NEWS: Inequality in South Africa remains rife

THE transfer of power from the late Nelson Mandela to Thabo Mbeki and then to President Jacob Zuma marked a notable generational change – from a generation that was committed to liberation and struggle to a much younger and seemingly inexperienced one whose sole task it is to deliver.

Thus, delivery, and the unmistakable lack thereof in important sectors such as education and civic services, is an important talking point for South Africans.

As a young South African, I believe that I must caution that it is perilous to assume that democracy necessitates political and economic freedoms. It does not. South Africa’s problems are diverse and interwoven. Former president Thabo Mbeki spoke (during his tenure as president) about two South Africas, one belonging to the developed world and the other to the underdeveloped world. These continue to exist side by side.

South Africa has developed a political economy in which the distribution of wealth is skewed in favour of a white minority that continues to enjoy excess and access.

According to considerable empirical evidence, the richest 10 percent of the South African population earns 50 percent of the national income while a stone’s throw away, the poor earn only 1.5 percent.

In South Africa’s education sector the troubles are topsy-turvy. The South African government spends 20 percent of its national budget on education, of which 78 percent is spent on settling salaries and yet the education system continues to proliferate immeasurable inadequacies and inequalities. Education drives social mobility, thus, if one is born into a poor family then one’s prospects for social mobility are slim.

If South Africa is to compete successfully in the global marketplace, it is imperative that it upgrade its skills base, crippled by generations of apartheid and the industrial colour bar that prevented the black population from doing skilled work.

This was the single most damaging thing that apartheid wrought on South Africa’s future economic prospects, and sadly the first 15 years of democratic government did little to start the process of rectification as the Department of Education stumbled from one crisis to another.

The government needs to get the syllabus right – an informed and precise layout of the syllabus must detail what is taught, how, and to what outcomes. Schools need to provide a comparable measure of pupil performance as well as a benchmark for grade-appropriate achievements, making it possible for targeted support to reach specific schools. Each pupil must master the basics of foundational numeracy and literacy, as these are the building blocks of further education.

Absenteeism

Teacher absenteeism amounts to about one month a year and learning is compromised. Teachers need to be in class. Every teacher must have the minimum basic competencies in the subjects they teach and every pupil needs to access adequate learning materials. Our youth cannot afford scandals involving missing textbooks, sabotage and tender irregularities.

The rural/urban divide dichotomy within South Africa’s economy is one typical of the developing world that is home to a struggling and economically marginalised black majority. Economic activities are restricted to urban areas. This means that rural poverty is plentiful and that urbanisation intensifies so fast that the government finds it difficult to mediate dysfunctional urban development such as informal settlements.

Also, high unemployment combined with a big youth dependency ratio leads to a low revenue base for the government. Widespread inequality, unemployment, and inadequate education, together with a macro-economic policy that subordinates development to growth and a macro-political structure that does not encourage accountability to voters, deny South Africans the quality of life proposed in the Freedom Charter.

For as long as macro-economic policies and macro-political structures allow one developed South Africa to live extravagantly while the other strains in poverty, we must work harder to realise that economic freedom is part of freedom itself.

Ideology must be tempered with pragmatism to provide freedom as power to the voter base.

Mmereki is a social entrepreneur and the founder of the African Youth Secretariat

Read more at The Mercury, August 29, 2014


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