South Africa

In a follow-up article to her last piece on South Africa’s failing education system (which appeared in last week’s In the News post), Celia Dugger discusses the rise of a new youth movement aimed at improving the country’s predominantly black and under achieving schools.

Dugger also raises, but largely skips over another very interesting and in many ways troubling fact about primary education here in South Africa. While speaking about a small number of white students who came to show support for the march towards equal education, Dugger writes:

“And Nina Hoffman was among the dozens of white students who joined the march from one of the country’s formerly all-white suburban high schools — Westerford — which can afford a well-stocked library because parents pay annual fees of more than $2,200 per child.”

Important in this observation are the implications of South Africa’s system of required tuition for primary education, even in public schools. An  issue not addressed here by Dugger is the fact that despite the forced opening of schools that had served only white students during apartheid to everyone, the requirement of tuition and the ability for individual schools to decide what price to charge has contributed to the presistance of  both a degree of segregation and a substantial achievement gap between South Africa’s historically black and white schools.

As alluded to above, in order to maintaining their high standards,  South Africa’s historically successful schools have continued to require tuition fees which as a result largely preclude the vast majority of non-wealthy (i.e. non-white) South African’s from enrolling. While this is not to mean that tuition fees at South Africa’s historically white schools are intended to ensure that they remain predominantly white, what it has meant is that only a select minority of non-white South Africans who have the necessary resources available to pay the relatively high tuition fees have integrated into these schools.

Likewise, the rest of South Africa’s poor population is left with few options regarding education; options that are mainly limited to either spending what money is available to send their children to underperforming, underequiped, and under understaffed township schools, or not sending their children to school at all.  All of this has created a situation in which schools that serve poor populations such as those in South Africa’s townships, informal settlements, and rural areas, are unable to provide adequate facilities due to their inability to charge sufficient tuition to cover things like books and maintenance while those institutions that are able to provide a quality education have stayed largely segregated and out of the reach of most.

All of this then begs the question whether South Africa’s system of tuition for primary education is not in itself inherently broken. The answer to which seemingly has the potential to largely determine whether this, or any other movements like it aimed at improving the conditions of schools that serve South Africa’s townships, rural communities, and other poor populations has any real chance of making a significant or lasting impact.

HIV

The New York Times reports on the first true glimpse of hope in the search for an HIV/AIDS vaccine.

“For more than 20 years now, vaccine trials have essentially been failures…” “Now it’s like we were groping down an unlit path, and a door has been opened. We can start asking some very important questions.”

A good start, but it sounds like there is still a long way to go.

“How different are dogfighting and football?”

“There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else—neither considerations of science nor those of morality—can compete with the destructive power of that love.”

South Africa

Barry Bearak’s article, South Africa’s Poor Renew a Tradition of Protest chronicles what has resulted from the lack of services provided to South Africa’s poorest citizens throughout many of the country’s townships and informal settlements.

Also, Celia Dugger’s article, Eager Students Fall Prey to Apartheid’s Legacy looks into the sad state of many of South Africa’s predominantly black schools.

“Thousands of schools across South Africa are bursting with students who dream of being the accountants, engineers and doctors this country desperately needs, but the education system is often failing the very children depending on it most to escape poverty.”

Yet one more promise made at the end of apartheid still waiting to be fulfilled.

I think you are mistaken. Also, I love you new profile picture.

According to a member of Iran’s judiciary:

“Sites such as Facebook and YouTube were devised by the United States in order to wage a psychological war against Iran.”

Who knew?

Never would have guessed that all those pairs of Pumas I loyally purchased were fueling a feud in Germany.

“…German brothers, Adi and Rudolf Dassler, who dissolved their successful family sneaker business 61 years ago, set up rival sneaker companies, Adidas and Puma, on opposite sides of a river in the small Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, and refused to speak to one another for the rest of their lives.”

Also, was it really that serious that you had to wait until World Peace Day to shake hands and make up?

What what what?

How come no one called me to tell me I could take the last few days off work?

That is when I decide that instead of trying to find a sushi place in Johannesburg, I should just learn to make it myself. So for a good part of the day Friday, I research how to cook the rice, slice the vegetables, pack the roller, and roll the rolls.

The results after the link.

6 rolls of cucumber and avocado sushi

Not bad right?

They turned out surprisingly well and now I can have sushi here in South Africa whenever I want it.

My next step is to try and figure out sushi with fish in it, although I am a little concerned about eating raw fish here in landlocked Johannesburg.

Anyway, should you feel like trying to make sushi yourself, I highly suggest the site Make my Sushi. It has awesome little flash videos about everything from cutting vegetables to using a sushi mat.

Also, a few tricks that I figured out last night.

1. Keep a bowl of cold water near you. Dipping your hands and wooden spoon in it while you are packing the rolls and spreading out the rice will help to keep rice from sticking to everything.

2. Use a very very sharp knife to cut the rolls. Really, make sure it’s sharp.

3. Wash your knife frequently while cutting the rolls.

4. Be careful about where rice is going while you are doing everything. I cleaned my kitchen last night and when I went to make breakfast this morning I found rice in places that I didn’t know existed.

What doesn’t fit here? Cheetahs, Crocodiles, Rhinos, Hippos, Wildebeest, and Ostrich. Really? Of all the animals that could possibly eat me, gore me, or trample me, I need to be worried about an Ostrich. Did you really need to put that on there or did you just have extra space on the little warning sign?

Pics of what I saw after the link. As always, click for larger.

First thing I saw was…

Zebera, and lots of them.

Zebras eating

Zebras eating next to a tree

Another Zebra eating

I think I’m starting to see a theme here.

Wait, what? Running, this is new.

Ya, that didn’t last long.

And walking away.

After the Zeberas, we saw these very large, moose looking animals.

Watch out! Ostrich.

I will say though, for as awkward and flightless as they may be, they are rather large.

Then, after lots of driving around, we found the rhinos.

At first we were so far away that they just looked like big grey rocks.

Ya, definitely not a rock.

In all, an awesome day. I had really hoped to see some hippos, but the park ranger said that they only come out at night and in the very early morning. Hopefully next time I will wake up earlier.

One last shot of Zebras on the way out.

My desk

Sitting area

Dinning table (which I still havn’t used)

My car. It’s small, blue, barely makes it up hills, and stalls a lot
(alothough that is probably more my fault than anything else).

A giant bird. Its about the size of a cat, or a small dog, has a huge pointy beak, and makes very loud squaking noices at 6:00 am right out side my window.

Offie, the German Shepard puppy who lives in the house connected to my apartment, and who should be protecting me from very large, menacing birds.

Posts about my arrival, life, and work here in South Africa to come soon.

Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s new President, seen here celebrating the African National Congress’ projected two-thirds win in the recent South African election. (photo: european pressphoto agency)

During the recent South African elections, much attention was devoted to following the proportions of the nearly 17.7-million votes being garnered by each of the country’s major political parties. While this in itself was not surprising, what was somewhat peculiar was the marked emphasis placed on the possibility that the African National Congress (ANC) might claim two-thirds of the votes. Making this odd is the fact that a simple majority of the national vote, something that the ANC was practically assured, would have been sufficient for them to elect Jacob Zuma as the country’s next president.

So why then did everyone care so much about the ANC reaching two-thirds?

The answer lies, as The BBC’s Peter Biles writes, in the proportion of parliamentary seats needed in South Africa to “push through constitutional changes.”

Both prior to and during the election, as it looked like the ANC might surpass the 66% of the votes needed to command two-thirds of the South African parliament, and therefore control enough parliamentary votes to amend the Constitution, observers and opposition leaders alike began to speculate whether the ANC would seize upon such an opportunity.

While those worried about the possibility that the ANC might amend the Constitution were pleasantly surprised by the final results, which saw the ANC come up just short of the votes needed, receiving 65.9% of the vote, discussion and debate about whether the ANC would have changed the constitution has persisted.

In a recent opinion piece, Koos Malan, a professor of public law at the University of Pretoria has fired back at those speculating that the ANC might have used a two-thirds majority in parliament to change the Constitution. Asserting that no changes were either planned or on the horizon, Prof. Malan writes that:

First, at the root of the fear and the joy is the notion that the constitution is primarily a weapon at the disposal of the opposition and is thus troublesome to the ANC. According to this notion, the constitution annoys the ANC; the party is almost a victim of the constitution. It is in power, yet is not really as in power as it should be. The constitution is disruptive to the ANC and prevents it from doing what it wants to do. Hence the constitution is serving the opponents of the ANC with the result that the party would like to bring about fundamental changes to the constitution, thus getting the annoyance out of the way.

A subsidiary notion is that the nimble and astute negotiators of the old National Party made short shrift of their leaden-footed and somewhat dull-witted opponents – people such as Cyril Ramaphosa – during the constitutional negotiations, thus imposing a burden (the constitution) on the ANC under which the ANC has laboured ever since.

This notion is obvious nonsense. The historical record of the constitutional negotiations of the 1990s overwhelmingly shows that the ANC was the principal author of the constitution. To a large extent, the constitution embodies the ANC’s own convictions and its much vaunted (yet currently somewhat eroded) moral claims. More than anybody else, the ANC is proud of the constitution as its showpiece to the world — the ANC-ruled SA’s example of what a constitution should look like.

Viewed against this backdrop, material changes to the constitution at the initiative of the ANC are clearly not on the cards.

While Malan is largely correct in his argument that the Constitution falls short as the sword and shield of South Africa’s opposition parties, his assertion that the Constitution lacks portions or provisions that annoy the ANC is somewhat more tenuous. Based on an oversimplified recollection of the events surrounding and leading up to the drafting and ratification of the final Constitution, Malan wrongly assumes both that the ANC controlled the creation of the current Constitution and that there are no aspects contained in it that the ANC would prefer did not.

The “historical record,” which Malan asserts, “overwhelmingly shows that the ANC was the principal author of the constitution”, is in fact not so one-sided or clear. As Heinz Klug writes in his book, Constituting Democracy, the two-stage constitution-making process essentially granted the National Party’s demand of “a negotiated constitution.”

The negotiated constitution alluded to by Klug refers to the first stage of the two-stage constitution-making process in which a multiparty assembly composed of the ANC, the National Party, and several other political organizations negotiated South Africa’s Interim Constitution and a set of 34 constitutional principles. As Allister Sparks writes in his book, Tomorrow is Another Country, derived through a process of compromise, these principles and the provisions of the Interim Constitution effectively tied the hands of those in the freely elected constituent assembly as they sought to draft South Africa’s final Constitution. While the constituent assembly, whose members were determined by South Africa’s first completely free elections was dominated by the ANC to the tune of 63%, they were none-the-less unable to circumvent the previously negotiated principles and provisions.

An example of this can clearly be seen in the Constitution’s treatment of private property. Klug writes that from the beginning of negotiations the ANC and the National Party had taken opposite stances on how the future government would treat private property and to what extent, if any, should private property be constitutionally protected. The ANC’s 1991 Land Manifesto proclaimed the party’s intention to see through programs of both land restitution and redistribution with the policy of affirmative action guiding their fulfillment. On the other hand, the National Party had asserted its commitment to securing the protection of all property rights with expropriation to be allowed only if the land was to be used for public purposes and if confiscation was to be subject to compensation determined by the courts based on the property’s market value.

Unable to arrive at a property clause agreeable to both sides, the drafters of the Interim Constitution settled on a compromise that included the aspects of each position separated among several different constitutional provisions. On the one hand, the guarantee of land restitution advocated for by the ANC was removed from the property clause and inserted into the corrective actions provision of the equality clause in the Bill of Rights. On the other hand, the promise of compensation based on market value insisted on by the National Party was left in the property clause but was amended to allow the courts to take a wide range of factors into consideration when determining appropriate compensation.

In the end, the ANC dominated constituent assembly, in drafting the final Constitution reinserted the restitution provision into the property clause but was bound by the contents of the Interim Constitution to also include those points argued for and won by the National Party during negotiations. Among those were promises of compensation based in part on its market value, a provision allowing those whose lands were assumed through racially discriminatory laws to apply for land tenure that is legally secure, and the guarantee that land could only be confiscated for a public purpose or in the public interest. So while Malan is correct in his assertion that the ANC played a large role in the composition of the Constitution, he is incorrect to summarily assume that there are no aspects contained in it today that the ANC did not want to include at the time of its creation and would rather not appear in its current form.

Additionally, Professor Malan’s assertions that the fears regarding Zuma’s and the ANC’s plans to amend the Constitution were unfounded may in fact be incorrect. Even though Zuma was outspoken in his denials that he intended to change the Constitution if the ANC garnered two-thirds of the vote, interviews with him just before the election can be interpreted to indicate otherwise.

In an interview reported on by African Press International, Zuma says this of the current constitutional arrangement between the judiciary and the other branches of government:

If I sit here and I look at a chief justice of the Constitutional Court [South Africa's top judicial officer], you know, that is the ultimate authority, which I think we need to look at it because I don’t think we should have people who are almost like God in a democracy…Why are they not human beings?

When these comments are taken against the background of Zuma’s attacks against the judiciary and Constitutional Court for their rulings against him in connection with the corruption charges he was facing, its not difficult to speculate that Zuma may have used a two-thirds majority in parliament to restrict the court’s powers and independence.

In all, professor Malan’s assertions that concerns whether Zuma and the ANC might have seized upon a two-thirds majority are both unfounded and nonsense are in fact, themselves somewhat unfounded. Malan does point out however, that had the ANC felt the need to amend the Constitution, waiting to gain a two-thirds majority in parliament in the most recent election makes little sense since the ANC actually controlled a two-thirds majority from the last election in 2004 up until the most recent one this last April.

Never-the-less, the fact that the ANC had the ability to change the constitution for the last five years but didn’t, should not be taken as absolute proof that Zuma or the ANC would not have sought constitutional changes this time around. A new President, particularly Zuma, who has a troubled history with regards to some of the constitutional guarantees and establishments such as the Constitutional Court, and new situations may have prompted Zuma and his administration to seek constitutional changes.

Additionally, the fact that the ANC failed to secure two-thirds of the vote and therefore two-thirds of the seats in parliament should not be taken as proof that Zuma, his administration, or the ANC will not still look to change the country’s constitutional and judicial landscapes in the coming years. Zuma will get to appoint a new Chief Justice, deputy chief justice, and nine other justices to the Constitutional Court during his presidency. While Zuma will have to choose from a list of potential candidates compiled by the Judicial Service Commission for nine of the judicial seats, he will have the power to freely appoint the court’s new Chief Justice and deputy chief justice, giving him the power to greatly influence how the Court will look, and likely act for the next 12 years.