in-the-corridors

There is land everywhere - why is government hogging it?

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:47:06 +0100

As the population of Earth nears the 7 billion mark, and urban sprawl hangs like a smoggy spectre over the planet, the availability of land is a pressing yet volatile issue. This is a paradox, if not plain stupid, given how much wasted land is available right in our cities.

I have to fly to Parliament almost every week and as the ageing BA jet flies over Johannesburg and Cape Town, it gives one a bird’s eye view of the large quantities of wasted resources represented by our land use in both cities. Up there in the air you can't see the by-law restrictions, the hectare or square metre cost, the inadequate bulk infrastructure services and the distance to transportation links.

But there is one thing you can see is… Land! There is lots of it. Most of our cities are spread out due to urban sprawl caused by the cheap fuel prices of the 1950s and 60s and apartheid’s special planning. We should never have let our cities sprawl out. It has made transportation expensive and added to air pollution. But there is another way of looking at things.

Up there in the clouds when you look down, you see the large swathes of unutilised or under-utilised land. We have reprocessed mine dumps, polluted lakes and dams, abandoned schools with sports fields (in the middle of Soweto), unproductive small holdings and industrial land lying vacant. It’s a shame really. That land could be put to better use. When you then consider that city councils are trying desperately to find enough land for shack dwellers in places like Alexandra, the N1 City Development, Delft, Umlazi and so on, it seems a shame that we have hectares of readily available land lying “fallow”. To say that there is a shortage of land is simply nonsense – there is plenty, if you care to look.

The problem is that much of the land is in the wrong hands. National and provincial governments own lots of it. The metro councils and state-owned enterprises own some as well, and then there is disused industrial and mining land, which is privately owned, often abandoned or disused in city centres. In each case, this land could be redeveloped to provide accommodation and work in economically active parts of our cities. What it takes is some lateral thinking and a very cooperative government working in concert at all three tiers to succeed and Tokyo Sexwale’s housing headache could be wiped out, probably in 10 years or less, along with serious long-term job creation. Let me sketch out a few examples:

East London, city of my birth, now known as Buffalo City. The old Railway Workshops, where my father spent the better part of 53 years remanufacturing steam locomotives lies derelict, adjacent to another piece of land also owned by Transnet and leased out as a small business hive. This land represents probably the largest piece of unused urban real estate in Buffalo City and is strategically located in the run-down CBD of East London. Of course, Transnet puts a high value on the land and won’t part with it for love or money.

It could, however, be transferred between national government and the local or provincial government for redevelopment at almost no cost. It is a prime piece of real estate that could be used to revitalise the downtown area of East London by providing housing in two- or three-story apartments, similar to the Newtown area of Johannesburg for previously disadvantaged residents currently living far from the city centre. The piece of land is so large that it could also house a brand new shopping mall, opening up the city centre and providing work and a customer base in one development. Couple that with a redevelopment of the central train station and you would have a revitalised city with the largest new development and private capital formation in its history… if only Transnet would part with the unused land (They probably want a huge cash payout making it non-viable).

In Cape Town we have a similar situation. The military owns large tracts of land, also in some cases under-utilised. Wingfield, Youngsfield and Langebaan – all have air force applications. But how many air force installations do we really need in one small geographical corner of the country? The city has, on several occasions, tried buying one or other of these installations to build low-cost housing for the thousands of under-privileged South Africans, but the air force wants Rands - lots of them.

When you add in the cost of bulk infrastructure, the job becomes prohibitive. However, again, the land is already owned by the state and under-used. There are several other pieces of land owned by the military in the greater Cape Peninsula and again they are mostly underutilised. Can the military not rationalise its operations (it can barely afford the jet fuel in any event) and inexpensively transfer at least one of these land parcels to provide a few thousand new homes to the homeless in Cape Town? The city would be only too glad to pay for the water, electrical and sewerage services if the land wasn’t costing an arm and a leg, one assumes.

In Johannesburg, there are many parcels of land also, which have already been identified – Frankenwold (partly owned by Wits University) and adjacent to a squatter settlement (in Alexandra) and the Gautrain station. But there are others. The re-mined land to the left of the N3 (southbound) highway and at the entrance to Germiston, provides an ideal opportunity to re-invigorate the aging and obscured CBD of Germiston. It’s a sizable piece of land, of course, currently unsuitable for human habitation without some serious earthworks and environmental rehabilitation, but it can be done. Again cost may be a limiting factor, but the land is in a prime position and much closer to work and shopping opportunities than the Far East Rand townships. In fact, there is much industrial land, and many small-holdings in the greater Germiston area that are unused or underutilised. It takes political will, thinking out of the box and new kinds of urban planning. Nelson Mandela Bay has similar tracts of underutilised land as do Durban and Tshwane.

Yes, these and other cities would find these projects very large ones to undertake, but we have a large housing problem and a large jobless population that could be assisted. Instead of building RDP settlements on the fringes of cities, in each of our metros we have ample land, if we can get the politics and bulk infrastructure sorted out - together with some environmental issues. But please, let’s stop pretending we have a shortage of land or an absence of ideas - just get in a plane and fly over our cities if you can’t think of any options. DM

LABOUR BUDGET VOTE – IAN OLLIS SHADOW LABOUR MINISTER Parliament

Sat, 28 May 2011 16:45:32 +0100

Madam Speaker/Chairperson

The grand toilet war of election 2011 has come and gone and here we are considering government service delivery again with the 2011 labour budget vote and business plan.

Treasury and cabinet have approved a larger budget for the Department of Labour (DoL) and, together with several virements in the last financial year, the department and its entities are receiving a slightly bigger slice of the pie than we had previously received. As we approach the new financial year, the labour department has seen an unprecedented amount of change that has left its staff and entities reeling. We had the DG of labour suspended and sacked; we had the long-standing minister of labour sacked and the chairperson of the labour committee replaced also. We have welcomed our new labour minister, new labour committee chairperson and we hear rumours of a new DG about to be appointed. What we must assess is whether this department is running at full steam and whether it is delivering on its mandate for all South Africans. With 1 in every 4 South Africans now voting DA, we have a vested interest in seeing that it does run smoothly. Our 1 in 4 South Africans would expect us to look after their interests and do so we shall. Incidentally, looking at the election results, if you add the total votes for the cities of Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay and Pretoria, the ANC received 911006 votes, whilst the DA received 1053267 votes, so if Jimmy Manyi had managed to remove the oversupply of certain race groups to the Eastern Cape and Gauteng, he would have handed us another two metro cities! But I digress!

So let’s look at some of the Labour Department detail:

The Sheltered Employment Factories are in a terrible state. Their subsidies have been reduced and government departments no longer have to purchase from these factories. Without new markets for their products, they are slowly going down the financial drain and instead of providing more job opportunities for disabled citizens, a few thousand less people now work for the Sheltered Employment Factories than did in 1994. However there are plenty of ways for disabled people to be sought: The Compensation Fund deals daily with South Africans who have become permanently disabled and now cannot work. Why doesn’t the DoL hand their names over to the Sheltered Employment Factories instead of trying to run an employment agency of their own? We have military veterans from the liberation movements who also sit without work, and some are disabled. Silo thinking! Our 1 in 4 South Africans would expect us to demand better co-operation from government departments. Our people deserve better!

Moving skills development from the Department of Labour to the Department of Higher Education (DHE) has been extremely messy and badly managed to the extent that the Auditor General cannot comment on the financials of Skills Fund. The DHE is, I am told, going to get a disclaimer as a result of the botched handover process. Proper governance criteria or accounting procedures were never adopted at the department of Origin -Labour Department - and have similarly not been set up in the DHE. What a mess! There are question marks over where the money went during the handover period. One version of the story circulating among departmental staff is that money is being run through the banking accounts of Minister Nzimande because too few bank accounts were opened timeously for the transfer! I hope that post-audit, these irregularities will be sorted out and the Department of Labour’s hand in this mess will be clarified. Where is Mr. Manyi when we need an explanation?

But there’s more: I have personally conducted visits, to offices of the Department of Labour in Pretoria, Johannesburg and elsewhere and discovered a whole range of training staff sitting idle in government buidlings. Now before you laugh let me explain. They are what remains of the skills development staff of the Department of Labour. It seems that the former Minister, Mdladlana, transferred the budget for skills development and training to Higher Education as requested, but, without telling anyone, kept the staff going in office after office in the DoL. Unfortunately they no longer have a budget to enable them to pay for the training courses that they had been offering. Now they sit, side by side, watching soccer, or finding stapling work to do. Oops!

I now believe that Mr. Moratoba will be moving these staff into the new government employment agency. Except that we are still arguing in Nedlac over the content of the enabling legislation, so I suppose they will have to continue watching soccer for a while longer! Some stapling for you, minister? Unfortunately Minister, the 1 in 4 South Africans that we represent want us to do better. Some of that money is their tax money after all!

The Taining Lay-Off Programme has been an equal disaster. Under this programme, about 7500 workers have been re-trained. However, almost R3Billion was pumped into it! This huge fund is still sitting there while people in SA have no jobs! What a disaster for the government! Let’s be honest, it was a great idea in theory, but there was simply no execution. None of the Seta’s has yet been able to account for how much they spent on the Training Lay-Off scheme either. How much did they use? No one knows? How much per person? No-one knows that either. I only hope that the Auditor-General is taking note of this problem. The DA’s 1 in 4 voters is certainly taking note.

The Essential Services Committee needs an urgent intervention also. It is essentially dysfunctional at present and has no real budget to run operations. It does have a General Minimum Services Agreement but this does not address the real concerns because it is too generic. It does not adequately clarify who may or may not go on strike and therefore, it is largely ignored by unions and employers alike. 1 in 4 of those South Africans now voting for the DA are affected by this chaotic situation and Minister we request urgent action to improve the operations and efficacy of the Essential Services Committee and a budget that will assist it to function. What can you do to improve this situation for the workers?

My colleague will be examining the Compensation Fund and the UIF this year, and I will not step on his toes, but I must just say that there has been no real improvement in payments of claims. I had one man in the Western Cape wait for a year and lodge enquiry after enquiry and appeal after appeal to get medical attention after a work injury. He also applied for compensation from, of all places, the Compensation Fund. Months went by without a response. He lost his house and his car, and moved into a garage for which he was paying a small rental. He had an eye injury that needed urgent medical attention, which he did not receive, because it was not approved despite completing forms and handing in reports from medical examiners. I escalated his claim and the appeal. I then emailed the relevant officials again asking for help. He was then thrown out of the garage he was living in because he couldn’t pay the small rental. I finally received a call from the mother of his children telling me that this past Christmas he had committed suicide and asked whether there was any payment coming that could be used for his children. I almost wept and that story still haunts me 5 months later. His member of Parliament sits here today and quite frankly, I do not know what to say to her. Many people in South Africa are very, very poor and when they are injured at work, or can no longer work, we should be able to respond to their legitimate needs speedily. The current state of affairs is just not good enough. We are still shuffling 20 documents and forms for every single application for Compensation and a similar situation in the UIF department. Instead of spending all his time measuring racial quotas, Mr Manyi, as labour DG, should have been fixing the computer system and streamlining the funds to deliver for the poor!

I want to close by examining the textile industry and how the labour department, together with other departments, have contributed to the ruin of an industry. In Newcastle we had several factories making textiles and paying workers below the minimum wage. The Department of Labour applied the relevant legislation and shut those companies down and 15000 employees lost their jobs. Some of those companies relocated to Swaziland and Lesotho and the remainder of those unemployed workers eventually turned on their unions and the bargaining council and asked for the companies to be re-opened. Some were eventually re-opened and are still not able to pay those minimum wages. Absolutely nothing has been achieved in this process except the loss of Jobs.

I do not condone the payment of below minimum wages, however a better solution could have been found. What we need in this industry, among many other labour intensive industries, is a co-ordinated approach to all aspects of the industry and a government that can understand complex detail and tailor-make legislation, regulations and policing of the industry in a way that creates jobs first.

The DA calls on the Minister to implement a Cadette internship programme for the textile industry, which takes on apprentices at a lower wage while they are being trained for a year at least. We also call on the Minister to apply an exemption from the bargaining agreement for the Commission Embroidery Industry that has been wiped out because each business is too small to comply with the agreement and margins are too low.

I do not understand the rationale for small companies who’s staff are not unionized being forced to pay over levies to the bargaining council in lieu of union fees. That is yet another tax with no purpose. It’s like a punishment for no services rendered. I call too on the Minister to conduct joint operations with Customs and Excise as the DA is aware that customs officials find it difficult to distinguish textiles such as cotton, wool, silk and polyester from each other when they land at ports like Durban and allow the goods through with the wrong valuation and therefore the incorrect import duties and levies being applied. There is too a problem with new goods being allowed in as “second hand” and the officials are not averse to re-arranging the invoicing to suite, for a small fee. Bribes kill jobs! The reason that this is a labour issue is that for each shipment that comes in without paying the appropriate duties, jobs are lost and the margins in Newcastle get thinner and thinner. If we want decent work for textile workers, then we have to stop the cheating at the harbors and ports of entry! A cluster of measures like this will improve the financial position of our textile industry and push wages to an acceptable level.

In Closing, I understand that the new DG of labour is about to be appointed in the person of Mr. Nhleko and it is about time. I have, in a previous speech welcomed the new minister to her department. However I call on her now to urgently intervene as people are suffering, industries are suffering and many bargaining agreements have become very dated and out of touch with the reality on the ground.

Our 1 in 4 South Africans would demand that we push for a better deal. I now declare in this first speech after the general election, that the toilet war of 2011 is officially closed!

I thank you.

Anti-corruption laws - do we have the balance right?

Sat, 28 May 2011 16:09:04 +0100

The seemingly stringent – and laudable - requirements of a raft of supposedly protective laws from Fica to Rica have become an onerous burden on ordinary consumers. Meanwhile their very raison d’etre is eroded by the high-level government , criminal and business fat cats who seem exempted. This woeful imbalance not only opens door to mega-bucks corruption, but foments the mounting rage as the little guy suffers and the powerful and well-connected thrive.

Walking through Sandton City over the Easter long weekend, I passed a notice board at the info kiosk declaring that customers would have to produce their IDs to buy a gift card for a birthday present or a house-warming party. The shopping centre would have to actually scan my identity document (presumably keeping a copy) to allow me to make a purchase. Immediately I felt irritated that to spend R250 on a friend, I now had to start having IDs scanned and a lot more time wasted. My better judgement reminded me that to stamp out corruption, rife in other parts, I needed to just accept the new regime of irritations imposed on us by the cache of new legislation enacted over the past five years.

We’ve had to get used to a raft of it, haven’t we? Fica, Rica, National Credit Act, Consumer Protection Act and on and on. MTN keep calling me to get my SIM card “Rica’d” I went and had it done recently, but still they call. I struggle each time to prove my residential address because the Johannesburg City Council has stuffed up my rates and services bill - it doesn’t even indicate the correct address – and I send all my mail to the PO Box up the road, because it’s safer that way. I tried to receive a donation to political activity the other day of about R1,800 and because the money was coming via Western Union, I had to again go and prove my own residential address, which resulted in two trips to the place as they had not advised me correctly on documentation which they require to release the funds.

On the one hand this new legislation is a good thing. South Africa was to a degree shielded from a financial meltdown due to its sound financial legislation, regulating the banking sector - or so most of us believe. However, at least one commentator has recently indicated that it was the excellent work of the Registrar of Banks, the high local interest rates and the exchange controls that protected SA from the global “subprime products” crisis. This would indicate the magic might not have been wrought by Fica, Rica and the like. Have we been spun a yarn?

At a crass level the theory is that you have to make it difficult to launder money in SA, limiting the opportunity for crime and at the same time preventing the economy from overheating. We are also preventing people borrowing more than they can afford by forcing financial institutions to assess affordability for the debt. And we have added to that the need to adequately make customers aware of the implications of a purchase so they fully understand what they are purchasing and giving them a cooling-off period too. Of course, in the process we are to a degree treating our consumers like children, protecting them from themselves. Solely on the belief that our banks remained stable during the economic crisis, we think this sort of legislation is responsible for it and working. It’s almost like a panacea for all economic ills.

However, I would argue that the “nannying” of consumers has caused the pendulum to swing too far in one direction, while we have left a gaping hole in our legislation at an entirely different level allowing serious corruption and crime by the large criminal elements this consumer level legislation is never going to address.

Let me explain. South African companies trading in Africa are often pressured into using bribes and inappropriate cash incentives to smooth the path of business at levels that are alarming. At another level, there appears to be a series of corrupt relationships developing between key political figures and business leaders inside the country which leads to lucrative infrastructure contracts, mining and mineral rights and supplying of goods and services to the state to be awarded in return for politically motivated favours and financial incentives. Finally, our weak borders and entry points allow for wholesale corruption so goods, minerals and cash can enter and exit our economy.

Let us examine a few examples, as yet largely untested in court, but widely reported in the media, in Parliament and in various reports.

Large SA retail, supermarket and or restaurant chains having to use inappropriate measures to do business in other African countries. It is widely discussed in boardrooms across SA that it is incredibly difficult to get one’s good’s released from the docks in Lagos, Nigeria, when doing business in that country and the level of bribes needing to be paid to get the goods to the stores has become disgustingly large. So too to repatriate profits to SA apparently requires the payment of inappropriate fees to banking officials in Nigeria to get the money released.
Border control staff often refuse to release goods travelling by truck across borders even in SADC countries. It has become common knowledge that briefcases of cash are sometimes required to get trucks of raw materials and goods released from the Zambian border controls as it has become difficult to keep pace with ever-changing documentary “requirements” of officials there.
Police often report, off the record, the number of foreign nationals from particularly West African countries living in SA (in places like Windsor, Hillbrow, Joubert Park and elsewhere in Johannesburg) who walk around openly with rolls of money in their pockets presumably ill-gotten gains from drugs, prostitution or even perhaps human trafficking.
Textile and garment workers often complain about the fact that Customs and Excise officials in Durban are ruining their jobs because they either cannot tell the difference between silk, cotton, wool, polyester, flax or other textiles leading them to rely on unscrupulous importers to identify their own goods or else they accept brides and look the other way, allowing new goods in as “second-hand” and thus attracting lower import duties. (local jobs are lost).
Finally, there are several stories of suitcases of money or travellers cheques travelling in and out of the country accompanied by senior South African business leaders without any limitations of Fica, Rica, NCR or CPA acts limiting them in anyway. Millions of rands of unexplained cash have recently been found on business leaders from SA travelling abroad in one or two highly publicised cases.

Governments such as that in the US, require all kinds of declarations from executive and non-executive directors of companies and CEOs regarding the payment of bribes, inappropriate incentives and the like to reduce this level of corruption occurring internationally. We have no such requirements. Directors are prosecuted where evidence to the contrary turns up. In SA, our legislation either doesn’t cover this kind of corruption or the officials we employ in Customs and Excise, the SAPS and the Reserve Bank are not doing their jobs. On the surface of things, it even appears that high-placed individuals in government are protecting those on the take. In this kind of environment, what does it matter whether or not I have my ID with me when I want to buy a R250 gift voucher at Sandton City. Fat cats are laundering millions and running very large systems of corruption while the rest of us mere mortals live with the irritation of proving who we are, where we live and what our identity number is to pay a TV licence or buy a new cellphone. Shouldn’t the pendulum swing the other way for a while?

The looming labour disaster

Sat, 28 May 2011 16:06:42 +0100

When my ANC colleagues in Parliament told me Cosatu wanted my head on a plate, I had genuine problems understanding the reason they’re so upset. Turns out I’m just one of those bloody slave-trading labour brokers.

Truth is, I had never really met a labour broker, or in fact realised the intricacies of the difference between them and regular employment agencies. All that changed when the DA nominated me to serve on the labour committee. I had to learn very quickly that what I didn’t know about labour in South Africa could well kill you!

So what’s the trouble all about? The newly deployed labour minister, Mildred Olifant, published the draft new labour laws on 17 December in the Government Gazette, her first big step as minister.

Of course, the drafts had already been leaked to the press in the middle of 2010, banning labour broking and “declaring all temporary employment to be permanent”. These were prepared under minister Membathisi Mdladlana and director general Jimmy Manyi’s reign, and rubber-stamped by Olifant before being released for public comment.

The process has been fraught with complications, intrigue and perhaps even irregularity from the start. The public hearings organised for the labour committee in 2010 were highly contentious. As I repeatedly pointed out at the time, they were dominated by Cosatu members reading from pre-prepared faxes sent to them from head office. People who disagreed were intimidated by union members in their fire-engine-red T-shirts.

One poor man from the Unemployed People’s Party had bottles thrown at him and sharp sticks pointed an inch from his eye-ball because he wouldn’t accede to Cosatu’s demands, calling instead for a system of regulating the labour broking industry. In that particular hearing in Germiston, I witnessed people carry long assegai-shaped wooden rods, bottles and one loaded revolver into the meeting. It ended in chaos and we chose to leave when it became clear that the “public” really could make their views heard as long as they agreed with Cosatu.

Jimmy Manyi disclosed to the labour committee he had already signed off the draft bills and handed them to the minister for tabling at cabinet, before the labour committee had even met to draft its own summary report on the public hearings!

But what genuinely worries me most is not the flawed process (Cosatu and the ANC are still not accustomed to genuine listening to the public at large), but the actual content of the drafts. The Regulatory Impact Assessment was called for very early in the process, before the full cabinet or National Economic Development and Labour Council had received the drafts. This in itself is an indication of the confidence insiders had in the laws. The RIA is quite damning (www.ianollis.com). It makes several important points about the new legislation:

A number of the provisions in the new laws are probably unconstitutional.
Many jobs will be lost
It will create uncertainty in the labour market leading to a drop in labour-intensive investment in SA and a large administrative burden on existing companies
An envisaged dramatic rise in legal action and work for labour attorneys trying to interpret the new proposals, and
Abnormally punitive measures for non-compliance.

The most surprising thing about the RIA, tabled in September, is that the labour department and the new minister seem to have largely ignored its findings.

The 17 December drafts are little changed from the mid-year versions (I think four sentences were altered). It still contains several very contentious provisions, which are sure to be challenged in court:

The Employment Services Bill requires private companies to provide sensitive employee information and vacancy details to the department of labour which will give the state employment agency an unfair advantage over the private sector – that’s forced co-operation with a state entity. It’s like having to tell SAA first that you are a customer wanting to fly to a certain destination and are mandated to receive a tailor-made itinerary before you are allowed to contact Kulula!
There is a provision providing for a fine of up to 10% of annual turnover for non-compliance with Employment Equity requirements. (This is only usually done where “ill-gotten gains” are at stake, similar to the fine levied on Pioneer Foods for their price fixing of bread.) There is, however, no cash advantage to non-complaint companies if they merely fail to employ enough disabled people or women for example, so why the extreme fines.
The clauses prohibiting Temporary Employment Services appears to contravene International Labour Organisation’s conventions on sectoral interests as it discriminates against categories of employment. (e.g. the Namibian debacle in which the Namibian supreme court rejected the attempted ban on labour broking through legislation).
The criminalisation of certain breaches of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the Employment Equity Act is new and unprecedented.
The Amendments make both a subcontractor and the client liable for unfair labour practices. This violates contractual law in South Africa.

Now I hear the sound of frantic typing and arguing coming from the department of labour’s head office. Rumour has it that the Basic Conditions of Employment Act is being rewritten to save millions in legal fees when these laws are promulgated. And even if the reason for the re-write is not common sense but the issue of the department's money, for the sake of this country's future, I hope the rumour is correct.

Cosatu/DA coalition: great idea, but not too realistic

Sat, 28 May 2011 16:02:05 +0100

There are many good reasons why the DA and Cosatu should find themselves at the same table and work together for the benefit of South Africa. And yet, there are almost as many reasons why such coalition will not work.

It has been mooted before that there would be distinct advantages to a proposed governing coalition between the Democratic Alliance and the Congress of SA Trade Unions to seize power from the ANC, provide an alternative government and force voters to think with their heads about their choices instead of voting their fears and their racial stereotypes. To put the advantage in perspective, Cosatu currently claims to have approximately 1.985 million members, Fedusa approximately 556,000 and Nactu 397,000, with the independent union, Solidarity, carrying about 197 000 members.

This idea has significant advantages, of course. It would shake the ANC to its core and force a serious re-think by the ruling party. A complacent government repeatedly re-elected has no reason to treat voters with respect and truly engage with their wishes and needs. Even the “government is listening” type engagements, public hearings and policy conferences tend to be dominated by the big guns who tell voters what is good for them by means of salting the audience with their own lackeys who will influence the crowd to give back the desired response. Unique views never reach government’s ears, because those views are drowned out by orchestrated populist responses. As Lumka Yengeni once put it to me, these public hearings are a form of group therapy, letting people talk about their pain and blow off steam. It’s not really about looking for new ideas or actually expecting the public to think for itself and give a real feedback.

To shake the nation out of its complacency requires something entirely new, entirely out of the ordinary and out of the box; enough of a change to get the majority of voters to take a step back, engage with the issues de-novo, if that is possible, and actually give their own views, unaided by a Malema or a Mugabe. The Cosatu-DA alliance would provide just such a jolt to the system. The SA Communist Party would never really get any significant voter support as it really has no sizeable constituency. It has never attempted to stand for election as an independent body. Cosatu is quite different. It is organisationally an independent body and has a measurable constituency. The DA-Cosatu Alliance could just crack the mould. The best part of it would be that race would not be a factor anymore and voters would have to consider policy and ideology.

Cope was not such choice. It was mostly ”ANC-Lite”. Most stories about Cope were about its infighting and controversial roots. Cope was not primarily about policy, but about forming a new movement that could break the stranglehold of the ANC. It was not significantly different to the ANC and its policy platform was thin or absent. It was really another UDM/ID-type experiment, this time with more former ANC bigwigs to give it credibility and several suitcases of cash.

Not so with Cosatu. It is already a mostly independent organisation. It has its policies and an established, successful machine and identity. It is well organised right down to local level, and has at least the operational machinery to get voters out.

And in many ways Cosatu has things in common with the DA. Apart from a well-established machine to mobilise its troops, it shares a common platform on corruption, ineffective government institutions and, despite the unfriendly rhetoric, most trade unions realise they need a successful, well-run industry or there will be no jobs.

Such an alliance would split the ANC vote and end the racial voting blocks in SA. This would give the combined force the opportunity to set up a government based on principle, not one using race or reacting to racial issues in campaigning.

That is, of course, where the ideological honeymoon ends. You can’t build a coalition of partners who are far apart on key policy issues. Apart from a commitment to end corruption and a commitment to clean, lean, government, there is little in common between the DA and Cosatu.

The DA, arguably, is a combination of moderately conservative economic, definite liberal social values and a concern for the unemployed who may never get job opportunities, as well as a strong commitment to excellence in education, as a means for social upliftment combined with a strong small light-footed government committed to maintaining law and order in a very hands-on kind of way.

Cosatu, on the other hand does not focus its policy choices on mechanisms to create new jobs. I have repeatedly asked Cosatu representatives in Parliament and in workshops what they are doing to create jobs and there is never any answer other than a gasp that I should even ask such a stupid question! The DA focuses its policy on job creation via small business and reduced red-tape. Cosatu rather focuses on more pressure to force government and business to provide protection, better working conditions and higher wages for its members who currently have jobs (which, according to DA stance, is loading government and business with red tape).

This puts the two movements at loggerheads on economic policy and labour laws. How you practically agree to suspend this clear difference for a five-year period of the governing alliance is not obvious. The DA is not averse to more measures to help the unemployed who make up many of its new constituents. It is, however, concerned that South Africa is constantly giving more to those who already have rather than those who have nothing.

But there is more. One could ask the question: What’s in it for Cosatu? Currently Cosatu occupies a space very close to the seat of power, and its members often end up with senior parliamentary positions, giving them the opportunity to influence government choices now, rather than at some point in the future. Why should they break with the ruling party to join the DA, with the potential fallout of membership abandoning them as they side with the group they have been led to believe (incorrectly of course) is the “oppressor” of the past. Propaganda and scapegoating are hard to undo.

But of course the largest problem is not ideological. It’s political. Vavi’s made it clear he is aiming to become the next deputy president. His name has become synonymous with Cosatu and has effectively turned it into a political movement. While many commentators have spoken with wistful hope of the day when Cosatu “goes it alone”, what is more likely is Cosatu will be neutralised by integrating Vavi into a senior ANC leadership position. That would, in turn, facilitate the economic policy necessary to deliver SA out of the quagmire of job losses and economic downturn in which we currently find ourselves. As long as Cosatu continues to push for more protection and perks for existing workers, SA becomes less competitive and jobs are shed. The youth will find it harder and harder to find employment until business, both local and multinational, view Cosatu as less of a threat and the environment in SA easier for business. Neutralising Vavi would probably also neutralise Cosatu and effectively give the more sensible ANC policy makers an open hand to free up the economy.

So in effect the real obstacle to a DA/Cosatu alliance, apart from the obvious policy differences, will be the career aspirations of the Cosatu leadership. In fact, it’s more likely that a Fedusa/DA/Solidarity/ID kind of alliance could emerge, with the left-overs of the UDM and Cope in tow… if they survive this year’s election, that is!

And this is all just my view. Of course.

The Gautrain: What was it all about?

Sat, 28 May 2011 15:58:31 +0100

Maybe the phrase “pipe dreams” should be changed to “train dreams” – certainly in the case of the vaunted Gautrain and accompanying BRT system. Less than 3,000 jobs and a few newish buildings do hardly a rich harvest make.

The Gauteng provincial Gautrain office hosted many workshops, public meetings and presentations in the months leading up to the launch of construction of the Gautrain. These were essentially part of the environmental impact process and also a marketing exercise to let people see and get excited about the first new train line and train system in South Africa since 1973.

The rest of SA’s rail infrastructure is many decades old and outdated. During one of these presentations the head of the project, Jack van der Merwe explained the need for the train, other than the obvious need for an integrated high-speed transport system, that is. He explained that South Africa had, since 1994, developed various proposals meant to stimulate economic growth – Gear, the Maputo Corridor, the Coega harbour and various export processing zone projects and so on. Each one, he pointed out, had run into serious trouble or limitations, sometimes opposed by trade unions, sometimes limited by the exchange rates and sometimes by the costs involved.

Transportation infrastructure, such as the Gautrain, was to be the new tonic for the economy and would stimulate growth and create jobs. The view then was that the Gautrain would stimulate the economy, directly and through its offshoot projects by 1% of Gauteng’s GDP. The project is now nearing completion and we could begin to evaluate just how far down that road of job creation and economic growth we are to date. Phase one of the train, from the airport to Sandton is running effectively and the Pretoria/Tshwane to the Joburg CBD route will open mid-2011.

So what has been achieved? The success of the actual train is unquestioned as a mode of transport (construction costs aside). Usage by passengers has been double the projections drawn up. One can expect that the longest and final route will equally be over-subscribed. Apart from being much faster than driving one's own car, it is safe and reliable.

In SA this is nothing to be sneezed at. We can expect it to reduce some of the congestion on our highways and it will connect to metro-rail at two points in Tshwane as well as at Rhodesfield in Kempton Park (Ekhuruleni) and at Park Station in the Joburg CBD.

But what about the projected knock-on effect of economic growth? Of course, the concessionaire and the provincial Gautrain office are keen to laud the successes of the project. This week I received employment figures from them on jobs created.

“In view of the verified local employment by the concessionaire and its sub-contractors, the concessionaire has created or sustained more than 29,000 local direct jobs and an estimated total of 101,500 direct, indirect and induced jobs up to September 2010,” Barbara Jensen said. Longer term, about 2,700 direct and indirect jobs a year would be created for operation and maintenance of the system.

Of course, we don’t yet have audited figures and these include lots of indirect and some temporary jobs, which will no longer be required once the engineers, technicians and labourers move on to other projects here or abroad. It is the 2,700 that is the more significant figure as it is what remains after construction is complete. It is a significant number. However, when seen against the backdrop of the 1 million jobs lost and the government’s plans to create 5 million new jobs, it is a drop in the bucket. The true impact of this project will be in the knock-on effects of a more mobile workforce and a new customer base available to businesses around the stations and distribution routes and the construction and property developments in those nodes.

There is the possibility of a revival of property and business at the Pretoria Central Station as well as the Park Station in Johannesburg if the local city councils increase “safe and clean” initiatives at either end. Some new development will occur around the Hatfield station, but much of this land is already developed. The area around Rhodesfield will be redeveloped and OR Tambo will be able to increase its capacity with the additional modes of transport available to airline passengers.

However, a closer examination of the infrastructure and development around the Marlboro, Sandton and Rosebank stations will give an indication of some of the limitations and weaknesses in the somewhat utopian vision we expected. Two key limitations immediately spring to mind: The incomplete bus rapid transit system and the limited funds available (due to the economic downturn) for the property development necessary to drive all of this economic growth.

Marlboro Station has a very small bus distribution system. Having ridden the train twice, I have never seen anyone embark or disembark at this station. It lies adjacent to the bustling township of Alexandra. These residents generally cannot afford plane trips for the most part and mostly have no interest in riding to the airport. Existing taxi systems serve the needs of these residents who don’t need the train to get to Sandton either. No significant new development has begun in the area. And significant new shopping and residential developments would be necessary to make this station fully functional and rezoning and new services infrastructure would be needed to support this – all very costly.

Rosebank has seen some significant new investment. Development began at the cusp of the economic downturn by large institutional investors who took the risk and began construction of new malls, refurbishing others and constructing a hotel and several new office developments. However, the proposed new residential high rise buildings have not yet materialised. The city council’s expectation of the inclusion of some low-cost residential units in Rosebank look like an unrealistic pipe dream and the upper-end apartments just became too expensive for the market to support until now. A few of the new developments have been scaled down, not begun at all or delayed. Capital markets dried up at the time many developers began construction and, of course, if all office and retail developments went ahead at the same time, a glut of space would leave many buildings unoccupied until the market caught up with the available bulk. The economic crisis of the past two years has only exacerbated this trend.

The lack of a completed BRT system linking the Rosebank and Sandton stations with other destinations such as Randburg, Cresta also limits the rate of development and demand. Where do you go when you get off the train? And where do you leave your car? Parking at dedicated Gautrain parking garages is expensive as are the buses that don’t always go near your home or place of work. I regularly report through Twitter when I spot a completely empty Gautrain luxury bus whizzing past, taking no-one anywhere.

Sandton has a similar problem. The Sandton city complex has embarked on an impressive extension and revamp project that will increase the size of the shopping mall immensely and add new office and residential elements. The Gautrain must surely have contributed significantly to making this viable. One or two new hotels have sprung up spurred on by the Gautrain and the World Cup. However, with the cup gone and the global economic slowdown, the skyline of Sandton is not changing quite as quickly as expected.

So was Jack van der Merwe right after all? In the short term, the answer must be an unfortunate “No!” We are not going to see the huge impact on the Gauteng economy as predicted. The net cost of the World Cup counteracted any gains made by the Gautrain in the short term, coupled with the effect of the simultaneous global recession. One train system will not offset the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the region during the downturn. The expected property and retail boom in the nodes has not brought about those elusive jobs either. In the longer term, we should see the international economy turning around and freeing up new capital for development in Midrand (around the Gautrain station and Grand Central airport) as well as in Rosebank and Sandton. If and when the city council finds the funds for the new infrastructure necessary to unlock developments around the Marlboro Station, we could see a completely new node develop there too.

Until then, there will be some efficiencies coming out of the economy as a result of the Gautrain, but those expected tens of thousands of jobs will remain an elusive dream. At most 2,700 long-term jobs and a few new buildings are simply not what we were offered for our money.

How to fix a non-existent crisis

Sat, 28 May 2011 15:57:07 +0100

The biggest and most powerful city in Africa is plagued by a billing crisis, which is a national disgrace. Not only does it make a mockery of Joburg’s vaunted claims to being a “world-class African city”, but now threatens to have its mayor tied up in court battle after court battle. And all this despite a series of simple fixes waiting in the wings.

I woke up on 23 December 2010 to a sunny holiday morning. Family were arriving soon from that other place. Off to the kitchen and made a cup of coffee, my last for a couple of days. Just then the refrigerator went quiet and the electricity went off. Heard my neighbour’s diesel generator start up and I realised we had another power failure! I made my way back to the bedroom to start calling the city. Of course, the e-services on www.joburg.org.za had been broken for some time, so I had to physically call. The first call dropped. The second one told me there was no power failure and then put me on hold before cutting me off. The third call dropped, the fourth went through to the wrong person and the fifth one played elevator music for 23 minutes before getting through and finally getting a reference number. I had a quick shower, while the water was still warm.

I began to worry a little when by the evening there was still no power and the diesel generator next door began to falter. Cold shower! The rest you can probably guess. (My neighbour had been cut off by mistake also). The city was in the midst of another billing crisis.

But it doesn’t need to be like that. It can be sorted out. The first thing that needs to be done is to staff the municipality properly. I turned on the radio two weeks ago and a call centre operator from Joburg Connect was being interviewed anonymously. She told me how she dreaded answering calls because she found that the staff that were supposed to do the installations, connections or repairs were not getting it done and she had run out of excuses to give people. She spoke of 80,000 queries that remained unattended.

If you don’t have sufficiently trained and deployed staff in sufficient numbers, the system breaks down. A while ago, when I enquired about the staffing of City Power, I discovered there was only one qualified electrician at the Hursthill depot able to repair street lights and electrical infrastructure. This one staff member was responsible for 79 suburbs! We have to greatly increase the number of artisans out there doing the work or the call centre will become a giant toy telephone. We also need many more trained staff in the finance and billing divisions. One staff member showed me their office with piles and piles of files full of complaints and queries awaiting attention. “They have been lying there for three months unattended, because there are so many new complaints coming from the public who walk into this office every day. I will never get back to those files.” The staff-to-query ratio is just too depressing.

Training is the second problem currently causing a headache in the system. That same call centre agent told us on the radio how she did not understand the new computer software because she had not had adequate training. This has been an ongoing issue. The new SAP-based accounting and operations software was supplied via a BEE partner that went belly up. Since then there has been a spat between two large multinationals about who is responsible for the fiasco with the system.

Essentially the city must take responsibility. When you implement a new software system across a city as large as Johannesburg, you have to have excellent training over a fairly lengthy period and you have to stress-test the system in parallel until you are satisfied it will do the job. You then still have to supply on-site assistants to help the staff through teething problems for at least six months to prevent the kind of crisis we are seeing. The day I visited the “People’s Centre,” there were no IT or SAP staff to assist. The existing staff did not know how to sort out my problem, and those that did, lacked the “permission” or password access to do so.

I had sold my apartment in January 2010 and had it transferred to the new owner. The city owes me about R8,500 from that clearance certificate. My new property was transferred into my name on 1 April 2010 (I should have known). Since then, no amount of letters from my attorney, or calls or emails from me have been able to get the rebate or to receive a correct bill from the City of Joburg for my new property.

Early in 2010, I dutifully opened a new account for water and electricity and paid my deposit – it still reflects a zero balance. When the new billing system kicked in, the poorly trained officials did not know what to do with the meters from my new house, so they created a new “fake” bill, number 550018770 and sent it to the previous owner! She, surprise, surprise, didn’t pay and they cut her/me off in December. All because the staff are over-worked due to the high volume and lack proper training. I still have been unable, with some political connections, to get it rectified. I live in hope.

The third remedy urgently needed, in my view, with this system is a software system similar to those employed by the banks. FNB, Standard and Nedbank have all called me over the past six months, during my renovations, to check that the unusual transactions on my bank accounts were legitimate. The city needs such an early warning software package to pick up unusually high or low bills and flag them for attention by a dedicated team. This will prevent bills for R250,000 being sent to pensioners for payment. A friend of mine (aged 70 plus) living in Parktown North received a bill for R68,000 and was told to pay first and argue later! Very humane! If the banks can do it, so can the City of Johannesburg!

The fourth need is for a dedicated team to deal with the backlog and the large volume of new complaints arriving at the city each day. They need to have those magic passwords and permissions to cut through the red tape and rectify the serious cases. This means they cannot be entry level recruits with no training! They must be able to instantly place a moratorium on cut-offs of accounts they are dealing with. City councillors should have access to this team to speedily resolve problem cases.

Finally, the city needs a larger, well-trained team in the office that handles clearance certificates. The number of people who have sued, or are in the process of suing the city over the lack of clearance certificates is getting into a zone marked “ridiculous”. After judgments against the city in court, accounts remain unresolved. One woman sold her property and the city continued to bill her for water and electricity for many months. She then, in desperation had prepared meters installed and the city continued to charge her an average amount on her bill. Due to the accumulating bill, she was unable to acquire a clearance certificate to transfer her property. There is clearly a problem with transfer of meters from previous owners to new owners and the office handling transfers is unable to resolve this. What will we do when the mayor is arrested for contempt of court for failing to comply with several court orders requiring clearance certificates to be issued?

All of these problems are relatively simple and can be solved with sufficient trained and qualified staff and correct software, coupled with a helpline or priority queue for the unusual problems. In the meantime, Mr Masondo, can I please have my bill? Name's Ollis. Ian Ollis.

No quick fix to save our cities, so we'd better start now

Sat, 28 May 2011 15:54:20 +0100

Urban sprawl and everything that goes with it are global crises, and rapidly approaching disastrous proportions in South Africa. Solving the problems is fraught with every conceivable problem – all the more reason to get started right away.

I got chatting to Arnold Smit on the plane to Parliament this week about the future of South African cities. He represents the Centre for Business in Society at the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Long ago I became concerned about the long-term future of cities in the world and South African cities in particular, because the general population and most city fathers do not understand the crisis into which we are heading. Smit made the point to me that you probably only need about 4% of society to fully understand the crisis, but the trouble in SA is that often it’s not the correct 4% of leadership that understand. If local and provincial government, let alone national government do not grasp the world crisis, then we are simply not going to be able to respond until it’s too late.

Personally I don’t like scaremongering. The old apartheid government put me off that kind of politics. With the racial epithets being thrown around at present over the new employment equity laws, I have avoided writing on my perspectives on race this week. I’ll keep that article for when we are not in the middle of electioneering.

However, my first concern about the impending city crisis is that people seem to relegate the discussion to green issues, which must be looked after by those people with green fingers and degrees from Oxbridge. You can even see this view reflected in Wikipedia: “sustainable city, or eco-city is a city designed with consideration of environmental impact”. Now, the term “sustainable city” has to mean “eco-city” which is a pity. That’s far too narrow a scope for the problem we face.

The crisis in our cities is we cannot sustain our cities with current practices in the full sense of sustain, including, (but not limited to) financial planning, spatial and town planning, roads and storm water infrastructure, water, electricity and sewer installation and recycling as well as the human migration and sustainable employment practices. It’s not just a green revolution that we need. The environmental crisis is but a subset of the problem. With current practices, our cities are not sustainable financially either. Nor can we control people movements and job opportunities, which makes spatial and urban planning very difficult.

Let’s tackle infrastructure first. Most large modern metropolitan conglomerates were built around 100 years ago, or greatly enlarged around that time after the advent of motorised transport, creating the typical American suburbia. It has taken us roughly 100 years to realise the headache we have built as a result. Environmentalists have listed the challenge for us as being a depletion of resources. The resources of the planet are being consumed to maintain our cities faster than we can replace them. The typical example quoted is how London would die as a city if the air and shipping routes were cut off. There would not be enough produce to keep the city alive and the city would die, being strangled by a lack of natural and processed resources.

However, the other half of that equation is missed in the green debate. The problem in a nutshell is that the pipes and cables and drains of cities installed 100 years ago are now decaying and in need of repair. Cities around the world require more and more money for maintenance and replacement of infrastructure to maintain services such as water, electricity, sewerage and garbage removal. And here’s the problem: without raising taxes in an unsustainable fashion, how do we replace that ageing infrastructure without compromising something else? Inevitably political decisions have to be made. Unrealistic increases are avoided and above-ground visible service delivery is compromised to replace the essential services below the ground that carry our water and so on.

This in turn results in dirty and unsafe spaces above ground as the funds for “clean and safe” get spent beneath our feet. Of course, in the US and Britain a new vehicle was devised to deal with that, called a City Improvement District. Property owners, both business and residential, have to resort to paying extra fees to clean up their “hood”. I remember my amazement years ago when it finally dawned on me that the CIDs in SA were not a result of business nodes needing to fix the funding gap caused by the current government in SA, (the need to siphon off funds for the townships where services had never been properly installed). I was walking back to my hotel in Manhattan from a church service one Sunday morning with my head down as it was snowing on Madison Avenue and as I picked up my head to look for traffic at the intersection, there was a man in an overall with a sign on his back “Madison Avenue Business Improvement District,” and the penny dropped instantly.

Cities have tried various means to deal with the big three issues – urbanisation leading to a growing housing need, limiting the insatiable increase in the need for service infrastructure and the growing safety and security needs that have arisen. One key solution has been to force high-rise instead of further urban sprawl, by legislating an urban edge to the city and preventing new developments outside that set perimeter. The City of Johannesburg approved such a perimeter some years back to loud applause from all parties.

However, the ink was barely dry when the city itself was forced to violate its own legislated urban boundary. Why? We have an added problem in South Africa. Many of our people still live in shacks and we have to provide access to affordable housing. That alone bedevils the equations. The limiting of urban sprawl makes the service infrastructure cheaper and simpler to maintain because many more individuals are paying towards the maintenance of one metre of pipe or cable if you go high rise, than if you spread out. However, building high-rise is also expensive and we are in a hurry. The ANC realises it is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If it cannot build sufficient low-cost houses for the poor in a short time, the country and the ruling party could face a Mubarak-scenario. The homeless may revolt and bring down the government - and not through the ballot box, which is the preferred method. When you are in a hurry to build low-cost housing for large numbers of rapidly urbanising underemployed workers, you can’t afford high rise. It’s just too costly and takes too long. End result – RDP housing. But how do you build RDP housing in cities like Johannesburg, Durban or Cape Town, where the available land located close to the work opportunities is limited? You are forced to go further and further out to find more cheaper land.

This creates untold complications. Johannesburg had to violate its own urban boundary within 12 months of approving it. This made the commitment to high rise, meaningless. The cost of the new pipelines and electrical infrastructure had to be taken from elsewhere, usually from maintenance of roads, sewers, storm water drains, street cleaning, park maintenance and the like. Still not enough money – sell off the parks and open spaces. The Rosebank library and park in Johannesburg is apparently now quietly up for sale and an official reportedly told the local ward councillor, “it’s because the council needs the money”. Carefully add up how much parkland has been sold off in Johannesburg over the past 10 years and you will be amazed. The opposition is constantly fighting the sale of a park or open space because concrete jungles are not good for societies.

I haven’t even spoken about the transport nightmare this creates. If you build houses in Diepsloot or Zandspruit, or even Cosmo City (Thabo Mbeki’s flagship project) you soon realise there are no BRT buses, Gautrains or any other real public transport to feed those areas. Taxis take over and the environment takes a hammering because of the pollution of too many fossil-fuel burners on the roads. Then, of course, you have to widen the roads, build bridges for cars and pedestrians and you never really get to laying the pavements – the cost/benefit analysis kills you… every time. In simple terms, while you are laying the pipes in “Norweto”, the roads in Bertrams and security in Hillbrow collapse, not to mention the litter in Illovo or the uncut grass in Delta Park.

This is really just the introduction to the problem. The solutions are complex and the choices are difficult and mired in political will and electioneering mandates. However, we cannot ignore this looming crisis. If we do not take action soon, our cities will be unaffordable, both financially and environmentally, and as my new friend pointed out, we haven’t yet begun to deal with the skills shortages, the taxpayer versus social grant equation, the illegal immigrant question and those other legacies of apartheid. If the US and the UK struggled, we had better face up to our challenge soon. Hoping that populist politics is going to help, is like sticking your head in a smelly place.

Having our cake and eating it

Sat, 28 May 2011 15:52:22 +0100

Marie Antoinette’s notorious remark when told the French masses were revolting because they had no bread to eat, was to say, “Then let them eat cake”. Not only was it the zenith of arrogance, but demonstrated the most reprehensible detachment from the realities of her people’s suffering. The idiom of having your cake and eating it (meaning to enjoy consuming something and yet to preserve it, like a never-emptying bottle of single-malt Scotch) is only a slightly different perspective on the same idiocy.

A therapist once told me that one of my personal weaknesses is that I love to have my cake and eat it - I want it all! If someone offers me pistachio ice cream or banana, I usually want both. I mean, why choose? Mercedes or BMW? Send me one of each. Throw in an Audi, too. There is unfortunately that little problem: How do I afford both, or sometimes either? And therein lies the rub, of course. Affordability.

South Africa faces a similar problem. In simple terms, it is the case of Cosatu and other unions wanting better working conditions for their workers, and government needing to provide more jobs. Unfortunately government has to choose, because resources are limited. Sounds like a simple choice, doesn’t it? Well.

Of course government in general and the president and minister of finance in particular, have a prickly problem in dealing with this choice. It is not only government’s resources that are limited, but also private resources, particularly in business are limited. And because these resources are finite, choices have to be made. The simplistic model is: Do we apply more resources to create more jobs or do we apply more resources to improve the working conditions, job security and remuneration of existing, lower paid workers. The collective opposition generally is pushing for more jobs first. Cosatu is pushing for better quality jobs and applies a slightly misrepresented phrase “decent work”, borrowed from the International Labour Organisation to champion their cause. Of course, I say misrepresented because there is a difference between what the ILO understands as “decent work” and what Cosatu champions as “decent work”. The ILO has an emphasis on safety and security in the work place, and ancillary services such as unemployment insurance. Cosatu wants higher wages, job security and benefits, benefits, benefits. The ruling party is afraid of making this choice and resorts to explaining their philosophy with the almost meaningless (economically speaking) catchphrase “decent work for all”. Which side-steps the issue completely.

As we develop our new democracy, as citizens, we are trying to decide what government’s role is in the workplace and society generally and, therefore, in this jobs paradigm. How much intervention in the market by government is tolerable for us as a country and an electorate? Do we want government to force companies to provide “better quality” jobs and what does that mean? Do we want government to directly create jobs and how exactly can they do that? These are complex and far reaching decisions involving one’s theory of economics, a subject which I will not venture into in this short piece.

At the very least, we do need to evaluate government’s performance in developing a policy and implementing that policy as well as evaluating the results and whether we are satisfied with our government’s performance in this regard.

Unfortunately, our government appears to have become stuck. The president and finance minister, in simple terms, are being asked to choose between the unionised and the unemployed. And therein lies the current crisis and stalemate in the ruling alliance. They would prefer to do both. Government wants better working conditions for the workers in the unions that support the ruling party at the poles, and more jobs for the unemployed workers, who mostly vote ANC too. It’s not an artificial conundrum either. Labour policy and economic policy have to align to unlock the economy. In the Mandela era, for largely similar reasons, the economic policy (at the time Washington consensus) and labour policy (protecting workers with complex and stifling labour laws) went in very different directions leading to a mixed and sluggish economy.

The recent spat in this regard in the media between the new labour minister, the general secretary of the ANC and Cosatu highlighted the squabble. Initially government tried to get out of the logjam by focusing on more jobs, at least at the level of debate. Cosatu rattled its sabres and the genie went back in the bottle – and we went back to the logjam. Then the president tabled his State of the Nation speech and we got a look at the budget – jobs, jobs, jobs, but not too much on the quality side, leaving Cosatu unhappy again. The budget indicates incentives for larger companies to take on youth, Seta “learners” and the like.

The president then focused the administration on doing a completely disastrous thing – each department is instructed to provide a plan to create more jobs and he makes all cabinet ministers responsible for coming up with plans to create more government jobs. Having looked at the strategic plan for the labour department, by way of example, together with their new budget, it doesn’t look like there is anything significant there.

Finally, the president appealed to business to “do more” because it is, of course, a partnership. Why should business help the president in his need to create jobs? No reasons given.

Taken together, these measures present the economy with a lethal cocktail. The cash/tax incentive to take on more workers is the only part that shows promise.

The attempt by the president to force government departments to create jobs is going to be government’s downfall. This is a communist-style solution and it will not work. Even if departments are able to create new positions in the public service, by bloating budgets, this approach will be unsustainable in the long term. The reason is easy to see. We have less than 6 million income tax payers, 14.5 million people on welfare and an already bloated public service. If you employ more people in the public service, you have to up the tax revenue on those same 5 million people or you have to radically increase the country’s debt (other solutions, like printing more money, are simply too horrific to contemplate). Either of those methods will cause an economic collapse sooner than we think.

Government now faces a crisis and it appears there has been a failure of leadership at the crucial moment. Cabinet and its bosses are unable to make the choice, and leadership has avoided the decision by promising decent work and more jobs at the same time as kind of a miracle. They have offered a sort of youth wage subsidy (good), forced government departments to create more jobs (bad) and tabled draft labour laws which make it much more difficult (and costly) to do business in SA (unbelievably bad). Foreign investment will dry up if these laws are implemented.

We cannot have our cake and eat it. Jobs can only be created in future in the private sector. Government cannot employ any more workers using funds off the current tax base. Instead of asking for the private sector to create jobs and then lining government policy up to prevent that from happening, we should see leadership making the difficult choices. We need to assist the private sector to be more competitive, we need to support the development of new small businesses and we need to ramp up our apprenticeship system. Laws need to be jobs-friendly and the budget and labour laws should line up with these priorities.

In the current climate, keeping Cosatu happy and simultaneously creating new sustainable jobs in this economy is simply unachievable. The masses of unemployed need bread and Cosatu’s solution, in a perverted sense similar to Marie Antoinette, is to ask for more cake.

Let's re-write African history - again

Sat, 28 May 2011 15:49:49 +0100

It is a truism that history is written by the conqueror – or whoever rules at any given time. Even the origins of the Universe seem fraught with divergent “interpretations”. And if history that old can be messed with, what about recent history? Is consensus about history possible?

The first time I remember consciously thinking about the ownership of our history was in what used to be called standard eight (grade 10) at school. I had been allocated to the higher grade history class and the history teacher was handing out our textbooks for the year. Erith Budge taught history at my school and he first handed out a slim textbook published in South Africa: “This is the textbook recommended by the National Party education system,” he remarked, “Take this one home and lock it up. Just be sure to bring it back by the end of the year and hand it in.”

He then handed out a much thicker tome, published in Great Britain, which he proceeded to tell us was the book we would mostly be using in class to understand our history. This textbook, he believed, would give us a more international perspective on our history, as a nation, and the quality of the text was much higher.

Budge had been quite an ingenious teacher. He understood the weakness of the skewed perspective of the apartheid-era history being taught. To help us, he had ordered the much thicker textbooks which were supposed to be used only for the teachers to gain background material. He had ordered the four full copies which teachers were allowed each year, until he had enough copies for our whole class. We guarded those very valuable textbooks with our lives, covered them in plastic and returned them in pristine condition at the end of the year. All of that taught me that there was more than one perspective on history and that those in power often control what we learn as children. I have always suspected since that the prevailing ideological view of history, politics and economics is really just one temporary perspective, which should be challenged and reviewed from time to time.

The history of Africa has been written many times and from different perspectives. I am currently reading “The Scramble for Africa” by Thomas Pakenham ... it’s a real tome! As histories of Africa go, it is probably a good one. But each history of Africa seems to be written with a strong agenda and successive governments in South Africa have taught our children history from the perspective of their worldview often having a strong ideological bias, to prop up some ideological agenda or support government propaganda. The Dutch Colonial Era, The British colonial era, the Smuts government, The National Party apartheid history, and more recently, the Post-Apartheid story taught in our schools from a liberation perspective as if it too is the “correct” view.

What has begun to concern me is the simplistic divide into the two broad kinds of African history. There is the colonial-type history showing how the colonial powers brought good of various kinds to Africa – Packenham refers to the three Cs : Commerce, Christianity and Civilisation - and opened Africa up to the world. Trade boomed and Western powers delivered infrastructure and tools, while teaching civilised values and worked to stamp out unhealthy, dangerous and uneconomical practices.

Then there are the new or “modern” histories. Africa was raped by the western or colonial powers. However, Africans were inherently good before the colonial powers came and oppressed people, dragging them into slavery and stealing the natural resources. African people should have been left in their pristine natural conditions and the attempt has been to expunge colonialism from Africa, put African people back in charge and liberate them from their oppressors. Everything native and natural was good and everything colonial and imported was bad.

People then get to choose which of these two streams to follow and which story to plug their own national identity into. These histories have been emphasised by successive African governments seeking to give legitimacy to their particular government’s raison d’etre.

I don’t buy either neat package. Africa’s history, like the history of all regions, has been very messy and complex and the events and stories do not neatly fit into one or other of these tidy patterns.

Africa was definitely not a place of wild people just waiting for Europeans to bring the enlightenment and civilisation. But also, Western medicine made a huge impact in keeping many who would otherwise have died alive. Does anyone really want us to go back to traditional medicine only? No antibiotics of any kind? No ultrasound equipment? No railroads to transport goods to and from the coast? No western educational methods? At all?

And was Africa really all that pristine before colonialism? What about the cannibalism in West Africa? What about the Arab slave trade predating Western colonisation? What about the continuous internecine tribal warfare? Was this really all that ideal?

I would suggest we need a new attempt at writing the history of Africa, being more honest than colonialists and Africanists would like us to be. A new position aiming to provide a holistic approach to our history, written perhaps by a more dispassionate party without a vested interest in defending a political ideology, that most governments get caught up in. We need a new revised perspective on African and South African history.

Obviously there is the risk, in South Africa particularly, that we are too close to recent events in our own history, such as the end of apartheid in 1994 to provide enough distance and perspective on such a new history of South Africa. However, what worries me even more is what the current generation of children is being taught in the meantime? Is the current accepted version of history merely a lurch in a new unbalanced direction with a distinctly Africanist, anti-colonial and anti-western perspective, which future generations will need to correct yet again.

Perhaps we are still too close to events and perhaps we shall have to wait, but I would hope there is a more neutral position emerging from contradictory voices, perhaps from outside our borders, that will help us gain perspective on African history, and South African history too, but taking an even longer view, looking further back and standing as “far away” from current events as possible to develop a third way - a more holistic perspective on our situation, our place in the world.

I for one, have become as tired of hearing the current politically correct version of our history as I was tired of hearing the previous one, and I would prefer that children and young people in our schools and colleges think much further than that. We owe it to ourselves and to our shared future.