Mass economic illiteracy equally poses terrifying risks
- William Gumede
South Africa may have among the largest mass belief in Soviet-style state-centred economics - education is needed on the disastrous impact in post-war Africa.
The widespread embrace by old and young across the political spectrum in former disadvantaged communities of outdated economic policy ideas that have been frozen in the Soviet Union-era, redistribution policies that have failed devastatingly in post-war Africa and poor understanding of the basics of how a business works, whether state or private, poses huge risks for South Africa’s prosperity.
Of all the major emerging markets in the world, South Africa may have among the largest mass belief in Soviet-style state-centred economics among citizens young and old. We often despair about the poor performance of SA’s public education system on mathematics and sciences, which undermines the country’s competitiveness, as these subjects are the fulcrum of development, compared to our emerging market and industrial country peers.
Mass economic illiteracy is not only widespread among ordinary citizens from disadvantaged communities, but is entrenched within the ANC leadership, and because of this widespread in government, and among leaders, members and supporters of political parties that are spinoffs from the ANC, such as the EFF and ATM.
Mass economic illiteracy equally poses terrifying risks to the country’s economic growth, development, and stability. Perhaps, the most vivid illustration of this is a few years when a Cabinet Minister said the ANC leadership did not care about the fall of the Rand currency, because they will just pick it up again, and it everything will be just fine.
The fact that a senior ANC leader can even say this publicly, which reflects a poor grasp of how irrational economic policies, corruption and mismanagement have real-life implications for the country, businesses, and citizens, underscores the economic illiteracy at the highest levels of the ANC leadership and government.
The ANC and its tripartite alliance of Cosatu and the SACP have dominated economic thinking among disadvantaged communities during the last decades of the apartheid and the democratic era. Through the influence of the SACP, ANC economic thinking during the apartheid-era was closely aligned to the Marxist-Leninist economics of the former Soviet Union, which was the SACP’s largest ideologic, material and leadership influence.
South Africa’s liberation struggle wrapped the participants in a bubble, isolated from global economic idea changes, which means that economic ideas of many remained frozen in neo-Marxist-Leninist ideas, even when these had collapsed elsewhere, and the rest of the world evolved.
Sadly, although South Africa in the post-apartheid era, has opposition parties, groups, and entities with a diversity of economic views, beyond that of Marxist-Leninist statist ones, and the country is an open economy, with influences from all economic ideologies, economic thinking among the majority of ANC leaders – and leaders of ANC spinoffs, and most disadvantaged communities remains rigidly neo-Marxist-Leninist.
Perhaps, only North Korea, a society completely isolated from the global economy, thinking and trends, have similar levels of frozen economic thinking as in South Africa presently.
Because of outdated economic thinking, there is a mass appeal among disadvantaged communities of African-style redistribution strategies, whether it is the nationalisation of private companies, expropriation of land without compensation and fostering empowerment strategies in which a select elite of political capitalists, who are not entrepreneurs, get rich solely through tenderpreneurship – living off state contracts.
In the last 60 years, such misguided strategies have plunged most African countries into failed states, civil war and decline to pre-colonial development levels.
Many ANC leaders and members, leaders and members of ANC spinoffs and South Africans generally from disadvantaged communities because of high levels of economic illiteracy so poorly understand how companies, whether state or private, work.
Because of this, many find it hard to accept that once a state company is corrupted and mismanaged by incompetent political appointees, it often cannot be resuscitated anymore.
In such cases, the costs and time do so, may make it better to close it down or hand it over to the private sector who are willing to take the risks, have the skill set and is not bound by political obligations. Many are also opposed to the private sector providing public services; although the private sector is already doing so where the state has failed, such as filling potholes, and delivering health, education, and security.
The lack of economic literacy has resulted in irrational economic policies which have increased unemployment, worsened poverty, and unleashed social disorder. It is also a fertile ground for economic populism – with populists who are themselves often economically illiterate, promising irrational economic policies, that will compound the hardships of those who vote for them based on such promises.
Public education about economic policy disasters elsewhere, so we do not repeat them, is crucial in all spheres, especially in public media. Sadly, reading, let alone reading widely has plunged. There has to be urgent intervention to lift economic literacy levels across society. Economic literacy should be an essential part of school and higher education curricula, part of workplace induction and part of government development and empowerment programs.
Mass-based community-level training on business, entrepreneurship and economic literacy, will help to improve economic knowledge, and so lead to better quality policies, better individual decision-making and better oversight of elected and public officials over the management of the economy.
William Gumede is Associate Professor, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, and author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg). This article was first published in TimesLive/Sunday Times.
Vitamins and supplements: what you need to know
- Neelaveni Padayachee and Varsha Bangalee
There’s a common perception that supplements are harmless. But they can be dangerous at incorrect dosages.
If you were to open your medicine cabinet right now, there’s a fair chance that you’d find at least one bottle of vitamins alongside the painkillers, plasters and cough syrup.
After all, people are definitely buying vitamins: in 2020, the global market for complementary and alternative medicines, which includes multivitamin supplements, had an estimated value of US$82.27 billion. The use of natural health products such as minerals and amino acids has increased – and continues to rise, partly driven by consumers’ buying habits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
People sought out vitamins C and D, as well as zinc supplements, as potential preventive measures against the virus – even though the evidence for their efficacy was, and remains, inconclusive.
Multivitamins and mineral supplements are easily accessible to consumers. They are often marketed for their health claims and benefits – sometimes unsubstantiated. But their potential adverse effects are not always stated on the packaging.
Collectively, vitamins and minerals are known as micronutrients. They are essential elements needed for our bodies to function properly. Our bodies can only produce micronutrients in small amounts or not at all. We get the bulk of these nutrients from our diets.
People usually buy micronutrients to protect against disease or as dietary “insurance”, in case they are not getting sufficient quantities from their diets.
There’s a common perception that these supplements are harmless. But they can be dangerous at incorrect dosages. They provide a false sense of hope, pose a risk of drug interactions – and can delay more effective treatment.
Benefits
Vitamins are beneficial if taken for the correct reasons and as prescribed by your doctor. For example, folic acid supplementation in pregnant women has been shown to prevent neural tube defects. And individuals who reduce their intake of red meat without increasing legume consumption require a vitamin B6 supplement.
But a worrying trend is increasing among consumers: intravenous vitamin therapy, which is often punted by celebrities and social media marketing. Intravenous vitamins, nutrients and fluids are administered at pharmacies as well as beauty spas, and more recently “IV bars”. Users believe these treatments can quell a cold, slow the effects of ageing, brighten skin, fix a hangover or just make them feel well.
Intravenous vitamin therapy was previously only used in medical settings to help patients who could not swallow, needed fluid replacements or had an electrolyte imbalance.
However, the evidence to support other benefits of intravenous vitamin therapy is limited. No matter how you choose to get additional vitamins, there are risks.
Warning bells
Most consumers use multivitamins. But others take large doses of single nutrients, especially vitamin C, iron and calcium.
As lecturers in pharmacy practice, we think it’s important to highlight the potential adverse effects of commonly used vitamins and minerals:
Vitamin A/retinol is beneficial in maintaining good eye health. But it can cause toxicity if more than 300,000IU (units) is ingested. Chronic toxicity (hypervitaminosis) has been associated with doses higher than 10,000IU a day. Symptoms include liver impairment, loss of vision and intracranial hypertension. It can cause birth defects in pregnant women.
Vitamin B3 is beneficial for nervous and digestive system health. At moderate to high doses it can cause peripheral vasodilation (widening or dilating of the blood vessels at the extremities, such as the legs and arms), resulting in skin flushing, burning sensation, pruritis (itchiness of the skin) and hypotension (low blood pressure).
Vitamin B6 is essential for brain development and in ensuring that the immune system remains healthy. But it can result in damage to the peripheral nerves, such as those in the hands and feet (causing a sensation of numbness and often referred to as pins and needles) at doses over 200mg/daily.
Vitamin C is an antioxidant and assists in the repair of body tissue. Taken in high doses it can cause kidney stones and interactions with drugs, such as the oncology drugs doxorubicin, methotrexate, cisplatin and vincristine.
Vitamin D is essential for bone and teeth development. At high doses it can cause hypercalcaemia (calcium level in the blood is above normal) that results in thirst, excessive urination, seizures, coma and death.
Calcium is essential for bone health, but can cause constipation and gastric reflux. High doses can cause hypercalciuria (increased calcium in the urine), kidney stones and secondary hypoparathyroidism (underactive parathyroid gland). It can have drug interactions with zinc, magnesium and iron.
Magnesium is important for muscle and nerve functioning. At high doses it can cause diarrhoea, nausea and abdominal cramping, and can interact with tetracyclines (antibiotics).
Zinc can impair taste and smell, and doses over 80mg daily have been shown to have adverse prostate effects.
Selenium can cause hair and nail loss or brittleness, lesions of the skin and nervous system, skin rashes, fatigue and mood irritability at high doses.
Iron at 100-200mg/day can cause constipation, black faeces, black discoloration of teeth and abdominal pain.
Recommendations
People need to make informed decisions based on evidence before consuming health products.
Regular exercise and a well-balanced diet are more likely to do us good, as well as being lighter on the pocket.
Seeking advice from a healthcare professional before consuming supplements can reduce the risk of adverse effects.
Be aware of the potential adverse effects of vitamins and seek a healthcare professional’s guidance if you have symptoms.
Dhamaal music and dance reveal a rich and complex mixing of cultures that is shaped by history.
The term Siddi refers to Afro-Indians – Africans who mixed with Indians through marriage and relationships. Africans crossed the Indian Ocean and arrived in India during the 1200s, 1300s and 1400s. They were transported by Islamic invaders and Portuguese colonisers as enslaved people, palace guards, army chiefs, harem keepers, spiritual leaders, Sufi singers, dancers and treasurers.
Today, the majority of Siddis are found in the west and south-west of India, in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana states. As they settled, they preserved and practised their African ancestral sociocultural traditions – and also adopted local Indian traditions.
This interweaving of African and Indian cultural values gave birth to various creolised (mixed) food, music and spiritual practices.
As a diversity studies scholar, I have been researching Siddi culture for some time. Working within this community in Gujarat and Karnataka, I found that their creolised cultural practices emerged as a resistance to colonisation, racialisation and victimisation in postcolonial India.
My most recent research – which can also be seen in a new documentary – has focused on the music and dance performances of the Siddi community in Gujarat, called Dhamaals.
The story of Dhamaal performance traditions reveals the rich and complex mixing of cultures in a world shaped by human movement and history.
What are Dhamaals?
Dhamaal is a mix of Sufi and African (mostly East African) musical and dance traditions. It refers particularly to the spiritual practices of the Siddis of Gujarat.
The Siddis begin almost every Dhamaal song by blowing into a conch shell. This is often followed by the slow playing of East African percussion instruments like the musindo and the slow thumping of feet that marks the onset of the singing and dancing Dhamaals. The ritual of foot thumping is a crucial part of spiritual East African dance and musical traditions.
The Siddis are followers of Islam and arrived in India from Muslim communities in East and Central Africa. Dhamaals are performed in memory of their spiritual leaders, among them Bava Gor, Mai Misra, Baba Habash and Sidi Nabi Sultan. According to Siddi folklore they arrived from Ethiopia through the Nubian Valley, Syria and the Indian Ocean to the coast of Kuda in the Bhavnagar district of Gujarat.
Usually, Dhamaal songs and dances are performed to celebrate the anniversary of the birth and death of spiritual leaders. They are performed in two ways – Dance Dhamaal and Baithaaki Dhamaal. The Baithaaki Dhamaal is performed in the sitting position and the Dance Dhamaal is performed in both sitting and dance positions.
During the performance of Baithaaki Dhamaal the focus is more on the lyrics and less on the musical instruments. During Dance Dhamaal the focus is more on the sounds of the instruments. These are often played in a frenzied manner and accompanied by frenzied dance movements. The spiritual songs that are sung during the Dhamaals are known as zikrs.
A mixing of cultures
The creole cultural aspects of Dhamaals are broadly reflected through the Swahili Creole language used to sing the zikrs, the Indian and African musical instruments used to perform them and the Afro-Indian body movements of Dance Dhamaals.
Historically, the Swahili Creole language in India emerged among the Siddis through the mixing of Kiswahili from East Africa with Gujarati, Hindi and Urdu languages from India. As an example, these are the lyrics of one zikr:
Ya bolo sabaya hua wey
Ya bolo sabaya hua wey
Hu sabaya
Salwale Nabi Sultan
This zikr is sung in the praise of Siddi spiritual leader Nabi Sultan, believed to have arrived in Gujarat from the Nubian Valley. The Swahili words that have been used are “hu” (a common expression of consent) and “sabaya” (meaning that everything is alright). The zikr means that with the blessings of Nabi Sultan no evil can befall the Siddis of Gujarat.
Siddis performing Baithaaki (sitting) Dhamaal in a shrine in Gujarat.Courtesy Sayan Dey, CC BY
The musical instruments used to perform the zikrs are East African percussion instruments. The musindo, for example, is a cylinder-shaped, two-sided drum from Kenya. The misr kanga is a small, funnel-shaped instrument from Ethiopia, containing small stones. The mugarman is a large, cylinder-shaped, one-sided drum from Tanzania. These are played along with traditional Indian musical instruments. These include the harmonium (a keyboard instrument) and the dholak (a two-headed hand drum). The intermingling of Indian and African musical instruments generates creole rhythmscapes which are traditionally African and Indian at the same time.
During the Dance Dhamaal, the hand and the body movements of the Dhamaal dancers in Gujarat are very similar to the Ngoma dancers of East Africa. The Ngoma dancers thump their feet and swing their arms sideways to the rhythm of drums. The Dhamaal dancers also swing their arms sideways, but the thumping of feet depends on the context of their dance. During religious occasions, for example, the foot thumping is slow. This is because the Siddis follow many spiritual aspects of the Sufi tradition. For Sufis, heavy and frenzied feet thumping is prohibited when worshipping spiritual leaders.
Transoceanic roots
These creolised musical and dance performances allow the Siddis in Gujarat to maintain their African ancestral practices. They do so in collaboration with Indian practices so that they do not forget their historical roots yet can respect local traditions at the same time.
The author’s documentary Afro-Indian Creole Rhythms: Siddi Dhamaals of Gujarat.
These creole practices have allowed the community to build a transoceanic identity (one which crosses the oceans). This is done in a collaborative, reciprocal and diverse way.
The Dhamaal tradition of the Siddis has socially, culturally and economically empowered the community as well. Several community members, through the assistance of government and private organisations, travel across India and the world to perform at cultural festivals. This encourages the Siddis to share their creolised cultural values across the globe.
This in turn invites audiences to consider history through an interracial and intercultural lens.
Solar would provide their dwellings with power, but also a source of revenue if power is sold back to the grid.
Much debate has been sparked by the announcement that in Cape Town at least, people and companies generating excess power will soon be able to sell it back to the grid, at an approved feed-in tariff.
That will immediately benefit some people in Cape Town — if there is sufficient additional power to sell to the grid – but also those already resourced — industrial plants, factories, wealthier individuals and households who can afford large solar installations (and the connection fees back to the grid).
Of course, everyone will benefit if this additional power impacts on rolling blackouts, but only those high-income households that can afford to install solar systems will get the financial benefit of the feed-in tariff.
Why not simultaneously trigger a “solar revolution” by targeting informal settlements? They are without doubt among some of the poorest spaces in the country. They have not been provided with electricity, and no disputes over illegal connections should occur.
The morphology of informal settlements, as we note below, is to move from free-standing structures to compounds, which can include multiple households in one larger group of structures — which share one very large roof, ideal for solar.
If informal settlement residents are helped upfront — say, through a lease-and-own agreement for the installation and infrastructure — simple self-interest would see households in informal settlements lead the way in harvesting sunshine and selling to the grid. As their solar farms grow, and income increases, they may also be able to move up the socioeconomic ladder, and off social grants. It seems such a clearly virtuous cycle that it must form a core part of the conversation.
TheGauteng Research Triangle (GRT) is a partnership between the Universities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, and the Witwatersrand (Wits). The GRT oversees a range of areas, but one of its main projects is a new health and demographic surveillance site (HDSS) with a split node located in Hillbrow, Atteridgeville West, and Melusi, an informal settlement in Pretoria.
It joins other well-known nodes including Agincourt, Dimamo and Ahri, with further nodes in the early stages in Cape Town, eThekwini and the Eastern Cape.
The Gauteng node is called “GRT-Inspired” (the Gauteng Research Triangle Initiative for the Study of Population, Infrastructure and Regional Economic Development).
The core functions of an HDSS are measuring the population (which should be ~100,000 people) that inhabit dwelling units within the boundaries of the node, which align with Stats SA boundaries.
Through one face-to-face interview per annum, and two shorter telephonic follow-ups per annum, all respondents are contacted three times a year.
We will be developing an intimate knowledge of the spaces that make up the node, and the people living and moving in and out of them, capturing vital statistics as well as covering a range of issues such as migration, health status, socioeconomic status, and so on.
GRT-Inspired was designed as a multidisciplinary initiative and has a group of associated academics across the three partner universities who will analyse the data from multiple perspectives, adding to the value of the core sets of questions asked in all Saprin nodes.
Once the platform for the HDSS is fully developed, it is very easy to nest other related studies onto the platform. For example, it would be very possible to look deeper into household income and expenditure trends by adding a special survey to the existing platform.
Research platforms such as GRT-Inspired have a number of advantages over traditional (cross-sectional) surveys. Because households are surveyed on a longitudinal and panel basis, it allows us better to understand change, and to be able to attribute change to a particular variable.
An HDSS platform also allows us to innovate with policies by piloting interventions and observing how effective the interventions are, over time, and how households and individuals are responding to a particular intervention. A lot of the testing and proof of the efficacy of antiretrovirals was done in such HDSSs.
A large part of GRT-Inspired comprises informal settlements. Melusi, one of our sites, is a relatively new settlement in Tshwane — it did not exist in Census 2011, but now houses some 40,000 people. Atteridgeville, while a formal township, also includes a very large (and older) informal area, Jeffsville — colloquially known as Gomorrah. Understanding informality is thus core to the work done in the node.
The first stage of work is complete — a baseline that includes household registration and mapping the entire node, complemented by the use of drones to better understand the morphology of the informal areas in particular. For field workers in informal settlements, far more complex directions are needed than “turn right”!
In the two drone images below, two things are immediately clear. Firstly, informal areas clearly go through a consolidation phase — the dwellings in Melusi are more widely distributed, and still in the process of forming bigger compounds. In “Gomorrah”, which is considerably older, this process has reached near-saturation, and multiple households are clustered in large compounds, with fewer central courtyards open to the sky.
The second glaring issue — to us, anyway — is the smattering of single solar panels in Melusi, and their almost complete absence from “Gomorrah”. The point at issue is twofold: solar panels could easily enhance the quality of life of all informal dwellers, and the more efficient they are, the more power they can supply. This is well-known (if not implemented in practice — RDP houses are often accompanied by solar power for geysers but not informal dwellings, where they are at the owner’s cost). Newer settlements show an awareness of solar, but only small units are in place.
Solar clearly works — just see below, for Atteridgeville’s formal areas and non-residential structures, with roofs covered in solar panels.
The second issue is far more important: if household-produced solar power could be sold back to Eskom, informal settlements could drive the solar revolution because of enlightened self-interest. Solar would provide their dwellings with power, but also a source of revenue if power is sold back to the grid.
Look at the size of the compound rooftops in Atteridgeville, and one gets a sense of how much solar they could generate. But notice too the absence of any solar panels.
Going back to the possibilities for HDSSs to make it possible for innovation in policy, one issue that we’re considering is whether it might be possible to consider some innovation that solves a crisis in South Africa, and also contributes to innovation in social and economic policies.
The decarbonisation transition that South Africa has committed to to address climate change, gives us the opportunity to rethink how all aspects of our economy, including social policy, might be more effective.
This raises an interesting question: might it be possible for South Africa’s decarbonisation transition to include public provision of solar panels to all households, including informal households; and might reform of the grid make it possible for low-income households to earn an income by simply selling electricity back to the grid?
Of course, there are a lot of complications that we would have to consider before developing a concrete policy proposal in this regard. One of the complications that immediately strikes us is to which member of the household would the electricity tariff be paid?
Another is how should the payment be made — in cash or a voucher? Should a means test be used to pay cash to low-income and informal residents, and credits to those in dwellings that already enjoy electricity? Should this be means-tested or not?
These are all important questions that we explore and test at GRT-Inspired an extremely important investment in South Africa’s research infrastructure.
There are aspects of such a proposal that appear very appealing. A large number of high-income households are investing in solar systems, both to overcome rolling blackouts, but also to reduce their dependence on Eskom, which is increasing the price of electricity. Low-income households are unable to afford this investment, and this has the effect of increasing levels of inequality.
Moreover, in line with many other countries, social protection in South Africa is based on the state providing cash grants. These have been very effective at protecting the poor, but the cash amounts are small and do very little to allow low-income households to generate income.
Provision of solar panels — on a lease-and-own basis for the poor — and revising policy to allow households to sell electricity into the grid, gives people an asset that can generate a stream of income.
Such an intervention would also move many households’ and individuals’ incomes above the threshold for other social protection support. Combining such an intervention with domestic production of solar panels will also generate new economic activity and increase employment.
And, it would begin to solve the rolling blackouts problem.
It would probably be fair to say that our economy is in a mess, and our economic policy debate is stuck. It’s time for a bit of innovation.
Professor David Everatt is a Professor in the Wits School of Governance. Professor Imraan Valodia is Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality at the University of the Witwatersrand. This article was first published in Daily Maverick/Our Burning Planet.
The invisible trillions of global capitalism
- John J Stremlau
Raymond W. Baker says the estimated hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden wealth a decade ago has skyrocketed to trillions today.
Secrecy has become as important for corporations as transparent and taxable profits used to be, according to Raymond W. Baker in his new book Invisible Trillions. Global capitalism, he argues, operates beyond the rule of law. This contributes to extreme inequality that threatens liberal democracy.
Deals in the financial secrecy system account for half of global economic operations. This is far beyond illicit transfers of funds through corporate under-pricing and overpricing of exports and imports, or the drug and other criminal networks 50 years ago. Tax havens, “shell companies”, anonymous trust accounts, fake foundations and new digitised money laundering technologies have proliferated. Add to that falsified trade. All of this is facilitated by international lawyers, accountants and financial strategists based mostly in rich countries.
The book’s timely contribution is how financial secrecy threatens both free enterprise and political freedoms. Both are critical to dealing with current inequalities afflicting humanity and to meeting challenges in public health, climate, and elsewhere.
Baker indicts the United States as the biggest user of the financial secrecy system, and the biggest recipient of dirty money from around the world. A key indication of the cost of this is that gaps between top and average wages in the US have shot up from 20 to 1 in 1960 to 350 to one today. Had this not occurred, Baker told me he estimates, the middle class would now be better off by $50 trillion.
Pioneering work
A pioneer in exposing illicit financial flows, Baker is a member of the High-Level Panel on the subject commissioned by the African Union (AU) and UN Economic Commission for Africa. It was chaired by former South African president Thabo Mbeki from 2011 to 2015. It is suspended pending further funding. Invisible Trillions should spur renewed work by the panel.
The panel’s 2015 report estimated that in the previous half-century, Africa lost over a US$ trillion in illicit money flows. This is about what Africa received in official development assistance over the same period. Baker made a similar finding in his 2005 book, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel.
He began his career as an entrepreneur in Nigeria after independence, applying his 1960 Harvard MBA to launch several successful local businesses in the 1960s and 1970s. After relocating to Washington, DC in the 1980s, he became a guest fellow at the Brookings Institution. He eventually founded Global Financial Integrity in 2006. The research institute continues to produce seminal research and policy analysis on all aspects of the secretive world of illicit financial flows.
Clean up must begin from above
Baker is cogently critical not only of the complicity of the US and its corporations, but also law firms, auditors and consulting companies that abet tax avoidance, concentration of wealth, and corruption of government officials. He accuses the US and China, which together account for over 40% of the world’s nominal GNP, of knowingly exploiting secrecy in global economic relations.
Little wonder that 193 members of the United Nations have pledged to halt illicit financial flows, but with little discernible effect. Meanwhile, the COVID pandemic, the war in Ukraine and climate change worsen inequality within and among nations.
Concise and accessible, Invisible Trillions has three parts:
Democratic Capitalism at Risk
Corroding the Commons
Renewing Democratic Capitalism.
Rogue capitalism
I found Baker’s criticisms of capitalism in the US to be reasonable, his indictments of corruption and authoritarianism illuminating, and his emphasis on fairness, justice, equity and human rights hopeful. America’s leading democracy scholar, Larry Diamond of Stanford University, wrote the book’s foreword. As he asserts:
Only radical improvements across the globe in financial transparency and accountability and in regulatory capacity and integrity can break this cycle of political decay and despair.
Baker, however, carefully avoids analysis of the structural deficiencies of US democracy. He defers to others to build on his analysis of how secretive concentrations of wealth became possible with the complicity of banks, corporations and “complicit governments” in key chapters of Part II.
Although the book is mainly about the “rogue capitalism” of the US, it includes the impact of secrecy on economic behaviour further afield, using seven country case studies. Featured are the two dictatorships – Russia and China – plus a flawed pluralistic democracy, South Africa, an example of state capture. Other examples of where secrecy serves autocrats are Guatemala, Venezuela, Myanmar and Iran.
The South African case shows well the role played by foreign corporations, international lawyers and public relations firms in corruption. Baker concludes Part II with a very short chapter, “Hiding in Silos”. It is critical of western attempts to spread the rule of law while ignoring
the degree to which the capitalist system (is) operating increasingly beyond the rule of law.
This sets up Part III, in which he proposes ways and means for “Renewing Democratic Capitalism”.
Renewing democratic capitalism
In Baker’s view, democracy is self-correcting, but capitalism is not. His main message is: reform capitalism or forfeit democracy.
His suggestions focus on the US and its potential for either causing disaster or preventing it. This will depend, he argues, on the US government requiring greater transparency, accountability and governance reforms by corporations.
He advocates forcing banks and other financial institutions to once again separate lending and investing. And audit firms should not offer costly financial advice – another conflict of interest.
Baker recommends government action on increasing minimum wages to $15 an hour, ensuring universal healthcare, waiving student debt, and a reckoning with “race”. He also urges a reducing inequality among nations. In sum, an agenda much like that of the Biden administration.
Unless national Democratic majorities continue to grow and press effectively for bi-partisan democratic reforms, it is difficult to imagine the country playing the kind of constructive democratic role at home or abroad that Baker calls for.
Social grants are the largest source of support for many vulnerable groups, and the government’s primary response to poverty, food insecurity and inequality.
Everyone is vulnerable in some way, whether it’s to natural disasters, chronic diseases or hunger. But some are more at risk than others because of what they are exposed to socially, economically and environmentally. This phenomenon is known as social vulnerability. It refers to the attributes of society that make people and places susceptible to natural disasters, adverse health outcomes and social inequalities.
Although these social inequalities are well documented in South Africa, not enough is known about the link between social vulnerability and food insecurity for the country as a whole.
Previous studies that investigated the relationship between social vulnerability and food insecurity have been limited to certain places, such as the poor and rural Eastern Cape province or the crowded urban area of Soweto. A better understanding of social inequalities at a national level might help the government provide social relief where it’s needed most.
With this in mind, we conducted a nationally representative survey of the prevalence of social vulnerability in the country. We looked at a range of socio-economic, demographic and geographical variables to see who is socially vulnerable. We also investigated the associations between social vulnerability and household food insecurity.
Questions about food
We conducted our study in October 2021 with 3,402 individuals we recruited across the nine provinces of the country. We used a statistical technique to transform the sample of 3,402 into a nationally representative sample of 39.6 million people, aged 18 years and older.
Does your household ever run out of money to buy food?
Do you ever cut the size of meals or skip meals because there is not enough money for food?
Do you or any of your children ever go to bed hungry because there is not enough money to buy food?
Vulnerable and food insecure
The study showed high levels of social vulnerability in the country linked to food insecurity. Over 20.6% of the South Africans in our sample were socially vulnerable, and 20.4% food insecure. This amounts to about 7.8 million people out of our sample of 39.6 million people.
We also found that the most vulnerable groups in the country were Africans – as opposed to white people or people of Asian or mixed descent.
Also most vulnerable were
females
people living in rural areas
those with low socio-economic status
people without high school certificates
adults older than 45.
These findings are not surprising, given that these groups are known to have higher levels of poverty. But the findings are still important because they paint a troubling picture in which social inequality remains a major and persisting national challenge. It needs urgent and efficient solutions.
Addressing social inequalities
The government uses various initiatives to address social inequalities in the country to good effect. These include public education and health services, school feeding schemes and the tax exemption of staple foods such as brown bread and rice.
Social grants are the largest source of support for many vulnerable groups. They are the government’s primary response to poverty, food insecurity and inequality.
Despite such efforts, social inequalities have consistently remained high. They are also unlikely to be eradicated with the current social initiatives because of several complex factors. These include the fact that social grants are unable to keep up with inflation in food prices.
Another problem is that recipients use the funds for many non-food necessities – such as clothing and transport costs. Other contributing factors are the gaps in the formulation and implementation of policies to address food insecurity.
There’s also a lack of collaboration from different stakeholders in the food system. For example, policymakers often view food insecurity as a rural issue. So, a majority of initiatives to address the problem focus on solutions related to food production. Yet, urban areas are also vulnerable to food insecurity as they depend more on the cash economy than rural areas.
In view of our findings, government and other stakeholders need to implement creative and targeted social strategies to reduce and eliminate food insecurity in highly vulnerable groups. Improving the economy and education system should be the main areas of focus in addressing social inequalities in the country.
The explosive viral spread of the grainy but dramatic footage shows the limits of mainstream media ethics.
In the days after the killing of rapper Kiernan Jarryd Forbes, known as AKA, and his friend Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane, the murders kept playing out on social media. Again and again, leaked CCTV footage of the two being gunned down was viewed and shared – some 490,000 times in the version of just one Twitter account.
The explosive viral spread of the grainy but dramatic footage shows the limits of mainstream media ethics. Beyond the reach of press and broadcast codes and complaints mechanisms, social media platforms are driven by algorithms that measure and reward success by the millions of clicks. This often means boosting the worst and most sensational material. It’s urgently necessary to find ways of ensuring the platforms show greater responsibility.
Mainstream media ethics, as captured in the South African Press Code and the Broadcasting Code, make it clear that footage of this kind can only be used if there is good reason. Violence should not be glorified, the press code says, and the depiction of violent crime should be avoided “unless the public interest dictates otherwise”.
Public curiosity about the assassinations is undoubtedly high, but it’s not the same as what the codes understand as public interest. That is defined as
information of legitimate interest or importance to citizens.
The concern about material of this kind is less about the possibility of hampering police work, as some have argued, but about the potential harm: the pain caused to a grieving family and the offence caused to audiences by gratuitous and shocking violence. Where the value of material lies more in offering grisly entertainment than in its news value, publication becomes questionable.
Journalists argue there is sometimes a positive obligation to show unpleasant realities. Kelly McBride, vice-president of the US nonprofit media institute Poynter Institute, says some images may have the “power to galvanise the public”, adding:
it’s irresponsible for a news organisation to shield its audience from hard truths.
However, much depends on context and the handling of the images. Responsible editors will include audience advisories so they can opt to avoid the image. Some effort to provide names and other details can help to humanise the victims, evoking more human empathy than simple ghoulish fascination.
In the case of the AKA and Tibs murders, most South African mainstream publishers seem to have taken the view that the circumstances did not justify the publication of the actual shooting. Most simply reported the existence of the footage.
But no such restraint was shown on social media. Fascinated by the sensational murder of a music star, users shared the footage in their tens and hundreds of thousands.
Clearly, professional codes and mechanisms are powerless against a truly viral phenomenon of this sort. The Press Council and the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa handle complaints against mainstream media, but they have no authority over the wider public on social media.
There is increasing concern about the spread of harmful content on social media platforms – not just gratuitous violence, but also hate speech, misinformation and much else. Several governments are developing legislation to fight toxic content. But the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, among others, has voiced concern that the laws may be a pretext to act against dissent.
Peggy Hicks, director of thematic engagement at UN Human Rights, says:
Some governments see this legislation as a way to limit speech they dislike and even silence civil society or other critics.
The social media giants themselves –such as Twitter, Google and Facebook – have emphasised that they are not publishers, simply offering a platform for sharing and, therefore, don’t have to take responsibility. However, they increasingly accept the need for content moderation.
Machines are necessary to cope with the sheer volume of material. But human content moderators have a critical role as artificial intelligence is not always smart enough to deal with complex contexts and linguistic nuance, as emerged in leaks from inside Facebook. Moderators in their thousands have the unenviable task of sifting through a vast and unending flood of truly terrible material, from decapitation to child porn.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) is looking into the regulation of social media platforms. A draft set of guidelines emphasises the need for platforms to have policies based on human rights and to be accountable.
Fundamentally, the platforms’ algorithms operate on a logic of rewarding traffic, which needs to be tempered with considerations of the common good. According to Unesco:
The algorithms integral to most social media platforms’ business models often prioritise engagement over safety and human rights.
Gossip sites in sensationalist feeding frenzy
In the example of the AKA video, sensationalist gossip sites also traded on and drove much of the traffic. A Google search for mentions of the video is dominated by obscure sites using poor language, for whom the video is simply clickbait. Their business model relies on bulk traffic to earn advertising income, and that in turn relies on the platform giants’ algorithms.
That, perhaps, is the most important lesson of the uncontrollable spread of the AKA video: ways need to be found to write elements of information ethics into the platforms’ algorithms. It is deeply damaging to social cohesion to have machine logic systematically boosting the worst and most disturbing material.
- Olasunkanmi Habeeb Okunola and Mulala Danny Simatele
Poverty drives vulnerability to climate risks in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Here are 4 factors that affect how residents adapt.
Climate change is a long-term shift in temperatures and weather patterns. It’s caused by solar cycle variations and human activities such as burning fossil fuels: coal, oil and gas.
In 2022, we saw devastating floods in Nigeria, South Africa, Benin, Madagascar and Central African Republic. The floods damaged livelihoods, critical infrastructure, education and economies.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has warned that unless governments everywhere reassess their energy policies, the world will become uninhabitable. Climate change is a grave and mounting threat to people and the planet. To plan for adapting to this threat, people need to understand what the risks will be.
Climate change adaptation is essential to prevent future infrastructure damage, provide economic opportunities and supply various social and environmental benefits. A critical question is whether African governments are doing enough to support citizens in combating climate change effects.
Our recently published article explored factors influencing residents’ adaptation to climate risks in Port Harcourt, southern Nigeria. Port Harcourt is the fourth largest city in Nigeria. We found that households’ choice of adaptation strategies were greatly influenced by education level, monthly income, house type and house ownership.
We concluded that the government and others like NGOs and private organisations must complement residents’ efforts. There’s also a need for an awareness campaign to make households less vulnerable to climate change risks.
Nigerian households and climate risks
We randomly selected and interviewed 310 households in low, medium, and high-income areas of Port Harcourt from October 2021 to February 2022. We targeted those susceptible to climate change. These included the elderly, women and residents of coastal communities. Port Harcourt is one of African coastal cities predicted to experience coastal flooding and erosion because of rising sea levels.
Awareness of climate risk was high
We found out that 88% of respondents believed that climate change had affected them negatively. These residents were very conscious of climate change impacts, because of the frequent severe flooding in the city.
Poor households are at greater risk
Our findings revealed that flooding was the most devastating and severe climate impact in Port Harcourt. It had significant impacts on critical infrastructure. When asked what they could do to adapt to flood risk in the city, respondents mentioned relocation of residents from risk areas, and repair and replacement of damaged properties.
Their choice of adaptation strategies was greatly influenced by the lack of government support and their income level. Low-income people are attracted to flood-prone areas by cheap housing and access to jobs.
Our data show that households experiencing higher flood risk paid 14% to 56% lower rents in Port Harcourt compared to other communities. And households affected by flooding lived closer to jobs. Low income earners who had been affected by flooding at least once lived 13 minutes closer to work than those who had not been affected. Those who had been affected more than once lived over 25 minutes closer to work than those unaffected by floods.
Homeowners invest more in climate protection measures
Individuals who owned houses had more adaptation strategies – 32% more than those living in rented apartments. Some of the strategies adopted by the homeowners included use of windbreaks, drainage construction in front of their houses, and planting of trees to protect them from sun and wind. The respondents confirmed that they did these things to protect themselves from a threatening event or vulnerability.
Older adults could turn the tide
Our results showed that older adults (55 to 65 years) represented 49% of the people who adopted various adaptation strategies to climate risk in the study area. Asked about their reasons for using these strategies, respondents in all age groups said that older adults had greater resources and represented an engaged and energised group of climate activists who were “rolling up their sleeves” to deal with the climate crisis in their communities.
They added that older adults brought life lessons, skills, experience, wisdom, time, and often economic wealth to address the climate crisis.
The way forward
From our findings, poverty is closely linked to higher climate risk in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Poverty drives vulnerability to climate risk in different ways, from increased risk of exposure to extreme events such as floods and storms to lower access to coping mechanisms that can support resilience.
Consequently, government and civil society organisations should find ways to help residents learn about and use climate change adaptation techniques. This includes building construction in line with the national building codes, protection and restoration of wetlands and tree planting.
State governments and the federal government, development partners, and private sector actors all have a part to play. Their roles include investing in infrastructure, planning effective land use, creating wealth from waste, campaigning to change behaviour and reclaiming green spaces.
Citizens can act too. For example they can build climate-resilient buildings, take up home insurance, warn or help neighbours at risk, and use plants to improve drainage and create a more comfortable environment.
