criticism from students during the protests for seemingly supporting the use of private security on UCT campus to try to ensure the continuation of academic activity.\nIn a 2016 op-ed by black law students, Andrews was accused of siding with white students against black protesters.\n“[Andrews’] consistent appeals to white upper class students for support on her reactionary positions are a testament to her insecurities in leadership and demonstrate a betrayal of the collective struggle that made it possible for a black woman to be dean in a racist institution like UCT after so many years,” the writers charged.\nAndrews’ statement on Wednesday concluded with a desire for “further engagement” with the CHE to “continue improving upon our excellent LLB programme”.\nDespite this, the decision to place UCT’s LLB on notice is likely to reignite debate about the tension between institutional autonomy and government control when it comes to South Africa’s universities. If nothing else, it is a humiliating smackdown for a law school which has produced the likes of Cissie Gool, Dullah Omar, and a clutch of high-profile South African judges. DM\nPhoto: UCT Law School (Wikimedia Commons)\n*note: This story has been updated to reflect a correction to UCT’s ranking on the Top International University Ranking.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-16-ucts-law-programme-under-existential-threat/"}

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+{"doc_id": "135a0f74428b3bc1bf95ac091f8e19f3", "text": "Plans are afoot to extract more value and better integrate fishing into the Mauritanian economy. Doing so will require a break from the past – including making considerable investment in infrastructure, implanting a new set of policies, and ensuring a new way of doing things. The sector is a key test for a country which could, if it walks its own talk, become a regional exemplar. By GREG MILLS.\nNoauakchott’s fish market at the Plage des Pecheurs (Place of the Fishermen) is a place of great energy. Teams of men, some in oilskins, most barefoot, heave colourfully decorated pirogues up the beach. Others pack outboard engines and hand-knotted nets. Boys and girls sell drinks and food, and donkey carts lug bags and boxes of fish. The concrete tables in the roofed marketplace are piled with fish, the floor littered with discarded heads and entrails, while traders seal cooler boxes for the refrigerated trucks parked outside.\nHundreds of these traditional, open fishing boats line the shore. The seas off Mauritania’s 754km coastline contain some of the world’s richest fishing grounds, generating a quarter of the country’s exports. But the industry is under pressure. As much as 1.2-million tonnes is caught in Mauritanian waters annually, though fishermen complain that they have to go as far as 30kms offshore to make their catch.\nPhotos: Plage des Pecheurs (Greg Mills)\nIn July 2015 the European Union renewed a 20-year agreement with Mauritania allowing EU vessels to trawl up to 281,500 tonnes annually in return for commercial payment and an aid package to support local fishing and environmental controls. Commercial trawlers can net up to 250 tonnes of fish daily; a pirogue might do five tonnes a year. Chinese, Russian and South Korean trawlers, like the Europeans, are drawn to the area by increasing consumer demand and declining stocks back home. It is estimated that more than a third of fish caught off West Africa is illegal, unreported or unregulated, losing $1.3-billion in annual income.\nPlans are afoot to extract more value and better integrate fishing into the Mauritanian economy. Doing so will require a break from the past – including making considerable investment in infrastructure, implanting a new set of policies, and ensuring a new way of doing things.\nThe sector is a key test for a country which could, if it walks its own talk, become a regional exemplar.\nNouakchott – the “place of winds” – was created afresh as the capital on independence from France in 1960, when just 10,000 frequented what was little more than a fishing village. Now home to perhaps 1.5-million people, or a third of Mauritania’s population, it is pockmarked with grey concrete residences under construction. There are no physical city limits to the urban spread across the apparently endless expanse. “If you have a thing about sand,” observes one diplomat, “you should not be here.”\nPhoto: Nouakchott. (Greg Mills)\nSprawl and poverty place different but extreme strains on infrastructure.\nThe road to the mine at Akjoujt strikes out 250km northeast from the capital Nouakchott towards the border with the Western Sahara. Its tough territory, more Mars, it seems, than Mauritania.\nPhoto: The road to the mine at Akjoujt. (Greg Mills)\nA short stretch at the start is built to link the new international airport with the capital, the four lanes lit by solar-powered lamps. On the city limits the route is a dodgem of donkey carts, petrol tankers, trucks, camels, and suicidal Mauritanians, lined with a scruffy salad of plastic rubbish, old tyres, desert shrubs, vehicle detritus, the occasional mosque and the ubiquitous khaima – tents around which goats scuffle and out of which occasionally a shepherd appears in a colourful boubou, veiled in an equally bright chehce headdress. Red sand from rolling dunes spills into the road at various points, whipping across it at others in a ghostly tarmac mist, adding to the challenge.\nAnd then, quickly, there is virtually nothing. Just a black strip, a string through the endless sand, punctuated by an occasional khaima, solar powered cellphone towers, grazing camels and busy goats, sedentary police roadblocks, and an odd roadside water bladder. One of the 10 most sparsely populated countries in the world, Mauritania’s human density is 3.5 people per km2 across its million or so square kilometres, putting it alongside Botswana (3.48), Iceland (3.24), Namibia (2.56) and neighbouring Western Sahara (2.25). The per capita cost of delivering infrastructure over this vast territory is high.\nPhoto: The copper-gold mine at Akjoukt. Temperatures peak at over 60 Celsius in summer in the pit. (Greg Mills)\nOnce on the margins of the world – confused even by couriers with tropical Mauritius on the other side of the continent – Mauritania has benefited from the global mining boom, given its large stores of iron ore and copper. Annual foreign direct investment leapt from $100-million in 2006 to $1.5-billion in 2012, 90% of which was in mining. It enjoyed five years of annual growth of 5.4% from 2010.\nYet it remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with a per capita GDP of $1,300, ranking 156th among the 188 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index. Although its population is growing slowly by regional standards, 60% is under the age of 25, while literacy is just 52%. Its infrastructure is fragile – with just one-fifth of the population having access to electricity, and with a chronic national water shortage. Mauritania imports as much as 90% of its domestic food requirements.\nMacro-economic troubles have surfaced as the commodity super-cycle has cooled. With a 10% drop in mining production in 2015, GDP growth fell to 3%, from 6.4% the previous year. And government debt rose to over 90% of GDP, forcing the devaluation of the Ouguiya.\nA troubled political history has not helped, with a dozen coups or attempts since independence, the first in 1978 ending the rule of independence leader Moktar Dadda. A military junta ruled until 1992, when the first multi-party elections were held. Another bloodless coup in August 2005 oversaw a transition to democracy. Although Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdellahi was inaugurated in April 2007 as the country’s first free and fairly elected president, his term ended abruptly in August 2008 with a putsch led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. The general was subsequently elected president in July 2009 and re-elected to a second, and apparently final term in 2014 with 82% of the vote, both events however being boycotted by various opposition movements.\nAlthough there have been significant reforms in media freedom, for example, Mauritania’s political system remains classified “not free” by Freedom House. The differences appear deeper than democracy. There remain ethnic and racial tensions among three major groups: the Arabic-speaking descendants of slaves (Haratines), around 40% of the population, Arabic-speaking so-called “White Moors” (Bidhan), some 30%, and the remainder from those Afro-Mauritanians originating from the Senegal River valley to the south. With Bidhan Mauritanians occupying most elite positions, in government and business, there is a tense public debate about slavery and its effects.\nDespite such differences, and adverse conditions, there is a strong sense of national attachment and resourcefulness. “We still think like nomads,” explains a veteran local politician, “to our cost. We dump rubbish where we choose, and have no permanence. It reflects in the way in which we drive.” Mauritania is one of the few countries where you will routinely be overtaken while waiting at a red traffic light, a place where old Peugeots and battered Mercedes taxis come to die. “But being nomads,” he smiles, “also means we can survive the toughest conditions.”\nStill Mauritania’s image outside remains tainted. This is compounded by challenges in doing business. It is ranked 168 out of 189 countries in the World Bank’s 2016 Ease of Doing Business indicators, for example. Investors say they are hampered by erratic tax practices and an inefficient and corrupt legal system.\nNone of this, however, is lost on government. By the admission of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Mohamed Djibril, dealing with corruption and ensuring inclusive government are items two and three on the government’s top-three priorities, the first being to “develop the private sector without which it is impossible to create jobs”.\nThere are deeper challenges. Ahmed Mahmoud Dahan, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and, later, Islamic Affairs, and now the head of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Nouakchott, says the state was “established by the colonial authorities principally for extraction. After independence, it was replaced by a state to serve the executive. As a result,” he notes, “power is all important as the state is virtually the sole source of jobs.” Predictably, in the government, until now “there has been little incentive for change”.\nThis view is echoed by the Prime Minister, Yahya Ould Hademine.\nWith a background in the state iron-ore mining company SNIM, he, too, has clear ideas of what needs to be done. Appointed in August 2014, the Canadian educated technocrat identifies “the first constraint in that Mauritania was not a state before independence. We have had to construct institutions and educate our people to enter modernity. Now, after 50 years, we have reached the level of countries like Senegal, at least, which has been doing this for hundreds of years.” This situation was made more difficult by “a big 20-year drought in the 1970s, which seriously affected our livestock-based society, and increased the rate of urbanization. But then we had to provide new infrastructure in the cities – potable water, roads, services, policing – as well as attempt to deliver,” he notes, “over a large territory.”\nTo these constraints he says have to be added “increasing investment, improving the legal system and justice.” And this has been complicated by the rise of “violent extremism”.\nNow the government “has identified three fields for growth and jobs: fishing, agriculture and livestock. We aim to add more value to fishing. Whereas Morocco has just half of our production, it has 500,000 workers. Senegal produces one-quarter of what we do, but has 400,000. We have just 36,000. The Free Zone initiative in the [northern port of] Nouadh’bou aims to change this, as will be the development in smaller ports along the coast.” The government plans to spend as much as $1-billion on the fishing sector alone.\nIt’s slightly more complicated, however, given that the local fishing industry is dominated by Senegalese. Many menial jobs go to foreigners, mostly from West Africa.\n“In agriculture,” says the Prime Minister, “the plan is to prepare the land to the south along the Senegal River, where we have hundreds of thousands of hectares available. Already we produce 80% of our rice requirement from this area.”\nA focus on these areas would build on the success of the mining sector, he says. Mauritania is the second largest iron ore producer in Africa, and aspires to be in the top five global exporters of iron ore by 2025 with an annual production of 40-million tonnes. There are also investors operating copper and gold mines, including Mauritanian Copper Mines, at Akjoujt. With an injection of finance and technology by owners First Quantum, the mine, originally started by Anglo American in the 1960s, produces around 40,000 tonnes of copper and 60,000 ounces of gold annually.\nWhat about the to-and-fro steps regarding democracy?\n“You have to understand that Mauritania is not exactly like all African countries,” says Prime Minister Hademine. “Our population has a long cultural history and in the Middle Ages they conquered Spain and Morocco, so convincing them of new rules of governance is not that is as other African populations who learnt how to read with the coming of the colonial power. Our path is thus one of small steps.”\nThese steps include the debate around inclusive government, which some see as a proxy, however, for extending the president’s rule to a third term. With a proactive leadership role in the African Union and the Arab League, the government is surprisingly defensive about its international engagement. Even though it has made a long-term regional commitment to fighting violent extremism, France is routinely fingered as the culprit when things go awry, as is Israel since Nouakchott cut ties with Jerusalem in 2009. And there is suspicion towards foreign workers and investors in taking jobs away from Mauritanians, hence the imposition of schedules to work expats out of positions that locals might fill, sometimes a balancing act between local empowerment and appeasement on the one hand and continued competitiveness on the other.\nYet, ironically, Mauritania’s greatest strength is in its relationship with the international community as a stand-out country in the Sahel, given its relative security. This asset is highlighted by the projected increase in the region’s population from 135-million to 330-million by 2050 and an estimated 670-million in 2100.\nTogether with water scarcity, populist temptations including Islam, and fictions of local statehood across an area of more than six million km2, the Sahel scene is otherwise set for chronic failure. Throw in climate change and soil degradation (already estimated by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation as affecting over 80% of the Sahel) and a predominantly young population one should expect migration, both south and north, on a grand scale.\nUntil now the role of the international community has been to manage the tactical extremes, and trying to bolster state and especially military capacity in places where there are fundamental issues of control of society and territory at stake. This approach is likely only to stave off rather than solve these problems especially where it’s not always clear who the government and the good guys are.\nThere is a wider role for those Sahel states that might answer these questions. As Ambassador Dahan observes, “The world speaks about North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. But there is a big bit of the continent between the two, stretching from Mauritania in the west to Sudan in the east. It’s sparsely populated and big.\n“Does this region, the Sahel, divide these two worlds,” he asks, “or does it link them?”\nThe road from Nouakchott to Akjoujt was rebuilt in 2012 by Mauritanian Copper Mines at a cost of $25-million. It was in the company’s self-interest to do so, moving an average of six 30 tonne fuel tankers and fifteen 50-tonne copper concentrate trucks daily down the route. MCM has a wider role still, pumping water 120kms away from an aquifer at Benn’chahab. In the heat of summer, with temperatures at over 50 Celsius, the mine gets less than 75% of the water which originally entered the pipe, the rest being diverted to the local town and various populations and camels en route. In the town of Akjoujt, 360 houses are owned by the mine, which has additionally set up training programmes for youth, women, farmers, and school children.\nThis adds a premium, of expectation as much as expense, to the mine’s activities, already burdened by distance and the cost of services. The cost of transport, for example, to the port at Nouakchott is $16 per tonne, plus $10 in handling charges and $35 in shipping to China. To this has to be added processing costs, and explains why plans to extract iron ore from the discarded copper-gold concentrate at MCM had to be put on hold when iron prices slipped below $60 per tonne.\nPhoto: The author with the Prime Minister Hademine and Ambassador Dahane.\nReducing inequalities and tackling wealth redistribution, notes the World Bank, “are key challenges that Mauritania can overcome, provided that it continues its commitment to good governance, particularly in the mining sector and in the supervision of state enterprises”. Indeed, the partnership epitomised by the mine at Akjoujt answers some of the development questions posed by Mauritania – and the Sahel. To do more, and ensure both its own stability and provide an example to its region, the government in Nouakchott will have to stay true to its rhetoric to encourage the private sector. DM\nDr Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, and has been researching in Mauritania for a new book, ‘Making Africa Work’.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-10-19-reform-in-the-sahel-mars-mauritius-or-mauritania/"}

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+{"doc_id": "14acc9457d0fede5dab98be184f78902", "text": "Despite individual African governments having an essential role in tourism management, private wildlife reserves are proving to be the sector's driving force. But are conservancies the way to go? (Photo: birdstoryagency)\nIn December, over 190 countries attending a UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada committed to protecting 30% of Earth’s lands, oceans, coastal areas and inland waters in an attempt to conserve global biodiversity.\nAfrica is seen as a key pillar in these efforts. And yet, a conservation revolution may already be underway on the continent.\nThe Great Green Wall for Restoration and Peace is a grand initiative facilitated by the African Union to restore savannas, grasslands and farmlands across Africa – some 100 million hectares worth – and create 10 million jobs.\nThis poster child for African conservation has been touted as transformative – but dig deeper and a more localised transformation is already underway, driven by local, private and community-funded conservation.\nIn 2023, 3000 delegates drawn from close to 100 countries will descend on Kigali for the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) Global Summit, one of the world’s most influential travel and tourism events. This is the first time the summit will be held in Africa.\nMany of those who will be in attendance are African tourism and wildlife industry leaders as well as key government representatives. The event is recognition of the enormous effort that Rwanda has put into building its tourism sector, which was almost nonexistent just twenty years ago.\n“Rwanda is building its reputation as a must-see destination,” said Julia Simpson, President of WTTC.\nFamous for its robust tourism and wildlife approach, Rwanda is the only African country with an extensive gorilla conservation programme – the International Gorilla Conservation Programme – and has made this unique species the centrepiece of its tourism offering, in much the same way that China has done with its pandas.\nWhile the country’s major successes in the tourism sector are government-led, the underlying privately-managed game parks and animal sanctuaries are a booming subsector. They have significantly complemented government efforts to upscale the industry.\nThis is not unique to Rwanda, as Africa’s extensive wildlife diversity remains largely untapped.\nPrivate conservancies have surged across Africa in recent years, run and managed by private entities – whether individuals or community-wide initiatives.\nThe World Wild Fund estimates that Africa – a continent that is home to close to 30% of the world’s wildlife population – has lost nearly 70% of its wildlife population in about 50 years. According to the Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association, KWCA, 65% of Kenya’s wildlife now lives on community and private lands.\n“In the Maasai Mara, for example, 15 conservancies protect over 450,000 acres of critical habitat for the great Serengeti-Mara wildebeest migration. This has seen the lion population double over the last decade and 3000 households earn more than $4 million annually from tourism,” KWCA outlines.\nThe African Nature Based Tourism Platform, a platform connecting funders to communities and SMEs in wildlife and tourism, in a series of country reports released in January 2022, demonstrates the value of the sub sector in economic development.\nIn Kenya, private and community-owned conservancies contributed 8.1% of the country’s GDP, supporting more than 1.5 million jobs. The survey report lists 93 privately-owned wildlife conservancies, 68 of which are community owned.\nComparative figures are listed for South Africa, where individuals privately own 71 conservancies, with 21 community owned. These contributed to 6.7% of South Africa’s economy, channelling more than 22 billion US dollars besides supporting 1.5 million jobs.\nSimilar trends could be observed in the case of Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Uganda, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Tanzania in 2019, before the pandemic.\nAccording to Carel Verhoef, a Tanzania-based conservation enthusiast and wildlife film technical director, private wildlife conservancies take different models across Africa.\nKenya’s model is of shared land, Tanzania has converted former hunting blocks to safari areas, and Botswana employs community-based conservation areas.\n“The Kenyan conservancy model is such that an agreement is struck between land owners, the Maasai, and the private sector on land management and land use, sharing,” Verhoef explained.\nHowever, these models are not perfect.\n“The model is good for expanding a small protected area…but it is dependent on the tourism sector’s success. That means it is vulnerable to bad business management and global pandemics,” Verhoef added.\nExploitive capitalist attributes could also threaten the approach since the land under conservation is offered to the highest bidder.\nVerhoef believes that for conservation and sustainable tourism to be realised in Africa, the conservation obligation should not be wholly left in the hands of the private sector, where financial success is prioritised over the actual need to conserve.\nStill, human development and herding in conserved areas, among other human activities, continue to limit wildlife conservation, especially on private lands.\nRichard Obanda, senior manager at Buteyo Miti Park, a privately (Kenyan)-owned conservancy in western Kenya, says community involvement is crucial.\n“The park today has no funder supporting its operations, we depend on entry fees which can barely support 50% of our operational needs. The alternative is to ensure there is as much value addition as possible so that the space can serve both the community and us,” he explained.\nFor him, the debate on the place of private conservancies in sustaining the sector cannot be understated.\n“Communities are offered an opportunity to have direct control of the natural resources besides minimising human-wildlife conflicts since such issues are solved more amicably,” he said.\nThis week’s historic agreement envisages US$200 billion provided to support biodiversity by 2030, with another $500 billion possible. Low-income countries are to receive far more than is currently provided for efforts to protect nature. That funding is likely to go some way to fuelling Africa’s fast-growing, localised – and locally-owned – conservation economy. – bird story agency", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://mg.co.za/africa/2023-01-04-are-private-wildlife-conservancies-the-way-to-sustainable-tourism-in-africa/"}

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+{"doc_id": "1594baca28b9ff6173539f0005c49c63", "text": "Stats SA has published GDP data for the second quarter of 2018, showing that the country has entered into a technical recession.\nThe group reported a decline of 0.7% in the second quarter of the year, following a first quarter decline of 2.2%, which came as a shock to many analysts.\nIn economic terms, a technical recession is described as two consecutive quarters of economic decline.\nSouth Africa entered into a technical recession in 2017, until government later revised the data in the latter quarters of the year.\nAhead of the GDP announcement, economists had anticipated data showing that South Africa had narrowly missed the technical recession, but indicated that growth, if any, would have been too low to spell any good news for the economy.\nGDP data\nAccording to Stats SA, the largest negative contributors to growth in GDP in the second quarter were agriculture, transport and trade.\nThe agriculture, forestry and fishing industry decreased by 29.2% and contributed -0.8 of a percentage point to GDP growth. The decrease was mainly because of a drop in the production of field crops and horticultural products, Stats SA said.\nThe transport, storage and communication industry decreased by 4.9% and contributed -0.4 of a percentage point. This was as a result of decreases in land transport, air transport and transport support services.\nThe trade, catering and accommodation industry decreased by 1.9% and contributed -0.3 of a percentage point.\nThe main positive contributions came from the mining industry and finance, real estate and business services. Increased production was reported for mining of ‘other’ metal ores including platinum group metals, copper and nickel.\nThe manufacturing industry contracted by 0.3% in the second quarter. The majority of the ten manufacturing divisions reported negative growth rates in the second quarter. The largest contributors to the decrease were the motor vehicles, parts and accessories and the furniture and ‘other’ manufacturing divisions.\nThe electricity, gas and water industry increased by 2.1%, largely due to an increase in electricity consumed in the second quarter. The construction industry increased by 2.3%. Increases were reported for non-residential buildings and construction works activities.\nThe rand fell further against the dollar after the report was published, sinking to R15.22, having passed the R15 barrier earlier in the day.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/269235/south-africa-enters-recession-after-gdp-declines-for-a-second-quarter/"}

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+{"doc_id": "15bf3fba1970581eabb9313dcbc22923", "text": "Analysis: Money, politics and patronage in Sierra Leone\nAs Sierra Leone struggles with the aftermath of the devastating Ebola epidemic, it must fight fires on several fronts: as well as being one of the most corrupt countries in Africa, it is facing an acute cash shortage and potential leadership struggle. By JAMIE HITCHEN.\nThis article originally appeared on Africa Research Institute’s blog. Jamie Hitchen (@jchitchen) is a policy researcher with Africa Research Institute (@AfricaResearch).\nTransparency International’s 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Sierra Leone 119th out of 168 countries. The country’s position has progressively worsened over the last four years. Also in 2015, 70% of citizens surveyed by Afrobarometer felt that corruption had increased from 2014, with only a third believing that they can make a difference in the fight against it.\nTackling corruption\nErnest Bai Koroma pledged to tackle corruption after his election as president in 2007. He replaced a Sierra Leone People’s Party government that was accused of being a “fortress of corruption” and which faced severe criticism of its record from international partners shortly before being voted from power.\nKoroma began promisingly with the creation of an Anti-Corruption Act in 2008 and public attacks on graft within government. But after the unexplained resignation in 2010 of Abdul Tejan-Cole, the widely respected, impartial head of the Anti-Corruption Commission, progress stalled. Under the leadership of Joseph Kamara, increasingly a close ally of the president, the commission successfully prosecuted no high-profile individuals for corrupt activities, leading to accusations that it has been politicised. The decision to appoint Kamara to the position of Attorney-General in a recent cabinet reshuffle does not convey the message that the justice sector will take a tough or proactive stance on the issue.\nThe fading commitment to tackling corruption was highlighted during the Ebola outbreak. A real-time audit of government expenditure by the Auditor-General’s office found that 30% of the money was disbursed without proper supporting documentation. Despite the report being a public document that was presented to parliament – meaning that the Anti-Corruption Commission could in theory have been expected to investigate its detailed findings – so far no individual has been reprimanded or asked to pay back ill-gotten gains. Procurement mismanagement and inflated contracts have featured prominently in every report by the Auditor-General’s office since 2011, but continue to be features of day-to-day government business.\nInternational donors like the UK’s Department for International Development have also sought to engage government on the subject. Following previous initiatives, in 2014 a “Pay No Bribe Campaign” was launched with the support of the president, who urged citizens to “Request no bribe! Pay no bribe!” The department decided not to channel funds for the Ebola response through government ministries, indicating concern about accountability and transparency. However, the UK’s Department for International Development’s own showing on that score has been far from perfect. Sierra Leoneans – the beneficiaries – have a right to know why, for example, a treatment centre at Kerry Town was constructed (and subsequently dismantled) at a cost of £85-million; or why only 2% of all funds donated by external agencies including the department went to local doctors, nurses and burial teams.\nIn a recent interview with The Economist, the president’s spokesman, Abdulai Bayraytay, claimed that the installation of two sets of traffic lights in Freetown would help reduce corruption as “traffic police are perceived as being very corrupt”. The comment appears symptomatic of the government’s unwillingness to address the root causes of the corruption “problem”. Police reforms and the punishment of transgressors, rather than a public admission that the government knows what goes on but does nothing, would have been more encouraging to Sierra Leoneans. Of course, promoting this type of reform for government departments is not in the interest of ministers whose lifestyles are far more opulent than their monthly salaries of about $3,000 could possibly support.\nLooking for capital\nThe government is facing an acute cash shortage. The price of iron ore, the main driver of double digit GDP growth in the years preceding Ebola, remains low; most aid is not channelled through government departments, and internally generated revenues are slight. The Ministry of Defence received only a quarter of its budgetary allocation for the first six months of 2016, a constraint replicated to varying degrees across all ministries.\nTo the government, Chinese investment looks like an appealing solution. But partially state-owned companies, such as the China Railway Group, are mainly interested in the construction of toll roads and a new airport. These are necessary in the long term, but far from vital for a country that has serious problems with the provision of water and electricity, prevailing food insecurity and a health sector described by the Auditor-General as a “panoply of dysfunction”. Ulterior motives are widely suspected.\nIf it goes ahead – and opposition has already been expressed by key international donors and partners like the IMF – moving the airport from its current location at Lungi to a new site 60km east of Freetown, at Mamamah, is expected to cost at least $300-million. The Chinese government, it is alleged, have their eye on the Lungi site for a military base; for President Koroma, it would be a way of getting much-needed cash into the system and facilitating a legacy project. With an election just 18 months away, the All People’s Congress (APC’s) patronage machine is already grinding through the gears.\nElectoral politics\nSierra Leone’s 1991 constitution limits the president to two terms. It appears unlikely that Koroma will attempt to change the constitution despite increasingly vocal backing from APC supporters and even those within the party to secure “more time”. The president is aware of the potential consequences for relations with leading international donors and the reputational impact. Legally, he would only be able to extend his term in office if the country were to remain in a state of emergency; but this measure, announced in late July 2014 to contain the Ebola outbreak, is due to be lifted in August 2016.\nPerhaps Koroma’s cabinet reshuffle in March 2016, widely interpreted as a political manoeuvre, provides the clearest indicator of what will happen to the presidency. Those who were suspected of contemplating a leadership challenge ahead of the 2018 election were sacked and replaced by individuals with limited experience and in some cases few qualifications other than demonstrable loyalty to the APC. Several of the new ministers may not be well-equipped to provide the strategic, long-term thinking that is required as the country rebuilds post-Ebola, but they will ensure that Koroma’s rumoured successor, Joseph Kamara, has the full backing of the party. The APC’s structure and constitution promotes a strong, top-down chain of command. Once a decision has been made by the party’s inner circle the casting of votes to endorse this choice is purely academic.\nA popular refrain holds that Koroma is “doing okay” but is let down by his ministers. However, Sierra Leonean journalist Umaru Fofana points out that ultimately “[the president] appoints the cabinet and the buck stops with him”. For Fofana, “the tragedy is that Sierra Leonean politicians, on all sides, are thinking in the 1960s and 1970s. They are trying to undermine democratic principles and values – rather than focusing their energy towards building them. To them, electoral politics, instead of development, is to the fore in whatever they do; everything else has to fall in line behind.” DM\nPhoto: The President of Republic of Sierra Leone, Ernest Bai Koroma, attends a press conference during the international conference on Ebola at the Egmont Palace in Brussels, Belgium, 03 March 2015. EPA/JULIEN WARNAND\nRead more\n- Sierra Leone: Music in the time after Ebola on Daily Maverick via Africa Research Institute", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-06-06-analysis-money-politics-and-patronage-in-sierra-leone/"}

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+{"doc_id": "175f0826b255793ebcb289804a5cebee", "text": "Image Credit: Paul Saad\nDaily Maverick is a unique blend of news, investigations, analysis and opinion. We are a South African based publication with a worldview.\nEvery part of Daily Maverick is free to access and no payment is required, although some civic-minded readers participate in our voluntary membership programme designed to keep our journalism free for all.\nDaily Maverick is run by an independently owned, private company with no affiliation to any other media group (or political party or religious organisation.)\nIt is funded through membership reader contributions, advertising, events and grants.\nIf you’d like to reach out to us with questions you can contact us via email.\nFaith • Trust • Belief\nIn the years since Daily Maverick’s inception in 2009, the proliferation of social networks and online content has brought never-before-seen public participation into the information universe.\nHowever, this internet-fuelled revolution also brought a change in the flow and quality of information. As a result of this explosion of digital content, what constitutes facts, trust and accuracy have all suffered. It is often said that lies travel halfway around the world before the truth has even managed to get out of bed.\nMisinformation, lies and disinformation campaigns are now part of our everyday digital worlds. And one of the most effective ways to fight this onslaught is with high impact, independent public service journalism.\nFor us, journalism needs to do two things. Firstly, our constitution specifically asks that we help protect our fledgling democracy. And we do that with a huge investment in accountability journalism.\nSecondly, journalism should help you navigate life. Helping you make better decisions, have better conversations and ultimately, aid you in the pursuit of a better life. We do this by explaining the impact of big events, providing perspective from the most experienced newsroom in South Africa’s history and bringing a range of opinions from a network of contributors that you might not agree with but will definitely want to know what they’re thinking about.\nWe feel we have proven our worth to you, many times over. But don’t just take our word for it. The judges at the Global Shining Light, Nat Nakasa, Taco Kuiper, Vodacom, Standard Bank and Bookmark awards have over the years repeatedly acknowledged the quality and impact of our amazing team.\nOur goal is that we have a relationship of trust, where you can safely believe what you read on Daily Maverick’s pages – no matter what noise proliferates out in the world – and on your phone.\nOur vision is that when you spend your valuable time with our journalism, you will know more and know better. We do that by going all out to “Defend Truth”.\nReader Covenant (written in 2009)\nThese are our promises to you, and what we expect from you in return.\nGive us a tiny slice of your time and we’ll give you the world. We’ll also throw in a whole lot of fun, just to sweeten the deal.\nIn the background, there’s a whole lot more to it, of course, but that’s all just detail. Daily Maverick exists to provide you with the news, analysis, investigations, insight and opinion that you need. Whether you’re required to make big decisions or just want to hold your own over lunchtime conversation, we’ll provide the tools.\nHere’s another promise: we won’t ever waste your time. We don’t let algorithms decide what is important and what is not. Our journalists and editors are humans and some of the best and most experienced ones around at that. They’ve spent decades refining the craft and, by now, they’re pretty good at it.\nThe result is a service that will tell you what happened yesterday, what’s happening now and what’s going to happen today and tomorrow – and what it all means.\nThe important stuff is all here. But we realise you may need more than that. So we’ll provide you with the social currency you need to talk to your friends about that big game yesterday, or to talk to your office buddies about what the world’s, and South Africa’s, next move is going to be. And we’re not going to let you be ignorant about the latest in arts and culture or science and technology either.\nWe will always be serious about you being a knowledgeable and fun person.\nWe’ll do all of that for you, day in and day out, and we’ll do it with the greatest of integrity. Nobody will ever pay for our opinions, no matter the size of the chequebook. We will never sell your private information, let somebody else dictate our agenda, or conspire behind your back.\nYou, dear reader, are at the very centre of the Daily Maverick universe.\nHow we’re funded\nDaily Maverick journalism is funded, mainly, by three sources: philanthropy, commercial activities and support from our readers. By design, we do not have an overreliance on any single revenue source to reduce the impact of any market shocks.\nPhilanthropic funding is provided by grant funding institutions and individuals to the Public Benefit Organisation that houses our investigative reporting, climate crisis, internship training and civil society reporting teams. Some of these amounts are recurring for specific programmes, and some are once-off per project or focus areas.\nNo individual donor contributes more than 5% of our total income.\nIn the last 12 months, we have received grants greater than R150k from the foundations and trusts, including Donald Gordon Foundation, Vital Strategies, Roy McAlpine Charitable Foundation, Claude Leon Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Millennium Trust, Elaine & David Potter Foundation and ABSA.\nOther donations are also received from individuals in their personal capacity and no amounts greater than R150,000 have been received in the last 12 months and the majority number small amounts below R1,000.\nCommercial revenue is generated through the sale of advertising packages and sponsorships across our digital, print and events properties. Advertising clients range from large corporations to small and medium-sized businesses.\nWe sell directly to clients, through media buying agencies and through programmatic channels. We do not allow illegal products, tobacco, or sexually explicit content and services to be advertised on our properties.\nDespite blocking these categories, advertisers do sometimes slip through the cracks on programmatic channels – please let us know should you see any of them. In recent years, the breadth of journalism that we pursue has grown to include book publishing and directing feature film documentaries.\nReader support is driven primarily through our membership programme, Maverick Insider. As of May 2022, we have more than 17,500 members who are recurring annual or monthly contributors (who choose the amount of their contribution).\nOver the years, a robust and diversified revenue model has allowed us to build a resilient business model where no single source or even category of revenue is overly relied upon.\nThis helps protect us from market shocks like Covid-19 and industry disruption. Since its inception, all growth has been re-invested into creating new jobs in an industry that has lost more than 50% of its permanently employed workforce in the last decade.\nIn this period, Daily Maverick has created more than 120 employment opportunities, most of them permanent or near-permanent positions – more than any other media house in the country.\nStrategy and direction\nThe overall business and editorial strategy for the organisation is set by the founders, Branko Brkic (Editor-in-chief) and Styli Charalambous (CEO), in consultation with our team leaders.\nEditorial teams are led by section heads and a steering group of 11 people operates as a leadership collective covering the entire breadth of teams inside Daily Maverick.\nWe also listen to our expert body of some of the best journalists and professionals South Africa has ever seen and regularly take the pulse of the country to assess its pressing needs.\nNo advertisers, members, grant funders, donors or shareholders are involved in day-to-day or long-term editorial decisions.\nWhile we accept suggestions and tip-offs from the public the final decision to pursue any story is decided upon by the managing editors of respective teams and the editor-in-chief, who also bears ultimate responsibility for all editorial decisions.\nThe Daily Maverick (Pty) Shareholders\nDaily Maverick is wholly owned by an investment holding company which in turn has the following shareholders:\nMore than 50%\nNone\nMore than 25%\nInkululeko South Africa Media (Non-Profit Company)\nLess than 15%\nTondox (Pty) ltd\nNoble Savage (Pty) ltd\nBakkium Share Trust\nKMC Trust\nWolmarans Trust\nPolyanna Trust\nAngel Trust\nStyli Charalambous\nBranko Brkic\nTony Rattey\nThe board of directors are the co-founders Branko Brkic and Styli Charalambous.\nCareers\nVisit our Announcements Page for information about the latest positions.\nCancellation/Refund Policy\nRefunds of voluntary once-off contributions will be considered if applied for within 30 days of making such a contribution. Cancellation requests for ongoing recurring monthly contributions will be processed within 30 days of receipt of notice.\nPrivacy Policy\nWe will not give your individual data to anybody, ever, unless they carry guns accompanied by a valid court order.\nSome of our e-mail is sent by third-party providers (who have the servers and systems to do so quickly and efficiently); these providers are highly professional companies that comply with stringent requirements for privacy and security on the lists that we give to them.\nAlso, we know where they live.\nWe track reader habits; how long an individual spends on the site in a session, whether readers like both politics and entertainment articles, for example. We need that data to understand better how we can better serve you, the reader.\nFor statistics and analysis, we use the standard Effective Measure and Google Analytics services, like just about any other respectable website in the world. This general data we analyse ourselves (to see what works, where people go, what they read, that kind of thing) and we share some aspects of that data with our advertisers, so they know how many readers we have in Iceland, for example.\nThe data that we share, however, is generic, overall, and in no way allows for the identification of any reader. You can find the privacy policy for Google Analytics here; it falls under the general Google privacy policy.\nWhen you sign up to receive e-mail from us or to comment on the site, we ask you for certain personal details: a telephone number, the city in which you live, and so on.\nThis information is optional. If you do provide it, it may make it easier for us to reach you (to tell you how awesome you are, or invite you to coffee) or to provide you with new and exciting services (like information linked with your hometown). Again, this information is not shared with anyone outside Daily Maverick.\nWe also use technology such as cookies, image tracking in e-mail and other forms of monitoring to help us understand reader needs and optimise the website. All of these techniques are stock standard and all data gathered is only shared with outsiders once we are satisfied that it cannot be abused.\nUnless you wear a tinfoil hat to bed every single night, chances are that we are more paranoid about your privacy than you are. May it long stay that way.\nPress Council\nDaily Maverick proudly displays the “FAIR” stamp of the\nPress Council of South Africa, indicating our commitment to\nadhere to the Code of Ethics for Print and online media which\nprescribes that our reportage is truthful, accurate and fair.\nShould you wish to lodge a complaint about our news coverage,\nplease lodge a complaint on the Press Council’s website,\nwww.presscouncil.org.za or email the complaint to [email protected] . Contact the Press Council on 011 484 3612.\nDaily Maverick © All rights reserved", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/about/?dm_source=homepage&dm_medium=link&dm_campaign=homepage_footer"}

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+{"doc_id": "18db1de56d92b3060b446bd19a31f7d9", "text": "In South Africa, economic policy is, to put it mildly, contested terrain. With our history having created a skewed scenario of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, there is an uncomfortable element to these arguments. In short, to argue about economics is to argue about race and our past. Which is one of the reasons that every time there is a slight change in government, or an election, everyone both locally and abroad starts to fret and worry and prepare for economic policy Armageddon. Knowing full well that the structure of our economy is simply unfair and wrong, those who are the ‘haves’, and those who have invested money in this economic structure, worry deeply. But over the last five years the ANC itself appears to have actually, slowly, started to shift to the right. Under President Jacob Zuma. For real. By STEPHEN GROOTES.\nIn 2009, Jacob Zuma was about to become Mr President. He had emerged victorious from the rain and mud at Polokwane in 2007, and after brushing aside a few legal matters, was headed for the Union Buildings. (And towards Nkandla, but that’s another story.) At the time, there were two major pressing concerns for most of the politically aware. Who was he going to appoint as National Director of Public Prosecutions? And was he going to bring and end to the Reserve Bank’s policy of using interest rates to keep inflation in check – otherwise known as Inflation Targeting?\nWe all know how his NDPP appointment ended.\nBut the fears about the economy were quite rational. It appeared at the time that Zuma was completely in political debt to the Left of the alliance and the ANC. His most vocal supporters had been Cosatu and the SACP. He himself said virtually nothing about policy. Famously, in his first press conference as ANC leader, when asked in which direction he would lead his party, he said that he was “an empty vessel”, and that his job was to take direction from the ANC’s members. For someone watching from the money houses of New York or Tokyo, it could not have been a comforting moment.\nFast-forward to the ANC’s National General Council of 2010, and the same fears started to surface. Led in the main by one angry youngster, it appeared as if the whole economy was about to change. The ANC Youth League packed the economic transformation commission debate, and the annoyed, but ultimately smiling, Trevor Manuel saw them off.\nNow, in 2014, as Zuma appears poised to start his second term as president, it seems there has been hardly any movement to the left at all. Rather, under him, it appears the economic policy debate in the ANC has shifted to the right.\nThink of it like this: No one seems to be worried about a huge change to the Reserve Bank’s mandate this time around. For all the sound and fury of 2009, the economy has hardly featured in this election campaign. The ANC’s main economic promise this time around is to create five million “work opportunities”, which appears to be a more effective Expanded Public Works Programme. There is no talk of making changes to the way things work, or to increase taxes or to give more power to the left. And anyone who talks about mine nationalisation within the ANC now looks like a Malema-ite. Or someone who wants to join NUMSA. These people, should they breathe their wish aloud, could be turned into the political equivalent of a pillar of salt,.\nThere are some interesting reasons for this. The first is that the Left within the alliance has managed to destroy itself. It’s become so routine to describe the SACP as simply a lobby group for Zuma that they don’t even seem to argue with us anymore. Instead, they spend their time blaming Nkandla on white people. (Good luck to them.) And Cosatu, of course, is simply going through a painfully slow atomic explosion, creating political thermo-nuclear radiation that will scar all involved for years.\nThen we have some fundamental changes within the ANC itself. Over time the number of people within it, who have become a part of the business establishment, has grown. It’s no longer just a few big business people within the NEC. It’s not just about Saki Macozoma and the discussions Patrice Motsepe has with someone over a single malt. There is now a much more organised lobby of businesspeople within the ANC. In particular there is the Black Business Council, led by Sandile Zungu, that has become more effective than any other business lobby group we’ve had within the ANC in the past. Last week’s apparent confirmation by ANC Secretary General Gwede Mantashe that the party would create a Ministry of Small Business is the successful conclusion to their campaign. Ditto some of the Mangaung policy decisions, which put paid to whatever plans people like Malema had to nationalise the mines.\nThese people are becoming part of the real business establishment. They have a huge stake in the economy as it is now, not in how some lefty would want to be. Some are what the SACP in its younger days would have written off as “rent-seekers”, but generally they are people running businesses. They are not going to let labour broking be banned, or let life be made harder for them more generally without a fight. And this lobby group is likely to keep growing within the ANC.\nAlso, the creation of the Economic Freedom Fighters means that the ANC itself may want to claim the mantle of the more sober and trustworthy party. In other words, if it tried to suggest big changes in the economic sphere after the elections, it would look too close to the EFF. So, in a strange way, perhaps the EFF is nudging the ANC a little to the right. Who’d have thought?\nHaving said all of that, this doesn’t mean that life has got any better for business over the last five years. Anyone who is an employer would immediately point to the Labour Relations Amendment Bill that appears to allow strikes without ballots beforehand, and, of course, anything that comes from Rob Davies’ office. The Labour Bill was really the result of the fact that Cosatu can’t be written off completely within these debates, and the Department of Trade and Industry’s red-tape creation activities are probably more to do with decisions by Davies and his officials than decisions from within the ANC. Mangaung delegates did not spend that much time discussing the intricacies of small business regulation.\nThe ANC can be notoriously difficult to predict. Policy issues can spring up with very little prior warning. No one saw the debate on nationalising the Reserve Bank coming, or the idea of a job-seekers’ grant. So it’s still entirely possible that at some point the party will start to move back to the Left. But for the moment, it seems more likely to be heading on a slight rightward path. This could, of course, become easier to assess after Zuma appoints his new Cabinet in a few weeks time. DM\nPhoto: South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma (R) jokes with his party’s newly appointed Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa at the National Conference of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in Bloemfontein December 18, 2012. South Africa’s ruling ANC re-elected Zuma as its leader, setting him up for seven more years as head of state of Africa’s biggest economy. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-04-14-its-just-the-ancs-slow-jump-to-the-right/"}

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+{"doc_id": "1be099292e906b42dcaa69828199d06a", "text": "Also today: More political moves as Sudan’s election nears; President’s absence splits Nigeria’s Cabinet and Senate; Niger sees greater hunger than in previous years, but is slow in admitting it; Zimbabwe’s Bennett terrorism trial witness was forced to change sides; Eritreans act unconcerned over UN sanctions for helping Somali Islamists.\nMauritians seek investors for food security deal with Mozambique\nMauritius-Mozambique\nMauritius wants investors to buy into a plan to lease 23,500 hectares (about 60,000 acres) of farmland in Mozambique, to ease growing food insecurity on the Indian Ocean island. It’s not the only country that’s doing this. South Korea and Saudi Arabia are among nations that are leasing land to grow food in places as diverse as Sudan and Madagascar, after food price hit record levels in 2007 and 2008, helping fuel inflation. Mauritius’s government has set aside money for food security in its 2008/2009 budget, and will take ownership of the leases before sub-leasing them to investors, if all goes to plan. South African farmers are also looking to Africa to provide greater food security for the continent, but there’s a lot of bureaucracy to be sorted out.\nRead more: Reuters, Grain, Arcadia Foundation\nPhoto: A Mauritian man tends to his vegetables in Terre Rouge. REUTERS/Ed Harris\nMore political moves as Sudan’s election nears\nSudan\nThere’s new horse-trading going on in Sudan in the run-up to a shaky election in April that’s part of a 2005 peace deal that ended a 22-year civil war between the north and south of the country. This week, former Sudanese prime minister, Sadiq al-Mahdi, stated he’d stand against current leader Omar al-Bashir as president n the poll. Mahdi was last elected in 1986, but was ousted by Bashir in a 1989 coup. Now, Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party says it won’t field a candidate against rival Salva Kiir for president of the semi-autonomous south. Observers see this as an olive branch to improve ill-feeling in a north-south power-sharing government that has yet to agree details of a planned 2011 referendum for secession by the oil-rich south, and security and constitutional arrangements around that.\nRead more: Reuters, Agence-France-Presse, MSN, BBC\nPresident’s absence splits Nigeria’s Cabinet and Senate\nNigeria\nThe two-month absence of Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, who’s in Saudi Arabia receiving treatment for heart problems, has caused a split between the country’s Cabinet and Senate over whether he’s capable of holding office. The Senate wants Yar’Adua to formally hand over power to Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan, but the cabinet fears this is a ploy to remove him from office. Yar’Adua’s illness has prompted three separate court cases against him, with cabinet having been given two weeks to pass a resolution on Yar’Adua’s fitness to govern. Yet another judge ruled that Jonathan could assume control. But the lack of formal and written instructions in this regard has led to worries that the nation is facing a power vacuum, and thousands of protesters have already hit the streets of Lagos and the capital Abuja. Nigerian politics is complex and full of intrigue, and things could soon get out of control.\nRead more: RTT News, Nigerian Tribune, The Times of Nigeria\nNiger sees greater hunger than in previous years, but is slow in admitting it\nNiger\nHalf of Niger’s people will go hungry this year, bringing back memories of severe food shortages in 2005 that affected four million out of the nation’s 15 million people. This time round, an official government survey says nearly eight million will suffer food insecurity. The government has resisted foreign help so far, denying there might be famine until media coverage attracted international attention. The largely rural and agricultural West African desert state only has uranium exports to sustain it, but with farmers producing 26% less food in the current harvest, it may soon need help.\nRead more: Reuters, National Public Radio\nZimbabwe’s Bennett terrorism trial witness was forced to change sides\nZimbabwe\nThe trial of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change party treasurer Roy Bennett is not going all that well for the state, after the chief witness for the prosecution told the court that Bennett wasn’t part of a plot against President Robert Mugabe. Bennett was supposed to have been sworn in as a deputy agriculture minister in Zimbabwe’s shaky coalition government, but Mugabe’s Zanu-PF had earlier charged him with illegal possession of arms for purposes of committing terrorism, banditry and sabotage, which could lead to the death penalty. Bennett denies the charges, which include claims that he tried to assassinate Mugabe. Earlier this week, a key state witness, Peter Hitschmann, said Bennett had nothing to do with an anti-government plot, but his evidence was then struck from the court. Hitschmann has now overnight become the key defence witness. It looks like the government��s case is beginning to unravel, but that means little in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Hitschmann even told the court he was tortured by state security agents to implicate Bennett. The farce continues.\nRead more: The Zimbabwe Mail, SW Radio Africa, Metro Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe Times\nEritreans act unconcerned over UN sanctions for helping Somali Islamists\nEritrea\nEritrea claims that UN sanctions won’t affect its economy, after the world body slapped an arms embargo and imposed travel restrictions and asset freezes on some of the country’s top officials for allegedly supporting Islamist rebel groups in chaotic Somalia. The UN says Eritrea’s population of five million has one of the highest numbers of people leaving any country not at war, because of massive poverty and conscription into the country’s armed forces. The nation has fought numerous border wars with its much bigger Christian neighbour Ethiopia, leaving its economy reliant on cash remittances from the diaspora in Europe, the US, the Middle East and Africa. The oppressive regime denies that those who leave the country are doing so because of political persecution, saying they’re only seeking economic opportunities in greener pastures. The government also denies it helps radical Islamists in Somalia, but that hasn’t prevented the African Union, which has some 5,000 peacekeepers in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, from suspending it.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-01-28-28-january-mauritians-seek-investors-for-food-security-deal-with-mozambique/"}

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+{"doc_id": "1d34bd3dd8e90a555bff0da0ff92f1a7", "text": "The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) were political beasts under Julius Malema, but those days are gone and only the paper trails of alleged patronage remain. It’s now up to the courts to decide between legitimate business deals and corruption. The charges against Pule Mabe are the latest in a list that has rocked former youth leaders. By GREG NICOLSON.\nBarely two years ago, Mabe was the treasurer general of the ANC Youth League, walking side-by-side with Julius Malema on the road to economic freedom. It was Old Pretoria Road and Mabe flanked Juju, leading thousands of young comrades challenging the nation to speed up economic transformation and pressuring the ANC to relax disciplinary charges against Malema. Like Juju, he put in a decent slog, walking into the night, then sped past the stragglers towards the Union Buildings in the comforts of his car.\nBut Mabe cowed to President Jacob Zuma’s force before his fellow Young Lions. It was a good political move. The ANCYL pretended to be determined to save Malema and Co. at last year’s elective conference in Mangaung. Forces were aligned for or against Zuma, the against rallying around reinstating Juju and backing a haphazard list of dissenters and politically ambitious politicians. The Anyone But Zuma crew suffered a humiliating defeat and the Youth League hardly whimpered. Even after trying to save themselves by cosying up to Zuma they were disbanded this year and placed under the administration of a task team.\nMabe played the game. When he was viewed as a sympathiser to Zuma in 2012, he was dismissed from the Youth League, on the grounds of lobbying for the leadership (the ANCYL still considered Malema the top dog) and misappropriating funds. ANC leaders intervened and forced his reinstatement. The division, which defined the party before Mangaung, was sowed and Mabe ended the game on the right side of the field. For his services, he won a place in the party’s national executive committee (NEC), beating influential politicians (who were seen as being against Zuma) like Paul Mashatile and Fikile Mbalula.\nThe ANCYL is these days fighting for its very survival, and Malema has formed the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), but the charges against Mabe go with the grain. He and co-accused Paseka Letsatsi and Kabedi Ramosa received R10,000 bail on Friday for allegedly defrauding the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) of millions. Letsatsi is Sassa’s head of communications and Ramosa is reported to be Mabe’s business partner.\nSunday World alleged Mabe gave R30,000 of the loot to former ANCYL spokesperson and current EFF member Floyd Shivambu. He believes Mabe wants to drag him down. “The police case against Pule Mabe does not mention my name as a beneficiary of the ‘stolen’ millions, [it] instead mentioned a number of recipients, most of whom are his private companies, his friends and family members, and the ANC Youth League which he paid R100,000,” said Shivambu on Sunday. He will ask Sunday World to withdraw their story, failing which he will take legal action. “I take this approach because it is apparent that the story was meant to cause damage to my character as a South African, and particularly as part of the collective of the EFF, which stands for accountability, open and corrupt-free society,” added Shivambu.\nOpposition parties are using the charges to discredit the ANC and assert their belief in a corruption-free society. The Democratic Alliance (DA) said it welcomes Mabe’s arrest. “If Mabe and his co-accused indeed defrauded Sassa of social grant funding, we hope that justice will prevail and that they will be brought to account. The DA will closely monitor this case to ensure that there is no political interference in the investigative and judicial processes,” said Mike Waters, DA shadow minister of social development.\nAgang SA, which has great statements but whose political clout seems to be diminishing by the day, said in their press release, “The only difference in Mabe’s brazenness and sense of impunity is that he had the audacity to give the governing party’s headquarters as the address of the trust he used as a vehicle to steal and launder millions of rand from the South African Social Security Agency. He obviously believed that invoking Luthuli House would guarantee him the free-flow of ill-gotten millions from the agency, given the party’s sickening conflation of government, the state and itself.”\nAgang pointed to its leader Mamphela Ramphele’s comments at the party’s Saturday launch (which, bizarrely, was held in Johannesburg’s TV and film Atlas Studios): “We need to imagine that we have clean government that is a servant to the people – not the other way round. It is possible. But, it is only possible if we all become active citizens and cast our votes in the 2014 election . . . by 2019 it will be too late. By that time our country will be on the other side of Zimbabwe.”\nThe ANC isn’t suspending Mabe from the NEC. (Innocent until proven guilty, right?) But the charges, in fact, reflect a worrying period of (alleged) corruption, fraud and money laundering when the Young Lions’ roared. Today, Malema is in court over the On-Point Engineering tender. Former National Youth Development Agency head Andile Lungisa is up on what could be termed charges of stupidity, allegedly stealing R2.5 million that was supposed to fund an R. Kelly concert (because R. Kelly is so important to youth development in SA and all). The Youth League is currently under a provisional liquidation order from the South Gauteng High Court after failing to pay for its 2008 Bloemfontein conference.\nThat was when the ANCYL was a lever on the country’s political strings. Malema was instrumental in ensuring Zuma’s election in Polokwane and its political clout was a bankable currency for all involved. But money transfers are traceable and after the Johnnie Blues are done it’s now up to the courts to draw a line between legitimate business deals and corruption. DM\nPhoto: The then-expelled African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) President Julius Malema (R) gestures with then-suspended ANCYL Treasurer-General Pule Mabe during a media briefing at the Luthuli house, headquarters of the African National Congress in Johannesburg March 5, 2012. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-11-18-the-paper-trails-to-pule-mabe/"}

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+{"doc_id": "1d6683d734e19f9c296537ecd98fff2d", "text": "On Monday, President Jacob Zuma directed the Minister of Finance, Malusi Gigaba, to trim down expenses and increase revenue to find a solution to the R40 billion gap identified in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement and by ratings agency Standards & Poors ahead of its ratings cut on Friday.\nThis would equate to cuts in expenditure amounting to about R25 billion as well as revenue-enhancing measures amounting to about R15 billion, including where appropriate, tax measures, the presidency said in a statement.\nAccording to a report by BusinessDay, Treasury has since confirmed that these amounts were over and above the R15 billion in tax measures and R31 billion in spending cuts for the 2018-19 fiscal year already included in former finance minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget in February. This means that government is looking to implement a total of R30 billion in tax hikes and more than R50 billion of spending cuts in 2018 – just to help cover the shortfall.\nAs part of the announcement, the Presidency also said that the presidential fiscal committee, led by Gigaba and the Treasury, must develop a phased implementation plan for fee-free higher education.\nCiting senior officials, the Mail & Guardian reported that the president is looking at options to make massive cuts to existing budgets to find the money – including, but not limited to, cutting social grants payments; reducing the rollout of RDP houses; freezing government wages; and halving the military budget.\nOther avenues to draw in more revenue also include hiking VAT, selling state assets or cutting down the number of departments.\nTax revolt\nFollowing the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) delivered on 25 October 2017 a number of analysts noted that there is growing concern that South Africa has reached its limit in terms of the amount of tax revenues it can extract from taxpayers through further tax increases.\nAccording to Kyle Mandy, Tax Policy leader at PwC the evidence emanating from the MTBPS suggests that, in the current environment, South Africa has maximised the tax revenues that it can extract from its citizens and has possibly even gone past that point and is now on the downward slope of the curve.\n“The last few years have seen significant tax increases directed at fiscal consolidation in a low growth environment and amid growing concerns of levels of corruption and government inefficiency,” he said.\n“These tax increases saw the main budget tax-to-GDP ratio increase from 24.5% in 2012/13 to 26% in 2015/16, primarily led by increases in personal income tax. However, since then the tax-to-GDP ratio has stalled at 26% in both 2016/17 and in the revised forecast for 2017/18.\n“It is not unreasonable to expect that the tax-to-GDP ratio for 2017/18 may fall below 26% in the final outcome. The stalling of the ratio comes despite significant tax increases in each of 2016/17 and 2017/18 which were expected to deliver R18 billion and R28 billion of additional tax revenues, respectively.”", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/213377/south-africa-looking-at-r30-billion-tax-hike-for-2018/"}

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+{"doc_id": "1f2866ced1584e8a56c99821bab4a800", "text": "Deadline reached for SASSA to make deal with Post Office. By Barbara Maregele for GROUNDUP.\nPublished originally on GroundUp .\nToday – November 24 – is the deadline for the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) to reach a deal with the South African Post Office. SASSA has to decide if it is cost-effective for the Post Office to provide four essential services to pay grants from 1 April next year.\nOn Tuesday, Jeff Radebe, chairperson of the Interministerial Committee (IMC) on Comprehensive Social Security, announced that the deal between the two state entities would be finalised subject to its cost effectiveness.\nA panel of experts reports to the Constitutional Court on progress with the handover of the grants payment system to a new provider. It has been operating since June. SASSA has been instructed by the court to find a new service provider to pay social grants. Currently the grants are paid by Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), a subsidiary of Net1.\nEarlier this week, because of the delays finding a new service provider, the panel of experts proposed that the Constitutional Court “as a last resort” might have to again suspend the invalidity of the contract between the SASSA CPS.\nSASSA’s five-year contract with CPS, which began in February 2012, was declared invalid by the Constitutional Court in 2014. The Court suspended the invalidity so that grants could continue being paid until SASSA was meant to take over the payments in April 2017.\nBut the Court was forced to step in again when SASSA failed to meet its own deadline to institutionalise the payment system. On 17 March, the Court ruled that the suspension of the invalid contract be extended until March 2018. It also ordered the appointment of the panel of experts to monitor the process.\nOn 8 December, SASSA is meant to submit its detailed “contingency plan” on whether completely phasing out CPS by 1 April next year is possible.\nThe panel was scathing in its first report to the Court on 15 September. It highlighted how SASSA had “repeatedly failed to provide timeous access to information”, preventing the panel from adequately doing its work. It also warned that “SASSA does not yet have a visible plan to manage CPS’s exit from the current system”.\nIn the second report to the Court on 20 November, the panel recommended that the declaration of invalidity of the CPS contract be suspended again but this time only for social grant cash payments. It suggested that the revised suspension be for six months to ensure uninterrupted grant payments in areas where alternative payment facilities are not within five kilometres from where beneficiaries live.\n“CPS must … submit a reasonable costing requirement to National Treasury, payable by SASSA, which will provide the actual cost recovery of the services rendered. [It should] exclude any cost of investments already covered by Net1 on its biometric and payment technology for services rendered during this period,” the report stated.\nThe panel said this should only be granted if “no other solutions can be found” and solely in order to allow the key institutions needed, including the Reserve Bank and National Treasury, enough time to discuss and agree on a “national solution to an urgent problem”.\nThis follows the panel’s suggestion that SASSA pay grants directly from its bank account into the personal commercial bank accounts of beneficiaries. This would be at a “fraction of the cost” compared to cash payment points, it said.\nThe panel said that of the approximately 16 million social grant-related transactions per month, 79% were processed through South Africa’s “efficient and secure” National Payment System.\n“The right of access to social assistance should not require the state to provide a variety of payment options simply because beneficiaries might find that convenient. Doing so significantly increases costs,” the report stated. This means that each pay point needs to have at least three times the amount of cash available because there is no way of knowing which payment option the beneficiary will use.\nThe panel also cautioned the state that its plan for the Post Office to form the core of the payment system “carries the systemic risk of again being locked into a single service provider”. It also found that there was “no justifiable need” for SASSA to have biometric recognition for proof of life.\nIt also suggested that the court instruct the National Treasury to investigate SASSA employees and officials of the Department of Social Development for “all actions undertaken since 2016 to issue contracts to service providers to determine whether there has been any malpractices of obstruction.” The panel also said that SASSA’s repeated failure to take action and implement the court’s order would make it “virtually impossible” to have a smooth transition next year. DM\nTimeline of social grant payment debacle\nFebruary 2012: SASSA contract with CPS, a Net1 company, to pay social grants started\n2014: Constitutional Court declared CPS contract invalid, but suspended the decision until April 2017\n17 March 2017: SASSA failed to meet its own deadline (granted by the Constitutional Court) to take over the grant payments, so the Constitutional Court extended the deadline to March 2018\nJune 2017: Panel of Experts formed\n15 September 2017: Panel released its first report, which is scathing of SASSA\n20 November 2017: Panel released its second report, recommending that declaration of invalidity be suspended again so that CPS can continue with cash payments\n24 November 2017: Jeff Radebe promised that SASSA would finalise deal with Post Office (i.e. today)\n8 December 2017: SASSA deadline to submit contingency plan in case it can’t phase out CPS payments\n31 March 2018: SASSA contract with CPS ends\n1 April 2018: New social grant payment system has to come online. DM\nPhoto: A Panel of Experts has recommended that National Treasury investigate SASSA employees and officials of the Department of Social Development. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-24-groundup-sassas-failures-make-smooth-grant-handover-impossible-warn-experts/"}

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+{"doc_id": "225e0ca83db5cb0b1082a58de7791e94", "text": "A spiritual leader disappears in Zanzibar. Riots shut down central Dar es Salaam. In Mombasa, a would-be rebel is badly beaten by police. All over East Africa, tensions between governments and a number of Muslim groups are running at an all-time high, and no one is in the mood for compromise. SIMON ALLISON wonders if the latest crackdowns will have the opposite of the intended effect.\nAs each day passes, the mystery around the disappearance of Sheikh Farid Hadi grows deeper. The Zanzibari cleric went missing on Tuesday last week, and even though he reappeared on Friday, no one’s quite sure where he was or what happened to him in the intervening four days.\nHis supporters have one story. They claim that the cleric, the spiritual leader of Zanzibar’s Uamsho (‘awakening’) movement was kidnapped by police in apparent retaliation for Uamsho’s demand that Zanzibar be given full autonomy from mainland Tanzania. Venting their frustration with this perceived persecution, the cleric’s supporters caused havoc on the island last week: blocking roads with chopped-down trees, burning tyres, throwing stones at police. Police responded in kind, with batons and tear gas. The unrest forced shops in Zanzibar’s capital Stone Town to close, and one policeman was killed – stabbed multiple times and left to die in a drainage ditch.\nWhen he emerged on Friday, Sheikh Farid supported this version of events. “Four men who had their faces covered seized me on Tuesday. They were interested in getting information on our activities, my trips to Oman and Saudi Arabia.… They inquired about messages I received in my mobile phone and as we speak they have not returned my handsets,” Sheikh Farid told reporters, adding that the men had introduced themselves as security officers. “At one time they shot on the floor to scare me into telling them what they wanted to hear.”\nTanzania’s security services vehemently deny this, saying they had absolutely no idea where Sheikh Farid spent those four days – they couldn’t find him either, apparently, although not everyone bought this denial. “Zanzibar is literally a village where everybody knows everyone else; it beats the wits out of everyone that one Sheikh Farid Hadi Ahmed… could disappear into oblivion just like that. The Zanzibar police owe the public some explaining,” wrote the Tanzanian Guardian.\nOn Saturday, just one day after his return, Sheikh Farid was formally detained by police. After a lengthy interrogation, they claimed to have solved the mystery of his whereabouts: “He was not kidnapped…he did it on his own,” said Zanzibar’s Police Commissioner Mussa Ali Mussa. The good sheikh, in other words, kidnapped himself – to what end, commissioner Mussa did not explain.\nIf the police’s version of events is true, than it is the most extraordinary coincidence that on the same day – Tuesday – that Sheikh Farid faked his own disappearance, another prominent Muslim cleric was detained by police.\nThere is no confusion over this one. Sheikh Ponda Issa Ponda was arrested on the mainland in Dar es Salaam and charged on two counts, the most serious being “inciting followers to commit violence”. Sheikh Ponda is thought to have encouraged those violent followers of his to attack five churches in Dar es Salaam on 12 October, in retaliation for an incident in which a Christian boy unequivocally proved to his Muslim friend that urinating on a Quran does not turn one into a snake.\nSheikh Ponda’s followers weren’t all that happy about his arrest, and marched through the streets of Dar es Salaam voicing their displeasure: rocks were thrown, teargas was sprayed and a heavy police presence shut down the city centre.\nThe two incidents in Tanzania symbolize the growing friction in east Africa between governments and conservative Islamist groups. This is most obvious in Somalia, of course, where it has taken a five-member coalition of African countries to put al-Qaeda-linked militant group Al-Shabaab on the back foot. It is less obvious but no less present in Ethiopia, where huge protests from the Muslim community – some estimates suggest in the hundreds of thousands of people – have gone largely unreported. Here, many Muslims are upset at what they see as undue government interference in religious affairs (and they probably have a point).\nAnd in Kenya, still the most influential country in the region, news in recent months has been dominated by tensions between the government and various groups in Muslim-dominated Mombasa and surrounds. In another suspicious coincidence, just one day before Sheikh Farid went missing in Zanzibar and Sheikh Ponda was arrested in Dar es Salaam, the leader of the secessionist Mombasa Republican Council (MRC) was arrested during a police raid. Omar Mwamnuadzi claims to have been badly beaten during his arrest, and said he would be dead if his bodyguards had not intervened. Several other prominent MRC members were arrested, while others are on the run. A Kenyan MP, Sheikh Mohammed Dor, was also caught up in the crackdown after commenting that he would be ready to fund MRC activities.\nThese arrests were all the more unexpected since it was only this July that the MRC was declared by a court to be a legal political grouping, after years of featuring high on the government’s banned list. Just three months later, the MRC finds itself back on the list, much to the delight of many Kenyans worried about the potentially destabilizing effect they will have on the upcoming presidential elections (the MRC was calling for an electoral boycott).\n“So the MRC, in my personal opinion, are just petty criminals who should be dealt with mercilessly and ruthlessly by the security organs in this country,” said Dr Douglas Kivoi, a Kenyan governance analyst and researcher. “Remember the Taliban in Pakistan started the way MRC is behaving, and we all know the effects and atrocities the Taliban are committing in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”\nThis analogy should give some pause for thought. Even if we accept that the MRC and the Taliban employ similar methods and ideologies, with similar goals (which is debatable), it is also true that the military might of the United States of America has not been able to comprehensively defeat the Taliban in more than 10 years of fighting. And Kenya’s security forces, even emboldened by their supposed victory against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, are unlikely to fare any better. The same goes for Tanzania’s crackdown against Islamist groups.\nA more cautious approach might yield greater rewards. “Sometimes, because of the sensitivity of the issues, it calls for circumspection,” said Andrews Atta-Asamoah, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies. “It might not be the best idea to treat the leaders of these groups as criminals. Kenya and Tanzania will have to learn a lot from what happened to Boko Haram and how it evolved after their leader was arrested.” Boko Haram, in its current form – the form that has killed more than 1,000 people in Nigeria since 2009 – evolved after the death in police custody of its original leader, who was arguably more moderate than the leaders which followed him. “You confuse the group and they kick into a survival mood, which invariably involves more violence,” added Atta-Asamoah.\nKenya and Tanzania would do well to remember this advice as they consolidate their crackdown on various Islamist groups. The same goes for Ethiopia, should it be contemplating a similar move. Somalia, like Nigeria, has already learned this lesson the hard way; the genesis of Al-Shabaab was the Ethiopian invasion of 2006-2007 that unseated the significantly less fundamentalist Islamic Courts Union.\nUndeniably, East Africa is going through a tricky period, with a number of different Muslim groups at the forefront of anti-government protests. There are some concerns that, as Kivoi described it, “a brand of radical Islam is trying to gain a foot hold in East Africa”. It is more true, however, that each group in question is largely motivated by very specific domestic issues: the secession of Mombasa for the MRC; the autonomy of Zanzibar for Uamsho; religious independence and a greater say in government for Ethiopia’s Muslim demonstrators.\nThese are all ultimately political problems requiring political solutions. East Africa’s challenge will be to find capable politicians able to recognize this and act accordingly. So far, if the recent spate of arrests and riots are anything to go by, these are in short supply. DM\nRead more:\n- “Let’s protect our peace and unity at any cost,” on Tanzania’s Guardian on Sunday\nPhoto: Kenyan security forces patrol around the Majengo neighbourhood as Muslim faithfuls chant slogans during a protest against the killing of Sheikh Aboud Rogo Mohammed, after Friday prayers at the Masjid Mussa Mosque in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, August 31, 2012. The killing of Muslim cleric Aboud Rogo Mohammed on August 27, 2012, accused by the United States of helping al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants in Somalia, triggered riots and violence in which five people, including three police officers, were killed. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-10-23-crackdowns-and-coincidences-tension-high-as-east-africa-confronts-muslim-groups/"}

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+{"doc_id": "22f14d60463d05f5bdca760a6d8336ce", "text": "All three of major credit ratings agencies have weighed in on South Africa’s financial future, with only Moody’s opting to take a “wait and see approach” ahead of the ANC’s December conference.\nOn Friday (24 November) ratings angecy S&P Global downgraded South Africa’s local currency debt to junk status, making it the second agency after Fitch to declare the country as full junk. Moody’s put the country on review for downgrade, to be assessed after the budget speech in February 2018.\nThe S&P downgrade had an immediate impact on the rand, with the currency weakening almost 2%, to R14.11 against the dollar over the weekend.\nHowever, many analysts said that ratings downgrades had already been priced in for some time, and as such the rand’s weakness is expected to slowly manifest over the coming months and years instead of in a single blow.\nIn the immediate term, this means that the rand is likely to see a slight boost or loss depending on whether or not the “market-friendly” Cyril Ramaphosa is elected as the ANC’s new leader in December, before slowly regressing as other market factors take their toll.\nThis was the sentiment expressed by Absa’s Global Investments & Solutions (GI&S) which has published its currency forecast over the next three years, as part of its October report.\nThe report is compiled by Absa’s Asset Allocation Committee, which regularly assesses the need for strategic and tactical adjustments to pre-existing allocations, based on short- to medium-term risk and return expectations.\n“During the October 2017 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), South Africa’s Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba demonstrated less than satisfactory policy guidelines in balancing fiscal discipline and resuscitating economic activity,” it said.\n“To this end, markets have swiftly begun pricing in a benign economic trajectory, with an expectation of suboptimal expansion rates over the next three years.\n“Undershooting economic growth targets while indicating low levels of commitment toward fiscal consolidation, is a condition likely to induce more struggles in fending off further credit rating downgrades.\nThe report also warned of high meat price inflation and upward pressure in global oil prices, which was likely to affect South African petrol prices.\nCurrency forecasts\nAll forecasts are reflective of rand spot prices taken in the first week of November 2017.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/213183/how-the-rand-could-perform-against-the-dollar-over-the-next-3-years/"}

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+{"doc_id": "24e9f093d6fabf0bb61f28936e5fae31", "text": "As Donald Trump in on the cusp of his departure for a visit to Japan, China, Vietnam, the Philippines and South Korea (and perhaps even to tip-toe right up to the dividing line – the DMZ – between the South and North Korea and to peer first-hand at the Little Rocket Man’s domain), J. BROOKS SPECTOR takes a look at an intriguing part of North Korea’s connections to countries in Africa – and efforts to earn export earnings to pay for those missile and nuclear ambitions.\nDaily Maverick intern Puseletso Nthate assisted in researching this article.\nA few years back, travelling around Madagascar, I came across a giant – albeit down-at-the-heels – sports stadium in the capital city, Antananarivo. Since this construction seemed more substantial than practically every other building in the city, and because it looked nothing at all like any still-remaining examples of colonial French-style architecture that were part of the city’s heritage, the origin of the massive stadium was a bit of a puzzle.\nQuerying people in the area, with a mixture of French, English and even a few words of the local language, it was explained to me this structure had been a kind of “gift” from North Korea. Ah, of course. Over the years, one of the hereditary communist hermit kingdom’s more unusual activities globally has been dispatching architects, construction and mechanical engineers, and construction battalions to erect a whole panoply of modernist monstrosities, all built in a particular brutalist style, often in unlikely spots. In addition to the buildings themselves, there has also been a steady stream of those Stalinist-style-more-than-life-size heroic public art statues of presidents, freedom fighters, glorious revolutions and the like.\nBeyond demonstrating the undying ties of friendship between Pyongyang and wherever such things have been placed, a key part of the equation is that these activities have also served as a valuable source of foreign exchange earnings for a regime that has become increasingly cut off from other sources of hard cash.\nPre-eminent in this construction work has been a North Korean company named Mansu Dae, with its two public art and construction wings. Mansu Dae was established nearly half a century ago, and it has become North Korea’s most visible art studio – now with business connections throughout Africa and on into Southeast Asia. It has been estimated by people who do such things that six years ago it earned around $160-million from its various overseas building monuments and memorials. In its projects it operates as a closely held company, using only North Koreans as artists, engineers, and general construction workers, rather than employing any local people for these tasks.\nAbout 15 years ago, Namibia began issuing major construction projects to Mansu Dae. And now, there are reports that Mansu Dae both built and operated a munitions factory there. This, not surprisingly, has been described as a significant violation of UN-voted sanctions directed against North Korea by the UN staffers assigned to monitor such efforts.\nOf course, this kind of eliding around the rules behaviour may also parallel reported carryings on of North Korean diplomats. For years, it was common knowledge – according to the diplomatic rumour mill – that the North Koreans financed much of the overhead costs of their embassies through some really good quality, painstaking counterfeit US dollars. There have also been allegations that drug smuggling was part of their oeuvre as well.\nOver the years, in Africa, there have also been frequent allegations of the illegal exportation of products like rhino horn via the diplomatic bag. As The Guardian reported last year,\n“Since the mid-1970s, North Korea’s involvement in transnational organised crime – particularly drug and cigarette trafficking, weapons smuggling and the production of counterfeit US currency – has grown steadily, peaking during the severe economic crisis and famine the country faced in the early and mid-1990s.”\nThe Guardian went on to say,\n“Mozambique has become a major trading point for illegal rhino horn, much of which is being smuggled out by North Korean ‘dodgy diplomats’, a new report claims. Released by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, the report found that the corruption permeating every level of the Mozambican state – including the country’s ports, airports and borders – has made it a smuggler’s paradise.\n“One example cited in the report details the arrest, in Maputo in May 2015, of a North Korean diplomat and a taekwondo instructor after 4.5kg of illegal rhino horn and $100,000 was allegedly found in their vehicle. Police detained them and impounded the car. Within hours of learning of the incident, the North Korean ambassador to South Africa, Yong Man-ho, was on a flight from Johannesburg to Maputo. The two men were later released after paying a $30,000 fine and the vehicle was returned to them. It’s unclear whether illegal contents were ever seized. Diplomatic and government sources in South Africa have made similar claims, telling Global Initiative that the North Korean embassy in Pretoria is ‘actively involved in smuggling ivory and rhino horn’ and may be linked to other illegal activities.”\nSimilarly, at least one North Korean diplomat assigned to Pretoria was withdrawn for other dodgy circumstances. A year before The Guardian report, News24 had reported, “A high-ranking North Korean diplomat accused of abusing his diplomatic immunity and his embassy’s diplomatic bag to smuggle rhino horn out of South Africa has been expelled from the country. News24 has learnt that Park Chol-jun – also identified in some news reports as Pak Chol Chun – quietly left the country on December 11.” That is definitely not what is supposed to go into the diplomatic bag.\nBut let’s return to the activities of Mansu Dae. This would come with the understanding that even a so-called company in North Korea is exceedingly unlikely to be “private” in the way that term is used everywhere else, rather than effectively an arm of the state, given the government’s near-total control of industry, exports and strategic equipment, raw materials or technology.\nMoreover, Defense News reported in 2016 that Mansu Dae was an uncle in the armaments business in Namibia, noting,\n“The Namibian government has confirmed that North Korea built an arms and ammunition factory in the African country and is in the process of executing other contracts for the construction of the country’s first military academy, military barracks and a new headquarters for the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The confirmation came a week after the government refuted the recent United Nations Panel of Experts (PoE), which found that Pyongyang has continuously violated UN Security Council sanctions imposed to protest its nuclear weapons program by providing military weapons, training and embarking on military-related construction projects in African countries, including Uganda and Namibia.\n“This week, Namibian Deputy Prime Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah confirmed that the North Korean state-owned firm Mansu Dae Overseas Projects, through its subsidiary Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation (KOMID), had indeed built a small arms and ammunition factory in the capital Windhoek. The arms and ammunition factory was completed in 2005, although the company continued doing business in Namibia until early last year.\n“The US Treasury defines KOMID as ‘North Korea’s primary arms dealer and main proliferation channel’ for goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. Nandi-Ndaitwah said North Korea and Namibia have a long history of military co-operation, which dates back to the struggle for independence. [Older folks may remember the work of a certain North Korean military training unit further north in Zimbabwe.]\n“According to the leaked UN report, Namibia also confirmed that KOMID had been contracted to implement several other multibillion-dollar government projects, including the construction of the State House, the National Heroes Acre, the Namibian Defence Force (NDF) Military Museum and the Independence Museum. However, Nandi-Ndaitwah said the Namibian government co-operated with the UN requests for information because there was nothing wrong with contracting the sanctioned North Korean company to build Namibian infrastructure and provide technical training to its armed forces.\n“She said the small arms and ammunition factory built by North Korea cannot be seen as a contravention of UN sanctions because all the products it manufactures are not for export but for use by Namibian security agencies. Further, Nandi-Ndaitwah said the UN sanctions are primarily aimed at North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and do not prohibit Namibia from having diplomatic or other military relations with Pyongyang.\n“However, Namibia’s assessment varies with the leaked UN report, which concluded that ‘the construction of any munitions factory or related military facilities is considered to be services or assistance relating to the provision, manufacture or maintenance of arms and related material and therefore, prohibited under the resolutions.’ ”\nIn fact, in a number of African nations, governments have been doing deals with North Korea for years, and some of these may be for more than building ostentatious, splashy buildings or more of those appalling statues. There is, obviously, a geo-political element to this. With North Korea’s continuing efforts to develop a nuclear weapon that can be fitted onto a intercontinental ballistic missile, CNN had reported, “United States and United Nations investigators are looking a lot more closely at Pyongyang’s African connection. The UN says many of the contracts are with Mansu Dae, a North Korean state-owned enterprise and a cash cow for the rogue regime.”\nDespite this growing interest about Pyongyang’s efforts, things in Namibia might have remained in a kind of stalemate, with the UN quietly crying foul over sanctions violations, North Korea being mum about everything, and Namibia insisting everything was above board, save for the fact that CNN reported in-depth on this issue just the other week. CNN’s correspondent, visiting the Mansu Dae compound outside Windhoek, had found that the North Korean enterprise had purchased the site and had been carrying on rather heavy-duty work there until just a few weeks ago, with a large contingent of North Koreans living there – and even raising food in gardens inside the compound.\nThe Namibian government admits they had contracts with the company, but they have insisted nothing was amiss. Deputy Prime Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah told CNN, “All of these were agreed before the sanctions by the UN. But when the sanctions were imposed we had to comply and then we had to cease all the contracts, we had to terminate the contracts we had with North Korea.”\nBut, when CNN spoke to the UN co-ordinator on North Korean sanctions, he said the UN panel hasn’t received responses from Namibia to specific queries for over a year. “It is not enough to talk in the media. It is not enough to say you have been exonerated by the UN for North Korean sanctions violations because that is not true. The panel deals with hard facts – with evidence – and this is what we have been asking for many months now,” said Hugh Griffiths, the co-ordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea, the body charged with monitoring sanctions enforcement on the country.\nCNN’s correspondent went on to explain, per the UN panel, that Namibia had contracted North Korean workers and state companies to construct a munitions factory. While the Namibian government told Griffiths’ predecessor they were fully compliant with applicable UN sanctions, “In fact, at the time there was a large group of Korean workers building a munitions factory in direct violation of the resolutions. So they were being untruthful,” Giffiths noted. While the Namibian government said that work had ceased last year, local observers told CNN that didn’t appear to be the case. In fact, Namibia is not alone in having found a way to a defence relationship to the isolated Asian nation in the recent past; even nations like Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda now insist that they are in compliance with UN rules.\nBut according to the panel’s annual report, beyond Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Tanzania and Angola have yet to reply to inquiries, according to the panel’s annual report, which came out in February. However, since the panel has no direct enforcement wing, it has sometimes been difficult to gain information from UN members. As John Park, director of the Korean Working Group at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, told CNN, “It’s a function of not being forthright and dragging your feet. All of those things give the opportunity for those types of governments to use plausible deniability.”\nStill, there is some evidence the heightened scrutiny from the UN panel and elsewhere has been boxing in the North Koreans and their efforts in working across Africa. As CNN’s reporter noted, “There are circumstantial signs that that is happening. In Windhoek, the vast construction site of the new Ministry of Defence headquarters, built by North Koreans, is standing idle. The Mansu Dae industrial headquarters CNN visited outside Windhoek is also quiet.”\nBeyond the Namibian government’s assertions that everything is as it should be, when Daily Maverick attempted to obtain clarifications from the North Korean Embassy in Pretoria about this cessation of work, we were unsuccessful.\nHowever, the editor of the leading Namibian online news service, Oshili, issued an emailed comment that dismissed any concerns. In their message, Oshili said, “This week when news spread about CNN sensationalised reporting on the purported violation of UN Sanctions on North Korea by Namibia, I commented on Twitter saying as far as I am concerned as long as our government in its engagement with North Korea, if it was done transparently and without corruption save in the national interest, I would fully support our government’s bilateral relationship with North Korea.” Deciding to rub some salt into the paper cut, the editor added the counter-example that a country like Israel fails to adhere to many UN resolutions and is defended by the US, with the editor’s apparent meaning being: one’s friends are one’s friends no matter what they do.\nThe challenge going forward, of course, is that the US and North Korea still appear to be on a collision course over Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear ambitions and with a continuing regimen of taunts and insults. Accordingly, one might wonder if being such a close friend to North Korea right about now is the best possible bet to make.\nHeretofore, it has been rather rare for the US and Namibia to find much to quarrel about. But when the Trump administration gets into a huffy “if you are not with us, you are against us” mood about Kim Jong-un’s military initiatives, someone in Washington may just possibly remember – with something approaching a frown – North Korea’s unlikely teammate in southern Africa. DM\nPhoto: (Left) Independence Memorial Museum in Windhoek (Photo by Wikimedia Commons); (Right) An undated file picture released by the Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of North Korea’s ruling Workers Party, shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-un observing a multiple-rocket launching drill at an undisclosed location in North Korea. EPA/RODONG SINMUN", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-10-30-north-korea-in-africa-surprising-business-ventures-including-munitions-factory-in-namibia/"}

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+{"doc_id": "25acf228725bedc8bae5d40499c49184", "text": "The World Wealth and Income Database has updated its profile for South Africa, showing how the average salary in the country has changed since 1946, and up to 2017.\nThe online datasets use national accounts, survey data, fiscal data and wealth rankings, and were originally created by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and a team of more than 100 researchers from 70 countries.\nThe latest update to the dataset brings salary changes over the last 70 years to 2017 into focus, as well as the share of GDP among adults.\nAt 2017 prices, the average South African earned R112,911 a year, while GDP share is at R136,249.\nThis effectively means that salary levels have settled around the same numbers seen in the late 1980s.\nSouth Africa’s peak average was in 1974, where it reached over R129,000 a year – while the country’s GDP share peaked in 1980, when it reached R156,562.\nAccording to data published by Stats SA in December 2018, South Africa’s average annual income in the formal non-agricultural sector is closer to R20,860 a month which is approximately R250,320 a year.\nAccording to the World Wealth and Income Database’s 2018 Inequality Report, South Africa stands out as one of the most unequal countries in the world.\nIn 2014, the top 10% received two-thirds of national income, while the top 1% received 20% of national income.\n“During the twentieth century, the top 1% income share was halved between 1914 and 1993, falling from 20% to 10%,” it said.\n“Even if these numbers must be qualified, as they are surrounded by a number of uncertainties, the trajectory is similar to that of other former dominions of the British Empire, and is partly explained by the country’s economic and political instability during the 1970s and 1980s.”\n“Since the end of the Apartheid in 1994, top-income shares have increased considerably. In spite of several reforms targeting the poorest and fighting the segregationist heritage, race is still a key determinant of differences in income levels, educational attainment, job opportunities and wealth.”", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/293560/this-graph-shows-how-the-average-salary-has-changed-in-south-africa-over-the-past-70-years/"}

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+{"doc_id": "271e6acca553cdd2bf2a7019d47f2165", "text": "What on earth is going on with our land reform process? Recently, South Africa has experienced another of its periodic spasms of concern about the ‘land question’ – this time brought about by the unveiling of a sheaf of controversial new legislation and proposals by the Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development (DRDLR 2014b). After a year or two of relative quiet, we at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies are once again besieged by journalists seeking comment from experts who can help them make sense of the new proposals. The experts, it has seemed, are as stumped as the rest of us – or even more so. By ANDRIES DU TOIT.\nOver the years, we have become used to trying to explain the ins and outs of land-related questions to baffled urban South Africans – but the policies that are being proposed are so ill-conceived, so dangerous, so cockamamy, that they seem to emanate from cloud-cuckoo land. The groupings affected by the proposals – farm workers, farm owners, land claimants – have not been consulted in any meaningful way. The debate during the Department’s Budget vote on 23 July this year did not cast any light on the matter and swiftly degenerated into political posturing and extremist buffoonery (Davis 2014). How does one make sense of what is going on?\nCertainly the concrete policies and measures that are being proposed are nothing short of disastrous:\n- The proposed policy on “strengthening the relative rights” of farm workers (DRDLR 2014a) is probably unconstitutional, will cost billions, and – because it focuses only on long term permanent workers – excludes the majority of South African farm workers (and almost all female farm workers, who are the most vulnerable and exploited). That exclusion is arguably a moot point, because what is proposed – some kind of ill-defined equity share arrangement – is unlikely to be of any material benefit to those farm workers in any case. The impact on the rest of the country is at this stage unclear. If the government is merely giving farm workers expensive bits of paper there may even be no impact. But serious attempts to meddle in farm management could well encourage rising food prices – and that would be ruinous for food security for the urban poor.\n- The Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act (15 of 2014), which was publicly announced as a way to include the claims of people dispossessed before 1913, manifestly does not do any such thing. It re-opens the floodgates for new claims in a context when the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights is clearly unable to resolve the current ones. While some have argued that the exclusion of claims arising out of Apartheid-era Betterment policies necessitates re-opening claims, this does not make sense: while the legacy of Betterment is disastrous, trying to use the legalistic and rigid Land Claims process to address this legacy will just make matters worse. Traditional leaders have, apparently with some Presidential encouragement, started to make huge and overlapping claims for their old 19th century territories (DispatchLIVE 2014; WM&G 2014), transforming the land claims process into a kind of legal version of an episode of Game of Thrones. The point of this is obscure, since those claims are inadmissible in terms of the provisions of the Restitution Act anyway. More seriously though, the passage of the Act has effectively undone all the progress that has been achieved with existing claims now – because every piece of land in a settled claim is now once again wide open for new claims. At the stroke of a pen, the Restitution process has effectively been shipwrecked. It is not surprising that most existing Restitution claimants have vociferously opposed the amendment. That those objections have been flatly ignored is nothing short of scandalous – and probably grounds for a Constitutional court challenge.\n- The creation of the office of the Valuer-General in the new Property Valuation Act (Act 17 of 2014) will most likely render most open land claims irresolvable anyway, potentially closing off avenues for out-of-court settlement and making protracted, expensive and inconclusive court battles almost inevitable (Spoor 2014).\n- The proposed new Communal Land Tenure Policy (CLTP) seeks, contrary to the provisions of customary law, to turn traditional leaders into the owners of communal land (CLS 2013). The Communal Property Associations Amendment Bill looks set to unchain new levels of conflict in communal areas by enforcing an inappropriate model of individual entitlement on tenure systems premised on jointly managed land.\n- As for land redistribution, it is difficult to tell –– partly because of the general lack of transparency in the Department’s reporting and records, which makes it hard to say who has been getting access to the land the department has been buying up under its Proactive Land Acquisition Strategy (PLAS). But the evidence that is available suggests that the disconnection between land reform and any kind of sensible vision of economic growth has deepened. Despite a rhetorical commitment to smallholder agriculture in policy documents, actual policies are biased in favour of medium or large scale emerging black commercial farmers. Land reform policy has more or less abandoned any coherent focus on pro-poor land redistribution. To make matters worse, the Department seems to be unable to provide even these farmers with the support they need, as dire recent tales of farm abandonment in areas like Gauteng seem to suggest (Hosken 2014).\nIs there method in this madness? It is easy to see that the policies proposed are unconstitutional, ill-advised, impractical and in many cases simply impossible to implement. But why are they on the books in the first place? Why is the ruling party apparently set on enacting them? Why the railroading of objections and the riding roughshod over the protests of rural people themselves, white and black? What’s happened to our democratic policy process? What, for that matter, about the National Development Plan, with which the proposed measures are deeply out of kilter?\nMore to the point, what is the political logic of what is happening here? Is what we are seeing simply policy-making, or political fantasising, completely out of touch with reality? Is there a sinister political logic at play? For example, is the ruling party indeed getting ready to tear up the Constitution and go for a Mugabe-style land-grab? Or is this simply cynical political theatre: land reform as an inconsequential side-show, smoke-and-mirrors intended to catch votes, but with little chance of implementation?\nThe truth appears to be more complicated. The current situation is the messy and chaotic outcome of a complex set of interlocking factors that have together produced a crisis for land reform, rural development and agricultural policy. Like all ‘wicked problems’ its permutations and ramifications are complex and often obscure – but some of the key underlying factors can clearly be spelled out.\nFirstly, part of the context for the current mess is the policy incoherence at the centre of South African politics more broadly. The presidential hegemony that we saw during the Mbeki years – with the Union Building exercising an iron grip on the ruling party, defining what could be debated and how (Gumede 2007) – has given way to a laissez-faire process in which multiple factions war for control within the state, with little or no leadership from above (Marais 2011). In such a time, all manner of morbid symptoms will appear; with land and rural development, indeed, being but one of the theatres of action.\nA second contextual factor is that the problems of rural development are genuinely deeply rooted and difficult to resolve. The poverty of rural people in South Africa today is not simply a legacy of the past; it is not simply the result of rural ‘backwardness’ that can be addressed by the infusion of a shot of ‘progress’. Rather, it is the result of the nature of the growth path of the present-day South African economy as a whole. The pressures of economic growth and competition have created a dynamic which millions of people are being pushed out of land-based employment with little chance of finding formal or informal employment in the non-farm sector. Expensive and complicated ‘rural development projects’ won’t help if it is the ship as a whole that has to change direction. So the Department has an all-but-impossible task to begin with.\nTo make matters worse, there is a vicious circle. The challenges of rural development are exacerbated by the failure of 20 years of land reform and agricultural policy to resolve the racial legacy of the past. If agriculture is to provide sustainable employment and food security, commercial farmers need coherent programmes of support from government. But deep political mistrust and antagonism has made it impossible to extend meaningful support to the small number of white farm owners who produce most of the food and provide most of the jobs in agriculture. This legacy of suspicion has contributed to the large-scale adoption of policies of liberalisation and deregulation. The bigger and better-positioned players have benefited. But in general, this has unleashed processes of concentration and consolidation. Agriculture is increasingly under the control of agribusiness, processors and powerful supermarkets. This further intenstifies the marginalisation of small and emergent black farmers who are hard pressed to compete on these uneven playing fields – leading to a further loss of livelihoods and employment in our rural areas, and deepening rural poverty and inequality.\nThirdly, in this context, the terms of public debate about land reform have not been helpful. In fact, when South Africans consider the future of our farmlands, we tend to ignore the realities of rural de-agrarianisation, corporate control, and small farmer marginalisation. Rather than asking searching questions about how our agricultural and food system should be managed to ensure livelihoods and food security for us today, debates about the rights and wrongs of land reform tend to focus on ideological posturing about who stole land from whom in 1652 or 1848. Questions of equity tend to be framed as questions of restorative justice (how to redress the wrongs of the past) rather than question of distributive justice (how to ensure that everyone gets a fair share now). The caricature of the white Afrikaans family farmer – as an object of fear, ridicule and punishment – still shapes the depiction of a landscape long reshaped by large-scale industrial farming and urban corporate control.\nEven more problematically, the discourse of land reform has increasingly served as a channel for the racialisation of South African politics and the articulation of a narrow, populist and chauvinist African essentialism in which the claims of indigeneity increasingly threaten an inclusive and cosmopolitan notion of citizenship. This is part of a broader and politically explosive process: the failure of the non-farm economy to create ‘jobs for all’ has led to the emergence of a large population of marginalised and justifiably angry black South Africans who feel excluded from the benefits of post-Apartheid growth. In this context the land question becomes increasingly conflated with the national question: Questions about whose land this is are becoming entangled with questions about whose country this is. This means that the notion of land dispossession carries a deep ideological charge; it symbolises and the marginalisation and disenfranchisement of our entire poor and black population – including those who have been urbanised for more than a generation and who have no prospect or desire of ever putting a plough to the ground. In this context it is not surprising that unrealistic and unimplementable plans are articulated.\nA fourth factor is the incoherent institutional mandate of the Department of Rural Development itself. Here, it is important to remember that this department did not arise from a blank slate. It is the direct descendant of the Native Affairs Department (NAD) – the department created during the colonial period to govern Africans excluded from the provisions of white citizenship (Dubow 1986). Later (as the Department of Bantu Administration and Development) it was charged with implementing the ideology of separate development. It implemented forced removals, presided over the development of Bantustan policy – and, crucially, oversaw the incorporation of co-opted and often illegitimate ‘traditional leaders’ within the administrative apparatus of the Apartheid regime. Under the Mandela presidency, the remains of this bureaucracy were incorporated in the Department of Land Affairs under the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs.\nThis history has created some recurrent problems. For one thing, there was from the beginning a ‘conceptual divide’ between the policies of land reform and those of agriculture. The splitting off of the department from agriculture and the creation of a Department of Rural Development and land reform (DRDLR) only deepened this divide. Another problem is that the DRDLR seems to have inherited antiquated notions of rural development similar to those that existed in the former Bantustans – notions built around clientelism and the channelling of state resources to localities (Phillips, Lissoni, and Chipkin 2014). In addition, this history has left the department with a fundamentally unclear mandate. Every aspect of the development remit of the DRDLR – jobs, services, agriculture, education, you name it – is already the territory of another, existing line department. The DRDLR, perhaps understandably, has decided that it therefore needs to play a co-ordinating role to ensure the ‘integrated’ delivery of services and projects to rural people. But, but lacking the constitutional mandate and powers needed for such a role, it has ended up merely replicating functions and adding another layer of bureaucracy to an already fragmented rural governance terrain.\nThe fifth and most troubling factor, however, is the resurgence of elitist, paternalist and patriarchal notions of rural governance in South African policy discourse. This, arguably, is what really sets the DRDLR apart from the DLA-that-was, and what distinguishes Gugile Nkwinti (and, arguably Jacob Zuma) from their predecessors. While previous ministers of Land Affairs have at times been very unclear about how to exercise the pro-poor mandate of their department, Nkwinti has abandoned the rural poor in favour of the elite. The stamp of a chauvinistic, sentimental, elitist, romantic and patriarchal rural paternalism is evident everywhere in the current policy proposals. It is evident, for example, in the Regulation of Land Holdings Bill, which seeks to regulate ‘foreign’ ownership of land even when all the available evidence indicates that the ownership of land by non-South Africans is not an issue and not a problem. It is evident in the stipulation that the strengthening of the relative rights of farm workers on commercial farms shall depend on ten or more years of ‘disciplined service’ – a notion that lacks any clear policy definition, but which is redolent of the paternalist discourse that shaped farm labour regimes for decades before the end of Apartheid. It is evident in the clear focus of current redistribution and land acquisition practice on creating opportunities for emergent black businesspeople rather than the poor. It is evident in the patronising policies that refuse to give even these emergent black farmers security of tenure until they have ‘graduated’ to become full-fledged farmers.\nMost of all, it is evident in the alliance being forged between elements in the ruling party and traditional leaders looking for a place in the sun after the demise of Bantustan policy. The proposed amendments to the Communal Property Act are a sop to disgruntled chiefs who feel the current act undermines their authority. Eliciting grandiose and fantastical land-claims from South Africa’s various royal families is clearly another attempt to cozy up to them. In fact, as Aninka Claassens and William Beinart have pointed out, one golden thread in current rural development policy is the re-emergence of notions of rural identity, communal tenure and rural governance based not on custom, but on the colonial and imperial misunderstandings of custom that typified Native Administration under Verwoerd and his predecessors. The traditional leaders are claiming back, not their ‘traditional’ role, but the autocratic powers bequeathed them by Apartheid (Claassens 2013; Claassens 2014; Beinart 2014). And our government is playing right along.\nThe resurgence of these conservative and traditionalist forms of rural governance is not an accident. At one level, it is clearly part of the broader rise of patrimonialist and clientelist politics, and the attempted capture of the state by elite and sectional interests that is one of the hallmarks of Zuma’s government. But this resurgence also has a broader political rationality. Here we have to look at the consequences of the failure of the South African economy to deliver ‘broad and inclusive growth.’ As I have mentioned, this has led to the development of a large, economically disenfranchised but politically empowered underclass – a class that rightly feels entitled to the benefits of economic growth and post-Apartheid liberalisation; but which finds itself marginalised and excluded. How should such a population be governed, and how can the political instability promised by its existence be contained?\nThose questions are of course not new. They have been with us since the beginnings of the process of industrialisation and urbanisation that transformed our country since the late 19th Century. If modernisation and change were going to dislodge large numbers of black Africans from their traditional ways of life, how would they be incorporated within South African society? The political union created in 1910 was based (inter alia) on the decision to exclude the majority of black and poor South Africans from the rights and entitlements of citizenship. When the demands of an urbanising black population surfaced with new urgency during the 1940s, Apartheid emerged as a strategy to re-impose this exclusion. Apartheid was in many ways a strategy of ‘rural containment’ – an attempt to hold back the flood of urbanisation and what was at the time called ‘detribalisation’. Central to this was the Bantustan policy and the subjection of most poor black South Africans to indirect rule through autocratic and unelected ‘chiefs’.\nThat strategy failed, and the new South African polity that has come into being since 1994 has been built on the promise that all South Africa’s people – black as well as white; rural as well as urban – would be entitled to the rights of citizenship. That promise has been hard to fulfil, and the costs of that failure impact particularly harshly on poor black rural people.\nNo wonder, then, that dreams of rural containment seem to be re-emerging. Significant strands within our ruling party appear now to believe that the answer to poor black marginalisation and de-agrarianisation lie in the recreation of a rural idyll of ‘vibrant’ local economies, disciplined workers, benign farm owners, virtuous peasant farmers and omnipotent chiefs: an idyll that never was – and which never can be.\nIn this context, the political posturing associated with land reform discourse is not mere grandstanding in cloud-cuckoo land. It is effective political theatre. It defines the questions of land reform in racialised and ideological terms that seek to exempt the proposals from critical interrogation. It allows the Minister to portray himself as speaking on behalf of all black people and all Africans, when he is in fact doing nothing of the kind. It allows him to position himself as a champion of the wretched of the earth, when in fact he is creating enabling conditions for clientelism, pork-barrel politics, and elite enrichment. And it tries to set in place strategies of rural containment whereby poor and marginalised rural South Africans are once again subjected to autocratic and undemocratic control.\nThese politics need to be rejected outright. The critics on the left who have lauded the intention of Nkwinti’s plan, while suggesting that the ‘devil was in the details’ (Greenberg 2014) are wrong. Nkwinti’s vision is flawed from the ground up. National reconciliation cannot be achieved – and the ‘national question’ cannot be resolved – through a narrow and legalistic process of claiming back ancestral land rights. Redistribution cannot succeed if it is disconnected from a broader vision of inclusive agricultural development. Neither can it succeed if involves models unsuited to the real needs of small-scale commercial farmers. And ‘rural development’ cannot deliver social justice if it is based on an alliance with rural elites and a small handful of well-connected businesspeople.\nWhat, then, are the alternatives? The pressures for land reform will not go away. But South Africa needs an approach that can deliver the inclusive and broad based growth government has called for. This means land reform should contribute to economic opportunities and tenure security for poor people – in the countryside as well as the cities. Land and rural development need to be situated within broader approaches to regional development that engage with the realities of urbanisation and economic integration. Most of all we need policies based on democratic citizens’ rights for all our people; not strategies for reinstating indirect tribal government in the former homelands. DM\nAndries du Toit is the Director of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies. He writes in his personal capacity.\nPhoto: Miners and mine service workers queue to get food handouts from the NGO ‘Gift of the Givers’ on a rugby field in Rustenburg, South Africa, 06 June 2014. Many of the people queuing for food are affected by the ongoing strike in the platinum mines made infamous by the shooting of 36 miners in Marikana. The strike is the longest in the country since 1967. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK\nReferences\n- Beinart, William. 2014. “Verwoerd, Zuma and the Chiefs.” Custom Contested. http://www.customcontested.co.za/verwoerd-zuma-chiefs/.\n- Claassens, Aninka. 2013. “Recent Changes in Women’s Land Rights and Contested Customary Law in South Africa.” Journal of Agrarian Change 13 (1): 71–92. doi:10.1111/joac.12007.\n- ———. 2014. “Reviled Land Act Is Being Re-Enacted.” The M&G Online. http://mg.co.za/article/2014-02-06-reviled-land-act-is-being-re-enacted/.\n- CLS. 2013. Communal Land Tenure Policy (CLTP). Cape Town: Centre for Law and Society.\n- Davis, Rebecca. 2014. “Land, Firebrands and Grandstands: Just Another Day in Parliament.” Daily Maverick, July 24. http://local.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-07-24-land-firebrands-and-grandstands-just-another-day-in-parliament/#.U9dWPYCSwY8.\n- DRDLR. 2014a. Strengthening the Relative Rights of People Working on the Land. Policy Proposals: Final Draft. Febgruary 2014. Department of Rural Development and land reform.\n- ———. 2014b. Moving South Africa Forward – A Radical Departure from Colonial and Apartheid Socio-Economic Legacies: Speech by Deputy Minister M Skwatsha. Budget Policy Speech. Budget Vote 33. Department of Rural Development and land reform.\n- Dubow, Saul. 1986. “Holding ‘a Just Balance between White and Black’: The Native Affairs Department in South Africa c.1920-33.” Journal of Southern African Studies 12 (2): 217–39.\n- Greenberg, Stephen. 2014. “Land Plan Is Laudable – but Unlikely to Work.” Dispatch Live, July 14. http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/opinion/land-plan-is-laudable-but-unlikely-to-work/.\n- Gumede, William Mervin. 2007. Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC. Zebra.\n- Hosken, Graham. 2014. “Farms Are Dying – Times LIVE.” BD News. http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/08/01/farms-are-dying.\n- “Kingdom to File Massive Land Claim | DispatchLIVE.” 2014. Accessed July 30. http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/kingdom-to-file-massive-land-claim/.\n- Marais, Hein. 2011. South Africa Pushed to the Limit: The Political Economy of Change. Zed Books.\n- Phillips, Laura, Ariana Lissoni, and Ivor Chipkin. 2014. “Bantustans Are Dead – Long Live the Bantustans.” Mail & Guardian, July 17.\n- Spoor, Richard. 2014. “Land reform – and the Law of Unintended Consequences.” Daily Maverick, July 7. http://local.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2014-07-07-land-reform-and-the-law-of-unintended-consequences/#.U9egcYCSwY8.\n- “Traditional Leaders Prepare ‘Very Substantial’ Land Claim.” 2014. The M&G Online. Accessed August 5. http://mg.co.za/article/2014-07-06-traditional-leaders-prepare-very-substantial-land-claim/.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-08-11-op-ed-land-reform-cloud-cuckoo-land-or-calculus-of-power/"}

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+{"doc_id": "287a1bc92dc715fdcfda678f9cb0fafd", "text": "There are three phrases to avoid acute water shortages. The City of Cape Town is currently in Phase 1, with water rationing through extreme pressure reduction. If rationing and savings are not successful, we risk entering Phase 2, which is a disaster stage followed by Phase 3, the extreme disaster phase, where the city would be incapable of drawing water from its surface dams. By City of Cape Town executive mayor PATRICIA DE LILLE.\nDue to the impacts of climate change and reduced annual average rainfall as we have again seen this past winter, the City of Cape Town has adopted a scenario called the New Normal where we are no longer only relying on rain water to fill our dams for our water supplies.\nThe New Normal means that as a permanent drought region, we have to change our relationship with water as a scarce resource and augment our supply with alternative non-surface sources.\nToday, as part of our regular updates on the drought crisis, I am announcing key aspects of the City of Cape Town’s Critical Water Shortages Disaster Plan.\nIt essentially deals with the measures we are putting in place to avoid a time when water users do not have access to municipal drinking water. I want to assure residents that we will not allow a well-run city to run out of water.\nA responsible city plans for the impossible, and today we will outline the plan to avoid critical water shortages.\nAs things stand now, if we all use the water left in our dams more sparingly (which as of Monday stands at 27,6% useable water), combined with other demand management measures which are under way, we can stretch out the number of days of water we have left in our dams to beyond March 2018.\nWinter is over and we are in for a long, hot, dry summer period where we will see a rapid decline of our dam levels.\nIf consumption is not reduced to the required levels of 500-million litres of collective usage per day, we are looking at about March 2018 when supply of municipal water would not be available.\nThe day or month of this happening is, however, not as important as what we do now to avoid such a time.\nCurrently our collective water use remains dangerously high, with daily consumption at 618-million litres per day. We have done well to reduce our consumption but there is still a lot of room for improvement.\nI want to thank the majority of Capetonians who are saving water. Your efforts have helped us navigate our way through the drought thus far and can take us through the tough summer if we keep up and step up water-saving effort wherever we can.\nAs part of our water demand measures, we are going after the approximately 55 000 households and people who are still abusing water and show no regard for this crisis and the efforts of the many people who are using water sparingly. They are playing with all of our futures.\nWe are going after the excessive water users with a mass roll-out of the installation of water management devices, which are being set at 350 litres per day per property. We are also monitoring the commercial sector who must reduce their water use by 20% compared with a year ago.\nIn terms of our Water Resilience Plan to augment supply with new schemes, we are expecting the first water to come online by approximately December 2017/January 2018 if all goes according to plan. Other new sources will come online at various stages and the yield of each source will rise incrementally.\nFor instance, water from temporary land-based desalination plants in Monwabisi and Strandfontein is expected to come online by February 2018. Thereafter, from March 2018 onwards, additional desalination projects are expected to come online.\nIn terms of groundwater extraction at the Atlantis and Silverstroom aquifers, additional water from these projects is expected from about January/February 2018 onwards. In fact, the city has already managed to increase the production capacity from the Atlantis aquifer as part of our Water Resilience Plan and we are continually looking at optimising operations in other areas.\nIt is expected that additional water through water reuse from our Zandvliet Wastewater Treatment Plant will come online from January/February 2018.\nI have just returned from a meeting with the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Nomvula Mokonyane, to discuss water security and water licences for the new emergency schemes.\nIn terms of our Critical Water Shortages Disaster Plan, as with all parts of our operations, we have a disaster plan for all eventualities as every organisation does as part of risk management.\nIn order to avoid disaster and build up reserves, we have been reducing pressure over the months and this has been intensified. We are now set to increase it further to force consumption down.\nOur plan to avoid acute water shortages comprises three phases. The city has activated Phase 1, with water rationing through extreme pressure reduction (throttling).\nThis is a critical stage where we must all do everything we can to stretch the water supply in our dams.\nAs water rationing is intensified, some areas will be affected for short periods of time. This will lead to intermittent, localised temporary water supply disruptions.\nThis process does not result in a complete shut down of the water reticulation system, but it will severely limit available water supply in the system per day.\nWe ask water users to store up to five litres of municipal drinking water only for essential usage. Please do not store excessive municipal water.\nThe city cannot provide definitive time tables of the disruptions as the water systems must be managed flexibly to avoid damage to critical infrastructure. Any zoned outages will likely occur during peak water usage times in the mornings and evenings. We are asking people to prepare for water supply to be disrupted for a short period of time.\nCritical services such as clinics and hospitals will be largely unaffected and mitigation measures will be put in place if they experience intermittent water supply.\nWe will share the plan summary with businesses in Cape Town to effect their planning and to ask them to assist us.\nPhase 2 is a disaster stage.\nThe difference between Phases 1 and 2 is that in Phase 1 we are rationing the whole system with reduced supply. In Phase 2 we are only keeping a certain portion of the system alive close enough to water collection points. Residents will be able to collect a predefined quantity of drinking water per person per day from these collection sites.\nDuring this phase, the city would more actively assume control over the daily water supply available to households and businesses with more extreme rationing.\nStrategic commercial areas, high-density areas with significant risk of increased burden of disease and fires (such as the majority of informal settlements), and critical services (such as hospitals), where possible, would continue to receive drinking water through normal channels.\nThe city’s law enforcement and policing resources, as well as the various resources of our intergovernmental partners, such as the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), will be deployed to ensure that general safety is maintained throughout the city in this phase.\nThis plan will be submitted to the SAPS and the SANDF who will provide key inter-governmental support.\nPhase 3 is the extreme disaster phase.\nAt this point, the city would be incapable of drawing water from its surface dams in the Western Cape Water Supply System. There would be a limited period in which the city can continue to supply water before complete water system failure.\nNon-surface drinking water supplies, sourced from groundwater abstraction from various aquifers and spring water, will be available for drinking purposes only. The city will distribute this drinking water to residents through water distribution points.\nI must emphasise that the disaster and extreme disaster phases (2 and 3) can be avoided with progressive savings and rationing in Phase 1. This extreme can only be avoided if we all do what we need to do now to save water.\nAs a responsible city, the likelihood of such a risk materialising must be balanced against the potential impact of that risk. It is therefore necessary that the city and its residents and stakeholders plan for such a situation if it were to occur.\nThe city has been investing much of its resources, through our water resilience task team, to avoid a disaster scenario. But, as a City that plans ahead, the above plan is necessary to have in place. Intricate operational plans are being finalised as we speak as this is an ever-changing situation.\nThis is a call to action to all our water users. We can only get through this by working together.\nThe severity and duration of this drought could not have been predicted. As a city, we are managing the situation with absolutely every drought intervention that we have at our disposal.\nWe have not let Cape Town down before and we do not intend to do so now. We need all water users to stand with us, to support us during these trying times, and to be constructive partners. DM\nThis is en edited extract from the statement announced by City of Cape Town mayor Patricia De Lille today\nFile photo: Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille at a recent press conference. Photo: Leila Dougan.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-10-04-op-ed-the-city-of-cape-towns-critical-water-shortages-disaster-plan/"}

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+{"doc_id": "29c8261de03be0e58e177a619333efca", "text": "Jonas Makwakwa – in charge of SARS’ key revenue generating units – seemingly struggles to manage his own finances. We know this because Scorpio has seen the financial statements of Makwakwa’s primary bank account for the years 2014 to 2016. His expenses often outweighed his income – in three months Makwakwa spent about three times more than the salary he gets from SARS, our analysis of his financials show. Reporting a series of suspicious deposits into this account in 2017, the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) found that Makwakwa had grown a dependency on possibly illegal payments to maintain his lifestyle. In Part Three, Scorpio reveals that the FIC had good reason to be worried. By PAULI VAN WYK for SCORPIO.\nJonas Makwakwa is a big spender – an excessive habit the 48-year-old struggles to satisfy solely with his income from SARS. Between 2014 and 2016 his monthly salary (after tax) fluctuated between R105,000 and R144,000, the bank statements of his primary FNB account show.\nBut in April, May and November 2015, Makwakwa’s expenses were at least three times higher than his monthly income from SARS. During another eight months in the analysed three-year period, Makwakwa’s expenses were about twice as much as his monthly income from SARS.\nBetween July 2014 and August 2016 (26 consecutive months) Makwakwa managed to spend more than what he earned from Sars. His overdraft facility was not enough to absorb Makwakwa’s splurging on luxuries. Makwakwa seems to have depended on a series of “suspicious” and unexplained payments to fund his excessive spending.\nIn an attempt to give Makwakwa the benefit of the doubt, one might reason then that he earned a legitimate income elsewhere. But his bank statements show that the only other income (that was not flagged by the FIC for being suspicious) rarely exceeded R10,000 per month.\nThe only other sources of income Scorpio could find were two bonuses paid by SARS in July 2014 and July 2015 – respectively R245,574.06 and R453,018.67. But even with the benefit of these bonuses, the maths does not make sense.\nThese are the spending habits of SARS’ Chief Officer: Business and Individual Tax – a portfolio that includes SARS’ biggest revenue generating units. After over a year on suspension on the back of these mysterious payments, Makwakwa is back in the job thanks to a tailored disciplinary hearing where he answered only to a fraction of the allegations against him. Now that he’s holding the reins once more, Makwakwa’s main task will be to shrink the R50-billion projected revenue shortfall before the financial year ends in February 2018.\nWhy is Scorpio disclosing elements of Makwakwa’s bank statements?\nBank statements are a private matter and Daily Maverick respects Makwakwa’s right to privacy. When we received his bank statements from our source, we carefully considered whether the facts before us merit the infringement of Makwakwa’s privacy.\nWe consulted two sets of lawyers, probed our source’s motives, reviewed the publicly available facts as well as what we knew about the curious case of Makwakwa’s mysterious fortune.\nUltimately it was Moyane’s disastrous reporting stints to Parliament’s standing committee on finance on 28 November and 4 December that convinced us to go ahead and publish some details from Makwakwa’s statements. Members of Parliament criticised Moyane on both occasions for not being frank, but rather combative and defensive.\n“You have not served yourself well, and you have not served SARS well,” committee chair Yunus Carrim reportedly told Moyane in November after he deflected and attacked a series of questions from MPs across party lines.\n“There is a strong perception that [Makwakwa] is being protected and you are feeding directly into that perception.”\nCarrim also wrote to Moyane in October:\n“Given the role SARS plays, it not only has to be, but be seen to be above reproach, and perceptions of irregularities by its senior officials have to be effectively addressed.”\nMakwakwa oversees mega taxpayers. He needs to be above reproach.\nOur source acquired Makwakwa’s bank statements lawfully. The source rationally and truly believes that if the truth learned from the bank statements is not published, justice will not be done. There is a strong and reasonable belief that an escalation of the matter through “appropriate” channels will only result in the source being victimised and the matter dying in Moyane’s office vault.\nIn Part 1 of the Makwakwa Dossier, Scorpio revealed that Makwakwa did not answer to the majority of allegations highlighted in the FIC report. Makwakwa has not been cleared of money laundering allegations, nor is it clear whether he paid tax on his mysterious income and if the income is regular. Yet Moyane allowed him back in SARS.\nWhile analysing the bank statements it becomes clear, even to a layman, that Makwakwa’s excessive spending cannot be funded by his income alone. This possibly makes Makwakwa vulnerable to abuse, manipulation and even extortion. We asked him on two occasions for an explanation. Our queries were met with a lawyer’s letter attempting to kill the story (more on this later).\nScorpio deliberately leaves out highly personal details of Makwakwa’s life that would make for great click bait and probably scandalous reading. Scorpio’s only focus is to investigate the source and nature of Makwakwa’s reportedly suspicious funds and how this makes him vulnerable, considering his senior position in a crucial state department.\nWhile Scorpio is not accusing Makwakwa of criminality, we believe it our duty to inform the public of the facts and allow them to make up their own minds.\nSwipe the plastic\nGood food, fancy clothes and even fancier hotels are a priority for Makwakwa.\nIn April 2015 Makwakwa spent over R16,000 on accommodation at the Fairmont Zimbali Resort Hotel in KwaZulu-Natal. He spent another R19,000 on the same hotel in January 2016 and three months later R24,000 at the Pezula Resort Hotel in Knysna. This does not include the substantive amounts he spent on food, clothes and entertainment during these breakaways. Makwakwa’s financial statements also include some spending in Europe and the United States. Scorpio established that at least one trip to Rotterdam in the Netherlands was in the course of his official duties. It seems as if SARS reimbursed some of these expenses.\nThe people in his life are similarly important to Makwakwa and some have benefited handsomely from his apparent good fortunes. Makwakwa has repeatedly gifted money to at least 60 people between 2014 and 2016. The list includes family members, his wife Moli Makwakwa and girlfriend Kelly-Ann Elskie (who are both employed by SARS), his children, friends and some SARS colleagues. Elskie received at least R85,000 during this period, while Moli received about R51,000. The payments are typically small amounts paid several times per month between 2014 and 2016.\nMakwakwa also co-owns at least three properties, publicly available documents show. The bond payments towards these homes contribute to the about R100,000 in expenditure on loans, insurance and other monthly payments. This does not include payments to his children’s school and tuition fees, their transport, and other payments of a personal nature Scorpio will not disclose.\nAs already mentioned, SARS paid Makwakwa between R105,000 and R144,000 per month between 2014 and 2016.\nSimply put: Makwakwa’s one plus one doesn’t equal two. Makwakwa seems to have grown a dependency on mysterious payments to fund his lifestyle – an assertion made by the FIC in their May 2016 report (more about this later). Scorpio’s analysis now bolsters this finding.\nWhen approached for comment last week, Makwakwa’s lawyer, Norwood-based attorney, conveyancer and notary public Liezel David, at first attempted to dissuade Scorpio from publishing this story by threatening legal action.\nAccording to David, the financials of the second most powerful official in SARS – accused of money laundering and corruption by the highly respected FIC – might be interesting to the public, but they are not in the public interest.\nRead David’s entire four-page letter on behalf of Makwakwa:\nNeither David nor Makwakwa answered Scorpio’s two sets of questions posed to Makwakwa last week. Neither attempted to contact Scorpio again, despite understanding that the publication of a story was imminent.\nAccording to David, Makwakwa further declined “to engage with [Scorpio] on any matter that has been the subject of due process… including the illegal disclosure of information such as [Makwakwa’s] personal bank statements”.\nMakwakwa did not give consent for the publishing of his financial statements.\nWhen one minus three equals four\nMakwakwa’s magic touch with numbers was however interesting to the FIC. It is unclear when Makwakwa’s financial behaviour set off alarm bells at the FIC, but in May 2016 the centre gave SARS boss Tom Moyane a damning report detailing how hundreds of thousands of rand in mysterious payments unexplainably found its way into Makwakwa’s account. Between 2010 and 2015 the payments into his account increased yearly from R1.35-million to R3.4-million, an increase of approximately 152%, the FIC found. During this period, Makwakwa’s expenses also grew, “creating a dependency on suspicious cash deposits and payments to maintain his current standard of living”, FIC investigators said. The centre ordered that it be investigated, because the payments might be “proceeds of crime”, point to “money laundering” and are “of concern as they originate from unknown sources and undetermined legal purpose”.\nThe “suspicious” payments into Makwakwa’s account included cash he and others paid into ATMs, three internet payments made by a company Makwakwa was once a director of as well as a forex payment from an unknown jurisdiction.\nMoyane kept a lid on the FIC report until an amaBhungane exposé forced Moyane to suspend Makwakwa in September 2016.\nThe series of financial statements Scorpio has seen offers a wider view of Makwakwa’s financials than the period ultimately considered by the FIC for their report. An analysis of Makwakwa’s financial statements highlights therefore two additional and important trends.\nTiming is of the essence?\nThe first is how a linear analysis of the mysterious payments create a hyperbolic curve. This means the suspicious payments at first entered his account slowly and in small figures, reached a crescendo in value and frequency in the middle of 2015 – coinciding with the resignation of former deputy SARS commissioner Ivan Pillay – and then tapered off to stop abruptly about a year later.\nPayments into Makwakwa’s account stopped around May 2016 – the same time that the FIC gave Moyane its report, which he possibly illegally disclosed to Makwakwa. Simply put: Moyane seemingly tipped off Makwakwa that the FIC was looking over his shoulder. Disclosing FIC reports to unauthorised persons, including the subject of the investigation, is a criminal contravention of the Financial Intelligence Act and could land Moyane in jail or with a hefty fine. This contravention has not been explained by Moyane.\nWhy the cash payments started in January 2014 is unexplained. In these early months the cash amounts were still low in value, and increased slowly to reach R14,900 in August 2014. But in September 2014, the pattern breaks and 11 cash payments totalling R83,800 were deposited from ATMs at OR Tambo International Airport, Bloemfontein and Mall at Reds in Centurion.\nA forex payment of R147,850.65 landed in Makwakwa’s account in the same month. This marked the beginning of Makwakwa’s good fortune. It is – coincidentally or not – also around this time that the Sunday Times’ stories about former SARS executive and head of investigations Johann van Loggerenberg turned weird. In October 2014 the Sunday Times wrote the first story alleging that a “rogue unit” in SARS spied on President Jacob Zuma and ran a brothel – claims the newspaper had to retract later and label as untrue. September 2014 further marks the month Moyane got appointed as SARS Commissioner.\nThe Makwakwa life\nThe erratic spending pattern Makwakwa fell into from September 2014 is the second trend highlighted by Scorpio’s analysis.\nTo understand Makwakwa’s unpredictable spending and why this might be a problem, we need to take a step back and start with the beginning of the financial picture before us.\nBetween January and June 2014, Makwakwa consistently dipped low into his overdraft. In July 2014 he is awarded a R245,574.06 bonus on top of his R135,389.01 monthly salary from SARS. The bonus temporarily lifts him out of the doldrums and he closes the month of July with R40,924.13 in the green. This means Makwakwa spent over R300,000 in July 2014 – behaviour probably induced by the increase in expendable income. In the previous months (January to June 2014) Makwakwa spent between R130,000 and R200,000 per month. In these six months his salary from SARS never exceeded R106,000 and no other substantial income has been recorded.\nBetween August 2014 and June 2015 Makwakwa barely managed – even with the help of several suspicious payments – to keep his bank balance in the positive. In April 2015 he received no ATM deposits, and by 9 April Makwakwa had again lived into more than R23,000 of his overdraft limit. On this day, though, Biz Fire Worx, a company he was once a director of, sends the first (R150,000) of three big payments to Makwakwa.\n(Side note: The FIC was particularly disturbed by the payments from Biz Fire Worx because it was traced right back to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, making a loop through 12 other bank accounts, described by the investigators as a possible money laundering scheme.)\nA day later, on 10 April, another R200,000 from Biz Fire Worx arrives in his account. The two payments – flagged as suspicious by the FIC – lift Makwakwa right back to about R308,000 in the bank.\nIn the following seven days Makwakwa spent large sums of it. By the end of April 2015, Makwakwa had R145,333.41 left in his account after spending about R350,000. This is one of three months when Makwakwa spent more than three times his salary. SARS paid Makwakwa a salary of R110,802.49 (after tax) in April 2015.\nOn 8 May 2015, Biz Fire Worx’ last payment of R130,000 registers in Makwakwa’s account. Five days later, Makwakwa pays R200,000 cash from his bank account to “Mercedes Benz”. This correlates with the FIC report’s findings, which described the payment as a “Mercedes Benz C220 Bluetec”, bought for his girlfriend Elskie.\nThe same theme of sudden and excessive spending on luxury items, holidays and food whenever mysterious deposits are paid into Makwakwa’s account repeats itself right through the three years of financial statements Scorpio has had sight of. But when the goose that laid the golden eggs was slain, Makwakwa’s good fortune also seems to have dried up. By the end of August 2016, SARS’ second most powerful official, with the responsibility to lift South Africa out of its revenue doldrums, was R114,671.43 in the red. Again. DM\nPhoto: SARS No2 (again) Jonas Makwakwa.\n- Scorpio is the Daily Maverick’s new investigative unit. If you’d like to support its work, click here.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-12-08-scorpio-the-makwakwa-dossier-part-3-why-sars-no-2s-erratic-spending-pattern-raised-red-flags-with-financial-intelligence/"}

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+{"doc_id": "2d3efe90d372f7d8f25e684a8de8ef91", "text": "Unfortunately for shale gas exploration companies like Shell, a scientific study indicates that the Karoo shale deposits are “over-mature” (cooked to the point where most gas has disappeared). Commenting on the latest study, Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAG) chief executive Jonathan Deal says he is not in the least bit surprised by these results. By TONY CARNIE.\nNew evidence that the shale gas potential of the Karoo is grossly inflated is part of an emerging worldwide pattern – where “game-changing” economic opportunities from the gas fracking industry are deliberately manipulated or overstated.\nThis is the opinion of veteran anti-fracking campaigner Jonathan Deal, reacting to a scientific study published on Thursday morning in the latest issue of the SA Journal of Science.\nProf Michiel de Kock, the study’s lead author and head of geology at the University of Johannesburg, said the United States Department of Energy published a report in 2011, estimating the Karoo basin’s recoverable reserves to be 485 tcf (trillion cubic feet), suggesting South Africa had the fourth largest shale gas reserves in the world.\nThis estimate was later revised down to around 390 tcf – but a new study by de Kock and a team of researchers from several other universities suggests both these estimates are “grossly inflated” and that the actual reserves are more likely to be around 13 tcf.\nA map of the Karoo Basin showing three borehole drilling sites (starred) which revealed very low traces of natural gas.\nThat is more than 37 times lower than the initial US Energy Department estimate, that was used to trumpet the supposedly massive economic and job-creation benefits from fracking the Karoo.\nDe Kock bases the latest low estimates on the first direct measurement and analysis of natural gas content, taken from three deep borehole sites in the north-western Cape, eastern Cape and Free State.\nHe concluded that despite the relatively small sample of direct tests (taken from depths of up to 2,500m) the Karoo deposits have been overcooked – much like an overdone braai steak.\nShale gas is a by-product of ancient animal or plant debris laid down underground millions of years ago. They need a certain amount of heat to produce hydrocarbons such as oil, gas or coal – and in the case of gas, the shale steak has to be cooked to “medium”.\nPhoto: Drill core samples collected from beneath the Karoo which showed very low gas levels. Photo: Alec Birch\nUnfortunately, for shale gas exploration companies like Shell, De Kock believes the Karoo shale deposits are “over-mature” (cooked to the point where most gas has disappeared). Commenting on the latest study, Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAG) chief executive Jonathan Deal says he is not in the least bit surprised by these results.\nHe notes that Marcellus shale gas reserves in the United States were originally estimated at around 500 tcf whereas more recent estimates indicated that these reserves were in the region of just 50 tcf.\nShale oil reserves in Monterey, California, were similarly grossly overestimated to be around 13.7 billion barrels – but later slashed by 96% in more recent estimates.\n“Government policy can be built on overstated reserves. This use of sensational hype and manipulation of the figures helps people to get things in place, but no one bothers to hold the oil and gas industry to account when the estimates are slashed later,” he said.\n“What the motives might be is difficult to follow, but I think it would be obvious to anyone who follows the oil and gas industry closely. They enjoy investors speculating in their shares, based on access to supposedly huge reserves of hydrocarbons.”\nDeal recalled that when shale gas reserves in the Karoo were initially estimated at around 485 tcf, Investec economist Brian Kantor calculated that this translated into nearly 400 years of petroleum-based energy for South Africa.“Shell then released a report by Econometrix which said that even if the reserves were 10% or 20% of this estimate it could still translate into nearly 700,000 jobs and add R200-billion to the country’s GDP.”\nYet the CSIR reported in a study last year that Karoo shale gas quantities were uncertain and that there could be “no economically extractable gas”. Even if 30 tcf were found, this would translate into less than 2,600 direct jobs (with only 15%-35% of these jobs available to Karoo residents).\n“The over-stating of the so-called economic benefits of shale gas is completely irresponsible,” said Deal, pointing to the risk of a boom and bust scenario.\n“In the United States, even the very best fracking wells are only lasting three to four years before drying up, whereas many others run dry within 12-18 months or less.”\nDeal says abundant supplies of offshore shale gas from Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania and even the East Coast of America can be imported more cheaply than by developing Karoo gas – without having to incur any risk to South Africa’s scarce underground water supplies, tourism, agricultural sector or the environment, especially when renewable energy is getting cheaper and cheaper all the time.\n“I can speak from experience on this because I have been off the grid for 10 years at my home in the Karoo.”\nOn whether the latest very low estimates signal the end of shale gas exploration in South Africa, Deal says: “No. I don’t think so. There are still vested interests that have built up this momentum of expectation around massively-overstated economic benefits. I think that if it left up to the Zuma administration they will push as hard as they can, and go ahead regardless. I personally believe that promises were made to corporate interests some years ago.\n“The fight will now have to move to the trenches in the Karoo and KwaZulu-Natal to oppose all EIA applications for shale gas exploration”, he says, noting that a legal challenge against South Africa’s new fracking regulations had been lodged in the Pretoria High Court by TKAG and Afriforum and the matter is set down for hearing on February 20- 21.\nMarcus Pawson of Afriforum says De Kock’s study was an encouraging step for South Africans who believed in building a sustainable industry that can be regulated sufficiently through evidence-based scientific studies.\n“Three critical aspects are being revealed; first that government has drafted fracking regulations that were published before scientific studies were completed; second that the wrong ministry published these regulations; and third that there are not enough gas reserves to make the industry economical without polluting the water reserves.\n“I think we as a country must focus now on renewable energy and strategies that not only ensure our energy needs are met in the future, but to also reach our millennial goals in reducing our carbon footprint.\n“Nevertheless, anti-fracking groups must be wary of the soothing sounds or movements that create the impression that the eagerness of international companies to start fracking in South Africa is waning.\n“In fact, now is the time to step up efforts to finally stop fracking and exploration in our water-sensitive and drought-plagued country. The research on hydraulic fracturing has already shown that in the South African perspective, the negatives outweigh the positives.”\nLast year, the country’s top science advisory body (the Academy of Science of South Africa) published a 214 page report warning the government that uncontrolled hydraulic fracturing (fracking) could have “devastating effects” on the country’s scarce water resources and could activate dormant geological faults that could induce significant earthquakes.\nShell, however, appears undaunted by the test results just in from the Karoo. “Shell remains committed to the long-term prospect of a shale gas development in South Africa,” spokesperson Dineo Pooe said last night.\n“We have noted the findings of the research conducted around the shale gas potential of South Africa’s main Karoo basin. However, confirmation of a commercially-viable gas resource across the Karoo basin can only be established through exploration drilling in specific target zones\n“Should a clear and supportive legislative and regulatory framework as well as competitive commercial terms be put in place, the Karoo project could compete favourably within Shell’s global tight/shale gas and oil portfolio.” DM\nThe full research article is available at www.sajs.co.za\nPhoto: One of the drilling sites near Ceres, south of the Tankwa Karoo National Park. Photo: Geoserve Exploration Drilling", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-09-28-fracking-flop-karoo-gas-estimates-overcooked-in-more-ways-than-one/"}

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+{"doc_id": "2e808301c512e416c923be131d409be8", "text": "Cape Town - Corruption costs the SA gross domestic product (GDP) at least R27bn annually as well as the loss of 76 000 jobs that would otherwise have been created, according to Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel.\nThis is according to a recent exercise by his department to quantify the cost of corruption in the public sector, based on just a 10% increase in price in infrastructure projects as a result of corruption.\nCollusion increases the costs of doing business, stunts the dynamism and competitiveness that is needed and has a negative impact on growth and jobs, Patel said at the Competition Law, Economics and Policy Conference at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.\nThe culture of “rampant acquisition” is spreading so widely that the professional standards of integrity which are a hallmark of functioning institutions are under enormous pressure. There are some troubling matters to address in looking at corruption and the collusion therewith by professional firms, from auditors to lawyers and others.”\nA World Bank study on competition in SA noted, for instance, that in the case of four cartels in maize, wheat, poultry and pharmaceuticals – products which make up 15.6% of the consumption basket of the poorest 10% – conservative estimates indicate that around 200 000 people stood to be lifted above the poverty line by tackling cartel overcharges.\n“There are things we can do, practical things, while the wider battle to ensure integrity in the public and private sectors is pursued,” said Patel.\nThe construction industry, through the seven largest companies, for example, has embarked on a major transformation programme, with three prominent companies selling a large block of their shares to black South Africans. In all, the deal will place construction turnover of “billions of rand” in the hands of black South Africans over the next seven years.\nCompetition policy is going through something of a golden age, with enormous public interest in the work of the competition authorities and widespread public debate on what is done and what should be done.\nPublic interest\n“The past seven years have seen a focus by government on the public interest consequences of mergers and acquisitions, specifically on employment, small business development, ownership by black South Africans and local industrial capability,” said Patel.\n“This is not surprising in a society with so many people who are unemployed, where poverty levels are deep, many citizens feel excluded from the economy and wider inequalities threaten the social stability of our still-young democracy. This is a fertile field for demagogues who offer simplistic solutions to the many who are desperate.”\nHe pointed out that some commentators, lawyers and economists – while acknowledging the extent of the problems of joblessness – have asked whether it is the proper remit of competition policy to deal directly with unemployment and with the strong focus on public interest issues.\n“Two decades ago, economic goals in many countries were framed in the language only of rates of economic growth, with the widespread presumption that growth always, often automatically, results in wider benefits for society,” said Patel.\n“Today we live in a wiser world where there is compelling evidence that strong growth has in many cases gone with deepening inequalities and social exclusion, for example of young people. Today there is a broad consensus on the need for inclusive growth.”\nThere is also a growing constituency of policy-makers across the world who see value in well thought-out and transparent public interest conditions being attached to mergers and acquisitions to bring out the inclusivity of the growth.\n“In 1994, at the start of the democratic era, the new incoming government identified high levels of economic concentration as a critical challenge. Today, some 23 years later, the public discussion has returned to this issue,” said Patel.\nManufacturing\nIn research currently being done on concentration ratios in the manufacturing sector, preliminary results suggest that the top five firms in the sector as a whole accounted for 13.7% of total manufacturing sales in 2011. By 2014 this had risen to 16.2%.\nIn a three-year period, the data seem to show a growth of 2.5 percentage points in market share – or based on estimated rand value, it may be equivalent to as much as R54bn of additional sales that, had market share ratios remained the same, would have gone to smaller firms.\n“Some of this may be due to efficiency gains or other reasons that could be enhancing overall welfare. But clearly, if increased concentration has the effect of displacing smaller companies, issues of social equity loom large. These levels of concentration may be economically unjustified and, if so, should be addressed,” he emphasised.\nRacially skewed\nIn addition, many parts of the economy are still faced with stubbornly racially-skewed ownership profiles, according to Patel.\n���The exclusion of most historically disadvantaged South Africans from the ability and opportunity to own productive assets must be remedied to unlock the competitive and development benefits of full participation by all in the economy,” he said.\n“The effect of these two structural features of these markets is to stunt economic growth, prevent entry of new players, reduce consumer choice, limit the levels of innovation and dynamism in the economy and feed a growing resentment among black South Africans of the failure to realise the promises made by the Competition Act and the vision of the constitution.” DM", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-09-01-patel-corruption-toll-could-be-r27bn-to-gdp-76-000-job-losses/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Afternoon%20Thing%201%20September%202017%20WBC&utm_content=Afternoon%20Thing%201%20September%202017%20WBC+CID_55c2c0e7ea22e608922692798c3cee1a&utm_source=TouchBasePro&utm_term=Patel%20puts%20figure%20to%20national%20corruption"}

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+{"doc_id": "302f4a4a1620db5a1485f737728f43d0", "text": "The arms deal commission of inquiry has expectedly turned into a farce. Staff are resigning. Information seems non-existent. GREG NICOLSON evaluates, and sees it’s oh so Zuma.\nGiven a global platform to explain the successes of the ANC and his government, President Jacob Zuma took his chance at the National Press Club in Washington DC last week. He boasted South Africa’s fifth peace democratic elections, pointed to the rise in middle income earners, and the expansion of foreign companies entering South Africa. Inflation’s been tamed; the Johannesburg Stock Exchange has grown; the National Development Plan strives to reduce unemployment, eradicate poverty and achieve annual growth of 5.4%.\nIt was an investment pitch: South Africa is a success – invest in the country and we’ll see greater success together. For Zuma, every pitch is vital to creating a legacy to be proud of. But back home, the inquiry into the arms deal, a supporting actor in most major political scandals in the last 15 years and a shrine to the corruption that prevents investment, has followed the expected narrative and crumbled into a farce.\nWhile Zuma’s hardly to blame for the 1999 deal, then worth R30 billion but estimated to have now ballooned to a cost of up to R70 billion, it’s highly symbolic of what he should be remembered for. He’s the director on a political stage, playing to the audience’s desires, setting scenes of apparent conflict, development, progression, but taking us nowhere, resolving nothing, immersing us in a screenplay that reflects reality but is in fact fiction, and never letting us escape.\nThe arms deal commission was a turning point, said then-Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Jeff Radebe in 2011. “The establishment of this commission and the commencement of its work represent a watershed moment in the history of democratic South Africa, in a quest to rid our nation of what has become an albatross that must now cease to blemish the reputation of our government and the image of our country.”\nAt the time, Zuma appeared to pre-empt a ruling from the Constitutional Court and finally gave the country the commission of inquiry many had been calling for. The terms of reference were generally celebrated, though Pierre de Vos noted it wouldn’t look into the bribe Schabir Shaik solicited on behalf of Zuma because that was for influencing a potential inquiry, post deal. It would, however, evaluate the deal’s rationale, how the equipment has been used, whether arms dealers created jobs as promised, whether there was “improper influence” on the decision makers, and if so, whether contracts should be cancelled.\nThere’s nothing particularly wrong with the terms of reference. Yet the inquiry isn’t the key that will unlock the vault of corruption and wipe clean the lingering stain on democracy that still, through a maze so convoluted, has a negative effect on the performance of state institutions. Like almost every investigation before it, the inquiry isn’t going to uncover corruption committed between arms dealers, middlemen and politicians, as once again we see the alleged influence of politics.\nOn Friday, Mail & Guardian published excerpts of a letter from two advocates who were working as evidence leaders at the inquiry until they resigned two weeks ago. Barry Skinner and Carol Sibiya lasted longer than others, but clearly couldn’t take it anymore. “We believe our integrity is being compromised by the approach which the commission appears intent on adopting,” they said in their 15-page resignation letter. “The role of evidence leaders has been diminished to the point where they are serving little purpose and are not independent,” they continued.\nSkinner and Sibiya said they were denied vital evidence and weren’t invited to a meeting with Richard Young, who has doggedly fought for accountability over the arms deal, or given vital information he handed over. They criticised fellow evidence leader Fanyana Mdumbe, for presenting one-sided evidence and intimidating witnesses, for attacking Young and distorting information. Skinner and Sibiya were also critical of Chairperson Willie Seriti’s decision not to allow a leaked report from a law firm that allegedly shows German submarine provider Ferrostaal paid R300 million in bribes. Seriti, they added, also kept them from cross-examining witnesses.\nThe two advocates should be applauded for surviving this long. Senior investigator Mokgale Norman Moabi resigned in January with claims the commission had two agendas, the first of which was gazetted, the second a clandestine operation reporting to the president. One of the three commissioners, Francis Legodi resigned reportedly unhappy with Seriti’s leadership and the covert handling of evidence. Principal legal researcher Kate Painting has also quit, citing a second agenda and culture of fear. Evidence leader Tayob Aboobaker also resigned. The commission has denied there is any type of second agenda and dismissed the claims of Skinner and Sibiya as a misunderstanding. Officially, it’s continuing and on track.\nUnofficially, it’s a mess. Obviously, Zuma isn’t the man directly in charge of the inquiry and beyond the updates he receives and date extensions, he should be awaiting the inquiry’s report. But Radebe was more than happy to claim the announcement of a commission as a “watershed moment” in SA’s history, enacted of course by the Zuma government.\nThe moment, though, isn’t going to be the shedding of the ugly albatross, but accepting it as a part of history. It’s questionable how many people even care about the arms deal: it has had no apparent effect on the ANC’s election results, happened at a time when the country was young and may, some say, be forgiven for making mistakes, and for most people is of less importance than the bread-and-butter issues of employment and service delivery. The watershed moment is more likely to be a defeat, convincing those that still care that you can’t do anything about the arms deal, which is more likely to be legitimised by the current inquiry than delegitimised.\nZuma’s taken us on a ride to nowhere. Back where we started, why the hell would we want to get back on the boat? Political schools could give lessons on how to bury the truth while at the same time doing the right thing, giving everyone what they want and giving them nothing at all.\nBut sadly, for Zuma, it won’t help his legacy. Suppressing the spy tapes won’t make his government’s economic response to the financial crisis look impressive. Avoiding corruption charges – arms deal-related or Nkandla-related – won’t shine a light on achievements in service delivery. Defeating claims of corruption doesn’t equal an appreciation of the infrastructure rollout.\nBecause at some point we’ll wake up and realise it’s all fiction. We’ve been cast as both actor and audience in a play that ends in keeping Zuma out of jail and leaving him with a legacy to be proud of. But he can’t have the two. It’s likely he’ll stay out of jail, continuing to march brilliantly through SA politics unscathed, and that’s what we’ll remember him for.\nHe’ll be remembered as the guy who got us again, and got away with it; the leader the country survived to flourish. DM\nPhoto: Forgive us, Master Yoda.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-08-11-so-farce-so-good-zuma-and-the-arms-deal/"}

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+{"doc_id": "30d5138b9dfec979bde1af66a7b13a70", "text": "Pretoria - President Jacob Zuma has released the report of the Commission into the Feasibility of Fee-Free Higher Education and Training in South Africa.\nZuma established the Heher Commission in January 2016 to investigate university fees.\nIt was chaired by Honourable Justice Jonathan Arthur Heher, assisted by Adv Gregory Ally and Ms Leah Thabisile Khumalo.\nHere is the full report:\nRelease of the Report of Commission of Inquiry into the Feasibility of making High Education and Training Fee-free in South Africa\n13 November 2017\nRelease of the Report of Commission of Inquiry into the Feasibility of Making High Education and Training Fee-free in South Africa\nOn 14 January 2016, I established a Commission of Inquiry into Higher Education and Training in order to add into the body of knowledge and evidence that will inform government’s decision making process in pursuit of a sustainable solution to the on-going higher education funding matter.\nThe Commission was chaired by Honourable Justice Jonathan Arthur Heher, assisted by Adv Gregory Ally and Ms Leah Khumalo.\nThe terms of reference of the Commission was to enquire into, make findings, report on and make recommendations on the following:\nThe Commission was expected to complete its work within a period of eight months and to submit its final report to the President within two months of completing its work.\nAt the request of the Commission the working period of the Commission was extended until 30 June 2017 with the report due within two months of completion of the work.\nI received the final report from the Commission on 30 August 2017. I would like to thank Judge Heher and the Commissioners on the work done on this challenging matter. I also thank all stakeholders who made presentations to the Commission, and all who cooperated with the Commission to ensure that its work was done and concluded successfully.\nI hereby release the Report of the Commission into the feasibility of making higher education and training fee-free in South Africa.\nThe recommendations of the Commission can be summarised as follows:\n1.1 FUNDING THE POST SCHOOLING EDUCATION AND TRAINING SECTOR\nThe Commission recommended that government increase Block funding to the Post School Education and Training Sector (PSET) as a whole in line with increased costs for providing quality education and infrastructure needs. The Commission recommended that government increase its expenditure on higher education and training to at least 1% of the GDP, in line with comparable economies. The Commission further recommended that government pay particular attention to the Technical and Vocational Education and Training colleges as they cannot perform at their current funding levels.\n1.2 STUDENT ACCOMODATION\nOn student accommodation, the Commission found that there is a severe shortage of student accommodation across the higher education and training sector. The Commission recommended that government adopt an affordable plan to develop more student accommodation and that Historically Disadvantaged Institutions be prioritised. The commission further recommend a Public-Private Partnership approach when responding to the student accommodation challenge.\n1.3 ONLINE AND BLENDED LEARNING\nOn the option of Online and Blended Learning, the Commission recommended that Government must further investigate the viability of “online and blended learning” as an alternative in addressing the funding and capacity challenges facing the current higher education and training sector.\n1.4 FUNDING FOR TECHNICAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING (TVET) STUDENTS\nThe Commission made the following recommendations regarding the funding of students at TVET colleges:\n1.5 POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS\nThe Commission recommended that the NRF bursaries (based on merit, or other criteria as developed by the NRF) for postgraduate students be retained and expanded when possible. The Commission further recommended for Postgraduate students to have access to a cost-sharing model of government guaranteed Income-Contingency Loans sourced from commercial banks (ICL).\n1.6 HISTORIC DEBT\nIt is recommended that students with debt, who have since graduated, be offered income-contingent loans (ICL) as well.\n1.7 NSFAS\nThe Commission recommend that the participation of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) in the funding of university students be replaced by the ICL system. NSFAS should be retained for the provision of the funding of all TVET students and TVET student support if such retention is considered necessary.\n1.8 FUNDING FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS\nThe Commission recommends that all undergraduate and postgraduate students studying at both public and private universities and colleges, regardless of their family background, be funded through a cost-sharing model of government guaranteed Income-Contingency Loans sourced from commercial banks. Through this cost-sharing model, the Commission recommends that commercial banks issue government guaranteed loans to the students that are payable by the student upon graduation and attainment of a specific income threshold. Should the student fail to reach the required income threshold, government bares the secondary liability.\nIn implementing this model, the Commission recommends that the existing NSFAS model be replaced by a new Income Contingency Loan System.\nShould government be opposed to this model, the Commission recommends that government consider the “Ikusasa Student Financial Aid Programme”, an Income Contingency Loan Funding Model proposed by the Ministerial Task Team on Funding for Poor, Working Class and Missing Middle Students.\nThe Commission further recommend that government considers the introduction of a university fee capping mechanism to avoid the cancelling out effect. Some key points of the ICL model are the following:\n1.9 REGISTRATION FEES\nThe Commission recommended for the application and registration fees to be scrapped across the board.\nWAY FORWARD\nThe Inter-Ministerial Committee on Higher Education Funding led by the Minister in the Presidency Mr Jeff Radebe, and the Presidential Fiscal Committee whose lead Minister is the Minister of Finance, Mr Malusi Gigaba, are processing the report. I will make a pronouncement on the Report once the Ministers have concluded their work. I have decided to release the Report prior to the conclusion of our work in processing it so that the public can have an opportunity to study the report while we continue with the processing thereof. DM", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-11-13-zuma-releases-fees-commission-report/"}

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+{"doc_id": "32eb922042a3ec03f140f738d5339399", "text": "On May 15\nThe interview with Frans Hiemstra, Uber’s general manager for sub-Saharan Africa, and his communications manager, Mpho Sebelebele, begins with a half-truth.\n“The one thing that is a bit of a pain is how journalists classify or label the drivers when they are writing,” says Sebelebele.\n“They’ll say drivers that work for Uber, or Uber drivers, but it’s actually inaccurate. The drivers are very specific that they want to be recognised as independent contractors.”\nUber says this claim is based on driver surveys. But publicly — and certainly anecdotally, among all Uber drivers interviewed — the drivers would much prefer to be treated as employees, with all the protections and benefits that come as a result.\nBut the global e-hailing company has a major financial incentive to not treat their drivers as employees. If it had to guarantee salaries, give sick leave and take responsibility for drivers’ safety and security, its business model would not be nearly so lucrative.\nIn some places, drivers have successfully challenged the “independent contractor” label. After a legal battle, some 70 000 Uber drivers in the United Kingdom won the right to be recognised as workers, forcing Uber to roll out holiday pay, a pension plan and a limited minimum wage.\nUber’s drivers in Africa enjoy none of these protections, despite their best efforts.\nIn South Africa, a group of Uber drivers successfully took the company to arbitration to demand recognition as employees, but the judgment was later overturned on a technicality — the drivers had sued the wrong holding company.\nIn March, Uber drivers went on strike in three South African cities, in part to demand workers’ rights.\nThese are rights that Uber has no intention of recognising, as Hiemstra makes clear.\n“I think we should put the strike in context. So South Africa is the country in the world with the most number of protests,” he said, adding quickly that this shouldn’t take away from its importance.\nHe said that Uber intensified its contact with drivers as a result of the strike, although “it wasn’t necessary to significantly change the game”.\nIn other words: Uber makes the rules and drivers just have to live with the consequences.\nUntapped market\nThe interview with Hiemstra, conducted on Zoom, is arranged to coincide with Africa Day. It is intended to showcase the company’s positive contributions to economic growth and development on the continent.\nUber now operates in eight African countries — Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda — and has completed a billion trips in less than a decade. It claims to have offered three million “economic opportunities” in Africa, although it will not comment on the quality or duration of those opportunities.\nIts plans for expansion on the continent are aggressive. In May, it added another three Nigerian cities — Kano, Enugu and Warri — to its network, with more still to come.\n“The growth potential is out of Africa. Essentially the biggest population growth will come out of Africa,” says Hiemstra.\nHiemstra, who comes from a finance and consulting background, is keen to talk about Uber’s social and economic effect in Africa. “We are not just a company that brings you your car, we can bring things to you, we can move you places, and we’ve been able to leverage that to do good,” he says, referencing Uber’s vaccine drive which helped 95 000 South Africans access a Covid-19 vaccine.\nHe also talks up that figure of three million economic opportunities. “That’s three million people that would have been unemployed recently. That’s something I would love for you to lean in on because it’s a great story.”\nThis, also, is not quite true. Although some Uber drivers may have been unemployed, many left existing jobs for the promise of good pay and incentives.\n‘It’s not something we negotiate’\nBut when Uber unilaterally changes its pricing and bonus structure, that promise disappears — as revealed this week in a global leak of the company’s documents. Some 124 000 internal records were leaked by Mark MacGann, one of the company’s most senior lobbyists.\nThe Washington Post, which reported on Uber’s growth in Cape Town — in part overseen by Hiemstra — said the leak shows “that Uber created working conditions it knew would result in many drivers barely scraping by. Uber incentivised more drivers to sign up than were necessary, shrank driver earnings and built a system that rewarded workers for undertaking routes and schedules that put them at risk of harm in locations plagued by violence.”\nThis is how it worked in practice, according to The Washington Post. When Uber first arrived in Cape Town in 2013, it offered drivers a $400 joining bonus and a subsidy of $4 a trip. Once they were committed — often taking steep loans to purchase their own vehicles — Uber unilaterally slashed the subsidy and increased their own commission from 20% to 25%.\nBy 2016, some drivers were earning as little as a third of what they earned in their first year but had no choice but to keep working to pay off their vehicle loan.\nIn response to follow-up questions, an Uber spokesperson said: “Earnings do fluctuate as a normal part of the business. They are affected by factors such as seasonality and the macroeconomic environment [cost of living, fuel etc] …. Recently, we have seen driver earnings begin to recover in South Africa.\n“In terms of subsidies, when we started in South Africa, we offered incentives and referrals for drivers to join the platform, as is common for any business investing in growth. As the market has matured, we have adjusted these incentives accordingly.”\nIn the interview, Hiemstra refuses to get into specifics about how the company sets its pricing — but once again makes clear that drivers don’t have a say.\n“It’s not something that we negotiate with drivers,” he said. “We have these economic models, and we have data points that we get from drivers, and that’s how we determine the prices.”\nHe said that the company would “in principle” be unable to give drivers a guarantee of how much they could earn.\nThis is convenient for Uber. It leaves its drivers carrying almost all the financial risk, while the company gets to take home the majority of the profit.\nWhatever the rights and wrongs of the model, there is no doubt over its efficacy. It has fuelled the company’s rapid growth over the past decade — and, according to Hiemstra, Uber is only just getting started in Africa. “We need to make sure we get our fingers in every single use case. Then we need to be in all the cities.”", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://mg.co.za/africa/2022-07-19-uber-drives-a-hard-bargain-in-africa-at-the-cost-of-its-drivers/"}

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+{"doc_id": "33d976df798ef97eb754deefc3e6b68b", "text": "How will investors read the Eskom saga? Short answer: they will probably run for the hills and dive into any bunker available. So is nationalisation now the only alternative?\nIt’s almost impossible to imagine a worse result for Eskom: the well-liked, broadly respected, unquestionably competent guy brought in to fix the rotten organisation is now out. The man who presided over its calamitous decline and desired effective 300% increase in its tariffs, that will cripple industry, is now back.\nWhat? How did that happen? As Private Eye might comment “surely shome mishtake”.\nIt would be difficult to script a more disastrous sequence: rumours that the CEO Jacob Maroga was going to be fired; then actually being fired, then the politicians weighing in with the inevitable race card, then chairman Bobby Godsell being fired. (Perhaps “fired” is a harsh word, but if your situation is made untenable, then being “fired” may be indelicate, but is surely not absolutely inaccurate).\nThe sequence is tragic and crippling for an organisation already in distress. Where does it go from here? More particularly, where does it leave the organisation’s ability to raise money?\nThe short answer is it is in deep trouble. Dawie Roodt of the Efficient Group is quoted as saying Godsell’s resignation could affect Eskom’s efforts to attract funding from foreign investors for its R385 billion expansion programme.\nReuters quotes Ulrich Joubert, an economist at Kruger International, commenting that if Godsell’s resignation reflected political pressure, this could affect investors’ willingness to fund the utility. This may or may not be so; a monopoly organisation with state backing is never a bad bet for investors looking for a steady return, even if returns are low.\nThe bigger problem for Eskom is that the debacle narrows down its options. The organisation’s strategy so far has been to try to fix its own financial problems by increasing massively the revenue side of the income statement. The plan was clearly to achieve financial stability with government guarantees, but without significant direct government support as its first priority, and then perhaps to ease future funding requirements by approaching the financial markets once this had been achieved.\nHence, in the near term, the effect of the debacle on Eskom’s ability to raise funds on the bond market might not be extreme since borrowing was not the primary strategic thrust. Yet it’s increasingly become clear that this strategy was either misconceived or ill-executed. The income increases required to restore the balance sheet are simply too large, and will just devastate the public and industry. AngloGold’s Mark Cutifani said with glorious candour that Eskom’s price rise was simply “not viable”.\nCritically, Maroga has been trying to turn the organisation around against some terrible headwinds: a declining economy, which has lowered Eskom’s income, and massively rising costs, including that of Eskom’s primary resource, coal. All of this was reflected in Eskom’s record loss of R9.7bn in the year to March.\nNow that it’s obvious that what is required for a quick restoration of the financial integrity of the organisation is untenable, it seems equally obvious that a different strategy is necessary; perhaps one which includes larger state-supported borrowings and slower tariff increases. A partial sale of the organisation should at least be on the table.\nThe other option is simply nationalisation. Since the board demonstrably has no power to select or reject management, it can be argued that the organisation is effectively nationalised already. How would nationalisation work? Since the state is already the sole shareholder, the process would not be overly complex. The board would be dispensed with and the existing loans and obligations would be assumed by the state.\nIt would no longer be an organisation at arm’s length from government and Eskom would not be able to raise capital off its own balance sheet. The move would effectively substitute taxpayers for electricity users as funders of the organisation. Effectively, this is the same solution government is proposing for the SABC.\nNationalisation would signify a terrible failing on the part of the organisation, but, as hundreds of banks effectively nationalised during the recent recession around the world would testify, it’s inevitable if the organisation is in danger of imploding.\nThis is the question that now looms before government in general and public enterprises minister Barbara Hogan in particular. It’s not a pleasant one.\nBy Tim Cohen", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2009-11-10-Is-nationalisation-now-the-only-option-for-Eskom/"}

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+{"doc_id": "33db54fe54616a73f9779bf0dc14eec5", "text": "It is still too too risky for the South African Reserve Bank to start issuing virtual currencies or crypto-currencies at the moment.\nThis is according to Francois Groepe, deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank, speaking in a keynote address during the Strate GIBS Fintech Innovation Conference 2017 as reported by ITWeb.\nConcerns currently facing the central bank include the need to ensure that the payment methods are not abused; that they do not help fund illegal activities; and the fact that many regulators still lack a clear understanding of how virtual currencies work, said Groepe.\n“Virtual currencies have the potential of becoming widely adopted. However, for the central bank to issue virtual currencies or crypto-currencies in an open system will be too risky for us. This is something that we really need to think about,” said Groepe.\n“These are: developing analysis on activities that involved in the financial services; continuous collaboration between local and global regulatory authorities; and investigating and deciding on the most appropriate structures to keep abreast of fintech developments.”\nFollowing earlier reports, Groepe said that the that the Reserve Bank had recently created a three-member team to look into how virtual currencies work.\nThese currencies would be tested by the central bank in a “sandbox” environment to help fully understand how they would work in an open market.\nIt would also allow businesses that provide virtual currency exchange services to experiment and test new products, said Groepe.\nRead: How high can Bitcoin go?", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/194050/bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies-are-still-too-risky-reserve-bank/"}

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+{"doc_id": "349ac5798631f1f941e597d2b3d97a61", "text": "The South African school maths story is well known: Our school maths performance is very poor. We are second from the bottom of the international league table, and perform worse than some fellow African countries which spend less than we do on education. Despite 22 years of investment our matric maths pass rates are not improving. Yet our Minister of Basic Education asserts that we have a “system that is on the rise”. Is that just spin? What is our school maths story? By NICKY ROBERTS.\nMaths is the subject most vulnerable to challenges in the school system. Like a caged canary in a mine, we watch it closely to reflect on the toxicity or health of our schooling system. Our South African school maths story is well known. It goes something like this:\nOur school maths performance is very poor and unequal. Former apartheid Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd (when responsible for education) famously said that there was no place for mathematics in the education of the African child. They were to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.\nWe inherited a highly unequal system of education as a result of our colonial and apartheid past. This impacts on who can access mathematics, and has influenced who is capable of teaching it. Post-apartheid we have tried to create a more equal education system where all South Africans can access maths. But both improving educational quality and reducing educational inequality remain challenges. In maths, we perform second from the bottom of the international league table of 25 countries (just above Saudia Arabia). We are worse than Egypt, Botswana and Morocco who spend less than we do on education. We have prioritised mathematics as a subject for 22 years. However, there has been no impact on our mathematics matric pass rates.\nThe knowledgeable storyteller may explain what underlies this tale in many ways:\n- Outcomes-based education was a mistake. Teachers did not know what mathematics to teach when.\n- Teachers lack knowledge for teaching mathematics.\n- Our schooling culture is exam-focused and perverse attention is given to one high-stakes exit exam (at Grade 12).\n- We don’t have accountability systems.\n- We lack resources (textbooks or classrooms or teachers…).\n- Problems in maths are a direct result of problems in language.\n- Problems in maths are evident from the early grades in primary schools and are compounded as learners progress through school.\n- The children are not learning basic mathematics facts – they use very long, inefficient methods to perform calculations with larger numbers.\n- There is inadequate coverage of the curriculum – teachers do not cover what they are meant to, with too little mathematics done each day.\n- While some blame teachers’ low expectations (noting a lack of sufficiently challenging maths each day), others complain that the maths curriculum is too dense and too challenging.\n- Sometimes trade unions loom large as a major bogeyman to spice up the story.\nThis familiar tale is retold from year to year; with a particular frenetic narration each January with the release of the matric results. This is so because, as for many good stories, parts of it are/were true.\nWhen releasing the National Senior Certificate (NSC) results on January 4, 2017, Minister Moshekga referred to a “system on the rise”, and “a system in an upward trajectory”. Some dismiss this simply as spin. After all, improving the proportion of mathematics passes at Grade 12 level from one year to the next cannot be used as evidence of systemic improvement. Umalusi, our quality assurance body, has identified Grade 12 mathematics pass rates as worryingly stagnant.\nSo is there a case of improvement in South African school maths? Yes – I think so. In 2017, I think that we now have several rays of hope which question the basic plot of our story:\nRay 1: We are not in denial and we have a fairly detailed plan.\nWe know our school maths story and spend time trying to account for and change it. We have a detailed diagnostic report as part of our National Development Plan, and more detail is provided in Basic Education and provincial plans. Approaches to improving language and mathematics are being tested by more affluent and urban provinces, and in poorer provinces various interventions through the National Education Collaborative Trust (NECT) are being tested. However, more detail on how to improve mathematics from Grade R to 12, and greater coherence across provinces, is needed.\nRay 2: We are starting to gather and use evidence for systemic change\nThere have been numerous interventions involving school mathematics at a large scale. The methods used in these interventions are still being debated. There is much still to learn from and share.\nRay 3: Our maths teacher education system is growing and improving\nWe have systems to encourage ongoing professional development for our teachers already in schools. These are not without problems; but there is a growing – and accredited – suite of formal courses. Some of these programmes are being developed and refined through universities and the work of the National Research Fund Numeracy/Mathematics chairs. Some of these programmes are being offered, developed and encouraged by teacher unions and NGOs. The Department of Higher Education is leading an EU-funded programme to further improve initial teacher education for primary teachers. We have an indication that our teacher education system is improving. From our regional benchmark (Southern and East African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality – SAQMEC IV) teachers (at Grade 6 level) who were trained through university programmes performed better in a mathematics test than older teachers who were not trained in this way. We require more data to confirm this finding and establish whether this holds for teachers at other Grade levels. More is required to monitor and improve both initial and ongoing teacher development.\nRay 4: We know that targeting matric maths (or even Grades 10-12) is too little, too late\nWe know that a lot of investment was wasted on targeting the school exit point (Grade 12). From 2011 to 2014 we got common assessment data on maths (from the Annual National Assessments in Grades 1-7 and Grade 9 levels). This showed that maths problems occur from early on, with problems at Grade 6 seriously compounded by Grade 9. There is now at least more talk about intervening and supporting maths from the earlier grades.\nRay 5: We are finding ways to get meaningful data from earlier Grades\nHow Annual National Assessment (ANA) data was being used was a concern to teacher unions. As a result the ANAs were not administered in 2015 and 2016. Useful assessments communicate about standards, set high expectations and support diagnosis and remediation. As such, a collaborative process involving the state and teacher unions is under way to plan how assessments can be meaningfully designed and utilised. South Africans should expect to get national assessment data (at Grades 3, 6, and 9 to complement Grade 12) in 2017.\nRay 6: We are starting to report on retention\nReporting solely on pass rates, we neglect those who are no longer in the schooling system. This year the Department of Basic Education reported on retention rates (how many people are staying in the school system) up to age 15, together with the NSC results. This is to be welcomed. One of the provinces also reported on its retention of older learners (in Grades 10-12). South Africans should expect annual reports on retention rates alongside pass rates (at Grades 3, 6, 9 and 12 levels).\nRay 7: We know we must invest in early childhood development and improve the quality of Grade R and primary maths\nInternational research indicates that it is most cost-effective and educationally effective to invest early on, and that this is also a major lever for reducing inequality. We have successfully expanded access to free public Grade R; and are aware of the need to improve the quality of this (especially in rural provinces). Currently one of our more urban provinces is trialling a mathematics professional development intervention, and mathematics materials for Grade R teachers. There is far more to be done to improve maths in all of primary school. Far more is need at the Early Childhood Development level and to join up health and social services with schooling.\nRay 8: We know improving maths results involves all of us\nWe know that success in maths cannot be divorced from success in language and literacy. We know that teachers of maths (from Grade R to Grade 12) are pivotal and require ongoing, long-term professional support to improve both their knowledge of maths and of how children learn maths. Along side this we know that school leaders, and subject advisors at district level, can play an important instructional leadership role. We know that parents and caring adults can help and that after-school maths clubs, family maths days and homework drives yield improvements. Far more is needed to ensure that learners themselves experience maths as something that makes sense. Maths results improve when learners and teachers believe that they are capable of learning and explaining maths, and when they all work hard and think hard to solve difficult problems every day.\nOur maths story is not yet complete, and much remains to be done. However (and this is the real plot changer) two sets of independent, benchmark tests show that we are improving in maths.\nFirst, our regional benchmark assessment (Southern and East African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality – SAQMEC IV), conducted in 2013, shows that at Grade 6 level we are performing better in mathematics than in the two previous studies. We are now above the 500-point “centre point” (which considers the 15 other member countries on our continent).\nSecond, in our international benchmark mathematics assessment (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study – TIMSS), when we compare Grade 9 performance in TIMSS 2003 to TIMSS 2015, South Africa improved more than for any other country with comparable data. This was equivalent to an improvement in performance of approximately two grades. Yes, we are still in 24th place, but we can’t expect better than “most improved”. (With our improvement sustained over the three studies.)\nLooking at each ray individually, there is still much room for improvement. Taking the eight rays together, and combining them with the two sets of independent benchmark data, it is clear that (1) our school maths needle is no longer static and (2) the needle is moving in the right direction. We are not yet writing a completely new school maths story, but in 2017 (at last) our tale is indeed changing for the better. DM\nPhoto: World Bank Photo Library.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-01-08-school-maths-what-is-our-story/"}

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+{"doc_id": "36ec4b37eb42221707268f984d58285c", "text": "In recent times, political sentiment – from some quarters within the incumbent government – would have it that the Central Bank or in our case the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) do something about the floundering rand. And yet others want the powers of SARB to be clipped. By SALIEM FAKIR.\nAs far as the rand goes, there is little the Central Bank can do because its foreign reserves are limited, and if political governance is such that it either frightens capital to take flight or persuades them to engage in a disciplining mode, the Central Bank is as much a limited sovereign institute as it is victim of circumstance.\nThe erstwhile politicians are missing a beat: the incumbent government had long struck a Faustian bargain with big money.\nGiven our political elite – inherited power with no economic power to speak of – they had no full independence from the money economy. To get big capital’s money it had to play by their rules.\nIt still has to do so, and this state of affairs will remain unless one builds the saving base of the country, enhances tax receipts, curtail illicit flows of capital, or there are strategies in place where the state itself is able to extract a share of capital accumulation from the market economy.\nFor capital accumulation via state entities to prevail, then they must make sure they deliver a return and not be endless troublesome sink-holes serving the populace the recurrent hangman’s noose for every hard-worked tax that is given over to the state.\nThe current predatory grab by the predateurs, on various parts of the economy, breaks any hope that even this strategic play will raise the stakes for economic sovereignty and reduce the dependence on big money.\nSometimes the temptation for political populism can be overwhelming.\nPolitical populism can also go the route of the Mugabe option: print more Rands in the hope that it will get you out of a deficit, but very quickly you will see how printing money leads to hyperinflation and loss of value.\nIf you think it can only happen to countries like Zimbabwe, consider Germany and its extreme hyperinflation in the 1920s, when it too tried to deal with a sluggish economy and deficits following the Versailles Treaty.\nPrinting money only works in America, as the dollar is both money for exchange and the store of value. We all give the United States this power over the printing machine because we trust nothing these days other than the dollar and gold.\nThere are lessons from hyperinflation: the Zimbabwean dollar had to suffer the ignominy of having to debase itself and replace itself with the US dollar for the Zimbabwean economy and payment system to function again.\nAs much as Zimbabwe was beholden to Chinese loans, it also found itself under the control and autopilot of the US Federal Reserve – so much for Zimbabwean national sovereignty over its own monetary policy. It will never again regain fully the power over its own money, go Mugabe and come the Messiah. It is a stark lesson and warning to our incumbents to be careful what they wish for.\nEven in esteemed countries of big capital like the US, the Central Bank can be the subject of political interference, as Governor Arthur Burns quickly found out when he took over the reins of the Federal Reserve during the Nixon era – a rocky episode which he was eager let steam off in speech (or an essay he titled most aptly “The Anguish of the Central Banker”).\nOr ask Raghuram Rajan, the MIT-educated and high-flying central banker, seen as a leading light in emerging economies. Rajan was unceremoniously deposed by the not so regal nationalists of Modi’s party as soon as he asserted independence. With Rajan gone, the Indian Reserve bank is ruled by a council of six experts, all reporting to Prime Minister Modi – and leaving the new governor hamstrung between economic reality and political fantasy of the nationalists.\nWe will have to see where this experiment goes.\nThe thing is, there are limits to sovereign independence when sovereigns are so prone to the goodwill of foreign savers and money economies. Foreign savers in turn rely on their intermediaries, such as banks, private equity firms, pension funds, to find places where money can reap more money.\nIt is for these savers and moneybags men and women that the credit agencies perform their tasks. We may despise the credit agencies, but you can only tell them to take a hike if you decide that you do not want to take a penny from the world’s money economy.\nHow did we land with the money economy in the first place? In the classic period, the relation between money value and its real exchange was reflected in the metal that contained in money made out of gold, silver or copper. At times rare commodities such as salt, olives or other things could also be exchanged for goods.\nIt is only when the first central bank was established, the Riksbank in Sweden (1668), that paper money brought into the world a new concept of money. Money which had some backing in a metal could be freely exchanged with the promise that it will be redeemed provided not all depositors suddenly wanted to redeem their money all at the same time (a run on the bank).\nThe Swedes found they could raise commerce to new heights, given that Sweden was a great regional power, as it could circulate more money relative to how much was backed by its holdings in gold and other metal.\nThe model of the Riksbank was replicated elsewhere and found great enthusiasm in the creation of the Bank of England. The US, interestingly, only established its central bank in 1914, after several failed attempts because independent states within the US confederacy were reluctant to cede money power to a central government.\nThis debate goes on today in the US. Followers of Ayn Rand and other free market extremists such as the followers of Milton Friedman decry the fact that government must be in charge of money supply and policy.\nNothing backs paper money other than sentiment and trust that the sovereign, which prints such a money, would exchange my money into gold if I wanted it.\nToday, this pretty much the world of money, except you will not get gold back thanks to Nixon, who broke from the Bretton Woods agreement – having long delinked money value to the pegged value of gold.\nWhen Nixon broke the accord, New Zealand pioneered the price pegging tool we use today called inflation-targeting (IT). Inflation targeting is used by close to forty countries explicitly and others indirectly to control inflation by setting a band where inflation should remain. In our case, it is around 3-6%.\nToday money value is paper money in its totality. What keeps money value together is the relation each country establishes with the global money economy. And that money economy is the result of the US money empire – it is the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the IMF and the global financial architecture running through London, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.\nThis architecture is the product of our dependence on the dollar, not only as a medium of exchange but also a store of value. It is what makes the Federal Reserve the central bank of the world, sometimes the bank of last resort if the IMF cannot come to the rescue and will be so for a long time to come because even China is dependent on US Treasury bonds to keep the Renminbi at a competitive exchange and to ensure cheap money in the US enables US consumers to keep buying Chinese goods.\nChina also has to find a way to quarantine itself from all those dollarised exports to ensure it can retain its status as the cheap factory of the world. It either houses its money in a dollar-rated sovereign fund or holds US treasury bonds. If there is any lesson in this too, China’s own capital accumulation positions it very well to intervene in the currency markets if it wants to bolster its own currency. For this it has a war-chest of close to $3 trillion dollars, if not more.\nYou have to be China to do what our political incumbent was so frustratingly advising our SARB a week ago.\nOur complicity to the dollar is largely the effect of having to succumb to the dollar hegemon, and to displace the dollar would require a change in political economy at the centre of power of the global money economy.\nThe periphery has no power to change the centre, no matter how much they dream of the bliss of the dollar-less economy, euthanising Wall Street (a phrase coined by Keynes when he talked of greedy financiers seeking excessive economic rents) and cutting the head of their demon, the credit agencies.\nCountries that want to win some sovereignty over financial markets can only do so if they act in concert with each other. But even fraternal nations can are often less persuaded by their nominal friendships than their own self-interest.\nSelf-interest is an internal force that undoes any effort to untie oneself from the global empire of money. You may call it delft politics or reluctant pragmatism, but to maintain sovereign power requires playing astute geopolitical chess-games. At present our own internal turmoil – brought about by a weak incumbency – makes us even more vulnerable to the money economy not less.\nOn the independence of Central Banks – well, it depends a lot on how those who sit in the Monetary Policy Committees (MPC, and many countries now make their minutes available to the public) manoeuvre between political and market populism.\nCentral Banks are occupied by humans. Humans have social networks and peer groups. They have a way of looking at the world, as all of us do. They are also driven by mimetic impulses. Lack of innovation comes from fear of stepping out of the sentiment of their peers.\nThere is pressure to conform, especially if you want to rub shoulders at the annual Central Bank beauty parade in Kansas City called the Jackson Hole conference, where the top minds from all the world’s CBs meet. No wonder critics call this the Jackson Hole Consensus. It is a bit like the Washington Consensus for monetary policy people.\nCentral Banks can be unconventional, in times of crisis, not only in terms of quantitative easing or the use of “helicopter money”. By and large they are conventional, as it has to do with the history of conservatism that infects Central Banks.\nOur conservatism, at SARB, is also the fact that money and fiscal policy are intertwined – bound by our self-imposed regime of austerity. If the state borrows from others, the creditors want to be sure we can pay them back, hence this discipline of austerity.\nI have to issue a caveat though: profligacy of spend is dictated by our creditors, and then too, if the delivery arms cannot deliver economic and social goods due to poor performance, austerity is a necessary measure. In South Africa, creditor pressure, corruption and inefficiencies in state delivery arms will always exert a force of restraint on our vanguards of monetary and fiscal policy.\nIn the end, Central Bank or no Central Bank, to make money do what you want it to do is always a reflection of the power of the political sovereign relative to the domestic and global owners of money economy. The less you have, the more you have to play by their rules. DM", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-09-06-op-ed-the-politics-of-the-money-economy-the-power-and-limits-of-the-central-bank/"}

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+{"doc_id": "3794d06b40f9b2f1a86ea257608ffe17", "text": "With the economy in freefall, and state coffers nearly depleted, Robert Mugabe’s government desperately needs a lifeline. They could be getting one – from the World Bank, which has somehow concluded that “popular” Mugabe’s economic reforms are working, and that ongoing human rights violations can be tolerated. By SIMON ALLISON.\nThe World Bank is working on an extensive bailout package for Zimbabwe, which could see the state receive a cash injection of up to $400-million beginning in 2017, according to leaked documents. The documents have been reported in Zimbabwean media, and were received independently by the Daily Maverick.\nThis news could provide some respite for Mugabe’s under-fire government, which is facing an unprecedented level of popular protest. This unrest has been exacerbated by the country’s perilous economic situation, which has all but emptied government coffers. Civil servants, police and military have all been paid late, while the government has imposed new restrictions on foreign exchange and imports in a bid to keep cash in the economy.\nThe internal documents – a draft turnaround eligibility note, and a draft country engagement note – praise Zimbabwe’s economic reforms, and appear to dismiss concerns about the level of human rights violations occurring in the country. They are dated 27 July 2016 and 28 July 2016 respectively, and were prepared by the departments responsible for handling Zimbabwe.\n“The [Government of Zimbabwe] has gradually implemented reforms to recapture parts of the state dominated by deep vested interests and more effectively broaden the benefits of recovery and growth,” said the country engagement note, which outlines the bank’s proposed engagement with Zimbabwe in the 2017 and 2018 financial years. It notes improved policy in the areas of mining, banking, investment climate, state-owned enterprises, land reform, and public procurement.\nIt does not, however, acknowledge the government’s disastrous and universally criticised announcement in May that it would introduce “bond notes” in lieu of US dollars for exports; the imposition in June of an import ban on 42 products, which sparked huge protests at the Beit Bridge border post; or the increasing delays in processing international money transfers.\nNor do the documents make much reference to human rights. Notably, in the turnaround eligibility note, a reduction in human rights violations is not a necessary condition for financial support. In a list of desired indicators, the note requires only that the “number of alleged human rights violations level off or decline from 2014 average and/or no unwarranted arrests of key opposition leaders”. No mention was made of the arrest in early June of Pastor Evan Mawarire, leader of the #ThisFlag movement, or several of his supporters; or the police brutality with which #ThisFlag marches have been met.\nThe same note also appeared to praise Mugabe’s governance skills.\n“Finally, Mugabe’s factional balancing skills have also been a source of stability by keeping the ruling party and the security forces together. The president’s factional balancing skills have helped to unify the fractious Zanu-PF at critical moments in the party’s history and are likely to have prevented all-out conflict on several occasions. Unlike his party, Zanu-PF, he remains popular in Zimbabwe,” it concluded.\nZimbabwe is already in arrears with international institutions, including the World Bank itself, the International Monetary Fund, and the African Development Bank (AfDB), to the tune of $1.8-billion. The World Bank’s proposed assistance package is conditional on Zimbabwe clearing those arrears. The government is in advanced negotiations with the African Development Bank to do just that, which would pave the way for the government to access foreign currency – a potential lifeline for the regime.\nWhen contacted for comment, the World Bank said: “The World Bank cannot resume direct lending to Zimbabwe, under standard World Bank rules and procedures, unless the issue of arrears is resolved. Once the arrears are cleared, Zimbabwe would be eligible as a borrowing member of the Bank to a broad range of financing instruments.”\nThe World Bank’s position is problematic on several levels.\nFirst, as outlined above, its analysis ignores recent events in the country, including controversial new economic policies that have seriously undermined reform.\nSecond, the document appears to take Zimbabwean officials at their word when it comes to further reforms. This does not take into account the unpredictable nature of the current faction-fighting within the ruling party, nor the government’s history of failing to deliver on promises.\n“The notion that the Mugabe regime will reform itself is absurd. The record is long and clear. For the World Bank to give the regime funding based on more false promises would be reckless and irresponsible,” said Todd Moss, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.\nThird, the provision of further funding is likely to have a significant political impact in the country. With popular support for the regime drying up, it is increasingly reliant on patronage for support. The government’s cash crunch has made it harder for it to buy loyalty, a major factor in the scale of the popular protests. A promised cash injection will inevitably tip the balance of power back in favour of the regime.\nAfter 36 years in charge of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has made plenty of enemies. These leaked documents suggest, however, that the World Bank is not among them. DM\nPhoto: Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe addresses a media conference at State house in Harare, on the eve of the country’s general elections, July 30, 2013. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-09-07-the-world-banks-plan-to-bail-out-mugabes-government/"}

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+{"doc_id": "385ce47d9ffdac399874961f837cea68", "text": "French President Francois Hollande said on Wednesday Britain could not expect to win a veto on euro zone policies and he also ruled out a further round of negotiations over reforms aimed at keeping the country in the European Union.\nThe head of the European Council, Donald Tusk, unveiled a draft reform package on Tuesday to persuade Britain, an EU member but outside the common currency, to stay in the bloc.\nTusk offered Britain a way to slow down euro zone legislation that it objects to but he was careful not to offer London any veto rights over euro zone decision-making.\n“A country outside the euro zone cannot have a veto over countries in the euro zone,” Hollande said after talks in Paris with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo.\nHollande said there could not be “new adjustments” to the package on offer at an EU summit on the issue set for Feb. 18-19.\n“There will be corrections if necessary (but) not new negotiations. We have reached a point that will give the British the necessary assurances,” the French leader said.\nEarlier, French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said Paris saw Tusk’s proposals as a basis for discussion, but within limits. He did not say explicitly whether France approved or disapproved of the proposals.\nEU officials believe Tusk’s proposals would withstand legal challenges and that they do not require amendments to the bloc’s treaties, which would be difficult to achieve among its 28 EU states.\n(Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry and Elizabeth Pineau; Writing by Ingrid Melander and Leigh Thomas; Editing by Brian Love and Gareth Jones)", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-02-04-france-rules-out-euro-zone-veto-for-britain/"}

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+{"doc_id": "386fc6146dece82c48afa19b1f1a5cea", "text": "Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane on Thursday stood by her call to review the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) constitutional mandate, part of the controversial Absa Bankorp report, still under court review. She picked up the political ball from ANC MP Bongani Bongo, a vociferous critic of her predecessor Thuli Madonsela, who described that report as “an intelligent move”, adding: “The Reserve Bank matter should be pursued.” Mkhwebane’s response was one of several curious statements in a justice committee meeting in which ANC MPs moved to deflect sharp opposition criticism. By MARIANNE MERTEN.\nIn a judgment scathing of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s conduct and “somewhat unrepentant alignment with one side of the public debate”, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria in mid-August set aside one remedial action, that justice committee chairperson Mathole Motshekga must bring about a constitutional change to redefine the role of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).\nThat remedial action went as far as outlining the wording that must be used to amend the current Section 224 of the Constitution so the SARB is responsible for “ensuring that the socio-economic well-being of the citizens are protected” and “to achieve meaningful socio-economic transformation”. Currently the SARB’s primary objective is “to protect the value of the currency in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth”.\nWhile this specific remedial action was successfully taken on review to court on an urgent basis by SARB, the ABSA Bankorp report remains under court review for a number of other issues including, according to court documents, on grounds of irrationality, and failure to disclose investigative development to affected parties, like Mkhwebane’s engagements with President Jacob Zuma’s lawyers and the State Security Agency (SSA).\nWhen that Absa Bankorp report was released in June 2017, the exchange rate dipped, wiping out over a billion rand in stocks, amid widespread concern it was part of efforts to tamper with the SARB’s institutional independence. The report came amid ANC policy conference radical economic transformation discussions that ultimately recommended the SARB should be nationalised, while retaining independence. The ANC December national elective conference will decide on whether the bank’s private shareholders would be bought out.\nOn Thursday, Mkhwebane said the “lesson learnt” was that she could not prescribe to Parliament – it was never her intention to be prescriptive, but to raise an issue that “must be looked at” – and appeared unmoved amid opposition questions on this debacle.\nEFF MP Sam Matiase said the public protector had “bungled” the ABSA Bankorp matter, which was “a mistake of monumental proportions”.\n“All you should do is resign, not even an apology will help you,” he added. And DA MP Werner Horn asked how it could “be acceptable for the holder of this office to explain it away as a typo”.\nBut in a poignant reversal to the bruising digs the ANC delivered to former public protector Thuli Madonsela, the governing party’s MPs stepped in to throw Mkhwebane a lifeline. A point of order that the public protector’s integrity could not be questioned without a substantial motion was brought by ANC MP Loyiso Mpumlwana – “To us all you are a very good example of a public protector,” he also said – and upheld by acting justice committee chairperson ANC MP Chana Pilane-Majake.\nAfrican Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) MP Steve Swart objected. “The very same attacks were made at Madonsela… I would ask you to bear in mind the history of this committee.”\nBut Swart was overruled, and at the end of the day ANC numbers held sway in the justice committee’s official statement on the meeting, including the ABSA Bankorp report, which accepted her explanation. “The committee accepts her explanation that she had not meant to instruct Parliament to amend the Constitution, but merely recommending that (it) should be given the necessary attention. The committee is of the opinion that this flawed action should not overshadow attempts to investigate the role of the Reserve Bank in the reduction of poverty in South Africa,” said Pilane-Majake.\nNo comment was made officially on Mkhwebane’s curious description of her powers and functions as that of “an institution of ombudsman” to assist government to achieve good governance. But, she added, the March 2016 Nkandla Constitutional Court ruling had “changed” this by making public protector recommendations binding remedial actions.\nThese comments echo the attitude of President Jacob Zuma during the years of controversy over Madonsela’s remedial action that he must repay a proportion of the non-security upgrades at his Nkandla rural homestead. “The role of the public protector is akin to that of an ombudsman and quite distinct from that of the judge,” Zuma argued in a letter sent to National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete, who is also ANC national chairperson, in September 2014 as Parliament was looking into this political pickle. “Similarly, reports emanating from a public protector process are not judgments to be followed under pain of a contempt order, but rather, useful tools in assisting democracy in a co-operative manner, sometimes rather forcefully.”\nUltimately Parliament absolved Zuma from any repayment, and the EFF took this to the Constitutional Court, which in March 2016 affirmed the binding nature of public protector remedial actions – unless these are taken on review to court.\nAnd it seems those at the receiving end, and not just the controversial ABSA Bankorp report, are doing that: there are 22 pending court reviews, pushing up legal fees from R500,000 to a budgeted R6-million.\nAmid questions over the Office of the Public Protector’s deficit of R18-million – the public protector confirmed approaching the National Treasury for an additional R846-million – ANC MPs again stepped in to assist Mkhwebane over opposition questions on the absence of her deputy Kevin Malunga, saying it was her job to delegate functions in her office.\nAnd that’s exactly what happened: Malunga has been moved into capacity building, or training. Daily Maverick has reliably learnt that one consideration for moving Malunga, who was also interviewed for the public protector’s post, was an adverse security finding by the SSA.\nIn a letter to Parliament’s ad hoc committee interviewing the nominees, seen by Daily Maverick, the SSA wrote that Malunga was “unsuitable” because he only qualified for confidential, not top secret, security clearance due to the Zimbabwean citizenship he held until 2010. The basis of this finding remains unclear as Malunga publicly confirmed he had renounced Zimbabwean citizenship in line with South African legislative requirements. All 13 other candidates, including Mkhwebane who was employed as an SSA analyst at the time, were given the green light, regardless of default judgments and criminal cases of assault and sale of liquor.\nIn nine days’ time, the Office of the Public Protector marks its 22nd anniversary of existence and, as Mkhwebane pointed out to MPs right at the start, “I will be marking exactly 365 days in office.” It has been a very different kind of year. DM\nPhoto: South African Public Protector Advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane attends a stakeholder meeting at the Community Hall in Masiphumelele, Cape Town, South Africa, 05 May 2017. Photo: EPA/NIC BOTHMA", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-10-06-parliament-mkhwebanes-curious-take-on-her-powers-as-she-stands-by-review-of-reserve-bank-mandate/"}

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+{"doc_id": "3c4fcfb4727441c3606fe0a77c30882a", "text": "Urbanisation: People in West Africa are moving to cities like Nigeria’s Lagos because of push factors such as violence as well as extreme weather that harms agriculture. Photo: Adeyinka Yusuf/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images\nFrom Dakar to Freetown, Abidjan, Accra and Lagos, West African cities are locked into a difficult future because of the continued carbon pollution of wealthy countries. As drought, floods and violence drive people into these coastal cities, they’re becoming examples of how climate change exacerbates existing problems.\nThe United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released last week, has a chapter on Africa. It also looks at the continent’s main regions and its warnings for West Africa are the most urgent.\nMore than half of the continent’s population live in big cities such as Lagos, home to 15 million people. They’re being driven to cities because agriculture, a source of livelihoods for up to 80% of people in countries such as Burkina Faso, is failing.\nRainfall is less predictable and droughts harsher. This is not evenly distributed: West Africa is getting wetter in the east and drier in the west. When rain falls it is in violent spells that strip topsoil and ruin crops. Crops are producing less food, with the yield from a staple such as maize 6% lower than in the 1960s.\nFor people who rely on livestock, hotter temperatures mean grazing land is being overtaken by shrubs and trees. And pests harmful to livestock are spreading west and north.\nWorking outdoors is also more difficult. West Africa is already more than a degree warmer than it was a century ago. It will probably get a degree hotter by the middle of this century. And that’s in a best-case — and highly unlikely — scenario where average global temperature increases by just 1.5°C this century.\nSince the 1960s, the number of days above 35°C in the region has been increasing. The number of very hot nights has also risen. Heatwaves are hotter and longer than they were in the 20 years before that.\nBy 2060, more than 110 days a year will be hotter than 40°C. If temperatures increase closer to 2°C, there will be 35% more heatwaves and they will be 37% stronger than at 1.5°C of heating. The 2015 Paris Agreement saw countries commit to the former and aspire to the latter, thanks to the insistence of African states. Although there is no data specifically for West Africa, the IPCC report says GDP per person for the continent was 14% less between 1990 and 2010 as a result of climate change.\nLess money means less buying power. When people live in cities, they need money to buy food. External shocks, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has increased maize prices by more than 10%, add pressure on top of this.\nFor these coastal cities, fish becomes a major source of protein and people’s iron intake. In the best-case climate scenario, the number of fish caught could drop by up to 40%. That’s a result of hotter oceans, which drive fish north to the temperatures they’re evolved to live in. This is without factoring in overseas fishing fleets stripping local oceans.\nPut together, this means people are increasingly relying on cities to solve a range of problems. But those cities are repeating the same development mistakes.\nThe report says efforts to adapt to climate change — and this is universally true — have been small, slow and “designed to respond to current impacts or near-term climate change risks”.\nCities, for example, are stripping away wetlands, mangrove forests and other natural ecosystems that slow down floodwaters and storm surges. Sometimes cement alternatives, such as the more than 6km sea barrier being built around Eko Atlantic in Lagos, seek to replicate those functions. They aren’t as effective. Or as cheap. This new city is also built for those with wealth. People forced to move to cities tend to end up on the periphery, with some 59% of Africans now living in informal settlements in cities.\nThe land they move onto was not used for other development and can be a floodplain. These areas also don’t get formal development with water and sanitation infrastructure. And temperatures inside a zinc home are up to 5°C hotter than outside. But, because the world is heating and the polluters won’t take responsibility, these cities (and countries) have to respond.\nThe IPCC report says this has to be with a focus on people. Complicated problems need a diversity of views to help solve them. It’ll mean more investment in public services such as education and healthcare, so people are better able to handle extremes. It’ll mean more green spaces and wetlands in cities, so they can regulate extreme rainfall and also provide cleaner air.\nCrucially, it will mean investing in irrigation so farmers don’t rely on unpredictable rainfall to grow food. And it will mean making it easier for people to send money between countries, so families can help each other and those around them.\nThe overall report ends with a warning of how the time to act is short. “Any further delay … will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”\nThe alternative will see cities with huge populations facing simultaneous, extreme events because of climate change, layered on top of the existing failures of governance and basic humanity. This will be bad everywhere. It’ll be particularly bad in West Africa.\nThis article first appeared in The Continent, the award-winning pan-African weekly newspaper shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy at here", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://mg.co.za/africa/2022-03-11-climate-crisis-in-west-africa-will-get-worse/"}

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+{"doc_id": "3daa689345af9da93a68ce4fac38978d", "text": "Gregory Mthembu-Salter\nFrench President Jacques Chirac looked particularly pleased with himself when he announced progress towards a ceasefire in the Congo at the Paris Franco-African summit last week, but in reality the chances are slim.\nThe Democratic Republic of Congo’s President, Laurent Desire Kabila, resumed his fighting talk immediately after the Paris discussions. Rebels in the east of the country said since they had not been invited to Paris the talks did not concern them, and in Kigali senior Rwandan government officials made it plain that their troops intended to ensure Kabila’s downfall.\nEmmanuel Gasana, representative for Rwandan Vice-President, Minister of Defence and widely acknowledged de facto leader of the country Paul Kagame, said: “We do not care who is president in Congo. Kabila has assembled genocidal forces and says he will bring war to Rwanda. We are clear that Kabila is a genocidaire and we want him to fall. Our forces are in Congo to ensure Rwandan security, and with Kabila our security is not assured.”\nThe Rwandan government does not seem particularly perturbed by the threat posed to its plans in Congo by Zimbabwe’s intervention. It noted the distinct lack of territorial gain from Zimbabwe’s bombing campaign in the east and is following with satisfaction the mounting opposition to the war in Zimbabwe.\nAngola’s involvement is far more troubling to Kigali, where officials privately admit having miscalculated Luanda’s response to Rwanda’s invasion of Congo in August.\nHowever, having prevented the fall of Kinshasa in the early stages of the war, Angola now seems more interested in keeping central Congo’s diamonds out of Unita’s hands than in joining Zimbabwe’s assault. Angolan and Rwandan troops have yet to clash in the eastern Kivu region.\nBut Rwanda has a problem with its donors, on whom the still impoverished country is relying to bridge the yawning gap between its meagre export earnings and hefty import requirements.\nBoth the British and United States governments, Rwanda’s two main international backers, were angered by Rwanda’s three month-long denial of its presence in Congo, only broken in early November by Kagame at a press conference with President Nelson Mandela.\nRwandan officials concede the damage done to their government’s credibility by its stubborn denial, but insist that it was necessary in order to force the world’s recognition of significant internal as well as external opposition to Kabila’s rule.\nHowever plausible they considered the justification for the incursion and its cover-up, donors regard Rwanda’s presence in Congo as illegal under international law. Nonetheless, the donors appear to have agreed to withhold public condemnation for now in order to give forthcoming talks in Lusaka in early December a chance of success.\nBut should Rwanda fail to sign a ceasefire in Lusaka, or sign one and fail to honour it, it is likely to find that aid disbursals will slow considerably.\nAlready, aid inflows are erratic. During his presentation of the 1999 budget to the national assembly on November 10, Rwandan Minister of Finance Donat Kaberuka stressed: “Rwandans must realise that international generosity is over. Aid levels … are now falling. The little that remains has become unpredictable and comes with too many conditions attached.”\nThese conditions stem mainly from the fact that donors do not want to pay for Rwanda’s war in Congo, though Rwanda’s army has cultivated its own sources of income to such an extent that an International Monetary Fund (IMF) team visiting recently was unable to find any evidence of increased military expenditure by the state since the war began in August.\nKaberuka is fairly confident that the World Bank will deliver the funding it promised, but is concerned about the European Union, which has to answer to an inquisitive Parliament.\nApart from the general problems that less aid will mean for Rwanda, Kaberuka reckons it will fail to meet targets it previously agreed to with the IMF on the levels of its foreign exchange reserves.\nMeeting these targets is a key condition for continued funding from the IMF for Rwanda under the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, on which the country is particularly reliant.\nAn IMF team is coming to assess Rwanda’s performance in January. Kaberuka hopes that Rwanda’s impressive economic statistics for 1998 – gross domestic product growth of 9% (2% higher than predicted) and an expected inflation rate of only 5% – and its privatisation programme will encourage the IMF to be lenient.\nHowever, the IMF blew most of its money earlier this year bailing out Indonesia and the United States Congress has refused to give it much more to play with.\nThe other option for Rwanda is to pull its troops out of Congo, which would lead to increased donor funding, a satisfied IMF and the continued flow of financial support under the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, which would keep the government’s much-needed anti-poverty strategy on track.\nBut that means handing Kabila victory and leaving genocidal Rwandan militia at large in eastern Congo. For the security- obsessed Rwandan government that option is no option.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://mg.co.za/article/1998-12-04-why-rwanda-has-to-fight-on/"}

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+{"doc_id": "3e18d72b1979ef1b097d2ade4ded4a74", "text": "The good women and men of President Jacob Zuma’s office are headed for Sri Lanka for a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting this weekend. We’re not sure whether they’ll be mixing official government business with pleasure and enjoying a holiday in between, but Sri Lanka’s reputation as a top holiday destination is marred by the fact that in many ways, the country is still at war with itself. By KHADIJA PATEL.\nPresident Jacob Zuma leaves for Sri Lanka on Thursday. He’ll be in Colombo for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). And no, it’s not a holiday. The theme of the conference is, “Growth with Equity: Inclusive Development”. According to the official South African government correspondence on the summit, the theme, developed by Sri Lanka, emphasises the importance of equity in economic development, stressing as well that inclusive development should provide opportunities for all members of society.\nYep, it’s definitely not going to be a holiday, or light banter under palm trees (we hope).\nBut if the president and his posse have any qualms about their trip, they need look no further than the Lonely Planet travel guide, which gushes with praise for the island.\n“You might say Sri Lanka has been hiding in plain sight,” the travel guide says. “Countless scores of travellers have passed overhead on their way to someplace else, but years of war and challenges such as tsunamis have kept Sri Lanka off many itineraries.”\nAnd if that gushing introduction has not yet enticed the president’s travelling office, there’s an assurance that the worst bits of Sri Lanka’s history have been banished to the past.\n“But now – as you’ve probably heard – the war is over and Sri Lanka’s looking up. If you’ve ‘done’ India, grown blasé about Southeast Asia or simply want to explore a place whose appeal and pleasures are myriad, then it’s time you dropped in.”\nWe’ll forgive Lonely Planet their flowery language and admit their sunny optimism is not entirely misplaced. Sri Lanka is one of the highest-rated travel destinations of 2013.\n“Sri Lanka is spectacular, it’s affordable and it’s still mostly uncrowded,” Lonely Planet says. “Now is the best time to discover it.”\nWe are tempted enough to wonder if there’s a spare seat on Inkwazi.\nThe Sri Lankan government hopes to cash in on the temptations of its pristine beaches and lush, green hills. The government plans on increasing tourist arrivals from 650,000 in 2010 to 2.5million in 2016, attracting $3bn of direct foreign investment over five years, and increasing tourism-related employment four-fold to 500,000 by 2016.\nIt sounds like the best way forward for a country that has for so long been at war with itself, the best way to demonstrate that the ugliness of its past will not determine its future.\nNot everyone, however, is convinced that the brutality of the state is a thing of the past.\n“The Sri Lankan government’s promises of accountability since the war’s end have come to very little,” says Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.\nHuman Rights Watch and other global advocacy groups have launched a strong campaign in recent weeks against the two-day Commonwealth summit in Colombo.\n“If the Commonwealth has to have its meeting in Colombo, then human rights protections in Sri Lanka need to be prominently on the agenda,” Adam says.\nThe Sri Lankan government is said to be using the Commonwealth summit to showcase its post-war revival. Instead, the summit is fast becoming a public relations headache.\nOn Wednesday, AFP reported that the country’s military stopped scores of ethnic Tamil protesters from entering the capital ahead of the summit on Friday.\nThe government also ordered Britain’s Channel 4 TV crew not to travel to the former conflict area of Vavuniya in the north of the country after pro-government activists staged a protest and prevented their train from leaving north-central town of Anuradhapura.\nDr Rebecca Walker, author of “Enduring Violence. Everyday life and conflict in eastern Sri Lanka” and a researcher at the University of Witwatersrand’s Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, says human rights atrocities were committed by both sides during the three-decade civil war in Sri Lanka.\n“The militant Tamil group, the Tamil Tigers, were responsible for recruiting child soldiers, for silencing anybody who spoke out against them, for carrying out suicide bombings against the Sri Lankan government, against ministers and people like that,” Walker says.\n“But the Sri Lankan government itself has also carried out a huge number of atrocities,” she adds.\nSri Lanka, Walker says, has recorded one of the greatest numbers of disappearances in the world, which Walker says for a country with a small population like Sri Lanka is astonishing.\nHowever, she adds that the current outcry stems from the Sri Lankan government’s failures at the end of the war.\n“With opposition parties and civil society weakened by years of government intimidation, international pressure on Sri Lankan leaders is essential to preserve the remaining space for democratic dissent, prevent regression on ethnic issues and restrain growing authoritarianism,” says Jim Della-Giacoma, Asia Program Director of International Crisis Group.\nWalker, however, argues that despite International Crisis Group Human Rights Watch and others describing the Sri Lankan government as “increasingly authoritarian”, the government has always been authoritarian.\n“Anybody who speaks out against the government is silenced,” she says, pointing out as well that the cry for Sri Lanka’s human rights abuses to be highlighted at the summit may actually not persuade the Sri Lankan government at all.\nPrevious attempts to highlight the human rights record of Sri Lanka or the failed reconciliation process, she says, have been met with imperviousness – the Sri Lankan government does not believe the international community has a say in the way it’s crushed the Tamil rebellion.\n“They didn’t care in 2009 and they won’t care now,” Walker says.\nSouth Africa itself has expended great effort in its attempts to persuade Sri Lanka to follow the South African example of reconciliation. Deputy minister of International Relations and Co-Operation, Ebrahim Ebrahim, visited Sri Lanka twice in the space of eight months (not because he liked the beaches, we take it) meeting with the leaders of the Sri Lankan government, the Tamil community, NGOs and other stakeholders, “addressing the need for the resolution of the outstanding issues following the end in May 2009 of the bloody civil war in that country”.\n“The South African government has always believed that the domestic accountability issues must first and foremost be sought at the national level and that there should be demonstrable and concrete effort and movement in that regard,” Dirco said in a statement in September last year.\nThe South African government has stressed that durable and lasting peace can only be secured in Sri Lanka “when the reconciliation process is underscored by a broad and truly inclusive dialogue process that addresses the rights and freedoms of the Tamil community and has the support of the international community and all Sri Lankans within and outside that country”.\nLike the South African government, many others have also stressed the fragility of peace in Sri Lanka.\nAlan Keenan, the director of the Sri Lanka Project based in London, says the government’s policies do not undermine the rights of Tamils alone.\n“The government’s policies badly damage rule of law and democracy, undermine the rights of Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese alike and render all citizens insecure,” he says. “If [the government] continues to close avenues of peaceful change, the risks of violent reaction will grow.”\nWalker says that the Sri Lankan government now has strong motivation to keep the peace in Sri Lanka.\nShe says, “Because of tourism picking up massively, the government has been very successful at hiding, basically enforcing a kind of forgetting while encouraging tourists to come to the south.”\nIn the meantime, none of the underpinning causes of the violence in the north of the country have been addressed.\nPresident Zuma and the other heads of state from the Commonwealth states, however, are not concerned by all of that this week. They are in Colombo on other business. DM\nRead more:\n- Truth, reconciliation and Sri Lanka’s failure in Daily Maverick\n- Sri Lanka: island in the storm in The Guardian\nPhoto: Men paints flags of countries participating in the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2013 to be held in Colombo from November 15 to 17. (REUTERS/ Dinuka Liyanawatte)", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-11-14-commonwealth-summit-sri-lanka-not-all-sun-and-fun-as-repression-continues/"}

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+{"doc_id": "3f11f95e06bd88d6e9f22c9a674d849f", "text": "The scandal surrounding Malawi’s politically connected Sterling Timber International has deepened, with an insider alleging that the government settled the company’s large debt to the state-owned Malawi Savings Bank. By COLLINS MTIKA for the Centre for Investigative Journalism Malawi and AMABHUNGANE.\nSterling Timber received a 1.4-billion kwacha (R58-million) loan from Malawi Savings Bank (MSB) in 2011 to set up a timber processing plant, which it never built.\nThe Centre for Investigative Journalism Malawi has now been reliably informed that the treasury paid its debt to MSB – which allegedly still stood at R58-million – when the bank was sold to a private company last year.\nSterling has powerful friends. One of its directors, Peter Mwanza, is a former agriculture minister and senior member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).\nAnd the MSB loan was facilitated by Malawi’s long-standing finance minister and DPP heavyweight, Goodall Gondwe, who was also one of Sterling’s initial directors.\nGondwe refused to answer questions when contacted on the phone two weeks ago.\nThe company was launched in February ?2011 to add export value to pine cut in the 53,500ha Viphya plantation in the Mzimba district of northern Malawi.\nIt secured the loan from MSB despite having no experience in the timber business. The loan was guaranteed by another state institution, the Export Development Fund.\nHowever, the factory was never built, and neither Sterling nor MSB has explained what happened to the money.\nLast year the government controversially sold 75% of MSB’s shares to privately owned FDH Financial Holdings. This followed a recommendation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which found that politically connected individuals received huge loans from the bank that were not being serviced.\nAs part of the sale, the treasury paid out MK6-billion (R128-million) to clear toxic loans made by MSB to private companies.\nSterling’s name does not appear among the 13 relieved debtors listed by the government. But a reliable finance ministry source, who was involved in the Sterling deal from the start, said that it was among the principal beneficiaries.\nThe source said the treasury paid off the full original loan amount.\nAlso benefiting from the write-off was Mulli Brothers, another politically connected firm (see below).\nMulli Brothers\nProminent on the list of companies that benefited from the Malawi treasury’s generosity is Mulli Brothers, which is listed as owing the Malawi Savings Bank a whopping MK4.8-billion (R104-million).\nThe company’s proprietor, flamboyant Leston Mulli, was a close lieutenant of former Malawian president, Bingu wa Mutharika.\nHe remains a known supporter and financier of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.\nThe list of 13 debt relief beneficiaries also includes K’s Investments, which owed the bank (MK66-million (R1.4-million).\nThe company is owned by Bintony Kutsaira, a senior DPP politburo member.\nTreasury spokesperson Nations Msowoya told The Nation newspaper that the toxic loans “had been on the bank’s books for a long time without generating interest … and this reduced its share value.\n“This [debt relief] was not protecting individuals.”\nIn an interview with the Mail & Guardian in 2014, Gondwe confirmed to the Mail & Guardian that he lobbied for the loan but said he no longer had any connection with Sterling.\nHe referred all questions to the Sterling chief executive and board chairperson, whose names he claimed not to know.\nIn a telephone interview last week, Gondwe reacted furiously to questions about the debt relief.\n“Don’t ask me that as if you are my boss. What is your problem?” he snapped, before hanging up. Several attempts to contact him for further clarification were unsuccessful.\nTreasury spokesperson Nations Msowoya failed to answer questions over a four-week period, despite reminders and his assurances that he would respond.\n“It just shows that there is no accountability on the way Treasury uses funds,” Felix Jumbe, an opposition MP who chairs Parliament’s agriculture committee, told The Nation newspaper.\nAttempts to contact Mwanza for comment were unsuccessful. The directors previously failed to respond to questions.\nSterling was the brainchild of the Timber Millers’ Cooperative Union, comprising 400 small millers, which held a 63% stake in the company.\nThe plan was for the union to supply raw timber to the factory, which would export finished products to the United Arab Emirates, South Africa and east Africa.\nIt was the beneficiary of a state loan guarantee scheme that targets “non-traditional exports” – but which does not cover timber products.\nThe millers’ union withdrew its support for the venture in 2014, complaining that the factory had not been erected and it had no idea what happened to the loan.\nSaid Shadrack Gondwe of the Chibwaka Co-operative Miller Timbers, one the Sterling shareholders: “They rented a ramshackle timber building in the Viphya plantatation from a German, bought five pick-up trucks, office supplies and a transformer.\n“No plant or machinery was bought for use in timber value-addition. In fact, nothing took off the ground.”\nMalawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau said this week that it could not investigate the Sterling scandal until it receives a formal complaint. “The bureau is not investigating the issue of toxic loans at the Malawi Savings Bank because that is not within its mandate,” said ACB spokeswoman Egrita Ndala.\nUnder the Anti-Corruption Bureau Act, the bureau cannot launch an investigation purely in response to public concerns, even though the necessary information may be in the public domain.\nMeanwhile, the Viphya plantation, once said to be among Africa’s largest, has been reduced to an uninterrupted vista of charred tree stumps.\nThe destruction followed the ruling DPP government’s issue of numerous licences to politically connected companies and individuals, giving them unfettered harvesting access.\nThe licences far outstripped the forestry department’s capacity to replant or maintain the forest.\nHarvesting has been put on hold for the remaining trees and members of the Malawi Defence Force have been posted there to keep loggers away. Local environmentalists contend that less than 20% of the original area has been replanted.\nThe latest auditor-general’s report revealed that the government has lost at least 3.4-billion kwacha (about R70-million) in uncollected revenue from tree and fuel-wood sales, rentals and permits issued to plantation operators at Viphya. DM\nThis article was produced by the Centre for Investigative Journalism Malawi in association with the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism.\nThis story was provided by:\nWe are an independent, non-profit investigative journalism centre. Like this story? Be an amaB supporter. Sign up for our newsletter. Visit us at amaBhungane.co.za.", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-07-19-amabhungane-politically-connected-brothers-scandal-toxic-loans-malawi-edition/"}

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+{"doc_id": "4085b2e93516c1dc98e7f9578b1f4213", "text": "If Cabinet reshuffles represent the political balance of forces at the time at which they are conducted, Monday night’s announcement was the final proof, if more were needed, that the ANC is still locked in a series of massive struggles, and with big actors. It is now clear that President Cyril Ramaphosa needs David Mabuza if he is to survive, and that he still lacks the power to fire even Bathabile Dlamini from the Cabinet. But at the same time, it is also clear that he does have the authority to right one of the biggest wrongs of our times, the firing of Nhlanhla Nene as Finance Minister. While there are many reasons to feel these are the worst of times, there are also signs of the best of times. By STEPHEN GROOTES.\nFirst, the panic, the worst.\nDavid Mabuza is now going to be your Deputy President. A man accused of corruption; Of theft; Of murder. In some ways, this places us in a much worse position than we were when Jacob Zuma was Thabo Mbeki’s deputy. No one has ever accused Zuma of murder, he didn’t come to the office with a reputation of being a thug, which Mabuza most certainly possesses. Mabuza being just a heartbeat away from the Presidency is the best campaigning tool the opposition parties could wish for.\n(Especially when Ramaphosa himself didn’t look his best on Monday night.)\nThere is so much that is just wrong here. Mabuza has the entirely opposite image to Ramaphosa. Where Ramaphosa promises reform, Mabuza brings scandal, when Ramaphosa promises change, Mabuza brings more of the same, when Ramaphosa gives the image of a new confident polyglot South Africa moving forward, Mabuza brings a small-town provincial image.\nBut, the internal politics of the ANC being what they are, it is now clear that Mabuza decided he could not back Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma at Nasrec, and so Ramaphosa came through in the end. However, it should not be forgotten that under the Constitution, the Deputy President has the rights and duties assigned by the President. Apart from that, they have the same role as any other Cabinet Minister. This means that formally, he can only do what Ramaphosa allows him to do (apart from when Ramaphosa is out of the country, and Mabuza becomes, yes, acting president, with the power to invade Lesotho, should it be necessary).\nIn the past, there has usually been a situation where the incumbent president’s biggest rival has been his deputy; think Mbeki and Zuma, Zuma and Ramaphosa. Which is how Zuma ended up as Chair of the Moral Regeneration Movement and Ramaphosa in charge of the E-tolls task team.\nThis means that Ramaphosa can still place significant boundaries around Mabuza. And Mabuza appears to lack the national support he would need to prevent that from happening. A cat may be able to survive under many circumstances, but that doesn’t mean it gets to run the circus.\nMabuza may find that frustrating.\nThere is reason for panic too that for some reason Bathabile Dlamini cannot be fired from the Cabinet. She is now being shuffled off as Minister for Women in the Presidency. Considering most people probably can’t name the previous person in that post, it is certainly a demotion. And confirmation that the position has no real political power, it was simply used to create an opportunity for patronage.\nHowever, the person who she has swapped with (in case you hadn’t worked it out yet) is Susan Shabangu. Shabangu has been what you could call an almost silent minister. And now she is in charge of fixing the social grants payment system mess. It is a mystery why one of the biggest problems of all is now in the lap of someone who has shown little experience of fixing this, or any, kind of problem in the past. It could well be a job for a Mondli Gungubele or even a Pravin Gordhan. It suggests, perhaps, that the story around Cash Paymaster Services is much more political, and possibly involves a wider group of people than we had previously thought.\nThe appointment of Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma to the position of Presidency Minister for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation is curious. When Collins Chabane was still alive, it was a ministry that appeared to have some real power. But since then, no one really cares. It is interesting both that Ramaphosa has given the person who lost at Nasrec a Cabinet position, and that it is such a junior one. Dlamini Zuma has been Minister of Health, Home Affairs and International Relations, all offices with very real power. This is a huge come-down. It is a sign of how badly things have gone for her, and may push her to re-assess some of her life choices.\nThankfully, now that the shock of Mabuza as Deputy President may be wearing off, the sense of panic is ebbing. And is slowly being replaced by some calm.\nThe first reason for this is that so many of the really really evil bad incompetent awful ministers have gone. Lynne Brown, Mosebenzi Zwane, Des van Rooyen, Bongani Bongo, David Mahlobo, all politically kaput, and hopefully will be booed in the streets, if they dare venture out without their blue light brigades.\nBut the choice of Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba as the new Minister of State Security is curious. She is the kind of person many people, even professional politics watchers, will not have heard of. Her life story will probably burst onto the national stage over the next few days. She is from Limpopo, a former MK, and Parliament’s website says her previous position was in the Limpopo legislature. During the Zuma years we became accustomed to people unknown in the urban political arena being appointed to important jobs suddenly. Often, this was a sign that they were completely beholden to Zuma, and would do his bidding. It may be that Letsatsi-Duba is a similar case. Or that she is the result of a compromise over the real political hot potato of who controls those who can tap cellphones. And it is also entirely possible that the urban commentariat (including this writer) are just ignorant of her past, and that she is the best person for the job. It would be tempting to say that time will tell, but bluntly, this position is so important to our politics that actually one cannot just hope for the best, one must demand to know more.\nRight, to a phrase you don’t read very often in this online daily: And now, for the good news!\nAnd there is plenty of it. It is surely a fantastic feeling to see Nene back in the halls of the National Treasury. It was his unjust, unexplained, and unwarranted removal back in 2015 that started the internal ANC revolution that led to Ramaphosa becoming president. If ever a person had borne their unjust treatment with a quiet dignity, it is Nhlanhla Nene. And now, in such a symbolic moment, he is going back to the Finance Ministry. The move just makes sense, and completes the circle. When you trust the person who is in charge of the nation’s money, it is simply easier to sleep at night. Now you can.\nBut, as you do, spare a thought for Mcebisi Jonas. The man who turned down the R600-million bribe offered by the Guptas to become the Finance Minister. It was that decision that set the stage for the overstepping by the Guptas and Zuma to remove Nene, and attempt to replace him with Van Rooyen. Jonas was not on the list of ministers and deputy ministers announced by Ramaphosa on Monday night. If it was an oversight, he deserves better. Much better. If he was approached and has other things he wants to do in his life, this nation owes it to him to not just wish him well, but see that he achieves all that he wants to do. In so many ways, it was he, and Pravin Gordhan, and Derek Hanekom and so many others who saved the ANC, and possibly the country, from the abyss.\nTalking of Hanekom, he’s back at Tourism, after playing such a key role in moving opposition to Zuma within the ANC.\nAlso back in Cabinet is Blade Nzimande, at Transport. When Nzimande first became Higher Education Minister, it seemed like a perfect fit, it played to his strengths and interests. But obviously that has become difficult. He may not enjoy Transport that much, but he is likely to do all that he can to perform well and competently. Even though it may not actually suit the longer-term aims of the SACP to have him still in Cabinet.\nWhile there may be many who are relieved to see Malusi Gigaba leave the position of Finance Minister, he may well sit back in his chair at Home Affairs with a relaxed sigh. It’s not clear that he enjoyed the position of Finance Minister, the context around him was incredibly difficult, and would have challenged anyone. But the fact that he oversaw the appointment of so many Gupta-aligned people to the boards of parastatals as Public Enterprises Minister, and yet is still in Cabinet, could mean many things. Perhaps he is still too important to fire from Cabinet, or maybe he has done some deal that could evolve in a court somewhere. Either way, visa officers in airlines around the world will not rejoice upon his return.\nThere are two other appointments that are really reason for celebration. The first is that of Pravin Gordhan to Public Enterprises. Gordhan is one of the finest political operators of his generation, and he knows where the bodies are buried and he won’t take crap from anybody. Imagine being on the board of the parastatals just now. He was surely the prime moving force behind the new Eskom board. Envision, just for a moment, if all of the boards of the parastatals looked like Eskom’s and SAA’s. And imagine how quickly things could get moving once he establishes himself (which should take him until about lunchtime on Tuesday).\nAnd then, the removal of that liar Mosebenzi Zwane from the position of Mineral Resources Minister, and his replacement, by, of all people, Gwede Mantashe. Frankly, there is probably nobody better placed to get our mining industry on its feet again. Mantashe knows everybody in the mining industry from his time as secretary-general of the National Union of Mineworkers. He is still beloved by that union. And, after what they’ve been through, he is likely to receive a great reception from the Chamber of Mines. He will tear up Zwane’s Mining Charter that has caused so much trouble, and sit down and negotiate a new one. He will be tough during that negotiation, but the Chamber will know that he will stick to it once it’s done. And then he will go on an international road show with the Chamber and tell the Americans why they must come and put billions of dollars into our land.\nBut the best part of it is that he has the political heft to make big promises, and then deliver on them. It is an inspired appointment.\nThere is much to celebrate in Monday night’s announcement. It is the final proof that the Zuma Empire is gone, blown to bits, with the Guptas in hiding. But it is also the final proof that the ANC is not a settled organisation, and that there could well be more political surprises in store. DM\nPhoto: South Africa’s deputy president, David Mabuza. (Greg Nicolson photo)\nThe list of the new appointments:\n- Communications: Nomvula Mokonyane\n- Energy: Jeff Radebe\n- Higher Education and Training: Naledi Pandor\n- Home Affairs: Malusi Gigaba\n- Human Settlements: Nomaindia Mfeketo\n- International Relations and Co-operation: Lindiwe Sisulu\n- Mineral Resources: Gwede Mantashe\n- Police: Bheki Cele\n- Public Enterprises: Pravin Gordhan\n- Public Service and Administration: Ayanda Dlodlo\n- Public Works: Thulas Nxesi\n- Rural Development and Land Reform: Maite Nkoana-Mashabane\n- Science and Technology: Nkhensani Kubayi-Ngubane\n- Social Development: Susan Shabangu\n- Sport and Recreation: Tokozile Xasa\n- State Security: Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba\n- The Presidency: Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation: Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma\n- The Presidency: Women: Bathabile Dlamini\n- Tourism: Derek Hanekom\n- Transport: Blade Nzimande\n- Water and Sanitation: Gugile Nkwinti\nThe new Deputy Ministers:\n- Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries: S’fiso Buthelezi\n- Communications: Pinky Kekana\n- Finance: Mondli Gungubele\n- Public Service and Administration: Chana Pilane-Majeke\n- Small Business Development: Cassel Mathale\nThe positions of Deputy Minister of Public Enterprises and Deputy Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation will remain vacant.\nPending the completion of their swearing-in as Members of the National Assembly, the following will be further appointed:\n- David Mabuza as the Deputy President of the Republic\n- Zweli Mkhize as Minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs\n- Nhlanhla Nene as Minister of Finance\n- Reginah Mhaule as Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation", "source": "cc", "stratum": "cc", "fetch_date": "", "url": "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-02-27-cabinet-reshuffle-the-worst-of-times-the-best-of-times/"}