South Africa moves one step closer to a sugar tax -- and a healthier lifestyle

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South Africa has joined only a handful of countries in the world close to imposing a sugary drinks tax. A new bill that imposes a tax on sugary drinks has cleared the first of three hurdles in South Africa’s law-making process. One of two houses of parliament has approved what is being called a health promotion levy. The bill is expected to be passed by the other, The National Council of Provinces, and then signed in by the President. Implementation is expected in April 2018, but industry interference may still have an impact. The Conversation Africa’s Health and Medicine Editor Candice Bailey spoke to Karen Hofman and Aviva Tugendhaft about the tax.

How important is the sugary drinks tax and why?

The decision by South Africa’s Parliament is a very far sighted decision. It shows that the country’s parliamentarians fully understand the health implications of a product that is excessively high in sugar and has no nutritional value.

The sugary drinks tax – or health promotion levy – is expected to prevent a wide-range of obesity related non-communicable diseases. These include diabetes, cancer, stroke and heart disease. This is important because South Africa’s public health sector is severely overburdened. Public hospitals are seeing on average of 25 000 new hypertensive cases a month as well as 10 000 new diabetic patients each month. These are estimated to be only half of the real numbers because both are silent conditions.

The effect of the reduction in the prevalence of non-communicable diseases will be twofold: it will help the country to implement National Health Insurance (NHI) as an overwhelmed health system will be a barrier to NHI. And it will reduce the negative effect that chronic non-communicable diseases have on economic growth because of the impact on the workforce due to increased absenteeism and decreased productivity.

Already, there are signs that obesity related diseases are affecting the country’s economic growth rate.

The sugary drinks tax will also help people make healthier choices. In Mexico, after a sugary drinks tax was implemented soda consumption decreased by between 7% and 10% and water consumption increased.

Lastly, tackling chronic noncommunicable diseases will ensure that South Africa doesn’t lose the gains it has made in life expectancy after the introduction of antiretrovirals to treat HIV infections. Life expectancy has improved to 62.5 years of age after falling as low as 52.1 at the height of the AIDS pandemic in 2003. Without further policies to promote health, the country’s life expectancy is likely to reverse. This has been seen in countries like Brazil.

The initial lobby was for a 20% sugar tax. But in the end it was only 11%. Is it good enough?

It’s a start. The sugar tax is similar to the one introduced in Mexico which contributed to a 17% reduction in the consumption of sugary beverages among poor people.

Once the tax is implemented in South Africa it will be monitored and an evaluation will be done to establish if it has helped.

What will this levy mean for consumers?

The industry is clearly against the tax. This was illustrated by the fact that the chairperson of the finance committee in parliament, Yunus Carrim, spoke out about industry interference in the process.

The sugar industry sees South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa as their growth market This means that they will continue to find a way to increase profits. We’re expecting to see the industry change their products in an effort to ensure their bottom line is not affected. The tax will be levied on sugar content, which will hopefully encourage industry to lower the sugar content in its drinks and create healthier alternatives.

The sugar tax has been criticised because it deals with only one factor among a myriad that lead to obesity. What’s your response?

This is true. But that criticism only stands if you view it as a single event. The levy is the first step in a very long journey of a range of different interventions that will need to happen.

This was also the case with tobacco. The first step was a tobacco tax. This halved smoking rates over two decades. It was followed by the banning of advertisements and very clear labelling about the dangers of tobacco.

The health promotion levy – which research shows is by far the most effective mechanism – will need to be followed by clear and transparent labelling. We need to move away from just having sugar levels listed in grams on the back of cans. There should be labels in large letters on the front of cans informing consumers about the number of teaspoons of sugar they’re drinking.

The second intervention should be marketing and advertising regulations of these drinks, particularly to children.

Karen Hofman, Program Director, PRICELESS SA ( Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Stregthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand and Aviva Tugendhaft, Deputy Director, PRICELESS SA, Wits/MRC Agincourt Rural Health Transitions Unit, Wits School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Lessons for South Africa's Jacob Zuma in Robert Mugabe's misfortunes

The political troubles of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe comes with lessons for his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma.
REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

President Robert Mugabe’s endgame in Zimbabwe holds various lessons for his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, as the latter too, considers his prospects towards the end of his presidency. The first, obviously, is that while, from the pinnacle of power, a country’s president may feel the monarch of all he can survey, it is always possible that the blade of the guillotine is just around the corner.

Accordingly, it is always prudent to keep at least two bags packed for a hasty exit: one full of suit, shirts, underwear and socks, another full of foreign currency (preferably dollars or Euros). You just never know how things might pan out, so it is best to be prepared.

Following the almost-coup, Mugabe has been in a stronger position than many African dictators before him because the African Union has in recent years become a lover of democracy and a hater of coups. It therefore now demands that changes of leadership must have at least a veneer of constitutionality.

This has always been the Zimbabwean military’s weak point during this past week of flirting with political power. Hence its insistence that, despite its take-over of the airwaves, State House and parliament, alongside its house-arrest of the president and his family, its actions are not a coup.

In turn, this has provided Mugabe with a considerable degree of wriggle room, which he has sought to exploit to the full. Indeed, it has remained his key bargaining chip, not least because the African Union does not want to be seen as party to the overthrow of a hero of African liberation.

Explicit political actor

Zuma will feel confident that whereas in Zimbabwe the army has long been deeply involved in the ruling party’s internal affairs and the wider political arena, the South African National Defence Force is not an explicit political actor. He stands in no fear of a military coup (or even a Zimbabwe-style non-coup). Yet he does have to worry about what happens within his political party, the African National Congress (ANC).

Even if his favoured candidate, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, were to win the party leadership at the ANC’s December congress, Zuma’s continuing as South African President might be seen as a political embarrassment. If strong contender Cyril Ramaphosa wins, even more urgent calls will be made from within the ANC for the him to be “recalled” because he will be viewed as an electoral liability.

It is a fair bet that, whoever wins, an excuse will be made for a delegation from the party leadership to visit the president and to ask him to stand down. Just ask former President Thabo Mbeki who was fired by his own ANC. If Zuma refuses to cooperate, then the ANC might turn to parliament, where enough ANC MPs might feel emboldened to vote with the opposition to dethrone him.

Fighting for survival

Like Mugabe, Zuma will be battling for a dignified exit. Even more urgently, he will be fighting for survival. In previous years, Mugabe may have feared the prospect of retribution for his sins, and would have been determined to secure immunity from prosecution.

Now, at 93, he is confident that once out of office he will be left in peace. He may or may not appreciate the irony that, unlike his country’s last white ruler Ian Smith, he will not be able to stay in Zimbabwe after he has been forced to stand down, but he will know that he has to leave.

Neither the army nor Zanu-PF will want him hanging around, fearing his ability to continue pulling strings. So off he must go, to South Africa, Dubai or Singapore (anywhere with a few decent shops for his shopaholic wife Grace). His major immediate concern then, we may presume, is safe passage and immunity for his family. We may further presume, that there is lots of money stashed away in foreign bank accounts to keep the crocodile from the door.

Zuma’s tricky position

Zuma is differently placed. If he loses the Presidency he stands in all sorts of dangers, not least of which is prosecution for past financial crimes and the prospect of his ending his days in prison. In other words, he has much more to bargain for, and he will be doing so from a considerably weaker position. Not least of his problems is that he is a lot younger than Mugabe, so could spend quite a few years in jail.

Zuma’s major strength is that, whoever wins the party leadership, the ANC will probably want to grant him immunity and get him out of the way, as otherwise they face the prospect of their former leader facing a corruption trial during the lead up to elections in 2019.

But for a start, there is no provision for presidential immunity in the constitution, and its grant would face a strong challenge in the courts. Furthermore, if the Gupta or other Zuma allies in the project of “state capture” were to be prosecuted, Zuma could face being dragged into court as a witness.

In short, Zuma will realise that it will make sense to hot-foot it out of the country, preferably to a comfortably authoritarian country which will turn down requests for extradition.

The fickle people

What Mugabe is learning now, and it is something of which Zuma should take good note, is that the people are an ungrateful lot, and are likely to turn against you just when you most need their support. Up till a week ago, it was presumed that Mugabe retained the backing of all who mattered in Zanu-PF and that he would again be its candidate for president at the next election. But now, like many a dictator, he is having to learn fast that the people no longer love him.

Past allies, like the war veterans, had already turned against him, repudiating his apparent bid for his wayward wife, Grace, to replace him. Zanu-PF Youth leader, Kudzai Chipanga, initially declared his willingness to “die for Mugabe” and labelled Major-General Constantino Chiwenga, the leader of the non-coup, a traitor when the army first intervened. After being locked up, he shamefacedly read out an abject apology, begging forgiveness, and pleading the inexperience of youth.

This has been followed by all 10 provincial organisations of Zanu-PF calling for Mugabe to go, and even encouraging ordinary people to join the marches being organised by opposition parties and civil society demanding his dismissal.

Zuma is too wily a politician not to know that once he loses the party presidency, his support base will drain away, and that he will become known as yesterday’s man. Yet like Mugabe, he will take comfort from the regional body, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), for there is nothing his fellow presidents dread more than the prospect of any one of their number facing impeachment.

He will also know that, unlike Mbeki, whose stature in Africa remains high, he has no viable future as a roving ex-president. Zuma will know that if he wants to enjoy his retirement in peace, he has to leave South Africa before he gets tangled up in court proceedings.

His best option will be to grab those two suitcases, make a hasty exit and move in next door to Bob and Grace in Dubai.

Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Groundswell against nuclear in South Africa could put paid to a power deal

President Jacob Zuma has appointed David Mahlobo, a close ally as energy minister.
Flickr/GovernmentZA

South African President Jacob Zuma, has a maximum of 18 months left as head of state. This time he hopes to rescue a nuclear power deal involving a proposed contract to build between six and eight new nuclear reactors in South Africa.

In an attempt to push through the deal, Zuma has appointed his former minister of state security, David Mahlobo as energy minister. The president trusts that Mahlobo, a close ally for over ten years, will act decisively to implement the deal. He appears to be under orders to get a deal with Russia done and dusted.

The nuclear deal contract is for nuclear reactors to produce 9600 megawatts of power. This would be five times the amount of energy generated from Koeberg, South Africa’s only nuclear power plant which generates a maximum of 1844 megawatts.

But the facts show that the country does not need this extra power. Demand for electricity has come down every year since 2011. And the National Treasury argues that the costs, in the range of at least R1-1,8 trillion, will be prohibitive.

Nuclear energy will also be the most costly electricity source, according to work done by energy experts. In a climate where the state utility Eskom is deeply in debt and is therefore trying to raise the price of electricity by 19.9% for the next few years, investment for nuclear will force up the cost to consumers, and meeting the borrowing requirements will put unnecessary pressure on an already stressed economy.

Zuma’s push for nuclear continues to emphasise how isolated he really is. The anti-nuclear lobby is no longer confined to environmentalists. Large sections of civil society, business, academia and even sections of government have come out against it. My hunch is that democracy will win, and the people will triumph over a tainted and over-extended kleptocrat.

Massaging the energy strategy

Zuma’s efforts to get the deal underway have been stopped in their tracks following a court ruling that declared previous attempts to privilege Russian interests as illegal. The court ruled that before the deal can be reinstated, it has to go through a public participation process and parliament has to approve it. The court also ruled that state efforts to put Eskom in charge of procurement were illegal, as the proper procedures weren’t followed.

It is unlikely that even Mahlobo can meet these legal requirements in the time that his boss has left in office.

Mahlobo’s first step has been to try to speed up the state’s energy strategy – which was supposed to be updated in April 2018. Although the plan is supposed to be updated every two years the 2010 version – which called for more nuclear procurement – is officially still on the table. A subsequent revision in 2013 questioned the need for nuclear. But this plan was never tabled in parliament by the Department of Energy.

The 2018 plan being promised by Mahlobo is expected to re-emphasise the commitment to nuclear. Zuma wants the plan fast tracked. But by speeding it up, the government has indicated to parliament that it will be excluding a public participation process.

This is likely to be challenged given that the plan is the closest thing South Africa has to a national discussion on its energy future.

But even if the plan can be massaged in Zuma’s interests, it won’t be enough to ensure the deal goes through. It will be challenged by political parties and NGOs who are prepared to litigate to challenge a rigged plan if necessary.

Additional hurdles

The public participation process that the national electricity regulator must manage – as prescribed by the April 2017 court judgement – is far from being established. The regulator was berated by the court for not doing this. It has to happen before procurement takes place. The process will provide the perfect opportunity for organisations to make the case that the scientific, environmental and economic arguments against new nuclear are backed by solid evidence.

Even if this process approved the orders of new reactors, there are other hurdles to be cleared. Before the competitive procurement process can be initiated, South Africa would need to renew a series of legal memoranda of understanding with vendor countries. These include France, Russia, China, South Korea and the US. This would ensure that these are free of contractual content, and then sanctioned by parliament. Only then can the procurement proceed legally. And government would have to ensure that the process abides by the Constitutional requirements of “fairness, equity, transparency, competitiveness and cost-effectiveness.”

This means that it will be illegal and unconstitutional to offer Russia preferential treatment in guaranteeing that it secures the deal.

Any transgression of the law or the Constitution will be met by litigation from the environmental lobby. It will be strengthened by an array of other actors, ranging from tax and anti-corruption to human rights activists.

Zuma can of course flout the rule of law, but would he want to jeopardise what is left of an already problematic legacy over this more or less unwinnable issue?

David Fig, Honorary Research Associate, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

After Mugabe: why the role of Zimbabwe's army can't be trusted

Zimbabwe’s Defence Force has taken control of the country’s political affairs.
Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters

Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s forced resignation invites a re-examination of the military’s role in political affairs. While a professional military is typically expected to refrain from politics, the interface between security and politics can sometimes be blurred.

In Kenya for example, the military Chiefs of Staff usually come from the president’s ethnic community making them partisan to the head of state and the party he represents. Most recently, there have been allegations of the military’s involvement in a poll rigging scheme with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government.

Other countries such as Uganda, Egypt and Thailand have experienced more flagrant examples of the military’s involvement in politics.

Recent events in Zimbabwe need to be understood within this context. The Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) latest stunt must be read as political subterfuge. The military has been enmeshed in Zimbabwe’s politics since the liberation struggle. While it has occasionally flexed its muscle to support Mugabe’s grip on power, this time around it has intervened to shore up the ruling party’s fledgling support after years of the former president’s unpopular rule.

Officers who call the tune

The ZDF have been an invisible actor in the country’s protracted crisis. The intervention that resulted in Mugabe’s resignation was the result of a slow brewing coup that has been occasioned by the military’s involvement in the country’s politics since independence in 1980.

The military has been accused of violence and intimidation, as well as participation in electoral malpractices. ZDF’s human rights violations, economic plunder and entanglement in politics have been widely documented. And its professional misconduct has fomented poor civil-military relations.

The military takeover is therefore a manifestation of undercurrents that have been present for years.

According to the latest research, Zimbabwe is ranked 81 out of 133 countries in terms of military strength, just after the Middle Eastern nation of Kuwait, and one rank above Georgia, which is a former Russian territory. It has a total of 52,000 military personnel, 30,000 active personnel and 22,000 reserves.

ZDF prides itself as having been the liberator in the country’s struggle for independence. During the fight for independence political figures were deployed in the military rank and file to motivate the fighters. At the time, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) was the political wing of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). This close relationship between the military and political wings persisted after independence.

Mugabe has regularly gifted the military through the allocation of exploited resources. He has also rewarded military men with high positions in the civil service to retain their loyalty, for example the late Mike Karakadzai and Samuel Muvuti. These dynamics have progressively obscured the separation between the army, state and party.

Open support for the ZANU Patriotic Front

The military has been openly partisan in its support for ZANU-PF. The politics of patronage and wealth accumulation has characterised the relationship on both sides. In suppressing the opposition, ZDF has created an uneven political playing field through intimidation and election rigging. The Joint Operations Command which coordinates the military, police and intelligence has been central to ZANU-PF’s security policy.

The military has also taken an openly antagonistic stance towards the opposition. An example of this was Brigadier Douglas Nyikayaramba’s description of Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), as a national security threat.

By engineering Mugabe’s ouster the military has reasserted its position as an important player in Zimbabwean politics. It may not hesitate to intervene in the event of another “national crisis”.

Factors in the Mugabe ouster

In their clamour to oust an oppressive ruler and his ambitious wife the Zimbabwean people have placed their hopes in a devious military.

It is hard to tell whether Mugabe’s Achilles’s heel was his wife, Grace, or an equally scheming military, which lured him into a false sense of security and then double-crossed him when he failed to indulge their political whims.

The current political crisis could in fact be the climax of an unwitting convergence of machinations from both sides. By casting Grace as the villain, and taking on the role of saviour, the military is attempting to erase the part it has played in Zimbabwe’s fractious politics.

By joining in the calls for the installation of former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the people seem to have momentarily discounted his dark past in the country’s politics. Examples of his misdeeds include his role as chief architect in the Gukurahundi massacres which was carried out between 1983 and 1987. Approximately 20,000 Ndebele’s were murdered by the military and security forces.

Another dark cloud that hangs over him includes his special relationship with the military. They were jointly involved in the economic plunder of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The former vice president has also been known to persecute his opponents.

While he has the support of ZANU-PF and the top military brass when he becomes president he will face the challenge of de-linking himself from his murky past.

What next for Zimbabwe?

The military takeover strongly suggests that the men in uniform are intent on determining the country’s political trajectory. As such, there are limited leadership choices open to Zimbabweans. With the military’s support, Mnangagwa will take over in the interim and potentially win a future election. But he has a blemished past, which the ZDF cannot sanitise. And his installation could plunge the country into further uncertainty.

For Zimbabwe to take a different route, two things need to happen: the radical security sector reforms that have stalled since 2008 need to be revived. These reforms should be targeted towards professionalising the sector by addressing past misconduct, mainstreaming human rights, and introducing community policing. This should go in tandem with depoliticising the sector, and demilitarising the state and some civilian populations.

In addition, the people of Zimbabwe need to agree on a framework for a viable transitional justice process.

Yvonne Rowa, PhD Candidate in Politics and International Studies, University of Adelaide

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What South Africa's Reserve Bank can -- and can't -- do about illicit financial flows

South African Reserve Bank deputy governor and registrar of banks, Kuben Naidoo, has the tough task of curbing money laundering.
Supplied by SARB

Developing nations are facing a rising wave of illicit financial flows and money laundering. In South Africa the country’s Reserve Bank is at the forefront of managing the problem. Mills Soko asked South African Reserve Bank deputy governor and registrar of banks, Kuben Naidoo, to explain the scale of the challenge and what’s been done about it.

What are the key highlights of how to fight money laundering?

First let me just say that we don’t know how big the losses are, but South Africa must be losing billions, if not tens of billions, of rand in revenue through illicit financial flows.

The South African Reserve Bank plays two particular roles in dealing with money laundering and illicit financial flows.

Firstly, we assess the compliance of banks with the provisions of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) and the relevant regulations. This is purely a compliance job to ensure that banks have the requisite systems, processes and procedures to be able to implement the act.

We do this through an auditing methodology. We ask a bank for a sample of customer accounts, let’s say 70 accounts. We then go through the sample to determine whether the bank has complied with FICA’s Know Your Customer requirements. Did they check the names of their customers against the United Nations database on criminal sanctions? Did they check them against the database of politically exposed persons? If anyone was on a list, did they do an enhanced diligence?

Then, we ask for all the transactions involving the 70 people and pick out suspicious transactions or those that fall within the cash threshold reporting requirements. And we check whether the bank’s systems flagged these suspicious transactions.

There is then a manual process that takes up to two weeks to see if these are indeed suspicious transactions. If they are, did the bank submit a suspicious transaction report to the Financial Intelligence Centre.

The second role we play involves enforcing the remaining foreign exchange controls and regulations in terms of the Currency and Exchanges Act of 1933 , a function delegated to us by the Minister of Finance. We monitor and enforce the foreign exchange aspects of cross border transactions. If a South African company or individual wants to take money out of the country above a certain threshold, they need foreign exchange control approval.

If, in the course of monitoring these transactions, we pick up violations of exchange controls, we have an administrative process to find out:

• Why the person violated exchange controls?
• If they want to declare what they’ve taken – what we call regularise?
• Is there a sanction we can apply?

But we don’t have the ability to prosecute. We refer cases that are ready for criminal prosecution to the police who, after their own investigation, refer these to the National Prosecuting Authority for a decision whether to prosecute or not.

What are the big challenges that developing countries face in terms of tracking and curbing money laundering?

One of the challenges facing countries like South Africa is that it has relatively open capital markets. You can bring money in, and take money out within limits. At the same time, it also has significant amounts of corruption and crime, both of which are sources of illicit financial flows. While compliance has improved dramatically since 1994, there are still people who take a chance by avoiding taxes. The challenges therefore are: the corruption; proceeds of crime; and the legitimate South African businessmen who wants to avoid taxes.

What are countries like South Africa getting right?

The Financial Intelligence Centre – which is housed in the National Treasury – is a significant tool for monitoring the financial sector. But it’s limited to monitoring the formal financial sector. It also has a strong bias towards electronic transactions.

In general, the financial sector has a high level of compliance with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act. The act, and recent amendments, give the Reserve Bank significant powers to monitor transactions and require banks to report suspicious transactions. The legislative framework also creates room for greater cooperation among the three institutions - South African Revenue Service, the South African Reserve Bank and the Financial Intelligence Centre – to connect the dots and pick up patterns regarding money laundering, tax evasion, or fraud.

Where are the big gaps?

The financial reporting system that the South African Reserve Bank monitors is almost unique in the world. The bank has records of every ATM, debit card, credit card, or electronic funds transfer (EFT) transaction, whether done in South Africa or abroad. If a South African uses their card to buy coffee at Starbucks in New York the bank knows.

The system provides the bank with an opportunity for further investigation if it picks out what it believes are patterns of money laundering. But there are gaps. For example, South Africa’s remittance system allows transactions worth R3 000 per transaction, or R10 000 per month. There are almost no questions asked, only proof of identity. And there’s evidence that the remittances system is being abused.

Then there are gaps relating to South Africa’s trade with the rest of the world. For example, we have a 40% duty on imported clothing. You bring in a container load of shirts and tell the South African Revenue Service these shirts cost R10 each, and you pay R4 in import duties per shirt, but actually the shirts cost R100 each.

You now have to get R90 out of the country illegally to pay for the shirts. What you do is you send lots of gifts to somebody abroad. Alternatively, you set up a company and you apply for an advance purchase authority to pay for the imports. Once the payment goes through, but before the goods are delivered, the company collapses.

Or you say you are importing software for R50 million and you transfer R50 million and the exporter sends to South Africa a box of compact disks (CDs). Our customs officials have no way of knowing whether these CDs are worth R5 or R50 million. For all you know, they could be copies of Lionel Richie’s CDs.

Even though the legislative framework provides for cooperation, there is often not good cooperation between South African Revenue Service, the South African Reserve Bank and the Financial Intelligence Centre.

The last gap relates to law enforcement. We have given 151 cases to the police and/or the National Prosecuting Authority over the last 5 years, out of which there have been only two prosecutions . This might be because they don’t have the time, resources, expertise, skills, or the will to prosecute.

How can the gaps be closed?

This can be achieved through tighter cooperation between relevant institutions. And by creating better capacity to prosecute money laundering and illicit financial flows.

This is part of a series called Face-to-face interviews The Conversation Africa is running in which leading academics put questions to prominent individuals in the public, private and not for profit sectors.

Mills Soko, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Zimbabwe beware: the military is looking after its own interests, not democracy

Zimbabwe National Army commander Constantino Chiwenga, second from left, addressing the media.
EPA-EFE/Aaron Ufumeli

November 2017 will go down in the history of Zimbabwe as the beginning of the end of Robert Mugabe’s 37 year tyranny. A tumultuous week finally culminated in his resignation on November 21st. One cannot understate the widespread jubilation at the demise of Mugabe and his desire to create a dynasty for himself through his wife Grace.

But the optimism is misplaced because it doesn’t deal directly with the dearth of democracy in Zimbabwe.

First, contrary to popular sentiment that the coup was meant to usher in a new era of political liberalisation and democracy, the takeover is actually meant to deal with a succession crisis in Zanu-PF. The military made this clear when it said that it was dealing with criminals around Mugabe. And the party’s secretary for legal affairs Patrick Chinamasa indicated that removing Mugabe from the party’s Central Committee was an internal party matter.

Secondly, I would argue that the military resorted to a “smart coup” only after its preferred candidate to succeed Mugabe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was fired from the party and government.

The way in which the military has gone about executing its plan upends any conventional understanding of what constitutes a coup d'etat. It’s a “smart coup” in the sense that the military combined the frustrations of a restive population, internal party structures and international sympathy to remove a sitting president. It thereby gained legitimacy for an otherwise partisan and unconstitutional political act – toppling an elected government.

This begs the question: Is the military now intervening for the collective good or for its own interests?

Why the military intervened

It is baffling to imagine how the military has suddenly become the champion of democracy and regime change in Zimbabwe.

It’s clear that what motivated the military commanders was a fear of losing their jobs and influence after their preferred successor was purged. They launched a preemptive strike against Mugabe to safeguard their own selfish interests as a military class and the future of their careers.

Given the symbiotic relationship between the Zimbabwean military and the ruling Zanu-PF party, it was inevitable that the top commanders would be embroiled in the party’s succession crisis. After all, the military has been the key lever behind the power of both Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF since 1980.

In the past they have acted as part of the Zanu-PF machinery, openly campaigning for Mugabe alongside other security agencies.

And they have played a key role in neutralising political opponents. Back in the 1980s the military was responsible for the massacre of thousands of civilians and Zapu supporters in Matebeleland. More than two decades later in 2008 they were responsible for the torture, death and disappearance of 200 opposition activists and the maiming of hundreds more.

In addition, the UN has implicated Mnangagwa and the generals in the illegal plundering of resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They have also been fingered in the disappearance of diamond revenues from Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields.

On top of this the military and Zanu-PF share a special relationship that has its roots in the liberation struggle. The Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) was the political wing of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla) during the liberation war. They therefore have vested interests in the survival of the party.

After independence, the relationship remained intact as the military became the guarantors of the revolution. Some of the same surviving commanders of Zanla are still senior high ranking officials. The commanders are also bona fide members of the ruling party and guarantors of Zanu-PF power.

The same securocrats are also members of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association. This quasi paramilitary group is an auxiliary association of the ruling party and has fiercely opposed Mugabe’s attempt to create a dynasty.

Military must step aside

Zimbabwe goes to the polls next July to choose a new president and parliament. The elections – if conducted in a credible way – will provide the next government with the legitimacy it needs to take the country out of its political and economic crises.

Now that Mugabe has resigned the hope is that the military will allow a genuinely democratic transition to take place. All political players, including opposition parties, would need to be incorporated into a broad-based transitional authority pending credible elections.

But for the elections to be credible, the transitional authority would need urgently to reform the electoral system. This would ensure Zimbabweans can freely and fairly choose their leaders. Without this, peace and prosperity will continue to elude Zimbabwe.

In the long run, the military would do well to get out of politics instead of continuing to view itself as “stockholders” in the country’s political affairs because of its liberation struggle credentials.

Enock C. Mudzamiri, DLitt et DPhil Student in Politics, University of South Africa

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Mugabe and Dos Santos: Africa's old men seem, finally, to be fading away

Mugabe tried to impose his wife on his party as his chosen successor.
Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters

Soon after Zimbabwe’s army confined President Robert Mugabe to his palatial Harare home this week – allegedly for his safety – it was announced in Luanda that Angola’s new President, João Lourenço, had relieved Isabel dos Santos of her position as head of the state-run oil company Sonangol.

While there may not be any direct connection between these two events, they suggest some intriguing comparisons. In both countries ruling families seem to have failed to secure themselves in power.

When Mugabe, as leader of the Zimbabwean African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF), became ruler of Zimbabwe at independence in April 1980, José Eduardo dos Santos was already President of Angola. He had succeeded to that position after the death of Agostinho Neto in September 1979.

Dos Santos had to deal with external intervention and over two decades of civil war , during which he ruled dictatorially. Mugabe, despite a facade of constitutionalism and regular elections, also became increasingly dictatorial. He abandoned adherence to the rule of law and his country’s economy collapsed. Angola became notorious for the scale of the corruption linked especially to its oil riches. Zimbabwe went from bread-basket to basket-case. With the great majority of the people of both countries living in dire poverty, Dos Santos flew to Europe when he needed medical attention, while Mugabe went to Singapore.

Though Dos Santos was probably as reluctant as Mugabe to give up power, he decided to quit as president of the country and try to retain influence through the ruling party and members of his family. Mugabe tried to impose his wife on his party as his chosen successor and then to cling on to his positions even when the army took effective control of his country.

Given recent developments in Luanda and Harare, it would seem that neither of these two old men have succeeded in securing their family dynasties.

Dos Santos’s succession plan

By 2016, suffering health problems that took him to Spain for treatment, Dos Santos announced that he would step down as president of Angola and he approved his Minister of Defence, João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço as his successor.

João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço, president of Angola.
EPA/Fernando Villar

Following the victory of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the general election held in August this year, Lourenço took over as president in September. But Dos Santos remained president of the MPLA, and clearly expected Lourenço to look after his interests and that of his family, who had become enormously wealthy.

From the action Lourenço has now taken against Dos Santos’ billionaire daughter Isabel, it would seem that he’s becoming his own man. It appears he wishes to distance himself from the Dos Santos family, which for many Angolans is associated with corruption on a vast scale.

The London-educated Isabel has proved herself to be a very capable businesswoman, and though the Angolan economy has been suffering because of low oil-prices, on top of massive corruption, it’s unlikely she was sacked to bring in a better chief executive to run the country’s most important state owned company. There is talk in Luanda that Isabel’s brother, José Filomeno dos Santos, will be relieved of his position as head of the country’s large Sovereign Wealth Fund and that his father, the former president of the country, will be replaced as president of the ruling party, though that may have to wait until a party congress is held.

Mugabe’s succession plan

In Zimbabwe Mugabe has sought to arrange that his wife will succeed him. But Gucci Grace and Robert made the mistake of trying to ensure this by firing Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Though at the time of writing, the 93-year-old Mugabe remains president both of the country and of the ruling Zanu-PF party, it’s widely expected that he will soon be relieved of both positions, probably by Mnangagwa, with the assistance of the army.

Changes for the better?

New leadership in Angola and Zimbabwe will have an impact on the region as a whole.

Given Mnangagwa’s record as a long serving member of government in Zimbabwe, and his involvement in the mass killing of Ndebele in the early 1980s, it is hardly likely that he will emerge as a champion of democracy.

In Angola, Lourenço is still finding his feet as head of government.

Fired Zimbabwean Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
EPA/Aaron Ufumeli

It is therefore unrealistic to hope that either country will soon move from decades of repressive rule and lack of transparency to greater constitutionalism and closer adherence to the rule of law.

But if we are witnessing the end of an era in which dictators stayed in power for decades and tried to secure their continuing influence through their families, and if we are seeing the diminishing importance of liberation movements turned political party, this must be good not only for Angola and Zimbabwe but for the southern African region as a whole.

It should also hold lessons for those who rule in neighbouring countries.

Chris Saunders, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How farm dwellers in South Africa think about home, land and belonging

Farm dwellers like Zabalaza Mshengu live in extremely precarious conditions.
Association for Rural Advancement

South Africa’s unemployment rate puts it in the bottom ten countries in the world. Hunger levels are growing. It has what Berkeley geography professor Gillian Hart calls a “population surplus to the needs of capital” that must find ways to survive despite living a “wageless existence.”

This is happening against the backdrop of three unfolding social processes.

The first involves deteriorating conditions for survival. A new social category is emerging called the “precariat”: growing numbers of people who struggle to secure the conditions for their survival through traditional means like permanent work. Instead, more and more people survive through multiple jobs that are part-time, insecure and precarious. Guy Standing, who is a professor of economy security at Bath University and coined the term, estimates that a quarter of the world’s adult population is now in the precariat.

Secondly, land reform is now geared at servicing the economic needs of black and white rural elites. Land reform budget allocations are spent on the wealthy rather than poor South Africans who are unable to access land.

Thirdly, the structural legacy of dispossession of Africans from land hasn’t been addressed. Failing to resolve this means that a painful political question is left hanging and becomes an easy symbol to manipulate.

So how do these historical and present conditions constitute the conditions for an emancipatory politics? For instance, will rural people who need land to live on or to farm organise to assert claims for restoration?

One possible answer emerges from research undertaken by the Association for Rural Advancement (AFRA), a land rights NGO working with farm dwellers in South Africa’ Kwazulu-Natal province.

AFRA recently undertook a socio-demographic and income survey of 850 households resident on farms in the Umgungundlovu Municipal District to understand more about farm dwellers’ conditions and how these have changed over time.

AFRA’s conclusion is that the politics associated with land is not about an organised emancipatory movement. While the radical opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and some factions of the governing African National Congress (ANC) are calling for the restoration of land to Africans without compensation to existing landowners, farm dwellers are mainly preoccupied with daily survival strategies.

If work opportunities arise away from farms, then many farm dwellers will choose to leave the farm. However, such opportunities are increasingly limited. Many farm dwellers are now asserting a demand to remain on land they have long ties to. These different strategies fragment farm dweller interests in the land.

But it seems that the potential exists for a social movement of people “surplus” to capital’s requirements. Whether such a movement develops depends on how effectively populist political groups can create alliances within and between the agricultural precariat, those living in city slums and those whose land access is threatened by agreements between traditional authorities and corporate interests like mining.

The International Peasant Movement, Via Campesina provides one example of a social movement involving reoccupation of unproductively used farmland. However, we argue that South Africa’s precariat is more complicated because the country is not agriculturally rich and more than half the population is now urbanised and lives in shacks on the edges of cities.

What we found

AFRA defines farm dwellers as rural people who live on large commercial farms owned by someone other than themselves.

In some respects farm dwellers are a relic of the country’s agrarian history, which involved the establishment of capitalist agriculture in the early 1900s on the back of African labour tenants’ unpaid labour. In return, tenants were granted the right to use some of the farmland for their own farming.

Our data shows that farm dwellers are not simply wage workers. They identify intimately with the land they live on. More than half of the interviewees have family graves on the farm. Their livelihoods are land-based: more than half cultivate crops, while just under half own livestock.

We identified three distinct responses of a fragmenting class of agricultural labour to the increasingly strained conditions for its social reproduction. These are: moving away from conditions on farms that make survival intolerable or impossible; seeking out better options in the cities and towns; and holding on to the roots of a familiar life and place on the farm despite deteriorating conditions.

Those who decide to move away from farms usually do so because of landowner decisions. These include explicit measures to evict some or all of the family members – this affected 7% of the total sample of over 7 000 individuals – as well as implicit or “constructive” evictions which involved the impounding of livestock, cutting off access to basic services such as water and electricity, locking gates and preventing children from attending school.

The second response – seeking better options – involves individual farm dwellers who decide to leave the farm. About a quarter of farm dwellers who have the landowner’s permission to live on the farm choose to live elsewhere. Rates of unemployment affecting households on these farms exceed 80%, so those who leave tend to have done so in search of work.

Farm dwellers must contend with difficult living and working conditions. This makes the third response – staying on the farm – perhaps the most surprising.

One factor is farm wage income which makes up 55% of household income. So when people can get work on the farms where they have dwelling rights, it makes sense for them to stay.

There are other explanations for why farm dwellers stay on farms. We call this the politics of holding on to home.

Nearly 75% of all farm dweller households we interviewed had lived on the farm in question for 23 years or longer, and had a parent, grandparent or great grandparent who was born on the farm. When asked “who is the owner of the house you live in?”, 61% said they owned the house – even though they had already stated the name of the farm’s owner.

Among the reasons given were that they had no other home and had never lived anywhere else.

When asked who would take over the home after the household head died, more than half said that someone in their family would take it over. This suggests that a different, parallel conception of ownership co-exists with legal ownership of the land. Farm dwellers know the farmer is the title holder of the farm but are also asserting that they are the owners of their homes.

Creating alliances

A political alliance among farm dwellers opting for different survival strategies doesn’t appear to exist yet although the economic conditions are present. It could possibly develop if either the EFF or a breakaway group from the ANC organise it.

For now, the EFF’s focus seems to be on shack settlements and the urban poor and the ANC is too mired in its own internal wrangles to be able to organise a movement of this kind.

Donna Hornby, Postdoctoral research fellow, University of the Western Cape

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Mnangagwa and the military may mean more bad news for Zimbabwe

Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo

The military has taken control of the national broadcaster, troops are in the streets and the president is being held in a secure environment. All military leave is cancelled and a senior general has addressed the nation. Yet the Zimbabwean military continues with the pretence that this is not a coup d’etat.

The obvious response to this is: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then the chances are it’s a duck. And the sole reason the Zimbabwean military is not acknowledging this as a coup d’etat is to avoid triggering the country’s automatic suspension from the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Both bodies frown on coups.

A perfect storm formed ahead of these events and made military action predictable. The country had once again entered a steep economic decline (not that its “recovery” had been anything of note). A clear and reckless bid for power was being made by the so-called Generation 40 (G40) faction around Grace Mugabe in direct opposition to the Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the standard bearer for the so-called Lacoste faction.

This culminated in Mnangagwa’s dismissal by President Mugabe: a clear indication that Grace Mugabe was now calling the shots. It also served as a follow up to the 2015 Grace-engineered dismissal of another Vice President and rival, Joice Mujuru.

The coup means that Mugabe’s long and disastrous presidency is finally over. The only questions that remain are the precise details and mechanics of the deal which secures his departure.

Why the coup

Mnangagwa is a long time Zanu-PF stalwart and is clearly closely integrated with the military high command and the intelligence services. Both institutions are concerned that the succession is being arranged for a faction led by people with no liberation credentials but who have been skilled in manipulating Mugabe himself and in making him do their bidding. The G40 now appear to have overreached, perhaps believing that their proximity to the “old man” made them invincible.

This coup’s explicit purpose is twofold. First, it’s trying to definitively kill off Grace Mugabe’s ambitions to become president and to set in place a ruling dynasty akin to the Kims in North Korea. Second, it’s a bid to clear Mnangagwa’s path to power, first in Zanu-PF and then within the state itself (over the last three decades these have been virtually one and the same thing).

What we do not yet know is what counter force, if any, the G40 can bring to bear against the military. The calculation of the military hierarchy appears to be that Grace and company are paper tigers who will have few cards to play against such force majeure and who lack the popular appeal to bring angry and disillusioned masses out onto the streets.

Could this be the end of President Robert Mugabe’s 37 year reign?
Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo

The coup has formally stripped away the façade that Zimbabwe is a constitutional state. This is clearly a militarised party-state where the military is a pivotal actor in the ruling party’s internal politics. It is not simply a neutral state agency subordinate to the civilian leadership. And the idea that this military intervention is an aberration – a departure from the constitutional norm – is misplaced.

Zimbabwe is a de facto military dictatorship. It serves as a guarantor of ZANU-PF rule rather than as a custodian of the constitution. It has helped Zanu-PF rig elections. And it was central to the state terror which was unleashed against the population to reverse Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s electoral defeat in 2008. The military has always been a key political actor. The only difference this time is that its intervention is designed to control events within Zanu-PF rather than to crush opposition to it.

But, a highly politicised military is a major impediment to the re-establishment of a democratic order in Zimbabwe. It has nothing to gain, politically or financially, from democratic rule given the lucrative networks of embezzlement and plunder it’s put in place over decades. Most recently it seized and siphoned off of the country’s diamond wealth for military officers and the party hierarchy.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo

This intervention is designed to secure the presidency for Mnangagwa. So it is hard to avert our eyes from the elephant –- or in this case the Crocodile –- in the room. Mnangagwa is the Mugabe henchman who helped enable the misrule and tyranny of the last 37 years. He was one of the principal architects of the Gukurahundi -– the genocidal attack on the Ndebele – in the early to mid-1980s which left at least 20 000 people dead.

He has also been instrumental in rigging elections and crushing all opposition to Zanu-PF rule, including the atrocities of 2008.

Expecting such a person to now make a deathbed conversion to the democracy, constitutional government and good governance he has spent an entire career liquidating is dangerous nonsense.

Dilemmas to come

Mnangagwa will soon have to confront a series of dilemmas. How can he put in place an administration which has the appearance of a national unity government, can secure international approval and the financial assistance required to help rebuild a shattered economy – but avoid ceding any meaningful power or control? Can this circle be squared?

The best hope for Zimbabweans is that the international community uses its leverage wisely and sets stringent conditions for such assistance: free elections closely monitored by an array of international organisations, the establishment of a new electoral commission, free access to the state media and the right of parties to campaign freely.

There should also be a role here for South Africa to restore its badly tarnished image as a champion of democracy in Africa. It has followed a malign path over the last two decades, facilitating Zanu-PF authoritarianism in the name of a threadbare and increasingly degenerate “liberation solidarity”.

Such a combination of pressures will severely restrict Mnangagwa’s room for manoeuvre. Anything short of that will deliver an outcome which is essentially Mugabeism without Mugabe.

James Hamill, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

A military coup is afoot in Zimbabwe. What's next for the embattled nation?

President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have become increasingly divisive figures in Zimbabwe.
Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo

Nobody is safe from the rages of Zimbabwe’s First Lady, “Dr. Amai” Grace Mugabe. There was the young South African model Grace lashed with extension cords. 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe’s longtime and usually trusted ally Emmerson Mnangagwa, was next in the firing line: he was sacked because his supporters allegedly booed her at a rally.

The consequences of her vengeance may have led to a coup headed by Zimbabwe’s army chief General Constantino Chiwenga, who is commonly perceived to be Mnangagwa’s protégé. But ex-freedom fighter Mnangagwa has his own presidential aspirations.

Mnangagwa has been exiled from the party in which he has served since he was a teenager. But he is not just skulking in the political wilderness. On arrival in South Africa he issued a statement calling those who wanted him out “minnows”. He promised to control his party “very soon” and urged his supporters to register to vote in the national elections next July.

As if to back Mnangagwa, on November 13 General Chiwenga announced that he and his officers could not allow the “counter-revolutionary infiltrators”, implied to be behind Grace Mugabe, to continue their purges.

Factions and purges

Chiwenga declared that the armed forces must ensure all party members attend the extraordinary Zanu-PF congress next month with “equal opportunity to exercise their democratic rights”. He flashed back through Zanu-PF’s history of factionalism, reminding his listeners that although the military “will not hesitate to step in” it has never “usurped power”. Chiwenga promised to defuse all the differences “amicably and in the ruling party’s closet”.

Although this airbrushed more than it revealed about the party’s rough patches when leadership vacuums appeared, the statement appeared more as a cautionary note than a clarion call to arms. It’s not often a coup is announced before it starts; but once in motion direction – and history – can change. Grace Mugabe may have unleashed a perfect storm and her own undoing.

Soldiers stand next to a tank on a road in Harare.
Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo

All the “shenanigans” that have inspired the generals to consider a coup have set the stage for an extraordinary Zanu-PF congress this December instead of in the expected 2019: that is, before rather than after the July 2018 national elections.

This suggests some people were in a hurry to settle the succession issues for the president, who is now showing every one of his 93 years. Maybe Robert Mugabe won’t rule until he is 100-years-old. If not, and members of his family or party wanted to keep their dynasties alive, they had to work quickly lest some similarly inclined contenders are in their way.

These contenders include Mnangagwa and a slew of his “Lacoste” faction consisting of war veterans and the odd financial liberal. The best-known of these is Patrick Chinamasa. This former finance minister tried to convince the world’s bankers he could pull Zimbabwe out of the fire. He was demoted to control cyberspace and then fired. Perhaps he may make a comeback in the wake of the semi-coup.

The pro-Grace faction includes the members of Generation 40, or “G-40”. Many are well over 40. But in Robert Mugabe’s shadow they appear young, as does the 52-year-old First Lady. Without a base in the liberation-war cohort, they resorted to working with the Mugabe couple: sometimes their ideology appears radical, espousing indigenous economics and more land to the tillers.

If the history of their best-known member – the current Minister of Higher Education Jonathan Moyo – is indicative, however, they are pragmatic; or less politely put, opportunist.

But with Grace Mugabe sans Robert, they would have to muster inordinate amounts of patience and manipulation to steer the sinking ship to the shores of stable statehood and incorporate yet younger generations who cut their political teeth as Robert Mugabe’s rule faltered.

Perfidious ‘saviours’

Yet the possible plan for the upcoming congress – to create a third vice-president – appears not to move far beyond the cold hands of the old. Phelekezela Mphoko would be pushed to third vice-president status. Grace would be the second vice-president.

The current defence minister, Sydney Sekeramayi would be first vice-president and so, next in line for the presidential palace. He is a quiet but no less tarnished member of the Zanu-PF old guard; especially when one remembers the massacre of thousands of Ndebele people during the Gukurahundi.

When performing the calculus necessary to rectify Zimbabwe’s graceless imbalances, remember that Mnangagwa was perhaps the key architect of the nearly genocidal Gukurahundi, now chronicled in archival detail in historian Stuart Doran’s Kingdom, Power, Glory: Mugabe, Zanu, and the Quest for Supremacy. Among the scores implicated therein are the British, condemned by Hazel Cameron, another meticulous archivist, as exercising “wilful blindness” during what Robert Mugabe has dismissed as a “moment of madness”.

Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that many are suspicious of Mnangagwa’s relationship with the UK. Many suspect he has been swimming with perfidious Albion for a very, very long time.

Those waters, in the shadow of Mugabe’s heritage, will take a few more generations of hard political work to clear. It hardly seems propitious that a coup, and the same generation that has ruled since 1980, starts it off.

David B. Moore, Professor of Development Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What the hijacking of South Africa's Treasury means for the economy

There are claims President Jacob Zuma may push through irresponsible proposals relating to higher education funding.
Reuters

South Africa has been rocked by news that President Jacob Zuma has bulldozed the country’s National Treasury to adopt a fee free higher education proposal without following standard process and scrutiny. This is reportedly what’s behind the resignation of the Treasury’s respected head of budgeting, Michael Sachs. The Conversation Africa’s Sibonelo Radebe asked Seán Muller to weigh up the implications.

How significant is the resignation?

Reports indicate that the resignation came as a result of interference in the budgeting process. There appears to have been an attempt to push through irresponsible proposals relating to higher education funding. From a technocratic perspective this is a serious a blow to the Treasury’s credibility.

What’s unfolding can be seen as a continuation of the “state capture” inspired attack on National Treasury that began in 2015 with the firing of the then finance minister Nhlanhla Nene. The attack was temporarily halted and Zuma had to reverse the appointment of trusted ally Des van Rooyen.

The president relented by bringing back trusted finance minister Pravin Gordhan. But then he fired Gordhan early this year and replaced him with another ally Malusi Gigaba. This was followed by the departure of the department’s director general Lungisa Fuzile.

The head of the budget office is arguably one of the most important positions within the Treasury. The incumbent, Sachs, played a pivotal role in protecting the country’s public finances while also increasing transparency and engagement with civil society.

He is the son of former constitutional court judge and anti-apartheid activist Albie Sachs, and a former member of the ANC’s Economic Transformation Committee. He had unparalleled insight into both the bureaucratic and political sides of the budget process. His resignation indicates the extent to which political dysfunction has compromised responsible management of public finances.

How does the proposal for increasing higher education funding compromise the budget process?

One of the major achievements of post-1994 governments was to embed a thorough, bureaucratic and political process of developing the annual national budget and the medium-term budget. Within this process, any major changes to budget priorities are signalled in the medium-term budget. They are then gradually integrated into successive national budgets.

Any intention to dramatically change the structure of the budget – for instance, by cutting social grants in order to pay university fees – should have been contained in the medium-term budget.

In the current case, the Heher Commission, under retired Judge Jonathan Heher was established to investigate higher education funding. It handed its report to the president on the 30th of August, before the presentation of the 2017 medium-term budget policy statement. Its findings should have been released earlier and any decision reflected in the medium-term budget. That would have provided a basis for Parliament to facilitate democratic oversight of the proposals and alerted citizens and stakeholders to government’s intention.

What’s more worrying are reports that the president has ignored the Heher Commision’s recommendations. Given the extensive consultation by this commission, it would arguably be irrational and irresponsible to ignore its findings and implement an ill-conceived, “populist” removal of university fees.

Regardless of the merits of such proposals, to try and ram them through in the period between the medium term budget, in October, and the national budget in February is reckless. It will undermine the credibility of South Africa’s public finance management and carries negative implications for investment, credit ratings and economic growth.

What is your view on the call for free university education?

We should start with the widely accepted principle that no student who is suitably qualified for university education should be prevented from pursuing it. Given this principle we then need to ask the following questions:

• How many students does the basic education system adequately prepare for higher education?
• How many of those need financial support and to what extent?
• What are the total cost implications of providing all such students with the necessary support, whether in grants or loans?
• Can the country afford to do this for all such students immediately?
• Even if we can afford it, is it the most equitable use of such funds?

I have argued previously that too many students are being admitted into the higher education system. Many are ill-prepared given the poor quality in the schooling system.

Evidence on the household incomes of students in higher education indicates that – relatively – they are much better off than the majority of South African youth. Youth outside the further education system get little, if any, direct support from government. And so a large increase in funding for university students is not the best way to assist poor youth.

What are the implications beyond education?

There are two major implications.

Firstly, it increases the chances of a downgrade of the country’s debt that’s held in local currency. Even before these recent events I argued this was almost inevitable. My view then was mainly informed by the revenue shortfalls indicated in the medium term budget, poor economic growth forecasts and the government abandoning its policy of fiscal consolidation (stabilising government debt).

The resignation of the head of the Treasury’s budget office makes the situation even more dire. The interference that induced it constitutes an unprecedented subversion of the country’s national budget process and National Treasury’s mandate to ensure stability and sustainability of public finances.

Secondly, the way in which the president intends to unilaterally ram through his favoured approach to higher education funding signals that a similar approach could be taken with a decision to pursue nuclear power. At the time of the medium-term budget, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba indicated that government cannot afford nuclear. But shortly afterwards the new minister of energy, David Mahlobo, and Zuma both suggested that they are preparing to push it through. If that happened, it would further compromise South Africa’s public finances and economic growth.

There was some hope that a victory in December for the anti-state capture grouping in the governing African National Congress’s elective conference might be able to stabilise governance and public finances. But it now appears that a great deal more damage could still be done by the president before then.

Seán Mfundza Muller, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.