South Africa’s black middle class is battling to find a political home
- David Everatt
South Africa’s black middle class is growing numerically – and growing politically restive.
But does it see the world differently from others? Does this translate into voting behaviour?
These questions require close consideration because the black middle class is already a critical constituency in some of the country’s wealthier provinces such as Gauteng, and is looking for a political home that’s stable and serves its class interests.
The post-apartheid project was meant to unlock the economic energies of all South Africans. But sluggish economic performance, coupled with a decade of state capture and the scorn former President Jacob Zuma felt towards “clever blacks”, has left the black middle class angry and wary.
They are angry at their exclusion from mainstream economic activity, where “boardroom racism” and a racial ceiling are clearly at work. And they are wary that unless they are members of the governing African National Congress (ANC’s) “charmed circle”, their chances of accessing state funds – normally required to help grow and stabilise the indigenous bourgeoisie after liberation – are at best slender.
A recent survey conducted for the ANC and which the party has not released publicly, asked over 3 000 Gauteng voters a range of questions about attitudes to politics past and present. The survey showed that there are stresses and strains in the body politic in general, many of which are most acutely felt by the black middle class.
As a young man from Johannesburg put it in a focus group:
The one thing that is changing that is killing the ANC is the individuals inside. There literally is a clique, if you belong to this clique within the party, you will be all right and if you are against any of their ideas, you are pushed to the side.
The implications for the ruling party are clear: if its policy of appointing party loyalists to government positions (cadre deployment and state capture (or even overt patronage) remain the order of the day, the black middle class will simply withdraw all support from the ANC. This would be a dire indictment of the ruling party.
Definition challenges
Many academics, correctly, spend a lot of time worrying about the precision of various definitions of (middle) class. These range from occupation to income and education to consumption, through to subjective self-identification. They also correctly bemoan the clumsiness of survey attempts to measure class in all its nuances.
While accepting the weaknesses of most definitions, we nonetheless need to develop and use what we can to try to understand if such a class exists, and what its political behaviour might be.
In this case, we started with a household income in excess of R11 000 a month. This is scarcely a princely income, but analysed in the context of “black African” income generally, it certainly includes the “middle stata”.
To make the definition more nuanced we included those who self-identified as upper-middle class (or, in less than 2% of cases, “upper class”).
As the voting intention graphic below shows, even with this rough and ready definition, there seem to be different political dynamics at play for the black middle class.
Voting patterns
The graph makes a number of key issues clear. Firstly, the ANC has held – or regained - the loyalty of the majority of black middle class Gautengers, but only just. Where 63% of non-middle class black Africans in Gauteng (who were registered to vote) told us they will vote ANC, this dropped to 56% among the black middle class. Their loyalty is remarkable, given the past decade.
Part of the reason is the state of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the leading opposition party. The DA should be the natural home for an emergent and ambitious middle class, with its talk of equal opportunities, its general dislike of cadre deployment and its strident attacks on ANC corruption. However, the DA is deeply divided - over race.
The DA committed policy seppuku as the election approached, with its members and commentators freely attacking party leader Mmusi Maimane over the issue for fear of alienating their traditional, rather tribal, white voter base. Any mention of race, or redress, or race-based inequality, it seems, was to be banished - while asking those at the receiving end of racism to vote DA.
The signal to black middle class South Africans was clear: fears that the DA remained a “white” party, or a party in hock to white interests, remained; and they were unlikely to be terribly welcome. This remarkable pre-election behaviour split the uneasy alliance of those previously opposed to Zuma and everything he and the ANC represented before Cyril Ramaphosa became the party leader. It seems to have driven those who dipped their toes in DA waters back to the ANC fold, or into the arms of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) or - for a significant number - into the political wilderness.
The ANC has never been able to sustain a strong appeal to higher educated or higher income voters. The DA has now fallen back dramatically in these areas, and the graphic makes it clear that the EFF hold more appeal to black middle class voters than the DA. Whether this is because of their strident opposition to racism, or is done to fire warning salvos across the bows of both ANC and DA, the result is that the DA and EFF are fighting for the same small portion of black middle class votes - which are unavailable to the ANC - albeit from vastly different ideological positions.
The ANC continues to enjoy the lion’s share of black middle class votes from those willing to vote. But for how long?
The apathy
While 67% of black middle class voters do intend to vote, a third will stay at home on 8 May, cursing all political parties for failing to represent their interests, according to the survey. Chunks of the black middle class may vote, but far from enthusiastically. And a great many will not vote.
Among those who said they would vote, according to our survey results, 17% “don’t know” (or won’t tell) who they will vote for – even though many had previously overcome their unhappiness at the perceived “whiteness” of the DA:
although most black South Africans will continue to regard the DA as a white party … there is a growing number of black middle-class liberals who are tired of being ashamed for being regarded as “coconuts” [black on the outside, white on the inside].
Maimane was a very powerful magnet for black middle class voters, but as his party rounded on him over race, white privilege and the need to maintain the white vote, Ramaphosa has inevitably exerted his own magnetic pull. He is charismatic and emblematic of what the black middle class can achieve. It is therefore no surprise that DA support in this key segment has all but evaporated.
Those who will never forgive the ANC its past sins are either opting out or voting EFF. The question for the future is whether any current party can reflect the needs and aspirations of the black middle class - who, importantly, are black as well as middle class - or whether they represent the social base of some not-yet formed political party.
Why restoring accuracy will help journalism win back credibility
- Glenda Daniels
How removing senior sub-editors from newsrooms and creating "sub-hubs" have contributed to the rise of misinformation, propaganda and disinformation.
As a journalist and a media academic, I have always assumed that I’m a fairly savvy media consumer. I know when something is genuine, and when what I’m looking at misinformation, disinformation and propaganda.
But, during a recent event held in Johannesburg to mark International Fact-Checking Day (which is observed on April 2 every year), I realised that even savvy readers can get it wrong. At the event, hosted by the fact-checking organisations Africa Check and First Draft News, participants were presented with examples of stories, videos and images and asked to verify these.
One of the pictures showed a baby lion and a baby elephant strolling along together. It was apparently taken in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. It turned out to be a photo shopped image. I was horrified: I had shared that very photograph a few months ago, touched by this supposedly sweet moment between two natural enemies.
For the rest of the event, a partner and I agonised about what was real and what was not. It took us hours, and we didn’t always get it right. This was a salutary reminder of how laborious, time-consuming and complex fact-checking, and why experts in the field are so crucial.
There are several threats to trust in the media. One is the decimation of senior staff in newsrooms and the removal of people from key jobs such as sub-editing – a key competency, since sub-editors ensured that stories were edited and checked. Companies have made these cuts because they’re not making the profits they once did.
In parallel, social media is growing – and growing. For instance, today there are more than 20 million Facebook users in South Africa. Many South Africans, especially in the middle class, rely on Twitter for much of their news. But too often, it’s not purely news that they get: instead, they find rumour, gossip, slander and hate. Many stories online contain grains of truth and a smattering of falsehoods. This is the age we live in, and it is crucial that fact-checkers be in place to help media consumers guard against those falsehoods.
The role of fact checking
Sub-editors used to fulfil a lot of the fact-checking function in newsrooms. But during the economic recession of 2008, they started losing their jobs. This is true around the world, including in South Africa where I work and conduct my research.
Traditionally, sub-editors did basic fact checks on articles. They would pick up incorrect dates, or point out when captions and photographs didn’t “match”. In the past decade or so in South Africa, media organisations trying to save money have created “sub hubs”: they centralise sub-editing services, and one sub-editor will end up contracted to two or three or even more titles.
Many of the sub-editors in these set-ups are not particularly senior, lacking the institutional memory that would allow them to detect factual errors. And those who do remain have no particular loyalty to one title, so feel less pressure to thoroughly, rigorously check facts – a process that takes enormous time, especially when you are editing scores of stories each day.
What should replace those full-time, dedicated sub-editors? I believe that fact-checkers could be employed instead.
This is the only way in which countries in Africa can really grapple with the rise – and rise – of misinformation, propaganda and disinformation, then newsrooms should consider hiring teams of full-time fact-checkers. This is already happening in some newsrooms elsewhere in the world; the New York Times, and The Washington Post, for instance, have added fact-checkers to their teams.
A similar intervention can ease the pressure on already hugely overburdened reporters, a situation I’ve written about before; improve trust in media organisations; and help audiences navigate the glut of “fake news” that dominates so many spaces.
The threat from digital media
In many ways, media organisations – and in fact the broader public – have been caught on the back foot by the rise of misinformation and disinformation. It’s as though digitisation caught everyone off guard. Of course, that’s not entirely true: even 20 years ago, there was an acknowledgement that traditional media would change and be overtaken by digital developments.
But people didn’t anticipate the malicious consequences of these developments. With more places to access information, and to do so more quickly, digitisation has led to the spread of disinformation.
The result is that social media has become a megaphone for the populist, right-wing trajectory that’s happening all over the world – from the US to Hungary, Turkey and some parts of Africa.
Pressure
Some may argue that journalists themselves should be responsible for fact-checking their stories. The reality is that they can’t. It takes a lot of time to do this properly, and journalists are under tremendous pressure to produce more and more stories each day, and to do more with less, including perform on social media. That’s the way journalism is structured right now.
If modern newsrooms are serious about producing good journalism, and fighting back against the proliferation of falsehoods that dominate so much of the news cycle today, professional fact-checkers are crucial. This is imperative for titles to survive. Journalism will be saved by good journalism, and good journalism happens when media organisations invest in things like fact-checking.
Why the Indian Ocean is spawning strong and deadly tropical cyclones
- Jennifer Fitchett
The Indian Ocean has made its mark on the global news cycle this year.
In March, tropical cyclone Idai made headlines as one of the most severe storms to have made landfall in Mozambique. Current estimates indicate that more than 1,000 people died. This makes it the most deadly tropical cyclone ever to have made landfall on the southern African subcontinent.
Until Idai, tropical cyclone Eline, which struck in 2000, was the most devastating tropical cyclone to make landfall in Mozambique.
After Idai, Eline was the strongest – though not the deadliest – cyclone to have hit the southern east African cost. This ranking as the strongest was soon after challenged by tropical cyclone Kenneth, a category 4 tropical cyclone that made landfall over the border of Mozambique and Tanzania six weeks after Idai.
Kenneth, in many regards, took the region by surprise. The storm was the northernmost tropical cyclone to make landfall on Mozambique, and the first to make landfall on Tanzania. It occurred very late in the season. Most cyclones in the region occur from January to March. It was also unusual for the Mozambique Channel to experience two severe tropical cyclones that made landfall within one season.
The third major cyclone to emerge out of the Indian Ocean came a few weeks after Kenneth, when cyclone Fani, a tropical cyclone on the border of Category 5 intensity wind speeds, hit the east coast of India. Category 5 tropical cyclones were only first recorded in the North Indian Ocean from 1989 so, again, this storm is unusually severe in the context of the longer historical records.
These high intensity storms have been tied to the very warm sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean. Temperatures of 30°C are occurring more often and over longer periods of time. This is a result of gradual warming on a global scale, which has resulted in a net increase in ocean temperatures.
Warmer ocean temperatures allow stronger storms to form. These conditions are exacerbated by global forcing mechanisms including El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, which concentrates warm ocean waters in smaller geographic areas.
High intensity storms have been a frequent feature along the coast of the US throughout recorded history. Their increased frequency in the Indian Ocean should be raising alarm bells because countries like the US are much better equipped to help people prepare ahead of time, and to handle the fallout.
Measuring intensity
Tropical cyclone intensity is classified according to the Saffir Simpson scale. Categories are measured on the basis of the sustained wind speed and the storm’s central pressure. Each category is accompanied by estimates of the likely severity of damage and possible storm surge height.
Tropical cyclones form and intensify due to a combination of seven primary climatological conditions. Among other things, these include warm sea surface temperatures, high humidity levels and atmospheric instability.
For a storm to intensify, these conditions have to be maximised while the storm remains over the ocean.
Tropical cyclones require a sea surface temperature of 26.5°C to form, while the highest intensity storms require much warmer sea surface temperatures of 28-29°C. This is important because it’s one of the reasons why southern Africa is experiencing more intense tropical cyclones.
The South Indian Ocean is warming rapidly. This means that regions that previously experienced the temperatures of 26.5°C that facilitated tropical cyclone formation are now experiencing temperatures as warm as 30-32°C.
Simultaneously, regions further from the equator which didn’t previously have sufficiently warm water for tropical cyclone formation, with sea surface temperatures of 24-26°C are more regularly experiencing the threshold temperature. This increases the range in which these storms occur, making storms like tropical cyclone Dineo, which made landfall in February 2017 in southern Mozambique, more common.
These very warm sea surface temperatures are not a factor of global scale warming alone. They’re further influenced by a range of global and local forcing mechanisms. These include El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and the Southern Annular Mode. For this particular cyclone season, scientists are seeing the strongest impact from the [Madden-Julian Oscillation].
This is a band of moisture in the tropical regions which moves eastward over a 30 to 90 day period. The strong Madden-Julian Oscillation is also affecting tropical cyclones in Australia.
Comparing storms
Ranking storms on the basis of their Saffir Simpson classification is not always the most valuable measure. That’s because it can’t take the characteristics of the location of landfall into consideration.
This results in two key shortcomings. First, it doesn’t take the flooding potential into account. This is difficult to identify for a particular storm, because it’s not only a function of how much rain is experienced and over what period – or even the height of storm surge – but also the nature of the region of landfall.
Lower-lying, relatively flat areas are more prone to flooding than higher elevation regions or those with rugged topography. This is part of the reason that Idai caused such severe flooding. Some regions will have better suited storm water infrastructure. And when flooding does occur, some regions are better able to warn and evacuate people to prevent or minimise the loss of life.
Another factor which determines the devastation resulting from a tropical cyclone is the population density of the area of landfall. The higher the population density, the more people who are at threat of losing their life, their homes and livelihoods.
This also means more people who would need to be evacuated in a short period, and more people who need shelter until the storm’s immediate effects have subsided. This is why Idai and Eline resulted in far greater losses and fatalities than the stronger intensity Kenneth, and why the total damage from Fani is projected to be particularly devastating. We need to start measuring storm destructiveness in addition to climatological metrics.
Each university and journal must reflect on its assumptions in biology, medicine, natural sciences, anthropology and the social sciences.
In 1937, the zoology department at Stellenbosch University enlisted 133 men for a study. At the time, the field of physical anthropology was focused on documenting “racial types” and this study helped to scientifically construct and confirm the category “coloured” to distinguish these men from “white Afrikaners”.
Handri Walters wrote her PhD thesis on race, science and politics at Stellenbosch in 2018. She unearthed the data sheets from the 1937 study, which measured skin colour, eye colour, hair texture and more than 80 other measurements of the head and body to determine racial type.
In March 2019, researchers from the department of sports science at Stellenbosch published an article titledAge- and Education-Related Effects on Cognitive Functioning in Coloured South African Women. It concluded: “Coloured women in South Africa have increased risk for low cognitive functioning as they present with low education levels and unhealthy lifestyle behaviours.”
Eighty-two years after the 1937 study, Stellenbosch is still uncritically using the term “coloured” as a frame for research. The use of this colonial and apartheid category in a scientific study resulted in an outcry from academics and social media users alike.
“For scientists and research, it is really difficult,” said Elmarie Terblanche, one of the authors of the Stellenbosch article. Speaking in an interview on Cape Talkradio, Terblanche said: “We have to look at different racial groups, we have to specify. All population groups have different problems and we have to characterise that.”
A statement was put out by the Cape Flats Women’s Movement in response: “We are the demographic of your study. Life on the Cape Flats is brutal and the challenges we face are endless. We don’t think you can even begin to imagine what kind of mental ability this takes. How do you think our children look at us now that a famous university has declared their mothers to be idiots?”
A team of scholars decided to use their voices to speak out against bad science. The team — including Barbara Boswell and Shanel Johannes from the University of Cape Town, Zimitri Erasmus from Wits, Kopano Ratele from Unisa and Shaheed Mahomed of South African History Online — drafted a letter to the editors who published the article.
“We ask that you retract it [the article] because of its racist ideological underpinnings, flawed methodology and its reproduction of harmful stereotypes of ‘Coloured’ women.” The letter became part of a campaign that gained more than 10000 signatures.
Many South African scholars have documented the history of racism and sexism in science in this country. Saul Dubow in his 1995 book,Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa, Yvette Abrahams in her articles includingThe great long national insult(1997), and Ciraj Rassool and Martin Legassick in their bookSkeletons in the Cupboard(published in 2000 and updated in 2015) are among the important voices that have contributed to the understanding of this history.
The juxtaposition of the two Stellenbosch studies reminded me of my own shock when I began research for my bookDarwin’s Hunch: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins, published in 2016. Racism and sexism in science have deep roots and go back centuries.
In the mid-1700s, Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, developed the modern system for classifying all living things and publishedSystema Naturae. He categorised humans as Homo sapiens. Yet, Linnaeus classified the Khoisan and “Hottentot” people of southern Africa in a separate category: Homo monstrosus that included “monstrous or abnormal” people. With this one act of naming and classifying, he sent a dehumanising, painful ripple-effect across the centuries.
In the early 1900s, it was not unusual for scientists in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States to believe humans could be categorised as distinct racial types and each type could be classified by its physical characteristics. Many scientists embraced the ideas of a racial hierarchy and white supremacy.
Raymond Dart, the head of the department of anatomy at Wits, was inspired by universities in the US and the UK to establish a human skeleton collection in an effort to clarify racial types. Dart also led the first expedition of researchers from Wits to the Kalahari Desert in 1936 because he was interested in the “Bushman anatomy”.
Thanks to a footnote in an important chapter of Deep hiStories: Gender and Colonialism in South Africa (2000) by Rassool and Patricia Hayes, I learntof a young woman from the Kalahari named /Keri-/Keri. Dart, according to Rassool and Hayes, took interest in her “in life and death” because he thought she represented a “pure bushman”. So, he took her body measurements and face mask while she was alive, and her body cast and skeleton after she died.
In the same year as the Wits expedition to the Kalahari,/Keri-/Keri was brought by Dart to Johannesburg for further research. She was put on display at the Empire Exhibition celebrating Johannesburg’s 50th anniversary. My research into the Dart archives revealed that a doctor in 1939 alerted Dart that /Keri/Keri had pneumonia and was at Outdshoorn Hospital. Anticipating her death, Dart immediately made arrangements for her body to be transported to Johannesburg.
Several days later, /Keri-/Keri died. In many ways, /Keri-/Keri’s story is reminiscent of Sarah Baartman’s, who had been examined by the French anatomist George Cuvier more than a century earlier. Dart saw /Keri-/Keri’s body and her skeleton as a specimen to be studied. For close to 60 years, her body cast remained on display at Wits and her skeleton remained on a shelf in the Raymond Dart collection of human skeletons.
In the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, Unesco drafted a statement on race in 1950, which began: “Scientists have reached general agreement in recognising that mankind is one; that all men belong to the same species Homo sapiens.”
In the same year, the apartheid government implemented the Population Registration Act of 1950, which defined a “coloured person” as someone “who is not a white person or a native”.
Scientists in South Africa continued to work with the concept of “race typology” well into the 1960s. Phillip Tobias, the successor to Dart as head of the department of anatomy at Wits, continued to embrace the existence of racial types, which largely coincided with apartheid’s racial classifications. Tobias built the face mask and skeleton collections at Wits into the 1980s.
In March 2019, just weeks before the Stellenbosch study was published, the American Association of Physical Anthropology put out a new statement on race.
“Racial categories do not provide an accurate picture of human biological variation”, it said, adding “the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination”, and “no group of people is, or ever has been, biologically homogeneous or ‘pure’.”
In the wake of the campaign to retract the journal article, the Psychological Society of South Africa put out an open critique of the study: “The authors have unjustifiably and exploitatively used the apartheid-inspired understanding of race.”
Initially, the university’s deputy vice-chancellor for research, Professor Eugene Cloete, said the findings of the study were those of the authors alone, but in a later statement, he “apologised unconditionally for the pain and anguish which resulted from this article”. The statement made no mention of the faulty scientific assumptions and methodology. Subsequently, the university announced it would conduct a “thorough investigation into all aspects of this study”.
On May 2, the editors and publisher ofAgeing, Neuropsychology and Cognition,the UK journal that published the Stellenbosch study, retracted the article, noting: “While this article was peer-reviewed and accepted according to the Journal’s policy, it has subsequently been determined that serious flaws exist in the methodology and reporting of the original study.”
However, the retraction did not critique the framing of the study specifically for its focus on “coloured women,” nor did it acknowledge the perpetuation of racist stereotypes.
The campaign team pointed out this was not only an issue for the four white women researchers. The problem goes much deeper; it is systemic. There is a new generation of academics that did not see the problem.
Everyone who spoke out against the study sounded an important alarm. The lesson is not only for Stellenbosch, but for every academic and research institution in South Africa and around the world to promote sound science.
Each university and journal must reflect on its assumptions in biology, medicine, natural sciences, anthropology and the social sciences. This episode points to the need for greater diversity in these fields, as well as on ethics committees, among peer reviewersand on editorial boards.
Christa Kuljian holds a BA in the history of science from Harvard University. She is the author of Darwin’s Hunch: Science, Race and the Search for Human Origins (Jacana, 2016), a research associate at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research and is working on a new book about the history of sexism in science. This article was first published in the Mail&Guardian. Read the original article.
The struggles of black women in science
- Ndoni Mcunu
Ndoni Mcunu shares her journey of being a black woman in science on Pasha 18, The Conversation Africa’s podcast on research.
Many academic disciplines in science, technology, engineering and maths tend to be dominated by men. There are a number of historical and social reasons for this, which persist today and keep women out of these disciplines. This is especially true for black women, who must also battle outdated cultural ideals that suggest they don’t “belong” in science.
In this episode of Pasha, Ndoni Mcunu, a PhD Candidate at the University of the Witwatersrand, takes us through her story of being a black woman in science.
How the ANC survived Jacob Zuma — and eked out a win in South Africa’s election
- Rod Alence and Anne Pitcher
Under Zuma, democratic institutions bent but did not break. Just 15 months ago, South Africa’s democracy faced the gravest crisis in its 25-year history.
The governingAfrican National Congress(ANC), the party of Nelson Mandela, scrambled to oust President Jacob Zuma, whom many accused of fostering a sprawling, deep network of state corruption. So dire was the crisis that a new term entered the national lexicon — “state capture” — when those in power systematically subvert public institutions and divert public resources for political and financial gain.
So what happened in the May 8national elections? The ANC and its reformist presidential candidate, Cyril Ramaphosa, received 58 percent of the vote. Ramaphosa, a former trade union leader and prominent ANC member, helped forge South Africa’s democratic constitution and later became a wealthy businessman. The ANC installed him as presidentafter it droveZuma from officein February 2018. As the elections approached, Ramaphosa was well into a cleanup he promised would bring a“new dawn”to reinfuse South African governance with the values of Mandela.
What turned things around?
ANC loyalists had the courage to replace a bad leader with a much better one — and whistleblowers andjournalistsrisked their livelihoods to expose state capture.
As specialists in howpolitical institutionsshape thevaried patterns of governancein Africa, we analyze recent events in South Africa as a fundamental stress test for the country’s democracy. In pursuing their project of state capture, Zuma and his collaborators tested the foundations of South Africa’s hard-won constitutional order. The fact that nearly all voters chose parties explicitly opposed to the Zuma legacy suggests that although democratic institutions bent, they did not break.
State capture is a deeper problem than corruption
The term “state capture” gained currency because the word “corruption” did not do justice to the sweeping efforts to divert public funds under Zuma’s watch. Aplausible estimateplaces the cumulative costs through Zuma’s second term at over $100 billion, or roughly four months of GDP.
Initially,journalists discoveredthat state funds had paid for “upgrades” to Zuma’s palatial estate in his rural hometown. Anofficial inquirythen documented endemic looting in public procurement, especially in the lucrative energy and transport sectors. An avalanche of evidence regardingkickbacks,shell companiesandplastic bags full of cashfollowed.
State capture required short-circuiting accountability mechanisms. Acommon strategywas to appoint presidential loyalists, rather than competent professionals, to key positions in the cabinet, law enforcement agencies, national revenue service and state-owned enterprises. Many appointees then used their positions to enrich themselves and to conceal the misdeeds of others.
Here’s an example. When a respected finance minister rejected Zuma’s spending proposals,Zuma tried to replace himwith an obscure mayor, best known for having his house burned down by disgruntled constituents. After the ANC’s leadership rebuffed the appointment, Zuma turned his attention toattacking the central bank’s independence.
Holding Zuma accountable
Opposition parties proposed several parliamentary motions to remove Zuma, but theinstitutional architecture of South Africa’s democracymade this difficult. Its closed-list proportional representation means the party leadership chooses individual members of Parliament, not voters. At the same time, the Constitution requires governing party members to hold their own president accountable in Parliament.
But as motions to dismiss Zuma accumulated, more ANC members came around. Parliament voted by secret ballot on the final motion, in August 2017. It fell short by three votes — meaning that at least 30 percent of ANC parliamentarians must have supported it.
Zuma’s downfall began in December 2017 at the ANC’s National Elective Conference, held every five years. He was ineligible for reelection as party president. The leading contenders were Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the former chairwoman of the African Union Commission and Zuma’s ex-wife.
Ramaphosa won a close race, and took control of the party. Zuma, meanwhile, continued to run the government. Demands from within the ANC to “recall” Zuma mounted. Heresignedunder duress in February 2018, and Ramaphosa replaced him as president.
Ramaphosa seeks to restore faith in democracy
Ramaphosa quickly began tackling entrenched malgovernance. He appointed several official commissions of inquiry. The media broadcastcommission hearingslive, publicly exposing the scale of state capture.
Ramaphosa’s rise complicated life for opposition parties, which previously gained easy popularity by attacking their common enemy, Zuma. The Democratic Alliance (DA), to the ANC’s right, and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), to its left, had led the charge against Zuma in Parliament.
Without Zuma, opposition voters’ conflicting interests, shaped by differences in race and class, became more politically salient. The rapid growth of ablack middle classin recent decades has partially deracialized severe inequalities inherited fromapartheid, but South Africa remains among the world’s most unequal countries.
Voters’ politics typically reflect experiences of inequality and social mobility. For example, the DA draws much support from a diverse urban middle class. Although most whites vote for the DA, most DA voters are not white. The party struggles to balance itstraditional platformemphasizing race-blind opportunity with ANC-like policies of racial redress.
The EFFappeals to black South Africans who feel shut out from both models of upward mobility. TheFreedom Front Plus(FF+) appeals to similarfeelings of exclusionamong conservative white Afrikaners.
The May 2019 results suggest wide support for Ramaphosa’s “new dawn.” But the ANC’s reduced majority anddecreased turnoutsuggest thatpublic trustin government will not be rebuilt on promises alone. DA support dropped slightly, from 22 percent in 2014 to 21 percent in 2019. Mirroringglobal trends, the politics of disaffection on left and the right gained traction: EFF support grew from 7 to 11 percent, and FF+ support grew from 0.9 to 2.5 percent.
What are the takeaways?
South Africa’s recovery from state capture continues, but its democratic institutions seem to have survived the tough tests of the Zuma years. Whether South Africans get their “new dawn,” the resilience of their democracy — and the tenaciousness of its defenders — hold lessons even for long-standing democracies that confront similar challenges.
Rod Alenceis an Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand. Anne Pitcheris a fellow at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa and a Professor of Political Science and Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Michigan. Through a partnership with the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa, Alence and Pitcher have received funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to study election-related violence and peacebuilding across Africa.
Ramaphosa’s cabinet: who and what’s needed to end South Africa’s malaise
- Seán Mfundza Muller, Cheryl Hendricks and Mzukisi Qobo
South Africans recently went to the polls in a national election which the African National Congress (ANC) won by a wide margin.
The incumbent president Cyril Ramaphosa will shortly appoint a cabinet after parliament officially declares him president. Thabo Leshilo asked Mzukisi Qobo, Cheryl Hendricks and Seán Muller what he should focus on.
Given that Ramaphosa probably has less than five years in the job, what cabinet posts should be his top priority?
Cheryl Hendricks: He needs to leave a legacy and live up to his promise of a new dawn. He therefore needs to concentrate on a few things that will make maximum impact. These include changing the conditions that generate high levels of inequality, as well as those that have made South Africa’s state institutions dysfunctional and have reduced its international standing.
So his top priority cabinet posts should be: basic education and higher education, economic development, finance, trade and industry, rural development and land reform, public enterprises, international relations and science and technology.
Finally, he needs to attend to the representation of women. South Africa has lost a lot of ground in the struggle to translate gender representation into gender equality and women’s peace and security.
Seán Muller: There are four main dimensions that could be considered: strategic institutions, policy direction, effectiveness of the state and institutions for delivery. Ideally, Ramaphosa needs to pursue major improvements on each of the four dimensions in parallel.
What will be crucial in the context of rolling back the influence of state capture on strategic institutions will be who he appoints to justice and correctional services, police, state security, as well as the economics cluster (notably finance and public enterprises).
Then there are the posts that will be important in determining policy and delivery of social services. These include social development, health, education, water and sanitation, transport, and human settlements. Many of these are also important for economic services, along with departments like energy, mineral resources, communications, telecommunications and postal services, tourism and agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
Finally, there are departments that should play a key role in the effectiveness of the state itself. These include the departments of public service and administration, and cooperative governance and traditional affairs. Within the presidency there’s performance monitoring and evaluation.
To the extent that prioritisation is necessary, Ramaphosa has to ensure that reform of critical institutions is placed first – for the simple reason that everything else will be compromised if this fails.
Mzukisi Qobo There are limits to Ramaphosa’s reform agenda in the next five years. For him to succeed, he will need to rely on highly competent technocrats to drive change within government, take bold and decisive action in reforming institutions early on, and take measures that may make him unpopular but have good results. For this to happen he will have to stare his party down and be his own man. The last time he put his cabinet together, his party constrained his options. The result was a watered down compromise. He can’t afford that this time.
But it will be hard for him to find capable ministers. This is true even in the economic cluster, apart from Tito Mboweni in the finance ministry and Pravin Gordhan in the department of public enterprises. Yet the economy is an area that will likely define the next five years of his term (if he completes it). With unemployment at 27.6%, economic performance and job creation in particular will be yardsticks against which his success will be measured.
What attributes should he be looking for in these key positions?
Cheryl Hendricks: People with integrity, people who have leadership skills and people who have a vision for the positions they will be stepping into. People with fresh ideas to deal with old challenges and who are willing to do the hard work it will take to rebuild the country. He needs a cabinet with a healthy mix of experience and youthfulness and gender balance.
Seán Muller: A common error is to think that ministerial positions should be filled on the basis of area-specific expertise. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of ministers relative to senior officials (like the director general of a department). Ministers serve a political function and need not have any particular expertise in an area.
What matters is a general level of competence, commitment to their mandate and the public interest, and respect for the separation between political and bureaucratic competence. A minister’s core functions are arguably to ensure that the officials leading the department are the best – technically and ethically – and that they are allowed and enabled to do their job.
Tito Mboweni will be hard to replace an Finance Minister.GCIS
Public confidence in the integrity of members of Cabinet is an intangible factor that is also important. But there’s tension between this and the challenges Ramaphosa faces within his own party. It is these that are likely to lead to the greatest compromises in cabinet appointments. Ultimately, it will do the country little good if he appoints the best Cabinet possible without factoring in party political considerations, only to then be so weakened within his party that he and his appointees cannot pursue the public interest.
Mzukisi Qobo: The cabinet is a reflection of the quality and depth of the governing party’s leadership bench, whose heft has been in decline over the years. Even the best of its parliamentarians will struggle to bring renewed energy to the job. Many of them are recycled, as they were part of the political arrangements in the last nine years of corruption and institutional decay under former President Jacob Zuma.
And, there is no evidence that they did much to ameliorate its damage. Some, such as Jeff Radebe, have been in government for two decades. There is no evidence of innovative thinking in their approach to governance.
Under such circumstances, Ramaphosa may find himself relying a lot on informal networks, especially business links, outside of government. But this could undercut his credibility among constituencies within the governing tripartite alliance.
Success requires a combination of experience, competence, integrity, and fresh ideas. This is particularly true in ministries such as the National Treasury, and those that interface with critical sectors of the economy such as agriculture, telecommunications, mineral resources, energy, and transport.
Since early 2018 there have been strong indications that Ramaphosa will overhaul the current structure of cabinet as part of institutional reconfiguration of government. The low-hanging fruit will be to reduce the size of the cabinet. Even a country like China, 20 times larger than South Africa, has a cabinet with 24 ministers compared to South Africa’s 35. There is more emphasis on quality and meritocracy and less on viewing cabinet positions purely from the view of dispensing patronage.
Ramaphosa has a very difficult task ahead. Constitutionally, he can only appoint two individuals who are not members of parliament to his cabinet. That means he has to choose his cabinet from the list of MPs who are political fossils and were, by and large, part of the problem during Zuma’s administration.
The reality is that most MPs have a poor grasp of their oversight roles, are often out of depth on how government works, are under-prepared, and many see themselves as no more than deployees of the ruling party.
In South Africa, unhealthy food choices are everywhere
- Ozayr Patel with Safura Abdool Karim
Diseases linked to obesity are rising rapidly in South Africa. Listen to Pasha 20, The Conversation Africa’s podcast on research.
A major part of the problem is the growing available of unhealthy food options. In many neighbourhoods there are more unhealthy food outlets, like fast food places, than there are healthy food options.
In this episode of Pasha, Safura Abdool Karim, a senior project manager at PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa) sheds light on these issues.
Professor Karen Hofman and Noluthando Ndlovu were key members of the research team.
Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor at Wits contributes to a discussion about climate change and the media on Al Jazeera.
Are the news media finally giving the climate change story the coverage it deserves? Satgar answers this question with other contributors on Al Jazeera's programme The Listening Post: A perfect storm of activism, science and politics pushes the biodiversity crisis up the news agenda.
There’s still so much we don’t know about the star-gazing beetle with a tiny brain
- Marcus Byrne
Edited extract from 'The Dance of the Dung Beetles', a new book authored Dr Helen Lunn and Professor Marcus Byrne published by Wits University Press.
Dung beetles have been ever-present in the history of the West – but oddly, less so elsewhere – in religion, art, literature, science and the environment. What we understand about them now mirrors our greater understanding of the important role they play in keeping our planet healthy.
The story of these beetles, which we tell in our new book “The Dance of the Dung Beetles”, comes with a few unexpected twists. It moves from the tombs of the pharaohs to the drawing rooms of directors of the Dutch East India Company to the remote forests of Madagascar. It is a big story carried on the back of a family of small creatures who seldom diverge from their dogged pursuit of dung in its infinite variety and abundant supply.
Like the housemaids of Victorian Britain, who tended fires and households in the small hours while the Empire swept across the globe, they remain largely unseen and ignored. Yet without those housemaids, the world would have a lot more dirt in it. In the same way, dung beetles are largely invisible. And yet without their vital activities, the world would have a lot more faeces in it.
More than “dung-grubbers”
Dung beetles have relatively minuscule brains, much of which is devoted to analysing smells. But they also process visual information that even humans with their vast brains struggle to comprehend. This was shown in a study we conducted with other scientists that revealed how dung beetles use the light of the Milky Way to orientate.
The original story was picked up way beyond the scientific literature and spread rapidly around the world. We were struck by how the tale of a lowly beetle and the distant Milky Way engaged popular imagination when so much other information about dung beetles is equally impressive, if not even more fascinating.
Wearing a cap prevents this beetle seeing orientation cues in the sky. As a consequence it rolls its ball around in circles, like a human lost in a featureless desert.Courtesy Marcus Byrne
This realisation prompted us to respond on behalf of these little creatures, which can be found on every continent except Antarctica, to show that they deserve better press than to be seen as mere dung-grubbers – some of whom happen to orientate by the stars.
Together with earthworms and ants, dung beetles represent a trinity of earth transformers. They literally change the earth beneath us, and they do so at absolutely no cost to us. Dung beetles play a largely unexplored role in soil health, which is increasingly important in a hungry world full of people. There is still so much we do not know about the 6,000 species that clean our world.
We do not know, for example, exactly what they eat. Most eat dung, some eat carrion (dead animals). But getting by on low nutrient waste requires careful selective feeding performed by specialised mouth parts. Microorganisms in the dung and soil might also have a role, fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere to increase food quality and soil health.
We know how dung beetles use celestial cues to orientate, but it’s not clear how a brain so small can process or remember such information. We know they are attracted to the smell of dung, but we do not really understand how that works, or if that sense switches off when they turn their attention to the visual task of rolling a dung ball. Does their neural limitation preclude parallel processing of disparate information?
Evolution of science
In our history of the development of contemporary science, we have seen the evolution of belief in magic, to one of stocktaking and empirical observation, to interpretation and deepening levels of sophisticated tunnelling into the smallest known particles. We have gone from myth, symbols, vague observation and interpretation of a world run by the gods, to a world with one God, and then a world in which the boundaries of religion no longer act as the limit to our knowledge.
The quest for money rather than scientific or natural interests drove much early exploration. Gold, and then trade, became the vehicles for global expansion and settlement. The knowledge we now have of how the world works comes with the recognition that so much of what there is, is threatened by the very pursuits that opened up our world.
It is an irony that cannot be lost on us as we look at the growing list of flora and fauna on the brink of destruction and extinction. The relevance to what we still do not know about creatures as small and seemingly insignificant as dung beetles is that we are beginning to understand what German naturalist and artist Maria Sibylla Merian showed in her paintings: that the world is deeply and fundamentally interconnected.
Biological evolution represents the history of a dynamic process – but evolution has its own timetable. So, even though many creatures can adapt relatively rapidly to the environmental changes we have induced, there are hundreds of thousands of species that cannot. Dung beetles are however, excellent models of rapid evolution and speciation.
The development of the magnificent horn of many dung beetles can be switched on or off in the same gene carried by males and female dung beetles, allowing natural selection – that is, chances of survival – to be balanced against sexual selection (chances of reproducing) in different habitats. The export of dung beetles to different continents, for control of dung-breeding flies, has created a massive natural experiment which will eventually reveal which way evolution will drive those species.
If we need a reminder of how much we do not know, then the study of one little sub-family of unseemly beetles is instructive. Their endless complexity and variety has absorbed the energies of so many researchers across the globe since the Egyptian Horapollo recorded the first observation of them rolling their ball “from East to West, looking himself towards the East” 3,000 years ago.
We tested baby food sugar levels in South Africa. This is what we found
- Karen Hofman and Nicola Christofides
South Africa has the highest rates of childhood obesity in the world, with an alarming figure of 13%.
The global average stands at 6%. One of the main causes of South Africa’s rate is the rapid growth of the country’s commercial food industry. This has led to increased consumption of cheap, easily accessible and ultra-processed food that is high in sugar.
We analysed the sugar content of a variety of baby food products. The study sample included commercially available baby foods – including boxes of cereals and jars of processed food – targeted at children under 12 months and sold in supermarkets and other major retailers in South Africa. We collected data on sugar content and compared this with recommended intake guidelines. We also checked if the sugar content was added sugar or free sugar – the kind often found in processed food.
We also characterised the food based on back of the package information. This wasn’t easy as the facts are provided in tiny font that is difficult to read and interpret. For example the content is usually shown as grams per 100 ml or per serving, not in teaspoons.
Our findings showed that most baby cereals have added sugar. This is a concern because they are often the first food given to babies when they are weaned. We also found that pureed fruit and desserts had very high levels of sugar (20g or more per serving; that’s about 4 teaspoons).
This is bad news for the future health of South Africa’s population because it encourages a “sweet tooth” in children – in other words a preference for foods that taste sweet for the rest of their lives.
Sugar is a big contributor to increased tooth decay. It also results in childhood weight gain and obesity that causes preventable diseases later in life such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer. Although the sweet-taste preference is present at birth, exposure to too much sugar early in life can affect what people eat, including a preference for sweet things.
What this adds up to is that, in the long term, sugar in baby products will contribute to South Africa’s rising burden of noncommunicable diseases and will affect life expectancy.
Global weaning guidelines recommend that babies get fed complementary foods that don’t have added sugars. The aim is to ensure that the threshold for sweet tastes is set at lower levels. In turn, this helps prevent health problems in both childhood as well as later in life.
We conclude that there’s an urgent need to start regulating sugar in baby foods. South Africa’s childhood obesity crisis won’t be resolved unless the baby food industry stops promoting the development of sweet preference from an early age.
What we found
Commercial baby foods are often introduced as first foods to infants in South Africa because they are convenient and easy to use. This makes our findings particularly alarming.
We collected and analysed the sugar content of 235 baby food items from 12 different manufacturers sold in major South African supermarkets. Nearly 90% were prepared baby food products, of which 35% were pureed fruit and 20% were pureed meals.
Only one in five of the baby foods in the study had acceptable levels as defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) – that is, less than 20% of total calories was derived from sugar.
But nearly 80% of cereals and pureed desserts contained added sugar. Processed meals that contained added sugar, including honey, were a carrot blend with semolina and two types of breakfast oats.
The study also shed light on the fact that little information was available to consumers on the ingredients used in the baby foods. For example, it was almost impossible to identify which products had added sugar versus those that had intrinsic (natural) sugars only. Both are unhealthy in processed products.
Recommendations
On the basis of our study, we have a number of recommendations. The first is that the amount of sugar in baby food should be regulated as a matter of urgency. To start with, mandatory disclosure of added sugar by manufacturers and the introduction of a food labelling system is essential.
A promising example is Chile’s warning octagonal logos that tell consumers if a product exceeds a recommended limit of sugar. There is already less demand for juices and cereal with high sugar content.
And given the importance of serving sizes in controlling obesity, information on nutrients per portion and the number of portions per package should be included. It would help if this were standardised across all related food products, which is currently not the case.
Consumers can’t make informed choices about what’s in the food they are feeding their infants without easily understandable labels of calorie and nutritional information. Even if they wanted to stick to the WHO’s recommendation that the intake of free sugars should be reduced to less than 10% of total energy intake, the public can’t do so because of a lack of clearly understandable information.
We also recommend limiting sweet, processed baby foods in favour of healthier alternatives.
We acknowledge the contribution of Agnes Erze in the preparation of this piece. She is a research fellow at the SAMRC/Wits Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science/PRICELESS.
Structuring SA’s digital government: the road not traveled?
- Lucienne Abrahams and Mark Burke
The potential capabilities afforded by digital technologies should not be ignored in the current stage of design of the future government administration.
Speculation about the future composition and organisation of the government in SA as a crucial state capability to shift the development path of society towards a more equal, inclusive and sustainable one, is rife at the moment. With about a week to go before President Cyril Ramaphosa announces his Cabinet, which will give an indication of his thinking on the reconfiguration of the state, various ideas have been put forward.
There is some speculation that the configuration of the government will merely revert to the composition before the process of unbundling and fragmentation that took place in the past 10 years. It is understandable that political motivations will dominate the decision on the composition of the Cabinet and government departments. Tough political bargaining, aimed at bringing on board the most important constituencies of the governing party, while also providing a level of legitimacy and stability for anchoring the new administration, will leave an indelible mark on the choices made.
However, the composition of the government cannot be left to only politics if there is to be a developmental commitment to building a capable state. It must also take account of the changing conditions under which this administration will come into being and must, by design, be congruent and responsive to major developments impacting the ability of the government to perform.
One of the most dramatic influencing factors to emerge since the turn of the 21st century is the extent to which digital technologies now shape our lives. Increasingly, they are impacting the very notions of identity, the relationship that citizens have with the state, the nature of policy-making, and the opportunities and constraints for delivery of services. Digital technologies now afford governments the opportunity to develop new, and strengthen existing, capabilities necessary to address some of the most intractable challenges in our society.
For instance, big data has the potential to better target distinct packages of social insurance to the most marginalised in society, with predictive analytics capable of modeling cause and effect to channel support to the most effective forms of social insurance. In healthcare, artificial intelligence (AI) can assist in diagnostics, estimating the probability of disease outbreaks, and monitoring specific illnesses, for example.
The value of these kinds of digital technologies can only be harvested optimally for policy-making and service delivery when large scale data sets are established in ways that enable databases to interface with each other to form cross-departmental digital platforms. Such digital platforms provide the foundation for sharing data and services across previously independent (but now inter-dependent) government departments and entities. These ideas have found traction over the past few years in terms of thinking about government-as-a-platform (GaaP).
Our purpose here is not to promote specific paradigms of technology use in government, or advance some form of technological determinism; rather, it is to suggest that the potential capabilities afforded by digital technologies should not be ignored in the current stage of design of the future government administration.
Digitisation must lead to digitalisation
Historically, SA’s dominant focus for digital government formation has been on automation. This is a necessary process by which analogue and paper-based processes in government are digitised. Once digitised, such information and processes have the potential to contribute to the digital transformation (digitalisation) of government.
In addition to the focus on automation in government, there have also been a few large-scale investments in systems aimed at the consolidation of databases into standardised single platforms such as the automated biometric identification system (Abis) and the home affairs national identification system (Hanis). The integrated justice system (IJS) brings together eight departments, agencies and authorities in the criminal justice value chain to produce an integrated digital platform to manage the information exchanges across the criminal justice system.
The effective formation of such digital platforms requires, among other things, integration across individual departmental boundaries, which represents a significant challenge to organisational autonomy, accountability and inter-operability. While the technical infrastructure is available to link systems across organisational boundaries through networks, the institutional infrastructure — including incentives, procedures, and cultures that underpin the required inter-operabilit — needs much greater attention.
The barriers to integration exist mainly because the design of government is based largely on the outdated Weberian model of state organisation developed in the 18th century, not allowing for the greater flexibility needed today. In this model, governments are arranged as organisational units concerned with the provision of services to meet specific needs, such as education, healthcare and welfare, or support for economic sectors, such as agriculture, mining and various branches of industry.
This organisation is framed by a reductionist and rationalist worldview, in which problems can only be understood by reducing them into elementary building blocks that can be addressed independently. Sectoral interests and practices thus dominate government programmes, trapping them in modes of operation that are confined to narrow, sectorally focused approaches to problem-solving. This limits the flexibility necessary to respond to continuously changing ways of living and doing business.
In this next period, the major challenge for the government is not the technical infrastructure, but instead, the re-organisation of the institutional arrangements that make possible a citizen-centric approach to policy-making and service delivery. Yet, it is the re-organisation, interconnection and integration made possible by networked digital infrastructure that policy makers least consider in the organisation of the state.
The path to a digital government is not without risk. Privacy, data integrity and cyber-security are some of the key risks on this path. These risks need to be weighed up against the capabilities afforded by new and, at times, disruptive, digital technologies. But can SA afford not to take advantage of the capabilities afforded by digital technologies in the re-organisation of government? Rehashing a mode of organisation fit for the 20th century is unlikely to enable government to cope with the complex governance and service challenges of this century.
The composition of the Cabinet and the next administration provides a first opportunity for considering how to embed new modes of organisation in the form of post-Weberian networks, ecosystems and platforms, to inform the future organisation of government. Not taking this opportunity will, in future, come to represent the road not traveled towards effective structuring of government administration and service delivery, for addressing inequality, poverty, sustained low economic growth and unemployment.
Dr Lucienne Abrahams is director at the LINK Centre, Wits University; and Mark Burke is a visiting researcher and convenor of the Frontiers of Digital Government Programme: LINK Centre, Wits University. This article was first published in Business Day.