Newly repaired community hall torched

City officials to meet with Joe Slovo Park leaders in a bid to end protests that started after shack demolitions

By Barbara Maregele
27 June 2017

Joe Slovo Community Hall was torched by protesters on Monday night. Photo: Barbara Maregele

Joe Slovo Park community leaders and representatives from the City of Cape Town are expected to meet today over the recent spate of protests in the area.
On Sunday afternoon, a group of protesters torched a MyCiTi bus after the City’s Anti-Land Invasion Unit demolished about 20 shacks.

At about 8pm on Monday, protesters burnt the community centre and a small hall on Democracy Way which was being used as a local clinic and church. The Joe Slovo community hall was also gutted.
By Tuesday, City officials had cordoned off the community hall to assess the damage and clear debris. Inside, charred rubble and melted plastic chairs were scattered across the floor; the kitchen was gutted, and the bathrooms badly vandalised.

A female firefighter, who asked not to be identified, said she is traumatised after being caught in a tense standoff between protesters throwing stones and police firing tear gas.

“I was so scared, because it was the first time I experienced this. At one point, I was separated from my team and my eyes started burning. Later, I found out that it was teargas. I’m still coughing,” she said.

Loyiso Nkohla, the City’s community liaison officer, said he could not comment on the matter until officials had met with community leaders. He said for safety reasons a closed meeting would be held at Milnerton police station.

Community leader Cowen Banjatwa said the people whose shacks were demolished are from Ward 4 and that they cannot afford the rents in the area.

Banjatwa said he woke to the sound of people shouting and the smell of teargas. “My eyes and my wife’s eyes were burning in our shack. Now, people don’t have places to stay and they are angry. I don’t encourage what happened, but we need to sit down and discuss with the City to find solutions before this continues.”

“There is a great need for housing here and nothing has been done about it for years,” he said.
Phoenix resident Gavin Williams, whose formal house is directly behind the torched Democracy Way hall, said he feared for the safety of his family on the night of the protest. “We heard something happening outside, people shouting and going on. Then we smelt the smoke and the teargas. The neighbours all came out and started throwing buckets of water on the hall because the fire was about to jump over to our houses.”

“We had to take our four-month-old baby away because of all the smoke. Even the fire brigade was scared to come … We had to go and fetch them. The police also only came when everything was done,” he said.

Lorenzo Hutchinson said protesters started to stone them when he and his neighbours were trying to douse the flames. “We were trying to save our homes, but they started throwing us with stones. We have nothing to do with what they are protesting about, but they attacked us. That’s not right,” he said.

Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security JP Smith said the City has spent years transforming the hall into “one the community can be proud of”.

“The hall has been severely damaged and will be closed until further notice. The fire damage is extensive, resulting in almost all of the ceiling boards in the main hall being destroyed. This is hard to swallow when [on Monday] the Recreation and Parks Department finished extensive repairs to all ceilings boards and doors in this facility after years of motivating for funding,” he said.

“The nearest community halls are the Summer Greens Hall and the Milnerton Hall, and the City’s Recreation and Parks Department will accommodate users of the Joe Slovo Hall,” said Smith.

A small hall used as a local clinic and a church on Democracy Way were completed gutted. Photo: Barbara Maragele

Correction: The headline of this article was changed. Originally it incorrectly said the newly repaired hall was on Democracy Way.

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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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.