The Nation Newspaper

Tag: South Africa’s

  • South Africa’s jobless ignite creative power with solar kits

    A motorbike accident two years ago in the Cape Town suburb of Milnerton left Pascal Kassongo with a leg fracture, multiple cuts and a written-off bike, crippling his courier business.

    Two weeks in hospital, followed by several more of physiotherapy and recovery, drove the father of four into near destitution.

    Too weak to buy and deliver goods to clients, his opportunity to earn 300-400 rand ($24.40-$32.60) a day was gone.

    Originally from Uvira in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Kassongo fled the war there in 2007, and had only a few friends he could call on for help in South Africa.

    One of them was a pastor who took him to Scalabrini, a centre that helps migrants settle and find an economic foothold in South Africa.

    As well as receiving regular food parcels, Kassongo was recruited for the “Amandla!” Project, whose name means “power” in the Xhosa and Zulu languages.

    The scheme trains unemployed people, especially migrants, to run small businesses using a solar-powered kit called Ecoboxx.

    The Ecoboxx is a lightweight, portable power supply, charged with two solar panels, that can provide 50 hours of power. It comes with two LED lights, a USB-driven fan, hair clippers and a charging cable for cell phones and other devices.

  • South Africa’s war against neighbours

    Just when Nigerians were celebrating the relatively peaceful conduct of the 2015 elections and the emergence of a people-oriented government, we all woke up to news of the infamous xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

    As I pen this piece, my heart is with those Nigerians and other Africans who are victims of this condemnable attack. Until now, I have personally rated South Africa as a leading African country where democracy has found firm roots. The country, over the years, has given the world the impression of a perfect ground to advance the cause of democracy and human freedom. But recent developments have given the world a true picture of the nation called South Africa. Even though there have been reported cases of violence against foreigners in the past, one can hardly imagine that a nation which Nigeria stood by in its trying moments can quickly turn against it, slaughtering its citizens at will and carting away their legitimate and hard-earned properties in broad day light. Nigeria issued at once, hundreds of passports to South Africa’s asylum-seekers in the dark hours of   apartheid. Nigerian musician, Sonny Okosun in 1977 wrote the hit song, “Fire in Soweto” in honour of black South Africans during these trying times. The gravity of attacks against Nigerians in the ongoing crisis in South Africa is at best virulent, brutal and overwhelming. This is definitely not the best way to reward a people who had made indelible contributions to the survival of South Africa.

    For foreigners, life in the Republic of South Africa is now hellish, brutish and short, just like Thomas Hobbes aptly captured it.

    Until now the realities of the word xenophobia was already fading away and being replaced by less offensive words like ethnicity. But the people of South Africa have however brought it back to the front burner. Wikipedia has described Xenophobia as the unreasoned fear of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. It further says  Xenophobia can manifest itself in many ways involving the relations and perceptions of an ingroup towards an outgroup, including a fear of losing identity, suspicion of its activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate its presence to secure a presumed purity. The people of South Africa have exhibited all of the above, including a devilish purity.

    Zulu King Godwill Zwelithi’s utterances on March 23 can be said to have launched the Zenophobic attacks in South Africa and he had refused to apologise, even after finding out that his people have maimed, killed and destroyed businesses belonging to black foreigners which he claimed were not his intentions. He insists that foreigners should go back to their countries but tried to save face by saying attacking the foreigners is not how to chase them away. He wants the government to do it legally. The Zulu king was quoted to have said: “we are requesting those who come from outside to please go back to their countries. The fact that there were countries that played a role in the country’s struggle for liberation should not be used as an excuse to create a situation where foreigners are allowed to inconvenience locals. I know you were in their countries during the struggle for liberation. But the fact of the matter is you did not set up businesses in their countries.” If not coming from a King, I would have by any means considered such a statement irresponsible, I would rather say it is insensitive, resentful, full of hate, largely acrimonious and rancorous.

    The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action speaks loudly and urges all governments to take immediate measures and to develop strong policies to prevent and combat all forms and manifestations of racism, xenophobia or related intolerance, where necessary by enactment of appropriate legislation including penal measures. The Republic of South Africa is privy to this but has acted far from it.

    However, if South Africa has any genuine reason to banish foreigners and isolate itself from the comity of nations, it is free to do so. The Zulu King captured his genuine feelings when he said his three major complaints and why he wanted foreigners to go. One, South African traders in the townships said they could not compete with the prices that foreign-owned businesses were selling their products. Two, foreigners were involved in violent crimes. Three, lack of respect shown by foreigners to locals. The Republic of South Africa as a sovereign nation and it is free to pursue its foreign policies with little or no interference and whenever it wants foreigners on its land no more, it should be done with and within the ambit of the law without gashing of flesh and spilling of blood. Meanwhile, let’s see how far it can go in doing this.

    “It is safe to first pursue the thief from without before dealing with the traitor from within” says the Yoruba adage. As much as we castigate the government and people of South Africa, we should not spare the Nigerian government of the blame as successive governments have squandered and embezzled the common wealth of the nation. The irresponsible nature of the Nigerian governments has continued to gradually and systematically force its citizens to migrate to other – even smaller countries for various reasons, with the quest for greener pasture and qualitative educational topping the list. Nigeria has been turned to an infertile nation infested by cancerous politicians who have torn our national fabric into shreds and left its citizens hapless. It will be close to the truth to say that it is the dream of every Nigerian to either work, study, live, seek medical attention or even die abroad. That is the height of shame for a country which prides itsekf as the giant of world’s most populous black continent.

    However, as it is, all hope is not lost. Nigeria will be great again. Our dry bones shall live again.  Our cultural and moral lorry shall be restored. Nigerians will be proud to be Nigerians again.

    Nigerians have clamoured for a change and they have seen its realisation. General Muhammadu Buhari is the beacon of hope, and Nigerians should trust him enough to spearhead the much need change.

    Once again, I commiserate with the victims of the infamous xenophobic attacks in the Republic of South Africa as I call on the whole world to condemn the people of South Africa to have led such an inhuman onslaught on legitimate people in search of meaning for their lives.  God bless Nigeria.

     

    Mark writes from Abuja

  • Again, is this South Africa’s reward for our love?

    I experienced one of my most depressive moments in the evening of May 11, 1981. I had just sat an exam in the remote school I attended and decided to see a friend on my way home. Dare and I did not attend the same school. We became close primarily because of the passion both of us had for Bob Marley‘s songs. I had never seen Dare in the pensive mood I found him on that day. He sat with his chin on the back of his clasped hands, gazing intently at something only his own eyes could see.

    “Is anything the matter?” I asked. His response confirmed my fears that he might have lost a loved one. “Bob Marley is dead,” he said in a voice that wreaked emotion and caused a stone to drop from the top of my heart to the pit of my belly. A rash of questions ran through my mind. What becomes of reggae? What becomes of music? What becomes of life? As far as I was concerned, good music had died with Marley and, for the first time, my faith was shaken in the saying that nature abhors vacuum. If nature indeed abhors vacuum, why create a massive one with Bob Marley’s death?

    But I only needed to wait for five years to behold another fine flower of reggae music. It was in Yola, Adamawa State where I had gone on vacation as an undergraduate at the University of Lagos. From the speakers of a cab I boarded came the sweet, compelling voice of a reggae artiste hitherto unknown to me. I asked who the musician was and the taxi driver told me his name was Lucky Dube. “That must be another Jamaican,” I thought to myself, only to realise later that I was very wrong. Lucky Dube hailed from South Africa.

    I felt both relief and pride. For five years after Marley’s death, I had lived with the thought that good reggae music had left the world. But here was an African dishing out a brand of reggae that almost sounded better than Marley‘s. Dube instantly became my new music idol. I surrendered my ears to his voice, gave my heart to his message and faithfully threw my money into his records. Then on October 19, 2007, another sword was driven into my heart: gunmen shot him dead in Johannesburg, in the presence of his three daughters.

    I woke up every day praying for the repose of Dube‘s soul and asking God to grant his South African compatriots the fortitude to bear the loss. Unknown to me, Dube was killed by some of his cynical compatriots who shot him dead simply because he was taking his children to school in an exotic car and they thought he was a Nigerian. It is needless to say that the confession of his killers left a sour taste in my mouth. And just as I was wondering whether their admission of hatred for Nigerians could be true, Gen. Buba Marwa, the then Nigeria‘s Ambassador to South Africa, declared that the hatred the average South African nursed against Nigeria was unimaginable.

    What could Nigerians have done to deserve that amount of hatred from South Africans, I asked myself again and again. Here was a nation that fetched and carried for South Africain the heady days of apartheid. For decades, Nigeria remained at the forefront of the fight against apartheid and the emancipation of the black population of South Africa from the ignoble regime. Our churches and mosques devoted their sessions to praying for the fall of the soulless practice. Our newspapers devoted their editorial pages to condemning the obnoxious governments of Ian Smith and Pieta Botha. Ras Kimono, Mandators, Sunny Okosuns and other Nigerian musicians devoted their songs to condemning the unhappy regime.

    For the sake of bringing down the wall of apartheid, Nigeria made Africa the centre piece of its foreign policy for decades. We shunned the wealth that could have accrued to us from patronising the West and pumped our money into the purse of the African National Congress, the political organisation at the vanguard of opposition to apartheid in South Africa. It was in recognition of the role Nigeria played in the war against the apartheid regime in South Africa that Nigeria‘s former Head of State, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, was appointed the chairman of the Eminent Persons Group, the think tank of the movement against the apartheid regime. At a point, a former head of state, Gen. Murtala Mohammed told foreign Nigerian students that they would have to forfeit their scholarships because the money was being channeled into the fight against apartheid.

    Ironically, Nigerians in South Africa have been victims of xenophobic attacks in recent years. The latest one and second in seven years had claimed no fewer than seven lives at the last count. While none of our countrymen was said to be numbered among the dead, they were reported to have lost property estimated at more than N21 million to looters and vandals during the crisis. It is highly probable that some victims of the attacks were Nigerians who had to forfeit their scholarships as students to aid the fight against apartheid. Now they are refugees in different camps in a country they sacrificed a lot for her self determination, all for the spurious allegation that available jobs were being cornered by foreigners in the country.

    Before the xenophobic attacks, I had received loads of complaints from Nigerians seeking visas to South Africa. Officials of the South African embassy insist on heavy bribes before they would process visa requests by Nigerians. Matters got to a head in March 2012 with the deportation of 125 Nigerians on legitimate business trips to South Africa. South Africa’s laughable reason for the action was that the deportees lacked genuine medical certificates declaring them free of yellow fever. In this age?

    Our corrupt and inept leaders are to blame for the fate that has befallen Nigerians in South Africa and other parts of the world. But for the insensitive deeds of our rapacious leaders, Nigerians have no business trooping to South Africa in search of menial jobs.

     

    •The above piece is an updated version of one that appeared in this column in March 2012.

  • South Africa’s Eskom suspends bosses over power shortages

    South Africa’s Eskom suspends bosses over power shortages

    South Africa’s power utility Eskom has ordered four of its executives to step aside while it investigates the problems at the firm.

    They include Eskom’s Chief Executive Officer Tshediso Matona – appointed less than eight months ago.

    “This was done in the best interests of our stakeholders,” said Chairman Zola Tsotsi.

    South Africa has faced severe power cuts in recent months, leading to widespread criticism of Eskom.

    “The inquiry will look into poor generation capacity, cash-flow issues and other problems,” Mr Tsotsi told journalists in Johannesburg.

    He said the investigation would last up to three months.

    Eskom, which provides almost all of the electricity in Africa’s most developed economy, has also come under fire in recent months over a seeming lack of maintenance at the country’s power plants.

    Economists warn that if the energy problems are not resolved, it could further stunt the country’s growth prospects.

    Nomsa Maseko reports on South Africa’s power crisis

    Eskom says it needs an estimated $20billion (£13billion) to solve its problems.

    The government has offered an initial bailout of $2billion, which will be paid out in tranches.

    The rest of the money may have to come from the international markets, but with South Africa’s credit ratings down, Eskom may find it hard to raise funds elsewhere, says the BBC’s Lerato Mbele in Johannesburg.

    In the meantime, ordinary South Africans and business want assurances that whatever changes occur within Eskom, the lights will stay on in the country, our correspondent says.

     

  • South Africa’s spaza shops suffer as big retail rolls in

    In this corner of South Africa’s black township of Soweto, the biggest building used to be the Catholic church. Now it’s been overshadowed by a shopping center and business has only gotten worse for Grace, a 68-year-old shop owner.

    Like many proprietors of spaza shops – the informal stores that dot township corners – Grace barely manages to keep afloat as more of her neighbors head to the mall.

    “Once people get paid, they buy their groceries at the malls,” she said, sitting among dusty shelves of tea-bags, small packets of biscuits, loose cigarettes and butter.

    “They used to buy their groceries from us. Now they only come for daily items,” she said, declining to give her last name.

    Grace has been running the shop with her husband since 1993, the year before South Africa’s first all-race elections. They used to earn around 1,500 rand ($140) a day, but are down to a third of that now.

    During apartheid, blacks were crammed together in squalid townships miles away from cities. Some residents began to sell staples such as maize meal and cooking oil out of their own homes. The informal stores became known as tuck shops or “spazas,” a slang word that connotes “just getting by”.

    Along with shebeens, or corner taverns, spazas are one of the most visible parts of township life, and a major component of South Africa’s vast informal economy.

    While recent data on the informal economy is hard to come by, a 2002 study by the University of South Africa’s Bureau of Market Research (BMR) estimated that spaza shops brought in around $705 million a year, employing up to 290,000 people.

    Those numbers will have come under pressure over the last decade as real estate developers and big grocers such as Shoprite and Pick N Pay push into black areas, targeting rising consumer spending.

    Getting the cake

    South Africa’s emerging black middle class grew at annual 6.5 per cent between 2001 and 2007, according to the BMR, which estimated the growing socio-economic group at 9.3 million in 2007, out of a total population of around 50 million.

    “The emerging consumer market has been very, very good for construction of retail outlets in non-traditional locations,” said Mike Upton, chief executive of South African building company Group Five.

    “It’s kind of like first mover gets the cake.”

    Grocers have been big beneficiaries of this broadening wealth.

    Shares of Shoprite, Africa’s top retailer, have more than trebled over the last five years, lifted by a push into sub-Saharan Africa and previously underserved South African markets. The Cape Town-based company’s no-frills Usave discount outlets pose a major threat to spaza shops.

    The warehouse-like stores appear tailor-made for low-income customers: most of the laundry soap is for hand washing, not machines. Some dispense with large parking areas as customers come on foot.

    The only milk available is full cream – no skim, organic or soy – while bags of frozen “walkie talkies” – chicken heads and feet – are plentiful and cost just 10 rand.

    In Soweto, a flashpoint of the anti-apartheid struggle, where stone-throwing black youths battled heavily armed soldiers and police with their snarling dogs, the 65,000-sq-meter Maponya Mall is one of several shopping centres that have sprung up in recent years.

    Just down the road from Regina Mundi church where former President Nelson Mandela is depicted in stained glass, the mall boasts a Pick N Pay hyper-market, more than a dozen restaurants and a Virgin Active gym.

    Although still poor, Soweto is unmistakably on the rise, evidenced by the growing number of tidy brick bungalows and shiny Toyotas, and even the odd BMW.

    While recent data is not available, Rose Nkosi, the head of the South African Spaza and Tuckshop Association, reckons that the sprawling black township alone may have lost around 30 percent of its spaza shops since 2005.

    That’s bad news for the elderly or those who live far from a shopping center, Nkosi said.

    “Spazas are community shops,” she said, pointing out they sell in small amounts, such as half loaves of bread, to meet the needs of the poorest customers.

    Economies of scale

    The big retailers are able to use economies of scale to undercut spazas, which usually buy in small volumes and from wholesalers, driving up costs.

    Nkosi has teamed up Songi Pama, an entrepreneur and consultant, to bring spaza shop owners together to buy direct from suppliers such as South Africa’s Tiger Brands and the local units of Unilever and Nestle.

    The survival of spazas is critical to the fabric of the townships because so many of the owners are women, Pama said.

    “The little that they get out of these outlets they use to feed their children and take their children to school.”

    Too few owners are real businesspeople, said Noel Ndhlovu, who publishes industry newsletter Spaza News. Most are just looking to make enough get by, he said.

    “Unfortunately, the bulk of spaza shops, about 60 or 70 percent, are survivalists. And because they are survivalists, they don’t have skills – no business skills, no financial literacy, nothing.”

    In one workshop he ran, Ndhlovu said it took him several sessions to get some of the owners to understand how to work out their gross and net profit.

    Not far from Grace, middle-aged Vincent Jonyane leans out the window of his tin-roof shop and laughs. Business is good, he says. While elderly rivals are stuck in the past, he is thinking of expanding his wooden shack.

    “I’m still young, I know where to buy things cheap,” Jonyane said, pointing to stacks of eggs in cardboard cartons on a shelf.

     

    •Source: Reuters