Sunshine Primary School is overcrowded, has too few toilets and lacks learning materials
By Nomfundo Xolo
4 August 2017 A hole in a classroom wall at Sunshine Primary School in Sodwana Bay. Photo: Nomfundo Xolo
Teachers at Sunshine Primary School in Sodwana Bay, in northern
KwaZulu-Natal, say they are understaffed, have insufficient teaching
materials and are forced to work in classrooms made of wood and zinc
sheets. There are only five prefabricated classrooms at the school.
They want the school to be built in accordance with the Department of
Education’s Norms and Standards. The school has 465 learners and only
10 teachers. It has four working toilets.
A teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Sunshine started
as a crèche. It was only registered as a public school in 2012 after an
international organisation donated the prefabricated classrooms to the
school, she said.
“We were approached by a Canadian programme called the African
Pre-Schools Society who donated the first three [prefabricated]
classrooms to the school. Two more classes were provided by the
Department of Education. We were forgotten about soon after,” she said.
“The number of learners grew each year, causing overcrowding and
jeopardising the health and safety of the children. We have a handful of
resources and facilities available.”
Another teacher said, “We have no basic teaching material such as
charts and chalkboards. We also don’t have safety-approved classes or
sufficient sanitation. You cannot tell me that any parent is proud to
take their children to a school [made of] shacks with no furniture. It’s
not nice to be a teacher at a school like this.”
She said that when it rains, teachers and learners have to mop the
flooded classrooms before teaching can resume. “We have to cover gaps in
the walls with blankets to prevent rain and wind from entering. The
children have gotten used to it now. They even pin up their own
jerseys,” she said pointing to a row of small jerseys hanging on a
washing line nearby.
There are 76 Grade R learners using one of the prefabricated classes
and 104 Grade 1 learners in another. Both of the classes have no desks
or chairs. The Grades 5 and 6 classes, which consists of 45 and 35
learners respectively, have benches. Grades 2, 3 and 4 are currently
being taught in zinc and wood structures. There is no electricity and
learners have to share desks and chairs.
The teachers claimed that the School Governing Body (SGB) wrote to
the District Office, the office of the local Chief and the Department of
Physical Planning. Their pleas have gone unanswered, they said.
Abigail Ncube, a parent and volunteer cook at the school, said they
are often forced to make meals outside because the school doesn’t have a
kitchen. Many of the learners are from poor households and depend on
the meal they got at school.
Ntozi Nxumalo, a parent, said that learners often got sick as there
were no windows in some of the classrooms and others had holes in the
zinc walls. “No child deserves to learn like this,” she said.
Spokesperson for the provincial education department Department of
Education in KZN, Muzi Mahlambi, said that the department was aware of
the conditions at Sunshine and have “escalated the issue to the Minister
of Basic Education”. Photo: Nomfundo Xolo
Published originally on
GroundUp
.
Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality commits to building homes for Westville residents
By Joseph Chirume
4 August 2017 Westville informal settlement residents torched a truck
and a bus while protesting for houses and other services this week.
Photo Joseph Chirume
About
300 residents of Westville near Kwadwesi in Port Elizabeth blockaded
part of a busy intersection with tyres and large concrete pipes on
Thursday. This follows nearly a week of protests over housing.
Residents are demanding that houses be built in the area and vital
services such as water, electricity and tarred roads be provided. They
claim these were promised to them nearly 20 years ago. The Westville
informal settlement was established in 2000 by people who did not
benefit from the Kwadwesi housing project nearby.
Earlier this week, police said that a bus and a truck were torched by
protesting residents on Tuesday night. Protesters also barricaded roads
in the area with burning tyres and concrete pipes.
On Thursday, police monitored protesters closely as they gathered in the streets.
A protester who refused to give her name said, “There are more than
5,000 people who live in this settlement. Most of us arrived here in
2000. Our shacks were demolished that year by the municipality. We then
rebuilt the shacks.”
The woman said that officials from the municipality at the time had
promised to supply the informal settlement with taps and electricity,
but failed to do so. “We have had numerous meetings with the
municipality and we learnt that there is an annual budget meant for ward
36, with Westville included. Where is that money going to when there is
no development taking place?” she asked.
Residents said that emergency vehicles have difficulty accessing the
settlement as there are no tarred roads. They also still use buckets for
toilets.
A man who identified himself as Rasta said that they would continue
protesting until they were addressed by Mayor Athol Trollip or Mayco
Member for Human Settlements, Nqaba Bhanga.
“Other informal settlements like Joe Slovo in Kwadwesi and Ramaphosa
in Motherwell have been developed with houses. We don’t have schools,
clinics or shops. We go to clinics in Kwadwesi and Kwanoxolo,” he said.
Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality mayoral spokesperson, Sibongile
Dimbaza, said “We are concerned with the plight of the residents of
Westville. We held a community meeting on 27 June. We explained to
residents that the plan to build houses has been approved by the
provincial government through the Housing Development Agency. We will
continue engaging them.”
Published originally on
GroundUp
.
Children marching on the
anniversary of the Soweto uprising. EPA/Kim Ludbrook
South Africa’s youth-led movements such as #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall provided contrasting view to perceptions that young people are apathetic and disinterested in the future of their country. But the protests didn’t quite dispel concerns about their lack of political involvement, particularly during elections where there’s been low youth voter turnout.
So we asked young people what they thought about politics. Our research involved focus groups with South Africans aged between 15 and 25 years of age from very different backgrounds. Sampled areas ranged from the rural Eastern Cape, to peri-urban Orange Farm and middle class Kensington, a Johannesburg suburb, amongst others.
Our findings challenge the widely reported perception that young people in South Africa are despondent and don’t care about politics or their role as citizens. What emerged from our research was a picture of young people with strongly defined opinions and knowledge of current affairs. Many said they were involved in some kind of civic activity.
All of the participants expressed a distrust of formal politics. But they also said they have a keen interest in the future of the country and are staking their claim in forging that future, albeit in different and new ways.
What was clear from the research is that young South Africans are engaging with politics very differently to the way in which young people got involved in the 1976 Soweto uprising. They have found new platforms and ways to share information, make their voices heard and ultimately be politically engaged on the back of growing internet based communication, especially social media.
In 1976 young people taught South Africa that they can’t be ignored. They are a powerful force that can shift the course of a country’s future. Today’s youth are no different. They are interested and engaged.
Distrust of formal politics
The people in our focus groups expressed distrust of formal political mechanisms such as voting, demonstrations, and membership of political parties.
Most indicated that they held little faith in the current leadership of the country. They found political leaders to be self-serving and disinterested in them and their communities. While they enjoyed watching parliament in action, this was because it provided entertainment value rather than serious content.
The discussions laid bare why many young people don’t vote. Most expressed alienation from all of South Africa’s political leaders. They said they didn’t know who they could trust or which political party would serve their interests.
As one put it:
Well, there’s ANC, an old promising party who is no longer keeping its promises, then follows the DA which is led and dominated by white people and you’d think when they are in power they may neglect us and care for whites only and also there is Malema who we think is going to corrupt us, so you just think it’s better not to vote.
They also said they didn’t see any point in voting given that there seemed to be little relation between what politicians said they would do versus what they actually did. A common sentiment is reflected in these quotes:
What is the point in voting? Nothing ever changes anyway.
We are not going to vote either because it’s not going to make a difference.
Personally for me I would vote for a party that I have seen making the biggest difference but everyone is fighting in parliament and they are not going out and making the difference that they are supposed to. And when it comes to voting time then all the municipalities jump up and start to do what they were supposed to do. I think that’s the thing. We don’t know who to vote for because no one is making a big difference.
This distrust and alienation often means that young people opt out of formal political processes such as voting and engagement with political parties.
But this should not be read to infer political disinterest and apathy. On the contrary, young people have found other ways to voice their opinions.
Different approaches
Social media is widely used, across the spectrum of youth interviewed, both to voice protest as well as to engage on issues they care about. And many said they have heated face-to-face discussions with their peers about key issues, particularly those affecting their own communities. All these approaches were more appealing, meaningful and accessible than political party membership and voting.
They also held very fervent issues-based views. The focus groups prompted heated debates about xenophobia and the role of foreign nationals in their communities. The participants also felt strongly about common challenges in their communities such as substance abuse, crime and teenage pregnancy.
Our research shows that young people are thinking about key issues in their communities and that they’re getting involved, particularly where issues affect them directly. The difference between this generation and the 1976 generation is that they’re doing so in non-formal ways.
The #feesmustfall campaign is a good example of this. It arose out of an issue that directly affected the lives of many young people. They did not feel that formal democratic processes served them, leading them to engage in a wave of protests driven largely by social media engagements across campuses.
Political parties trying to win the youth vote need to reconnect with where the majority of young people are, more so because young people will continue to form potentially the biggest proportion of the voter base at least until 2050. It’s time the country stopped stereotyping them as apathetic, disinterested and morally bankrupt and started engaging them in ways that are meaningful to them, and connect with the issues they’re interested in.
_This article was co-authored with Lauren Stuart, Thobile Zulu and Senzelwe Mthembu.
“We intend for the character of our march against the Zuma Presidency to be educational, embracing, inclusive and diverse”
By Ashleigh Furlong
3 August 2017 Revered Michael Weeder, Phumeza Mlungwana, Imam Rashied Omar and Father Michael Lapsley. Photo: Eloise Schrier
Leaders of civil society came together at a press conference
ahead of the “People’s March” on Monday, calling for the country to
continue to mobilise against corruption after the march.
“The removal of Jacob Zuma should signal to [those in government]
that even stealing a pencil from a department cannot be acceptable when
we know that there are young people who are going to school and do not
have stationary,” said Tshepo Motsepe, the general secretary of Equal
Education.
Motsepe was joined by multiple other leaders of civil society and
religious organisations at the St George’s Cathedral. They will be
marching on 7 August in Cape Town under the banner of #UniteBehind,
calling for the removal of President Jacob Zuma. On 8 August Members of
Parliament hold a no confidence vote on the president.
Motsepe said that Zuma is “corrupt to the core” and that this “rot
runs so deep” that even government clerks are stealing. This affects the
poor and working class, said Motsepe. He said that we need to ask what
kind of government we want in the future and not demobilise after the
march but continue to put pressure on the government.
This was echoed by Phumeza Mlungwana, the co-chair of the press
conference, who said that while marching was important, it was not the
only tool that needed to be used. She said that “we must make sure that
we address the systemic challenges of our country”.
Mandisa Dyantyi, Deputy General Secretary of the Social Justice
Coalition, said the government needs to “step up and represent the needs
of the people”.
“We are marching on the 7th because we have had enough,” she said.
Imam Rashied Omar of the Claremont Main Road Mosque said they are
“not naïve to believe that this one march will get Jacob Zuma to go.” He
also said that simply getting rid of Jacob Zuma and the Guptas would
not mean that the country’s problems were solved. Once the short-term
goals were achieved, people needed to redouble their efforts to hold
government to account. Omar said that he believed that the reason why
South Africa is currently in this position is because civil society
retreated and placed its faith in politicians.
At a recent gathering of the South African Council of Churches
members were called on to withdraw their moral support from the
government and to call for new elections. Omar emphasised that the march
on Monday has “nothing to do with the planned marches by political
parties”. He said: “We refuse to be co-opted onto the political agenda
of any political party.”
On 8 August political parties will lead a march that is also calling
for the recall of Zuma.
#UniteBehind decided not to join in the 8 August
march after they were unable to reach an agreement with the Democratic
Alliance on the logistics and nature of the march.
“We intend for the character of our march against the Zuma Presidency
to be educational, embracing, inclusive and diverse; instead of
listening to a line-up of leaders from every political party, who will
understandably be using the platform to promote their organisations,”
#UniteBehind explained in a statement.
The People’s March on Monday is set to start at 3pm at Keizersgracht Street.
Published originally on
GroundUp
.
What we eat matters to us – but we’re not sure whether it ought to matter to anyone else. We generally insist that our diets are our business and resent being told to eat more fruit, consume less alcohol and generally pull our socks up when it comes to dinner.
The efforts in 2012-13 by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to ban the sale of extra large soft drinks failed precisely because critics viewed it as an intrusion into the individual’s right to make their own dietary choices. “New Yorkers need a mayor, not a nanny,” shouted a full-page advert in the New York Times. And when a school near Rotherham in northern England eliminated Turkey Twizzlers and fizzy drinks from its canteen, outraged mothers rose in protest, insisting that their children had the right to eat unhealthy food.
At the same time, many Britons are troubled by reports that as a nation their fondness for sugar and disdain for exercise will eventually bankrupt the NHS; there is considerable support for the idea that very overweight people should be required to lose weight before being treated. We agree that our poor dietary choices affect everyone, but at the same time we’re certain that we have a right to eat what we want.
The story about how we started to think this way about food is closely linked to the rise of the potato as a national starch. Britain’s love for the potato is bound up with notions of the utilitarian value of a good diet and how a healthy citizenry is the engine room of a strong economy. To find out more about that, we need to go back to the 18th century.
Enlightened eating
Today’s somewhat uneasy marriage of public health and individual choice is the result of new ideas that emerged during the Enlightenment. During the 18th century, states across Europe began to rethink the bases of national wealth and strength. At the heart of these new ideas was a new appreciation of what we would now call public health. Whereas in earlier centuries rulers wished to prevent famines that might cause public unrest, in the 18th century, politicians became increasingly convinced that national strength and economic prowess required more than an obedient population disinclined to riot.
They believed it required a healthy, vigorous, energetic workforce of soldiers and labourers. This alone would ensure the success of industry. “The true foundations of riches and power,” affirmed 18th-century philanthropist Jonas Hanway, “is the number of working poor.” For this reason, he concluded:
… every rational proposal for the augmentation of them merits our regard. The number of the people is confessedly the national stock: the estate, which has no body to work it, is so far good for nothing; and the same rule extends to a whole country or nation.
“There is not a single politician,” agreed the Spanish thinker Joaquin Xavier de Uriz, writing in 1801, “who does not accept the clear fact that the greatest possible number of law-abiding and hard-working men constitutes the happiness, strength and wealth of any state”. Statesmen and public-spirited individuals therefore devoted attention to building this healthy population. It was the productivity puzzle of the 18th century.
The Potato Eaters (1885). Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh Museum
Clearly, to do this required an ample supply of nourishing, healthy food. There was a growing consensus across Europe that much of the population was crippling itself with poorly chosen eating habits. For instance, the renowned Scottish physician William Buchan argued this in his 1797 book Observations Concerning the Diet of the Common People. Buchan believed that most “common people” ate too much meat and white bread, and drank too much beer. They did not eat enough vegetables. The inevitable result, he stated, was ill health, with diseases such as scurvy wreaking havoc in the bodies of working men, women and children. This, in turn, undermined British trade and weakened the nation.
Feeble soldiers did not provide a reliable bulwark against attack, and sickly workers did not enable flourishing commerce. Philosophers, political economists, doctors, bureaucrats and others began to insist that strong, secure states were inconceivable without significant changes in the dietary practices of the population as a whole. But how to ensure that people were well-nourished? What sorts of food would provide a better nutritional base than beer and white bread? Buchan encouraged a diet based largely on whole grains and root vegetables – which he insisted were not only cheaper than the alternatives, but infinitely more healthful.
William Buchan (1729–1805): ‘What a treasure is a milch cow and a potatoe garden.’ Wikimedia Commons
He was particularly enthusiastic about potatoes. “What a treasure is a milch cow and a potatoe garden, to a poor man with a large family!” he exclaimed. The potato provided ideal nourishment. “Some of the stoutest men we know, are brought up on milk and potatoes,” he reported. Buchan maintained that once people understood the advantages they would personally derive from a potato diet, they would happily, of their own free will, embrace the potato.
The benefits would accrue both to the individual workers and their families, whose healthy bodies would be full of vigour, and to the state and economy overall. Everyone would win. Simply enabling everyone to pursue their own self-interest would lead to a better-functioning body politic and a more productive economy.
The marvellous spud
Buchan was one of a vast number of 18th-century potato enthusiasts. Local clubs in Finland sponsored competitions aimed at encouraging peasants to grow more potatoes, Spanish newspapers explained how to boil potatoes in the Irish fashion, Italian doctors penned entire treatises on the “marvellous potato” and monarchs across Europe issued edicts encouraging everyone to grow and eat more potatoes.
In 1794, the Tuileries Gardens in Paris were dug up and turned into a potato plot. The point is that there were an awful lot of public-spirited individuals in the 18th century who were convinced that well-being and happiness, both personal and public, could be found in the humble potato.
Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a leading spud-fancier in late 18th-century France.
These potato-fanciers never suggested, however, the people should be obliged to eat potatoes. Rather, they explained, patiently, in pamphlets, public lectures, sermons and advertisements, that potatoes were a nourishing, healthy food that you, personally, would eat with enjoyment. There was no need to sacrifice one’s own well-being in order to ensure the well-being of the nation as a whole, since potatoes were perfectly delicious. Individual choice and public benefit were in perfect harmony. Potatoes were good for you, and they were good for the body politic.
This, of course, is more or less the approach we take to public health and healthy eating these days. We tend to favour exhortation – reduce fat! exercise more! – over outright intervention of the sort that has seen Mexico impose a 10% tax on sugary drinks, or indeed Bloomberg’s soda ban.
Our hope is that public education campaigns will help people choose to eat more healthily. No one is protesting against Public Health England’s Eatwell Guide, which provides advice on healthy eating, because it’s useful and we’re perfectly free to ignore it. Our hope is that everyone, of their own free will, will choose to adopt a more healthy diet, and that this confluence of individual good choices will lead to a stronger and more healthy nation overall. But our modern belief that a confluence of individual self-interested choices will lead to a stronger and more healthy nation originated in the new, 18th-century ideas reflected in the works of Buchan and others.
It is no coincidence that this faith in a wonderful confluence of individual choice and public good emerged at exactly the moment the tenets of modern classical economics were being developed. As Adam Smith famously argued, a well-functioning economy was the result of everyone being allowed to pursue their own self-interest. He wrote in 1776:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
The result of each person pursuing their own interest was a well-functioning economic system. As he asserted in his Theory Of Moral Sentiments:
Every individual … neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it … he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
Strong men and beautiful women
The best way to ensure a strong national economy, in the view of classical economists such as Adam Smith, is to let each person look after their own well-being. The worst thing the state could do was to try to intervene in the market. Interventions in the food market were seen as particularly pernicious, and likely to provoke the very shortages that they aimed to prevent. This rather novel idea began to be expressed in the early 18th century and became increasingly common as the Enlightenment progressed. As we know, faith in the free market has now become a cornerstone of modern capitalism. These ideas have profoundly shaped our world.
It was perhaps inevitable that Adam Smith should particularly recommend potatoes. His idea of the free market was premised on the conviction that national wealth was possible only when people were happy and pursued their own self-interest. Happiness and comfort, in turn, required a plentiful supply of pleasant and nutritious food – and this is what potatoes offered, in Smith’s view. Not only was the potato far more productive than wheat – Smith calculated this carefully – but it was also incredibly nourishing. As he noted, “the strongest men and the most beautiful women” in Britain lived on potatoes. “No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution,” he concluded.
From: The Wealth of Nations (1776). Adam Smith
Smith linked the personal benefits individuals would derive from a greater consumption of potatoes to a greater flourishing of the economy. If planted with potatoes, agricultural land would support a larger population, and “the labourers being generally fed with potatoes” would produce a greater surplus, to the benefit of themselves, landlords and the overall economy. In Smith’s vision, as in that of William Buchan and countless other potato advocates, if individuals chose to eat more potatoes, the benefits would accrue to everyone. Better input of potatoes would result in better economic outputs.
In keeping with the individualism that underpinned Smith’s model of political economy, he did not recommend that people be obliged to grow and eat potatoes. His emphasis rather was on the natural confluence of individual and national interest. Indeed, potential tensions between personal and public interest were addressed directly by 18th-century potato enthusiasts, concerned precisely to see off any suggestion that they were subordinating individual freedom to collective well-being.
John Sinclair, president of the British Board of Agriculture in the 1790s, observed that some people might imagine farmers should be left to make their own decisions about whether to grow more potatoes. He conceded that: “If the public were to dictate to the farmer how he was to cultivate his grounds”, this might “be the source of infinite mischief”.
Providing information to inform individual choice, “instead of being mischievous, must be attended with the happiest consequences”. Advice and information, rather than legislation, indeed remain the preferred techniques for transforming national food systems for most policy makers. Nutritional guidelines, not soda bans.
The 18th century thus witnessed the birth of ideas that continue to be immensely influential today. The conviction that everyone pursuing their own economic and dietary interests would lead to an overall increase in the wealth and health of nations lies at the heart of the new, 18th-century model of thinking about the economy and the state.
Potato politics
It’s this idea – that private gain can lead to public benefits – that underpins the 18th-century interest in the potato as an engine for national growth. It also explains why during the 20th century, states and educational institutions across Europe established official potato research institutes, funded scientific expeditions to the Andes aimed at discovering new, more productive varieties of potato, and generally promoted potato consumption.
These connections between potatoes, political economy and a strong state moreover explain the current Chinese government’s obsession with potatoes. China is now the world’s leading producer of potatoes, which arrived in China in the 17th century but which have long been viewed as a food of the poor, while rice remains the prestige starch. For some decades, the Chinese state has been working to increase potato consumption and since 2014 there has been a particularly big push. There has been a great deal of pro-potato propaganda as regards both the cultivation and the consumption of the tuber.
Just as was the case in 18th-century Europe, this new Chinese potato promotion is motivated by concerns about the broader needs of the state, but it is framed in terms of how individuals will benefit from eating more potatoes. State television programmes disseminate recipes and encourage public discussion about the tastiest ways of preparing potato dishes. Cookbooks don’t just describe how potatoes can help China achieve food security – they also explain that they are delicious and can cure cancer.
One-third of the world’s potatoes are harvested in China. International Potato Center
As in the 18th century, in today’s China the idea is that everyone – you, the state, the population as a whole – benefits from these healthy eating campaigns. If everyone pursued their own self-interest, potato advocates past and present have argued, everyone would eat more potatoes and the population as a whole would be healthier. These healthier people would be able to work harder, the economy would grow and the state would be stronger. Everyone would benefit, if only everyone just followed their own individual self-interest.
The 18th century saw the emergence of a new way of thinking about the nature of the wealth and strength of the nation. These new ideas emphasised the close links between the health and economic success of individuals, and the wealth and economic strength of the state. What people ate, just like what they accomplished in the world of work, has an impact on everyone else.
At the same time, this new commercial, capitalist model was premised fundamentally on the idea of choice. Individuals should be left to pursue their own interests, whether economic or dietary. If provided sufficient latitude to do this, the theory runs, people will in the end choose an outcome that benefits everyone.
A small history of the potato allows us to see the long-term continuities that unite political economy and individual diets into a broader liberal model of the state. It also helps explain the vogue for the potato in contemporary China, itself undergoing a significant reorientation towards a market economy.
The connections between everyday life, individualism and the state forged in the late 18th century continue to shape today’s debates about how to balance personal dietary freedom with the health of the body politic. The seductive promise that, collectively and individually, we can somehow eat our way to health and economic well-being remains a powerful component of our neoliberal world.
_This article was co-authored with Lauren Stuart, Thobile Zulu and Senzelwe Mthembu.
The connections between everyday life, individualism and the state forged in the late 18th century continue to shape today’s debates about how to balance personal dietary freedom with the health of the body politic. The seductive promise that, collectively and individually, we can somehow eat our way to health and economic well-being remains a powerful component of our neoliberal world.