Patience with Ramaphosa's presidency is waning among South Africans

Patience might be running out for South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
GCIS

South Africa’s new president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has just crossed 100 days in office with increasing signs that his honeymoon period is already over. The economic realities are hitting home. And the accompanying impatience which seemed suspended since he took over in February is reemerging.

Ramaphosa’s tenure came with renewed hopes about the future of the country’s economy. His state of the nation address, followed by the national budget, raised optimism that the economy would soon rebound. This followed President Jacob Zuma’s rule which wrecked the economy through a series of corruption scandals and destructive economic decisions.

Given the depths to which Zuma had taken the country, it was easy for the Ramaphosa euphoria to emerge. A couple of speeches promising a “new dawn” did the trick. The people ululated and the markets cheered.

But it would seem that the honeymoon is over. Patience is waning and giving way to protests against long standing grievances. The failure by the ANC government to deliver basic services and endemic corruption is driving people to the streets.

Many celebrated the decision by one of the top three credit rating agencies to leave South Africa’s rating unchanged. What they missed was it’s long list of warnings.

I believe that this all adds up to the need to be extremely cautious about the country’s immediate future. The real test for Ramaphosa’s presidency is how he will respond to the immediate pressing needs. The people, markets and rating agencies will stand waiting to judge. The latest economic growth figures, showing a 2.2% dip in gross domestic product (GDP) during the first quarter of this year, is not a good sign.

A closer reading of S&Ps decision

S&P downgraded South Africa’s sovereign rating to sub-investment grade towards the end of last year, warning that further downgrades were possible. The country’s economy was in a perilous state and faced the possibility of slipping deeper into sub-investment grade.

Against this backdrop, S&P’s most recent decision, not to downgrade South Africa further, was greeted with delight. But its decision can be interpreted from two perspectives.

On the one hand, the decision was a sign that the rating agency was impressed that the country’s position has not deteriorated further since its last downgrade in November 2017.

The other view is that S&P acknowledged that the country has not done much to improve its fiscal position which remains significantly weak. By keeping the country’s outlook stable, the rating agency is anticipating the economy could improve modestly in the near future if certain reforms are undertaken. But it’s also a warning that should there be deterioration it will be forced to do another downgrade.

What’s been done, and not done

Ramaphosa’s government has largely focused on saving key institutions ravaged by the patronage of the Zuma era. This include the police and prosecuting agencies and state-owned enterprises.

There have been big changes in the management of key state-owned enterprises such as the power utility Eskom, regional airline SA Express, defence company Denel and transport and logistics enterprise Transnet.

This shows that Ramaphosa’s government is committed to rooting out corruption and improving service of these enterprises.

But a number of issues remain problematic. First, the country’s economic growth figures remain subdued and are likely to stay that way for a while. That’s because government is still not showing any firm commitment to undertake structural reforms that are required to jump-start growth.

Secondly, unemployment remains significantly high with no practical solution in sight besides a proposed job summit. South Africa’s unemployment stands at 26.7%. The rate is much higher, around 36%- if disgruntled work seekers are included. Youth unemployment stands at more than 52%. Something drastic is required to tackle this problem. Nothing from the prevailing talk fits the bill.

Thirdly, government’s debt burden continues to rise. This is on the back of low growth and a rising social service bill. The bloated civil service and cabinet are not helping the situation. Ramaphosa had a chance to review the cabinet size when he reshuffled it in February but he let it slip presumably for fear of unsettling political support. The continued power balance within the ruling party means that he will shy away from taking hard decisions like rationalising the civil service.

There is also the lingering financial burden posed by state owned enterprises. Besides improvements in their governance, many are run on fundamentally unviable funding models, making it impossible for them to be weaned from government support.

And finally there are the disturbing uncertainties around the ANC’s move to undertake expropriation of land without compensation. This is undermining the pledge to restore policy certainty and improve economic growth.

Possible solutions

Ramaphosa has inherited a ruling party and government faced with a tricky overriding challenge. The ANC is getting increasingly pressured by its voter base to deal with poverty and inequality. And the noise coming from populist groups like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is piling up the pressure. Arguably, it is this dynamic which led to the adoption of the land expropriation without compensation resolution at the ANC conference in December last year.

And so the government finds itself trying to strike a balance between addressing poverty and inequality while maintaining property rights and ensuring food security.

The main priority of the government should be centred on growing the economy to create jobs and reduce poverty. This could be achieved with structural economic reforms. These could include liberalising the labour market by making changes to the employment laws to lower the costs of hiring and firing workers in order to improve the ability of companies to respond to market shocks.

Economic reforms should include the removal of bottlenecks in the product and service markets to allow establishment and sustenance of small businesses. In addition, the reforms must aim at improving the country’s delicate taxation system through broadening the tax base with targets to reduce social spending in the medium to long-term.

Misheck Mutize, Lecturer of Finance and Doctor of Philosophy Candidate, Graduate School of Business (GSB), University of Cape Town

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How CCTV surveillance poses a threat to privacy in South Africa

CCTV cameras are becoming a “normal” feature of public life, tracking peoples’ movements as a matter of course.
Shutterstock

Locational privacy is a fairly new and novel aspect of privacy rights. It refers to the right of people to move about freely, without having their movements tracked.

But as CCTV cameras become more widespread in public spaces for use in a range of functions such as crime-fighting, it’s becoming more difficult for people to protect this kind of privacy in public spaces.

The cameras, linked to a display monitors, can be used to monitor human movements in particular spaces, including streets and shopping centres. A video recorder can also be added to record activities. But, the problem with CCTV is always the human capacity to process the information gleaned from the cameras. The cameras can only film fixed areas. Unless they are ubiquitous, they cannot be used to track movements.

The need for human monitoring places a natural limit on the analysis of camera footage. But, with digital tools of analysis, this is changing. When linked to a computer loaded with software capable of algorithmic analysis, huge amounts of footage can be analysed. These camera based surveillance systems can capture information about a person’s physical location. Some may only provide real time information, while others may record information for further analysis.

But governments of a more authoritarian bent can misuse this information to establish people’s movements, political activities and associations. People may not participate as robustly in democratic life as they would if they feel that they are being watched, and their movements tracked.

Invasive forms of data analysis such as number plate and facial recognition are being introduced in South African cities without any public debate about the implications for privacy in public spaces. Likewise, there’s no debate about about their implications for the ability of citizens to practice a range of rights in these spaces, such as the right to assemble.

Ubiquity

Increasingly, CCTV cameras are becoming a “normal” feature of public life, tracking peoples’ movements as a matter of course. Video analysis tools also allow for more sophisticated analyses of footage.

Computer analysis enables CCTV to be turned into “smart dataveillance” devices (that conduct surveillance through the collection and computerised analysis of data), which make individuals and their movements more visible to the state. These are meant to assist in “smart” policing, whereby police use data tools to enhance the effectiveness of policing.

Another example is facial recognition technologies. These can be used to identify a particular person from a facial database. Potentially, these technologies can, and are, being used to identify people engaging in politically activities, such as protests. This triggers concerns that governments may be tempted to use them for anti-democratic purposes.

South Africa has followed international trends in street-level surveillance and embraced technologies whose affect on crime fighting and intelligence work are, at best, unclear and contested. International academic research points to CCTV systems being most effective in specific contexts, such as parking lots, and least effective in open spaces.

Other kinds of crime such as white collar crime and domestic crime, are not recorded by street cameras, which perpetuates an ideology of crime being street crime perpetrated by strangers.

Critics have also blamed the use of CCTV systems for displacing crime, rather than deterring it. Where reductions in crime levels have taken place because of CCTV, they were localised and often not statistically significant.

A security officers monitoring activity captured on CCTV.
shutterstock

The difficulties of assessing the impacts of CCTV on crime is made harder by the fact that local authorities have not been undertaking independent impact assessments (including on privacy). This means that the public is forced to rely on the state’s version of events, which for public relations purposes, emphasises the positive impacts. Yet, in Cape Town in 2015 for instance, the police were criticised for making only 107 arrests following 2640 criminal incidents caught on camera.

In 2016, the City of Johannesburg announced that it was rolling out smart CCTV cameras complete, with automatic number plate and facial recognition technologies, as part of its ‘safe cities’ initiative.

Yet at the time of writing, the City had enacted no requirement for signage at the entrance to an area under CCTV surveillance – a key privacy protection requirement. The City was in the process of finalising a policy on the roll-out of CCTVs, coupled with a master plan, but these were still at draft stage, pointing to the fact that the technology had run ahead of the policy.

CCTV rollouts tend to “follow the money”. In other words, they tend to follow patterns of wealth in the major metropolitan cities in South Africa. This contributes to the enclosure of city spaces by private capital, and consequently to the privatisation of public spaces and the reproduction of spacial inequalities.

It’s not at all clear if the growing capacity of local governments to collect street-level data on peoples’ movements is making a substantial contribution to policing, as the police do not use this data routinely.

The risk of dumbing down policing

Technology is being used as a silver bullet for policing of public spaces, when more basic interventions may be more appropriate (such as improving investigative techniques), risks dumbing down policing. Yet, at the same time, the regulation of CCTV for its impacts on privacy is lagging behind the actual rollout of the technology.

Data-driven surveillance tools, such as smart CCTV, consistently over promise but under deliver in fighting crime. Yet, governments are adept at creating panic about crime to obscure these failings. People’s fear of crime, and their need to feel protected from it, should not stop them from asking the critical questions that need to be asked.

This is an edited excerpt from the author’s latest book, Stopping the Spies: Constructing and Resisting the Surveillance State, published by Wits University Press.

Jane Duncan, Professor and head of the Department of Journalism, Film and Television, University of Johannesburg

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

How Huddleston and Powell squared off about racism in a televised debate

Anti-apartheid cleric Trevor Huddleston, centre, with South African liberation struggle icons Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela in 1991.
EPA/Stringer

British Conservative MP Enoch Powell’s 20 April 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech has been making headlines as the UK marks the 50th anniversary of its delivery.

Powell claimed that immigration was responsible for a demographic and social revolution that threatened British society. His toxic rhetoric and the responses to it, shaped policy and legislation.

Only fragments of Powell’s speech were captured on film, and the address in its entirety was preserved as a text. This April, Radio 4 asked actor Ian McDiarmid, who played Powell on stage, to read out the notorious 3183 word speech. Uproar ensued.

Critics argued that the broadcast contributed to normalising racism. Others thought it should not be aired. The BBC defended its decision to proceed with the broadcast. It explained that the speech was interspersed with historical context. It claimed that the discussion emphasised the harmful impact of Powell’s words on his contemporaries.

I came across an astonishing piece of television during my research on the anti-apartheid activist and Bishop of Stepney Trevor Huddleston, and the impact of his experience in apartheid South Africa on race relations in Britain. The programme, called The Great Debate: My Christian Duty, aired on October 12, 1969 on ITV.

It was the result of a lengthy and public confrontation between Powell and Huddleston.

Huddleston protested the “rivers of blood” address and the two commented on each other’s positions throughout the year. When Huddleston called Powell’s rhetoric “evil”, the latter wrote to Huddleston to defend his position. In their correspondence, they agreed to present their arguments to the public.

The location for their public meeting turned out to be a television studio with a live audience. This may sound like a curious choice of venue. In fact, Powell turned to the media habitually to promote his agenda, as did Huddleston.

During the 40 minutes of the debate, both men used the emerging genre of the televised political debate to rally support for their views. The terms of the debate were set by Powell and the links he created between immigration, race and British decline. Huddleston could not sever these imagined ties. He did, however, invoke the evils of apartheid as a warning post to his fellow countrymen. He used his experience in Johannesburg to reflect on the dangers of racial discrimination.

Faith in humanity

Huddleston cultivated his public image as a moral authority in South Africa from the mid-1940s. Between 1943 and 1955, he worked as a priest in Sophiatown, a black suburb of Johannesburg. In those years, until his forced recall back to England in 1955, Huddleston was a prominent participant in the struggles against apartheid. By then, his biographer concluded

[Huddleston’s face was] the most photographed of any Christian except the Pope.

His bestselling memoir of the period, published in 1956, made him a household name in Britain too. Huddleston reminded viewers of Britain’s material and moral debt to its former empire in Africa and Asia. He argued that the British, through colonial expansion, had “quite deliberately” moved into other people’s countries. They have

created and sustained regimes of power over African and Asian people.

This, and Britain’s long reliance on the slave trade, and later, on the inscription of labour from the Commonwealth to fight its wars and build its towns, created a commitment to these populations.

Huddleston’s aim, however, went beyond a history lesson. He harnessed the medium of television to issue a call for solidarity to fight the crisis ensuing from Powell’s address. He drew on his experience of collaborating with activists across the colour line in South Africa to signal a path for a dispersed group of anti-racist protesters.

He was successful in this, as the hundreds of letters from viewers that he received in response to the debate testify. His performance energised anti-racist and anti-apartheid activists, lay and clerical Christians, as well as individuals affected by so-called Powellism. Huddleston offered Britons his faith in humanity as flexible, tolerant and inclusive, and his arguments were rooted in the language of reconciliation. Accordingly, in his vision, immigration was a source of opportunity, and an indication that Britain was embracing its role as a positive engine of change.

Tackling toxic rhetoric

Today, as in 1969, Huddleston’s alternative vision to Powell’s remains relevant. The animated public reaction to Huddleston’s television performance, which included bags of hate mail in addition to support, demonstrates the price and profit of standing up to toxic rhetoric.

When we assess the legacy of Powell’s speech, it is important to consider the diverse experience that fuelled the opposition to it. Huddleston’s vision for Britain, shaped by his tenure in South Africa, and the solidarity and political activity it spurred, should also be remembered.

Tal Zalmanovich, Postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the ERC funded project APARTHEID-STOPS that studies the transnational circulation of anti-apartheid expressive culture., Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Why bullshit hurts democracy more than lies

Why is bullshit so harmful?
Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA

Since the inauguration of Donald Trump as president, members of his administration have made many statements best described as misleading. During the administration’s first week, then-press secretary Sean Spicer claimed that Trump’s inauguration was the most well attended ever. More recently, Scott Pruitt claimed falsely to have received death threats as a result of his tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency. President Trump himself has frequently been accused of telling falsehoods – including, on the campaign trail, the claim that 35 percent of Americans are unemployed.

President Trump with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File

What is extraordinary about these statements is not that that they are false; it is that they are so obviously false. The function of these statements, it seems, is not to describe real events or facts. It is instead to do something more complex: to mark the political identity of the one telling the falsehood, or to express or elicit a particular emotion. The philosopher Harry Frankfurt uses the idea of bullshit as a way of understanding what’s distinctive about this sort of deception.

As a political philosopher, whose work involves trying to understand how democratic communities negotiate complex topics, I am dismayed by the extent to which bullshit is a part of modern life. And what bothers me the most is the fact that the bullshitter may do even more damage than the liar to our ability to reach across the political aisle.

Bullshit does not need facts

Democracy requires us to work together, despite our disagreements about values. This is easiest when we agree about a great many other things – including what evidence for and against our chosen policies would look like.

You and I might disagree about a tax, say; we disagree about what that tax would do and about whether it is fair. But we both acknowledge that eventually there will be evidence about what that tax does and that this evidence will be available to both of us.

The case I have made about that tax may well be undermined by some new fact. Biologist Thomas Huxley noted this in connection with science: A beautiful hypothesis may be slain by an “ugly fact.”

The same is true, though, for democratic deliberation. I accept that if my predictions about the tax prove wrong, that counts against my argument. Facts matter, even if they are unwelcome ones.

If we are allowed to bullshit without consequence, though, we lose sight of the possibility of unwelcome facts. We can instead rely upon whatever facts offer us the most reassurance.

Why this hurts society

In the absence of a shared standard for evidence, bullshit prevents us from engaging with others.
Mike Gifford, CC BY-NC

This bullshit, in my view, affects democratic disagreement – but it also affects how we understand the people with whom we are disagreeing.

When there is no shared standard for evidence, then people who disagree with us are not really making claims about a shared world of evidence. They are doing something else entirely; they are declaring their political allegiance or moral worldview.

Take, for instance, President Trump’s claim that he witnessed thousands of American Muslims cheering the fall of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. The claim has been thoroughly debunked. President Trump has, nonetheless, frequently repeated the claim – and has relied upon a handful of supporters who also claim to have witnessed an event that did not, in fact, occur.

The false assertion here serves primarily to indicate a moral worldview, in which Muslims are suspect Americans. President Trump, in defending his comments, begins with the assumption of disloyalty: the question to be asked, he insisted, is why “wouldn’t” such cheering have taken place?

Facts, in short, can be adjusted, until they match up with our chosen view of the world. This has the bad effect, though, of transforming all political disputes into disagreements about moral worldview. This sort of disagreement, though, has historically been the source of our most violent and intractable conflicts.

When our disagreements aren’t about facts, but our identities and our moral commitments, it is more difficult for us to come together with the mutual respect required by democratic deliberation. As philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau pithily put it, it is impossible for us to live at peace with those we regard as damned.

It is small wonder that we are now more likely to discriminate on the basis of party affiliation than on racial identity. Political identity is increasingly starting to take on a tribal element, in which our opponents have nothing to teach us.

The liar, in knowingly denying the truth, at least acknowledges that the truth is special. The bullshitter denies that fact – and it is a denial that makes the process of democratic deliberation more difficult.

Speaking back to bullshit

These thoughts are worrying – and it is reasonable to ask what how we might respond.

One natural response is to learn how to identify bullshit. My colleagues Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom have developed a class on precisely this topic. The syllabus of this class has now been taught at over 60 colleges and high schools.

Another natural response is to become mindful of our own complicity with bullshit and to find means by which we might avoid rebroadcasting it in our social media use.

Neither of these responses, of course, is entirely adequate, given the insidious and seductive power of bullshit. These small tools, though, may be all we have, and the success of American democracy may depend upon our using them well.

Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy, and Governance, University of Washington

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Lava, ash flows, mudslides and nasty gases: Good reasons to respect volcanoes

Lava flow moves in the Leilani Estates subdivision near Pahoa on the island of Hawaii, May 6, 2018.
USGS via AP, CC BY

Volcanoes are beautiful and awe-inspiring, but the ongoing eruption of Kilauea on Hawaii’s Big Island is showing how dangerous these events can be. So far this event has destroyed dozens of homes and displaced hundreds of people, but no deaths or serious injuries have been reported. Other volcanic eruptions have had deadlier impacts.

As a volcano scientist, I’m very aware of deadly volcanic eruptions can be, even the “nonexplosive” kind we’re seeing in Hawaii now. Since A.D. 1500, volcanic eruptions have killed more than 278,000 people.

Today there are 1,508 active volcanoes around the world. Each year, some 50 to 60 of them erupt. Around 800 million people live within volcanic risk zones. Volcanologists study and monitor volcanoes so that we can try to forecast future eruptions and predict how widely the damage could reach.

When mountains explode

Volcanic eruptions can be broadly divided into two types: explosive and nonexplosive. Explosive eruptions occur when magma, which is molten rock in the ground, contains gas. These eruptions are so energetic that the magma is pulverized into small rock particles, called volcanic ash.

Explosive eruptions are responsible for the highest number of volcanic-related deaths. These events can distribute volcanic ash hundreds of miles from the volcano, causing billions of dollars in air travel disruption, water supply pollution and damage to power lines, structures and machinery. Krakatoa in the Pacific (1883) and Mount St. Helens in Washington state (1980) are examples of explosive eruptions.

U.S. Geological Survey scientists recount their experiences before, during and after the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, which killed 57 people, including a USGS researcher.

The most dangerous features of these events are volcanic ash flows – swift, ground-hugging avalanches of searing hot gas, ash and rock that destroy everything in their path. Ash flows produced during the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy entombed the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. In 1902, ash flows from the eruption of Mount Pelee on the Caribbean island of Martinique killed more than 29,000 people.

Lava flows and fountains

Nonexplosive eruptions occur when little to no gas is contained within the magma. These events produce small fire fountains and lava flows, such as those currently erupting from Kilauea.

Nonexplosive eruptions tend to be less deadly than explosive eruptions, but can still cause great disruption and destruction. Eruptions at Hawaiian-style volcanoes can occur at the summit or along the flanks. New eruptions typically begin with the opening of a fissure, or long crack, that spews molten lava into the air and sometimes forms lava flows.

As reports from Hawaii are showing, lava tends to flow rather slowly. Typically it is easy to outrun a lava flow but impossible to stop or divert it. People can escape, but homes and property are vulnerable.

Lava flows and fountains consuming homes and property in Leilani Estates on the island of Hawaii.

Both explosive and nonexplosive eruptions release volcanic gases, producing a hazardous blend called volcanic fog, or VOG. VOG contains aerosols – fine particles created when sulfur dioxide reacts with moisture in the air. It can cause health problems, damage crops and pollute water supplies.

These particles have global consequences when eruptions eject them into the stratosphere, where they block sunlight, cooling Earth’s climate. This effect can cause widespread crop failure and famine and is responsible for many historic volcanic-related deaths. For example, the 1815 explosive eruption of Tambora in Indonesia caused 92,000 starvation-related deaths.

VOG (volcanic fog), produced by gases from Kilauea, hangs low over the Hawaiian Islands on December 3, 2008, producing unhealthy sulfur dioxide concentrations.
NASA Earth Observatory

Snow-capped volcanoes, such as those in the Cascades and Alaska, can produce mudflows, or lahars. These hazards form when ice and snow melt during an eruption, or ash is washed loose from the surface by heavy rain.

Mudflows have tremendous energy and can travel up to 60 miles per hour down river valleys. They are capable of destroying bridges, structures, and anything else in their path. A mudflow from the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia killed 25,000 people.

Getting ready for the next eruption

By studying past and current eruptions, volcanologists constantly refine our ability to predict and mitigate the hazards and risk associated with volcanic activity. But people who live within range of volcanic hazards also can minimize their risk.

All residents of these zones should develop household plans for evacuating or sheltering in place and prepare emergency kits with first aid supplies, essential medicines, food and water. Events like the Kilauea eruption are reminders that preparing before natural disasters can make communities more resilient when these events strike.

Brittany Brand, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, Boise State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.