Expert panel advocates ‘gradual phasing-in’ of basic income grant

14 December 2022 - Naledi Sikhakhane

The Expert Panel, chaired by Adjunct Professor Alex van den Heever, on Basic Income Support report ‘answers some crucial questions on basic income support.

"We will fight, we will soldier on even to the extent that we will ensure that we bring upon the introduction of the basic income grant, we are close to it, we are making steady progress towards it." — Social Development Acting Director-General Linton Mchunu.

The Department of Social Development (DSD) and partners released a report into the appropriateness and feasibility of a system of basic income support for South Africa.

The Expert Panel on Basic Income Support Supplementary Modelling report was produced under the supervision of the International Labour Organization (ILO) for the DSD and the South African government. It is a supplementary report looking at possible models and building on the first one released in 2021, in which the BIS Expert Panel examined the social and economic implications of a basic income support (BIS) grant.

Mchunu said the report answered some crucial questions on basic income support, such as where the money would come from, whether it would help or hinder the economy, and the feasibility of such support.

Mchunu also seemed to point a finger at the National Treasury for challenges in implementing the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant and ironing out bumps in its provision.

He said: “The reason why we’re having the difficulties we’re having now with the R350 grant… we’re currently paying about eight million people — yet in the first iteration we were paying about 11.5 million — because we introduced the means testing, and you know why? We were told that if we don’t introduce the means test, we will not receive the money.

“So, we grappled with finding a balancing act… it’s a difficult thing but, as the Department of Social Development, I want to say we will never deviate from this fight. We go into meetings and say we need a sense of certainty in the long term, can we extend the grant to the next three to five years while we sort out the policy side of this? And we’re told, no, you will only get one [year].”

Challenges in reaching the intended recipients

Mchunu said the DSD was restricted by red tape, which delayed processes and left millions in limbo. 

Panel chair Adjunct Professor Alex van den Heever said the report looked at the R350 SRD grant as a more permanent model because there was already data around this to analyse, while there wasn’t any for a basic income grant (BIG).

The idea is for a “gradual phasing for the progressive enhancement of the SRD benefit over time with the objective, together with the overall social assistance framework, of eliminating poverty at the upper-bound poverty line, UBPL [the average non-food-related spending that’s added to the poverty line created by economists and often used by DSD in creating means tests for grants],” said Van den Heever.

The analysis concluded that a gradual phasing-in of a basic income grant would curb the “economic and fiscal risks” and impacts on the tax system.  An entry-level version of the grant, basic income support, should be considered with the starting benefit value set at the lower-bound poverty line (the average spending on essential non-food items by households whose food expenditure is below, but close to the food poverty line). 

Van den Heever is the chairperson of Social Security Systems Administration and Management Studies at the Wits School of Governance. The panel of experts was made up of specialists in microsimulation, modelling in the field of social protection, computable general economic modelling and public finance. The deliberations also involved staff from the Social Security division of the DSD and the ILO regional office based in South Africa.

The modelling results show that “depending upon how it is financed, the SRD grant can be introduced in a manner that is fiscally and economically sustainable while at the same having a material impact on poverty and income inequality if implemented at the level of 13.1 million beneficiaries,” the report states.

The report posits four different simulations for how the grant will work and which simulations have the most positive outcomes during analysis. 

The first simulation of the Social Relief of Distress grant spending of R50-billion is financed primarily using an increase in Value-Added Tax (VAT) in the early years of the simulation. 

The second option is financing it entirely through an increase in the  principal, interest and taxes (PIT) of the top three deciles (a decile is 10%) of high-earning South Africans.

The third simulation involves a wage subsidy, where R50-billion is financed entirely through PIT increases on the top 10% of earners and allocated to the bottom four occupational groups (domestic workers, elementary workers, operators and skilled agricultural workers).

The fourth option is to collect R50-billion along with a wage subsidy that will cost 50% of the cost of the grant (R25-billion) and finance both entirely through PIT.

“A wage subsidy targeted at the four lowest-income occupational categories shows promise for improving economic output but is less effective in addressing poverty and inequality in comparison to the SRD grant. When the interventions are combined, however, there are potential gains for economic output, poverty [reduction] and [decreasing] inequality,” Van den Heever said. 

“Replicating the modelled wage subsidy with an equivalent programme in practice, however, may prove difficult. While more work is needed to better identify an effective government-subsidised employment intervention, such approaches are not substitutes for income protection. They are instead complementary, as they have distinct, although related, social objects,” the report read.  

Accepting the report, Brenda Sibeko, the deputy director-general of Comprehensive Social Security, acknowledged the challenges grant recipients have had in accessing grants and said that the DSD and civil society were working tirelessly to secure an income for the impoverished.

“As so many have said, the BIG is an idea whose time has come,” said Sibeko

This article was first published in the Daily Maverick.

Discover the power of civic technology

1 February 2023 -

Learn how to use technology to make a positive impact on your community

Civic tech is the effective use of appropriate digital technologies and methodologies in connecting government and citizens, in public participation, transparency and accountability and in delivering public services.

The Wits School designed this course, with key stakeholders, to provide skills to develop an applied understanding of how to use technological platforms to enhance the interface between government and citizens in the delivery of services. 

Civic Tech Brochure

To apply, email: Lerato.Mooya@wits.ac.za 

Learn more about the Wits-based Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN), a Community of Practice (CoP) and action learning network for people with an interest and commitment to leveraging the nexus between technology and civic activism: https://civictech.africa/ 

Do ministers matter for audit performance?

3 February 2023 -

Reports of corruption and mismanagement have scarred the South African Government’s reputation at home and abroad.

What can audit findings tell us about the influence that ministers have on the financial performance of their departments? And what does this say about the leadership required for improving the stewardship of public funds in future?

The Wits School of Governance (WSG) and ODI hosted a panel discussion which drew on new research conducted for ODI, to explore how leaders influence the financial management of their departments – for better or worse. 

Mr Thamsanqa Zikode (Office of the Auditor General of SA), Professor Pundy Pillay (WSG), Associate Professor Joachim Wehner (London School of Economics), reflected on the implications for public sector governance and service delivery.

Full report

SA Presentation Daniel Berliner, Martin Haus and Joachim Wehner

To watch the panel discussion, click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0enE-9QLHEI&t=2374s 

Opportunities for postdoctoral researchers at WSG

27 February 2023 -

The Tayarisha Initiative on Digital Governance is seeking postdoctoral researchers to participate in its evolving programmes.

Tayarisha, hosted by the Wits School of Governance, is a hub for teaching, research, policy dialogue, and outreach focused on the challenges and opportunities presented by digitalisation in the public sector, society, and industry in Africa.

Tayarisha works closely with key stakeholders including the Wits Innovation Centre (WIC), and various academic, government, and delivery partners.There are ongoing opportunities for excellent candidates to be attached to prestigious Postdoc opportunities for one or more years.

Candidates from a variety of disciplines and enquiry fields of relevance to the theme of digital governance are invited to apply. These fields include:

1. Digital transformations and governance
2. Open government
3. Data governance
4. Digital ethics and rights
5. Digital and telecoms regulation
6. Digital threats and security
7. Building digital capabilities of the state
8. Enabling institutions and ecosystems for digital innovation
9. Gov-Tech and Civic Tech R&D and Incubation
10. Anticipatory governance

Candidates must have obtained a PhD within the past 5 years.

To enquire or submit your CV please contact to Zibusiso Manzini-Moyo: Zibusiso.Manzini-Moyo@wits.ac.za  

PLEASE NOTE: This is an open call with no specified closing date, until opportunities are filled. Only successful applicants will be contacted.

For more information please visit our website: Tayarisha Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunities

Why SA’s CSR models need to change

21 February 2023 - Associate Professor William Gumede

SA’s corporates must rethink their flawed CSR models or risk rising anti-business feeling, community protests and legal action against them.

Informal settlements could drive solar revolution

6 February 2023 - Professor David Everatt and Professor Imraan Valodia

Solar would provide their dwellings with power, but also a source of revenue if power is sold back to the grid.

Much debate has been sparked by the announcement that in Cape Town at least, people and companies generating excess power will soon be able to sell it back to the grid, at an approved feed-in tariff.

That will immediately benefit some people in Cape Town — if there is sufficient additional power to sell to the grid – but also those already resourced — industrial plants, factories, wealthier individuals and households who can afford large solar installations (and the connection fees back to the grid).

Of course, everyone will benefit if this additional power impacts on rolling blackouts, but only those high-income households that can afford to install solar systems will get the financial benefit of the feed-in tariff.

Why not simultaneously trigger a “solar revolution” by targeting informal settlements? They are without doubt among some of the poorest spaces in the country. They have not been provided with electricity, and no disputes over illegal connections should occur.

The morphology of informal settlements, as we note below, is to move from free-standing structures to compounds, which can include multiple households in one larger group of structures — which share one very large roof, ideal for solar.

If informal settlement residents are helped upfront — say, through a lease-and-own agreement for the installation and infrastructure — simple self-interest would see households in informal settlements lead the way in harvesting sunshine and selling to the grid. As their solar farms grow, and income increases, they may also be able to move up the socioeconomic ladder, and off social grants. It seems such a clearly virtuous cycle that it must form a core part of the conversation.

The Gauteng Research Triangle (GRT) is a partnership between the Universities of Johannesburg, Pretoria, and the Witwatersrand (Wits). The GRT oversees a range of areas, but one of its main projects is a new health and demographic surveillance site (HDSS) with a split node located in Hillbrow, Atteridgeville West, and Melusi, an informal settlement in Pretoria.

The node is part of the South African Population Research Infrastructure Network (Saprin) hosted by the SA Medical Research Council and funded by the Department of Science and Innovation.

It joins other well-known nodes including Agincourt, Dimamo and Ahri, with further nodes in the early stages in Cape Town, eThekwini and the Eastern Cape.

The Gauteng node is called “GRT-Inspired” (the Gauteng Research Triangle Initiative for the Study of Population, Infrastructure and Regional Economic Development).

The core functions of an HDSS are measuring the population (which should be ~100,000 people) that inhabit dwelling units within the boundaries of the node, which align with Stats SA boundaries.

Through one face-to-face interview per annum, and two shorter telephonic follow-ups per annum, all respondents are contacted three times a year.

We will be developing an intimate knowledge of the spaces that make up the node, and the people living and moving in and out of them, capturing vital statistics as well as covering a range of issues such as migration, health status, socioeconomic status, and so on.

GRT-Inspired was designed as a multidisciplinary initiative and has a group of associated academics across the three partner universities who will analyse the data from multiple perspectives, adding to the value of the core sets of questions asked in all Saprin nodes.

Once the platform for the HDSS is fully developed, it is very easy to nest other related studies onto the platform. For example, it would be very possible to look deeper into household income and expenditure trends by adding a special survey to the existing platform.

Research platforms such as GRT-Inspired have a number of advantages over traditional (cross-sectional) surveys. Because households are surveyed on a longitudinal and panel basis, it allows us better to understand change, and to be able to attribute change to a particular variable.

An HDSS platform also allows us to innovate with policies by piloting interventions and observing how effective the interventions are, over time, and how households and individuals are responding to a particular intervention. A lot of the testing and proof of the efficacy of antiretrovirals was done in such HDSSs.

A large part of GRT-Inspired comprises informal settlements. Melusi, one of our sites, is a relatively new settlement in Tshwane — it did not exist in Census 2011, but now houses some 40,000 people. Atteridgeville, while a formal township, also includes a very large (and older) informal area, Jeffsville — colloquially known as Gomorrah. Understanding informality is thus core to the work done in the node.

The first stage of work is complete — a baseline that includes household registration and mapping the entire node, complemented by the use of drones to better understand the morphology of the informal areas in particular. For field workers in informal settlements, far more complex directions are needed than “turn right”!

In the two drone images below, two things are immediately clear. Firstly, informal areas clearly go through a consolidation phase — the dwellings in Melusi are more widely distributed, and still in the process of forming bigger compounds. In “Gomorrah”, which is considerably older, this process has reached near-saturation, and multiple households are clustered in large compounds, with fewer central courtyards open to the sky.

The second glaring issue — to us, anyway — is the smattering of single solar panels in Melusi, and their almost complete absence from “Gomorrah”. The point at issue is twofold: solar panels could easily enhance the quality of life of all informal dwellers, and the more efficient they are, the more power they can supply. This is well-known (if not implemented in practice — RDP houses are often accompanied by solar power for geysers but not informal dwellings, where they are at the owner’s cost). Newer settlements show an awareness of solar, but only small units are in place.

Solar clearly works — just see below, for Atteridgeville’s formal areas and non-residential structures, with roofs covered in solar panels.

The second issue is far more important: if household-produced solar power could be sold back to Eskom, informal settlements could drive the solar revolution because of enlightened self-interest. Solar would provide their dwellings with power, but also a source of revenue if power is sold back to the grid.

Look at the size of the compound rooftops in Atteridgeville, and one gets a sense of how much solar they could generate. But notice too the absence of any solar panels.

Going back to the possibilities for HDSSs to make it possible for innovation in policy, one issue that we’re considering is whether it might be possible to consider some innovation that solves a crisis in South Africa, and also contributes to innovation in social and economic policies.

The decarbonisation transition that South Africa has committed to to address climate change, gives us the opportunity to rethink how all aspects of our economy, including social policy, might be more effective.

This raises an interesting question: might it be possible for South Africa’s decarbonisation transition to include public provision of solar panels to all households, including informal households; and might reform of the grid make it possible for low-income households to earn an income by simply selling electricity back to the grid?

Of course, there are a lot of complications that we would have to consider before developing a concrete policy proposal in this regard. One of the complications that immediately strikes us is to which member of the household would the electricity tariff be paid? 

Another is how should the payment be made — in cash or a voucher? Should a means test be used to pay cash to low-income and informal residents, and credits to those in dwellings that already enjoy electricity? Should this be means-tested or not?

These are all important questions that we explore and test at GRT-Inspired an extremely important investment in South Africa’s research infrastructure.

There are aspects of such a proposal that appear very appealing. A large number of high-income households are investing in solar systems, both to overcome rolling blackouts, but also to reduce their dependence on Eskom, which is increasing the price of electricity. Low-income households are unable to afford this investment, and this has the effect of increasing levels of inequality.

Moreover, in line with many other countries, social protection in South Africa is based on the state providing cash grants. These have been very effective at protecting the poor, but the cash amounts are small and do very little to allow low-income households to generate income.

Provision of solar panels — on a lease-and-own basis for the poor — and revising policy to allow households to sell electricity into the grid, gives people an asset that can generate a stream of income.

Such an intervention would also move many households’ and individuals’ incomes above the threshold for other social protection support. Combining such an intervention with domestic production of solar panels will also generate new economic activity and increase employment.

And, it would begin to solve the rolling blackouts problem.

It would probably be fair to say that our economy is in a mess, and our economic policy debate is stuck. It’s time for a bit of innovation.

 This article was first published in Daily Maverick/Our Burning Planet.

Death of globalisation is overhyped and distracts from its real problem – inequality

19 February 2023 - Professor Mzukisi Qobo

The inequitable distribution of the benefits of globalisation and the emergence of new technologies that reproduce global disparities should worry us.

Getting to the roots of contemporary protests in South Africa

1 March 2023 - Takudzwa Pongweni

Mistra and the Wits School of Governance recently launched the book, Protest in South Africa: Rejection, reassertion, reclamation.

The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection’s (Mistra’s) latest edited research volume, in partnership with the Wits School of Governance, seeks to answer the question of why mass protests in SA have escalated, especially during the past 20 years, says Joel Netshitenzhe, executive director of Mistra.

"It is a book whose time has come. There is quite a [lot of] literature both internationally and in South Africa on protests, the manifestations and implications of protest. And yet in the last few years, there has not been a systematic study that undertakes that,” said Professor Susan Booysen, the director of research at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra). 

Booysen was speaking at the launch of Mistra’s latest edited research volume in partnership with the Wits School of Governance. Titled Protest in South Africa: Rejection, reassertion, reclamation, the publication, edited by Heidi Brooks, Rekgotsofetse Chikane and Shauna Mottiar, explore the underpinnings of contemporary protest and its short-term causes and structural drivers.
Infrastructural citizenship.

Mottiar’s chapter examines electricity contestations in Lamontville from the perspectives of self-connected residents in the informal settlement of KwaMadlala and residents who access Eskom services in the formal area of Dizababa.

“In 2020 in Lamontville, formal householders removed illegal electricity connections of informal householders as these connections were beginning to impact their power supply,” said Mottiar. This resulted in protest action by the informal householders, in the form of barricading roads and burning down municipal offices.

“My chapter examines the ways in which the state is visible at the everyday spatial and temporal scale through infrastructure, and how infrastructure is also a conduit for identities,” she said. 

The case study applies the idea of “infrastructural citizenship” to these contestations, to understand how electricity infrastructure is used in an attempt to shape residents’ behaviour into “appropriate” forms. It shows how this is resisted, but also how communities are divided according to their differential status concerning infrastructure, she explained.

Sethulego Matebesi’s chapter is centred on transactional activism. “There are no signs that these community protests will soon end in South Africa, so what I’m aiming at is a chapter that illustrates the engagement practices of these community groups,” said Matebesi.

Transactional activism refers to the “perverse system of incentives” where state actors provide leaders of protest groups with incentives, he explained.

“It has a huge impact on the agency, and also the future of community organising in South Africa,” he added.

“What is important about this chapter is that it points to the fact that by starting to pay attention not only to the causes of protests, but also to the leadership context, it can help us explain the engagement practices that have started to affect the operations of community groupings, and have led to a vicious cycle of community protests in South Africa.”

Luke Sinwell, Terri Maggott and Trevor Ngwane make use of a case study of Operation Dudula and Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia to argue that grassroots mobilisations can be activated in a manner that either sustains a system of racial capitalism or is employed as a mechanism to liberate the oppressed.

“We take the view of looking at the politics of grassroots mobilisation, and we look at how grassroots democracy can be a tool to maintain the status quo, to oppress or to liberate,” explained Sinwell.
The outcome of a community mobilisation can be affected by who goes to the community, and with what ideological framing the individual goes to the community, he added. The mob killing of Elvis Nyathi, a Zimbabwean national illustrates this. In April 2022, Diepsloot residents took to the streets to protest against a series of murders, high crime rates and ineffective policing. Police Minister Bheki Cele arrived in Diepsloot to address the angry community and advised them not to take the law into their own hands.

However, the fracas had already attracted the attention of Operation Dudula, and that night, after Cele left, Nyathi was dragged out of his house, beaten, stoned and set alight.

“Operation Dudula identified a place where it could intervene because people were already fighting against crime and indicating that Zimbabweans were the problem, Nhlanhla Lux [Dlamimi] promoted active citizenship underpinned by a particular ideology which arguably leads to the weaponisation of grassroots,” Sinwell added.

Linking theory carefully and concretely to grassroots politics and leadership in impoverished communities may be able to prevent the weaponisation of grassroots democracy and thereby prevent the killing of more individuals like Elvis Nyathi, he explained.

This article was first published in the Daily Maverick.

More about the book:

Protest in South Africa: Rejection, reassertion, reclamation (MISTRA, 2023)
Edited by Heidi Brooks, Rekgotsofetse Chikane and Shauna Mottiar

Popular protest has become a regular feature of post-1994 South Africa. As a young democracy born out of resistance, we may understand the contemporary manifestations of protest as extensions of this broader history. However, it is notably in the context of formal democratic institutions that popular protest has become an increasingly normalised mode of influencing policy, demanding delivery and forcing change. Protest is constitutive of South Africa’s democratic politics, but also reflective of it.   

Protest in South Africa: Rejection, reassertion, reclamation explores the underpinnings of contemporary protest and both its short-term causes and structural drivers. Focusing on the surge of protest from the mid-2000s, this edited volume provides an overview of the complexity of protest action, the diversity of protest spaces and actors, and responses to protest from both citizens and state. The volume situates its analysis against the backdrop of the global wave of protest witnessed since the turn of the 21st century, while examining protest in South Africa’s local and historical contexts. 

Contributors to the volume examine protests in relation to, among other factors, provision of infrastructure and services; contestations around socio-economic development; issues of citizenship; and demands for inclusive democratic governance. Chapters also examine the role of women in protest action, the policing of protest, and the intersection of protest action with spaces of formal politics. The volume also alerts us to the darker side of protest, and the destruction and division it may foment. It thus considers the prospects of South Africa’s evolving, sometimes violent, protest terrain for social and state stability and democratic progress.

Bringing together In the diversity of spaces, sectors and communities of interests in which collective action has emerged, Protest in South Africa: Rejection, reassertion, reclamation shows how protest is underpinned by a rejection of the status quo, a reassertion of interests, and a reclaiming of the political and democratic space. 

Book chapters:

Chapter 1: The architecture of protest in South Africa: Contexts and underpinnings – Heidi Brooks, Rekgotsofetse Chikane and Shauna Mottiar

Part I: Complex causes in protest trends and dynamics

Chapter 2: Protest in an age of contention: South Africa’s resonances with the global South and beyond – Heidi Brooks
Chapter 3: The nexus of citizen, party and state in accumulating protest repertoires in South Africa – Susan Booysen
Chapter 4: Protest apathy in South Africa - Rekgotsofetse Chikane and Halfdan Lynge

Part II: The architecture of protest

Chapter 5:  Gendering protests: Mapping women’s participation in community protests in Duncan Village, Eastern Cape - Hlengiwe Ndlovu
Chapter 6:  Rural protest against imposed development processes and environmental damage: Fishing communities in the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast - Fani Ncapayi
Chapter 7: Dying to drink: Water tenderpreneurs, community agency and protest in Mothutlung, North West - Mary Galvin
Chapter 8: Electricity contestations and infrastructural citizenship: Protest in Lamontville, Durban - Shauna Mottiar
Chapter 9: Weaponising grassroots democracy: Operation Dudula’s right-wing populism and the need for a countermovement - Luke Sinwell, Terri Maggott and Trevor Ngwane
Chapter 10: Beyond protest: Violence, looting and anarchy in July 2021 – Mary de Haas

PART III: Responses and repercussions
Chapter 11:  Transactional activism: Effect of the engagement practices of protest leaders on community protests in South Africa - Sethulego Matebesi
Chapter 12: Changing influences on the policing of public order in South Africa and the Global South - Ziyanda Stuurman
Chapter 13: Crime and punishment: Crime and policing-related protests in South Africa – David Bruce, Lizette Lancaster and Gareth NewhamChapter 14:    Rejection, reassertion, reclamation: The underpinnings of protest in South Africa - Heidi Brooks, Shauna Mottiar and Rekgotsofetse Chikane

SARB mandate: Growth vs. Inflation

16 February 2023 -

The South African Reserve Bank's mandate is interrogated in this interview.

Adjunct Professor Prof Alex van den Heever, Hugo Pienaar, Chief Economist, Bureau for Economic Research and Lumkile Mondi, Lecturer at the School of Economics and Finance at Wits participated in the conversation about the mandate of the South African Reserve Bank and whether is should be modified. 

Watch the full interview here: https://www.cnbcafrica.com/media/6320462653112/

State of governance in South Africa

28 February 2023 -

Adjunct Professor Alex Van den Heever says SA's leadership crisis is largely due to the weaknesses in the way the State structures are organised.

Watch this interview that took place on SABC News:

Green energy: South Africa’s transition plan must be careful not to deepen inequality

4 April 2023 - Professor Mzukisi Qobo

Since the UN Climate Change Agreement was signed by 196 nations in December 2015, many countries have announced policies to reduce their fossil fuel emissions.

Since the UN Climate Change Agreement was signed by 196 nations in December 2015, many countries have announced policies to reduce their fossil fuel emissions.

Their commitments are set out in nationally determined actions they’ll be taking to achieve this.

But the transition must navigate political economy tensions, especially in developing countries.

Take South Africa, for example. It has deep-seated socioeconomic challenges, such as inequality and unemployment. Its unemployment rate (including people who have given up looking for jobs) is unacceptably high at 42.5%. The country is also among the most unequal in the world.
And inequality remains mostly delineated by “race”. The mainstream economy remains predominantly owned by the white minority almost 30 years after democracy.

South Africa is under pressure to move from fossil fuels to green energy, with a strong emphasis on renewable sources. It has developed a just energy transition framework and a just investment proposal that has so far yielded €600 million in concessional finance from France and Germany.

The country is yet to formulate a systematic transition plan, however. Such a plan would be underpinned by a social contract, supported by a broad range of stakeholders and affected groups.

Moving to green energy will affect those directly employed in the coal mining sector. This is a fifth of those employed in the mining sector. That means 108,000 out of 514,859 people.

The ripple effects of the transition will also be felt across the value chain – from mines to markets and into people’s homes.

Making the green energy transition a success requires that the government pay attention not just to environmental factors, but also to socioeconomic needs. It must pay special attention to the impact on workers and communities in mining areas, and the macroeconomic effects of dwindling foreign exchange earnings and taxes.

Ignoring socioeconomic issues risks a populist backlash that could slow a necessary transition to a green industrial economy.

Socioeconomic imperatives

The core mission of South Africa’s a shift towards green energy should be to achieve economic growth, rising employment, and greater equity and inclusion. It must do all this while minimising social risks.

A green energy transition that is not anchored in fairness and inclusivity could potentially multiply socioeconomic risks.

Any efforts to move away from fossil fuels must cover three key areas. These include retraining workers who face retrenchment, and developing supply chains that give opportunities to small, micro and medium enterprises.

3 key elements for a sound green transition plan

Retrain workers in the coal industry who will be retrenched in the process, and offer them an alternative source of livelihood. The transition, as the World Bank proposes, requires a “whole-of-society” approach. This should entail engagements with everyone who is affected to ensure that no one is left behind.

Promote inclusive supply chains to enable greater participation of small, micro and medium enterprises, especially in small equipment manufacturing activities, installation, civil works, retail and maintenance.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development notes that small and medium enterprises can be important drivers of green and inclusive growth. They can be encouraged to adopt green strategies as part of their preconditions for participating in the supply chains of major firms.

Enhance energy security by attracting investment into other cleaner sources of energy. For example, the European Union is considering reclassifying nuclear as part of green energy. Major countries such as France insist on “technology neutrality” to include nuclear and hydrogen in their energy mix, rather than to privilege solar and wind energy sources that do not have baseload. Lack of baseload compromises energy security.

Renewable energy sources provide intermittent power, depending on the availability of sun or wind, whereas average demand requires consistent supply. Europe’s predicament in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine best illustrates this: as soon as Russia throttled Europe’s gas supply, governments rationed electricity to curb demand. Or they ramped up the demand for coal from countries such as Colombia, Australia and South Africa to ensure baseload.

A wide lens

As countries march towards a brave new world of green technologies, they must ensure that those left behind, and trapped at the bottom of the old industrial economy, are at the helm of the new economy. The transition to the ideal state must reflect a broad energy mix, rather than leaning on a narrow set of technologies that may not adequately offer energy security or produce just and equitable outcomes.

South Africa must balance environmental concerns, socioeconomic imperatives and energy security in its transition strategies.

For this to be possible, the answer, according to the World Economic Forum, will very likely have to be a combination of institutional capacity building, well-chosen policies and a substantial contribution by the international community – technologically as well as financially.

This article was first published in The Conversation.

Geopolitics, technology wars and global supply chains: Implications for Africa

5 April 2023 - Professor Mzukisi Qobo and Associate Professor Mjumo Mzyece

Ongoing US–China geopolitical rivalry could harm Africa.

Journal: South African Journal of International Affairs

As in the case of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, when African countries were treated like pawns on a global chessboard, African countries risk getting caught in current US–China geopolitical tensions.

These are intensifying following the COVID-19 pandemic when many Africa states are facing their
worst socio-economic crisis since independence, as well as a sovereign debt crisis not seen since the 1980s. Africa is institutionally underprepared for the combined effects of these developments.

Partly, this is due to persistent governance deficiencies, a constrained global trading environment, and
economic under-performance continent-wide. And partly, this is accounted for by Africa’s marginal position in the global system.

This article outlines Africa’s potential development pathways against this harsh backdrop, assessing the options for African agency in response to geopolitical rivalries playing out in technology, global supply chains and trade.

Read the full paper here: Geopolitics technology wars and global supply chains Implications for Africa

Apply now to join Africa's leading School of Governance

2 May 2023 -

We are getting ready to welcome our students for the July intake. There is still time for you to apply for our academic programmes.

You can apply to study the following programmes that start in July 2023.

PDM - Public and Development Management 
 
Our one-year programme is designed to help you advance your career and contribute to good governance and effective development. Expand your analytical and managerial skills at Africa’s leading School of Governance. 
 
Recent graduates with some work experience who wish to embark on a career in public administration or development are encouraged to apply. This programme will equip you with the skills, you need to become effective public administrators and development practitioners.

PDM - Public and Development Sector Monitoring and Evaluation

Governments today demand personnel who can accurately measure the outcomes and outputs of their interventions to enhance evidence-based decision-making. Unfortunately, a scarcity of local professionals with these skills means that governments must source talent internationally, which is often costly and untimely. The Wits School of Governance has a solution, our PDM M&E programme.

We are taking the initiative to build the capacity of local personnel in South Africa and Africa at large. With our programme, you can lead by example and create your own developmental solutions. Our aim is to equip you with qualitative and quantitative skills in formulating, managing, monitoring, and evaluating development interventions.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to strengthen your capacity and enhance your career prospects.

Master of Management (coursework and research) in Governance

The Wits School of Governance's Master of Management (course work and research) programme will equip you with the critical thinking and analytical skills needed to tackle complex issues within the State and civil society. Our graduates are confident, independent thinkers who can defend their operational choices and ask meaningful questions in the face of complexity.

Our specialisations will put your problem-solving abilities to the test and provide you with a solid foundation in qualitative and quantitative research approaches. You will be able to engage with multidisciplinary bodies of knowledge, synthesise information, and defend your research choices with confidence.

The demand for high-quality policymakers, policy analysts, policy advisors, and civil society policy researchers and activists has never been greater. With our programme, you will gain the necessary theoretical, strategic, and operational skills to excel in this field. 

Join us and become a specialist in policy research, working hand-in-hand with practitioners to achieve overall democratic governance, ethical and accountable practice, and specified levels of service delivery.

Applications close: 30 June 2023

To apply use this link: www.wits.ac.za/applications 

Watch: The Big Con book launch

14 June 2023 -

Book Launch: The Big Con How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies

The Wits School of Governance hosted this book launch on 13 June 2023 with Professor Mariana Mazzucato. The session was anchored by veteran journalist and researcher, Duma Gqubule.

There is an entrenched relationship between the consulting industry and the way business and government are managed today which must change. Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show that our economies’ reliance on companies such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and EY stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability and impedes our collective mission of halting climate breakdown.

The ‘Big Con’ describes the confidence trick the consulting industry performs in contracts with hollowed-out and risk-averse governments and shareholder value-maximizing firms. It grew from the 1980s and 1990s in the wake of reforms by both the neoliberal right and Third Way progressives, and it thrives on the ills of modern capitalism, from financialization and privatization to the climate crisis. It is possible because of the unique power that big consultancies wield through extensive contracts and networks – as advisors, legitimators and outsourcers – and the illusion that they are objective sources of expertise and capacity. To make matters worse, our best and brightest graduates are often redirected away from public service into consulting.

In all these ways, the Big Con weakens our businesses, infantilizes our governments and warps our economies. Mazzucato and Collington expertly debunk the myth that consultancies always add value to the economy. With a wealth of original research, they argue brilliantly for investment and collective intelligence within all organizations and communities, and for a new system in which public and private sectors work innovatively for the common good. We must recalibrate the role of consultants and rebuild economies and governments that are fit for purpose.

State failure: Why SA should move towards an entrepreneurial state

1 July 2023 - Associate Professor Isaac Khambule

Government has failed to entrench an entrepreneurial mindset to its developmental statehood ambitions for a poverty alleviation mindset, which has led to our current challenges.

With South Africa failing to arrest the growing rates of unemployment and the inevitable impact of poverty and inequality, the country is quickly reaching a state of decay. Some pundits already toy with the idea of South Africa as a failing state or a failed state. How does South Africa get out of this conundrum?

Before we grapple with the way forward, we must understand how we got into this situation in the first place. The genesis of the problem is the current leadership’s inability to address three interrelated setbacks: service delivery failure, institutional deficiencies in the state, and the failure to create a capable and ethical developmental state. 

In relation to service delivery, most municipalities are incapable of delivering basic services, let alone maintaining public infrastructure. This is evident in the crumbling roads and water infrastructure throughout the country. Even former world-class cities such as Johannesburg and Durban are now in a state of decay - mirroring the state of the country's direction. Former industrial towns are now in ruins with deteriorating living standards across society. 

Failure of national leadership

Of course, infrastructure issues are not only the competency of the local government. The ongoing electricity cuts reflect the failure of the national leadership, with water infrastructure soon to follow, based on the Minister of Water and Sanitation pointing to the pressure emanating from the lack of infrastructure maintenance. The Hammanskraal Cholera outbreak is only a sign of things to come if the country continues in this direction.

The combination of these failures reveals institutional deficiencies within the state. These institutional deficiencies are underpinned by a lack of a meritocratic system in South Africa's public services. A recent investigation revealed that over 50% of employees in eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality did not have the required qualifications - this explains the decaying state of the city and the constant capital flight. Nationally, over 1800 government officials are unqualified for their positions. 

Over recent months, many articles have been written sustaining the argument that some of these failures were a result of the ANC’s cadre deployment policies. In political circles, some point to the AG reports showing that most ANC-run municipalities are incapable of good governance, with the DA using this as a posture to show their good governance records by virtue of the clean audits where they govern. 

Despite political differences, cadre deployment, in one form or another, is practised by all parties throughout the world. The problem with the ANC's cadre deployment is that it promotes loyalty to the party instead of promoting national interests. This is something the Chinese and many developmental states have gotten right through the meritocratic recruitment process. As to why the ANC has remained tone-deaf to this issue, is anybody's guess.

The resulting predicament from these interrelated challenges is the failure to create a capable, ethical and developmental state enshrined in the National Development Plan (NDP). Ten years have now passed, and the country is in a worse state than it was when this policy was adopted. 

So, what is the way forward? 

Developmental states cannot be divorced from an entrepreneurial mindset through the state laying path for local businesses to benefit from policies. In our context, the failure is found in the government's failure to entrench an entrepreneurial mindset to its developmental statehood ambitions for a poverty alleviation mindset. This explains the consistent increase in unemployment rates - because the required jobs are not created because of the absence of new ventures. The country's entrepreneurial intention is at a low of 11-20% compared to 40% in the African region.

South Africa should move towards a developmental state underpinned by an entrepreneurial mindset by unearthing and nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit of its young population to become future venture creators. This requires extensive investment in business incubations run by the most competent people in a non-partisan manner to improve economic competitiveness. 

Getting the groundwork right remains a priority for this venture to work. Erik Stam’s work has shown that getting these ten entrepreneurship ecosystem elements (infrastructure, finance, institutions, leadership, talent, entrepreneurship culture, knowledge, intermediaries, demand and networks) is a necessity for entrepreneurship to work. Even the US, through its hidden network developmental state, has prioritised these very tenets to enable globally competitive venture creation in all economic sectors.

South Africa already has some of the groundwork right through institutions such as the Industrial Development Corporation, the Development Bank of Southern Africa and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) capable of unlocking the country’s potential. However, the right leadership is required to ensure the ten entrepreneurial ecosystem elements are healthy for new ventures and value creation. 

Energies need to be shifted toward a state capable of facilitating a healthy environment for innovation and other new venture creation mechanisms. As Professor Marianna Mazzacuto rightly observes, the state is responsible for primarily creating a landscape where the private sector finds "the courage to invest after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments". The role of the IDC in the creation of the energy mineral complex is exemplary of the role the state is required in ushering the re-birth of the entrepreneurial state in South Africa.

Private sector must take some blame

Blame must also be directed towards the private sector for hoarding investment. In the country's effort to recover from Covid-19, former finance minister Tito Mboweni lambasted banks for failing to use effectively the R200 billion Loan Guarantee Scheme to support businesses.

Despite 94% of the risk being on the government's doorstep, the banks failed to promote national interests. This may explain the political posture announced by the president to ensure PostBank will become a state bank to ensure access to finance. However, this may not work with the current leadership failing to make state-owned enterprises work for the greater society.

The government's envisaged social compact will be a mere document if it is not embedded in ushering in a new era of an entrepreneurial state capable of unearthing and nurturing the entrepreneurial spirits of South Africans. To do this effectively, the government must fix the ten entrepreneurial ecosystem elements and promote responsible entrepreneurship to address the country's high socio-economic inequality rates. 

This article was first published on News24.com

Using Africa’s precious civic innovation capacity to be Bee-Watcher-Watchering

9 July 2023 - Associate Professor Geci Karuri-Sebina and Amy Mutua

The majority of the skill and capacity within the civic space, leveraging the newest technologies and methodologies, as well as the passion and energy of young innovators, is being expended in "bee watcher watchering".

In Dr Seuss' classic story "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?" (1973) he tells a curiously familiar tale about a place near Hawtch-Hawtch where a bee watcher was hired to monitor the lazy town bee because "a bee that is watched will work harder you see." Unfortunately, the poor little bee did not work harder ("not mawch"), and therefore another Hawtch-Hawtcher was put on task as a bee-watcher-watcher, ostensibly based on the same logic that this would make the bee-watcher, and thus the bee, work more effectively.

Turns out it didn't - and over time, the story concludes that "all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch are watching on watch watcher watchering watch, watch watching the watcher who's watching that bee." It is a foregone conclusion that the bee still isn't being any more productive, nor do we know why. 

This a great and nonsensical little story about what we are lucky to not be (if we are indeed so lucky?); a cautionary tale of the self-reinforcing logic of layering on more and more management and oversight onto dysfunctional systems and actors, hoping earnestly for change. Never mind the allegedly lazy town bee who never actually got any support in all of this watchering - one can't help but wonder what else all the Hawtch-Hawtchers could be doing with their talent and time if they were not just fruitlessly watch-watcher-watchering!

Metaphor of current state of affairs

This story offers an evocative metaphor for the current state of affairs in African governance today, and the contribution of civic tech innovation.

In the publication Civic Tech in Southern Africa: Alternative Democracy and Governance Futures?, data from the Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN) 's database shows that of the various civic tech sectors catalogued, over 60% of initiatives in Southern Africa are in "Democracy & Governance" (D&G).

This means they are focused on issues such as governance accountability and transparency, including key themes of anti-corruption and elections, e.g. by promoting targeted open data portals and platform initiatives. This finding is consistent with what we find in the literature, which also highlights that democracy and governance are often the dominant preoccupation of civic tech initiatives.

This means that the majority of the skill and capacity within the civic space, leveraging the newest technologies and methodologies, as well as the passion and energy of young innovators, is being expended in "bee watcher watchering".

Civic time and resources are spent reacting to state deficiencies, tracking spending and corruption, demanding participation, and trying to prevent state actors from abusing their power - essentially, trying to make sure that governments are doing their jobs as they should.

Considering that society is already paying for our governments to do their jobs and to do them effectively, one can't help but observe (as we do with Hawtch-Hawtch) that having an entire sector dedicating its capabilities to monitoring governments seems a bit redundant - and similarly, determining impact remains evasive.

Even though the metaphor we use is a bit naughty and dramatic, it is not our intention by any means to undermine the important work that organisations are doing in the D&G space.

The question we want to pose here is why and how this happened. On a continent that is mired with development challenges, why is it that more local capacity is going to monitoring the government than directly addressing the "real life" issues that are affecting the lives of people? And how did this get enabled?

The new book Innovation Ecosystems Africa: Solving the problems we have offers as its premise that the African continent is faced with many complex challenges, for example, around energy, food and water security, health pandemics, and climate crises. The minority (<40%) who are focusing on core public development issues include civic tech initiatives such as Abaaraha (Somalia’s first-ever crisis mapping platform that enables relief organisations to respond more effectively to drought victims), Healthlane (A Cameroonian health technology startup promoting access to affordable healthcare services) and CropChain (a platform that facilitates trade between smallholder farmers and consumers), and Alexa Diaries (a Ugandan initiative that empowers entrepreneurial women with digital skills to improve their business). They demonstrate the potential of civic tech in advancing development across Africa.

Influence of funding

Again, we are not ignoring the impact of bad governance, and of good D&G work. It is a reality that many African countries still struggle with governance issues, and so it makes sense that the sector should be one important target for attention. But in a context where bread and butter issues are at stake, what’s a reasonable balance of attention between demanding food, and figuring out how to get food? When you have smart people, increasingly powerful and democratised tools, and vibrant civic networks from local to global - surely it is not unreasonable to suggest that perhaps a majority of the capacity really could be going to the actual work and not just the watchering?

We get the impression that one key cause for the watchering dynamic is the influence of funding. The civic activism space is in general heavily grant dependent, and it seems as though a lot of funding (often coming from the West) has tended to focus on the governance issues.

Donor priorities in Africa affect innovation investment, and it could be that civic tech got pigeon-holed by the limited understanding of the ways in which communities could best leverage tech. Often we hear of calls for funding what communities feel that they would like to do is countered by what the funders understand to be investments in the digital space, sometimes influenced also by sectoral silos (so, e.g. the envelope for funding water services is separate from the team funding digital transformation). 

So the question then becomes: how can we flip these statistics? Can we shift to 60:40 (with 40% being D&G rather than the other way around), or even 80:20? And what might be the conditions towards achieving a better balance between monitoring the state, but also contributing to development and the self-determined improvement of quality of life?

Firstly, it is important to have funding which supports local, contextualised priorities in civic tech, not just D&G. This may be achieved by donors and governments seeing civic tech as an important supplementation of capacity for public service innovation.

Secondly, a greater recognition of the intersecting and complex challenges that require transdisciplinary experiments for how digital technologies can help solve "old problems''. Here, fostering partnerships between a wide variety of stakeholders can lead to the development of more sustainable and impactful civic tech tools that address the challenges that citizens are facing.

Thirdly, there is a need for an invitation (and possibly permission) for civic tech innovators and activists to focus their creativity on solving the problems they have and not just aligning to what is touted as civic tech-worthy.

In this way, civic tech initiatives can be empowered to actively focus on co-creating localised, inclusive and relevant solutions to development challenges.

This article was first published on News24.com

Is #DIYAfrica the future?

14 July 2023 - Associate Professor Geci Karuri-Sebina and Amy Mutua

There are several initiatives across sub-Saharan Africa in which citizen-driven technology is used to improve public governance.

In 2021, the Civic Tech Innovation Forum ‘21 chose as its headline theme - #DIYAfrica. This theme explored questions of what a hyper-democratised society may have to look like in an age where governments seemed to be flailing, exacerbated by the impacts of Covid-19.

What if Africans on the ground had to get on with building their own futures, where technology might enable empowerment, participation, critique, and even resistance? This theme seemed to resonate with the spirit of the times, and leveraged a similar narrative from the European Union (EU) Future of Government 2030+ scenarios (EU, 2019), which had posited a scenario entitled "DIY Democracy". This DIY scenario was characterised by decentralising power and self-organised communities, with the civic rising as a key governance actor. It was a story of the co-creation of public services enabled by grassroots participation, digitalisation and the democratisation of tech. Could this be the emerging African story, the conference was asking?

If a bit dramatic, this #DIYAfrica scenario does raise an interesting question about the capability of African states and the necessary and/or desirable roles of civil society.

Citizen-driven technology used to improve public governance

In the recent publication Civic Tech in Southern Africa: Alternative Democracy and Governance Futures?, data showed that civic tech in Southern Africa is growing.

Today, there are several initiatives across sub-Saharan Africa in which citizen-driven technology is used to improve public governance. It is not necessarily evenly distributed - the Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN)'s civic tech database shows that the majority of civic tech initiatives (around 70%) in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are located in South Africa or originated from South Africa. This begins to signal there are already alternative loci of public action and delivery beyond the traditional government control.

There are, however, several issues that beg consideration which is why the idea of #DIYAfrica is not an easy solution or panacea, despite growing discontentment with government delivery.

Firstly, there is a state-citizen contract that delineates a relationship with roles, and the state is mandated to perform certain public functions. It is a role-based upon which for example, public taxation and control is agreed upon. Accepting a diffusion of these functions begins to put into question these state-society relationships.

Secondly, governments and communities may not trust civic tech approaches and their agendas, whether for fear of loss of control, of undue political or private influence or of the difficulty of managing quality standards in the context of massive decentralisation. Sometimes this is exacerbated by poor understanding and a lack of preparedness of the state in engaging with new technologies and new regulatory roles. 

At the same time, however, it cannot be denied that the state cannot go it alone; most African countries continue to face underdevelopment, undergirded by what South Africa has termed the "trilemma" of poverty, inequality and unemployment. Civic tech has come to the fore in providing solutions in critical sectors such as education, health, the environment, gender and justice.

Solutions such as VillageReach in Malawi (which use drone-delivery to get medication to remote areas), Community Tablet in Mozambique (which empower rural communities with digital education), and Gender Links Lesotho (which developed the Nokaneng app which supports women who are experiencing gender-based violence) - are filling delivery gaps and making a real impact in the lives of communities.

Two roles 

We argue that civic tech potentially has two critical roles to play. One role - where there are civic-driven digital solutions for development - could be seen as advocacy for #DIYAfrica. However, the second which has to do with civic-government interfacing on or for digital innovation - may offer more nuance.

In the civic-driven approach - where for example, Tipster as a news-sharing platform empowers any ordinary person with a smartphone to be an amateur journalist, or Living Wage which enables domestic workers to ensure that they are not being exploited - civic actors can identify and develop solutions for development gaps in their own communities and sectors of interest.

They can resource such initiatives in various ways, including through philanthropy, social investments or innovative financing models. They do not need permission from the state, only enabling infrastructure and environments. And even where the state can or will not provide those conditions, they can innovate around that too. At scale, this dispersion of service actors could underpin a #DIYAfrica society and likely require new democratic and governance relationships.

In the civic-government approach, civic tech has been seen to support and augment the capabilities of government to improve service delivery and the citizen experience. Examples of this include PENSA (a Ministry of Health-approved platform that provides Mozambican citizens with vital health information); Namola (an app developed with government support that enables South Africans to report when they are in danger); and MuniMoney and Vulekamali (civic tech built initiatives that enhance public finance transparency).

In these arrangements, we see government partnering, funding and sometimes even contracting the skills of civic tech innovators to design and deliver solutions that optimise mutual roles and capabilities.

It would seem to us that some hybridity between the two might be where the appropriate balance is. An abdication of the state's role to hold accountability for certain public functions raises some fundamental challenges in modern democratic states, typically enshrined in our constitutions.

Unless we make radical shifts in how we would like to see our countries work, relieving governments of their primary roles may not be sensible - even where they are not performing them well.

Furthermore, it would raise new questions about what the new financing models are to sustain civically driven solutions, which is already the Achilles heel of civic tech organisations. Where governments completely fail, however, or where trust in their role is totally lost - civic tech may well be a strong leg for #DIYAfrica to stand on, even while these questions still beg to be addressed.

This article was first published on News24.com 

Women marching towards justice: The struggle continues

9 August 2023 - Dr Thelela Ngcetane-Vika

One of the greatest contributions of the generation of women of 1956 was protesting against the repugnant pass laws with a persuasive force of will and unbreakable courage to lawfully reclaim their dignity and fundamental freedoms.

Year after year, the slogan "you have tampered with the women; you have struck a rock" reverberates across all parts of South Africa as we honour the thousands of women who descended on the Union Buildings in Pretoria at the height of apartheid on 9 August 1956. No amount of intimidation could deter these women warriors from their determination to face the Goliath of that era as they bravely marched to the brutal apartheid regime's seat of power. 

In its form and design, apartheid was the antithesis of justice and equality. These daughters of the soil understood their role in the fight against the immoral system of apartheid – to stand up against all forms of discrimination and injustice. Because historical interpretation has often played up the role of predominantly white male leadership while playing down the role of leaders of colour and, in particular black women, our understanding of history has been skewed, as it is not told through her story. This often leads to a distorted understanding and interpretation of our history.

Essentially, this notion of historicism and biases has to form a critical frame of reference in our endeavours to tell #herstory. It is from this perspective that the contribution of black women's struggles must be elucidated through continuous interrogation.

As we commemorate Women's Day on 9 August 2023, I think it is poignant to develop a deeper understanding of the difference and connections between nostalgia, commemoration, and remembrance. No doubt, remembering as a revolutionary act has its significance, not just for the sake of history but also for the urgency of now – to inspire the women of this country to take bold and unwavering action against current injustices.

Remembering is honouring, and honouring is actively, boldly and courageously walking in the footsteps of those who laid it all for us to have a just and equal society, putting ourselves at the disposal of the power of memory to take the necessary steps forward. This moment, right now, is calling us to advance the economic dreams of our people.

The search now should be for a more balanced interpretation, which includes striving to put many forces and multiple players in proper balance and perspective. That, I think, is what is at issue with regard to this momentous question: what are the lessons from the 1956 Women's March to this current generation?

It was the brave leadership of women like Lilian Ngoyi, Sophie de Bruyn, Albertina Sisulu and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, among others, that led to that historic march. The spectacularly successful Women's March was, and still is, one of the most significant moments in the history of the liberation struggle in South Africa. They, in my opinion, did not have room to indulge the unhinged apartheid and patriarchy.

Global significance 

As such, the 1956 Women's March was of global historical significance as the world was watching. Moreover, the bravery of the 1956 Women's March signalled a seminal moment in women's struggles and, indeed, in the anti-apartheid movement. It was a clear demonstration by black women that they would not tolerate discrimination and unjust laws affecting every facet of African people's lives. They unequivocally rejected the repugnant apartheid laws that diminished the humanity of black people in South Africa, and black women in particular. It bears remembering that their march happened during the most brutal era of the apartheid apparatus, so it was no small measure of revolutionary bravery.

Clearly, the anti-apartheid movement would not have been possible without mass democratic movements, global boycotts and condemnation, nor without the support of the working class, women and international pressure as many were detained and brutally killed. One of the greatest contributions of the generation of women of 1956 was protesting against the repugnant pass laws with a persuasive force of will and unbreakable courage to lawfully reclaim their dignity and fundamental freedoms. 

Women leaders brought us closer to fundamental freedoms

It is worth noting that black women's leadership precedes the 20th Century as women like Nonesi of AbaThembu led her people during the difficult days of the colonial epoch in the 1800s. Faced with Pharaohs from both sides of the river - sexism from her own people and annexation by the whites - she fought to assert her role as a legitimate leader. More than once, she was able to save her people from losing their land through her negotiation and diplomatic skills. She died in 1880, at the age of 65, after leading her people for almost 40 years. 

Notably, the advancement of women's struggles and rights was brought to the fore by women leaders like Charlotte Maxeke and Nontsizi Mgqwetho, who began the protest around 1918. The 1956 generation took this struggle forward as they organised the biggest march of their times. They put their bodies on the line to end the repression of women’s rights and declared the unjust laws of that time null and void. They brought us closer to our fundamental freedoms, which are the backbone and core values of our democratic society, underpinned by the principles of non-discrimination and equality. No doubt, their courage shaped 20th and 21st Century women's rights activism and gave us victories that propelled us to develop progressive policies and legislative interventions to give women their rights and voices. Thus, we owe a great debt to the generation of 1956. 

As I was ruminating on the struggles of black women, a thought visited my mind that it was on the 1 August 1985 that one of the pioneering black women human rights lawyers, Victoria Mxenge, was brutally assassinated. Her memory is also a blessing as she represented many of our people in court, sometimes as an outlaw herself. She paid the ultimate price, reminding us that our freedom was not free, as many of our people paid the ultimate price.

Women across the globe have continued to challenge discrimination and injustice in their own countries. In the US, for example, women like Fannie Lou Hammer and Rosa Parks, through various campaigns and protests and their refusal to accept second-class citizenship, served as an incubator of the African American women's struggles, rooted in non-violent revolution and the continuing project of freedom for all. That struggle continues; as Coretta Scott King aptly noted: freedom is never really won as every generation must win it. South African women, too, are on this life-long struggle against injustice.

Clearly, many factors must be considered, including equality for all in every sphere of our societies. Essentially, our society must advance the economic dreams of our people, fight the scourge of gender-based violence (GBV) that is rampant in present-day South Africa and bring an end to all forms of suffering, including the high rates of unemployment and poverty. Progressive, liberatory movements seeking to revive the politics of integrity, honesty, decency, accountability, dignity and courage should embark on continuous projects until justice is attained for every member of SA society. For those of us who are believers, the politics of faithfulness to God's call for justice is as noble and crucial as ever.

This article was first published on News24.com

WSG's Acting Head of School honoured at inaugural Whistleblower Awards

27 October 2023 -

Adjunct Professor Themba Maseko, interim head of the Wits School of Governance, was lauded for his courage and bravery for speaking up against corruption.

Maseko was recognised at an awards ceremony, led by Public Interest SA that advocates for ethics, social justice and transparency in South Africa, on 26 October 2023 in Johannesburg. 

The awards celebrated journalists, active citizens, civil society organisations and media houses that are committed to justice and building a South Africa, free from corruption. 

Professor Maseko left the public service after 17 years, after speaking out against state capture. He has authored a book titled For my Country. He is a Trustee of the Board of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and also serves on the boards of Corruption Watch, the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution and Chapter Zero. Maseko is also leading a project on the State Capture Report, which will comprise public events and a book.

Read more: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-05-16-in-the-trenches-why-former-government-spokesperson-themba-maseko-said-no-to-state-capture-and-paid-the-price/ 

Maseko joined the School in January 2022 as Director of Executive Education, bringing with him a wealth of public sector and management and higher education experience. The former government communicator’s leadership has been invigorating, strategically driving a team of highly professional short course administrators and business development staff to offer relevant courses.

His ability to make different teams work together in the School has had a tremendous impact on the quality and delivery of short courses offered. Under his leadership, innovative courses have been introduced in the field of digital governance and civic tech. The School’s short courses graduations have become illustrious events, attracting vital keynote speakers including, the Auditor-General of South Africa, Tsakani Maluleke.

He holds a BA LLB (Wits University) and an MBA (De Montfort University). Maseko's career in the public service includes roles as the former CEO of the Government Communication and Information Service and Government Spokesperson; Director General in the Department of Public Service and Administration; National Department of Public Works, and he was the first Superintendent-General in the Gauteng Department of Education and a member of Parliament in 1994.

His private sector experience includes short stints as Managing Director of the Damelin Education Group, independent management consulting, and Communications Director at the Business Leadership South Africa.

Johannesburg’s catastrophic CBD fire is a tale of one city’s non-accountability crisis

4 September 2023 - Adjunct Professor Alex van den Heever

Catastrophic events draw the attention-hungry media into the staggering horror of the moment which, although understandable, pulls the focus away from the years it took to cause the catastrophe.

Long-term patterns are, however, not newsworthy. Only when they manifest themselves as crises do they become momentarily interesting. But if the attention drifts off, and the drivers of a momentary crisis remain in place, nothing really changes. When the drivers of crises become embedded in systems that reproduce and protect themselves, the problems run deep, become more complex and are resilient to simple interventions.

The deaths of at least 76 occupants of the Johannesburg Metro-owned death trap and former “Albert Street Pass Office” has become the latest in a long line of events that largely reflect similar patterns.

These include, inter alia: the collapse of Eskom due to acts of sabotage and corruption; the deaths of about 80 patients when the Gauteng Department of Health outsourced chronic mental health patient care to unlicensed healthcare providers; the violence by zama zamas in Krugersdorp and Riverlea that drew attention to the failure of government to manage closed mines in and around Johannesburg; the cholera outbreak centred at Hamanskraal with upward of 50 deaths, which drew attention to failed water and sanitation management by government; the fire at the Bank of Lisbon Building, the headquarters of the Gauteng Department of Health, which resulted in the deaths of three fireman seen together with fires at eight public hospitals in Gauteng (including arson at Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital), which drew attention to the failures of facilities management by the Gauteng Department of Infrastructure Development; the murder of Babita Deokaran, the head of supply chain management at the Gauteng Department of Health, who was exposing corruption at, inter alia, Tembisa Hospital; the explosion on Bree Street (now Lilian Ngoyi Street), which revealed the failure of preventive maintenance by the City of Johannesburg and the province; and the theft of strategic transport and energy infrastructure by syndicates with possible links to the relevant public organisations and politicians.

In these cases, avoiding the crisis outcome needed sustained periods of investment in policy development, systems, infrastructure, high-quality teams and expert specialised law enforcement support.

In all instances, however, such investments are nowhere to be found. First, because preventive action is largely missing – with no sustained policy frameworks or investments that ultimately hit the ground. Second, when laws are broken, investigations disappear into the ether and/or get “fumbled” by the National Prosecuting Authority.

There is, therefore, no accountability for the policy failures or the lawlessness – whether perpetrated by parts of the government or private interests.

The absence of accountability is, however, no accident. The repeated narrative that foreign migrants and civil society bodies are to blame for these “complex” problems is a crude, but noteworthy deflection – straight out of the dictator’s playbook. Just pick on a vulnerable group that can’t fight back and make them into a monstrous bogeyman that explains all the ills you caused, past, present and future.

But the question this narrative desperately tries to avoid, is how a government, with all its powers and resources, ends up being weaker than a community with few effective protected rights and a motley crew of precarious civil society actors?

The answer, however, is quite simple. Government has become captured by criminal elements operating through the governing party, who divert state resources into their pockets. Provided you can keep people fooled using the dictator’s playbook, no one holds you to account, and the theft continues. As the collapse of public assets and services is inevitable, you need a ready-made reliable counternarrative to evade accountability.

If you want to know who is to blame for preventable crises, however, look no further than those resorting to the dictator’s playbook – as indelible a red flag as Lady Macbeth’s “damned spot” – “What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account?”

Strategically placed politicians effectively line their pockets, while occasionally offering some public services as a “side-hustle” – this to maintain the pretence that they are serving the people.

Behind the scenes of bluff and bluster, however, not much happens for the people. Posts either involve patronage appointments, who are not expected to deliver anything, or ghost appointments, which are used to syphon funds from government. When services in any way depend on procurement, the patronage appointments ensure the contracts go to designated companies, who are also not expected to deliver much. This way you get the unfinished low-income housing, the wrong, and over-priced computer system, and skinny jeans instead of medical equipment.

After a while, infrastructure decays, and complex social problems linger unresolved, surfacing only once critical thresholds are passed. And then, shock and horror, you have a crisis that only a very special minister on top of a pile of ministers can solve – with multiple public appearances and the dictator’s playbook in hand.  

The Albert Street Pass Office fire exhibits all the signs of this despicable pattern. Up until 2018, this building, owned by the city, was in a serviceable condition and being managed as a shelter for abused women by an NGO. A criminal syndicate chased the NGO out in that year, and the city took no action despite requests for intervention. Under the noses of the city, for the next five years the syndicate sublet the property, without a lease with the owner (the city) or paying rates and taxes.

Even the slowest of strategies would have borne fruit by now – but the city walked away from their asset and wilfully ignored the law-breaking and risks to the public occurring on their own property. The question is: Why?

Of the 57 listed hijacked buildings (yes, there is a list), at least 29 (or 51%) are actually owned by the City of Johannesburg. Their addresses are known, their condition is known, the unsafe conditions are known, the breaches of safety laws are known, the non-payment of rates and taxes are known. So where is the strategy? Where is the action plan?

Consistent with the dictator’s playbook, migrants are now publicly blamed, with the NGOs that protect them from unlawful evictions argued to be the cause. Not mentioned is the fact that there is no documented strategy to show how the city’s property portfolio is to be managed. Effectively the city has abandoned 29 buildings they own – without any strategy.

In the Draft Integrated Development Plan 2022/27 for the Johannesburg Metro, no strategy is outlined other than stipulating an intention to investigate 95% of “hijacked/problem properties”.

The city defines a hijacked property as:

“… properties that are characterised by criminal elements where the individual or a group of people misrepresenting themselves as lawful owners solicits money from the occupiers. Problem Properties are characterised by contravention of the City’s Bylaws and other relevant National and /or Provincial legislations.”  

The report, however, fails to mention that they own 51% of the hijacked properties. As the city is plainly aware of the criminal conduct involved in their own buildings, it is remarkable that no mention is made of criminal proceedings against parties “misrepresenting themselves as lawful owners”. No timeline is mentioned to do anything, and no mention is made of NGO “obstruction” through the courts.

The possible steps to addressing the problem of hijacked buildings could illustratively involve about seven steps.

• Step 1: Identify and pursue criminal charges against the “criminal elements”, who should not be hard to identify.
• Step 2: Intercept any money transfers from the abused tenants to the “criminal elements”.
• Step 3: Immediately mitigate any safety concerns in the buildings.
• Step 4: Identify and prepare alternative decent accommodation for tenants.
• Step 5: Demarcate and prepare lawful processes to address illegal immigrants resident in the building.
• Step 6: Request the voluntary transfer of tenants to the alternative accommodation prepared through Step 4.
• Step 7: For tenants failing to abide by the voluntary transfer process, adopt the eviction route, which, if lawful, will not be obstructed by the courts. 

While this could take time, if properly prepared and implemented it should address the problem and root out the syndicates.

Given that the City of Johannesburg owns the buildings that have been left to be run by criminal elements, they are quite possibly civilly and criminally liable for the deaths and all associated breaches of the law. This liability could, and hopefully will, extend to individual office bearers – both members of the executive and accounting officers. If this is the case, such liability will extend to all the other properties owned by the city.

Furthermore, independent investigations should ascertain whether there are links between the “criminal elements” and city officials, members of the executive, Gauteng politicians and members of law enforcement.

In summary, a rock has been lifted on the conduct of the Johannesburg Metropolitan Government. There should be nowhere to hide. Accountability must prevail, no matter how high it goes. The rot in the city must end, and the rotten must be fired, sued and jailed. Only then will we be able to move from the worst of all worlds to the best. 

This article first appeared on the Daily Maverick.

Apply now to Africa's leading School of Governance - Join our information sessions

21 September 2023 -

We are accepting applications for our all our academic programmes for 2024.

• Postgraduate Diploma in Management
• Master of Management (Coursework and Research)
• Master of Management (Research Only)
• PhD

A full list of our courses: https://www.wits.ac.za/wsg/study-at-wsg/academic-programmes/ 

Apply here: https://self-service.wits.ac.za/

Closing date: 30 November 2023

Should you need more information, one of our helpful staff members will get back to you.

Email: academicprogrammes.wsg@ds.wits.ac.za 

ICESCO Chair for Innovation and Futures in Africa launched at Wits

10 October 2023 -

Wits University, through the Tayarisha Research Group, based at the Wits School of Governance, signed an agreement with The Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) to host the ICESCO Chair for the study of Innovation and Futures in Africa.

This chair, led by Associate Professor Geci Karuri-Sebina, will result in collaborations between high-level researchers, as well as the development of educational programmes and policy dialogues with societal actors on issues of innovation, futures literacy and foresight.

“In this age of fast-changing technologies and digitalisation, it is crucial that we are ensuring that our governance and socio-economic systems are learning systems that can ensure that we are meeting the Sustainable development Goals and building positive futures for Africa, for humanity, and for our planet,” said Professor Jason Cohen, Dean of the Commerce, Law and Management (CLM) Faculty at Wits University.

The Chair will be located within the Tayarisha Research Group, a new, and fast-growing initiative at CLM/WSG which seeks to focus on the effects and implications of digital transformation on Africa’s future and its governance.

“The concept of ‘anticipatory governance’ is at the core of this work as we explore possible African digital futures and how we can be both more innovative, but also better prepared to govern adequately as technologies emerge and co-evolve with societal changes, continuously shifting the very conditions of change,” said Karuri-Sebina.

This ICESCO Chair at Wits will be the key driver for research, training, programming and partnering in this field of Anticipatory Governance.

“Within Wits, this stream is consistent with the work of the Wits Innovation Centre and strategy, where there is a University-wide effort ‘to encourage, facilitate, and support the connection between research and innovation’, said Adjunct Professor Themba Maseko, Acting Head of the Wits School of Governance.  

In addition to enhancing African innovation ecosystems and the commercialisation of research, WIC serves as a conduit between Wits and both the private and public sectors to help develop solutions to real-world industry and development problems.

WIC is working with the Tayarisha team to develop Africa’s first Gov-tech Incubator which is poised to become a flagship for impactful innovation in governance. The ICESCO Chair on Innovation and Futures in Africa will be integrally linked into this Wits-wide innovation agenda and its emerging offerings.

Karuri-Sebina said there are also important external platforms and opportunities already on the horizon, for example, the African Engineering and Technology Network (Afretech) is an innovation platform that Wits is already involved in which ICESCO member states are already well represented. This network of technology-focused universities includes Egypt, Senegal, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and the United States, and it seeks to “drive inclusive digital growth through higher education and the power of collaboration… working together to build engineering and technology capacity in education, knowledge creation, and entrepreneurship.”

Maseko said that South Africa, through Wits and its government partners, has been invited to host the 17th annual United Nations’ global ICEGOV conference which is the premier global convening of governments, scholars and digital governance stakeholders (More information to follow).

The inaugural Chair holder, Prof Karuri-Sebina, this Chair will share the many more linkages and opportunities as this initiative progresses.

For more information email: Geci.Karuri-Sebina@wits.ac.za

Meet our new Academic Director

11 October 2023 -

Apply now: Civic Tech Innovation executive course 2024

22 November 2023 -

We are looking for innovators and practitioners from government, non-profit and private sector organisations to join us on this course. Share and deepen your knowledge at the Wits School of Governance.

Benefits of this course:
• Understand civic tech trends and opportunities
• Identify opportunities for digital innovation in social impact initiatives and service delivery
• Learn about different research and civic tech tools
• Learn to improve interaction between communities, government and stakeholders for better outcomes
• Explore institutional arrangements for enabling civic tech adoption
• Connect with digital and innovation leaders in other organisations and sectors

There are a limited number of bursaries available and will be granted based on motivations and meeting eligibility requirements.

Please send all applications and queries to Lerato.mooya@wits.ac.za