Commuters rebel as Metrorail fails

Power failure brings Cape Town trains to a halt across the city

By GroundUp Staff
13 June 2017

A train on Cape Town station burns on Monday evening. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

Commuters at Cape Town’s central train station toyi-toyed, destroyed two cell phone shops, smashed glass, stoned a bus and burnt trains in frustration on Monday evening. In the afternoon trains across the city stopped running.

The atmosphere was angry and tense at the station. There were periodic flare-ups, unstoppable despite several police cars and a private security contingent inside the station.

At about 9pm a woman we spoke to said she’d waited from about 3pm for her train to arrive. She had children waiting for her at home.

A man walked forlornly around the station holding his child; he’d also been waiting since the afternoon.
We encountered two schoolchildren stranded on the station. One, nine years old and in school uniform, was crying; he’d been on the station since 3pm. He had an exam the next day, he said. He needed to get to Khayelitsha, while the other child, a girl, needed to get to Gugulethu. (A GroundUp reporter drove them to a nearby police station.)

The Vodacom shop on the station was ransacked. So was an MTN shop. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

Commuters were stranded with their weekly and monthly tickets, many without sufficient cash to use alternative transport. Metrorail had struck a deal with the Golden Arrow Bus Company that Metrorail tickets could be used on the buses. While GroundUp reporters were there, two buses pulled up to transport passengers, but there were long queues for them and clearly not enough buses. Some commuters stoned one of the buses and it left without passengers.

James Gudumede had been waiting since 5pm. He was heading to Gugulethu. “This happens on a daily basis,” he said angrily. Because of the late trains, “people lose their jobs. Prasa [the parastatal that owns Metrorail] does not listen. We are being robbed. We buy Tickets.”

A GroundUp reporter who usually uses the trains, left work at 3pm, only to arrive home at 7:30pm to her four children, after negotiating buses instead. The mother of another GroundUp reporter was on a train that travelled from Cape Town station to Mutual earlier in the day, then without explanation the train turned back to Cape Town (she was trying to get to Khayelitsha). She spent hours stranded trying to get from one place to another. Late at night she got stuck in Site C, Khayelitsha — unsafe after dark — while trying to get to home to Site B (she eventually got home by taxi). Thousands more commuters across the city no doubt had similar stories.

All this took place while it was a raining and cold in Cape Town.

Firefighters attempt to put out the blaze. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks

Metrorail published a statement explaining that electrical power feeds were responsible for the problems. The company said that it usually has four 11kv power feeds available, but two failed today and the remaining two became overloaded, tripping electricity and halting trains across the network.

Metrorail’s regional manager Richard Walker apologised to commuters. He condemned the destruction of property by irate commuters and said that surveillance footage would be studied with the intention of filing malicious damage to property charges.

Angry comments were posted on the Metrorail website. For example, one anonymous person wrote: “It is late. Can’t remember when last trains were on time. Late for work as a result. Your service is pathetic, trains are dirty and vandalised. Why do you not protect your assets? If you do that there will be less delays.” 

At the time of writing and publishing the situation remained tense on Cape Town station, and commuters continued to be stranded.

Shattered glass was strewn across the station turnstiles, while the station filled with smoke from the burning train. Photos: Ashraf Hendricks

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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A tribute to the world's oceans: why we couldn't survive without them

Shutterstock

Most of us do not realise the impact of the oceans on our daily lives, nor how humanity has changed vast parts of the big blue and its inhabitants. About one quarter of all species live in the sea. That’s roughly about 2.2 million, with the current estimates of all species on earth at about 8.7 million and their linkages with us are far-reaching and more pervasive than we can imagine.

Water covers about 71% of the planet’s surface. This means that it’s not only home to much of life on earth, but also closely involved in many functions that provide a stable environment for life to thrive. For example, oceans are an integral part of our weather and climate patterns. It absorbs, stores and redistributes heat through currents and they play a critical role in maintaining stable climates. They are also the largest absorbers of carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the greenhouse gasses that actively contribute to global warming.

Oceans absorb about one quarter of all CO2 produced by human activities. This provides an invaluable service to life on land, especially in mitigating some of the effects of human driven climate change. In addition, microscopic plants, called phytoplankton produce between half to 70% of all oxygen. To put this into perspective, researchers have tried to calculate how much oxygen humans use just for breathing, a figure that comes to over 6 billion tonnes of oxygen per year.

The oceans also provide many other important benefits; they have been extensively used to transport goods around the globe and they are a source of renewable energy from the action of wind and waves. Marine waters are also a potential goldmine for the pharmaceutical industry with some bacteria, sponges and algae showing great promise for treatments for diseases like cancer.

It’s difficult to put a price on all of this, but researchers have tried to provide a monetary estimate of all that the oceans provide for humanity. The amount they arrived at is a conservative value of a about US$24 trillion per year. Add to that the spiritual and cultural benefits and the sheer fun of being at the beach and the list of ocean services becomes very impressive.

So why a World Oceans Day?

World Oceans Day, an international event that’s commemorated on the 8th June every year, is a chance to reflect on the importance of oceans, whether you live next to the sea or many thousands of kilometres inland.

We tend to forget about the myriad of life beneath the waves. This diversity is fantastic, from tiny microscopic plants and animals to the largest mammal that has ever existed – the blue whale. Ocean life has evolved to inhabit many different kinds of environments, from the ocean surface to the deepest known point at about 11,000m and a range from frozen seas to tropical coral reefs.

World Oceans Day celebrates this diversity and reminds us of the importance of the big blue. It also serves to highlight the plight that the oceans are facing from continued man-made, or anthropogenic, pressures.

Most people are aware that many of the fish, crustacean and shellfish stocks are overfished and that the bounty of the sea is a fraction of what it should be. With over a billion people relying on protein provided directly by the ocean, it’s easy to see how much pressure humans are putting on natural resources.

Climate change too has contributed towards changing the temperatures and chemistry of the oceans. As the levels of CO2 have been increasing in the atmosphere, so has the uptake of this gas into marine waters. The next effect has been that some parts of the ocean are getting more acidic, which is a real problem for some animals and plants that rely on calcium carbonate as part of their bodies, that are literally dissolving in these new environments.

In addition, temperatures have also been changing in the oceans, which has led to large-scale shifts in marine life. For example, in their search for cooler environments, some fish species, such as cod and anglerfish in the North Atlantic have been documented to shift their ranges towards the North Pole or into greater depths. Pollution, as effluent, agricultural run off that includes fertilisers and pesticides and plastics are also heavily contributing towards killing marine species at unprecedented rates.

As a global collective, with many of us living far from the coastline, we need to become more aware of the far-reaching consequences of our daily activities and how these play out not only on land, but also in the sea. All of us should be contributing towards the safeguarding of the big blue, because without it the chances of our own survival are very low indeed. So let’s celebrate World Oceans Day and with it our future.

Sophie von der Heyden, Associate Professor of Marine Genomics and Conservation in the Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Zuma's attack on capital is digging South Africa into a deeper hole

REUTERS/James Oatway

South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress, is adopting a dangerous political approach used in failing states like Algeria, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. Its aim is to deflect attention from its policy failures and from numerous scandals surrounding President Jacob Zuma, his family and the politically connected Gupta network.

The approach was allegedly crafted by Bell Pottinger, a London based public relations firm. It focuses on two concepts.

The first is the term “white monopoly capital”. The phrase broadly refers to control of the economy by apartheid beneficiary capitalist oligopolies at the expense of South Africa’s black majority.

Accompanying it is the term “radical economic transformation”. This is defined differently by various senior government officials. But is understood to mean rapidly changing the economy’s ownership, control, and production patterns in favour of the previously disadvantaged.

However, beyond damaging South Africa’s social fabric, framing the country’s current economic impasse in such a dichotomous politically charged way has negative consequences.

Firstly it distracts attention from the private sector’s real sins. This makes it more difficult to objectively hold business to account for its own nefarious activities. These include tender fraud, collusion, price fixing, fronting, illicit capital flows and tax evasion. Framing the discourse as “white monopoly capital” muddies the waters. It becomes unclear whether exposing private sector crimes is merely a politically motivated assault, or an attempt to uphold the law.

Secondly the ongoing rhetoric will further damage the chances of economic recovery. This is because it will deter long-term domestic and international investment. It will also encourage companies to move their capital elsewhere and use complex tax avoidance mechanisms.

Thirdly trumpeting vacuous slogans is also unlikely to raise the prospects of credible policies that will deal with the country’s structural challenges.

Populist slogans don’t fix structural challenges

Over the last two decades South Africa has failed to modernise its labour and education systems. This has meant limited success in rolling back poverty, inequality and unemployment. As a result the country has one of the highest unemployment rates and gini coefficients in the world.

The structural problems in the education system have resulted in poorly prepared senior school and university graduates. This is despite the number of children attending school increasing exponentially since compulsory education was introduced in 1994.

Consequently, the country is poorly positioned to take advantage of the “fourth industrial revolution”. This is broadly understood as a range of new technologies that fuse the physical, digital and biological worlds.

Making things worse is the failure to adopt industrial policies to diversify the country’s export mix away from commodities to more sophisticated beneficiation and manufacturing activities. Commodities such as gold, platinum and coal, thus continue to comprise a significant portion of the country’s export earnings.

Although the services-based sectors have given rise to an emerging middle class, this new wealth is largely debt-fueled and consumption driven. This limits savings, capital accumulation and class mobility for most of the population.

What’s at stake

In mid-2017 the rating agency Moody’s will review South Africa’s sovereign credit rating. This comes after two recent downgrades by global credit rating agencies S&P and Fitch.

A great deal hangs on Moody’s decision. If it downgrades the government’s rand-based bond credit rating two notches to junk status, the country will be expelled from the World Government Bond Index. This will compromise its credibility as an investment destination. It will stimulate significant capital flight as international bond funds with investment-grade mandates are forced to sell off South African sub-investment grade bonds.

The rand will then depreciate and the trade deficit will widen. The central bank could then be forced to hike interest rates to curb inflationary pressures. Unemployment will rise and the government’s fiscal slack will be further depleted.

A downgrade of the rand denominated bonds would spark economic instability, and potentially significantly weaken the country’s private sector. The country’s politically connected elite could respond to this crisis by seeking to consolidate political power. This could be achieved using “radical economic transformation” to decimate the vestiges of “white monopoly capital.”

In the wake of the recent downgrades, some politicians have been peddling an illusion that the country’s current woes are simply “short-term pain for long-term gain” for the majority of South Africans.

But the experiences of numerous countries have shown that there is no gain from going down the populist economic path – only state failure.

There are tentative signs that this risk is beginning to take hold among some ANC leaders. Even Zuma’s newly appointed Finance Minister began watering down the term “radical economic transformation” at the recent World Economic Forum Africa gathering. Instead he opted to use the phrase “inclusive growth”.

What needs to be made clear is that the debate around “white monopoly capital” and “radical economic transformation” is about much more than statistics and definitions. It is about the ownership and control of both public and private capital by a politically connected elite. Thus it comes with the potential risk of turning South Africa’s entire economy into a centrally controlled patronage network.

Sean Gossel, Senior Lecturer, UCT Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town and Misheck Mutize, Lecturer of Finance and Doctor of Philosophy Candidate, specializing in Finance, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

It's cold outside Zuma's ANC. But there's little warmth left inside

A protest in support of Raymond Suttner released from detention in 1988 by apartheid authorities.
Robert Botha/Times Media Group

In the liberation struggle against apartheid a small number of white people joined the battle to overthrow the South African regime. One of them, academic Raymond Suttner, was first arrested in 1975 and tortured with electric shocks because he refused to supply information to the police. He then served eight years in prison because of his underground activities for the African National Congress and South African Communist Party.

After his release in 1983 he was forced - after two years - to go underground to evade arrest, but was re-detained in 1986 under repeatedly renewed states of emergency for 27 months – 18 of these in solitary confinement.

First published in 2001, Suttner’s prison memoir “Inside Apartheid’s Prison”, has been made available again, now with a completely new introduction. The Conversation Africa’s Charles Leonard spoke to Suttner.

Why did you write the book?

I was hesitant to write it because there is a culture of modesty that is inculcated in cadres. I used to think it was “not done” to write about myself. I also thought that my experience was a “parking ticket” compared with the sentences of Nelson Mandela and others. But I came to feel that I have a story to tell.

Nevertheless I hope that resources will be found so that more stories are told, not only of prison but the many unknown people who pursued resistance in different ways in a range of relatively unknown places.

You were imprisoned and on house arrest for over 11 years. It was based on choices you made. Would you make the same choices today?

Yes. I did what I believed was right at the time and even if things are not turning out so well at the moment that does not invalidate those choices. I saw the liberation struggle as having a sacred quality and considered it an honour to be part of it.

I was very influenced by the great Afrikaner Communist Bram Fischer. He had nothing to gain personally and could have been a judge, the president of the country or anything else. Instead he chose a life of danger and later life imprisonment. I was inspired by that example, amongst others, to do what I could.

When one embarks on revolutionary activities there are no guarantees of success. I was not sure that I would come out alive. I did what I believed was right and would make the same choices again.

So those choices were worth it?

Definitely. This was not a business venture where one could answer such a question through balancing profits and losses. For me joining the struggle, as a white, gave me the opportunity to start my life afresh by joining my fortunes with those who were oppressed. It gave me the chance to link myself with the majority of South Africans.

That was a more authentic way of living my life than whatever successes I may have achieved, had I simply focused on professional success. Most importantly I see this choice – to join the liberation struggle – as giving me the opportunity to humanise myself as a white South African in apartheid South Africa.

Do you still feel the damage after all these years in prison?

Yes. I have post-traumatic stress. I am not sure that it will ever be eliminated or that I always recognise its appearance. Many of us live with scars from that period.

I have not always acknowledged or understood that I have been damaged but it is directly related to my having fibromyalgia (a disorder characterised by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues), according to the specialist who diagnosed it. She cautioned me about returning to my prison experiences, in this book, fearing the possibility of it setting off physically painful symptoms. That didn’t happen as far as I am aware and returning to the scene of trauma may be part of healing, according to some.

Why did you break with the ANC over 10 years ago?

I had not been happy with many aspects of Thabo Mbeki‘s presidency but that did not mean I should align myself with his successor Jacob Zuma. Zuma’s candidacy was promoted not only by ANC people but especially the South African Communist Party (SACP) and trade union federation Cosatu’s leaderships, presenting him as having qualities that were not valid. In particular the claim that Zuma was a man of the people with sympathy for the poor and downtrodden was untrue.

It was already known that he was linked with corrupt activities before he was elected as ANC president in 2007. But what was decisive for me was Zuma’s 2006 rape trial. There was something very cruel in the way the complainant, known as “Khwezi”, was treated, in the mode of defence that Zuma chose. I found that unacceptable.

Is it not lonely outside the ANC?

Raymond Suttner in 2001, when ‘Inside Apartheid’s Prison’ was first published.
Raymond Preston/Times Media Group

I miss the comradeship that I understood to bind me to people with whom I had shared dangers, joys and sorrows. When you are together in difficult times it creates a special bond. I did not conceive of that being broken.

But when you break away in a time of decadence, what is it that one misses? I cannot resume relationships on the same basis as those which I previously counted as comradeship. Our paths diverged. I went out into the cold and some with whom I used to be very close chose to link themselves with a project that has meant corruption, violence and destroying everything that was once valued in the liberation tradition.

These former comrades have all been accomplices in Nkandla (Zuma’s private rural home which was upgraded at a cost to the country of R246-million to taxpayers), the social grants scandal and many other features of this period which have seen some individuals benefit unlawfully and at the expense of the poor. I do not say that every person I know has been improperly enriched. But all those who have been in the ANC/SACP/Cosatu leadership have endorsed, indeed even provided elaborate defences of some of the worst features of the Zuma period.

In the new introduction to the book I use the word “betrayal” and I choose it to refer to these people, many of whom were once brave, who turned their backs on those from whom they came or whose cause they once adopted as their own.

Yes, it’s lonely. But that loneliness cannot be remedied by resuming bonds
with people who have taken fundamentally different paths. I now build relationships with others from whom I am learning and growing.

Raymond Suttner, Emeritus Professor, University of South Africa and part-time professor Rhodes University, Rhodes University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The battle for control of South Africa's state isn't just about personalities

A protester calling for President Jacob Zuma’s removal.
Reuters/Mike Hutchings

It is probably no consolation to Brian Molefe, the CEO of South Africa’s power utility Eskom, that his woes are evidence that President Jacob Zuma’s March cabinet reshuffle has so far had precisely the opposite effect to that which was expected.

Nor, no doubt, would it cheer Molefe to know that his plight has become a symbol of an important reality: that who occupies which political post is turning out to be far less important to the government’s economic decision-making than it seemed.

Molefe’s woes are evidence that the country’s infamous cabinet reshuffle has so far had precisely the opposite effect to that which was generally expected.

Before the reshuffle, many expected that, if Zuma did fire the finance minister and deputy minister, the balance of power in government would sharply change. Walls which held the state’s capture at bay would come tumbling down.

But this has not happened. The ANC patronage faction may have strengthened its presence in the Cabinet. But its attempt to take control of key institutions is in retreat in the face of opposition within the governing party and from unions, business and civil society groups.

Thus far the patronage group’s opponents have also turned the tide by winning changes which reverse its gains. This does not mean that the patronage faction’s opponents have won: the battle will continue to be fought decision by decision, day to day, possibly until the 2019 election. But the patronage group’s expected triumph has not materialised despite changes in the faces in government.

Molefe’s Pyrrhic victory

It is widely known that the Treasury is a key prize for the ANC’s patronage faction. It was also expected across the spectrum that if Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas were out of the way, it would be able to get on with handing over public resources to private interests without hindrance. Molefe’s recent experiences shows that this has not happened.

After leaving Eskom in response to the Public Protector’s State of Capture report which linked him to the Gupta family, Molefe landed in Parliament chosen by North West province, a patronage faction stronghold.

When Zuma told ANC leaders he planned to replace Gordhan, it became clear that Molefe had not been given his seat as a consolation prize – the president wanted to appoint him finance minister. He backed off because half the ANC’s top six leaders insisted that Molefe was unacceptable because he had become firmly linked to the patronage faction.

This seems to have made Molefe so politically radioactive that he was not given any post in the reshuffle. Since he presumably had not come to parliament to sit on committees, he was given his Eskom job back.

This prompted a backlash – from within the ANC as well as outside it. The governing party issued a statement rejecting the appointment and the ANC national executive committee, its decision-making body between conferences, agreed that Molefe should go.

He now relies on courts to give him back his job – the same courts which have barred him temporarily from Eskom property, suggesting that they may see less merit in his case than he hopes.

What is the political import of these events? Not only have the president and the patronage faction been unable to secure Molefe any job in the Cabinet which would enable him to take the economic decisions they want. They have also failed to persuade an ANC national executive committee that Molefe should keep his Eskom job. That hardly suggests an all-conquering patronage faction ready to do with the state whatever it pleases.

Other patronage faction losses

Molefe’s fate is not an isolated incident. Since the reshuffle, every key government decision has gone against the patronage faction. The president has finally, after months of stonewalling, signed the Amendments to the Financial Intelligence Centre Act. The amendments aim to tighten control on illicit financial activity and were opposed by the patronage faction.

The interim board of the South African Broadcasting Corporation has begun an attempt to retrieve it from the faction. A deal between the armaments parastatal Denel and a company with links to the Gupta family, VR Laser Asia, has been halted.

Berning Ntlemeza, head of the Hawks, the special investigating unit which hounded Gordhan and Jonas and was seen as a loyal instrument of the patronage group, has been removed by new Police Minister Fikile Mbalula.

Investigations have been ordered into Eskom transactions.

There is a clear pattern here and it sends the opposite message to the one expected before the reshuffle. It is consistent with a takeover by the patronage faction’s opponents, not the faction itself.

How do we explain this? Why, after Zuma, a key figure in the patronage faction, removed key impediments to it at the National Treasury and other ministries, and saw off attempts to remove him, is the ANC and government behaving as if the patronage group lost?

It’s about much more than just personalities

The short answer is that the framework through which many in business, the media and the academy look at the ANC’s economic battle places far too much stress on personalities. It assumes that, if Zuma stays, the patronage group is rampant - if he goes, they will be put to flight.

It was similarly assumed that Gordhan and Jonas were the thin line which kept the patronage faction at bay: once they were gone, it could trample over the fiscus like an invading army.

But the battle is about far more than personalities. It is about how important sections of the ANC and the society relate to the market economy. Within the ANC there are significant groups who see patronage as a mortal threat to the economy. They enjoy substantial support from anyone who has a stake in the formal economy: unions and their members as well as professionals and business people.

They did not disappear on the night of the reshuffle. On the contrary, they regrouped quickly. They seem to have decided that they could win important battles on what government should and should not do about the economy regardless of who is president and in the Cabinet. And they seem to be winning thus far.

While the mainstream debate concentrates on who occupies which positions, the patronage group’s opponents are showing that it is possible to limit the use of public funds for private purposes regardless of who wins the personality battles.

It is, of course, not yet clear how lasting the patronage group’s retreat is – it may well recover. What is clear is that, even if its opponents win the ANC presidency, this faction will not disappear: it may continue to control several provincial governments which can be used as patronage strongholds. So its success, too, depends less on who gets what position.

Molefe’s recent travails, and the events which surround it, show that the battle for the fiscus will continue. And that the economy will be shaped by who wins the battle on concrete decisions more than who sits in government offices.

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.