South Africa’s political monopoly has been broken: could it help the economy?
- Imraan Valodia
South Africa’s more plural political space might bring in new voices that generate better economic policies.
Over the last decade or so there has been something of a revolution in economics. The long held belief that unfettered markets deliver good outcomes for all is now overwhelmingly discredited.
Some of the most prominent economists in the world have been changing their minds about the efficacy of markets. A Nobel Prize-winning economist at Princeton University, Angus Deaton, for example, had this to say in a recent article:
Our emphasis on the virtues of free, competitive markets and exogenous technical change can distract us from the importance of power in setting prices and wages.
On trade unions he said:
I long regarded unions as a nuisance that interfered with economic (and often personal) efficiency and welcomed their slow demise. But today large corporations have too much power over working conditions, wages…
The Nobel Prize winner for 2021, David Card, and his colleagues have shown that minimum wages do not in fact lead to job losses. They can be good economic policy to protect workers.
Much of this rethinking has been in response to economic policies implemented since the early 1970s that favoured unfettered markets, especially in finance and technology. These have led to growing inequality across the world, excessive corporate power and unacceptable concentrations of wealth in a small elite.
The global rethinking of economic policy recognises that to generate inclusive growth, markets need to be carefully regulated. The aim is to ensure that economic power is not concentrated, and that outcomes are good even for those who lack power in market relationships.
But policies to achieve these ends can’t be designed where there is a monopoly of political power. That leads to a monopoly of economic policy formulation, poor interrogation of policy, lip service to the idea of evidence-based policy making, and consequently poor outcomes.
This has certainly been the case in South Africa. But there may be room for optimism following the African National Congress’s loss of its majority in recent elections. What’s followed are efforts to knit together a unity government – essentially an alliance between the African National Congress, which has dominated South Africa at a national level since 1994, and its historical opposition, the Democratic Alliance.
My optimism arises from my sense that a more plural political space might bring in new voices that might generate better economic policies to address South Africa’s key challenges of economic concentration, unemployment and inequality.
Measures to reduce these high levels of inequality through social transfers have been effective. But they have limited effects on the overall level of inequality.
The problem with this pattern of inequality is that it reduces the level of economic growth, because too few people are integrated into the economy. Conversely, when the economy does grow, the benefits of growth go mostly to the upper and wealthier classes. It’s a vicious cycle.
Everyone who is informed about the economic challenges in South Africa would accept that the economy needs to grow. But to address the country’s high levels of unemployment and poverty, and extreme inequality, the benefits of growth will have to be skewed to lower-income groups and marginalised communities.
The government of national unity might offer an opportunity to achieve this.
On the surface, the unity government is unlikely to agree on and implement policies that will generate growth that disproportionately benefits low income groups and marginalised communities. This is because the Democratic Alliance has a long history of arguing against policies like minimum wages.
But the country could move towards the same goal for another reason – that the space has been opened for ideas to be contested.
Political scientist Adam Habib points out that South Africa requires uncertainty and contestability in its politics to ensure that economic growth is not skewed to benefit the political and economic elite.
With greater uncertainty and contestability, political elites are more likely to respond to the concerns of citizens.
When governments are responsive to their citizens, the probability of success increases. That’s one of the findings of economist Daron Acemoglu and political scientist James Robinson, in their study on why some nations succeed and why some fail.
Why new politics may be good for economic policy
It’s worth pointing out two extremely costly errors that have been made in policy. On 16 December 2017, then president Jacob Zuma announced free higher education in South Africa. This decision went against the advice of a commission of inquiry that he himself had appointed. It’s been a costly error and is now impossible to rescind.
Another example is from the late 1990s and early 2000s, when President Thabo Mbeki, against all scientific advice, adopted bizarre views about HIV-Aids. This was a policy error that came at a huge social cost. It delayed the rollout of life-saving antiretroviral drugs, which was only overturned by brave civil society action.
The two examples illustrate the dangers when leaders can take unilateral policy action. A more plural political space will place a lot more pressure on political actors to base their decisions on evidence.
Globally, societies are having to deal with complex challenges: among others, climate change, migration, the growth of artificial intelligence and inequality.
In the coming years, South Africa’s government will be called on to make important policy choices in a complex international political space. It will need to make policy that evaluates choices carefully, based on good research and evidence.
Such an approach to policy development can draw from the country’s strong institutions outside the state. These include excellent universities, a strong and capable civil society, highly capable legal institutions, trade unions with good policy capabilities, and an adept business community.
Cautious optimism
Nothing is certain. There are, however, good reasons to feel a little more optimistic, because of the new pluralism, about being able to address current challenges and those that will emerge.
Whether it happens will depend on how the government performs and also on how institutions outside the state use the political space that has opened up.
And, as the complexity of economic challenges comes to interact with the turbulence of politics, it would be advisable to bear in mind the quote by the famous economist John Maynard Keynes:
Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
Eight steps to get SA's healthcare system on track
- Sharon Fonn et al
Much needs to be done to improve governance of South Africa’s health system. Eight recommendations provide a guide to what needs to be prioritised.
South Africa’s healthcare system suffers from widespread problems in its governance. A number of indicators point to this dysfunction. These include the large number of managers in acting positions, frequent changes in senior leadership, worse health outcomes than similarly resourced countries, and overall deterioration of morale and trust in the public health system.
These indicators confirm that there are system-wide failures. And that much needs to be done to improve governance of the South African health system.
The findings were made by a panel appointed by the Academy of Science of South Africa. The seven-member panel was made up of a multidisciplinary group of South African public health and health systems researchers, academics and practitioners.
The findings underline that poor governance results from many interrelated factors. And that the country’s complex health system is still influenced by its historical context of colonisation, exclusion, fragmentation and inequity.
That said, there are examples of good service and health workers committed to their jobs and to providing good, even excellent care. These “pockets of excellence” can be found across the country and at all levels in the health system. Drawing from these pockets of excellence, we are able to make recommendations about how to improve South Africa’s health system.
We have sought to make recommendations which are clear, informed by evidence, respond to the governance challenges that have been identified and are feasible to implement. Doing nothing may in the long term prove more costly. It will also, among other things, create greater inequality in health in South Africa.
The panel recommends eight steps – in no particular order – to address key governance issues.
The eight steps needed
1.) Define and communicate a clear public value mission and the mandate for each level of the health service and each governance actor.
The National Department of Health has a critical stewardship role to play for the entire health system. It must engage all governance actors in the public value mission of achieving Universal Health Coverage and communicate and institutionalise its goals throughout the health system. This means engaging all sectors, partners and stakeholders in working towards that vision.
The department must set the terms of engagement, create governance arrangements to improve health outcomes, and improve institutional arrangements for accountability within the public and private sectors. Statutory and external regulatory bodies in the health sector, ombud structures and oversight boards should be prioritised.
Staff performance across the health system should be defined by what needs to be achieved rather than simply activities that staff should do. Incentives should promote behaviours and action that will realise the public service mission.
2.) Update legislation and governance structures to insulate them from vested interests and give them executive rather than merely advisory functions.
Accountability structures need to be made effective through the following:
Amend conflicts within legislation that weaken or undermine the delegation of governance roles and accountability.
Implement the recommendations of the Competition Commission’s Health Market Inquiry on private sector regulation. The inquiry found that the South African private healthcare market is characterised by high and rising costs of healthcare and medical scheme cover, significant overutilisation, and an absence of demonstrable associated improvements in health outcomes.
Institutionalise a public value mission in the goals of all health institutions, levels, and sectors which align with and support a national public value mission for the health system.
Establish arrangements to ensure the focus on the public value mission. For example, set up more than one supervisory entity in a given setting, including an external regulator, ombud, or independent board.
Create effective accountability structures to prevent capture from above (politicians or senior managers) and from below (stakeholders’ groups, professional groups, trade unions).
Boards (for example, of statutory bodies) must be structured to ensure separation of entities responsible for nomination and appointing, and removing members. Removal should require a decision by more than one party.
To govern, boards (for example, of hospitals) and committees must have appropriate decision-making powers for the structure, rather than being limited to an advisory role.
3.) Delegate authority appropriately to each level and within levels of the health system.
Each actor must have the authority required to carry out and take responsibility for their work. If the right people were in place, it would be possible to delegate without (or with less) risk. Oversight structures at each level that are insulated from vested interests would generate confidence that each level was operating within its mandate and to standard. Examples include boards and community groups that measure health outcomes or processes.
The design of the proposed National Health Insurance potentially poses substantial risks to decentralisation by shifting many health service functions to the national level. Attention should be paid to clarify roles and responsibilities of various players when it comes to the NHI fund.
Lack of trust in the managing of the fund can be dealt with by making it independent of the Department of Health with appropriate independent oversight structures.
4.) Get the right people – ethical people with the appropriate competencies – into leadership and management positions within the health system.
To achieve this, merit (demonstrating competencies appropriate to the post) must be the primary basis for appointment. Processes, including the criteria for appointments, must be transparent and open to public scrutiny.
5.) Surround managers and leaders with functional, fit-for-purpose systems so that they can do their work.
This includes human resources, procurement and health information systems.
Procurement is a function governed by too many, sometimes contradictory rules. Simplification of the rules and greater delegation to facility and district or sub-district managers is required.
Overly complex procurement systems are inhibiting decentralisation, as the complexity of existing rules makes it difficult for decentralised managers. This does not mean that every facility should be issuing its own medicine tenders. But there is no reason why strong sub-district offices or larger facilities should not be ordering supplies off transversal tenders without multiple layers of high-level signoff.
Primary care facilities should be able to get simple maintenance problems fixed without waiting months or years for higher level or Public Works Department approval. This lack of delegated powers together with overly complex rules on budgets and procurement is crippling the effective functioning of many community facilities.
The reforms needed on procurement include:
delegation of procurement powers to facility managers
e-procurement systems, electronic catalogues with improved price benchmarking, electronic stock management systems, barcoding, and faster simplified electronic ordering systems
inclusion of medical supplies and equipment in transversal tenders to achieve economies of scale.
6.) Support managers at every level with the resources, understanding and ability to build teams and attend to the relationships that make complex systems work.
Systems of accountability need to be strengthened. However, they must also allow for innovation and learning from mistakes, supporting mentorship and training.
Resources across the country in both the public and private sectors must be harnessed to improve management capacity. Partnerships with research and academic institutions have demonstrated success in the past. The department of health should consider identifying districts to be supported by relevant university departments to strengthen their management capacity and approach.
7.) Harness the potential of community participation in an authentic way to ensure appropriate, respectful and responsive health services and to monitor health service outcomes and processes.
For community governance structures, clear steps are needed to strengthen clinic committees, hospital boards and other entities.
8.) Act on dereliction of duty and acts of corruption and protect whistle-blowers.
To be effective, governance must be understood to be a distributed function that has to operate at all levels. Role clarification and delegation of authority will promote distributed governance.
The public sector’s human resources system in its current form does not advance accountability, as it does not sufficiently distinguish good from poor performance. Decisions such as promotion, continued employment or incentives must be linked to objective assessment based on performance data. Health managers in particular need clearer alignment between HR performance assessment and consequence management.
Managers need to be empowered to act against dereliction of duty. Insufficient consequence management will encourage corruption and incompetent performance.
Managers who do not act against dereliction of duty must be held to account. Delegation and greater local control over HR processes will make this easier.
Action against corruption also requires intervention beyond the health system along with improved functioning by state investigative and related authorities.
Implementation
These recommendations may not be simple to implement. But failure to grasp these opportunities will render Universal Health Coverage even more unlikely and, instead, lead to the situation in which quality healthcare becomes available to only a minority of South Africans.
The panel believes that these recommendations balance the centralisation-decentralisation tension that is present in all health systems. The recent signing of the National Health Insurance Act emphasises the risks of implementing a national health insurance system within the current context of weak governance in both the private and public sectors.
Catching online scammers: Our model combines data and behavioural science.
When fiction’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, needed to solve a crime, he turned to his sharp observational skills and deep understanding of human nature. He used this combination more than once when facing off against his arch-nemesis, Dr James Moriarty, a villain adept at exploiting human weaknesses for his gain.
This classic battle mirrors today’s ongoing fight against cybercrime. Like Moriarty, cybercriminals use cunning strategies to exploit their victims’ psychological vulnerabilities. They send deceptive emails or messages that appear to be from trusted sources such as banks, employers, or friends. These messages often contain urgent requests or alarming information to provoke an immediate response.
For example, a phishing email might claim there has been suspicious activity on a victim’s bank account and prompt them to click on a link to verify their account details. Once the victim clicks the link and enters their information, the attackers capture their credentials for malicious use. Or individuals are manipulated into divulging confidential information to compromise their own or a company’s security.
Holmes had to outsmart Moriarty by understanding and anticipating his moves. Modern cybersecurity teams and users must stay vigilant and proactive to outmanoeuvre cybercriminals who continuously refine their deceptive tactics.
What if those trying to prevent cybercrime could harness Holmes’s skills? Could those skills complement existing, more data-driven ways of identifying potential threats? I am a professor of information systems whose research focuses on, among other things, integrating data science and behavioural science through a sociotechnical lens to investigate the deceptive tactics used by cybercriminals.
Recently, I worked with Shiven Naidoo, a Master’s student in data science, to understand how behavioural science and data science could join forces to combat cybercrime.
Our study found that, just as Holmes’s analytical genius and his sidekick Dr John Watson’s practical approach were complementary, behavioural scientists and data scientists can collaborate to make cybercrime detection and prevention models more effective.
Combining disciplines
Data science uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract knowledge and insights from structured and unstructured data.
When its powerful algorithms are applied to complex and large datasets they can identify patterns that indicate potential cyber threats. Predictive analysis helps cybersecurity teams anticipate and prevent large-scale attacks. This is done through, for instance, detecting anomalies in sentence structure to spot scams.
However, relying solely on data science often overlooks the human factors that drive cybercriminal behaviour.
The behavioural sciences study human behaviour. They consider the principles that influence decision-making and compliance. We drew extensively from US psychologist Robert Cialdini’ssocial influence model in our study.
This model has been applied in cybersecurity studies to explain how cybercriminals exploit psychological tendencies.
For example, cybercriminals exploit humans’ tendency to be obedient to authority by impersonating trusted figures to spread disinformation. They also exploit urgency and scarcity principles to prompt hasty actions. Social proof – the tendency to follow the actions of those similar to us – is another tool, used to manipulate users into complying with fraudulent requests. For instance, cybercriminals might create fake reviews or testimonials, prompting users to fall for a scam.
Combining insights
We adapted the social influence model to detect cybercriminal tactics in scam datasets by combining behavioural and data science. Scam datasets consist of unstructured data, which includes complex text data such as phishing emails and fake social media posts. Our data consisted of known scams such as phishing and other malicious activities. It came from FraudWatch International’s Cyber Intelligence Datafeed, which collects information on cybercrime incidents.
It’s tough to draw insights from unstructured data. Models can’t easily discern between meaningful data points and those that are irrelevant or misleading (we call it “noisy data”). Data scientists rely on feature engineering to cut through the noise. This process identifies and labels meaningful data points using knowledge from other fields.
We used domain knowledge from behavioural science to engineer and label meaningful features in unstructured scam data. Scams were labelled based on how they used Cialdini’s social influence principles, transforming raw text data into meaningful features. For example, a phishing email might use the principle of urgency by saying “your account will be locked in 24 hours if you do not respond!”. The raw text is transformed into a meaningful feature labelled “urgency,” which can be analysed for patterns. Then we used machine learning to analyse and visualise the labelled dataset.
The results showed that certain social influence principles such as “liking” and “authority” were frequently used together in scams. We also found that phishing scams often employed a mix of several principles. This made them more sophisticated and harder to detect.
The results gave us valuable insights into how often different types of social influence principles (such as urgency, trust, familiarity) are exploited by cybercriminals, as well as where more than one type is used at a time. Analysing unstructured text data like phishing emails and fake social media posts allowed us to identify patterns that indicated manipulative tactics.
Overall, our work yielded high quality insights from complex scam datasets.
Further applications
It’s important to mention that our dataset was not exhaustive. However, we believe our results are invaluable for mining insights from complex cybercrime data. This kind of analysis can be used by cybersecurity professionals, data scientists, cybersecurity firms and organisations involved in cybersecurity research. It can help improve automated detection systems and inform targeted training.
The clumsy rules for employers to get training money back actually encourages them to give poor data.
Continually tweaking behaviour via incentives, rules, and tools has led to a system that is simply too complex for its own good. Read Part Two of the series here.
Dear Minister Nobuhle Nkabane,
As academics who have worked closely with your department over many years, we welcome your appointment to lead higher education and training, convinced that you will bring renewed energy and fresh insights to an area critical to the future of our country’s young people and its economic success.
It is often said that South Africa has a skills crisis, and that our education system doesn’t meet the needs of the economy. But we have an elaborate national system that asks employers every year what skills they need.
So, why is training not meeting the country’s needs?
Simply put, the rules and tools set up over the years to consult employers and fund their training requirements are too complex. Well-intentioned policymakers have added unnecessary complexity time and again, creating too many tools to do too many things.
They end up doing none of them well and sometimes incentivise negative outcomes. Clumsy and tedious funding processes and complex, overly elaborate regulatory oversight complete the picture. The result is little coherent direction from the state in priority areas, and an inability by employers to prioritise the training they need.
Effective leadership
As the new minister, you could provide refreshed and effective leadership with a few simple changes. This is not about new policy, just simplification and streamlining.
The system was designed to understand the skills employers need within the context of specific industries, and to encourage and support them to do the required training.
Employers with an annual payroll exceeding R500,000 pay a levy allocated via the tax system to Sector Education and Training Authorities (Setas). They in turn give 20% of the money back when employers submit an annual workplace skills plan and training report.
The idea is for these documents to provide insight into employers’ skills needs and show what training is taking place. Setas and the government can then direct funds to meeting training gaps by funding areas not covered by workplace training.
The assumption is that because this data identifies the skills employers need, it can be used to formulate sectoral training planned by Setas. It also informs the list of Occupations in High Demand developed by the government, and a critical skills list that guides the allocation of certain work visas.
The problem in the real world is that current data from employers gives very poor insight into skills needs. In some cases, employers only get their money back from the Setas if their training report matches their previous plan. This incentivises them to propose only training that will be easily achieved.
The clumsy rules for employers to get training money back actually encourages them to give poor data. Some employers also only list those training programmes that will be funded by Seta. This might sound crazy, but it is the result of overly complex policy.
Labour force trends
Plans developed by Setas have two main funding mechanisms for skills provision: earmarked “funding windows” during which employers and training providers can apply, and bursaries. Setas decide on these based on the aggregated data obtained from employers, as well as analysis of labour force trends and other research.
So, for example, employers list production workers as scarce even when they are not because they know they will need to train new employees, and grants are made available for scarce skills training. This way, they get back their levy funds to do the core training they need to do every year.
Another example: where employers have crucial training by international providers often linked to suppliers of specific technology, they can’t get funding because these trainers are not accredited in South Africa. This essential training by highly regarded international providers is valued and needed by employers.
So, some employers simply don’t report skills gaps in these areas because it’s a waste of their time as they won’t get money back for it.
Broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) employment scorecard reporting adds further complexity, and additional perverse incentives. Some employers report on skills gaps to obtain funded learnerships as cheap labour, with no plan to hire trainees once they have completed their courses. With no real skills gaps, training funding gives them subsidised labour.
The system does try to deal with this: the BBBEE scorecard rewards employers if they hire staff they train. The result is that large employers reduce the amount of training they do in crucial trades, because they don’t want to be reporting training above their own skills needs for fear of being penalised for not hiring trainees once they qualify.
This way, fewer young people are trained as artisans who could work in small businesses inside big companies’ value chains, and are lost to the relevant industries.
Continually tweaking behaviour via incentives, rules, and tools has led to a system that is simply too complex for its own good.
There are other problems facing employers in reporting their skills needs. They have to describe their workforce against the codes of the Organising Framework for Occupations, which many find cumbersome and hard to relate to their own organograms, job descriptions, and concrete requirements.
So, transaction costs are huge. Additionally, the annual nature of the process mitigates against long-term planning.
Equally significantly, many employers don’t participate at all. No insights are obtained from non-levy-paying members, and there is very little engagement with smaller companies, making the national data incomplete in significant ways.
As a result, the government and the Setas collect data from employers that is essentially meaningless and incomplete within the context of the overall economy, then use it for planning through clumsy funding systems.
Setas are supposed to be tripartite structures, accounting to employers, unions, and the government. So why are employers’ voices not stronger in the design of these systems?
Again, we have good intentions backfiring. In reality, Setas are ultimately responsible to the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), not the tripartite structures. The DHET oversees their annual performance plans and adjudicates the strength of their sector skills programmes.
The aim is positive – to make sure the Setas are doing what they should. But it does so within a complex and over-designed system that reduces oversight to box ticking instead of strategic assessment. The state is left checking allocations against designated windows, instead of making strategic decisions about economic and educational priorities.
Recently gazetted changes to the rules and tools for skills planning address little of this because they don’t reduce complexity or change lines of accountability.
Anticipating skills requirements across a complex economy like South Africa’s is not a simple exercise. International and local research shows that employers struggle to articulate their skills needs.
But some small changes could substantially improve the data South Africa collects and how it is used. For example, Stats SA could regularly assess and analyse workplace skills needs by industry and for the whole economy.
Developing insight at a sectoral level also requires understanding the skills needs of non-levy-paying companies. Industry associations could be helpful here.
SETAs could be important intermediaries between the worlds of education and work, but only if they spend more time in high-level engagement with employers on their real training needs, planning and funding accordingly.
Stephanie Allais is Professor of Education and Research Chair of Skills Development at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour, University of the Witwatersrand. Siphelo Ngcwangu is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Johannesburg. This article was first published in the Daily Maverick.
Part 2: It’s time to get vocational education right
- Stephanie Allais
TVET colleges must be strengthened to provide niche, high-quality training to counter the reality of their students’ weak, prior educational achievements.
This is expensive, but worth it if it produces the skilled artisans the economy needs. Read Part One in the series here.
Youth unemployment is one of our country’s most serious crises. Many believe that job training, known internationally as vocational education, is the answer.
In countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland, a well-established vocational training system funnels a majority of 15- to 20-year-olds into skilled work. But as in many other countries, our system has always been weak.
As a result, 30 years have been spent continuously reforming vocational colleges. They have been renamed, restructured, given new governance models and shaped and reshaped by shifting programme types, curricula, qualification policies and quality assurance arrangements. Further changes are currently underway.
Still, pockets of excellence exist in some technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges, ensuring dynamic relationships with employers and good employment outcomes for individuals.
But the people working in these colleges and getting it right do so in the face of almost inhuman odds. It is time to support them and their colleagues in other TVETs, rather than overwhelm them with constant change.
Three key problem areas
First, colleges are supposed to ensure a regular flow of artisans to an economy short of skilled, qualified staff. At the same time, they are expected to absorb masses of young people who have fared poorly in formal education, giving them skills for work which, in reality, is not available. The same institutions cannot play both of these roles effectively.
Vocational education is not a silver bullet for youth unemployment or economic development. Almost no countries outside Europe have strong mass vocational education systems. It is difficult to get vocational education right.
The location of TVET colleges in the broader skill formation system puts them in an almost impossible position between a generally weak school system, a relatively strong university system, and a low-growth economy with chronically high unemployment.
The pull of universities is strong because a degree vastly increases employment prospects. So those who can, head to university.
University student numbers have been deliberately and substantially increased over the past 30 years. This leaves TVET colleges to take students with generally weak school results.
This structural problem can’t be quickly or easily solved. But we need to face the fact that it is South Africa’s reality.
Specialised training needed
TVET colleges must be strengthened so they can provide niche, high-quality training to counter the reality of their students’ weak prior educational achievements. This is expensive, but worth it if it produces the skilled artisans the economy needs.
Second, the colleges have had to deal with a shifting set of qualifications and quality assurance arrangements, associated with changing curriculum and assessment models, intake periods and funding mechanisms.
The “N” qualifications are, today, trimester offerings emerging from the old apprenticeship system. In the past, students would attend technical college for three months to learn theory followed by nine months in the workplace. By design, these three-month courses have no practical component because students do the practical in the workplace. The old system included a nationally prescribed curriculum and examinations.
The system’s decline dates back to the late apartheid era. When the old apprenticeship system began to be discarded in the 1980s, courses became full-time. By 1994, the apprenticeship system was tiny, and work placements were rare. Programmes offered by colleges became separated from the remains of the apprenticeship system.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the labour minister announced the replacement of apprenticeships with a new system of learnerships, against outcomes-based national qualifications registered on a national framework.
Public and private institutions offering these qualifications would have to be accredited by the relevant Sector Education and Training Authorities (Setas), reporting at the time to the minister of labour.
The NCV system
A new qualification, the National Certificate Vocational (NCV) was developed by the Department of Education as an alternative to matric. However, employers did not want to let go of the apprenticeship system for a new approach they didn’t know or trust. So the “N” trimester qualifications and the apprenticeship system were not phased out.
Employers viewed the NCV as both too general to meet their specific needs, and not general enough to allow for foundational learning skills to be developed. Colleges were poorly prepared to teach the NCV; students were poorly prepared to enrol for it, and throughput rates were disastrous.
The framework changed in 2009, creating a new body, the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO). It developed new occupational qualifications, and the quality assurance arrangements changed again. So colleges had to be accredited by the QCTO while in many cases still working through the Setas.
Confused? Imagine working in a college at the receiving end of constant criticism for poor throughput and failing to meet the needs of the economy.
At the same time, the qualifications and quality assurance arrangements led to the third problem area – institutional form and funding mechanisms.
A question of funding
Two completely different sets of institutional logic operate in the same institutions simultaneously: a bureaucratic delivery model and an aspirational entrepreneurial one. They exist side by side because of how funding works. Colleges manage this by creating separate units, centres or components that operate according to the relevant logic of each model.
The N and NCV qualifications are funded through teacher posts, and managed and examined by the Department of Higher Education and Training against learner enrolment targets it sets. The occupational qualifications require colleges to be accredited and apply for funding through the skills levy.
The latter model assumes private and public education and training providers are nimble institutions, able to adopt programme offerings based on annual funding windows. This is difficult for any educational institution because it does not allow forward planning and hiring staff with appropriate expertise in long-term appointments.
Any substantive educational programme takes time to design, offer and lead students to a qualification. Making programmes dependent on short-term funding is particularly difficult for weak institutions, but even when they are strong, they struggle. In the training context, labour market responsiveness should be seen in the medium and not the short term.
The challenge is that colleges serving mostly poor students with weak educational achievement carry an enormous burden of expectations within the context of constant policy reform and muddled governance and funding.
Lecturers are expected to be three things at the same time: entrepreneurially minded sellers of qualifications; sophisticated navigators of a highly complex accreditation, qualifications and quality-assurance system; and teachers of a prescribed curriculum leading to a national exam through a state-funded system managed by a national government department.
Winds of change
And as if this was not enough, change is in the air again. The main TVET offering, N qualifications, is being phased out. Colleges have been instructed that 2024 is the last year in which they can enrol students against lower-level N qualifications.
Not officially discussed are the substantial differences in funding and regulatory models, and how they will be managed. The DHET has signalled that colleges will continue to receive funding at current levels at least during the phasing in of the new model, but the future is less clear.
The system requires TVET colleges to gain accreditation against registered occupational qualifications in areas identified as occupations in high demand. Funding will allow them to offer specific programmes in competition with each other and private providers.
This is a huge change, and it is unclear if many colleges can cope with it.
Colleges can’t solve youth unemployment. But they can play an important role in the economy and their communities, with a simplified vision, simpler funding, and a national government that supports institution-building.
Strong institutions can be responsive. The DHET should support and build these institutions driven by a stable, realistic and simpler vision of what they can and should achieve.
Stephanie Allais is a Professor of Education at the Centre for Researching Education and Labour, at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she holds a South African National Research Chair in Skills Development. This article was first published in the Daily Maverick.
SA needs a game-changer to fix joblessness crisis
- Imraan Valodia
The country needs fresh thinking to shift the economy onto a more employment-intensive growth path.
Everyone agrees that solving the unemployment problem in South Africa is the number one priority for economic policy for the new government, as it has been for all governments since 1994. What is less clear, and highly contested, is what should be done to solve this problem.
It’s worth starting by acknowledging that the problem is complex and there are no easy solutions. It is important to understand why unemployment is such a vexed problem, why it has remained a feature of the post-apartheid labour market, why some parts of the problem are found in other countries and why others are unique to South Africa. And how solving unemployment may be related to wider economic policies.
But address it South Africa must – because it’s the primary driver of inequality, a root cause of other social and economic problems, and a massive waste of human resources.
The official unemployment rate is 32.9%. If discouraged workers are included (people who have given up trying to find jobs), the unemployment rate is 41.9%. For young people, aged 15-24, the unemployment rate is 59.7%. If discouraged workers are included, about 11.2 million South Africans are unemployed.
Seriously tackling unemployment requires being clear about a few things.
First, it’s important to understand why unemployment in South Africa is so high. There are two main sets of issues – some global (such as changing employment patterns), and some specific to South Africa (such as the legacy left by the country’s apartheid past.)
What I conclude is that addressing South Africa’s unemployment challenge requires some new thinking and an acknowledgement that policies that seek to deregulate the labour market are no solution.
South Africa requires policies to increase the demand for labour – that means finding a new growth trajectory that is employment intensive. These could involve much greater public investment in rural areas and townships – addressing backlogs in infrastructure like transport that is important for linking people to markets – as well as promoting the informal economy and small businesses.
The country also needs a game-changer to get the economy onto a labour absorbing path. One possibility is fighting climate change. South Africa has a high natural advantage in the production of solar and wind renewable energy. More investment in renewables and the related manufacturing and services activities which go into the production of clean energy and which require clean energy as a key input has the potential to shift the economy in a way that generates employment.
The drivers of unemployment
Two global issues driving unemployment are important.
First, across the world, for much of the last three decades, technology has been changing at a rapid pace – computer technologies were followed by digital technologies and then artificial intelligence.
Technological change has had a significant impact on jobs. In net terms, it has reduced the number of jobs and wages, especially for low-skill occupations, and increased incomes for high-skill occupations.
Second, China’s incorporation into global production systems has had large effects on employment across the world. Harvard economist Richard Freeman has called this the “great doubling” of the global labour force. The result has been that production has moved to China, and reduced employment elsewhere.
The key South African issues are also twofold.
First is the distorting impact of apartheid on the labour system. There are three effects worth mentioning:
One of the most deleterious effects was that most Black women were not allowed to live in the cities, and therefore could not work for wages. Under apartheid, most of these women were classified as “economically inactive” and therefore not in the labour market. With the end of apartheid, there was a large increase in women migrating into the urban cities. In the post-apartheid period, these women were enumerated as economically active and since most were unable to find work, they swelled the ranks of workers classified as unemployed. This led to a large increase in the official unemployment rate, although many of those women were unemployed in the previous period – they were just not classified as such. Daniela Casale and Dori Posel have done excellent research on this issue.
As highlighted by the South African sociologist Harold Wolpe, the homelands and rural areas served essentially as spaces for women, children and retired men to live in, without any serious productive economic activity in these areas. Homelands were rural areas the apartheid government demarcated for black people to live in. This stripped them of any rights to live in, or work without a special pass in, what the government declared were “whites only” areas which made up 87% of the country.
The apartheid state crushed much of the entrepreneurial activity among Black South Africans to force African men to migrate to work in the mining industry. This was researched exhaustively by, among others, the South African historian Colin Bundy.
The second national issue affecting the job market is that while employment has risen and new jobs have been created, the size of the labour force is increasing at a faster rate than the net number of new jobs created.
What won’t work
So what’s the solution?
One argument put forward is that the South African labour market is over-regulated. That there is too much protection for workers, and wage levels are too high for employers.
An additional argument is that workers’ skills do not match what is needed by employers.
All of these see the problem on the supply side of the labour market. That is, unemployment is caused by workers expecting a wage that is too high, not having the right skills, or expecting too much protection.
Proponents of this view argue that reducing protection and reducing wages will allow the labour market to clear and unemployment will fall.
There are a number of reasons why such a strategy will not work.
First, it ignores the country’s history and trends. Second, depressing wages is not politically feasible and will lead to growing inequality in South Africa. Third, it underplays the key issue: the economy, even when it is growing, is generating fewer jobs than the increase in the labour force.
Some solutions
So, what might be a policy package that could address unemployment in South Africa?
The economy has to shift to a growth pattern that increases the demand for labour. Some elements of this would include:
Much greater public investment in rural areas and townships, to generate better economic integration in these areas, and boost the demand for labour. Examples of this include investment in transport systems, telecommunications, systems that promote exports.
More accommodating macroeconomic policies – essentially, public expenditure and taxation and monetary policy such as interest rate policies – that promote employment-intensive growth. South Africa’s monetary policies have focused on reducing inflation, through high interest rates. High interest rates might attract capital to South Africa, but they do very little to encourage firms to invest in production and related activity, which creates jobs. The country’s macro policies should be focused more on promoting investment by firms to generate employment. This is not to suggest that inflation control is not important, but a better focus on employment is also needed.
South Africa’s informal economy is small compared to its peers. Policies for greater public investment in marginalised areas will boost informal work opportunities.
More investment in renewables and related production which requires clean energy, to take advantage of the country’s high natural advantages. There are two components to this – manufacturing all the inputs for rolling out renewables and also using clean energy to produce goods that are classified as “green goods”.
This is the game-changer that could change the trajectory of South Africa’s economy.
How old are South African fossils like the Taung Child?
- Francis Thackeray
Using a method applied directly to ancient hominin teeth, researchers have calculated the age of several important fossils.
One hundred years ago the discovery of a skull in South Africa’s North West province altered our understanding of human evolution. The juvenile skull was dubbed the Taung Child by Raymond Dart, an anatomist at the University of the Witwatersrand, who first described it. In 1924 Dart could not say exactly how old it was, but he announced that it belonged to a new species which he named Australopithecus africanus. It was the first evidence that confirmed British naturalist Charles Darwin’s assertion that apes and humans shared a long-ago common ancestor and that humanity originated from Africa.
Following on from the Taung Child, new discoveries of Australopithecus africanus were made, many at Sterkfontein, about 70km south-west of Pretoria. Sterkfontein is located within the “Cradle of Humankind”, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site.
In the century since the Taung Child was found and described, a great debate has developed about the geological ages of the Australopithecus fossils found at Sterkfontein as well as those from Taung and a third site, Makapansgat.
Now the controversy may be a step closer to resolution. With my colleague Sue Dykes (who sadly passed away in 2019), I have used a different approach, applied directly to the fossil teeth of hominins (distant relatives of humankind), to estimate the Sterkfontein Australopithecus fossils’ ages. Our results for Member 4 suggest that the fossils range in age between about 2 million and 3.5 million years. This spans a period wider than previously thought, encompassing the ages estimated by the opposing teams.
Our method also allowed us to date the Taung Child to 2.58 million years ago.
We believe our method is accurate. But there will, no doubt, be other studies using other methods. We are dealing with a question that’s vexed scientists for decades and the quest to definitively say when these ancient members of our family tree existed in South Africa will continue.
One issue that hangs on the answer is the identification of the region from which our genus (Homo) originated: was it in South Africa or east Africa, from an ancestral australopithecine species?
Varying methods
One reason it’s been difficult to accurately date the Sterkfontein Australopithecus is that the initial discoveries were made in the course of mining for limestone, using dynamite. That means the context of the fossils was lost.
However, at Sterkfontein and elsewhere in South Africa, fossils have been found of animal species also found in east Africa. Volcanic deposits in east Africa have traces of potassium (K) and argon (Ar) which allow for accurate K/Ar radiometric dating.
Unfortunately active volcanoes did not occur in South Africa in the period of concern, between 2 million and 5 million years ago. But comparisons can be made between fossils of species from the two areas, including bovids (antelope such as wildebeest, hartebeest and kudu), suids (such as warthogs), and monkeys as well as gelada baboons.
Since the east African fossils can be well dated using the accurate K/Ar radiometric method, the ages of the same species in South Africa can be estimated. This approach is referred to as biochronology and is how one set of researchers in the debate reached their conclusion: that the Sterkfontein fossils from Member 4 are between 2 million and 2.6 million years old. Essentially the same ages have been obtained from uranium-lead and palaeomagnetic studies.
The group that sets the fossils’ ages at between 3.4 million and 3.7 million years old, meanwhile, used an approach called cosmogenic nuclide dating. They reached their conclusions by using the elements beryllium and aluminium to estimate the ages of chert (a type of sedimentary rock) in the Sterkfontein cave deposits associated with hominin fossils from Member 4.
Our approach
We also used a biochronological approach for dating. But, rather than using animal teeth, we worked directly from measurements of the Australopithecus fossils’ teeth.
We examined ratios of length and breadth of the lower first molars of east African hominins. Then, using an equation that we developed, we quantified a relationship between those ratios and geological age for our sample of Tanzanian, Kenyan and Ethiopian fossils, including Australopithecus afarensis and early Homo species such as H. habilis. The dates for these have been well established.
Under an assumption that the age of South African fossils representing the same genera could be estimated from the same relationship, we applied the equation to lower first molar teeth from Sterkfontein, notably to those attributed to Australopithecus as well as early Homo, for which tooth ratios could be determined. In this way we have been able to obtain dates for individual molars.
Our approach has been applied to molar teeth of the Taung Child, with a new result of 2.58 million years for this specimen of Australopithecus africanus.
Two teeth of Australopithecus from Makapansgat have also been dated using our method. The specimens are 3.07 million and 3.00 million years old, respectively. This is in good agreement with earlier estimates using palaeomagnetism.
We have also used our method to try to date fossils attributed to the hominin species referred to as Australopithecus sediba, found at Malapa near Sterkfontein. Our dates for two teeth representing this species (catalogued as MH1 and MH2) are respectively 2.14 million and 1.93 million years. This corresponds extremely well with the age of 1.98 million years obtained through methods using uranium, lead and palaeomagnetism.
We are particularly grateful to Jacopo Moggi-Cecchi for providing some of the measurements used in our study.
The 25th International AIDS Conference is currently happening in Germany. Here are five essential reads on breakthroughs, blind spots and new challenges.
In June 1981 The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a rare form of pneumonia in young gay men in California. Although they didn’t know it at the time, these were the first documented cases of AIDS.
In 1983, HIV – the virus responsible for AIDS – was isolated by virologists from the Institut Pasteur.
Since then 85.6 million people have become infected with HIV and 40.4 million people have died from AIDS-related illnesses.
In the early years the disease was known as the “gay plague” because it only seemed to affect homosexual men.
We now know that HIV is far from being a “gay” disease.
Today women are disproportionately affected by HIV compared to men, with young women most at risk. In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women accounted for more than 77% of new infections among young people aged 15 to 24 years in 2022.
The 25th International AIDS Conference takes place from 22 to 26 July in Munich, Germany. It will bring together people living with HIV, scientists, policymakers, healthcare professionals and communities to share knowledge learnt from the HIV response over the past 40 years.
At The Conversation Africa, we have published many insightful articles on one of the greatest contemporary challenges in human health. Here are five of them.
Viable option
One of the most significant medical advances against HIV in the past 40 years is pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP drugs.
These drugs reduce the risk of contracting HIV through sexual contact, and can be taken either as an injection or as a daily pill.
A recent clinical trial in South Africa and Uganda of 5,000 young women showed a twice-yearly injection of the PrEP drug lenacapavir was 100% effective against infection.
Not only is this a medical milestone, as Linda-Gail Bekker explains. For young women who can’t keep pills without facing stigma or violence, an injection just twice a year is the option that could keep them free of HIV.
Taunts and abuse
In South Africa unfair discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is against the law.
But in practice many African cultures view same-sex relationships and sexual intercourse as taboo and unAfrican.
A study of men who have sex with men in the Zulu community revealed stigma rooted in cultural beliefs was rife. Participants reported ridicule and abuse, often triggering depression, suicide and drug abuse.
As a consequence of this, many were too scared to check their HIV status or seek medical care at local health clinics. As one study participant said:
I would rather die with my sickness than use such facilities.
Ikekhwa Albert Ikhile’s article highlights the need to make healthcare more accessible for vulnerable populations.
The ‘grey’ epidemic
Most HIV prevention and treatment programmes and policies in South Africa remain focused on adolescents and young adults. A growing group of middle-aged and older adults with HIV, or at high risk, are being left behind.
This is a decade-long project in the rural north-eastern part of South Africa gaining a deeper understanding of the “greying” HIV epidemic, those people over 40 years old.
Researchers found that sexual activity was common among this age group: 56% of respondents had had sexual activity in the past 24 months. One in four were living with HIV and social stigma discouraged them from getting tested.
When sex is against the law
Studies elsewhere on the continent also found young people with sexual or gender diversity were at higher risk of stopping their HIV treatment, not only because of stigma but because of harsh laws.
Across 13 countries in east and southern Africa, laws and policies criminalised same-sex sexual relations.
Research in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia found criminal laws and negative cultural and religious beliefs produced deeply rooted intolerance around sexual or gender diversity.
Researchers Kaymarlin Govender and Patrick Nyamaruze report that participants spoke about verbal harassment, gossip and physical violence.
Overall 42% had contemplated suicide at least once. According to an 18-year-old:
I feel like I am nothing, I am useless … And, sometimes, I decide if I can die today, I can rest.
Getting treatment to migrant women
In 2020, it was estimated that there were 4 million migrants in South Africa, some of whom were women living with HIV. The public health system had struggled to respond to this mobile population.
The COVID lockdown made the situation worse.
Migrant women who left Gauteng province and then tried to return to collect their medication couldn’t do so, because of border and lockdown restrictions. Others were denied care because they didn’t have documentation.
There were also reports of mistreatment and xenophobic attitudes from healthcare providers.
Melanie Bisnauth writes that providing effective treatment for more mobile populations is key to bringing down infections for all and working towards the 2030 goal of ending the HIV epidemic.
Lessons from the inquest judgment of the Life Esidimeni tragedy
- Lesley Robertson
Holding two public officials responsible for the Life Esidimeni tragedy is a legal milestone. It also highlights the consequences of putting costs over care.
A South African high court ruling marks an important milestone in holding public officials to account for their decisions.
As a result of the ruling, Qedani Mahlangu, who was the health minister for Gauteng province, and Makgabo Manamela, who was the province’s mental health director, can now be prosecuted for nine of the 144 deaths that occurred following the transfer of people with mental disability out of Life Healthcare Esidimeni hospitals in 2015 and 2016.
In October 2015 Mahlangu announced the health department was terminating its contract with Life Esidimeni in line with the Mental Health Care Act, “which encourages mental health care practitioners to treat mental health care users in the least restrictive environment”, and to save costs.
What followed was one of the most shameful episodes of the past 30 years.
In her oral judgment on 10 July 2024, judge Mmonoa Teffo said Mahlangu, through the decision to terminate the contract, and Manamela, through implementation of the project, were responsible for the catastrophe.
They can both now be criminally charged.
As a psychiatrist with many years’ experience in academia and working in communities, this is, to my knowledge, the first time in democratic South Africa that government health officials have been held personally responsible for the consequences of a political decision.
It also highlights the devastating consequences of not looking after the country’s most vulnerable citizens, and putting perceived cost before outcomes.
Most helpless
It’s worth remembering just how vulnerable the people staying at the Life Esidimeni hospitals were. They lived with chronic neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and dementia, often more than one of these conditions.
The impact of these was such that living in their communities had been difficult. One person with chronic schizophrenia had reportedly lived at an Esidimeni hospital for 40 years.
Most people staying at Life Esidimeni facilities were admitted under the Mental Health Care Act as “assisted mental health care users” by trained medical professionals, meaning that they were assisted in the decision regarding their care by a family member or custodian and two mental health practitioners.
Essentially, terminating the contract overruled decisions made by families and trained professionals, ostensibly to save money.
How the tragedy unfolded
In October 2015, Mahlangu announced the Gauteng health department would end its decades-long contract with Life Esidimeni, a cluster of privately run mental healthcare facilities.
The contract had ensured the provision of medium- to long-stay hospital care for people with severe mental disabilities.
Mahlangu justified the decision as a “project” to deinstitutionalise patients in line with national policy, but said the reason for the decision was that the contract was unaffordable.
Ending the contract meant about 1,700 mental health patients had to be relocated out of the Life Esidimeni hospitals to alternative care.
By the end of June 2016, some users were sent home to their families, just over 200 were transferred to provincial tertiary academic psychiatric hospitals, and over 1,200 were moved to either a state-run care centre or one of 27 residential homes run by non-governmental organsations (NGOs).
The process was chaotic. The lack of planning meant that many of the non-governmental homes were unsuitable, understaffed, and lacking experience in providing the type of care required.
It was later revealed many NGOs were fraudulently licensed and inadequately subsidised by the health department.
Gauteng’s former head of health, Tiego Selebano, later admitted under oath to signing and backdating NGO licences – even after patients had died.
Some mental healthcare users with different diagnoses and medical needs were transported to the various NGOs in open pickup trucks.
Families were not informed of the whereabouts of their loved ones, confidential patient records were lost or damaged, and people were at times bounced between multiple NGOs.
As early as September 2016 it was clear that things had gone tragically wrong. Mahlangu announced in the Gauteng legislature that 36 people had died as a result of the policy.
By the time the inquest presided over by Teffo began its work in July 2021 the death toll had risen to 144.
Last in line
I was a member of the Sedibeng district mental health team during the Life Esidimeni tragedy. We received 63 mental healthcare users, who were placed in five different non-governmental organisations.
At Life Esidimeni, users were allocated R320 or just under $18 per day. Now, apart from the NGO subsidy of R112 or just over $6 per user per day, no additional resources were allocated to our (or any other) district.
However, the care we provided required intensive collaboration between the mental health team, the family medicine and primary healthcare practitioners, and the non-governmental organisations.
Already short staffed, routine clinical services gave way to the immediate needs of highly distressed, fragile people coming from Life Esidimeni.
The process was such that it seemed decision-makers and government officials did not have to uphold the eight Batho Pele – or “People First” – principles for public service: consultation, service standards, access, courtesy, information, openness and transparency, redress, and value for money. Or perhaps that the Batho Pele principles did not apply to people with mental disability.
Will it make a difference?
The Mental Health Care Act promotes care in the least restrictive environment possible. Wherever possible, people with mental illness who require long-term care should be discharged for follow-up at primary care or community mental health services.
However, 20 years since promulgation of the act, government funding continues to prioritise stand-alone psychiatric hospitals. Primary care and community mental health services remain underresourced, despite the hard lessons learnt during the Life Esidimeni tragedy.
South African society is not safe, secure, or supportive of people with mental disability. It is riddled with violence, poverty and psychological stress, factors to which people with mental disabilities are most vulnerable. They often have to fend for themselves if they cannot access long-term hospital care.
Holding public officials accountable for their callousness and incompetence is a significant step forward.
But, while the Life Esidimeni judgment brings some dignity to people with mental disability, it lays bare the catastrophic consequences of policies which aren’t backed up by appropriate funding.
The only vaccination against TB is more than 100 years old. Gene-editing has made it more effective.
Tuberculosis dates back more than 9,000 years. It is the most infectious bacterial disease and in 2022 10.6 million people fell ill with it. Of these 23% occurred in Africa.
The only vaccine against tuberculosis, the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, is more than 100 years old and is primarily effective for infants and young children.
Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Pathology have made a significant breakthrough in vaccine development by gene-editing the BCG to make it more effective.
Mice vaccinated with the modified BCG vaccine were better able to limit tuberculosis growth in their lungs than mice that had received the original vaccine.
Microbiologist Bavesh Kana, one of the lead researchers, explains to Nadine Dreyer from The Conversation Africa the science behind this breakthrough and the potential it holds for other vaccines.
How do vaccines work?
Vaccines primarily work by mimicking dangerous infectious agents. You want your immune system to recognise the vaccine as an “invader” and then mount an immune response to it. But you don’t want the invasive agent to make you sick.
To understand how vaccines work, it helps to look at how the immune system works, because vaccines harness the natural activity of your immune system.
The proteins and sugars on the surface of bacteria, viruses or other disease-causing pathogens have different shapes to any of the ones in the human body. These markers are pathogen-associated molecular patterns, commonly known as PAMPs. Think of the spikes on coronavirus.
So, your immune system quickly recognises the invaders. And the body fights back with a complex chain of events involving many different types of white blood cells working together. See video below on how the immune system works.
One type of white blood cell is able to make antibodies to fight the invaders. These antibodies can stick to the proteins or sugars on the bacteria’s surface, and this kills the bacteria or disables them. They have to be exactly the right shape, a bit like a key fitting a door. These white blood cells are known as B-cells.
Producing antibodies of the right shape can take several days. By this time there could be billions of disease-causing bacteria in your body.
Once the right cells are activated, they quickly divide and turn into a production line, making masses of antibodies that stick to the invading agents and disable them.
Eventually, your body gets rid of all the invaders and you recover.
Antibodies remain in the blood, and some white blood cells may also become memory cells for specific bacteria in case they invade the body again.
So with this stored arsenal of tools the immune system will respond quickly to future invasions.
How the immune system works.
Vaccines: Vaccines work in the same way as the immune system. They contain weakened or dead bacteria or viruses or even just a few proteins or sugars from the surface. This is enough to convince the immune system that a real invader has entered the body.
So the same process takes place as when real bacteria or viruses invade our bodies, except you don’t get ill afterwards. Vaccines are engineered to look like pathogens but are made in such a way that they do not make you sick.
When you do encounter the real agent, you have immunological memory, because your body has been exposed to something that looks very similar.
And that immunological memory allows you to withstand the infection or even prevent establishment of full infection, or to manage the infection without getting too sick.
How did you go about modifying the TB vaccine?
TB vaccines are very challenging to develop. The bacterium that causes the disease is complex. It is also proficient at evading the human immune system, which is why there is only one vaccine that has been developed against the disease in 100 years.
Our laboratory does a lot of TB research and for a long time we’ve been interested in the cell wall of these bacteria. We noticed that the cell wall has a small chemical decoration on the surface and that chemical decoration allows the bacteria to hide an important marker (PAMP), called the NOD-1 ligand, from the immune system.
Both the tuberculosis and the live bacteria used in the BCG vaccine are able to hide the NOD-1 ligand from the immune system, making it harder for the body to detect them.
We thought that modifying the BCG bacterium so it cannot hide this NOD-1 ligand might lead to a new, more effective vaccine.
To investigate this possibility we turned to CRISPR, a gene editing technology that allows scientists to modify DNA.
We used CRISPR to develop a modified version of the BCG bacterium which is unable to hide its NOD-1 ligand.
Mice vaccinated with the modified BCG vaccine were better able to limit tuberculosis growth in their lungs than mice that had received the original vaccine.
Further studies will be needed to modify the vaccine for use in humans.
What happens now?
Our findings offer a new candidate vaccine in the fight against tuberculosis.
With some novel vaccine candidates in the pipeline, we can finally begin to address this devastating illness adequately.
This work is very exciting because it demonstrates that gene editing is a powerful way to develop vaccines and may help develop more effective vaccines for other diseases in the future.
Massive wildfires broke out in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province on 12 and 13 July 2024, killing six firefighters who were trapped in a blaze and seven other people. The same fires killed 1,600 livestock animals and burnt 14,000 hectares of land.
About 84% of all human settlements in South Africa are located in fire-dependent ecosystems – places in which natural fires can contribute to the health of the ecosystem by clearing out old plant matter. But when fires rage out of control, the damage can include loss of life and injury. Infrastructure, industrial facilities, livestock, fodder banks, agricultural equipment, plantations, homes and resorts are often destroyed.
The major causes of wildfires in South Africa are:
very dry and hot conditions with temperatures of over 42°C
high winds
dry vegetation such as areas where trees have been cut down, with branches, leaves and twigs left on the ground. Land that has become infested with alien and invasive plant species that dry out fast and then burn quickly is another cause.
depopulation of commercial farming areas, with nobody available to fight wildfires when they break out
gentrification and resorts that are separate from resident communities, leaving nobody around to fight fires when these start
new and unskilled people with no capacity to fight fires moving to fire-prone rural areas
landowners who do not adapt their land to the increased risk of fire and who do not keep firefighting equipment on the property
human culpability like dropping lit cigarettes from a car window or carrying out dangerous activities on high fire risk days.
My research aimed to find out how many civil wildfire lawsuits have been decided by South African courts since 1994, and whether these are linked to the warming climate. The cases I found show how the rules for allocating liability for wildfire damages are evolving. The cases make reference to climatic conditions, such as rivers and other conditions on the land being much drier and hotter than normal.
I found that there have been at least 22 wildfire lawsuits decided between 1997 and 2023. There is no climate change law yet that sets out how people who’ve suffered losses from climate-related fires can sue. But the law of delict, which sets out how to claim compensation for injuries and damages, and the National Veld and Forest Fire Act have been used.
These lawsuits are important because if the courts uphold claims for civil damages against negligent landowners, this should compel landowners to comply with the law and put preventive measures in place. These court judgments could limit the number of wildfires that break out.
What do South Africa’s laws say about wildfires?
What does the law say?
In South Africa, wildfires are known as veld (open, natural grassland) fires. The Veld and Forest Fire Act says that owners of land must keep firefighting equipment, people trained to fight fires and protective clothing available. If they are away, a responsible person must extinguish fires and notify neighbours. Landowners are obliged to create fire breaks on their land to stop the spread of fire. However, there are wide ministerial powers to grant landowners exemptions.
To sue for damages from a fire, there must be proof that the fire was started intentionally or as a result of negligence. To claim compensation, there has to be damage that is quantifiable (such as losing a house or a breadwinner). The damage also needs to be wrongful.
In law, this relates to whether holding someone liable for wildfire-related loss is viewed as reasonable in the eyes of the community. In some cases, the courts have accepted that landowners did everything they could to fight wildfires that broke out because of hot and dry weather and quickly became unusually uncontrollable and ferocious.
However, because the risks of climate change are becoming better known, it is more foreseeable these days that wildfires will occur. Landowners who don’t take precautions against wildfires will find it difficult to argue in court that they could not have foreseen a fire starting during a hot, dry period. If they also fail to maintain fire breaks, train personnel or keep fire-fighting equipment onsite, they could fail the reasonableness test, especially on high fire danger days.
What I found
Litigation about the risks associated with climate change is happening. In South Africa, the state has done a reasonable job of putting in place a regulatory standard against wildfires. Using this standard to sue landowners or companies for failing to adapt to the changing climate will become more important as climate-change disasters, such as wildfires and floods, increase.
The failure to maintain a fire break is also a crime. Further research is needed to understand whether criminal penalties have been imposed on negligent landowners.
To date the claimants in wildfire lawsuits have mainly been historically advantaged farmers or landowners who have claimed from other landowners, business owners, municipalities, the state-owned transport entity, and even the Moravian Church. The claims have ranged from R74,000 (US$4,120) to R23 million (US$1.27 million) for burnt plantations, areas of fynbos, sawmill stock, agricultural land, farm fences, orchards, electric wire and livestock.
I did not find any lawsuits brought by working-class communities whose shacks or homemade shelters had been destroyed by fire although there are many such cases. As there are more people in those communities than commercial farmers who are affected by wildfires, this is a clear gap.
There have only been two lawsuits which even mentioned damage to the environment (one lawsuit mentioned trapped lions and another destruction to fynbos). Only three lawsuits mentioned personal injury or destruction of homes by wildfires.
Climate change science has shown that the southern African region is becoming hotter and drier and an increase in the number of high fire danger days is inevitable. The way in which courts are using existing laws to allocate liability for climate risks can reinforce preventive behaviour and highlight key gaps. Parliament or the state executive can then address the gaps.
(Author’s note: there is no definition of “wildfire” in South African law and veldfire is the legally correct term in use in South Africa.)
Too often, a ruling party assumes — wrongly — that what’s good for it must also be good for the nation.
It is wrongly assumed that a governing party, a country’s leader, or the largest ethnic community’s interests are the same as the public or the national interests.
This is rarely true. Similarly, one dominant group, ethnic community, political party, or colour's interests are also different from the public or the national interests. The interests of dominant parties, communities, and colour are in many cases different from the collective interests of a nation or a country.
Yet, for a country to prosper, governing parties and leaders must govern in the widest public and country interests', not in their parties', leaders', ideological, ethnic groups, or colour interest. Inclusive growth is certainly not possible without governing parties and leaders making decisions, policies, and appointments in the widest public and country interests.
The challenge for serious governing parties and leaders is how to genuinely prioritise the best interests of the country and nation, and not the narrow interests of self, party, dominant community, colour, or religion. Failing African and developing countries most of the time confused dominant party, leader, favoured ideology, largest community interests with that of their nation or country – when those are vastly opposite.
African liberation and independence movements – and splinters thereof, and leaders are particularly prone in conflating their party, ideological and leaders’ interests with that of the national or country interests. The culture of viewing dominant parties, leaders, group, and ideology interests as the national interests of all, are often imbibed by many opposition parties who come to power, after taking over from liberation and independence governments.
Members and supporters of dominant parties and leaders often wrongly embrace their parties and leaders interests to be the national or country interests. In diverse societies, with histories of conflict and parties based largely on past divisions, the national and country interests should never be assumed to be that of the leader or the governing party. This is a recipe for the contested of dominant party and leader decisions, policies, and programs.
The ANC’s failure the past 30 years is to belief that the party’s or the leader’s interests – especially in the case of former President Jacob Zuma, are the same as that of the national interests. Many ANC government decisions, policies and programs the past 30 years therefore were mostly partisan party, leaders’ and ideological interests which harmed South Africa’s national interests. One reason for state failure the past 30 years, has been the ANC conflation of party, leader, and ideological interests with the national interests.
This has led to the rejection or lack of implementation of many policies, decisions and programs which have been perceived by non-ANC constituencies as patently in the ANC, leadership, or dominant constituency interests, not in the national interests. Successful implementation of policies hinges on an ecosystem of collaboration between the governing party and state on the one hand, and opposition parties and non-state stakeholders on the other hand – business, civil society, communities, and citizens.
In public discourse, narrow, partisan ideologies, decisions and policies of the dominant party, leader, ethnic community, are often seen wrongly by many citizens as in the national interests. Individuals with views that are genuinely in the national interests, but go against the partisan views of dominant party, leader, and ethnic community, are often rejected, depriving society of game-changing views, ideas, and policies.
Successful implementation of government programs, especially in diverse societies, demand policies to be decided in the best national interests, not as party or leadership or ideologically partisan. Only when countries and leaders actively pursue the widest national interests, and not leader, party, or dominant interests, can countries secure sustainable development, long periods of high economic growth rates, industrialisation and social peace.
Not surprisingly, countries that emerges from conflict, which introduces governing mechanisms that will force decisions, policies and programs to be in the national interests, such as coalitions, national social pacts and government of national unity structures – whether post-World War 2 Japan or Germany, or post-economic crisis-Ireland or post-colonial Mauritius, have been more successful in delivering inclusive development, economic growth and social peace.
At the same time, most African countries in the post-colonial period has taken majority-based, rather than consensus-based decisions – whether based on liberation majority group, ethnic group, military, or ideological majority. The result has been devastating failure. Majority rule in Africa, since Liberia became the first independent country on 26 July 1847, has led to failed states, civil wars, and mass poverty in Africa.
It is critical that South Africa's new Government of National Unity genuinely make all decisions because of what is in the best for the country, not what is best for party, leader, ideology, colour, or dominant community. The GNU has adopted consensus, rather than majority-based decision-making, as it’s model.
Consensus-based decision is more likely to produce outcomes that are in the widest interests of all of society, rather than dominant groups. Furthermore, consensus decisions, if genuinely taken in the widest national interest, will produce better-quality policies, wider societal embrace of decisions and policies and therefore more successful implementation.
William Gumede is Associate Professor, School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand and author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Times (Tafelberg). The article was first pubilshed in the Sunday Times.
The vanishing lake
- Jennifer Fitchett and Anson Mackay
Fossil algae show a lake once existed on Lesotho’s Mafadi summit but it vanished about 150 years ago.
Lesotho is a small, land-locked, mountainous country located in the middle of South Africa. Its Eastern Lesotho Highlands are often referred to as the region’s “water tower” because they receive some of the highest rainfall amounts in southern Africa, providing water to South Africa and electricity to Lesotho through the Lesotho Highlands Water Project.
Despite this abundance of rainfall, and although the country has many wetland habitats, there are surprisingly few natural lakes. Researchers aren’t sure why – and our newly published study provides evidence that this may not always have been the case.
The research took place in a bowl shaped depression on the Mafadi summit, which is at 3,400m above sea level, high along the Great Escarpment in the eastern Lesotho highlands. Small white patches are visible across the landscape.
The patches are diatomite outcrops. Diatomites are consolidated sediments that consist mainly of the remains of fossilised algae called diatoms. These microscopic, single-celled algae are found in nearly all aquatic environments, and they preserve well as fossils due to their glass-like shells made of silica. Their visible presence alone suggests that surface water systems were once more extensive than they are today.
We investigated the species of diatoms from one of the main diatomite outcrops just downslope from the Mafadi summit, detailing how these species have changed over time. Unlike studies of contemporary wetlands in the region, this core showed very little change until about 150 years ago.
Those changes represent the shift from a lake to the contemporary shallow wetland at the site, and understanding what might have driven them is useful today, since freshwater resources in southern Africa are precious and sensitive to environmental change. If natural lakes were more extensive in the past in Lesotho, especially at altitude, this provides new important context for how freshwater ecosystems have developed over long timescales in this natural resource-rich mountainous country.
What the diatomite reveals
The diatomite we studied is situated along the slope of a bowl-shaped depression; the contemporary wetland situated at the bottom of this depression. The diatomite was characterised by species (such as Staurosirella pinnata, Staurosira construens and Aulacoseira ambigua) that thrive in persistent, surface waters such as lakes.
We then explored three further components: the contemporary topography of the landscape, the contemporary rainfall variability, and the geochemistry of the diatomite from the core, which was done alongside the diatom analysis.
Using the Topographic Position Index, an equation which compares the topography of a pixel to that of its neighbours using remote sensing, we confirmed that the bowl-shaped depression was sufficiently enclosed to feasibly have housed a small lake. Its depth would include the present-day diatomite outcrops. This topography would be necessary to explain how diatoms that have a preferred habitat of standing waters were in such high concentrations.
We also compared the contemporary rainfall at Mafadi to that at Lake Letšeng-la Letsie, a natural lake further south near the Ongeluksnek border with South Africa. It was dammed in the 1960s. This data confirmed that the Mafadi lake was hydrologically possible as there is currently more rainfall at Mafadi than at Letšeng-la Letsie.
Shifting patterns
So, how long was the lake around for? And where did it go?
We used radiocarbon to date the diatomite. The results indicate that the lake was present on the Mafadi summit from at least 4,000 years ago, until an estimated 150 years ago.
During this time, the diatom flora of the lake was rather stable. However, while the geochemistry of the lake was also stable for most of this time, there was a major geochemical change in the diatomite from around the year 1340 CE, indicative of changing nutrient availability, and perhaps the lake becoming shallower at this time. This shift occurred concurrently with regionally cooler temperatures linked to what’s known as the Little Ice Age. Simply put, changes in climate may have played a role in changing environmental conditions on the summit.
We are unable to determine the exact date when the lake disappeared. But the reasons for its disappearance are likely complex.
Unfortunately, long-term precipitation records for the eastern Lesotho highlands are lacking. But we do know that the lake’s disappearance about 150 years ago coincided with two major environmental changes. One was global climate change since the start of the Industrial Revolution. The other was regional landscape modification linked to the migration of herders and livestock into the higher reaches of the Maloti mountains, of which Mafadi is part, to find new grazing areas for their livestock.
Pastoralists’ use of these mountain ecosystems over the past century through burning and grazing has led to widespread land degradation; soils and wetlands have been extensively eroded. Upland erosion has a negative impact on wetland hydrology. This, together with shifting precipitation patterns, may have led to the lake’s final demise.
ANC’s political dominance will continue - and hurt DA
- Roger Southall
The ANC leads the unity government. If it leads South Africa back to happier times, that is most likely to benefit the ANC, rather than the DA.
The ANC’s loss of its majority in the recent election, and President Cyril Ramaphosa’s formation of a government of national unity, have been interpreted by some commentators as indicating the end of the ANC as a “dominant party”. That is, one which recurrently wins elections and hence dominates a political system.
Their argument, and it is not unconvincing, is that the ANC vote share has consistently fallen since its high point in the 2009 election, when it won 66%, to its new low of 40%. This is taken to indicate an inexorable decline which the ANC appears unlikely or unable to reverse.
However, there is a counterargument, by Oxford Analytica, the global geopolitical risk analysts, which needs exploring. This suggests that the unity government may allow the ANC to continue its dominance of the country’s political system within the framework of a multi-party coalition. This narrative cites the ANC’s continued ultimate control of the key levers of power by its retention of the presidency, with its extensive powers of appointment and agenda setting, and key ministries.
I have researched South African politics extensively, and am finishing co-editing a new book about the 2024 elections and path to a coalition government. I recognise that South Africa is entering a new, uncertain era in its politics, with different potential outcomes. One is that the unity government may facilitate the continuation of ANC dominance.
The unity government certainly opens up new possibilities for South Africa. Most immediately, these revolve principally around what many observers, including the much-cited “business community”, view as the enhanced prospects for the government to implement “structural reforms”. These include a concerted tackling of the energy and logistical constraints which have hampered the economy, providing for a sustainable higher rate of growth.
Politically, too, the potential of the unity government is far reaching. One possibility that has been touted has been its potential for bringing about a realignment of political parties. This would see the Ramaphosa wing of the ANC combining with the more liberal elements of the Democratic Alliance (DA) to form a new centre-right party in opposition to a (self-proclaimed) radical left combination of what remains of radical economic transformation of the ANC, the Economic Freedom Fighters and uMkhonto we Sizwe Party. Yet this is all speculation, perhaps even pie in the sky.
Although the statement of intent signed between the ANC and DA around which the government hangs provides “modalities” for resolving disagreements between the parties within the cabinet, these can never guarantee that major differences will be overcome. Much danger remains that the ANC will use its disproportionate representation within the cabinet to get its way.
The ANC’s disproportionate weight within the unity government
Although the unity government is constructed around an axis of an ANC coalition with the centre-right DA, Ramaphosa faced down the latter’s demand for proportionate representation in the cabinet. Having won over half as many votes as the ANC, the DA wanted half as many seats in the cabinet, but after testy negotiations, had to settle for just six ministerial positions out of 32. The ANC bagged 20, the rest going to smaller parties.
Furthermore, while the ANC was allocated 33 deputy ministerships, the DA received only six, reinforcing its image as the junior partner. Much credit was given to Ramaphosa’s negotiating skills, but these were backed by his holding the best cards. As president, he had the ultimate power over who got what in the cabinet.
Whereas the DA had wanted to take control of one or more of the ministries in the economics cluster – principally, finance, electricity and energy, mining, and trade and industry – and was initially in line to be awarded the last of these, Ramaphosa deferred to opposition to this from within the ANC. Instead, the DA settled for agriculture. Not unimportant, for sure, but not a post where it was likely to unsettle strategies, such as the ANC’s vigorous pursuit of black economic empowerment, which it holds dear but which the DA strongly opposes.
Democratic Alliance dilemmas
Meanwhile, the DA’s entry into the government may mean it is facing a Catch 22. Its election campaign saw it fighting to “rescue South Africa” from the prospect of an ANC “doomsday” coalition with the populist Economic Freedom Fighters. This it saw as likely to condemn South Africa to further economic decline, hurtling it ever faster towards becoming a “failed state”. In contrast, the DA views a successful unity government as guiding the country back to sustainable higher growth. But would that necessarily work to the DA’s benefit?
The statement of intent agreed between the ANC and DA provides for “sufficient consensus” (agreement between these two parties) to prevail where there is disagreement within the multi-party cabinet. However, it is more vague about how major disagreements between the parties would be resolved. All coalitions require a willingness to give and take if they are to survive. But what if the DA were to feel that its views were being serially ignored?
The problem for the DA is that the unity government remains ANC-led. If it leads South Africa back to happier times, that is more likely than not to work to the benefit of the ANC, as the largest party in government, more than that of the DA.
True, the DA is in charge of a number of important portfolios, notably Home Affairs. If if it runs these well, it will be able to claim convincingly that it has helped improve many South Africans’ lives. However, this does not ensure that it will receive proportionate credit among an African-dominated electorate among which it has consistently failed to win much backing. On the other hand, if the unity government fails, and the economy continues to falter, the DA will have to share its portion of the blame.
Uncertainties ahead
Much remains uncertain about the multi-party government. For the moment, it is constructed around a Ramaphosa presidency, but what happens in December 2027, when the ANC is likely to hold its next national conference? This will probably lead to the election of a new party leader. If precedent is anything to go by, this will lead to Ramaphosa’s early replacement as state president before the 2029 general election.
What will happen to the unity government at this point? Is it conceivable without Ramaphosa, the reconciler, at its head? Or even if he survives to the end of his presidential term, is the unity government likely to survive his eventual departure?
And then there is the whole question of what happens in the 2029 general election. The most likely prospect is that the multi-party government will dissolve at that point and its constituent parties will again find themselves competing electorally.
As noted, for the DA, the major problem is that if the unity government has succeeded in returning South Africa to sustainable growth, and has tackled its numerous other problems reasonably ably, the ANC will claim the major portion of the credit. And if it does this successfully, it is not at all inconceivable that it will reclaim its popular majority, and henceforward again run South Africa on its own. Even if the DA will say it has “rescued South Africa”, it may only have done so to see itself once again sitting on the opposition benches.
The DA’s high stakes gamble
The Democratic Alliance will hope that by playing its cards skilfully within the government of unity, it will help convince voters that it has “rescued South Africa”, and that it will pick up increased support. It may well do – but equally, so may the ANC. However, few should doubt that the DA is engaged in a high stakes gamble. It could win, but equally, it could well lose its wager.
Although the unity government demands of its constituent parties that they cooperate, this does not mean that they will not seek to further their own advantage within the coalition government. And it is the ANC which is likely to hold the aces.
A pig with lipstick is still a pig, and the unity government may well turn out to be a continuation of ANC dominance in disguise.
