South Africa P.I.G.

'Affirmative action behind social decay'

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0a44E1wWbTTsO4W7AIU6Jshp-4_YwuujskTrbYvYKc-TFGHLvau-MP9ymlV0cir49iquEJZQEEl-1EfWU2Y232ouq2GgFqalWHlZO_6Gy_LQY_SKWvkVm7tKBARhmAtf2er0r87VfDk/s1600-h/determination.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5359200335374314802" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC0a44E1wWbTTsO4W7AIU6Jshp-4_YwuujskTrbYvYKc-TFGHLvau-MP9ymlV0cir49iquEJZQEEl-1EfWU2Y232ouq2GgFqalWHlZO_6Gy_LQY_SKWvkVm7tKBARhmAtf2er0r87VfDk/s400/determination.jpg" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px" /></a>'Unbalanced" affirmative action has led to poor service delivery, especially in municipalities, and was a threat to the country's future stability, former president FW de Klerk has warned. De Klerk said private companies were not always honest with the government about the private discussions in boardrooms about affirmative action. "Our private sector is too cosy with government," he said. De Klerk was speaking at trade union Solidarity's one-day conference on affirmative action in the city yesterday. There have been widespread and violent protests about poor service delivery in various municipalities recently, but it could not be established if they had anything to do with affirmative action. De Klerk, who heads a foundation supporting minority rights, told the conference that the "wholesale appointment of people who are not suitably qualified has been a major factor in dysfunctional service delivery by the state and particularly at municipal level". "Unbalanced affirmative action has undermined the right of millions of ordinary South Africans to equal enjoyment of many of their basic rights in the constitution including most notably the right to life and security. "Crime prevention and crime fighting is far from what it should be. "(This also included) the right to healthcare, to food, to water and to social security and the right to reasonable and good education and training," he said. De Klerk added that this "unbalanced affirmative action", or the appointment of people on the basis of race rather than qualifications, achieved the opposite of what it was supposed to achieve, which is to promote equality. "The failure to effectively promote equality is not only a constitutional disappointment but a threat to our future stability," he said. De Klerk said the constitution stated that qualifications should be considered over race when appointing people, and this did not always happen. There were also not enough suitably qualified black people to appoint. "Despite progress, black South Africans in 2009 accounted for only 17 percent of the candidates who passed the chartered accountant final exams. "In 2008, only 23 percent of the engineers registered with the Engineering Council of South Africa were black," he said. He also blamed the government for leaving posts vacant rather than filling them with whites. He added that the exodus of 120 000 qualified and experienced whites from the civil service "had been a major element" in the deterioration of public services. "When I say that, it is not about white and black but about sufficiently trained and sufficiently experienced people," he said. De Klerk said economic growth would eventually end the "unbalanced affirmative action" in South Africa as it did apartheid, as the country would have to use all its talent to keep up with competitors. He told young people to talk to the government and to have open dialogues, rather than protest, which in his view did not achieve much. Addressing the same gathering, Trevor Tutu, the son of Nobel laureate Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, said affirmative action was working against South Africa as young skilled South Africans felt there were better job opportunities outside of the country. "In this manner we are exporting our children to sustain other countries at our expense, including former colonial masters," he said. He said that 15 years into democracy South Africa could have created equal opportunities for all and that people should not be punished for mistakes committed by their forefathers. "Race is not useful for anything," he said.

'Affirmative action behind social decay'

'Unbalanced" affirmative action has led to poor service delivery, especially in municipalities, and was a threat to the country...

3:53 PM

SA still getting bad 2010 press overseas

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsZxGLwlmZI7qRLBYsGB9SrebChHEqiigVvm7oWu7jK-R5RMv6NuA3VOd98Mq_IS9yxoeJpCPSyEu3oxRxKLs00g9yvQc5S6bqF17ENimOyv_msdVcGu9kFbn7y21ppnFOkEOlYmJtSAY/s1600-h/refugees_proudly_xenophobic_namate_large.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358808987922535154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsZxGLwlmZI7qRLBYsGB9SrebChHEqiigVvm7oWu7jK-R5RMv6NuA3VOd98Mq_IS9yxoeJpCPSyEu3oxRxKLs00g9yvQc5S6bqF17ENimOyv_msdVcGu9kFbn7y21ppnFOkEOlYmJtSAY/s400/refugees_proudly_xenophobic_namate_large.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 295px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 400px;" /></a>London - One-sided reporting on South Africa by the foreign media continues to damage the country's brand, says Pierre van der Hoven, CEO of destination marketing company Southern Africa Direct. "Clearly we cannot expect the foreign media to put South Africa in a positive light ahead of the 2010 Fifa World Cup - we simply have to do it ourselves," Van der Hoven said, reacting to an article that appeared in the British Sunday Times this weekend. It portrayed South Africa as a xenophobic nation flooded with starving refugees, where regular power outages are experienced and traffic lights are not maintained. The article, "<a class="l" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6689725.ece" onmousedown="return rwt(this,'','','res','1','AFQjCNFY0aKeiK6p5pFEDKwcEtTinJlL4g','&sig2=KZJdEkhTovCarQsNaGW7qA')">Starvation kills hopes of South Africa's rubbish-tip refugees ...</a>" read: "Incomers hoping for opportunities from the 2010 Football World Cup are instead finding xenophobia, poverty, poor wages and squalid death". "As the bread basket of the continent where poverty is a real issue, no one will deny that immigration is an ongoing issue in South Africa, but this article is one-sided and not factual," said van der Hoven. "It is not true that Fifa have their doubts about South Africa hosting the 2010 World Cup and many of the issues the author is referring to have long since been resolved. It is typical of the misrepresentation Africa continues to endure in the international media." Sunday Times Africa correspondent, Dan McDougall, writes that strikes by underpaid immigrant workers are causing work on the World Cup stadiums to "grind to a halt" and that Fifa has voiced fears "over the preparations for what will be the largest sporting event in Africa's history". "One particular concern is the state of the power grid. Power cuts are still common in most main cities. There are concerns about the wider infrastructure. In Johannesburg, street and traffic lights do not work in large parts of the city and routine maintenance has all but ceased," he writes. Van der Hoven asked: "Has Mr McDougall even visited Johannesburg? Where does he get his facts?" Van der Hoven's company, Southern Africa Direct, broadcasts positive and informative content on southern Africa on TV in the UK and worldwide on the internet. "We have to show South Africa in a positive light, through articles, videos and TV productions. We have to tell our stories ourselves - because no one else is going to." Judging by users' comments, misperceptions about Africa still abound. "It is clear that some are just not capable of self-governance especially in Africa," commented Frank of Los Angeles; "Why is anyone surprised by all this!" wrote PR of Manchester; and "I think this is one world cup I'll give a miss," wrote Peter K of Vancouver. - Daily News Foreign Service <a class="l" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6689725.ece" onmousedown="return rwt(this,'','','res','1','AFQjCNFY0aKeiK6p5pFEDKwcEtTinJlL4g','&sig2=KZJdEkhTovCarQsNaGW7qA')">Starvation kills hopes of South Africa's rubbish-tip refugees ...</a> From The Sunday Times July 12, 2009 <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivVr2Qe-XUFAHu4v35r5mEv1TOsnboirTLzn7TMpMpZP92ogZSUmP7oMixkU5OXE9RM3cUGK43zBp6eTdiG17Oa1IiO5vFHLLs23qunKfApAWF_S35JNGt_hy3KyisbeXpm99EodrHnPs/s1600-h/refugees-rubbish.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358801803735538642" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivVr2Qe-XUFAHu4v35r5mEv1TOsnboirTLzn7TMpMpZP92ogZSUmP7oMixkU5OXE9RM3cUGK43zBp6eTdiG17Oa1IiO5vFHLLs23qunKfApAWF_S35JNGt_hy3KyisbeXpm99EodrHnPs/s400/refugees-rubbish.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 185px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 385px;" /></a>Incomers hoping for opportunities from the 2010 football World Cup are instead finding xenophobia, poverty, poor wages and squalid death Beneath the granite shadow of South Africa’s Quadu Mountains, the prayers for the dead infant are spoken in Shona, the language of rural Zimbabwe. It is early morning. Across the De Doorns township, an hour's drive east of the commercial heart of Cape Town, migrant labourers emerge from twisted tin shacks, forced awake by the sound of mourning drifting across the main highway north to Johannesburg. By the roadside cemetery a dozen women sing and shiver in the midwinter chill beneath a circling flock of starlings: “We will meet again in Heaven, through the blood of Jesus, we will meet.” At their stamping feet, on a mound of rocky earth, sits the tiny coffin of thin cream-coloured plywood. Inside lies the body of one-year-old Melissa Mauketo, emaciated and withered, a victim of malnutrition in a country that has become a false beacon of hope for Africa’s dispossessed. The corner of the burial ground we are standing in betrays a wider tragedy. Around us are crude immigrant graves adorned with simple white crosses. On each crucifix, the knife-carved names of other infants, the diseased and malnourished children of immigrants from Lesotho, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. All of Africa in the ground beneath us. The girl’s middle name was Nyaradzo. It means “comfort”, the dead child’s mother, Patience, tells me through her sobs. “We are a long way from home here, but Zimbabwe is still worse.” <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3pjPe7d_efUQszf0q4-EDmlkjXTjAYeN6pIXs2yW9Q9XMJUuHvG4-dy3RSQoxmDGHEoDLE8y29lI8K70ugPefpCgDLmmOJV57HBKfxgvFzCazzog7gfQbre2fktbYh2vsDXLudi3S2Mo/s1600-h/refugee_from_zim.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358832439825874194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3pjPe7d_efUQszf0q4-EDmlkjXTjAYeN6pIXs2yW9Q9XMJUuHvG4-dy3RSQoxmDGHEoDLE8y29lI8K70ugPefpCgDLmmOJV57HBKfxgvFzCazzog7gfQbre2fktbYh2vsDXLudi3S2Mo/s400/refugee_from_zim.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 268px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 400px;" /></a>As we leave the cemetery, Braam Hanekom, the founder of Passop, a campaigning charity that helps South Africa’s refugees, says that up to 1,000 illegal migrants are coming to the Western Cape every day, looking for work and a new start. “By the time the World Cup is upon us that figure will have increased dramatically,” he says. “This situation here is unacceptable. A child’s death from malnutrition on the outskirts of Cape Town is astonishing and, with more immigrants coming in, it can only get worse.” He adds: “Imagine the 2010 games as an enormous magnet for Africa’s uneducated and impoverished and then imagine how bad life will become for these immigrants who come here to these townships and camps with the hope of finding work but find only exploitation and xenophobia. The situation is much broader than the government recognises. “What’s not being acknowledged is the fact that this isn’t a ‘male migrant’ issue. They are still summoning their families as soon as they arrive here, wives and children, when they can barely feed themselves, and these people are dying. The World Cup will be a tragedy for many African families.” For all its poverty and historic divisions, South Africa remains, despite last summer’s xenophobic attacks, which left 70 foreign workers dead in a wave of antiimmigrant violence, a beacon of hope for the dispossessed and persecuted, with a constitution that in theory guarantees equality and a functioning economy that rewards entrepre-neurial effort. With President Robert Mugabe’s continued destruction of Zimbabwe’s economy, hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans, many of them well educated, still stream across the Limpopo river into South Africa, straining its resources. Figures vary, but as many as 3m Zimbabweans may have made the cross-border journey under cover of darkness, one of the largest exoduses Africa has seen. More recently they have been joined by immigrants from Somalia, Nigeria, Angola and Mozambique. Government sources now claim that there are at least 6m foreign nationals working illegally in South Africa, representing 14% of the population. Melissa Mauketo’s story shows many immigrants are facing even deeper hardship. For South Africa’s illegal workers, underpayment, long working hours, poor living conditions and starvation are accepted parts of daily life. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-qeRpnrZg3TrTe0bM0FNOJpnVKvAvwPCIiIhhhUBDQVdXCyvUR-4t1sFrkpV-XF1gLrCe3a2t0YmtQDB4uhG0bfLWtjxJTVZQ1aWagmbbXZspqHIe4PIEPv0_BpsC-VtZRXeaQmZ1fzI/s1600-h/refugees-capetown.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358831573809911314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-qeRpnrZg3TrTe0bM0FNOJpnVKvAvwPCIiIhhhUBDQVdXCyvUR-4t1sFrkpV-XF1gLrCe3a2t0YmtQDB4uhG0bfLWtjxJTVZQ1aWagmbbXZspqHIe4PIEPv0_BpsC-VtZRXeaQmZ1fzI/s400/refugees-capetown.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 266px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 400px;" /></a>Most suffer in silence for fear of losing their jobs or being deported. The conditions are appalling - with only 20 rent-a-loos for 200/300 individuals and one water tap (the second one is broken) Philani Zamuchiya, of the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, a research centre at the University of the Western Cape, claims that already appalling conditions on farms are becoming worse for migrants, who will accept almost any job out of desperation. He said that although minimum salaries should be £110 a month, most farmers were paying their workers a mere £20, which, “with their families, isn’t enough to feed themselves”. Problems worsen during the five-month off season for work in the vineyards. Farm workers struggle to meet bare necessities, and infant mortality in the immigrant camps soars. “There is no food here, just like Zimbabwe,” says Anita Makauto, Melissa’s aunt. “Over there is a rubbish dump where Zimba-bwean and Congolese immigrants queue up every Friday to eat, waiting for the trucks to arrive to feed their families. “I have been there for scraps, as have all of my family. I see women eat straight from the ground, rotten cabbage and potatoes, scraping fruit out of tins with their hands. The council has told us we must take the rotten food away from the dump and eat it out of sight of the police.” She added: “The locals call us names and threaten to beat us. Every week fires are started in the compound where we live. We live in fear because we never know what will happen next. We are scared to talk in public for fear of people recognising our accents. On buses we mustn’t open our mouths. People here have seen the worst of South Africa but it is better they kill us here than we go back and they kill us in Zim.” On the flatbed passenger lorries from De Doorns township to the vineyards where day labourers eke out a living, working-class South Africans, Zulu and Xhosa, talk loudly and threateningly about burying the foreigners who sit beside them, particularly the Zimbabweans and Lesothans, whom they accuse of stealing jobs by undercutting wages and working for as little as £1.20 a day. The air of violence and intimidation is palpable. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMC2MXpRCJoIFuZIKHWQgf5-nyBgDn9j9zHB7GZ9rvCmh4_SS27AgLDjPF3NcU9xr4czTR4PV384tHqvGqh0TpquvQAIbs8ER7Dh8rdINcRIldjCYHpZ-resHyY0w-32zgsATroVKKn4c/s1600-h/refugee-Township-0.jpg"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0BXoOP87uT7OlKzwxDYheVeuo97SmzvI9HTKsLHLCbyvG3BpA2hr6LdLhQ5lsvqwhbTOA3toO_1q_-YDB8LOoZ2GzUU1BbOcjCNzWmRSjDlJus7eWGfjD5rfsYXhjnJW22adJ1n1UhuA/s1600-h/refugee-violence-southafricae-723341.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358849608380040498" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0BXoOP87uT7OlKzwxDYheVeuo97SmzvI9HTKsLHLCbyvG3BpA2hr6LdLhQ5lsvqwhbTOA3toO_1q_-YDB8LOoZ2GzUU1BbOcjCNzWmRSjDlJus7eWGfjD5rfsYXhjnJW22adJ1n1UhuA/s400/refugee-violence-southafricae-723341.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 258px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 400px;" /></a>Although government ministers condemned last year’s attacks on foreign workers, they have since left it to civic groups to distribute aid and grants to the displaced. Some critics say the immigrants’ plight has fallen by the wayside, with the focus on the World Cup. Others say the government is paralysed by what a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently called a “sense of shame” at the treatment of refugees. Intermittent violence has continued against foreigners, particularly Somalis, many of whom are legal refugees and run shops in the townships. A Somali woman and her three children were recently stabbed and bludgeoned to death in Eastern Cape province, prompting the UN’s top human rights official, Navanethem Pillay, to condemn “a continued and dangerous pattern of targeted attacks on foreigners”. “This was a hard place for my baby to be born,” says Lorian Mohakia, clutching her five-month-old son, Jacob, to her breast. Alongside her in the Bonne Esperance Refugee Shelter, in the Philippi district of Cape Town, are women from Zimbabwe, Angola, Burundi, Congo, Namibia and Senegal, all of them clutching undernourished infants. Pregnant women and those with newborn babies are among the most vulnerable. Insufficient food, delayed ambulance services, lack of beds and illness continue to plague the lives of most immigrant women. “I need to leave the shelter in the next few weeks,” she says. “I’ve seen other women leave to live on the street and lose their babies. People don’t believe that babies can die of starvation somewhere as beautiful as this. “Immigrants like me don’t exist; we are unseen. Our children are born with no rights, no birth certificate and when they die nobody in South Africa hears their mother’s wails.” Strike hits stadiums <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0lqMgQWPMJTQdxx4398V101pDoA4ZVVXQiMPGOHm2SaV68jdrDwdaq_nBAcJTWVKc5By7zzoIeiTZC-99-aXgHmmUxO2cgIZ5YjOl7QlMsrNKHCXBVj1cqK4wKOtjOW5bZa7NixxuEbE/s1600-h/Bhekani_MM.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358843048146002418" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0lqMgQWPMJTQdxx4398V101pDoA4ZVVXQiMPGOHm2SaV68jdrDwdaq_nBAcJTWVKc5By7zzoIeiTZC-99-aXgHmmUxO2cgIZ5YjOl7QlMsrNKHCXBVj1cqK4wKOtjOW5bZa7NixxuEbE/s400/Bhekani_MM.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 277px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 400px;" /></a>The growing power of South Africa’s vast army of immigrant workers was displayed last week in a countrywide strike by almost 100,000 construction workers, many of them impoverished economic migrants from Lesotho and Zimbabwe. The wildcat strike brought work on the World Cup stadiums to a grinding halt and placed further doubt on the nation’s readiness for next year’s event. The stadiums are due to be completed by December and work was reportedly on schedule before the strike. Yet concerns remain that at least five stadiums being built from scratch, including Cape Town’s showcase Green Point stadium, are still far from ready. The strike came after workers demanded a 13% wage increase. They downed tools at midday on Wednesday, stopping work on many of the infrastructure projects the government is hoping will help pull the economy out of recession and prepare the country for the tournament. Projects hit by the strike included the high-speed Gautrain rail link between Johannesburg and Pretoria, ports, airports and power stations and 10 stadium projects. Many of the workers on the site of the Cape Town stadium say they are being paid less than £3 a day, a claim denied by the authorities. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEHOdspQLtdpzG-z3t6njDBhaV4iWg7Ux7D1SrWVep2D0RADIlseXRAkcerFTXRVkMn5T2U1wTukX3kPIE9CKgmKF8ShJqrWOIAGpbqw379Nn63lHuztueFLZIUCwh0lO3KDnSQO_FNGU/s1600-h/AFR02_SOUTHAFRICA_0710_11.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358852081193203090" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEHOdspQLtdpzG-z3t6njDBhaV4iWg7Ux7D1SrWVep2D0RADIlseXRAkcerFTXRVkMn5T2U1wTukX3kPIE9CKgmKF8ShJqrWOIAGpbqw379Nn63lHuztueFLZIUCwh0lO3KDnSQO_FNGU/s400/AFR02_SOUTHAFRICA_0710_11.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 202px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 400px;" /></a>Striking construction workers protest in front of the Moses Mabhida stadium, under construction for the 2010 World Cup, in Durban July 10, 2009 South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers, which has many members in the building trades, and the Building, Construction and Allied Workers Union confirmed last night that a framework for a deal had been reached and the strike would end next week. Fears have been voiced within Fifa, football’s governing body, over the preparations for what will be the largest sporting event in Africa’s history. One particular concern is the state of the power grid. Power cuts are still common in most main cities. There are concerns about the wider infrastructure. In Johannesburg, street and traffic lights do not work in large parts of the city and routine maintenance has all but ceased. Public transport in Cape Town and Johannesburg is virtually nonexistent and in Durban, another host city, the roads are unable to cope with the volume of traffic. There are mounting fears about security in a country with some of the world’s highest crime rates. In Cape Town a zero-tolerance police initiative aims to cut petty crime in the city in the run-up to the opening match in June. But it will do nothing to curb violence in the surrounding townships or street robberies in Johannesburg, which will host the final. Source:- <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6689725.ece">http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6689725.ece</a>

SA still getting bad 2010 press overseas

London - One-sided reporting on South Africa by the foreign media continues to damage the country's brand, says Pierre van der Hoven, CE...

2:12 PM

The absent president, again, and arrogance of dominance

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdX-ySbvnxekwjl2zhPUeKFAuCpsV2fSlvG2xeGtod7U_sc7u9thKRcvmAVpAfgs2hgGRe0r2zuc9EsjrDfVTKfR2uST8JBSOTADJrMsvZSw_5fWmj3zbophJnu6d2HqC82ZeY2cpVDsA/s1600-h/zuma_our_president.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5358653623985411410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdX-ySbvnxekwjl2zhPUeKFAuCpsV2fSlvG2xeGtod7U_sc7u9thKRcvmAVpAfgs2hgGRe0r2zuc9EsjrDfVTKfR2uST8JBSOTADJrMsvZSw_5fWmj3zbophJnu6d2HqC82ZeY2cpVDsA/s400/zuma_our_president.jpg" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 273px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" /></a> Jacob Zuma has been president for three months but where is he? We get the odd pic of him at the G8 uncomfortably returning a strong hand put out by US President Barack Obama but as yet he has shown no leadership. He worked so hard and waited so long for this job, surely he had a game plan? We have heard nothing from him on strikers holding shift bosses hostage underground at mines, he has remained silent about the ongoing insulting lunacy of Julius Malema. He has not gone to pacify areas like Diepsloot where ongoing rioting against housing delivery is seeing increasingly dangerous clashes with police. He has made no utterance about trade figures that are plunging through the floor — factory output down 17.1%, mining down 14.5% at a time when the gold price is close to record highs and the economy is set to be R60 billion short in tax collection this year according to Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan. Zuma said he wants 500 000 jobs created before the end of this year but has given no plan on how this should be achieved, instead we have shed at least 200 000 jobs already. He said a month ago he would soon present a plan for how companies would be compensated for training workers instead of retrenching them; again no plan has been presented. Instead we hear Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies suggesting that government needs to intervene in the industrial sector. Great. They can’t manage hospitals; schooling is the worst it has ever been in the history of this country with less than 29% of those who begin school completing it and many of those who do, complete school functionally illiterate and innumerate. Everything the government touches turns to sludge and now they want to meddle with the private sector including heightened threats from the unions that the mines should be nationalised. Woza Zimbabwe. Where is Jacob Zuma and when will he lead? The only political figure who has yet shown leadership and strong performance in these first three months is Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane who moved strongly against corruption and abuse of position in her early days, but has remained mum on a government contractor that received R56 million and built no houses while she was housing minister for Gauteng. But Mokonyane is a profoundly ethical individual, which will probably be her undoing in this land where the corrupt prosper; it would be unlike her not to act. Zuma’s failure to be presidential is of singular concern at a time when the economy is on the skids and South African lawlessness in every sector threatens to humiliate South Africa before the world in its attempt to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup. We will have beautiful stadiums, remarkable roads in the host cities and stylish though chaotic airports but the venality of our populace will destroy us unless Zuma begins exhibiting the moral leadership this nation so desperately requires. Now is a fitting time to begin, it is Moral Regeneration Month — not that anyone would notice it. Mamphela Ramphele, who readers of The Weekender newspaper voted South Africa’s top intellectual, has been travelling the country explaining the Dinokeng scenarios. These are the result of a collaboration of 35 top thinkers sponsored by Old Mutual. They reflect on the consequences of what will happen if South Africa does not transform. At the Wits Business School in Johannesburg last week she said: “We have underestimated what it takes to transform ourselves from the past to the future we desire.” She said: “Today we are glued to the material benefits of keeping quiet.” She suggests that a culture of silence for fear of losing future tenders is endangering our future. On election day I was paying for goods at Woolworths Sandton and the man at the cashier next to me was loudly proclaiming: “When I go into the ballot box I’m going to take a picture of where I put my cross and attach it to future tender documents.” Where else would someone say that out loud and expect no negative comment? Ramphele painted some challenges we face: • We have a high current account deficit — 8.1% of GDP in 2008 • Land reform hasn’t worked • 50% of 20 to 24-year-olds are unemployed • A citizenry that is increasingly becoming dependent on the state — over 13 million citizen receive social assistance benefits. And last year the department of welfare increased the social relief budget from R124 million to R624 million. Ramphele said that leadership has failed in the public and private sector. She said South Africa has a leadership that reflects a culture of materialism and narrow self interest and a lack of ethics and accountability. Or “me, myself and I”. Ramphele gives it another term, “the arrogance of dominance”. The Dinokeng scenarios warn that if we do not change, then by 2018 we will be under the “Rule of a Strongman”, in other words a dictator — that is only nine years away. In essence by our silence and inaction we will have invited the worst-case African scenario into our land. She and the Dinokeng scenarios suggest that we need an engaged citizenry — every individual, every company, all religions and organisations need to register their disquiet over and over again at the trends we see. A third of parliament is women but who among them protests the insulting comments of African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema about raped women? We have become the nation of big bums. We never get off our chair, we never rise to be heard and most certainly not seen. We send caustic circular emails to our friends, we argue in the comment boxes of blogs, we do email petitions that never leave computers, we gripe interminably at dinner parties but we don’t implement the change that is needed in our companies, government departments and personal lives. In the land of I, we have all become blind. While the economy was the richest it had been in 60 years, we did not create jobs nor did government encourage it. Former president Thabo Mbeki was away trying to tell other African countries what they should be doing to succeed, at home he built a multimillion-rand home and increased the budget for VIP protection services so screaming motorcar cavalcades would announce the “king” and his lackeys. Zuma’s “government of the people” has not discarded such pretence. When the economy, such a short time ago, was so flush, South Africans bought holiday homes and bigger cars, the nouveau riche brought in interior designers for their homes and bragged how they had Louis Vuitton bags in different colours to match their outfits. Few created jobs. Moeletsi Mbeki in discussing his new book, Architects of Poverty, notes: <blockquote>“The ANC saw Afrikaner nationalism as its enemy. But what has the ANC done? It set out to emulate, through black economic empowerment, white capital. Look at the massive salary differences between ANC officials in government and the masses. “They don’t create wealth; they are a parasitic elite that lives off the existing assets they didn’t create. It is the same with the BEE tycoons in South Africa. They are living off the assets handed to them by existing companies. They are not a bourgeoisie; yes, they are wealthy but they are not capitalists. About 70% of South Africa’s GDP goes into private consumption (the latest SA Reserve Bank figures show it is now 82%). By comparison about 40% of China’s GDP goes into consumption. The rest goes into investment. “If you compare China and South Africa you can see why China is creating jobs. In 1985, 78% of footwear sold in South Africa was made locally; now 83% of shoes sold in South Africa are made in China. In just 20 years we have witnessed the collapse of our industry. In 1997, 23 000 people were employed in the footwear industry; this figure has dropped to 10 000. We no longer make our shoes; we are now importers. And shoe manufacturing is not a high-technology industry. “If it carries on this way, South Africa is headed the way of all African countries.”</blockquote>And that is where we are going at a rate of knots because inaction and silence implies consent. By <a href="http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/charlenesmith" style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Charlene Smith</a> - Thoughtleader

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