Sunday, December 16, 2018

Why the ANC itself is the chief impediment to Ramaphosa’s agenda



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South African’s President Cyril Ramaphosa. One of the biggest obstacles to his success is the party he leads, the ANC. Fllickr/GCIS

Even his detractors would concede that Cyril Ramaphosa has greatly improved the political atmosphere in South Africa since assuming the presidency in February 2018. True, the scope for any further deterioration was minimal. So squalid was his predecessor’s rule that virtually any new leader from outside the Zuma patronage machine would have offered some respite and improvement.

That said, Ramaphosa provided a reassuring presence and brought an impressive skills set to the position. He was considered a safe pair of hands, a skilled negotiator, conversant in international diplomacy and economics, untainted by corruption, and a competent administrator – all qualities sorely lacking in his predecessor.

He has drawn on a substantial reservoir of goodwill – at home and abroad - from people who have been only too keen to give him the benefit of the doubt. As a result 2018 has been a year of relatively easy wins. But that indulgence is unlikely to continue long into 2019.

Merely improving on Zuma’s shameful presidency is to set the bar of achievement extremely low. Ramaphosa must deliver substantial improvements in 2019. He needs to improve the quality of governance. He must also combine economic progress with social justice. And do so in the heat of a general election campaign which is likely to be fiercely contested and in which he requires an emphatic victory to give credibility to his leadership.

Unfortunately for Ramaphosa, however, all the principal barriers to his success resides within the African National Congress (ANC) itself. The broader national fixation with the malign nature of Zuma’s presidency perhaps allowed an underlying fact to be obscured, namely that the country has a systemic ANC problem rather than simply a Zuma problem. As he tries to advance his agenda Ramaphosa will confront this political reality sooner rather than later.

A toxic legacy

Ramaphosa has been handed a poisoned chalice. The nine-year Zuma presidency left South Africa in dire straits. The country remains one of the most unequal societies on earth. Anticipated growth is below 1%, unemployment is catastrophically high at over 27% and 12 million people continue to live in absolute poverty.

And if that wasn’t enough, the education system (the best long-term hope for inclusive economic development) is chronically under-performing, corruption has become all pervasive and the country attracts insufficient levels of foreign direct investment.

Zuma also left an array of state institutions and state-owned enterprises in a dysfunctional condition, often systematically looted by private interests around the former president.

Ramaphosa has been actively seeking to address this array of problems. His agenda is both congested and complex. He is trying to restore clean, orderly and functional government and to build a state capable of driving development. He’s also working to halt and reverse the state capture and corruption of the Zuma era which is now being exposed by the Zondo commission.

But instead of having a party that’s working with him, the ANC often acts as a drag on his ability to fix things, and is often at odds with his agenda.

Why the ANC’s the problem

The ANC is a cumbersome and unwieldy instrument with which to deliver effective government. Its eclectic character hinders decision making. For fear of antagonising various factions within the broad church, equivocation replaces policy clarity.

Policies are replaced by bland declarations, a lowest common denominator approach designed to preserve ANC unity. In this sense the ANC is serving as a brake on the country moving forward in other ways too.

In addition, Ramaphosa’s commitment to restore constitutional rule is odds with the ANC’s culture of exceptionalism which drives its politics. A combination of its role as leader in the struggle and its huge election victories has caused the party to view itself as a unique political actor. It considers itself synonymous with the nation. And it dismisses its opponents as illegitimate or as threats to liberation of which it remains the sole custodian.

Ramaphosa’s commitment also clashes with the long-standing ANC commitment to use the state as an instrument of its will. This is an approach that long predated the Zuma presidency. Ramaphosa’s desire for a capable state and his efforts to clean up state owned enterprises and promote efficiency and expertise fundamentally contradicts this approach. It also is at odds with the ANC practice of deploying functionaries throughout the state apparatus. This ensures that party loyalty is prioritised over anything else.

This means that Ramaphosa’s emphasis on technocratic capabilities will not be allowed to proceed unchallenged.

Embedded corruption

This brings us to the final ANC obstacle in his path.

Corruption is now deeply embedded in the ANC at all levels. In parts of the country it more closely resembles a criminal enterprise than a political party. Tender corruption, the rampant plundering of state assets, and kickbacks have become the new normal.

Attempting to turn back this tidal wave of malfeasance will lie beyond the powers of one individual, however well intentioned. A sustained anti-corruption crusade will pose an existential threat to the material self-interest of ANC elites. It will generate intense resistance even if, for appearances sake, that opposition will have to be couched in pseudo-political language.

Complicating Ramaphosa’s position still further is his relatively fragile position in the ANC - a product of his narrow leadership victory in December 2017 - and the fact that he still has to deal with a divided National Executive Committee and an ANC “top six”. Both contain the very gangsterish and corrupt elements he is committed to defeating.

Ramaphosa finds himself in the unenviable position of having to use the ANC as an instrument to clean up the state when the deep-seated corruption is largely the product of the very same organisation. Noble intentions and talk of “new dawns” notwithstanding, nobody should hold their breath waiting for success on that front.


The Conversation

James Hamill, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

McDonald's is a social and healthcare burden – whatever its charity PR might indicate




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aboutmcdonalds/flickr, CC BY-SA


Stepping into a McDonald’s in Dublin, the front window is covered with little yellow cut-outs of children’s hands. Donation boxes are displayed prominently on the counter top when you order. By donating €1 with your Happy Meal order, McDonald’s can transform you, body and soul, by putting tasty food in your child’s belly and a warm glow in your heart.

The donation goes to Ronald McDonald House, a charity whose Founding Mission Partner is McDonald’s. The charity offers vital accommodation to the parents of sick children. Its latest fundraising campaign aims to build a 53-room house at Ireland’s new national children’s hospital. A vital, noble cause, but how and why is it related to the burger and fries you just bought? Let’s step back a little and view the fuller picture.

McDonald’s has sustained catastrophic brand damage in the last two decades, as the tide turns against both the industry of fast food and its brand behemoth, due to health, labour and environmental criticisms. McDonaldisation, McJobs, McJunk, McLibel are all common currency to describe the low-wages, precariousness, slick marketing and poor foods, cultural imperialism and economically homogenising force that McDonald’s represents.

Of course, there have been recent moves on the part of the brand to make its Happy Meals more healthy, but this step blindsides us from McDonald’s most important strategy of recent years: the dedicated way the brand builds an enchanted, seamless, full sensory experience. To put it simply, it’s hard to order those carrot sticks in a place that smells of delectable French fries and has touch screen menus that foreground big strawberry sundaes.





McDonald’s: bringing people together?
RonaldMcDonaldHC/Flickr, CC BY-SA



Further undermining its “healthy” new image, consumer research has demonstrated that adding healthy additions to what is otherwise an unhealthy eating environment actually prompts people to eat even more unhealthily. McDonald’s sales say it all: while they have added salads and fruit to their menus, this is only a tiny fraction of their market. This reflects the deep disconnect between their corporate social responsibility speak and their strategic ambition to “convert casual to committed customers” and “enhance snack and treat offerings”.

From marketing to PR


Aside from straight-up marketing and advertising, McDonalds, like other corporations, relies on public relations strategies that are less tangible and take indirect paths into our consciousness. McDonald’s PR positions the company as caring and moral, and as having the same concerns as the community.

This happens through a cognitive process that every first year business student learns: classical conditioning. Take a thing that evokes an innate, intense emotional response (a cute puppy, a sunset, a sick child), and pair it with a thing that doesn’t evoke the same response (a toilet roll, a perfume, a fast-food restaurant). Over time, a powerful meaning transfer happens. The second thing comes to evoke an emotion similar to the first.

McDonald’s cannot advertise the golden arches on hospital buildings, or persuade paediatricians to give Big Mac stickers to kids. Such direct methods are technically legal in most countries in the world but would backfire because the brand commands so little trust or respect.


Instead, McDonald’s frames itself as a facilitator through which community can gather. It “donates” money to charity. It “allows” the charity to place permanent collection boxes prominently on its counter tops, helping customers to help this worthy cause. It “gives” a portion of every sale of its Happy Meal. It “lends” the charity crucial expertise through having McDonald’s management on the charity board of trustees. It “celebrates” its employees who volunteer their time and energy to the cause. It “helps” organise events like the “Pop Tab” campaign, which encourages children to collect tabs from soft-drink cans in exchange for a pledge from the company. It “gives permission” to Ronald McDonald House to use McDonald’s brand assets and other corporate resources.

It’s a classic PR strategy – you appropriate the signs and meaning that comes from the roots of community and background the brand itself. This puts the brand in the character role most loved in all mythic tales: the humble, generous and deeply kind servant, only too happy to help. McDonald’s successfully uses the gratitude parents naturally feel for what should be a basic right – to be beside their children when they are sick.

The link that Ronald McDonald House creates between itself and sick children is not just positive, it is sacrosanct. The final result of this 40-year PR strategy? Taking care of sick children seems like an impossible task without the help of a fast-food brand.





Kids get involved in a Ronald McDonald House project, 2012.
Maryland GovPics/Flickr, CC BY



Who’s responsible?


In most countries there are not enough public resources to care for the carers of sick children. They are “externality costs” that the health system cannot, or chooses not, to take on. The medical model draws a boundary around the sick child as the physical body in the hospital bed, taking away the tendrils that attach them to what sustains them emotionally and physically: their family.

Covering the cost of this seems to be off the table for public health systems. As a result, we outsource this extended care to the highest bidder. Yet our governments absorb other externality costs: health budgets pay, for example, for the consequences of obesity. There is a causal link between food brand marketing and obesity, but no food company incorporates that cost into its bottom line.





There is a direct link between fast food marketing and obesity.
Napocska/Shutterstock.com



Concerns about the presence of Ronald McDonald in children’s hospitals don’t arise from a lack of appreciation for the good work the charity does, nor even from anti-commercial sentiment or smug distaste for a junk brand, but out of recognition that the dangers to public health are unacceptably high, however pernicious and unquantifiable they are. One could target chocolate and football or beer and rugby instead, but the provision of indirect care to the sickest and most vulnerable citizens within Ireland’s flagship paediatric hospital by Ronald McDonald House is a good place for the frontline in the war on obesity to be drawn.

We pay for obesity. For example, Ireland’s cost of obesity is predicted to reach €5.4 billion by 2030. McDonald’s support of the Ronald McDonald charity in Ireland, meanwhile, is €90,000. So from one perspective, McDonald’s is not giving at all, but taking. McDonald’s is a social, fiscal, healthcare burden in Ireland and presumably everywhere else it sells its delicious, convenient, cheap food that is high in sugar, salt and fat.

Our failure to mitigate this is symptomatic of a moralistic view of obesity as a personal choice, despite the fact that the nature of the spread of the obesity epidemic is also down to dietary environmental factors, such as the widespread introduction of cheap and potent sweetening agents such as high fructose corn syrup.

McDonald’s should be less concerned about their public relations and market share and more concerned about a changing sentiment. There is ever growing public support for the implementation of ambitious and sweeping public health initiatives like complete bans on marketing junk food to children and minimum unit pricing for alcohol. Legislators and policy makers should therefore feel encouraged to do their bit to protect us from these undeniable harms.The Conversation

Norah Campbell, Assistant Professor in Marketing, Trinity College Dublin and Francis Finucane, Professor of Medicine, National University of Ireland Galway

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

South Africa won't create jobs unless it settles on a new social compact




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A significant number of South Africans can’t find jobs and scrounge for a living on the sidelines of the economy.
Shutterstock

Nearly a week has passed since South Africa’s 2018 jobs summit. The two-day gathering produced some useful agreements between the social partners: government, organised labour and business (essentially, big business).

This was the fourth jobs summit in 20 years. The frequency of attempts to find a solution to the country’s unemployment problems isn’t surprising given that South Africa has one of the highest jobless rates in the world. The unemployment rate has increased from under 22% in 2008 to the current rate of 27.2%.

But the record on delivering results has been mixed, to say the least.

The first jobs summit in the post 1994 era was held in 1998 when Nelson Mandela’s presidency was nearing its end and amid a developing country debt crisis. It achieved very little. The next one – the 2003 Growth and Development Summit – achieved significant agreements. But these were poorly monitored and implemented.

Six years later in 2009 social partners agreed on a framework to respond to the global financial crisis. In spite of the measures introduced by agreements reached at the gathering, South Africa lost nearly a million jobs.

Undoubtedly the outcome of the recent summit is positive. Job-saving elements of the 2009 agreement have been revived. There are forward-looking commitments such as finance for the black industrialist scheme and a focus on the export of manufactured products. There are initiatives for small business support, technical training and a mechanism for the absorption of graduates into the economy.

But perhaps the most important outcome was that a Presidential jobs council will be established to monitor progress.

As welcome as these developments are, the agreement doesn’t explicitly acknowledge that there might be some fundamental issues in the approach to development and job creation in South Africa. In a paper just published Brian Levy and I identify what these might be.

We argue that the implicit social compact of the 1990s laid a poor foundation for job creating growth in South Africa. Our view is that unless South Africa revisits the implicit and explicit deals struck at that time, the chances of making serious inroads into unemployment are remote.

But is South Africa in the kind of crisis as Mauritius was in 1968 and Ireland in 1988, where key social players were forced to review the social compact and work together towards a coherent developmental model? And do the social partners have strong enough leaders to arrive at suitable agreements?

These are the questions excitingly raised by the outcome of jobs summit, and should, in our view, be the preoccupation of the President’s jobs council.

The 1990s compact


An elite bargain over the country’s economic framework formed an essential part of the foundation for a democratic South Africa. The context of the bargaining process included the capitulation of the communist block, economic stagnation in most African countries, and a relentless campaign by the white South African business community for government not to intervene in the economic framework.

There was the threat of flight of capital and white citizens who were virtually monopoly owners of wealth and key economic skills and networks. What emerged was an apparently strong commitment to market-opening reforms.

The result is well known. The economic policies emphasised what was then called “getting the prices right and what we call "disciplining reforms”. This included: trade and financial liberalisation, fiscal restraint, tougher competition laws and a conservative mandate for the central bank.

Conversely, policies lacked on the side of interventionist mechanisms that were effective in some more successful developing countries. These included support for industrial innovation, cluster development and industrial policy which would have encouraged domestic investment in job creating growth.

Policy choices weren’t the only problem. Key players in the economy were pursuing new agendas as their options had broadened with the end of South Africa’s economic isolation and the repression of apartheid.

South African corporations were focused on narrowing their South African operations and spreading their activities and assets abroad. While they cast off some non-core assets, the corporations remain extraordinarily powerful.

At the same time, the trade unions used their bargaining power with government to strengthen worker rights. All labour laws had to go through the newly formed National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC) and could not go through until all parties were happy. The result was that big business, which always dominated the business delegation, agreed to labour laws that they could manage with their sophisticated human resource departments and because of the choices they could exercise. However, these laws were not all easy to implement for small and medium companies.

In addition, the reformed industrial training system was poorly designed which set back industrial training for many years.

The market opening reforms combined with the labour reforms achieved very little in the way of supporting dynamic investment and innovation. So, the elite pact that emerged reflected what powerful stakeholders were prepared to agree too – not a coherent package derived from carefully thought out trade-offs.

Compared with outcomes of more successful social pacts like Mauritius in the late 1960s and Ireland in the late 1980s, South Africa’s social compact failed. And over time commitment to the elements of the compact waned.

In a different world


In a different world, perhaps, had South African elites agreed on a clear developmental model and had they strived for suitable strategies, the outcome might have been very different. There would have been a much stronger emphasis on the more interventionist kinds of supportive industrial policies.

It’s not too late. More recently, industrial policy has formed part of the approach of government as seen in major initiatives in several sectors.

Informed analysts in South Africa are now asking “Where is growth going to come from?” Skilled people are streaming out the country as they did in Mauritius in the 1960s and in Ireland in the 1980s. Could it be that this is the moment for a coherent, developmental social compact?The Conversation

Alan Hirsch, Professor and Director of The Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance, University of Cape Town

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

South Africa's stimulus package shows power is finely balanced in the ANC




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Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic stimulus package shows that he and his political allies are in charge of economic policy.
GCIS

The economic stimulus package announced by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa shows that he and his political allies are, contrary to much analysis in recent months, in charge of economic policy.

Ramaphosa insists that it is a ‘bold’ attempt to initiate economic change which will particularly benefit youth, women and small businesses. It rests partly, he adds, on ‘significant regulatory reform’.

But the package is more interesting for what it says about the politics of economic decision-making in South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) than for its likely impact on the economy.

Certainly, it does not signal readiness by Ramaphosa and his allies to use their power to introduce much-needed reforms. In an article in the financial press explaining the thinking behind the package, Ramaphosa acknowledged that it rested not on new ideas but on trying to get the government to do what it has already said it will do. He wrote that it was “tempting to unleash novel policy directions” but it was far more important “to build a track record of successful implementation.”

Much of the package depends, therefore, on trying to ensure that government lives up to commitments it has already made – on, for example, funding infrastructure and allocating broadband spectrum licenses – rather than striking out in a new direction.

It is hardly surprising, then, that critics to the President’s left complain that there is no change in the government’s market-friendly approach. Indeed, a business chamber noted that it repeated much that the government had been promising to do over the past five years. The package does not depart from the policy framework which has guided government thinking on the economy for more than two decades.

This might make it seem like a non-event. In reality, the background to the package means that it is politically important.

Timing


The package’s details were announced in late September two months after Ramaphosa first
announced it was on the way. At the time, he also revealed that the ANC had changed its mind and would seek a constitutional amendment to allow it to expropriate land without compensation, having previously insisted that it did not need to change the constitution to do so. Both announcements followed a meeting of the ANC’s national executive committee which makes decisions between conferences. This strongly suggested that the national executive committee had insisted on both the land and the stimulus decisions.

This seemed to send an important message on the balance of power within the national executive committee on economic issues - that Ramaphosa and his allies had been caught off guard by supporters of former president Jacob Zuma.
Ramaphosa narrowly won the ANC presidency whose leadership, including the national executive committee, is divided almost evenly between his supporters and those who backed Zuma. His backers, who are inclined towards a market economy approach, are opposed to the patronage politics of Zuma’s faction, which has come to be associated with corruption and ‘state capture’ (using government for personal enrichment).

Ramaphosa’s chief mandate was to tackle corruption and ‘state capture’ and it was assumed that the Zuma group would try to stop him. But his opponents seem to have shifted their strategy. Instead of, as expected, complaining that anti-corruption measures were doing the bidding of white-owned corporations, they demanded change on policy issues such as land. This seemed to have wrong-footed Ramaphosa and his supporters, forcing them to react rather than to steer the ANC’s agenda.

The stimulus package seemed to stem from the same source as the land announcement – a push by the Zuma group to shape economic policy. All of this suggested that the Zuma faction was successfully pushing ANC policy in a less market-friendly direction.

But the fact that the package is firmly within the current framework signals clearly that Ramaphosa and his supporters are, after all, in charge of economic policy. It shows that they decide the government’s response to economic challenges despite the Zuma faction’s strong presence.

This does not mean that they are directing the ANC and government economic agenda. They still seem to be reacting to pressures for policy change from their rivals.

This is not surprising. Poverty and inequality are still strong realities in South Africa and many black professionals and business people still believe that they do not enjoy equal opportunities. If Ramaphosa and those who agree with him simply dismiss the calls for change, they will appear to be defending the indefensible. This allows its opponents to insist on government action – but they do not control the details when the decision to take action is turned into a concrete policy or programme.

That they were able to decide the details of the stimulus package is important if we bear in mind that the economy is in recession, which should increase pressure for more government spending – a pressure which they resisted. And, if they are able to shape the details of the stimulus package, it seems likely that they are equally able to shape policy changes on land and other issues, such as national health insurance, which are likely to be sources of pressure for change in the near future.

What is not clear is whether they are able to decide what will change – rather than just react to what their opponents want. To do this, they need to move beyond their current framework and to seek to take the economy in a new direction, which would tackle the exclusion of millions from its benefits while preserving, and strengthening, its ability to produce.

Need for a new path


It is now widely agreed that a new path is needed. Ramaphosa’s group will, therefore, remain on the defensive as long as the voices insisting that change is needed are those of their opponents. There is no contradiction between taking seriously the need for growth and investment and steering the economy in a direction which will open opportunities for many more people. On the contrary, the one depends on the other.

Given this, the voices calling for change – as well as those deciding what form it should take – should be those of the faction which insists it wants to get the economy working for all. It should not wait for the group which sees calls for radical change as a means of siphoning off the public’s resources to a small group of connected people to place the need for change on the government’s agenda.The Conversation

Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

A view of Johannesburg through lenses from a different era




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Carmel Building in Diagonal Street, Johannesburg.
Museum Africa (left) Yeshiel Panchia (right)



Johannesburg was always a much photographed place from its earliest days. It was a city that grew up with photographers and their cameras. As a town of migrants and immigrants, people wanted to send postcards and photographic souvenirs back home.

Some proof is in a new book, Johannesburg Then and Now, by history blogger, Marc Latilla. It is a series of photographic juxtapositions of early photographs of the city – dating from the 1880s to the 1940s – with contemporary images of the same street scene or building by photographer Yeshiel Panchia.

The book is descriptive rather than analytical, with the emphasis on Johannesburg buildings, places and streets and not its people. Latilla’s love and passion for his city comes through in his descriptions.

Young city


At a mere 132 years Johannesburg is a young city compared with cities of the world. London and Rome go back over 2000 years.

It started as a mining camp with a gold bonanza once George Harrison had found gold on the Main Reef in 1886. The new mining settlement was named Johannesburg – the origins of the name and who precisely was the “Johannes” of Johannesburg is still in dispute. The camp grew over time to a city. Today it is a metropolis that dominates the province of Gauteng, both as the provincial capital and the financial heartland of South Africa.

Johannesburg is a fractured city, divided in all sorts of ways. Geographically it’s split by the mines of the Witwatersrand - one can still see their remains south of the city while the north has a very different landscape.

Another divide was created by the railway which cut the town in half with the most affluent suburbs to the north and the less affluent to the south.

The city’s economic divide was also evident in the architectural styles of the residential areas which reflected status: from the working class, to the lower and upper middle class, and then at the very top end the grand estates on the northern ridges for the Randlords and newly enriched capitalist class.

The town was also divided by race from its earliest days. While there was always economic integration, segregated residential areas for different racial groups were the norm. The township of Soweto was created in the 1930s when the white government started separating black people from white people.

This policy of racial and class separation was perpetuated further when apartheid became official policy in 1948. It also led to forced removals of black people to townships outside the “white” city.

Growing in circles


Johannesburg has always grown in concentric circles. Municipal boundaries were periodically extended, mapped and basic services of water, sewerage, lighting, tramways financed by an increasing number of ratepayers brought into the net to support the city. Soweto, once the internationally recognised site of the 1976 youth uprising, is now part of the city, but so is the glitzy new glass and concrete post-modern city of Sandton.

The Johannesburg that has been captured in this book though is the old Johannesburg; what was called the Central Business District and its surrounding suburbs. This is Johannesburg from 1886 to a date more or less 50 years later when the city celebrated its jubilee with the Great Empire exhibition at Milner Park in 1936.

I should declare an interest – I was first asked by Penguin Books if they could use an image of an old early title deed that I had written about and then to give the book a preliminary early opinion. As historian I found myself drawn in to assist in some fact checking and comments to help the author. Of course the selection of photographs and his commentary remain his entirely.

The old photographs were taken by countless unknown and mainly anonymous photographers. They are remarkable in their own right. It was so much more difficult to take and make a photograph in 1900 than in our digital age. Those old photos in black and white are works of art as much as are the perfect colour and light reflected images of today. The sources of the old photographs are primarily from collections held by the University of the Witwatersrand, Museum Africa and the Transnet Heritage library. The early photographs are tend to be undated, so that the “then” can be any time from circa 1890 to the 1930s and even later, while the now photographs are all in colour and clearly belong to the last few years.

Superb find


My favourite photo is the old aerial view of the Harrow Road redevelopment when the first Johannesburg freeway was engineered (Harrow has since been renamed after a famous Johannesburger, the liberation struggle stalwart Joe Slovo). The photo allows us to see precisely how Harrow Road was widened and changed direction in the fifties. This single photo is a superb find.

A book such as this makes a contribution to heritage because it captures, assembles and documents the old and now the new. Where old photographs have been found recording what a particular building looked like and the building is still there, such photographic documentation strengthens the heritage preservation case.

However, none of the grit, crime, grime, litter or lack of maintenance we battle against today is visible in the modern photographs. This is the Johannesburg we don’t see: the crisis of homelessness and densification of dwellings. Who, for example, would know in the photo of Plein Street park that it is actually now a dormitory area for dozens of homeless people without jobs? Is it the city or history or harsh economic realities that has failed them? Of course one can argue that modernization and urbanization always left victims and the city of gold did not bring fabled wealth to all .

Johannesburg Then and Now is a fascinating book. It’s important for cities to preserve their pasts , because “Roots” matter as much as “shoots”. This book can perhaps start a discussion about what ought to be appreciated and “saved”. The book will remind city planners to include heritage in their planning for a 21st century city.

Johannnesburg Then and Now is published by Penguin.The Conversation

Kathy Munro, Honorary professor in the School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.