DA to refer discriminatory assault to Human Rights Commission

The DA is shocked by a report yesterday on the criminal justice system’s total lack of care in the assault of a lesbian woman.

It is unacceptable to be assaulted because of one’s sexual orientation. It is despicable when the person assaulted tries to report the matter to the police, the very people who are supposed to protect us from harm, only to be told that the matter is “not a big issue”.

Crime is a big issue. Being assaulted is a big issue. Being assaulted to the point where one is unconscious for three hours, is a very big issue. This reportedly happened to 29 year old Bonisiwe Mtshali, who was assaulted by security guards after she confronted them about comments they made regarding her sexual orientation. 

We believe that this conduct goes beyond misconduct on the part of the police, as well as the security guards. It is a violation of the rights of Ms Mtshali to enjoy her constitutionally enshrined right to freedom from discrimination on the grounds of her sexual orientation, and a violation of her right to a safe and secure environment.  It also makes a mockery of our criminal justice system.  How can we possibly know the extent of this type of crime, when the police are setting themselves up as judges by preventing the matter from even getting to court?

For these reasons, we shall be referring this matter to the Human Rights Commission for their urgent investigation. This type of intolerance and violence must be stopped, and stopped now.

Debbie Schafer MP
DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development

SACP must stop pretending

An open letter to Dr Blade Nzimande

Dear Blade,

I know you are a busy man, but I would like to issue you with an invitation on the occasion of your 13th national congress this weekend, and in exchange, I would love you to explain something to me.

What I want to know is this: what is the nature and content of the influence that the South African Communist Party (SACP) has on the ANC – if anything, and does this influence help or hinder the organisation in becoming the modern, integrated, effective political party it could, and should, become?

But allow me to begin with my own confession.

When I was at university in the 1980s, at the University of Natal, nothing interested me more than Marxism.

My sociology lecturers were Marxist. . . obviously. My African politics lecturers were Marxist. . . . naturally. Many of my law lecturers were Marxist. What is slightly surprising, is that most of my English lecturers were Marxist, and my wife still jokes that I cannot understand Jane Austen except as a faintly subversive but ultimately reformist force in the broader class struggle between emerging capital, the working class and the landed gentry of late 18th century Britain.

If that weren’t enough, what may be very surprising is that my music professor was a Marxist: Mozart was a reflection of the declining aristocracy and rising popular culture, hence the austere, regal formalism of his early work and the pantomime-like frivolity of his late operas.
And Beethoven was the bombastic representative of new bourgeois confidence, etc, etc.

There were several aspects of Marxism I found attractive: its ability to present a holistic and complete explanation not only for society as it exists, but also the way it unfolds. In that turbulent era, when apartheid was in its death throes – with states of emergency, detentions without trial, state clampdowns and endless protests – this holistic and complete explanation was like manna from heaven. I loved the way Marxism drove deep into the economic heart of the machine in fabulously intricate search for a science of society.

More immediately, Marxism was the door through which we as privileged students could enter the heady politics of the day, finding a common cause with black students in an era where the pull of black consciousness was declining and the push of congress politics was coming to the fore. It was a time of horror and loss, but it was also vital and exciting. It was fabulous to feel part of a grand force for social change. I graduated with what was called a Bachelor of Arts, but actually what I got was a Bachelor of Marxism.

Over the years, I gradually lost my faith. It wasn’t just the failure of the Soviet system, although that was obviously part of it. It wasn’t just that communist governments were almost indistinguishable from suppressive autocracies.  It was something much more devastating: observable facts turned out more and more at odds with the grand theory.

The more you knew about the theory, the more obvious the distinction between fact and theory became. Marxist theory, it turns out, is not only wrong but diametrically wrong. It’s not only not true; it’s the precise opposite of truth.

Take, for example, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, the big contradiction that supposedly lies at the heart of capitalism which is absolutely sure to tear it apart. Turns out, globally speaking, rates of profit have been generally increasing ever since Marx predicted they would start to fall. Capitalism began producing wealth at a rate faster than any social system previously known. Likewise, the labour-theory of value was pretty useless.

It was a useless notion when Adam Smith invented it, and even more so when Marx took it up. Far from being critical, it meant nothing at all in a world focused on exchange value.

If that’s too esoteric, what about class struggle? All history, as we know, consists of class struggle. Turns out that far from pressing the working class into poverty, capitalism has achieved the opposite, lifting billions of people out of squalor.

Many remained poor, but the middle class exploded and even workers began to own TV sets, cars, washing machines and homes. It turned out – though none of my Marxist lecturers noticed at the time – that the average earnings of the bottom decile of Americans was close to the top decile of Chinese, Russians, Vietnamese or any of the other countries that chose the communist route.

Oddly, the countries more desirous of social peace, and therefore, averse to “class struggle” in the post-war era (West Germany and Japan) did best. “Class struggle” wasn’t inevitable, it was just destructive, and countries that indulged in it, like Britain, paid the price.

Dialectical materialism? Fit Islamic or Christian fundamentalism into that if you please.
What about economic determinism? All that “base and superstructure” stuff? Bunkum. When working-class Britons voted for Margaret Thatcher, it became clear there is no inevitable connection between your “class position” and your politics, never mind your ethics or your taste in esoterica and art.

The world even contrived, as Niall Ferguson has noted, two controlled experiments: one divided east and west (Germany), and one divided north and south (Korea). East Germany produced the Trabant, a slow, dangerous, exhaust-spewing rattletrap. At the same time, West Germany produced, well, everything, including the Mercedes-Benz SLK. South Korean cellphones are used by millions around the world. North Korean rockets can hardly reach the shore before exploding.

The depressing thing is that while we were footling around in this absorbing blind alley, we were missing out on fine tuning the somewhat rusted and overused engine we had. Financial literacy, entrepreneurism, capital efficiency, work processes, brand building, inventory management, all got lost while we indulged in revolutionary fantasies. We were, in a sense, making things worse by not only studying the wrong thing, but not studying the right thing. We were revolutionary, except in our own thinking. In that respect, we were absolutely rigid.

So here is my invitation: please join us in the world. The real world. The world in which people live, and not some twisted fantasy world of a German romantic who lived a century and a half ago.
It’s a fabulous, inventive, creative, rich, fun place. It has all the freedom your party promises but never delivers.

By all means, bring your sense of social righteousness and the commitment to build a better world. But please, stop pretending you have an “intellectual” contribution to make to the ANC.
Social structures are not the mechanical box you claim they are. They are much more complicated and diverse than the strictures which have been determined by your failed theories.

You are, literally, history.

By Tim Cohen, writer for Business Day

No-show voters have the power to make change

Voter apathy, or low turnout among eligible voters, is increasing at national and provincial levels
while decreasing at the local level.

The proportion of eligible voters choosing not to vote in national and provincial elections has
increased from 14% in 1994 to 41% in 2009. In other words, in 1994 some 86% of eligible
voters voted in the national and provincial election, but by 2009 that proportion had fallen to
under 60%.

The opposite is true for local elections. The first local election in South Africa’s new democracy,
in 1995, saw only 38% of eligible voters take part. In 2011 the proportion increased to 43%. This
represented a decrease in voter apathy from 63% in 1995 to 57% in 2011.

From these figures it's clear that if we all voted we could change the face of politics in South Africa. Encourage your friends and family to vote, because contrary to what many say YOUR VOTE DOES COUNT.

Sources: Independent Electoral Commission, Institute for Race Relations.

Adoptions decrease by 52% while foster care grants increase by 72%

The number of orphans in South Africa increased by 29%, from just over 4 million to approximately
5.2 million, between 2005 and 2009. In the same period adoptions decreased by 52%, from 2 840 to
1 368. Foster care grants increased by 72%, from 281 475 to 483 800, according to the South
African Institute of Race Relations.

The trends are based on data from the Department of Social Development and may be attributed to
three main factors.

Firstly, adoptions are not a frequent choice among South Africans. This is particularly true of
Africans. A lot of orphans are looked after by their extended families or family friends in a private,
informal arrangement known as kinship foster care. This type of arrangement is widely practised in
South Africa even though it is not ordered or regulated by any statute or legal body. Statistics South
Africa estimates that 1.4 million children (8%) live in such households.

Secondly, formal foster care comes with a financial incentive. The foster care grant is currently
R770 a month. Many people opt to foster a child rather than adopt one.

Lastly, adoption requires that one be able to provide for the child’s needs, both financially and
otherwise. No financial assistance is provided by the Government. In addition, the adoption process
is a lengthy and demanding one which often acts as a deterrent to prospective parents.

None of this is good news for the increasing number of orphans in the country. The Actuarial
Society of South Africa estimates that by 2015, there will be more than 5.5 million orphans. Some
32% of these will be maternal, 56% paternal, and 12% double orphans.

Sources: Democracy Support Programme, South African Institute of Race Relations

12 731 businesses owed R1, 4 billion by EC provincial departments

Thousands of businesses in the Eastern Cape are squeezed financially by delayed payments from the provincial government. Small businesses are the most effective form of job creation and the province must pull out all stops to ensure their growth and survival. They cannot be the cash cow that is being milked while government delays payments from one financial year to the next to hide financial mismanagement.

According to a question for written reply by DA MPL Bobby Stevenson to the MEC for Finance, Phumulo Masualle, a total of  12 731 businesses were owed an amount of R1, 455,232 billion by provincial departments in excess of 30 days as at the end of the financial year (31 March 2012).  There were still 40 525 invoices due for payment to these 12 731 suppliers.  The worst performing department was Health which owed suppliers a total of  R865, 715 million followed by Education, R247 million, and Roads and Public Works, R218 million.

This amounts to an average of R114 270 per supplier. Delayed payments of these amounts can be crippling for a small business and drive them under.

Of the 12 731 businesses that were owed money, 6 716 were owed by Education and 3 983 were owed by Health.  Some departments performed very well and had less than 50 creditors outstanding.  (Legislature 6, Economic Development 15, Transport 41).

It is quite clear that the Health Department is deliberately delaying payment so as to deal with its financial crisis.  This merely compounds the problem as last year’s financial shortages are simply rolled over into the next year.

The DA welcomes the detailed response from the Provincial Treasury.  It shows they have the information at hand to monitor the situation.  However, they urgently need to intervene with departments to ensure that they don’t use small business to finance their debt from one year to the next. A Democratic Alliance-led provincial government would ensure the right climate is created for businesses to grow and create jobs.

Local government – too big to succeed

Plenty of local authorities in South Africa just don’t work. Perhaps that’s because we don’t have enough of them.

Corruption, cadre deployment, skills shortages, and poor administration have all been blamed for poor local government performance. Performance varies a lot between municipalities, but for some, solving these problems might not be enough. The problem may be, quite literally, bigger than that.

Some South African district municipalities are larger than many countries and American states. Our largest district municipality, Namakwa (Northern Cape), is larger than the state of New York, which contains 62 counties, each with their own mayor and administration. Switzerland, which is smaller than three of our district municipalities, is divided into 26 cantons, and approximately 2 700 communes. Every canton has its own parliament, government, constitution, laws, and courts.

In 1998 South Africa’s 843 local municipalities were reduced to 284. Older East Londoners will remember the days when Gonubie, Beacon Bay and King Williams Town were their own municipalities. There are now 278 municipalities falling under 52 district and metropolitan authorities. Previously, each municipality would have been responsible for, on average, three of the country’s 2 345 cities and towns. Now this average is more like eight. Is it possible for one local authority to effectively run eight different towns which may be spread over a large area?

The ANC is now discussing plans to abolish district municipalities. What would take their place is currently unclear, but the intention is to address the failings of local government. One idea is to get rid of the existing two-tier system and allocate the powers of districts to local municipalities or provinces. Particularly badly performing municipalities might be absorbed into provincial and national administrations.

Among those badly performing municipalities might be the 66 declared to be in financial distress by the National Treasury — a quarter of all municipalities. Assuming that the party is serious about fixing local government, perhaps the ANC should also be considering decentralisation as part of the solution, not greater centralisation.

Perhaps one of the problems with local authorities in South Africa is that some cover too large an area to work. The local government overhaul should then be considering more, and smaller, municipal areas.

Watch out for DA and walk the talk, warns Vavi

Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has sounded alarm bells at the factionANC, saying it could lose electoral support to the DA.

At the heart of the ANC’s problems was the party’s tardiness in tackling factions and implementing resolutions, he said. “The problem is that when we are in public platforms, we speak against factionalism but as soon as we leave those platforms, we do exactly what we have been saying must not be done … we sing songs praising individuals,” said Vavi.

Addressing a Cosatu provincial conference in Pietermaritzburg that is part of preparations for the labour federation’s national congress in September, Vavi said if the problems continued, the DA would have a field day in the 2014 elections.

“The enemy [DA] is at the door. Don’t underestimate them and their campaign, but be vigilant because they can see that workers’ needs are not taken care of. “When workers get desperate, they forget about ideologies. They forget about politics and think about their stomachs. Stomachs know no politics, they will vote for the DA.”

The DA was the only growing party, Vavi said. “We are busy fighting amongst ourselves. We know it won’t stop in Mangaung as some will start planning for the next conference even before they pack their bags to leave Mangaung,” he said. “Our problem is not that we haven’t identified these problems, it’s a refusal to do what we know is correct and desist from doing what we know will not build unity and take our organisation forward.”

Vavi said there was a lack of political will within the ANC and its allies to do the right things. “The ANC, its allies and the rest of the democratic forces have for many years been pointing out the current weaknesses and have taken bold resolutions on what is to be done. Yet our track record in doing anything about the identified weaknesses leaves much to be desired. “We lack political will to implement our own decisions, in particular when those decisions are against powerful interests.”

He said killing for positions had taken over the ANC. The gunning down of ANC chief whip Wandile Mkhize in the Hibiscus Coast local municipality last week in KZN was an example.

From Daily Dispatch. 03.07.12

SA TODAY: ZUMA’S “GIANT LEAP” – OFF THE CLIFF

The ANC’s policy conference in Midrand this week has dispelled any lingering hope that the ANC can still rescue South Africa from the consequences of 18 years of ANC rule.

If the conference resolutions (couched in tired, old Marxist jargon) are ever implemented, they will undoubtedly worsen the crisis of poverty, unemployment and inequality the ANC claims it wants to address.

The ANC acknowledges in its own discussion documents, prepared for the conference, that the state is “impotent”. It acknowledges that there is a “crisis of outcomes” (otherwise known as delivery failure). But its plan to fix this is – more state control!  

Despite the acknowledged failure of almost every state-driven intervention – from land reform to education renewal – President Zuma’s opening speech blamed the familiar scapegoat: “white men” and the inherited disparities of apartheid.

Instead of the “giant leap” forward Zuma promised, the conference ended in a tenuous “holding operation” endorsing the re-hashed policy proposals adopted at Polokwane almost five years ago.  

To be sure, it could have been worse. A large number of delegates were pushing for more radical forms of state-led populism, such as the wholesale nationalisation of the mining industry (which reportedly led to a fist fight between delegates behind closed doors) and the confiscation of land without compensation. If this lobby had triumphed, it would have been the death knell for further investment and economic growth. It is important that these calls were resisted (even if only by a narrow margin, in the case of the “land-grab” protagonists).

But this does not represent progress. It means that President Zuma will be even more compromised than he was before the conference. Policy paralysis is the inevitable outcome. Talk of the “developmental state” leading the “second phase of South Africa’s transition” is hollow rhetoric, bereft of content.  

Even if some of the policy proposals are implemented, they will make matters worse rather than better. Take the resolutions on mining: they are designed to make conditions more difficult for the mining industry, at a time when many mines are battling to survive. The proposed 50% resource rent tax on mining will inevitably lead to mine closures. The increased revenue government is trying to gain will be minimal compared to the economic and social impact of thousands more unemployed people.

Instead, we should grow mining output by working to reduce costs associated with poor transport infrastructure, inadequate export facilities and rising electricity prices. To grow jobs we need more down-stream industries in mining and to achieve this we should focus on improving the business and regulatory environment so that these industries are attractive to investors. State coercion to force mines to diversify by undertaking “beneficiation” will have the opposite effect.

Then there is the issue of land reform. The conference resolved that land should not be confiscated without compensation unless it had been acquired illegally. And while the concept of “willing-buyer, willing-seller” was rejected, the conference accepted that constitutional change was not needed. So the legal “status quo” remains: if the state and a private owner cannot reach agreement on compensation for land, a court must determine a reasonable price.

But the state’s own central role in the failure of land reform remained unexamined. Eighteen years into democracy, an “audit” of land ownership in South Africa is still incomplete. If there was any serious intent to drive land reform and improve agricultural output, the ANC would start by focusing on South Africa’s most fertile land along the country’s eastern sea-board which is largely unproductive and held in various forms of “traditional” communal ownership. The state also owns vast tracts of land. But instead of using this land to broaden ownership and enhance agricultural production, the focus remains on punishing productive farmers. This is incomprehensible given that, according to the government’s own statistics, over 80% of land reform ventures country-wide have failed.

Then there is the all-important area of investment, economic growth and job creation. It is clear from the discussion papers that the ANC still believes State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) should be the core drivers of “economic transformation” with a mandate to “advance the socio-economic and political agenda of the developmental state”.  

This jargon is pure satire, given the combined records of Transnet, Telkom, Eskom, South African Airways and the SABC. Between 2008 and 2010, state-owned enterprises had to be rescued by taxpayers to the tune of R243-billion. And to add insult to injury, when their CEOs and senior staff were “relieved” of their positions, it cost taxpayers R262-million to let them go.  

As if this is not enough, there are now plans for a new state-owned mining company, a state-owned bank, a state-owned construction company, and a state-controlled “human resource planning entity”. Each one of these is destined for failure. If a state is so inept that it cannot even deliver textbooks to schools, its attempt to control the supply and demand of human resources throughout the economy will certainly result in a “giant leap” – over the cliff and into an abyss.

While seeking state intervention everywhere it shouldn’t, the ANC continues to resist it where it should. In 2011, R5-billion was budgeted to implement a Youth Wage Subsidy in order to encourage employers to offer “first-time” jobs to enable young work seekers to get a foothold on the first rung of the economic ladder. It remains unspent. Under pressure from COSATU, the ANC has shied away from implementing one of the few interventions by the state that would really boost productivity and opportunity, and broaden the participation of young people in the economy.  

Instead, the ANC has opted for precisely the opposite. Although details are still sketchy, the conference mooted an ill-defined “job-seekers grant” offering young people an “allowance” while they look for work. This misdiagnoses the failure in our labour market, where job search costs are a limited contributor to unemployment. Accordingly, a grant with such a narrow focus will be relatively ineffective, increase dependence on the state, and do nothing to encourage more job creation.

One of the defining features of South Africa’s unsustainable-socio economic order is that grant recipients outnumber personal taxpayers by more than 3:1. This new “grant” will merely skew this situation further. It will not enable more people to move into the productive economy and up the ladder, eventually growing the number of taxpayers. In fact, it will do precisely the opposite.

To really create jobs in South Africa the Youth Wage Subsidy (that supports the demand-side of the labour market) should be matched by a supply-side “Opportunity Voucher” to give young people the choice of subsidised further education or seed capital or business loan guarantees, according to their individual needs.

As the ANC delegates argued (and came to blows) behind closed doors, it was fitting that external developments overshadowed their deliberations. These events, that grabbed the headlines, told us much more about the “real ANC” than the resolutions emanating from its own commissions.

As if to symbolise the discrepancy between the ANC’s words and its deeds, the rhetoric of Midrand  was obliterated in the metaphorical pall of smoke that rose from the state-sponsored burning and shredding of undelivered textbooks a few hundred kilometres further north (appropriately near Polokwane).

Towards the end of the conference, another story took centre stage: the news that the state is finalising a R2-billion deal to purchase a new private jet for Jacob Zuma – that is bigger and better than Angela Merkel’s.

That tells you all you need to know about the ANC’s “developmental state” and the farce that passed itself off as a “pro-poor policy conference” in Midrand last week.