Thomas Johnson - The Blog

Analysts say protests being experienced at South Africa's universities are not only about the unaffordable cost of higher education. The underlying catalyst is that a university education will secure benefits – skills, a guaranteed chance of a well-paying job and mobility to the middle-class and prosperity out of poverty. Experts say the dysfunctional education system – 80% of schools – mean only about 14% of school leavers qualify to go to university, and half of those who enrol dropout with nothing, except accumulated fee debt. Almost everything the ANC has done regarding education has been disastrous: Implementing outcomes based education against expert advice and the world’s experience and persisting with it despite the evidence. Closing teacher (and nursing) training colleges – some of them very good – and retrenching teachers despite the knowledge an excellent education can only be achieved through excellent educators. And now we face a shortage of teachers and a medioc...

City of Cape Town and mayoral member for transport Brett Herron received another bloody nose in the Western Cape High Court yesterday. It lost its application, with costs, for leave to appeal the Court's ruling last month halting the eviction of 26 Wynberg families to make way for the MyCiTi bus route and Acting Judge Leslie Weinkove's order for the city to conduct "meaningful" public participation. In papers filed with the application, Herron, who all along dismissed residents' appeals for a fair hearing, stated the constitution "imposed" public participation on the city. Tough Brett, if you don't like what the constitution says, get out of council and suck lemons! Neither the Constitution Act s152.1 and Municipal Systems Act chapter 4 s16 refers to "meaningful" in the context of public participation that's required of municipalities. The constitution s152.1.a says, "To provide democratic and accountable government for local ...

The following letter by an anonymous writer is trending: "For my South African friends: This is the letter I sent to You magazine. Perhaps they will publish it so it can reach more people: I've lived in Zimbabwe my entire life (27 years), I went through it's total collapse in 2008. But it wasn't an overnight crash - it took +/-10 years to hit absolute rock bottom. Reading the news, President Jacob Zuma says that the ANC comes first, not South Africa! It's not his statement that bothers me so much as the fact that the South African government is now reaching a point where they can (almost) say or do anything they want, and no one opposes them. South Africans are becoming complacent, the same way Zimbabweans did. (President Robert) Mugabe pushed the boundaries a little further each time to test us, and made seemingly insignificant changes to the law every now and then. In the beginning the change was so gradual, and when we didn't fight back, the changes became ...

In DC Comics’ Gotham City, the home of Batman is characterised by rampant and recurring corruption within the city's civil authorities and infrastructure . Gotham’s Underground – crime families and gangs – tentacles spread into and have almost total control over all aspects of society and government, with the city's officers steeped in bribery, corruption and criminal activities. Gotham City is lawless, with citizens having no protection except for the masked crusader, Batman. At the dawn of democracy in 1994 few would ever have pictured such a dystopian future for South Africa. Weren’t we different from the rest of Africa and the Third World? However, are we now fast approaching that future? A number of writers and analysts have suggested we are already there, the most recent being Max du Preez and The Times of London columnist Jenni Russell . Last month DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard was expelled from the party for sharing a Facebook post in September that said "educ...

South Africa’s 4.9 million personal income taxpayers contributed 36% of the total R986 billion collected in 2014-15, the largest source of tax revenue. Companies contributed 19%, down from 27% in 2008-09, and VAT 27%. South Africa’s tax to GDP ratio is 26%, the 10th highest in the world, compares to a world average of 15%. However, if you look at the poor value we receive and corruption and theft of state resources, and the services we have to buy, e.g. education, security and health because the state has failed in its provision, the burden on the country’s small tax base is far worse than the ratios suggest. And now they’re talking about a wealth tax. It’s on this point – poor value for money – that there has been talk about a “tax revolt”, the most recent comments from Judge Dennis Davis, head of the Davis Tax Commission. For our taxes, in Jacob Zuma we have the "world's highest paid, worst value-for-money president" . His cabinet, no surprise, is one of the larg...

Yesterday, different questions about different aspects of South Africa’s industry were posed by two different media persons. The first by David Biggs in his Tavern of the Seas column was why we import goods from China and elsewhere we could make here. And why we could not become a producer of luxury, designer goods. The second question was CapeTalk’s John Maytham to an interviewee about why South Africa did not have far more tourists than it already did with the local currency at over R14/$ and R21/£, making it a value-for-money destination. The short answer to the first question is because our comparatively expensive labour and production costs, low productivity and poor work ethic compared to China and Asia mainly, the world's factory, make it unlikely we'll ever compete. However, we can possibly compete in niche, luxury and designer goods, not mass produced stuff. But local manufacturers lack vision, confidence, government support and suffer confusing policy to take adva...

Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko delivered a scathing report to parliamentarians about suspended National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega, saying she has brought the police into disrepute. Nhleko and President Jacob Zuma must come clean and tell us why they ever thought Phiyega was suitable for the job in the first place. She had no policing experiencing and allegations about her fitness for office have been around a long time, with no reaction from them, until recently. A similar crisis is developing at SAA – or should I say, another crisis. Chairwoman Dudu Myeni cancelled a lease agreement for new aircraft with Airbus, apparently without the knowledge or approval of SAA’s executives, incurring a cancellation penalty of R1.5 billion. Her intention is to lease aircraft from Airbus via a third party, which the company indicated it had ethical difficulties with, incurring the wrath of Treasury, which warned of the financial and legal ramifications if the proposal goes ahead. It m...

An ancillary objective of the recent #FeesMustFall protests – apart from free university education – was an end to universities outsourcing cleaning and maintenance contracts. The Cape Argus ran an article about Patrick Maqhasha, a contract cleaner at UCT, who only had R100 left after expenses from his R5 000 a month salary. A follow-up story, ‘Support pours in for R100 UCT cleaner’ (November 2), reported offers of monetary and other assistance and outrage about his situation. I’m puzzled by this reaction. It’s not that he has little money left after expenses – that's very common. But at the public's outpouring of assistance for him in particular when his reported situation is bad, yes, but not as desperate as that of millions of the invisible poor around the country. I'm not unsympathetic to Maqhasha. However, as an employed person, even at R60 000 a year – the going rate for a cleaner – he is one of the lucky ones to have a job.    South Africa's real unemp...