South Africa: Who’s exploiting who?

 A total of 28-million South African citizens, or 47% of the population, rely on social grants. [welfare payments].

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa hailed the governing party’s efforts to “tackle poverty head on”.

He was referring to the monthly R350 social relief of distress grant government introduced in 2020 which about 10-million people receive and other social grants such as old age pension and child support grants from which 18-million people benefit.

He said the party’s approach to tackling poverty has been two-pronged: “First through the social wage, which involves a range of social and economic interventions, including expanding access to quality basic services, and second through direct transfers to households in the form of social grants.

This year South Africans will head to the polls to vote for national and provincial governments.

As part of campaigning, a week ago Ramaphosa threatened that the National Student Financial Aid Scheme ) and social grants were likely to disappear should the ruling party lose power. He was lambasted for using scare tactics as part of electioneering.’

https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2024-01-15-listen-28-million-people-rely-on-social-grants-ramaphosa-boasts-about-ancs-efforts-to-prevent-poverty/

And in a social system where ‘can’t pay, can’t have’ is built in, those without will always find ways to try and get what the minority elite as got even if it means hurting other members of their class.

An unemployed teacher from Daveyton in Benoni, was receiving the R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant each month since it was introduced during the Covid lockdown in 2020.

But in January 2023 he got an SMS from the SA Social Security Agency (Sassa) alerting him that his cellphone number had been changed. He did not receive another grant payment again after this.

He has tried several times to report the fraud to Sassa via email. Each time, he is told that his case has been escalated. A year later, he still hasn't been helped. He is one of many people who complained to GroundUp in recent weeks about being defrauded and blocked from receiving the grant.

Elizabeth Raiters, who heads up the social grant help desk at PayTheGrants– a campaign focused on creating universal income security and which helps people find correct information on the SRD grant – says she has received hundreds of similar complaints from people across the country.

Raiters says Sassa's response to reports of unauthorised cellphone number changes has been to prohibit recipients from changing their numbers online. Recipients have to phone Sassa's help desk. They are then sent a one-time PIN to the cell number currently registered on the Sassa system to authorise the change. But for beneficiaries such as Nxumalo who have had their cellphone numbers taken over by possible fraudsters, this process is futile.

Raiters says, in addition to the unauthorised cellphone number changes, PayTheGrants has received complaints from several new applicants for the R350 grant who turned 18 in 2023 and discovered that their ID numbers were already being used to receive the grant, preventing them from accessing the grant.

The number of SRD grant beneficiaries varies between 7.5 million and 8.5 million, as recipients are subjected to monthly means tests.

Sassa is developing facial recognition software to strengthen the identity verification process for the grant, Letsatsi said. The software is expected to be implemented in the 2024/25 financial year.’

https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/recipients-blocked-from-getting-r350-grant-after-fraudsters-change-their-cellphone-numbers-20240117

https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2024-01-15-listen-28-million-people-rely-

on-social-grants-ramaphosa-boasts-about-ancs-efforts-to-prevent-poverty

https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2024-01-15-listen-28-million-people-rely-on-social-grants-ramaphosa-boasts-about-ancs-efforts-to-prevent-poverty

Workers have no country

  

'Recalling the struggle of South Africans and the ruling ANC against an apartheid state that was defeated only three decades ago, Ramaphosa said in a video shared on his X account on October 14, that South Africa has always pledged solidarity with the Palestinian cause.'

Foreign Minister Pandor made a similar sttement last year: ‘As South Africans, we find similarities in our past with the Palestinians, and now I remember the funeral of Shereen Abu Akleh and what happened to her coffin. It reminds me of the gravesites that we had to carry out under the persecution of the apartheid soldiers’ (South Africa calls for holding Israel accountable for ‘inhumane conditions’ Palestinians live under, Middle East Monitor, 17 June, 2022).

In May that year Nokuthula Mabaso, an Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) leader was buried following her assassination in front of her children. She was the third activist of the shack dwellers’ movement to be killed in less than two months.    To date, 24 Abahlali activists have been killed.   Members of AbM are thus well acquainted with the state as a coercive machine of class oppression and likely know the fairytale Freedom Charter adopted by the ANC in 1955 envisaged a post-Apartheid South Africa where ‘The police force and army… shall be the helpers and protectors of the people’, ‘the right to be decently housed’ enshrined and ‘Slums shall be demolished …‘.   AbM are credited with starting UnFreedom Day, which coincides with the official South African holiday called Freedom Day, the orthodox annual celebration of the country’s first non-racial democratic elections of 1994. On the 16 August 2012 17 workers were killed and 78 wounded by the police in the Marikana Miners’ Massacre, the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against other workers since 1976. Worse still, former President Mbeki’s support for alternative remedies such as vinegar rather than antiretroviral drugs saved the state’s funds at a cost of at least 300,000 lives. 

And ‘More than two decades after South Africa ousted a racist apartheid system that trapped the vast majority of South Africans in poverty, more than half the country still lives below the national poverty line and most of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of a small elite’ (NPR, 2 April, 2018) led by billionaire Ramaphosa.

Apartheid Falling Apart? (1985)

From the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of the most obvious superficial manifestations of apartheid have been absent from South Africa for some time. Now a bill to repeal the laws prohibiting "inter-racial" sex and marriage has been placed before Parliament by the ruling Nationalist Party, and seems likely to be passed. The Conservative Party accuse the Nationalists of betraying their own tradition of separate development for different ethnic groups. So is apartheid beginning to crumble and to be dismantled by its originators?

At the same time, the South African state plainly retains its brutal character. On 21 March, police fired at a black crowd in the Cape Province township of Langa. The official death toll in this massacre is nineteen, but unofficial estimates are twice as high. Black trade unionists attending a May Day rally were dispersed by riot police using dogs and teargas. The security laws, which allow for indefinite detention in solitary confinement without trial, have recently been used against members of the United Democratic Front. Striking miners sacked from the world's largest gold mine, Vaal Reefs, have been forcibly deported back to their so-called homelands. If apartheid is in retreat, it remains a powerful and oppressive force.

These developments must be seen against the background of South Africa's history and the economic rationale of apartheid. Essentially, apartheid was the culmination of decades of government policy designed to provide a supply of cheap and easily-controlled labour power to the mining magnates and other industrialists of South Africa. The mining industry had become so large so quickly that state intervention was required to provide it with a pool of workers to exploit. In 1904, for instance, miners were imported from China to replace black workers who resisted wage cuts and new technology. A government commission of 1922 made quite clear the conditions under which a black worker should live and work; he

should only be allowed to enter the urban areas, which are essentially the white man's creation, when he is willing to enter and to minister to the needs of the white man, and should depart therefrom when he ceases so to minister.

It was not until 1948. with the election of the Nationalist Party to power, that the existing pattern of discrimination was strengthened and extended into a fully-fledged system of separate development. Literally, this meant that different ethnic groups were confined to live in different areas. All urban centres and some rural areas are confined to whites, but include ghettoes for Indian and "Coloured" ("mixed race") populations. Blacks are denied residence in white areas, and are permitted to live only in designated "homelands" or Bantustans, such as Kwazulu and Transkei. These constitute just one-eighth of the land area, though nearly three-quarters of South Africans are black.

Since many people did not originally live in areas "appropriate" to their skin colour, forced resettlement was required. Up to three million blacks, and over a quarter of a million "coloureds" have been forcibly removed to their allotted areas. Even so. by 1980 only just over a half of the black population lived in the homelands. It should be stressed that the homelands are not continuous stretches of territory, but scattered parcels of land, so that South African talk of their "independence" is quite absurd. With no industry or mineral wealth, they cannot possibly support vast populations. As some of the homelands are next to large cities, such as Pretoria and Durban, they provide convenient (for the employer) commuter areas.

When blacks are allowed into white areas it is only on the government's terms. Blacks are allowed to live in white areas provided they have a job there, but must "return" to their homeland when unemployed. Black people are thus reduced to migrant workers, living most of the year in hostels, apart from their families. Being on annual contracts, they cannot acquire permanent residence rights in the white areas. The pass laws require every black over sixteen to carry a permit stating where they are entitled to live and work: each year, hundreds of thousands are arrested for violating these laws. With abysmally low wages and little trade union organisation, South Africa's black workers are in a state of miserable poverty.

Apartheid, then, is intended to make available to the South African capitalist class, and to the multinational companies with vast investments there, a plentiful and regimented supply of cheap labour power. White workers have been duped into supporting the system by being given economic and political "privileges" compared to black workers, and by being bombarded by nonsensical claims that blacks are inherently inferior and backward. White trade unions have played a shameful role in keeping black workers in unskilled and menial jobs.

But it is no longer clear that apartheid can deliver the goods. By 1970, the period of boom in South Africa was over, inflation was soaring, and the balance of payments deficit was becoming severe. Black trade union activity grew, and resistance by black nationalist organisations increased. Black workers were no longer as docile as they had been. After the Soweto massacre of 1976, many overseas investors began to see South Africa as no longer a safe haven for their hard-earned resources. The removal of friendly regimes in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe meant that South Africa was now more isolated than ever. Defence expenditure increased massively, as did the resources devoted to converting coal into oil, as the government became worried about the availability of longterm oil supplies. All this threw into doubt the continuance of the prosperity of the ruling minority.

The South African rulers' response to these problems has been the promulgation of what is known as the "Total Strategy". Internally, this has meant some changes in the precise way in which black workers are controlled. Employers have complained about restrictions on the mobility of labour, while another problem they face is a lack of skilled workers, brought about by the inadequate education of blacks and their exclusion from on-the-job training. Blacks can no longer be confined to the role of unskilled labourers: a stable, skilled black work force is now needed. Two recent government commissions of inquiry, those of Wiehahn and Riekert. have suggested changes to the pass law system. More black workers will be granted the right to live in urban areas and to buy houses there (though only a tiny fraction can afford this). Employers can be heavily fined for employing blacks who are residing illegally in cities — which has led to thousands of such workers being peremptorily sacked. But controls on blacks remain, and with them the brutal police means of enforcing them.

The Nationalist Party's professed aim of removing all blacks into homelands, so that there should come a day when there were no black South Africans at all, shows the "conservative'' side of the coin. The "reformist” side is seen in the 1983 Constitution, which allows for a tri-cameral Parliament, involving whites. Asians and "Coloureds”. The black population are of course excluded, and the powerful President is to be elected by whites only. The Conservative Party sees all this as a betrayal of the Nationalist Party's heritage: in fact, the Nationalists have realised that some kind of concessions to non-white groups are necessary to defuse discontent and allow the system to continue with its essentials unchanged. Chipping away at such matters as segregated buses and the inter-racial marriage prohibition leaves the edifice unscathed. Most importantly, though, the changes in apartheid are to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the class who run it.

Apartheid clearly produces massive inequalities. On 1976 figures, blacks, who are 71 per cent of the population, had just 23 per cent of the national income; whites, who are 16 per cent of the population, had 67 per cent. But figures of a similar order are to be found in other capitalist countries with no institutionalised racism. Not all white South Africans are capitalists who live off the unpaid labour of workers: most are themselves workers who, though better off than black workers, are still oppressed and exploited. Some blacks have even become wealthy businessmen and landlords.

Black consciousness leaders such as Steve Biko argued that only blacks in South Africa were really workers, since any white, however downtrodden, had something to lose if the system were changed. But if it is not apartheid that is removed but capitalism, all will benefit. And that will require the joint efforts of workers of whatever "race", everywhere.

Paul Bennett

South Africa: Make Crime Pay (1953)

The above is the title of an article by the Johannesburg correspondent of the Economist, which in its issue of September 6th, presents us with an interesting sidelight on labour relations in South African agriculture. It appears that in the Kroonstad district of the Orange Free State,

  “the new goldfields nearby are drawing labour away from the farms; and in any case the Africans are showing an increasing aversion to farm work. Under the masters and servants act, a farmer can still pursue a runaway worker, and have him first fined, and then forced back to work. But the Africans, it seems, now resent this."

Obviously the good farmers of Kroonstad had got to find a solution to this distressing dilemma. They might raise wages, and thus make farm work more attractive. (They might, but not if they could avoid it.) There must (they reasoned) be some way out of the difficulty. And there was.

During the last year or two, the article continues, the South African Government

     “has pursued a deliberate policy of building ‘outpost’ prisons in rural areas, and allowing farmers to hire convict labour from them.’ There are now 12 such outpost Jails in South Africa, but until recently there were none in the Free State. “The farmers of Kroonstad district therefore applied to the government for a prison in their area. As there was apparently some difficulty in finding the money for it, the farmers hit on an ingenious expedient.”

Any private enterprise enthusiasts who may be reading this should follow the next bit carefully.

  “A leading Kroonstad farmer, Mr. George Verster, organised 22 other farmers into a private company, on a normal shareholding basis. The farmers subscribed £12,000 in £1 shares and elected Mr. Verster their chairman. Mr. Verster then approached the government with the proposition that the company build and equip a prison, if the government would stock it with convicts.”
   “The government was enthusiastic about the proposal, and it was arranged that when the new prison was built the government would supply 350 African convicts whom the Kroonstad farmers company could hire by paying the state 1s. 9d. per head per day” (the convicts, of course, get nothing).

It’s amazing. Crime has now donned the mantle of virtue, ascended to the Elysian fields of commercial respectability, to be sanctified in the name of profit. But hold hard—of course only the “best type” of convicts are employed, this is those who are serving sentences “of from six to fifteen years for slaying or wounding fellow Zulus in tribal fights. Thus they are not ordinary criminals, and by working for Mr. Verster and his friends they will be removed from contamination by hardened, habitual criminals.” Presumably by this is meant those revolting specimens of abysmal depravity the perpetrators of theft.

The only snag that the farmers of Kroonstad had to overcome was the fact that the cost of building and equipping the desired penal residence, was just over double the amount subscribed. What did they do about it? Use convict labour to build it! In this way you can build a £25,000 jail for £12,000. This we may presume is what in bourgeois circles is known as thrift. The name of the new prison is Geneva “perhaps in grateful recognition of the fact that the South African Government does not subscribe to the I.L.O. Convention against the hiring out of Convict labour for private profit.”

We note that one of the many merits of this scheme is that it is “ thoroughly democratic.”

   “By this is meant that under the rules of the company, the farmers will be treated in exactly the same way as far as getting convicts is concerned, whatever the differences in the size of their contributions to the scheme." 

When opening a new—civic building—if we may be permitted the phrase, it is customary to enliven the proceedings with a little ceremony. So the new jail was formally opened by Mr. Swart the Minister of Justice, accompanied by the Director of Prisons who, strange as it may seem, is Mr. George Verster’s uncle, Mr. Victor Verster.

Mr. Swart made a long speech (there were doubtless other long speeches) in which he:

  “Stoutly defended the jail farm system . . . praised Mr. Verster and his fellow farmers for their excellent idea (which he frankly confessed would save the state a lot of money), remarked laughingly that the convicts were lucky fellows who would get plenty of fine fresh air, and finally promised that, as Minister of Justice, he would see to it that 'many more’ farm jails were built in the shortest possible space of time."

The jollifications were concluded by the unveiling of a commemorative tablet and the consumption of numerous cups of coffee and plates of cake. We are not a little puzzled by the fact that the principal participants in the scheme were not invited to this “tea party.” But perhaps they would have been embarrassed. As it happened, the press in the person of the Johannesburg Star, took a rather poor view of this business, regarding it as “morally reprehensible” and as an “investment in Crime,” since it is now in the interests of farmers to build prisons and the state to keep them filled. But it appears that both the farmers and the Minister of Justice are impervious to criticism, and are firmly convinced that they are helping the convicts by what is called “rehabilitating them” and “helping the country” (time-honoured phrase) by providing cheap labour. “What other country, they may well demand, can point to such achievements? When was there ever such a magnificent example of philanthropy and five-per cent?”

Ian Jones

From the January 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

SACP - South Africa's Child Poverty

Almost two-thirds of children live below the poverty line of R965 per month. Not only are the country's children facing gross inequality, but unemployment and poverty means many households cannot financially support their young.

Inequalities in access to quality services and opportunities still run along racial with 41 percent of all black African children and 33 percent of this group across all ages living in the poorest 20 percent of households in the country.

Despite many children being eligible for a monthly child support grant of R360 researchers pointed out around 1.8 million are still not accessing the grant, many of whom are among the neediest young children. At R12 a day, the grant was in effect a very small amount and was not enough to cover a child’s most basic daily food needs.

http://www.iol.co.za/capeargus/news/sa-children-hardest-hit-by-poverty-2092671

Southern Africa's land reform

Twenty-two years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is still grappling with land reform. Progress is slow under the current approach to shift land from white back to black people and many are becoming impatient. Land ownership is a contentious issue in South Africa. With the end of apartheid in 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) party promised to right the wrongs of the past by shifting land from white farmers back to the black population who lost most of South Africa's fertile land under colonial rule. But the government is still far from reaching its initial target of redistributing one third of the land by 1999. 90 percent of the farmland that has been redistributed is not productive anymore, meaning that land reform has not been commercially viable.

"We haven't given it enough time," said Professor Nick Vink, chairman of the Agricultural Economics Department at Stellenbosch University. "It's something that's going to be with the country for the next two or three generations."

Left-winger,Julius Malema, renewed his call for blacks to occupy white-owned land. The Economic Freedom Fighters party has won public support with by campaigning against inequality in South Africa and calling for non-violent occupation to redistribute the land.

"They have been living peacefully. They have been swimming in a pool of privilege, they have been enjoying themselves because they always owned or land,” said Malema about South Africa's white, land-owning minority.

Robert Mugabe wanted to use his land reform program to eliminate the traces of colonialism by giving farms to black Zimbabweans. 15 years later the country can no longer feed itself. Some 4,500 white farmers were dispossessed, sometimes forcibly, and a million black Zimbabweans were settled on their land. A number of new medium-sized farms were created but by and large the land was redistributed to small-scale farmers – and to people who had good connections to the Mugabe regime. As a result of the land reform, some 300,000 black farm workers lost their jobs. Like the dispossessed white farm owners, they received no compensation for their losses. With the implementation of the land reform, the government failed to seize the opportunity to abandon traditional hierarchies and give women more of a say in the running of the expropriated farms. Less than 40 percent of land is currently being used productively, he told DW. One reason for this is that no real work is being done on many of the new large farms now in the hands of members of the political elite. Small farmers lack the necessary know-how and do not have enough capital to purchase the equipment they need, seeds, fertilizer or fuel.

Land reform seems to have become a symbol of how deep racial divisions still run in the country.

  

http://www.dw.com/en/south-africas-land-reform-a-never-ending-story/a-36491026

http://www.dw.com/en/zimbabwes-fast-track-land-reform-shows-little-benefit-15-years-on/a-18461592

Dying for a pee

Endlovisi, a vast sprawl of more than 6,600 corrugated iron shacks perched precariously over the sand dunes on the southeastern edge of Cape Town. One of the world's five biggest slumS, the townships of Khayelitsha stretch for miles, a sea of ramshackle wood and iron shacks. The townships are home to nearly 400,000 residents, 99 percent of them black. Part of Khayelitsha, Endlovisi is home to an estimated 20,000 people who share just 380 or so communal toilets.

"Using a toilet in informal settlements is one of the most dangerous activities for residents and women and the children have the biggest problems," said Axolile Notywala, of the Social Justice Coalition (SJO), a campaign group fighting for better sanitation in Cape Town's informal settlements. In 2012 a local man was convicted of multiple counts of child rape and one count of murder between April 2010 and September 2011. The court heard he had lured his victims to the bushes around the settlement before attacking them. The same court will begin a pre-trial hearing of the case against two cousins accused of the murder of Sinoxolo Mafevuka, a Khayelitsha teenager who was found strangled in a communal toilet near her home.

Meaning 'new home', Khayelitsha was established in the mid-1980s during the apartheid era as a vast dormitory for the thousands of workers who moved to Cape Town in search of jobs. When restrictions on the movement of blacks were lifted with the end of apartheid in 1994, hundreds of thousands more Xhosa people from the Eastern Cape poured into the city. Endlovini was born a few years later, in 1997, taking over a swathe of unoccupied hillside land that had been both a nature reserve and public landfill. The community's refusal to be evicted gave the place its name: in the Xhosa language it means both elephant and fierce strength and is officially known as Monwabisi Park.

Khayelitsha's residents' push for better sanitation and security, led by the SJC, has been built on tiny steps - from numbering existing toilets to identify them to the creation of services to clean and maintain them. Padlocks were issued to encourage a sense of ownership of existing toilets but new facilities are desperately needed.

"The city's budget for water and sanitation has decreased again this year...21 per cent of Cape Town's households are informal but they only get one percent of the city's total capital allocation for water and sanitation," the SJO's Notywala said. "The city still relies on offering undignified, inferior, temporary toilets meant for emergencies as long term solutions."

http://news.trust.org/item/20161012130244-psdu5/

Containing the Cartels

Six of the world’s biggest container shipping companies were raided by South African on suspicion of colluding to inflate rates between Asia and South Africa, the country’s Competition Commission said. The companies under investigation are involved in the transportation of cargo for import and export purposes across the globe‚ including South Africa. They use large metal containers as packaging crates and in-transit warehouses to store and transport general cargo such as frozen foods‚ garments and footwear.

The development comes as global container lines struggle in the worst-ever market conditions, caused by a glut of ships and slowing global trade, which has battered earnings and forced at least one out of business. The six companies raided comprise local subsidiaries of Denmark’s Maersk, Swiss-headquartered Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), France’s CMA CGM Shipping, Germany’s Hamburg Sud, Singapore-based Pacific International Line and Maersk unit Safmarine, the commission said in a statement. It said the firms were suspected of engaging in collusive practices to fix incremental rates on the shipment of cargo from Asia to South Africa.

“Any cartel by shipping liners in this region results in inflated prices for cargo transportation,” Competition Commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele said. 

In July, EU antitrust regulators accepted an offer from Maersk and 13 competitors to change their pricing practices in order to stave off possible fines. 

Facts of the Day

South Africa’s Gini Coefficient which measures inequality is the world’s highest (at 0.77 on a scale of 0 to 1, in terms of income inequality from employment).

Since 2000, social protests have numbered an average of 11 per day. 

From 2012-16 the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report category measuring worker militancy ranked South Africa’s proletariat as the angriest on earth.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Economic Crime surveys awarded the gold medal for world corruption to the Johannesburg bourgeoisie in 2014 and 2016.

South Africa's Child Poverty

Over three million children under the age of six in South Africa live in poverty. Children who live below the food poverty line are not getting enough food to get their 2‚000 calorie a day nutrition they need.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2016/05/12/Over-three-million-SA-children-live-in-poverty

The recession bites in South Africa

 Tens of thousands of jobs in mining, metals and engineering are at risk in South Africa as firms cut costs due to the commodity rout. Trade union Solidarity says that as many as 58,549 workers in South Africa could lose their jobs this year across a number of industries. It said that more than 29,000 jobs could go in the mining sector, as well as 8,000 in the metal and engineering industry.

South Africa — which exports vast quantities of platinum, manganese and iron ore — has been hit hard by resource companies cutting costs in the face of declining profits. They've been hurt by sharp falls in commodity prices due to oversupply and slowing demand growth in top consumer China.

Use the Power

On 30 March 1960, Philip Kgosana led a march of 30 000 people on Parliament in protest against the pass laws. He was arrested and jailed and later went into exile. For Kgosana, the protest against the pass laws was the "entry" point to a bigger struggle, a struggle "to change the lives of African people" He was to be in exile for 36 years, 22 of them spent working for the United Nations, in Africa and Asia. When he retired at 60, he returned home to the Winterveld, north of Pretoria only to find that "in 36 years, nothing had changed. The problems of our people were still the same."

He is critical of those in authority who "blame apartheid" for South Africa's problems after 22 years. "Why blame apartheid? You have been in charge. There is a misuse of power for the accumulation of wealth," he said. "If you get to power and you use it to make yourself rich, you are not doing your job. You are fooling us."

"Political power is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end, a tool to achieve social and economic freedom. Our people want food, and schools, and houses. What are all these squatter camps? There is not one city in South Africa which doesn't have this other city, this shack city, full of water and dead dogs. And these are growing. If there are children sleeping on the floor and studying under a tree, and you have power, you aren't using that power."

Five ultra-rich black South Africans

 Patrice Motsepe

Patrice Tlhopane Motsepe is a South African mining magnate. He is the founder and executive chairman of African Rainbow Minerals, which has interests in gold, ferrous metals, base metals, and platinum. Motsepe’s net worth is put at $1.1 billion (R18 billion) ranking him 847th in the world, and 22nd in Africa in 2015. However, Forbes reported earlier this month that since its last report, a mere two months ago, Motsepe has seen his fortune slip by as much as $200 million because of a softer currency and falling stock prices.

Cyril Ramaphosa

Ramaphosa has stepped back from his business pursuits since being appointed deputy president of South Africa in May 2014. He stepped down as chairman of investment firm Shanduka Group in May 2015 and a year later completed the process of selling his 30% stake in the company. Forbes puts his fortune at $450 million (R7.4 billion) – 42nd richest in Africa.

Tokyo Sexwale

Tokyo Sexwale is one of five candidates put forward to be the new FIFA president. Sexwale has a rich political background,  having spent many years on Robben Island, alongside the late Nelson Mandela, during apartheid. Upon his release, he worked his way up to a position where he campaigned for a leadership position within the ANC. The once Gauteng premier was appointed by President Jacob Zuma as Minister of Human Settlements in 2009. Upon leaving the public sector, Sexwale founded Mvelaphanda Holdings – a company of which he is still executive chairman. In 2009, Sexwale declared his wealth to be approximately $2 billion rand His net worth is put at $200 million (R3.27 billion). In 2013, it was reported that Sexwale had bought his own personal tropical island in the Indian Ocean for $70 million.

Sipho Nkosi

Sipho Nkosi is the CEO of Exxaro Resources, a diversified group with interests in the coal, titanium dioxide, ferrous and energy markets. Nkosi is set to retire as CEO in March after seven years on the job – having joined Exxaro in November 2007, one year after the company listed on the JSE. Exxaro’s share price has taken a beating in recent years, and particularly in 2015, along with other resource stocks. However, its share price was up nearly 6% in trade on Wednesday (27 January) to R53.77, having hit a low of R37.69 in 2015 – and from R29 in 2007. In 2014, Nkosi was paid a salary of R16.84 million by the company, including R5.5 million in gains on management share schemes. The Sunday Times rich list, published in late 2015, stated that Nkosi’s holding in Exxaro Resources was 2.7%. The company has a market cap of R19.26 billion. His net worth is put at around R2.7 billion.

Phuthuma Nhleko

A former CEO at Africa’s largest mobile operator MTN, Phuthuma Nhleko was re-appointed as executive chairman of the company late last year to deal with a multi-billion dollar fine issued by the Nigerian government. Nhleko has a 2.49% holding in MTN’s broad-based black economic empowerment scheme, MTN Zakhele, which made its debut on the JSE in November 2015. Nhleko is the chairman and co-founder of the Pembani Group, which recently merged with Shanduka Group which has stakes in 29 businesses,  creating a business with a portfolio value in excess of R9 billion. According to reports, Nhleko has assets amounting to R1.74 billion.

The above still have a way to catch up with Africa’s richest black capitalist. Nigerian cement mogul Aliko Dangote has a net worth of $14.3 billion, according to Wealth-X, as reported by Business Insider.

The African Wealthy

 There are 163,000 dollar millionaires in Africa, according to a report by New World Wealth; a Johannesburg research company. According to the report, Johannesburg has 46,800 millionaires. About 600 of those have over $30 million. Egypt is next with 20,200 millionaires; Nigeria with 15,400 and Kenya 8,500.

If you look at the asset allocation of the average South African millionaire, about 30% of their assets are in business interests, 25 % in equities, about 20% in property and then rest will be in cash, fixed income instruments, bonds and alternative investments like collectables like art

The African luxury sector generated an estimated $8 billion in revenue in 2014; with $2.8 billion coming out of South Africa.

Collectables such as art, wine and classic automobiles are increasingly popular and accounted for $5.3 billion of the total assets of African high net worth individuals at the end of 2014, according to New World Wealth. $32 million was generated in South African sales of super-luxury watches in 2014; up from $23 million in 2013.

The South African yacht industry generates about $150 million per year. Angola and South Africa are the top spots for yachting in sub-Saharan Africa. Morocco and Egypt are the top spots in North Africa. The yacht owners are mostly male, between the ages of 40 to 50, with average earnings of over $300,000 per year.

South Africa's Progress

Eighteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is now judged to be one of the most unequal societies in the world and its 19 million children bear the brunt of the disconnect.

The Unicef report found that 1.4 million children live in homes that rely on often dirty streams for drinking water, 1.5 million have no flushing lavatories and 1.7 million live in shacks, with no proper bedding, cooking or washing facilities.

Four in 10 live in homes where no one is employed and, in cases of dire poverty, the figure rises to seven in 10.

A total of 330,000 children - and five million adults - are presently infected with HIV, and 40 per cent die from the pandemic annually.

Child support grants, introduced in 1997, now reach 10.3m children but another one million who are eligible do not yet receive them.

Political Power

On 16 August 2012, 34 striking miners were shot dead by police at the British-owned Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, north of Johannesburg. Rock drill operators earning 5,000 rand ($421) per month were demanding parity with workers earning 12,000 rand ($1,046) per month at the nearby Impala platinum mine. Less than a week after setting down their tools, the police opened fire.

The Right Reverend Rubin Phillip, bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Natal, said: ‘And so again, the truth of our country is in dead black bodies littering the ground. The truth of our time is that people asserting their rights and dignity have been brought down in a hail of bullets… Has nothing changed in our place, when its truth remains that the armed might of the state acts for the elite of powerful and wealthy, and against our people?”

Class Apartheid

SACP-ANC veteran Ronnie Kasrils has written. “Racial disparities in wealth have actually increased since the end of formal apartheid.”

“There is a brutal exploitation of the working class, in the mines, farms and workplaces, to keep them in the status of wage slaves,” said Vavi.

Under the ANC’s policies, racial disparities in wealth have actually increased since the end of formal apartheid. Horrific state violence against workers has also returned, with the massacre of 34 miners at Marikana in 2012. Irvin Jim told an audience in New York, that the current South African state “represents the dominant classes in society, which exploit the workers.” That’s why the police massacre at Marikana happened. The ANC government “wanted to teach the working class a lesson: that if you act in your interest, we will kill you.”

Unemployment has worsened, to more than 36 percent.

50 percent of youth below the age of 25 are unemployed

Poverty has escalated to 54.3 percent of the people.

26 million live on “below a U.S. dollar a day.”

50 percent of kids drop out of school “before the age of 12.”

“This is what breeds a cycle of poverty among the working class,” said Vavi, with the rhetorical question: “Why did we make these sacrifices against apartheid, if this is the result?” Jacob Zuma, whom South African labor supported to replace the cold and calculating neoliberalism of President Thabo Mbeki, in 2009, “proved to be the worst thing we have ever done to the working class. It was our mistake,” said Vavi. “We got so angry at Mbeki and his neoliberal programs,” as well as his denial that HIV was transmitted by sex – leading to the death of “360,000 to 400,000 South Africans.” There are “blackouts every day, because of previous attempts to privatize electricity,” he said. “Billions and billions of rand are being wasted through corruption, which has been institutionalized” in the ANC. Such corruption is more than simple theft; it is built into the system that South Africa’s leaders have embraced. “The fight against corruption is a fight against the capitalist system.”

COSATU president S’dumo Dlamini likes to “talk Marxism.” but behaves like an agent of capital.

from here 

South Africans Against Climate Change

The battle against climate change is a world war. South Africa is in the front lines. Anti-nuclear energy activists are up in arms, and have taken to vigils outside South Africa’s parliament in Cape Town to protest against President Jacob Zuma’s push for nuclear development. The protest has been building since September 2014 when Zuma struck a deal with Russia’s Rossatom to build up to eight nuclear power stations in South Africa. The stations would cost the country around 1 trillion South African rands (84 billion dollars). The Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), an interdenominational faith-based environment initiative led by Bishop Geoff Davies, has said the government’s nuclear policy is not only foolish but immoral.

“SAFCEI does not believe that nuclear energy is an answer to climate change but is a distraction likely to bankrupt the country [South Africa] and lead to further energy impoverishment” – Liziwe McDaid, energy advisor for the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute. SAFCEI is demanding that the government take a fresh look at its drive for nuclear energy. Liziwe McDaid, SAFCEI’s energy advisor argues for a much greater rollout of renewable energy is the key to shifting the carbon-intensive energy sector towards a sustainable low carbon future. “SAFCEI does not believe that nuclear energy is an answer to climate change but is a distraction likely to bankrupt the country and lead to further energy impoverishment.”

David Hallowes researcher and editor of Slow Poison for groundWork, another climate change pressure group, feels South Africa is not doing enough on adaptation. “Government is still allowing mining and industry to poison water and land in key catchments and agricultural areas,” adding that the result is that climate impacts will be amplified. The same plants and developments that are driving climate change are poisoning and killing people, animals and plants that are in the path of pollution, “so the people’s struggles for an environment not harmful to their health and wellbeing are also climate struggles.” According to Hallowes, “there are different views on what can be achieved with renewable energy. We do not think it can power infinite economic growth and hence we do not believe it can sustain a capitalist economy. In the short term, we think we should be looking for a reduction in energy consumption. The question is who gets it for what.” He goes on to explain “We think we should have a programme that creates democratic ownership and control of renewable energy at different levels from community or settlement, to municipality to national. We call it energy sovereignty.  The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa calls it social ownership. It’s the same thing.” The groundWork researcher said that CSOs want to see an end to new coal developments, such as new mines or power stations. “I think everyone agrees but don’t necessarily mean the same thing. For some, it’s just a matter of jobs. We think it means the transformation of the economy towards equality and freedom that is democratic control rather than plutocratic control.”

Muna Lakhani, founder and national coordinator of the Institute for Zero Waste in Africa (IZWA), is equally concerned that government is not doing enough to fight climate change.

 “Our government sees too much of ‘business as usual’ and is very lax in implementing even the minimal legislation, such as air quality permits, carbon taxes and the like,” he says. According to Lakhani, CSOs are mostly united on key issues, such as the call for no more fossil fuel, a bigger push for renewables, and promoting local resilience especially of poorer communities and the generally disadvantaged.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/07/one-tune-different-hymns-tackling-climate-change-in-south-africa/

The Misery of Migrants in Malawi

FOR WORLD SOCIALISM

Maula prison, in the Malawi capital of Lilongwe was built to accommodate 800 prisoners, but now is bursting at the seams with 2,650 inmates. Amongst this desperate population, the most vulnerable are the nearly 300 undocumented migrants who were arrested as they travelled towards South Africa. These men represent the reality of our mobile world, where people are on the move, seeking refuge from violence and inequality or escape from chronic poverty. Lacking any kind of resources, they left their countries of origin in the hope of building a decent life in South Africa. A dream denied at home, that dramatically ended up in Malawi’s prisons.

Abeba, a man in his thirties from Durame, Ethiopia says “We are not criminals! But now, in prison, we are not human anymore.”

The number of foreign citizens, mostly Ethiopians, detained in Malawi for illegal entry has increased in the past few years, becoming a phenomenon of humanitarian concern. Most of them have been charged for three months, but the reality is that they have been locked away for more. The law requires they return to their homelands after their periods of detention, but bureaucratic delays impede any way forward. Moreover, they are supposed to cover their expenses for repatriation, a contradiction to their weak economic status.

A young boy explains “My dream is to reach South Africa; this is what I have worked towards for years. I knew it would be difficult, but I never thought I’d end up here. I thought Africans were all brothers. But here… here it seems different.”

Ethiopians follow a long-standing pattern of migration towards South Africa, their beacon of light. “Where we live, there is not enough land for everyone, we are too many in my family,” says Abeba, counting with the fingers on both hands the number of brothers in his family. “If I go to South Africa, after two or three years I can afford to buy a house. If you work for twenty years in Ethiopia you can’t buy anything,” he says. Another young Ethiopian adds, “If you need a job there, you have to belong to a certain family that has land. My family doesn’t have any.” For many, leaving the country wasn’t a choice. It was their last hope for survival.

Prisoners in Maula get food only once a day. They usually eat a plate of nsima - ground maize that fills the stomach but doesn’t give many nutrients. Beans are an occasional treat. Nutrition is so poor that last month Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had to treat 18 inmates for moderate-to-severe malnutrition

Money for safety

South Africa is a major destination for migrants and asylum seekers from all over the continent. In 2014, it received over 86,000 asylum applications, according to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, more than twice the number received in the UK. But just under one in 10 of those applications were approved – one of the lowest approval rates in the world.

In South Africa, asylum seekers and refugees in need of documentation often have no choice but to pay for it. So says a new report exposing how corruption and bribery have permeated nearly every level of the country’s asylum system: from border crossings, to queues outside refugee reception offices, to what takes place inside those offices.

The report, carried out by the African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, together with Lawyers for Human Rights, surveyed more than 900 respondents, the majority of them asylum seekers, and found that nearly a third had experienced corruption at some stage in the process. “It is corruption everywhere,” said one respondent interviewed outside Marabastad Refugee Reception Office (RRO) in Pretoria, which according to the report is the most corrupt of the country’s five RROs. “They ask for money. You pay, but they don’t help you. If you can give R2,000 to R5,000 (US$162 to $404) you can get refugee status.”

An interpreter employed by the Department of Home Affairs at Marabastad said that asylum seekers were routinely asked for money in exchange for a positive outcome on their applications.

13 percent of respondents said that border officials asked them for money. 22 percent of respondents said they were asked for money while queuing outside an RRO, usually by security guards or brokers claiming to have connections with staff inside. At Marabastad, more than half of the respondents experienced corruption in the queue. 31 percent reported being asked for money in exchange for being assisted once inside the office.

Asylum seekers unable to renew their permits before they expire are liable for fines, a system that opens up another opportunity for corruption, with fines often being paid directly to RRO staff, according to the report.