South Africa

A friend who works in South Africa but who is a Zimbabwe native visited his family over the Christmas holidays. Before he left I asked if he would send me a report upon his return so readers here can get a sense of things from the perspective of someone who loves his country but laments what has happened to it. For reasons that I hope are obvious, I am granting him anonymity.

Zimbabwe has become hell I tell you.

Nothing positive is coming out of that country. Its a
country riddled with serious food shortages. Its hard
to believe that life in this country is now
characterised by empty supermarket shelves, salaries
that are far far below the poverty line and ever
rising inflation which is making food, transport,
school fees, uniforms, rent etc unaffordable.
Inflationary trends are also fuelling serious
speculative tendencies in the market. In the capital
the situation is extremely untenable. It does look
like a capital anymore. One of my friends who lives in
Harare calls it a ghost city.

To quote some figures for you: When I arrived in
Harare for the festive period on 22 December a crate
of eggs cost Z$5million, bread $1,5million, beef
$9million per kg and chicken was $20million, but when
I left on 6 January a crate of eggs sold for
$12,5million, bread $2million, beef $18 per kg and
chicken was selling for almost $40million. I have a
friend who is a senior officer with the Parliament of
Zimbabwe. He is earning $27 million a month. These
rough statistics should give you a picture of how bad
things are. What it means for example is that a person
who earns $27million is earning one or no chicken per
month - what of other needs. I tell its tough.

Some people have simply decided to quit their jobs
because they cant afford transport to and from work.

My son’s fees were $12million per term up to December
2007. For the first term this year I will need to fork
out $400million - Can you imagine this. By the way
these a very huge figures considering people’s net
salaries. School facilities have deteriorated to
astounding levels. Below is an article from the
Standard Newspaper to give you evidence of how things
have degenerated.

“Zimbabwe: Schools Fall Apart As Education System
Crumbles”

A visitor might think it’s a farm garage. There is a
broken down tractor, old, rusty stoves. An ancient
deep freezer lies nearby. A closer look would compel
the visitor to think twice. There are piles and piles
of decrepit school furniture — chairs, desks and
drawers.

You don’t expect to find broken-down chairs at a farm
where productivity is in full swing. Forget the
guesswork. Welcome to Cranborne Boys High in Harare.
Years ago, the school was the pride of both
administrators and students.Now it’s a microcosm of
the decay and disaster that has befallen our
education.

One teacher said: “Cranborne is in an advanced state
of decay.” The classroom walls are dirty, the desks
and chairs broken, the floor tiles have peeled off.
Most worrying, all locks, bulbs and sockets in the
classrooms in the secondary block are missing –
stolen?

There was once a giant swimming pool, full of clean,
sparkling water. Now, it’s half-filled with dirty
water. Only frogs and mosquitoes find pleasure here.

The Standard has established it’s not just this former
group A school that is collapsing.

From classrooms, sporting facilities and grounds,
there is evidence most public schools in Harare are at
various stages of decay as the economy continues its
free fall. It’s the fate of most government
institutions today.

Raymond Majongwe, secretary general of the Progressive
Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), taught History and
Commerce at Cranborne High in 1997-98.

Last week, he said “It was a wonderful school, with
top-of-the-range facilities. Now the infrastructure is
run down.”

Majongwe said the problem was not confined to his
former school, but to public schools all over the
country.

“Our members all over the country tell us how schools
are collapsing. The level of vandalism is shocking.
It’s happening and nobody seems to care,” said
Majongwe.

“When the ministry was functioning properly you never
expected people who vandalised school property to get
away with it. Now, it’s different.”

Most headmasters said their “hearts bleed” as they
continue to preside over collapsing schools, once the
envy of the region.

They said the rot started around 2001 when President
Robert Mugabe’s government cut back the schools’
budgets after the farm invasions and a crisis spawned
by the violent 2000 elections.

In a populist move, the Minister of Education, Sports
and Culture, Aeneas Chigwedere, imposed such low fees
most schools could not raise enough money to operate
as in the past.

Primary schools still charge $1 500 a term for a
child, not enough to buy a marker. Schools are forced
to rely on levies.

Headmasters say the levies have been politicised by a
government determined to make education affordable to
people suffering under the worst economic crisis since
independence.

Parents now decide the fees they can afford. Their
proposals are forwarded to the ministry for approval.

“This is not different from a customer deciding the
price of something they want to buy,” said a member of
the Queensdale, Harare, SDA. “A few vociferous parents
with limited incomes can push for a $20 000 levy for a
term. Parents know it cannot buy anything, but might
be forced to approve it. That money is enough to buy
one exercise book.”

Until last week, Cranborne charged $30 000 — enough
to buy two loaves of bread. After a recent parents’
meeting, the ministry set the levy at $200 000, still
far short of what is needed.

A Harare headmaster said approving these unrealistic
levies was not easy. “It can be termed a Chigwedere
circus,” he said. “The ministry needs to know the
parents at the meetings, the minutes, their signatures
and how many voted for and against. Then he would
determine whether or not to approve it. The process
can even take over a month.”

The Standard was told ministerial approval could be
secured when the cost of whatever was needed had
quadrupled or when the commodities were no longer
available.

“In that case, how are you expected to run a school?”
asked a headmaster. “Our hands are tied. We are
bystanders as schools collapse.”

Rural schools are the worst affected, as most parents
have no incomes to fund the day-to-day expenses of
their schools.

“At our school, chalk is now rationed,” said a Gutu
teacher. “One teacher, one chalk, for days. When
supplies run out, we teachers have to improvise: write
with our fingers in the ground, the sad reality these
days.”

N.B. Over and above these problems are the perennial
electricity cuts/shortages and lack of constant supply
of water.

This could suffice for now. I write on other issues in
my next email.

Its a pity that financially I am not yet in a position
to take my family out of that country. I also fear for
them if we have deadly riots similar to the ones in
Kenya in the post-March elections period.

A couple of stories that caught my eyes in the last couple of days:

When observers of Africa want to point to a country that represents a success story, they often point to Botswana, by and large for good reasons. Stephanie Hanson of the Council on Foreign Relations investigates whether beneath the surface the picture is more complicated, especially the economic picture for the country’s masses.

IRIN, meanwhile, looks at Liberia’s truth commission. Liberia’s commission has the power to recommend that individuals face prosecution, which represents a different approach from that taken in South Africa, the example I know best.

Thirty years ago this week the South African political philosopher Richard Turner was assassinated in his Durban home.

 South African History Online (SAHO) has put together a special feature on the anniversary of Turner’s shooting. His daughter, the journalist Jann Turner, has included her own personal reflections of her father’s life and death and what it meant not only for her, but for South Africa’s liberation struggle.

It appears that some observers are finally beginning to counteract the shallow, facile narrative that overtook the analysis of the events in Kenya over the last couple of weeks. Caroline Elkins’ piece in The Washington Post this past weekend provided a model of how a historical analysis of the current events in Kenya ought to be framed. If Elkins rightly sees the colonial past as a major contributor to Kenya’s current political woes, IRIN shows how the economy equally plays a role. In their report for Bloomberg Paul Richardson and Antony Sguazzin explain the ways inwhich a multiplicity of factors contribute to Kenya’s destabilization, of which ethnicity is only one. Stephanie Hanson has also provided a useful asessment for the Council on Foreign Relations.

The posting has been light of light because of travel and a conference and the general need every so often to take a break. I will pick the pace back up soon. The Foreign Policy Association published my latest think piece last week, “South Africa’s Magnificent Catastrophe,” in which I make some tentative (and merely suggestive) comparisons between current South African politics and the state of United States politics in 1800. 

At The Mail & Guardian Jean-Jacques Cornish has a feature in which he provides an overview of Africa’s 2007. I may as well also remind you of my own South Africa: Year in Review feature for the Foreign Policy Association and this blog.

What does the ANC have in store for it in 2008? The party will have the chance to paint its picture in its traditional “January 8″ statement at a gathering in Pretoria to honor the ANC’s 96th birthday next week. A day before the newly constituted National Executive Committee will meet. Two key issues will be Thabo Mbeki’s lame-duck status and the corruption charges hanging over Jacob Zuma’s head. Thabo Mbeki is not known for going down without a fight. And a Zuma conviction (or even a vigorous prosecutorial case)  in the trial scheduled to begin in August will throw the succession doors open once again.

As Kenya entered the New Year much of the country was on the brink of the very chaos so many hoped that it would avoid as the country continues its tentative but measurable transition to liberal democracy. Even as President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner over challenger Raila Odinga, despite the incumbent having been behind in the polls by most estimations, allegations of vote rigging grew and violence expanded. The death toll  continues  to  rise. 

 Meanwhile, in some of the most irresponsible Africa coverage I have seen in some time, The New York Times fell back on hoary old Dark Continent tropes to address the Kenya crisis. The Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman chose to depict what is in reality a confluence of divisions – regional, ethnic, rural/urban, and of course above all political, among others – as the result of age-old “tribalism” marked by “atavism.”:

With the president, Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu and Mr. Odinga a Luo, the election seems to have tapped into an atavistic vein of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya but until now had not provoked widespread mayhem. 

 This story grossly warps the realities on the ground in the service of fueling stereotypes that Africanists have been fighting for more than a generation. “Veins of tribal tension that always lay beneath the surface in Kenya”? Please. That this nonsense comes from the Old Gray Lady, the “Paper of Record,” makes it all the more galling.