Watershed judgment clarifies limits of religion in South Africa's public schools

School children wave a South African flag after visiting the Nelson Mandela house museum in Soweto.
Reuters/Henry Romero

A High Court in South Africa recently handed down a landmark ruling with far-reaching implications for religion in the country’s public schools. The court decided that a school may not promote a single religion, or brand itself as such. This means that a school cannot, for example, call itself a Christian school.

The case was brought by an education lobby group – the Organisasie vir Godsdienste-onderrig en Demokrasie OGOD – which challenged the fact that six public schools had identified themselves as Christian.

According to the country’s constitution, religious observances can take place at state institutions - including public schools - provided it’s done equitably and that attendance is voluntary.

The court acknowledged this, ruling that religious observances, including praying, are distinct from the religious ethos of a school and are, therefore, to be allowed at public schools subject to the requirements of the Constitution.

The confirmation of the constitutional right to religious observances in public schools is a celebration of South Africa’s unique relationship between religion and state. The court’s judgment recognises that religion plays a large role in South African society. As such, the right to follow a religion is embedded both in the country’s Constitution as well as in practice. This means that South Africa isn’t a secular state. As the judge pointed out: it wasn’t the courts responsibility to pick sides between those who are religious and those who are not.

According to the country’s policy on religion and education a secular state adopts a position of impartiality towards religion and other worldviews. It also represents an attempt to “completely divorce the religious and secular spheres of a society, such as in France or the United States”. This is not the case in South Africa.

The court also upheld the right of school governing bodies to draft the religious policies for their schools in line with the Schools Act and the Constitution.

This is a watershed ruling in South Africa. The judgment has provided South African courts with the unique opportunity to interpret religious freedom in the public school system beyond just religious observances.

And although the case only involved six public schools with a Christian ethos, it will affect all 24,000 public schools in the country. All public schools will have to review their policies on religion to be in line with the decision. Public schools, whether branding itself as religious or not, will have to scrutinise how it deals with religious diversity.

In general, the case offered wins and losses for both sides. Although school governing bodies maintain their institutional authority to draft religious policies, the ruling means that they will now be under greater scrutiny. On the other hand, the organisation that brought the case got the legal backing it needed to require public schools to stay away from a single faith ethos.

Lost opportunity

The court affirmed the idea of celebrating diversity in South Africa and that public schools with a single faith ethos can hamper this. It balanced the right not to be excluded with the constitutional value of diversity. Hence its concern with public schools maintaining a single faith ethos.

But the case was rather disappointing in its superficial to zero analysis of human dignity, equality, religious freedom and diversity – all enshrined in the country’s constitution. The court only gave a short analysis of diversity, dedicating most of its decision to technical matters.

For example, having declared that South Africa was not a secular state, the court failed to analyse and discuss what religious diversity should look like in a “non-secular” state specifically. No deeper analysis was done about the meaning of diversity in the South African context. It was merely reiterated that, as declared in past court decisions and the Constitution, South Africa should celebrate diversity.

The nature of the right to religious freedom and the notion of “equity” received limited attention. The court therefore missed a wonderful opportunity to provide a critical analysis of the importance of religious diversity and religious freedom in the country.

For a case that is to directly affect more than 24,000 public schools and hundreds of thousands of pupils and teachers, one would have expected a more careful analysis. A critical discussion on the meaning of diversity when it comes to religion would have been useful and timely.

In some sense, the broader South African society lost. A critical analysis of the constitutional issues like diversity would have given the court’s final decision due weight and made it more credible.

Georgia Alida du Plessis, Research Fellow in Public Law, University of the Free State

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Ocean View forms human chain to highlight crime problem

Residents claim 13 murders so far this year but police won’t release stats

By Thembela Ntongana
10 July 2017

Residents of Ocean View form a human chain to show unity in the fight against crime in their area. Photo: Thembela Ntongana

Residents of Ocean View formed a human chain on Saturday to show unity in the fight against crime in the area.

Nervous to identify themselves out of fear that they would be endangering their lives, residents we spoke to said 13 people have been murdered this year in their community. The latest victim, GroundUp was told, was a teenage girl who was raped and murdered.

But South African Police Service (SAPS) spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Andrè Traut said that due to a national moratorium, he cannot release crime statics for the area. “Sporadic incidents of gang related violence are reported in Ocean View which can be attributed to the drug situation in the area,” he said.

This is the second time this year that the community has come together against crime. In April residents demonstrated at the entrance to the township.

On Saturday attendees ranged in age from children to pensioners. Many held placards with pictures of family members or friends that have been murdered.

“We want to speak but we are scared. … Your life becomes in danger,” said a resident.

Residents have been asking that Ocean View be recognised as a gang area, where special gang units can be deployed. Community leader Sharon Daniels told GroundUp that in a meeting in 2015, they were told that they do not meet the criteria for the area to be identified as a gang area.

Lieutenant Colonel Traut said: “Various crime combating initiatives are applied to address the situation. However, due to the operational nature of thess initiatives, the details thereof cannot be disclosed.”

Ocean View shares its police station with Masiphumelele which has crime problems of its own. The latter has had a number of violent protests over the lack policing in the area. The protests resulted in Masiphumelele getting a mobile police station.

Gatvol

Community leader Patrick Joseph told GroundUp that the human chain is a cry for help from the community. “We want to create awareness of what is going on in the community. We can no longer sit around in silence and watch. We want to bring focus to Ocean View,” he said.
Joseph said that they want to develop an action plan with the City to deal with the issues faced by the community.

“To use the word gatvol is a compliment. There are much stronger words I can use. Our kids should not die in vain. Every life counts,” said Joseph.

---

Published originally on GroundUp .

---

ANC policy anarchy – its leaders are too weak to lead, or too weak to take over

Protesters expressing their view of President Jacob Zuma’s government ahead of the ANC National Policy Conference.
Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

Disputed resolutions, deferred decisions and policy uncertainty were the prime bequests of the policy conference of South Africa’s governing African National Congress to the troubled organisation. Hot on the heels of these incongruities were opaque proposals on how the ANC will act on wobbly state institutions that need to implement policy, and porous pitches on improved ethics and integrity.

Even more, the proceedings confirmed that the ANC leadership is in stalemate. Leadership is in transition and factional leaders lack the authority to steer policy in directions that will address the country’s massive delivery backlog.

To the question: is President Jacob Zuma leading the ANC onto a path of implosion, the verdict is a sad but unambiguous “yes”. The conference confirmed that the president and his faction are not letting go – neither of their ambitions to determine Zuma’s successor, nor of their efforts to make “radical economic transformation” their platform.

The conference confirmed that the ANC recognises that the cancer of corruption and capture afflicts it badly. Yet the organisation remains stunted in finding ways to deal with it.

While the conference opted for unity, it’s a unity that precludes cutting out the cancer because it’s embedded in a faction that’s not budging. It will do everything in its power to retain power. That includes gambling with the conference’s policy outcomes.

The policy conference was, in effect, a six-day war over policy. Factional forces manoeuvred relentlessly to secure influence and power. The epitome of this deep factionalism was that Zuma in his closing address put forward a “power-sharing” proposal. His intervention tried to influence delegates to campaign for sharing the top ANC leadership positions. But the president’s factional interests meant that his proposal carried little weight.

Affected by the succession campaign, the overall outcome was approximate policy anarchy. It was directed by leaders who were either too weak to lead or too weak to take over.

Stalemate state of the ANC

The national policy conference , held every five years, is the ANC’s precursor to the December national elective conference that also adopts the final policy resolutions to supplement or substitute previous policy.

The character of the conference itself revealed a great deal about the indecisive and stalemate state of the current ANC. Unlike previous ones, there was no reliable stream of reports containing draft resolutions. And it failed to deliver consensual recommendations on crucial matters.

Several of the media briefings were delayed or rushed due to ongoing contests – some rhetorical, some ideological – between factions in commissions. The Secretary General’s report, which mentioned the problem of how Zuma has allowed the Indian-born Gupta family to wield undue and corrupting influence, was tabled. But it was immediately discredited by the pro-Zuma faction.

Some media briefings, like the pivotal report and proposed resolutions on legislature and governance – which presumably put the spotlight on issues of corruption, capture, and lack of cadre capacity – never happened. The briefing on organisational renewal was largely made up of a shopping list of issues that had been discussed. Very little else.

Policy certainty was a mirage. The best indicators of future policy were to be found in the subtly changing balance of forces in the succession contest for national ANC leadership. This was the price that the ANC and its factions paid for its short-term goal of unity.

The factional struggle was clearest around the battle over the terminology of “radical economic transformation”. Under this umbrella lay issues such as land expropriation, the mining charter and the role of the Reserve Bank. Where resolutions on these matters materialised, such as “monopoly capitalism” winning vis-à-vis “white monopoly capitalism”, the battle was merely deferred. The reported losers proclaimed that party branches, and thereafter the December conference, would be the next battleground.

Share of contested positions

Previous ANC policy conferences have also had their fair share of contested positions. Five years ago the fight between whether South Africa finds itself in a “second transition” or in the “second phase of the transition to a democratic society” was resolved.

Ten years ago the divisive question was whether then president Thabo Mbeki could contest for a third term as ANC president. Opposing factions compromised, deciding that the ANC president should “preferably” only run for two terms. This was followed by the Polokwane national conference at which Mbeki lost to Zuma as party leader.

If the ANC still has the power to self-correct – or ensure that its centre holds – it certainly didn’t show at this recent policy conference. The need to be radical and ensure equity and justice were conflated with the opportunistic appropriation of “radical economic transformation” for factional succession and continued capturist control of the South African state.

A compromise position of “radical socioeconomic transformation” – a long-standing and considered to be sufficient pivot of the ANC’s ideological stance – was announced but rejected by those supporting the president, including some of the so-called Premier League members (a group of provincial party leaders) and the party’s youth and women’s leagues.

This policy conference will be remembered for an ANC in disarray, plagued with internal dissent. It was a policy conference with ambiguous, unresolved policy stances. It ended without a definitive positioning on reconnecting the party with South African citizens and voters. This was the price the ANC paid to keep two powerful factions in the same broad church.

Chances are that the conference exacerbated rather than ameliorated the credibility of the ANC in the eyes of voters. The best hope for this haplessly acting ANC at this stage is not self-correction, but that opposition parties will make mistakes that surpass its own.

Susan Booysen, Professor in the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Nuclear and coal lobbies threaten to scupper renewables in South Africa

Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown citing cost as a reason to stop the last phase of renewables.
Flickr/GovernmentZA

South African power utility Eskom recently repeated that it will not conclude supply contracts with the developers of new renewable energy power stations. These developers were selected under a programme to facilitate private sector involvement in the building of medium-sized renewable energy power stations.

The programme has won plaudits for its success in facilitating the establishment of multiple solar and wind farms in record time. But Eskom is once again stalling.

The power utility’s stand threatens the viability of the entire renewable energy sector in the country. It’s hostility also defies logic given that the whole world is embracing renewable energy as key to a clean energy future and combating climate change.

So what lies behind the opposition?

The answer lies in the fact that two powerful lobbies are at work in South Africa. One is pro-coal, the other pro-nuclear. This has made the success of the renewable energy projects a target for attacks from interested parties in both. Disrupting the renewable energy sector would ensure that the coal sector remains dominant. And that, over time, it is gradually displaced by nuclear.

The lobby groups attached to coal and nuclear appear to have had powerful allies on the state utility’s board. There is mounting evidence that they have been furthering the interests of a group linked to the Gupta family. It in turn has been accused of capturing state entities to further its own ends, as well as those of President Jacob Zuma, his family and allies.

It has also been widely argued that the massively expensive proposed nuclear build is being driven by the same interest groups.

The battle over renewables is therefore closely linked to a wider political confrontation over control of key aspects of the South African economy.

Eskom’s flawed argument

The renewables dispute centres on the state utility’s refusal to endorse 1121 MW of new renewable energy. This translates to about 1% of Eskom’s current generated electricity, given that renewable energy supply is intermittent. This additional renewable energy would make up 5% of the total renewable energy generating capacity projected by 2030.

Eskom accepts the need to expand its generating potential in the long term. The additional contribution from renewables is well within its broader expansion targets. And tariffs on the energy from renewable sources would be almost half of the estimated cost of new coal and new nuclear power.

The Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown has been disingenuous in citing cost as a reason to stop the last phase of renewables. The higher costs she recently quoted were presumably those associated with the first round of renewable energy projects. These contracts were concluded in 2012 and prices for renewables have come down considerably since.

For its part Eskom has pointed to the oversupply of electricity as the reason for its objection. But elsewhere it has trumpeted the need for more nuclear power. It can’t have it both ways.

Powerful forces at play

Until two years ago Eskom was seen as a neutral player committed to effectively provide electric power in the best interests of the country. It threw its weight behind previous power procurement plans.

But that all changed in 2015 after Brian Molefe was appointed CEO.

Molefe and his successor Matshela Koko are both linked to the controversial Gupta family. Their names featured in the Public Protector’s State of Capture report as well as in a bulk leak of emails which implicated the Guptas and other leading figures in the state capture network.

Molefe and Koko played a pivotal role in helping the Guptas purchase a coal mine – the Optimum mine – and to secure a lucrative coal supply contract with Eskom. Both are also strongly pro-nuclear. They have also gone on record to argue that renewable energy is too expensive.

Eskom has furthermore listed renewables as the reason for planning to shut down four coal power plants. In reality, these old plants had already been destined for closure in anticipation of the imminent additional power supply expected from two new coal plants - Medupi and Kusile.

It’s suspicious that one of the power stations facing closure, Hendrina, is supplied by coal from the Optimum mine. The effect of stalling renewable power expansion could force the extension of Hendrina’s life span.

Brown is in the process of restructuring the Eskom board after Molefe departed, Koko was suspended and the chairperson of the board resigned. Although there are signs that the minister is aware that she has been misled by the Eskom board on other matters, she doesn’t seem to believe this is true when it comes to renewables, repeating recently the view that it’s too expensive.

Brown’s counterpart in the energy portfolio, Nkhensani Kubayi, has displayed little sympathy for the renewable energy sector, also making far-fetched and easily disprovable claims that the initial solar and wind power stations have resulted in zero jobs. Renewable energy is in fact estimated to eventually generate over 100 000 jobs in South Africa.

Kubayi has also shown that she’s highly receptive to the nuclear lobby. Visiting a nuclear industry fair in Russia in the middle of June she expressed concern that the judicial disqualification of the existing nuclear cooperation agreement damaged relations with that country.

It has been convincingly argued that South Africa can’t afford the nuclear option in the current economic environment.

The immediate future

The global ascendancy of renewables and their particular pertinence in South African climatic conditions may even make coal and nuclear energy technologies obsolete in the distant future. Ultimately South Africa won’t be able to buck international trends. That means that, in the longer term, the future of renewables in South Africa remains bright.

Hartmut Winkler, Professor of Physics, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

South Africa's youth speak out on the high cost of finding work

Young people understand the value of education but find fees prohibitively high in a context of widespread unemployment and low incomes.
REUTERS/Mark Wessels

The voices of the youth are often neglected in discussions about the problems they encounter in finding work. Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges young people face globally. But the absence of young voices on the subject stands in the way of understanding and solving the problem.

Youth unemployment in South Africa is a problem – and it appears to be getting worse. Between 2009 and 2014, the share of 15- to 34-year-old youth in the working population of the country fell from 42.6% to 39.8%. And in the first quarter of 2016, the unemployment rate (including only active job-seekers) for 15- to 24-year-olds was about 55% – up 5% on the previous year.

The Centre for Social Development in Africa at the University of Johannesburg conducted research among employed and unemployed 18- to 25-year-olds in five of South Africa’s nine provinces. It focused on their experiences of unemployment, employment and job-seeking.

The research, to be published soon, will hopefully amplify the voices of youth and thereby inform more realistic interventions to combat a serious developmental problem. Youth insights point to issues that are rarely considered in policy making circles. Three are highlighted in this article:

• the problem of accessing higher education;
• the costs of looking for work; and
• exploitation.

Higher education

Young people understand the value of education, particularly higher education. But, as recent student protests have shown, the cost of a university education is prohibitively high in a context of widespread unemployment and low incomes.

As one of the survey respondents, from Orange Farm in the Gauteng province, said:

Without skills you are nothing, matric [South Africa’s school-leaving certificate] is nothing, so that’s why I am here now because I do not have skills.

When students were awarded bursaries or loans by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme to attend university, it was common for these only to be paid out months after the academic year had started. But costs like transport, books, and registration and residence fees had to be covered immediately. Because their families were not in a position to support them financially, such students were at risk of dropping out of university.

The costs of finding work

Youth face many more immediate challenges in their search for work, including the costs of looking for work and filling out applications.

There are no functional job centres where relevant, up to date information about job openings and job advice can be found. Most youth find this information on the internet or in newspapers. They also often have to use the internet and computers for job applications. Few have these resources at home, so they are forced to use (sometimes distant) internet cafés.

In addition, many employers demand paper applications, which entails the costs of printing, copying, certification and postage.

A Cape Town respondent spoke of the cost:

It was in June or May this year I applied for a job, right, but the cost was to go to the post office to post those application forms. I think it cost me, like, R23. It was an envelope, a brown envelope plus photocopies. I think it was R50 with transport to town.

The general finding is that these job-seeking resources and services are inordinately expensive for people without regular income, and this limits the frequency with which they apply for positions.

In addition, young black South Africans typically live far from where jobs are located. This makes it expensive to travel to interviews or apply for jobs in person. A return trip is in the region of R30-R40 (about US$2-$2.63). For working people, this may mean spending more than a third of their monthly income on travel. For those hunting work, the costs are prohibitive.

Exploitative practices

A third and particularly disturbing finding is the exploitation of work-seekers’ vulnerability. Respondents repeatedly spoke of fraudsters advertising nonexistent jobs, soliciting payments for processing applications or for pre-job training.

These often large payments are made to what appear to be legitimate and professional employers or agencies advertising on the internet, in newspapers or by text message.

According to a respondent from the North West province,

I also got a message. Last year. That guy told me, at least give me R2,500 and I will give you a job at the mine. I said, “Wow! I’ll see what I can do …’

When applications are made in person, gatekeepers like human resources managers and secretaries frequently solicit bribes to ensure applications are considered rather than discarded:

Where are you going to get money to bribe this person? You are not working, you are looking for a job and you are expected to pay before even getting your name in the company’s books … Where are you expected to get the money from? You don’t have the bribe money, you are out. – East London respondent

Several young women and men also spoke of being asked to perform sexual favours to improve their chances of securing a job. A respondent from Johannesburg said: ”… there was a guy there and he said I am cute and if am willing to do some little things for him he can definitely give me a job.“

The need for intervention

The costs of looking for work often lead to the perverse outcome where job-seekers, having fallen into debt to meet these costs, find themselves worse off than before and even unable to pay for basics like food. Many respondents told us of tensions and strained relationships and, less frequently, trouble with moneylenders.

While young job-seekers were mostly not deterred from trying to find work, these obstacles point to the need for sustained, local-level and accessible interventions – informed by young people. Some feasible interventions include:

• universities and financial support agencies improving the efficiency of their administrative operations to ensure prospective students are paid loans and grants timeously;
• employers simplifying the job application process. They could, for example, stop demanding onerous documentation like hard copies;
• government (and others) opening accessible and functional job centres where authentic information can be accessed at a low cost. These should include subsidised application-related resources like access to the internet, printers and certification facilities;
• job-seekers being able to access publicly-funded travel subsidies; and
• law enforcement agencies cracking down on job fraudsters and extortionists.

Zoheb Khan, Researcher, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.