Petition launched after damning report on Eastern Cape schools

“This looks like a place for cows, but we are humans studying under these conditions”

By Nombulelo Damba-Hendrik
6 July 2017

In January, GroundUp reported on Imiqhayi Secondary School . The roof had blown off in 2014 and it had still not been repaired two and half years later. Photo: Manqulo Nyakombi

There are schools in the Eastern Cape that still have no access to water, electricity or sanitation. Sometimes classes are held outside because classrooms are not adequately maintained by the department. There are places where children get mugged on their way to school because there is no school transport.

These were some of the findings revealed in the Equal Education (EE) 2015/2016 annual report released this week. EE deputy head Amanda Rinquest said the organisation is now asking the public to sign a petition to put pressure on the department to fix its schools.
Rinquest said EE had visited 60 schools in the Eastern Cape and found 17 of them in clear violation of the Minimum Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure. Some of them were schools built with mud and zinc sheets.

The Department of Basic Education has already missed the first deadline of 29 November 2016 for upholding the Minimum Norms and Standards.

Equal Education cites Vukile Tshwete High School in Keiskammahoek outside King William’s Town which GroundUp reported on over a year ago. Snakes hide in the broken ceilings say students and teachers. Photo: Manqulo Nyakombi

On 27 April, Equal Education marched to the department offices in Zwelitsha, King William’s Town, with a list of demands. One demand was for the Head of the Eastern Cape Department of Education Themba Kojana to visit at least some of the schools EE had visited.

“When we had a meeting in May this year, he agreed to visit the schools, but since then, he’s been quiet. We have sent a number of emails with no response,” said Rinquest.

EE is demanding that renovations be prioritised at Mjaliswa Junior Secondary School, Tolikana Primary School, Lower Ntlaza Primary School in Libode and Mjanyelwa Junior Secondary School in Mbizana.

EE also wants there to be a blacklist of Implementing Agents that are lagging behind with school construction and for the department to penalise them.

Spokesperson for the Eastern Cape Department of Education Malibongwe Mtima said the department has a plan for all the schools mentioned by Equal Education. He said most of the schools were built by parents and the department is busy fixing them, however they are working according to a budget.
“Almost every week we are handing over new schools in the Eastern Cape. Some are built from scratch, others are renovated, but we cannot build them all at once due to the budget,” he said.
He said that in this financial year the department is planning to build 30 schools.

In the EE report, Eastern Cape learners from various schools share their experiences.

Silindokuhle January from Dimbaza Central Classrooms said, “I am ashamed to call that place my school. Students are tired of studying in dusty and wet classrooms. But, what can I say? I don’t have a choice. It is my school. My school does not have textbooks, so teachers have to make photocopies every day. Sometimes, in this environment we are studying in, the loose papers get lost. This looks like a place for cows, but we are humans studying under these conditions.”

Ziphozothando Mgweje of Forbes Grant Senior Secondary in King William’s Town said her science classroom burned down and it had still not been fixed after two years.

Ziyanda Gaxa of Qonce High School, who is an active member of EE, said, “The fact that the resources that we have are in conditions like this doesn’t stop them [the learners]. They know that their futures are in their hands. They keep coming to school, hoping that one day everything will be very much better and just like the former Model C Schools.”

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Published originally on GroundUp .

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Invasive species have a massive impact, but wise policy can keep them out

The American red swamp crayfish was intentionally introduced to parts of Africa to control snails and as a pet.
Shutterstock

This article is the second in a series The Conversation Africa is running on invasive species

Invasive alien species harm ecosystems, economies and human health across the globe. In Africa, alien trees reduce water yield in regions that are severely water stressed. Fishes introduced for aquaculture reduce native biodiversity and alien whiteflies spread diseases in cassava that can lead to famine.

Many of these species were introduced intentionally for use as pets, crops, livestock, garden plants or for forestry. Overall trade between countries has greatly improved human welfare by giving access to useful species. In Africa, these intentionally introduced species include the food staples cassava and maize, which are both native to the Americas.

But the continent has learned the hard way. A subset of imported species have become invasive, and by the time they become established in the wild it’s almost always too late to eradicate them.

More species than ever are being moved intentionally around the world as the pace of trade between countries continues to grow. Most countries still operate with what is essentially an open door policy, allowing in any species that commercial interests want to import.

But there is a better way. Invasive alien species are different from alien species that don’t cause harm. Scientists have the techniques and the know how to track these differences and to predict which species are likely to become invasive in the future. This makes it possible to decide wisely which species are safe to import. The impact of invasive species can be massively reduced if policies are developed based on these insights.

Developing these policies would be financially and environmentally beneficial for all countries. But there are significant challenges to implementation, particularly in developing countries, where resources for assessing species and then monitoring borders are scarce. These challenges could be overcome by sharing the results of assessments on species among countries, and through cooperation between importing and exporting nations to prevent the transport of harmful ones.

A basic biology

It’s possible to predict the behaviour of species by looking at their basic biology, how they interact with the environment, and how they spread. Using basic analysis, it’s possible to predict which invasive species will be bad, and which benign.

Not all are bad. Take the mollusc populations of the US Great Lakes which is home to a number of alien snails and mussels. But only a few are harmful – like the notorious zebra mussel which causes hundreds of millions in damage by clogging pipes and has fundamentally rearranged the Great Lakes ecosystems.

Zebra mussels, an invasive species of fresh water mussels, on the propeller and shaft of a
sailing yacht.
Shutterstock

This and other harmful non-native molluscs in the Great Lakes are characterised by having much higher production of offspring than their harmless counterparts.

And in South Africa, invasive pine trees mature faster and produce small seeds that can be blown long distances to colonise new habitats. These harmful pines are out competing native species in some habitats, while species without these characteristics rarely spread from where they’re planted.

Alien species with a history of being harmful in one area are likely to cause harm in another.

Transferring this scientific knowledge to policy helps to make predictions about how imported species are likely to act in the future. Risk assessment tools have been developed to do this. Some countries -– notably Australia and New Zealand -– have been implementing these for over a decade. They ban all species that have the characteristics of invaders, including most reptiles.

Many others, including the US, European Union, and South Africa, are moving in this direction. But progress is slow and there is opposition from companies concerned about regulations that restrict what they can buy and sell.

Policy is crucial for developing nations

Progress has been made in managing the import of species in developed countries, but there’s been less in developing nations. Poorer countries face big challenges in, for example, developing policies and monitoring borders.

But developing nations have the most to gain from keeping invasive species out because invaders have a big impact on agricultural production and fisheries that make up a large portion of their economies. For example, the American red swamp crayfish was intentionally introduced to Africa to control snails and as a pet. But it soon escaped into the wild where it reduces harvests of aquatic plants and fishes, and can even destabilise dam walls with its burrowing.

The red swamp crayfish escaped into the wild where it can reduce harvests of aquatic plants and fishes.
Reuben Keller

There are ways round the problem. Developing nations can use simpler methods to determine which species are likely to become invasive. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has developed a useful approach to risk assessment that relies primarily on determining whether a species is suited to climates in the new region, and whether it has become invasive elsewhere. The assessment can be adapted for any region, applied to any plant or animal, and has reasonable accuracy.

Another way to reduce the cost is for countries to share predictions. This would mean that the burden of assessing species was spread out.

And better coordination between exporting and importing countries could help improve border controls and ensure compliance.

Policies that predict which species are likely to become invasive and then keep them out would have huge environmental and economic benefits. South Africa is developing regulations. It should consider using one of the risk assessment approaches that have already been shown to be effective.

Other countries in sub-Saharan Africa need to take action too. Acting together, countries will be able to keep out the next invaders, protect biodiversity, reduce future financial costs, and lessen future losses of vital ecosystem services.

Reuben P. Keller, Assistant Professor Freshwater Ecology, Invasive Species, Bioeconomics, Loyola University Chicago and Sabrina Kumschick, Researcher and core team member Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

China says it has stopped harvesting organs, but evidence belies its claim

The Chinese government has claimed the country no longer harvests organs from prisoners. But recent revelations about two leading Chinese researchers indicate this may not be true.

In 2005, China publicly stated what many already believed: that its transplant system was built on harvesting organs from criminals sentenced to death (“executed prisoners”). According to declarations by officials, this practice has been banned since January 2015, with organs now sourced from volunteer citizen donors.

Based on these claims of reform, Chinese transplant doctors hoped to participate in international conferences and high-level meetings, publish in prestigious English-language journals and engage in academic collaborations.

But recent events challenge this somewhat rosy picture of organ donation and transplantation reform in China.

Contradictory accounts

First, the Vatican was widely condemned for inviting Chinese transplant officials to participate in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences summit on organ trafficking and transplant tourism.

The complaints centred on the involvement of Huang Jiefu, the current chair of the National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, ex-vice minister of health, a member of the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Political Consultative Conference, and deputy director of the secretive party committee that looks after the health of top cadres.

There were doubts that Huang would present an accurate or complete picture of organ procurement in China. He has given contradictory accounts of organ sources in China for many years.

The media coverage caused embarrassment to the Vatican and apparently led to the cancellation of the Pope’s planned address to the summit. After persistent questions, Huang admitted organ transplants from prisoners still occur. He cited the vast size of his country as an impediment to reform.

Several articles have drawn attention to the double meaning of the term “executed prisoner”. And independent investigators have identified that they include prisoners of conscience, who are executed for their organs without due process, as well as death-sentence prisoners whose organs are harvested after judicial execution.

In 2005, Huang ordered two spare livers as back-up for a technically difficult procedure. It is hard to imagine how this order could have been met in a system that relied solely on organs from prisoners sentenced to death. Prisoners must be executed within seven days of being sentenced to death, according to Chinese law, and are often not healthy enough to donate organs.

But the order is consistent with a system in which prisoners’ organs are plentiful, immediately available and blood-matched in advance. That is, prisoners who are waiting for death at the surgeon’s convenience.

Prolific transplanter

Huang is not the only senior figure in China’s transplant system who came under fire last week. Professor Mario Mondelli, editor of the journal Liver International, announced the retraction of a paper by Chinese authors on the grounds that they could not provide evidence that the organs used in their research were from volunteer donors.



The authors claimed that no organs from executed prisoners were used, but when challenged by three academics (including me, as part of my work with the International Coalition to End Organ Pillaging in China), they were unable to provide any such proof.

The senior author on this paper is Zheng Shusen, one of the most prominent transplant surgeons in China. He is an academician in the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Zhejiang Medical University’s First Affiliated Hospital, where he is a chief surgeon specialising in liver transplantation.

Since 2001, he has been the founding director of the hospital’s multi-organ transplant centre, affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Health. In addition, Zheng is vice-president of the China Medical Association, editor-in-chief of the Chinese Journal of Organ Transplantation, and former president of the Chinese Society of Transplantation.

As an architect of China’s transplant system, Zheng’s accomplishments in liver transplantation are impressive. On January 28 2005, Zheng and his surgical group performed five liver transplants in a single day and a total of 11 that week.

Zheng has also written a paper about performing 46 emergency liver transplants, between January 2000 and December 2004. Rather than spending time on a waiting list, these patients received their new livers within one to three days of arriving at the hospital. That again suggests a plentiful supply of organs at short notice.

Zheng’s own hospital website notes that he has been the leading surgeon in 1,957 liver transplant surgeries.

Reputational damage

Zheng’s prolific transplant activity reflects a system with plenty of available livers. In contrast, doctors in the West struggle with a shortage of donated organs.

One clue about this abundant supply of livers may lie in one of Zheng’s less-known roles. Since 2007, he has been chairman of the Zhejiang Anti-Cult Association.

The association is the provincial branch of the national agency, known as the China Anti-Cult Association (CACA). This was established in 2000 by the Chinese Communist Party to create propaganda vilifying Falun Gong, a Buddha-school spiritual practice. CACA devises methods of forcible ideological conversion of Falun Gong practitioners.

As the head of the provincial Anti-Cult Association, Zheng is responsible for agitation, incitement and propaganda against Falun Gong in Zhejiang, a province of 54 million people. References online show him heading political study sessions inciting hatred against Falun Gong and training Communist Party members in “anti-cult” work.

These activities seem to go hand in hand with Zheng’s successes in the transplant field. His 2008 Hangzhou Criteria revised patients’ eligibility for liver transplant based on carcinoma size. The new criteria expanded the pool of potential liver recipients in China by 52%.

This was in spite of recent judicial reform that caused death row sentences to plummet in the country, and suggests there’s an abundant source of non-death-row organs available.

Now, the reputations of two of China’s most senior figures in transplantation are under question: Zheng for his false claims that no organs from executed prisoners were used in his research, and the revelation of his “anti-cult” alter ego. And Huang for again showing that there is no genuine change in organ harvesting and transplantation practice in the country.

International authorities should demand a full account of the real sources of organs in China before believing any more claims about reform.

Acknowledgement: Matthew Robertson, an independent China researcher and translator based in New York City, co-authored this article.

Wendy Rogers, Professor in Clinical Ethics, Macquarie University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How we discovered the vampire bats that have learned to drink human blood

Doesn’t look like much of a threat, does he?
Gerry Carter/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

What’s for dinner? For some Brazilian vampire bats, these days it’s human blood.

That’s the surprising outcome of my research, recently published in the Acta Chiropterologica journal, which revealed that the hairy-legged vampire bat of Pernambuco, Brazil, has developed an appetite for human blood over that of other possible prey.

This finding upends all the existing scientific literature on this bat species, which typically feeds on bird blood.

A little-known bat (with a secret)

The hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata) is the least-studied of the three species of known vampire bats. In 20 years working as a zoologist, I had never held a live specimen in my hands.

But there I was in Pernambuco’s drylands in 2013, inside a cave in the Catimbau National Park, when I focused the flashlight on a little colony of bats above my head and spotted a few Diphylla.

Though not the prettiest species of bat, they are more delicate than some, with a gentle face, small ears and, I must say, a soft look.

On the ground below the bats, I saw pools of guano, or bat droppings, each the size of a soup dish. Vampire bats are hematophagous, meaning they can only eat blood, so their excrement is tinged red.

View of Catimbau National Park, where some bats are starting to change their feeding habits.
Enrico Bernard/UFPE, Author provided

Diphylla prey on bird blood, but in Catimbau Park, native birds of medium and large size have become locally extinct. Probably due to unregulated hunting, the white-browed guan, the yellow-legged tinamou, and the picazuro pigeon — all potential prey for Diphylla in the past — were no longer observed there by 2013.

So what were those Diphylla feeding on, if not birds? Goat blood might make sense. I had seen many grazing in the park, raised by the hundreds of families who still live in Catimbau, despite its legal status as a natural protection zone.

I returned to the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, determined to investigate Diphylla’_s_ diet.

The scientific method

Extracting DNA from vampire-bat guano is no small feat. Proteins in their digestive tracts can break down the DNA of the blood consumed, and samples collected in caves can be contaminated with exogenous DNA, either from other organisms in the guano (such as bacteria, fungi and insects) or by the sample collector.

For this task I joined forces with Fernanda Ito, then an UFPE student working toward her undergraduate honours thesis. She liked the idea of using fecal DNA to figure out the bats’ prey as her thesis project. Later our team welcomed Rodrigo Torres, from UFPE’s Department of Zoology, who works with genetics applied to biodiversity conservation.

If all went well, the sequences we obtained would be compared to those deposited in GenBank, indicating the possible prey Diphylla were feeding on.

The process of extracting and purifying the DNA was as long and dramatic as a Brazilian soap opera. For days, Fernanda persistently tested and modified protocols at various temperatures and lengths of time, until finding the right combination that would allow the perfect reaction to happen.

Finally, when Fernanda was on the verge of quitting in frustration, she managed to sequence the samples. When we compared our bat DNA sequences with those obtained from goats, pigs, cows, dogs, chickens and humans, we found that Diphylla had consumed blood from chickens and humans.

Researcher installing monitoring equipment in a cave in Brazil’s Catimbau National Park.
Eder Barbier, Author provided

At least three samples obtained on different dates pointed to the consumption of human blood. The other 12 of our 15 samples found evidence of Diphylla sucking chickens’ blood.

This was an intriguing finding. Science suggests that Diphylla would never consume human blood. Indeed, three articles (from Mexico in 1966 and 1981 and from Brazil in 1994) even indicated that in captivity, Diphylla would rather starve to death than feed on blood from cows, rats, rabbits, pigs or live goats.

Groundbreaking data

Our data was contrary to all the information available on Diphylla so far. In fact, we had seen reports that indicated that this species actually has a physiological intolerance of mammalian blood, which has more dry matter, mainly proteins, than bird blood (which contains more water and fat).

Diphylla ecaudata.
Eder Barbier, Author provided

That would explain why the bats weren’t going after the goats, as I had originally thought. But how to explain the strange preference for human blood?

It seems the scarcity of native large bird species in the park has led Diphylla to develop a more flexible diet than scientists could have imagined. That may be good for Diphylla’s survival, but it’s also an indicator that the area we studied is not faring well. In northeastern Brazil’s dry forests, native species are disappearing, presumably forcing other species, too, to change their diet and behaviour.

The presence of human blood in bat guano also raises public health issues. Clearly, some people in the Catimbau region are being bitten by bats, raising the risk that rabies and other diseases could be transmitted.

On the positive side, Fernanda defended her thesis with success and our article in Acta Chiropterologica is attracting media coverage worldwide.

Discovering that bats can learn to live on human blood has given me several new ideas to explore, such as radio-tracking them to find their human prey.

New research will start soon. Now, I just have to find a new Fernanda …

Enrico Bernard, Departamento de Zoologia, Centro de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Explainer: what is ballistic missile defence – and would it stop a missile from North Korea?

The US and several of its allies currently deploy several ballistic missile defence systems that would be used in the event North Korea actually launched an attack.
Reuters/KCNA

North Korea’s test this week of an intercontinental ballistic missile has reignited interest and debate on the feasibility of ballistic missile defence systems, and whether countries such as Australia should seek to acquire them.

But what are these systems, and how do they work? How effective would they be in providing a defence against a potential missile attack?

How do they work?

All ballistic missile defence systems consist of a network of tracking and guidance radars, and the interceptor launchers.

On detecting a ballistic missile launch, the radars track the missile’s trajectory, fire an interceptor to shoot it down, and prepare further interceptors to be launched if the first one misses.

This is referred to as a “shoot-look-shoot” strategy, as opposed to a strategy of saturation – where the defender simply shoots as many interceptors as possible in the hope of achieving a kill.

Modern defence systems use interceptor missiles carrying kinetic kill vehicles. These are warheads that are non-explosive and designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles by simply crashing into them.

All of the systems mentioned below are intended to work in conjunction with one another. They are integrated to provide the ability to shoot down ballistic missiles throughout their flight path. However, they are also capable of operating independently, although with less effectiveness than if operated in conjunction with other systems.

Missile defence systems in the region

The US and its allies in the Asia-Pacific currently deploy several ballistic missile defence systems. These would be used in the unlikely event that North Korea decided to actually launch a ballistic missile attack.

The first and most prominent is Terminal High Altitude Area Defence, or THAAD, which the US has deployed in South Korea. THAAD is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles in the terminal phase of flight – that is, as the ballistic missile is re-entering the atmosphere to strike its target.

The second relevant system is Patriot PAC-3, which is designed to provide late terminal phase interception – that is, after the missile has re-entered the atmosphere. It is deployed by US forces operating in the region, as well as Japan.

THAAD and Patriot PAC-3 interceptors at work.

Perhaps the most capable system currently in operation in the region is the Aegis naval system, which is deployed on US and Japanese destroyers. It is designed to intercept ballistic missiles in the mid-course phase of flight – that is, when the missile is outside of earth’s atmosphere and transiting to its target.

The Aegis system in action.

What all of these systems have in common is they are theatre ballistic missile defence systems, designed to provide protection against short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Intercontinental ballistic missiles, such as the one tested by North Korea this week, fly too high and fast for these systems to engage with.

Aegis has demonstrated some limited capability to engage targets similar to intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was used to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite in 2008, but has never been tested against an actual intercontinental ballistic missile target.

The only system expressly designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles is the US Ground-based Midcourse Defence. However, this has a very patchy record in testing. By the end of 2017 it will only have 44 interceptors deployed.

How effective are they?

None of these systems is 100% effective, and most have an iffy record in testing. Aegis has succeeded in 35 out of 42 tests, while Ground-based Midcourse Defence has had only ten successes in 18 tests. However, THAAD has been successful in 18 out of 18 tests.

Tests are conducted in favourable conditions – and it is reasonable to expect the success rates to be lower in actual combat use.

The true difficulty lies with intercontinental ballistic missiles. An intercontinental ballistic missile can attain altitudes well in excess of low earth orbit. Those fired on a typical long-range trajectory can exceed 1,200km in altitude. The high-trajectory, short-range test shot North Korea conducted this week attained an altitude of 2,700km.

By way of comparison, the International Space Station orbits at an altitude of around 400km.

However, the altitude intercontinental ballistic missiles attain is only part of the problem. The other major challenge facing ballistic missile defence is the truly enormous speeds that missiles attain during the terminal phase. They often hit or exceed 20 times the speed of sound.

A common comparison used is that ballistic missile defence is akin to shooting a bullet in flight with another bullet. The reality is even more extreme.

For example, a .300 Winchester Magnum (a high-velocity hunting and sniper round) can achieve a velocity of 2,950 feet per second as it leaves the barrel. This equates to 3,237km/h, or 2.62 times the speed of sound. An intercontinental ballistic missile can achieve speeds almost eight times faster than this. As a result, it is almost impossible to reliably defend against such missiles.

This is not necessarily a problem for countries such as Japan and South Korea. Any ballistic missile used by North Korea against them would be a shorter-range ballistic missile that these systems could engage.

However, countries should be mindful that these systems provide limited-to-no capability to defend against intercontinental ballistic missiles. In Australia’s case, the only missiles capable of reaching this far from North Korea are intercontinental ballistic missiles. Thus, even if Australia decided to invest in ballistic missile defence, it would provide little-to-no protection from a potential North Korean nuclear attack.

James Dwyer, Teaching Fellow and PhD Candidate, Politics and International Relations Program, University of Tasmania
Read the original article.