How South Africa can stop political interference in who gets prosecuted

Shaun Abrahams, Head of the South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority has been embroiled in an almost decade-long battle over the prosecution of President Jacob Zuma on 783 charges that include fraud, racketeering and corruption.

The charges are related to controversial post-apartheid arms deal.

Why has the prosecuting authority failed to prosecute? The reason is that the law has struggled to create the independence necessary for prosecutors to pursue charges against prominent members of the executive. South Africa isn’t alone in this. The US has struggled too.

The real problem is that political pressure can get in the way of prosecution. Members of the executive, including the president, can interfere with the head of the prosecuting authority - the National Director of Public Prosecutions. Two examples stand out: the case brought against South Africa’s former police commissioner Jackie Selebi which eventually resulted in a trial and a prison sentence. The second is the Zuma arms deal case.

My suggestion is to establish a separate special prosecuting office that deals only with political cases – that is, those involving members of the executive and the legislature. The usefulness of a special prosecutor was stress tested in 1973 during the US President Richard Nixon debacle. The purpose is to create a greater measure of independence, although the Nixon case also showed that it can be subject to political interference. He had three removed.

Watergate nevertheless illustrated why a separate prosecuting capacity targeting the executive arm of government is important.

But how would a special prosecutor be appointed in South Africa? There are various options. It could, for example, be left to the Chief Justice or Parliament to decide when a matter demands the appointment of a special prosecutor.

A system like this wouldn’t completely remove the potential for interference, but it would ensure it was minimised. It would also free the director from being embroiled in political battles, enabling them to concentrate on their core job which should be to increase the overall effectiveness of the prosecuting authority as well as public confidence in its abilities.

Room for political interference

In South Africa the efficacy of the entire criminal justice system rests on the ability of the prosecuting authority to do its job properly. This is because it enjoys a monopoly over the prosecution of crime. The constitution mandates it to be the gatekeeper – it alone decides which criminal cases go to trial.

Every year the prosecuting authority receives hundreds of thousands of cases prepared by the South African police service. The bulk of them are ordinary offences, like murder, robbery and assault committed by ordinary people against other ordinary people. Very few involve prominent state officials.

The prosecuting authority does receive cases against members of the executive. But the number of political cases are a drop in the ocean compared to ordinary cases. They nevertheless risk derailing the proper and effective functioning of the prosecuting authority.

In reality, the prosecuting authority is only quasi-independent. This is for two reasons.

The first is that the language describing the independence of the prosecuting authority in the Constitution isn’t very clear.

In terms of the constitution, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development has final responsibility over the prosecuting authority. Case law has held that the minister can’t instruct the prosecuting authority to prosecute or not, but is entitled to be kept informed about cases that the public might be interested in or that involve important aspects of legal authority.

Despite this innocuous clarification, ministerial oversight leaves open a gap for interference.

The other major flaw in South Africa’s system is that there’s room for political interference in the way in which the director is appointed. The director is appointed by the president. The president can make the decision without any consultation.

The director is the embodiment of the institutional independence of the prosecuting authority and the incumbent is meant to play an executive role rather than a political one. The director is responsible for determining prosecution directives and prosecution policy. He or she may intervene in decisions to prosecute and may review decisions to prosecute – or not to prosecute – after consulting with provincial directors of public prosecutions.

But given that the president appoints the director, the prosecuting authority is in a difficult position. To perform its functions effectively, it must assert an independence it doesn’t enjoy.

Interference with the director

The office of the director has been the subject of controversy over the past 18 years, with the appointment and subsequent removal of four directors. Some of this controversy has centred on whether the prosecuting authority would, or wouldn’t, prosecute certain political cases. Vusi Pikoli was removed by then President Thabo Mbeki for prosecuting Jackie Selebi.

The fact that these types of cases are within the purview of the director provides grounds for political interference over the office. This interferes with its overall performance.

So far the debate about increasing the independence of the director has centred on how the appointment is made, and how an incumbent can be removed. One suggestion has been that a properly constituted committee made up of different stakeholders does the interviews and shortlists candidates. On the removal of an incumbent, there’s been a suggestion that the president’s right to suspend a director without consultation is removed.

Bolstering the appointment and removal procedures are important and should be done. But it’s not enough to focus on the individual director. South Africa needs to remove the incentive for political interference over the director. That’s the only way the efficacy of the prosecuting authority can be enhanced.

Jameelah Omar, Lecturer in Criminal Justice, Department of Public Law, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The iPhone turns 10 – and it's isolated us, not united us

It was supposed to bring us all together.
Rokas Tenys/Shutterstock.com

Sometime around 2011 or 2012, it suddenly became very easy to predict what people would be doing in public places: Most would be looking down at their phones.

For years, mobile phones weren’t much to look at. The screens were small, and users needed to press the same key several times to type a single letter in a text. Then, 10 years ago – on June 29, 2007 – Apple released the first iPhone.

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” former Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said during the iPhone’s introductory news conference.

Within six years, the majority of Americans owned a smartphone – embracing the new technology perhaps faster than any other previous technology had been adopted.

Today, smartphones seem indispensable. They connect us to the internet, give us directions, allow us to quickly fire off texts and – as I discovered one day in spring 2009 – can even help you find the last hotel room in Phoenix when your plane is grounded by a dust storm.

Yet research has shown that this convenience may be coming at a cost. We seem to be addicted to our phones; as a psychology researcher, I have read study after study concluding that our mental health and relationships may be suffering. Meanwhile, the first generation of kids to grow up with smartphones is now reaching adulthood, and we’re only beginning to see the adverse effects.

Sucked in

In the beginning, sociologist Sherry Turkle explained, smartphone users would huddle together, sharing what was on their phones.

“As time has gone on, there’s been less of that and more of what I call the alone together phenomenon. It has turned out to be an isolating technology,” she said in the 2015 documentary “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine.” “It’s a dream machine and you become fascinated by the world you can find on these screens.”

This is the new normal: Instead of calling someone, you text them. Instead of getting together for dinner with friends to tell them about your recent vacation, you post the pictures to Facebook. It’s convenient, but it cuts out some of the face-to-face interactions that, as social animals, we crave.

A 2007 ABC News segment on the iPhone.

More and more studies suggest that electronic communication – unlike the face-to-face interaction it may replace – has negative consequences for mental health. One study asked college students to report on their mood five times a day. The more they had used Facebook, the less happy they were. However, feeling unhappy didn’t lead to more Facebook use, which suggests that Facebook was causing unhappiness, not vice versa.

Another study examined the impact of smartphones on relationships. People whose partners were more frequently distracted by their phones were less satisfied with their relationships, and – perhaps as a result – were more likely to feel depressed.

Nevertheless, we can’t stop staring at our phones. In his book “Irresistible,” marketing professor Adam Alter makes a convincing case that social media and electronic communication are addictive, involving the same brain pathways as drug addiction. In one study, frequent smartphone users asked to put their phones face down on the table grew increasingly anxious the more time passed. They couldn’t stand not looking at their phones for just a few minutes.

iGen: The smartphone generation

The rapid market saturation of smartphones produced a noticeable generational break between those born in the 1980s and early 1990s (called millennials) and those born in 1995 and later (called iGen or GenZ). iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence with smartphones.

Although iGen displays many positive characteristics such as lower alcohol use and more limited teen sexuality, the trends in their mental health are more concerning. In the American Freshman Survey, the percentage of entering college students who said they “felt depressed” in the last year doubled between 2009 and 2016. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a sharp increase in the teen suicide rate over the same time period when smartphones became common. The pattern is certainly suspicious, but at the moment it’s difficult to tell whether these trends are caused by smartphones or something else. (It’s a question I’m trying to answer with my current research.)

Many also wonder if staring at screens will negatively impact adolescents’ budding social skills. At least one study suggests it will. Sixth graders who attended a screen-free camp for just five days improved their skills at reading emotions on others’ faces significantly more than those who spent those five days with their normal high level of screen use. Like anything else, social skills get better with practice. If iGen gets less practice, their social skills may suffer.

Smartphones are a tool, and like most tools, they can be used in positive ways or negative ones. In moderation, smartphones are a convenient – even crucial – technology.

Yet a different picture has also emerged over the past decade: Interacting with people face to face usually makes us happy. Electronic communication often doesn’t.

Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Joe Slovo Park residents torch MyCiTi bus after shacks demolished

Land occupation followed removal of school classrooms

By Barbara Maregele
26 June 2017

Parent Noxolo Mayeki, seen here standing on the site left vacant at Khozi Primary, says her seven-year-old is also not in school. Photo: Barbara Maregele.

It has been two weeks since the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) removed prefabricated classrooms from an unregistered school – Khozi Primary – in Joe Slovo Park, Milnerton.
Since then, people took the opportunity to erect shacks on the vacant land which belongs to the City of Cape Town.
On Sunday afternoon, a group of protesters torched a MyCiTi bus after the City’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit demolished about 20 shacks.
The City has condemned the attack in a statement, saying that “the bus driver thankfully escaped unharmed” and that attacks on the City’s public transport system limited its financial resources. “Destroying what has already been achieved deprives the communities who are dependent on public transport. The MyCiTi buses operating along Route 261 are being deviated until further notice,” the City said.

Overcrowded school

Meanwhile, Marconi Beam Primary, the only primary school in Joe Slovo Park, has been dealing with overcrowded classes – with 47 learners per classroom, according to school principal Bukelwa Plaatjies.
“We have taken in most of the children who were at that school [Khozi] as the Department’s plan B. I understand the parents’ frustrations and their reasons for wanting another school. Every year, my school is overcrowded and there are kids who remain on the waiting list until the following year,” said Plaatjies.
On 7 June, dozens of parents demonstrated outside Khozi Primary when the education department, with the help of private security, removed several prefabricated classrooms.
That same evening, Plaatjies’ office was torched. The blaze gutted her office and destroyed important information about learners.
In May GroundUp reported that the school, which accommodated nearly 400 learners, was opened by the community after children were turned away from Marconi Beam. Parents wanted the school registered, and for the WCED to provide essentials such as chairs, desks, and crayons. But the Department said its lease on the land had ended and the mobile classrooms were needed at other schools.
Thabisa Dyantyi lives in a one-room shack with her five-year-old daughter, a road away from Marconi Primary. Her daughter used to go to Khozi, but has now been at home for the past two weeks.
“There is no space for Grade R at Marconi, and I don’t have money to send her to a school in Dunoon. I can’t send her back to creche so she’ll have to stay at home for the rest of the year if the [WCED] doesn’t find her a space,” she said.
Another parent, Noxolo Mayeki, said her seven-year-old Liyema, is also not in school. “Since Khozi, my child had a place to go to and learn during the day. Now, he just plays outside,” she said.
Mayeki said Marconi had taken in some of the learners, but she was not prepared to send Liyema to an overcrowded school. “I won’t endorse children going to that school because it’s already so full. How can they learn like that?” she asked.
Plaatjies said the education department had given three mobile classrooms to accommodate Khozi’s learners at Marconi Beam and Tygerhof Primary [also in Milnerton], but some parents were opposed to this. “Some parents waited until the day the classrooms were removed to bring their children to Marconi. A week ago, we accommodated almost all of those learners. At least now the learners are settling in and we are working out ways to make this work,” she said.

Education department responds

WCED spokesman Paddy Attwell acknowledged that Marconi “was under pressure.” Attwell said that their district offices had arranged for the Khozi learners to be placed at Marconi Beam, Tygerhof, Silverleaf and Du Noon primary schools.
“Unfortunately, certain parents have ignored guidelines that officials provided on where to place learners. Some parents have ignored requests to move children into mobile classrooms at Marconi Beam,” he said.
Attwell said that at the request of Minister Debbie Schäfer, officials met with community representatives on Friday morning to investigate the need for another school in the area.

Vacant City land where the classrooms once stood. Photo: Barbara Maregele

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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How a South African company turned constraints into global strengths

SAB’s resilience has allowed it to become a key player globally.
Shutterstock

On 28 September 2016, the shareholders of South African born international brewer, SABMiller, approved the company’s acquisition by Anheuser-Busch InBev for $104 billion (R1.5 trillion). The deal paved the way for the creation of what is now by far the world’s largest brewing company.

For a company that started out selling beer to miners in Johannesburg during the gold rush of the late 1800s, it’s been quite a journey. But how did a brewing company from a developing country rise to compete with the multinational brewing behemoths from the developed world?

A series of interviews with senior executives and managers who presided over the growth of what was then South African Breweries’ (SAB) rapid expansion during and after the 1990s are revealing. After building up a monopoly-like position in the beer market in South Africa, the company went in search of new markets. It used its experience in South Africa in its entry strategies abroad.

SAB’s path reflects the differences between multinationals from developed and emerging markets in terms of location choices, sequencing, time horizons and motivation.

A two-phased expansion path emerges to explain the remarkable success story. The first pillar to SAB’s international expansion was a focus on developing markets. Coming from a developing country itself, the company would cope better with emerging market conditions than brewers from the developed world. These ventures became a powerful base for SAB to take on developed markets.

The second was to expand into developed countries. This became necessary as it became clear the company was over exposed to emerging markets.

The first phase of expansion

After a few early forays into South Africa’s neighbouring countries prior to 1993, SAB executives realised that the company could exploit its knowledge of institutional shortcomings in its home country. It would use this experience to adapt more easily than its competitors to conditions in developing countries.

And so began the first part of its internationalisation strategy: a rapid expansion into emerging markets worldwide.

Through a series of acquisitions and joint ventures throughout the 1990s, SAB gained a foothold in various countries in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia. Although many were geographically distant (like Hungary, Czech Republic, China and India), they echoed South Africa in terms of their socioeconomic development. Eastern Europe, for example, was still emerging from political reform in the wake of communism, and infrastructural, institutional and economic weaknesses persisted.

By expanding into countries that shared socioeconomic characteristics with South Africa, SAB was able to make use of its experience to turn a perceived drawback – institutional weakness – into a strength. As one respondent explained:

To be quite frank, we actually accepted that we would live with the political risk and poor institutions. We didn’t really shy away from high-risk countries unless, of course, there was a raging civil war that we would have to wait to subside.

Once it had established this expansion plan, SAB diversified into developed markets such as Italy and the US. As one interviewee put it:

Investors became sceptical of companies whose only business was in emerging markets.

In 2002 it took a step closer to consolidating its position as a multinational brewing giant when it acquired US-based Miller Brewing Company. It became SABMiller.

Turning weakness into strength

The advantages that SAB gained from its experience in its home country are many. One was employee aptitude.

SAB employees had built up an extraordinary resilience, flexibility and entrepreneurial spirit through their exposure to the unsteady South African environment of the 1980s. As one executive said:

They survived labour trouble, survived interest rates at 25%, inflation at 16% to 17%, survived political disorder, political violence… That toughened you, toughened us.

This robustness, combined with an ability to connect with many different cultures, gave the company a valuable flexibility in its risk, location and investment choices.

Another strength was its ability to turn around neglected breweries and businesses. The experience it gained in South Africa, with its large rural population and pockets of poor infrastructure, meant that finding innovative ways to overcome challenges was embedded in the company’s DNA.

Another advantage the company gained was brand development and marketing ability. SAB was developed into a major operation without reliance on strong, globally-recognised brands. Using its home experience the company took brands it acquired in distant countries and built them into powerful national brands.

These became a base from which it launched into premium brands such as Grolsch and Peroni through acquisitions. This offset being over-invested in domestic brands.

SAB also had a philosophical edge over many competitors. It’s risk appetite was much bigger. By comparison a company like Anheuser-Busch had a conservative approach to risk and international expansion.

For example, Anheuser-Busch didn’t react to the rapidly changing global brewer consolidation until it was too late. And when it did, it realised that it had little emerging market experience.

This weakness meant that in 2008 Anheuser-Busch was unable to avoid a hostile takeover by InBev. This gave rise to AB Inbev, then the world’s largest brewer. AB Inbev, in turn, was compelled to make an offer for SABMiller to acquire complementary emerging market presence.

SABMiller’s long journey from the mine heaps of Johannesburg to global brewing colossus may appear to have come to an abrupt end after its acquisition by Anheuser-Busch InbevAB Inbev in 2016. But what’s clear is that its extraordinarily successful approach continues to hold many lessons for aspiring global companies from the developing world.

_This piece was adapted from an academic article by John Luiz, Dustin Stringfellow and Anthea Jefthas that first appeared in the February 2017 issue of Global Strategy Journal, Volume 7, Issue 1 (83-103).
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John Luiz, Professor of International Business Strategy & Emerging Markets, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Can we predict political uprisings?

Forecasting political unrest is a challenging task, especially in this era of post-truth and opinion polls.

Several studies by economists such as Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler in 1998 and 2002 describe how economic indicators, such as slow income growth and natural resource dependence, can explain political upheaval. More specifically, low per capita income has been a significant trigger of civil unrest.

Economists James Fearon and David Laitin have also followed this hypothesis, showing how specific factors played an important role in Chad, Sudan and Somalia in outbreaks of political violence.

According to the International Country Risk Guide index, the internal political stability of Sudan fell by 15% in 2014, compared to the previous year. This decrease was after a reduction of its per capita income growth rate from 12% in 2012 to 2% in 2013.

By contrast, when the income per capita growth increased in 1997 compared to 1996, the score for political stability in Sudan increased by more than 100% in 1998. Political stability across any given year seems to be a function of income growth in the previous one.

When economics lie

But as the World Bank admitted, “economic indicators failed to predict Arab Spring”.

Usual economic performance indicators, such as gross domestic product, trade, foreign direct investment, showed higher economic development and globalisation of the Arab Spring countries over a decade. Yet, in 2010, the region witnessed unprecedented uprisings that caused the collapse of regimes such as those in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.



In our 2016 study we used data for more than 100 countries for the 1984–2012 period. We wanted to look at criteria other than economics to better understand the rise of political upheavals.

We found out and quantified how corruption is a destabilising factor when youth (15-24 years old) exceeds 20% of adult population.

Let’s examine the two main components of the study: demographics and corruption.

Young and angry

The importance of demographics and its impact on political stability has been studied for years.

In his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, US academic Samuel P. Huntington explained how youth are agents of change.

Several examples can be found throughout the early 2000s. Young people were particularly active in Yugoslavia’s Bulldozer Revolution, (2000), Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003), the Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004), the Iranian Green Movement of the post-2009 presidential election, and finally during the Arab Spring (since 2011).

But a bulk of population being under 25 years old in a given country does not necessarily lead to revolution. It’s when leaders of such countries deceive and fail their younger citizens through systematic corruption, for instance, that the risk of upheaval is much higher.

Enter corruption

Political corruption allows non-democratic leaders to build political support through networks of dependency, extending the duration of their regimes.

A 2014 study by political scientists Natasha Neudorfer and Ulrike Theuerkauf, suggests the contrastability effects of corruption: the beneficiaries increase their income while a larger portion of the population feels the inequality as economic growth and investment stagnate. It particularly affects the youth population who are not yet inserted in the system and have fewer economic opportunities.

Autocratic corrupt states also allocate a larger portion of their budget to military and security fores, under-spending on education and health. This situation might stimulate youth adhesion to anti-establishment movements, including radical ones.

According to NIgerian scholar Freedom C. Onuoha, political corruption is behind the formation and durability of terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria and Nigeria. These groups succeeded in attracting the marginalised parts of the population that are mainly from the youth bulge.

But corruption alone, like age, is not creating political unrest. A combination of the right amount of youth within the overall population suffering from corruption is necessary.

The case of Iran

A good example is Iran. The country experienced one of the most significant political changes of the 20th century when the 1979 Islamic Revolution ended its monarchy and has been thriving on oil revenues since.

Oil revenue-dependency was less than 1% of total economy from 1970 to 1973. Substantial increase in oil prices from the mid-1970s led to a massive increase in the Iranian economy’s dependency on it – from 0.3% in 1973 to 31% in 1974 according to the World Bank.

In 2009, youth protested for months in support of the reformist Mousavi, creating the ‘Green Movement’.
Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

Based on my calculations of the World Bank’s Health Nutrition and Population Statistics, the share of 15 to 24-year-olds among the overall adult population has been higher than 20% from 1960-2016 (with an exception of 19% in 2016).

For this time period, we observed a continuous increase in the youth bulge in Iran from 33% in 1970 to approximately 36% (one of the highest in Iran’s demographic history) in 1979 (World Bank Population Estimates and Projections, 2017).

With oil income growing along with a diversity of activities linked to its production and circulation, corruption – for which we do not have data before 1985 – has emerged as a way of life.

In 1997-98, the share of Iranians aged between 15 and 24 in the adult population reached 36% (World Bank Population Estimates and Projections, 2017). At the same time, Iranian politics experienced a significant change with the presidential election of Mohammad Khatami whose main support base was the youth.

Incidentally we observed that Khatami’s government was one of the most factionalised period of politics in Iran with frequent political crisis. In 2004, The New York Times noted that :

During his tenure, President Khatami complained that ‘a crisis every nine days’ made it hard to get anything accomplished.

This did not lead to a revolution but civil unrest has regularly affected political life including in 2009. World Bank Population Estimates and Projections show that the share of youth in Iran will drop to 11% by 2050, reducing the political risk of demographics in the presence of corruption in the future.

Additional factors

Using cases such as the Iranian one, we tried to understand how corruption and youth could lead to crisis.

We also took into account other drivers of conflict such as inequality, economic growth, investment rate, inflation, government spending, military spending, oil rents, trade, education, fertility rate, and democracy.

We controlled for specific differences between the countries we studied, such as geography, geopolitical situation, cultural and historical heritage, and religion. International attention and intervention of external powers were also taken into account. And we included events such as the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2003 Iraq war.

Table 1 illustrates the marginal effect of corruption on internal stability at different levels of youth bulge.
Mohammad Reza

Figure 1 illustrates the marginal effect of corruption on internal stability at different levels of youth bulge.
Mohammad Reza Farzanegan

Based on our main results, Table 1 and Figure 1 show average marginal effects of corruption on political stability at different levels of youth bulge. We are 90% confident that a youth bulge beyond 20% of adult population, on average, combined with high levels of corruption can significantly destabilise political systems within specific countries when other factors described above also taken into account. We are 99% confident about a youth bulge beyond 30% levels.

Our results can help explain the risk of internal conflict and the possible time window for it happening. They could guide policy makers and international organisations in allocating their anti-corruption budget better, taking into account the demographic structure of societies and the risk of political instability.

Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, Professor of Economics of the Middle East, University of Marburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.