South Africa has work to do to make government more accountable

The South African government completed its term as lead-chair of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) in December 2016. The partnership is an international initiative formed by eight countries in 2011 that has grown to 75 members. Its aim is to improve public sector governance and encourage civil society participation in making governments more accountable and responsive to citizens.

Demonstrators march against corruption in Cape Town. South Africa has some way to go to plug a public accountability deficit. Reuters/Mike Hutchings

Some of the original founding members include Brazil, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, Britain and the US. Nigeria is the most recent African country to sign up.

Countries are invited to join if they meet the minimum eligibility criteria. These include a framework on open budgets, a law on access to information, public asset disclosure rules and basic protections for human rights.

Member countries are required to develop national action plans that are implemented in a two-year cycle. They are expected to submit self-assessment reports within the period. In addition, the partnership secretariat appoints a country researcher who consults with government and civil society organisations to monitor the implementation of the plans and develops both a mid-term and end of term assessment reports. Ultimately, the OGP provides an international platform for change agents at a country level both within and outside government to make government open, accountable and responsive to citizens.

South Africa has just been given an end of term report for its recently concluded two-year action plan. The report, released in December 2016, shows that it failed to meet key targets it set at the beginning of the process. But it also shows improvements in some areas.

Why people’s involvement matters

During South Africa’s two-year leadership the partnership hosted the Africa regional meeting focused on using open government for sustainable development in Africa.

This was significant because 2016 signalled the beginning of the implementation of the United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs). The goals are premised on the idea of partnerships for development. This includes the establishment of a collaborative platform that involves various stakeholders to ensure that marginalised people have a voice in determining priority areas to achieve the goal of poverty eradication.

Recent events in South Africa make it clear how urgently this ideal must be realised.

During 2016 the country was characterised by protests over the delivery of basic services and higher education fees. These distress calls came against a backdrop of growing concern about “state capture” – the diversion of state resources to benefit an already privileged elite. The problem of state capture shows a public accountability deficit which the partnership aims to address.

South Africa’s end of term report highlights the country’s accountability challenges. This is particularly true in relation to its failure to implement and mainstream public service anti-corruption laws. The report shows that the country failed to fully complete any of its seven commitments. These were the establishment of:

• an accountability/consequences management framework,
• service delivery improvement forums,
• platform for citizen participation in government,
• environmental management information portal,
• online crowd sourcing tool on data conservation,
• schools connectivity project, and a service rights and responsibilities campaign.

The report also shows that, contrary to agreement, the government didn’t formally establish a forum to involve civil society organisations in the partnership process. It still has to set up a joint mechanism to monitor the implementation of government’s commitments.

Transparency may not do much to reverse the disconcerting rise in corruption in both the public and private sectors. But it is a good starting point in promoting public integrity and accountability.

South Africa cannot continue to place the burden of holding the government accountable on just the media and brave whistle blowers.

These shortcomings not withstanding, it was not all doom and gloom.

The government must be applauded for setting up a citizen-based pilot monitoring programme. This was set up to collect community feedback on public services.

What needs to be done

It is important that the lessons of the previous action plan be heeded as South Africa embarks on a new two-year national action plan. The focus here will be to link its partnership commitments with its development goals.

South Africa is now on its third two-year action plan which will run from 2016 to 2018. It includes a commitment – introduced by civil society – to establish community advice offices to promote access to justice. This fits in with goal 16 of the SDGs – to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions.

Other commitments include citizen-based monitoring of service delivery projects and increasing public participation in government planning and budget processes. Another is to increase the level of civic participation in the provision of basic services.

These commitments require the sustained involvement of civil society. It is high time the South African government established a permanent dialogue mechanism that treats civil society bodies as equal partners. It also needs to develop ways of working more collaboratively so that it can make government work for all citizens.

It’s clear that the South African government recognises the importance of partnerships with civil society. But it stands accused of paying lip service to the idea of inclusivity. Indeed, the shrinking space for civil society in governance that is seen around the world is also evident in South Africa. The country’s civil society organisations are not seen as equal partners when it comes to accountability and governance.

For their part, South Africans need to re-imagine the role of civil society in the governance of their public services and management of their public resources. The partnership initiative offers that platform. But it needs to be implemented effectively and in the spirit of participation by ordinary people.



Fola Adeleke, Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

A prospect of hope for the white minority of South Africa

When the going gets tough, the tough needs to get going. The global and local economic challenges combined with down-scaling of business, favoritism, and uncontrolled affirmative action have resulted in a large number of white people in South Africa living in poverty and unbearable conditions.

In a country with eleven official languages, there are three languages that are freely spoken, Violence, Crime and Corruption and which has a huge impact on the safety and future existence of whites in South Africa.

Afrikaners have always thrived during times of difficulty, hardship, and injustice. The saying ” n Boer maak n plan” can be explained as ” IT DOESN’T MATTER WHERE YOU ARE IN LIFE, WHAT MATTERS THE MOST IS IN WHICH DIRECTION YOU ARE MOVING.

Instead of blaming others for our situation, we need to take control of our future and become leaders rather than followers, and let’s say to our people get BACK ON YOUR FEET!

BOYF (Back on Your Feet) registered in 2015, is a non-profit company with the aim of helping our own people back on their feet.

The Mission of BOYF is:
Take care of those in need
Help people find hope again
Teach people to manage self-development
Make people employable and self-sustainable through skills development
Teach people to be responsible and accountable
To provide counseling, guidance, and support where needed.

For more information on how BOYF are adding value and making a difference, please contact Tess Riekert, +2783270026 / +2783 288 5684 / +27748270803.
Published on South Africa Today – South Africa News

Shocking treatment at a Pretoria Hospital

An angry resident, wrote the following regarding the despicable treatment of elderly patients at the Steve Biko state hospital.

“I had it with Steve Biko state Hospital at Casualty’s
They are one of the worst hospitals in Pretoria.

There is no care for any elderly person in that hospital, but there are elderly people abused in that hospital.
We sent this old lady two weeks a go with a stomach bug to Steve Biko hospital, but with no bruises and this is how they sent her back to us.
Those bruises are from manual handling!
You are not fit to be called a nurse, you are the scum of the earth.”

 Published on South Africa Today
Image credits - Police Pics and Clips

Community help for farm attack victims

In the spirit of Christmas, people have opened their hearts and wallets to help farm attack victims.
During a farm attack near Leeudoringstad on the farm Rietkuil Mr. Thys Grobbelaar, (81) and his wife Rita, (76), Rita, were seriously injured while their daughter Karin Nel (53) sustained injuries, and their grandson, Joe Astle (24) was shot in the mouth.

 Mr. Louis Meintjes, president of TAU SA has launched a fundraising drive to assist Nel and her son Joe, when it emerged that they were in state hospitals and not receiving appropriate treatment, due to the shortage of doctors.

Joe was seriously injured. He was shot through the cheek, which caused him to lose his teeth, his tongue was severely cut, and a bullet remains lodged near his eye.

Within hours after the shocking incident, Mr. Meintjes, and TAU’s regional chairman in the Western Region, Mr. Theunis Kruger set out to assist the family. After the initial transport and transfer costs were paid, Joe was transferred to a private hospital. Mr. Meintjies received promises of support for this family and donations are expected from the generosity of caring people. It is unsure at this stage what surgery and treatment Joe will require and as there is no medical aid, the costs can be extremely high.

The Anncron Clinic has offered a consultation and an anesthetist has volunteered to assist. Several surgeons have indicated that they will charge a reduced life in an attempt to save the young man’s life.

TAU’s vice president and chairman of the safety committee, Mr. Henry Geldenhuys, said the fund will be ongoing and used for similar incidents in the future. He called on the public to continue sending contributions in order to register a national fund for victims.

Contributions for Mr. Joe Astle’s medical care can be deposited into the following account
HG Kotzee
Absa 628855773
Savings account.
Reference: Joe

This account is only a preliminary account and on Wednesday, when the banks open a new account will be opened. In the meantime, this account will bear the initial cost.
Read the story – Farm Attack – grandson shot in the mouth – North West
Farm attack; shot in the face, no doctors available – Graphic images

Read the original article in Afrikaans on Die Vryburger
South Africa Today – South Africa News

Why were there so many dinosaur species?

A new species of dinosaur is described, on average, every ten days. As many as 31 species have already been reported this year and we can expect a few more before 2016 is over. Of course, figuring out what counts as a distinct species is a tricky problem. Palaeontologists are argumentative by nature, so getting any two of them to agree on a definitive list of species is probably impossible. But by anyone’s count, there were a lot of them – 700 or 800 that we know of, probably thousands in total. So how did the dinosaurs become so diverse?

First we need an idea of just how many dinosaur species there were. One study tried to estimate the total diversity of dinosaurs by using the species-area effect – the idea being that if we know how many species one small part of the Earth can support, we can extrapolate how many must have existed worldwide. These calculations suggest that at the end of the Mesozoic, 66m years ago, the standing diversity of dinosaurs – all the species alive at one point in time – was between 600 and 1,000 species.

This seems to be a reasonable estimate, in that if you counted up all of the living land mammals weighing more than 1kg (the size of the smallest dinosaurs) and then added the extinct species from the past 50,000 years, such as wooly mammoths, ground sloths, and giant kangaroos (correcting for losses to diversity caused by humans) you would end up with a similar figure.

However, this is just the number of species around at one point in time, and the dinosaurs were around for a very, very long time. Over the course of the Mesozoic, dinosaurs constantly evolved and went extinct. Doing some quick and rough estimates, and assuming 1,000 species of dinosaurs lived at any one time, and then that the species turned over every million years – that’s 160 times over the 160m-year reign of the dinosaurs – we end up with 160,000 species. Which is a lot of dinosaurs.

This is, of course, a very rough estimate. It depends on a lot of assumptions, such as how many different species the planet can support, and how quickly they evolve and go extinct. If we assume a lower standing diversity of 500 species and slower turnover, with species lasting 2m years, for example, we end up with around 50,000 species. On the other hand, perhaps standing diversity of 2,000 species is reasonable for the warm, lush, Mesozoic, and perhaps they only lasted just half a million years. That gives us over 500,000 species. So it seems reasonable to guess that there were between 50,000 and 500,000 species of dinosaurs – without including Mesozoic birds, which might double the diversity.

So many fossils.
Shutterstock

Why so many species, then? It comes down to three things. Dinosaurs were good at specialisation, localisation, and speciation.

Specialisation

Dinosaurs were specialists, and by specialising to exploit different niches, different species could coexist without competing. In western North America, the giant predator T. rex coexisted with little meat-eating dromaeosaurs. Enormous, long-necked sauropods browsed alongside horned ceratopsians, which grazed on ferns and flowers. There were smaller plant-eaters – pachycephalosaurs and ornithomimids – as well as heron-like fish eaters, and even anteater-like insectivores.

And within these niches, there was further specialisation. T. rex was large and had massive jaws but fairly stocky limbs, and was well-suited to preying on the slow-moving but heavily armed Triceratops. T. rex‘s cousin, Nanotyrannus, was smaller but had the lanky legs of a marathon runner, and probably chased down faster prey. This specialisation meant that - based on my recent studies of the fauna – as many as 25 dinosaurs could live side-by-side in one habitat.

Localisation

Localisation refers to how different places had different dinosaur species. Mongolia had one set of animals – tyrannosaurs, duckbills, and ostrich dinosaurs – inhabiting a lush delta that flowed through the middle of a desert. Just a few miles away, little horned dinosaurs and parrot-headed oviraptors inhabited the dune fields. Dinosaurs also show differences across continents, with different species inhabiting different parts of North America, for example. Between continents, the differences are even more extreme. During the Late Cretaceous, North America and Asia were dominated by tyrannosaurs, duckbilled dinosaurs, and horned dinosaurs. But Africa and South America, cut off by oceans for tens of millions of years, had an entirely different set of species. Instead of tyrannosaurs, the horned abelisaurs were top predators. Instead of duckbills, the long-necked titanosaurs were the dominant plant eaters.

Speciation

Dinosaurs evolved new species with remarkable speed. Radioactive dating has made it possible to date the rocks containing dinosaur fossils, and from that, to estimate how long dinosaur species lasted. The rocks forming the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, for example, were deposited over a period of around 2m years. At the bottom of these strata, we have one species- Triceratops horridus, and at the top, we have a second Triceratops prorsus evolving from the first.

This implies that a species lasts a million years or less – a short time, at least in geological terms. Studies of other formations, and other horned dinosaurs, tend to suggest that other species were similarly short-lived. In the badlands of Dinosaur Park in Canada, we can find fossils that show three different sets of dinosaur – the first replaced by the second, the second by the third – evolving in 2m years. Dinosaurs evolved rapidly, driven by shifts in the planet’s seas, climates, and continents, and also the evolution of other dinosaurs. And if they didn’t, they went extinct.

We’ll never know exactly how many dinosaurs existed. It’s so rare for an animal to fossilise and be preserved that many tens of thousands of species, maybe hundreds of thousands, are probably lost to us forever. And yet the remarkable thing is that the pace of dinosaur discovery has actually increased over the years. Most of the species that have ever lived are lost, but we have thousands left to find.



Nick Longrich, Senior lecturer, palaeontology, Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath

This article was originally published on The Conversation.