Three, two, one…
That was the chilling countdown from over 300 students as they prepared to hurl rocks at private security on the steps of the Great Hall of the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
It came after days of running battles between police and students and eventually spilled onto the streets of Braamfontein in Johannesburg; a bus burned and shops were smashed and looted. The skirmishes got so out of hand that a rubber bullet was fired into the face of a priest. These were scenes reminiscent of the dark days before democracy two decades ago.
There was a nationwide shutdown, from the colonnades of the University of Cape Town (UCT) in the south to the deserted halls of the University of Mpumalanga in the north. For a second consecutive year, angry students, with their #FeesMustFall movement, launched a howl of outrage with demands for free education.
<div id="attachment_5362" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5362" class="size-medium wp-image-5362" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FeesMustFall_Oct10_JC-18-300x206.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="206" />Naitonwide student protest for free education. Using the #feesmustfall slogan.</div>
“We have nothing to lose. At the end of the day, we can barely afford to be here. My mom had to sell her car and downsize her house for me to be here. It’s tough out here and now [Vice-Chancellor Adam Habib] wants to police us if our calls aren’t legitimate,” says Malwande Mhambe, a final year international relations and political studies student.
The protest has escalated since 2015. It has evolved into a call for so-called decolonized universities that students say favour the privileged white middle-class.
“It is something that the youth has been calling for over 20 years now. We want more black students to be able to come to university and to have a better chance of participating in the economy,” says Busisiwe Seabe, leader of #FeesMustFall.
The violent campus backlash this year was sparked by Minister of Higher Education and Learning Blade Nzimande saying ‘those who can pay, must’ at the close of the Fees Commission, a government enquiry set to tackle the issue.
“We strongly condemn the actions of striking students who clearly do not want to see the completion of the academic program. They continue to disrupt and intimidate students who want to continue with their studies and in so doing deny the majority of students their right to higher education,” says Nzimande.
According to Statistics South Africa, university fees have soared by 80% since 2008. Government capped university increases at 8% for 2017. Nearly R300 billion ($21 billion) was allocated to education in 2016, making up 20% of the budget. This is almost double the amount spent on health.
<div id="attachment_5373" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5373" class="size-medium wp-image-5373" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FeesMustFall_Oct10_JC-19-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />FeesMustFall</div>
#FeesMustFall The Tip Of The Iceberg
The students may call for free education, but columnist Max du Preez, argues what has developed is an “extreme race rhetoric”, whereby a “legitimate struggle against whiteness and white privilege is being overtaken by a populist assault on white citizens.”
“It’s time to face the reality. The ‘revolution’ on our campuses is not primarily about university fees any longer. Nor is it about the ‘decolonization’ of the curricula. The subtext, the unspoken agenda, is beginning to look more and more like an effort to create a mini Arab Spring moment and to turn the entire post-1994 dispensation on its head,” Du Preez writes in his column.
Many of the ‘Fallists’, including Wits Student Representative Council’s secretary-general Fasiha Hassan, claim that they are only reacting to police brutality. It is believed that a minority have been fanning the flames of destruction, perpetuated by media coverage.
The rubble and burning debris, on the streets of Braamfontein and on campus, tell their own story.
“Some of these elements, like the Wits protest leader Mcebo Dlamini and UCT’s Chumani Maxwele, are clearly narcissists playing revolution,” says Du Preez.
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, a former journalist herself, says the protest needs to be tackled head on, without violence.
“We shouldn’t be shooting bullets at kids. We should have our police force with really good shields at all campuses protecting people’s right to study.”
Public policing has overreacted and inflamed confrontation.
“There is no other way out of this. What we have seen is negotiation after negotiation; the goal posts get moved every single time. It’s a deliberate strategy because people don’t want a resolution, they want a revolution and the challenge is you can’t assume people are acting in good faith,” she says.
The fight for free education is fuelled by frustration.
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$400-Million Brain Drain
While the government scrambles to find money, universities say they can’t survive without fees. South Africa faces an even greater threat should universities close down – a crippling R5.6-billion ($400-million) brain drain if graduates are not allowed to finish the year.
The University of Pretoria’s Roula Inglesi-Lotz, Associate Professor of Economics, and Heinrich Bohlmann, Senior Lecturer, believe that the economy stands to lose $400 million if 90% of its 80,000 graduates do not take up positions next year. This is based on an Australian-based economic model designed by the University of Pretoria, in collaboration with global think tank, the Centre of Policy Studies.
Max Price, UCT Vice Chancellor, says if the university does not continue academic activity, it will have to close for the rest of the year. It means thousands of students expecting to work in 2017, including 400 of 4,500 medical students, will not graduate and create a black hole for the economy.
<div id="attachment_5374" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5374" class="size-medium wp-image-5374" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FeesMustFall_Oct10_JC-21-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />FeesMustFall</div>
The University of Stellenbosch is also staring debt in the face. If it does not increase its fees, it will lose R50 million ($3.5 million) in academia and another R80 million ($5.6 million) on accommodation.
Students who have outstanding loans face hard times. Mmakatleho Sefatsa, a 19-year-old second-year education student and her family’s first graduate, is in over her head with R70,000 ($5,000) debt.
“Even if you don’t protest, at the end of the year the university is still going to send you a letter to say: ‘look you haven’t paid for two years, you have to leave’.”
Sefatsa is part of the missing middle – she is not poor enough to qualify for financial aid, and not wealthy enough to pay for her education.
The government plans to restructure fee payments based on students’ wealth: households that earn less than R120,000 ($8,500) a year won’t pay; the government will subsidize the difference in fee increases for the middle class, or missing middle, between R120,000 ($8,500) and R600,000 ($42,500); while the affluent will pay.
Undergraduate tuition fees at Wits can reach almost R60,000 ($4,200) a year.
Back at Wits, classes have continued under duress and with heavy police presence. The university’s spokesperson, Shirona Patel, says they will not give up.
“We need to finish the academic program this year and we need to have exams written. This will be our key focus for the next two weeks. Despite yesterday’s disruptions, we still had about half of our classes going and we’ll keep going every day until we get the academic program back on track.”
UCT, the University of Pretoria, and the Tshwane University of Technology, attempted to keep their doors open. Threats and escalating violence forced them to shut down.  Negotiations appear to have ground to a stuttering, and painful, halt.
“Access to higher education, particularly for the poor is everyone’s concern and therefore all stakeholders must play an active role in saving our 2016 academic program. Ongoing negotiations cannot stand in the way of classes resuming, dialogue is the only answer, and intimidation and violence will never address the legitimate concerns of students,” says Nzimande.
With negotiations stuttering and the academic year coming to an end, time is running out.
Why Free Education Won’t Favor The Poor
Students want free education, but do any of them know what it means.
Nico Cloete, Director of the Centre for Higher Education Trust at the University of the Western Cape, says students are asking the wrong questions.
“There is no such thing as ‘free higher education’. Universities are very expensive. Rather, the issue is who pays what and when? Secondly, international research shows that ‘there is broad agreement among economists of higher education funding that government subsidies are regressive, meaning subsidies favor the rich’. According to Nicholas Barr from the London School of Economics, public universities often argue that low or no tuition fees provide greater equality of educational opportunity, but that the overwhelming subsidy in public universities accrues to students from middle- and high-income families,” he says.
Cloete is one of the academics who submitted documents to the Fees Commission.
“The question to be addressed by the Fees Commission should have been: What is required for a sustainable higher education system with affordability for those who qualify for access?”
Higher education is seen as a ladder into the affluent middle class. The World Bank reports that South Africa has the highest private return to tertiary education. University graduates are three to five times more likely to find a job than high school graduates.
Cloete argues, of the million students who enter school, about 110,000 will enrol at university and 55,000 will graduate after five years. But, 45% of all undergraduates, and 70% of the poor on student financial aid, never graduate.
“So, the issue is not whether there is enough money for free tertiary education, the issue is to fix the undergraduate university and the college systems, provide vastly expanded education and training opportunities, put in place a modern progressive graduate tax (instead of an outdated loan scheme) and stop raiding the treasury. While the Fees Commission and the media are looking at money, the issue is political and systemic.”
The road will be long and arduous. It will take another three years to successfully transform university structures and integrate reform into the national budget, says Price. UCT and Wits also claim that 90% of its students want academic activity to continue and this majority is being held to ransom by a small group of ‘bullies’.
Meanwhile, the frustrated students who bay for change want it now, without paying another cent.

Frustration Fans The Flames

In the build up to the furore over Pravin Gordhan, the African National Congress (ANC) delivered a slap in the face to scores of its biggest names who endured prison and faced death to put the party into power. It spoke of a yawning gap between the principled roots of the party and its current remote and embattled leadership.
Sixty five ANC stalwarts wrote a letter to the General Secretary of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe, addressed to President Jacob Zuma and the top five in the leadership, castigating the ruling party and calling for change in way it runs.<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5364" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/RZ8F0590-300x286.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="286" />
The letter, in the possession of FORBES AFRICA, was signed by scores of the biggest names in African liberation politics, including three survivors of the so-called Rivonia Trial in 1964 who faced death with Nelson Mandela in 1964. Ahmed Kathrada, Denis Goldberg and Andrew Mlangeni were all found guilty, with Mandela, of sabotage and spent a lifetime in prison.
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Other signatories to the letter:  former Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus; former Director General of the Presidency of South Africa Frank Chikane; former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel; former Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin; former Speaker of the National Assembly Frene Ginwala; and former ambassador to London Cheryl Carolus.
“We have observed the ill-begotten wealth among some of our leaders at all levels and the resulting ruinous effects on the organization’s moral and political fabric and on society as a whole,” says the letter.
“We have watched as the leadership of the ANC became mired in a cycle of in-fighting occasioned not by any ideological or political difference but personal interest. We believe that many of the factors outlined have contributed significantly to the political assassinations to which we are sadly becoming accustomed.”
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The letter calls upon the president and the leadership to acknowledge its shortcomings, including failing to act against corruption, nepotism and factionalism.
In reply, on October 3, came a standard letter that astonished many party stalwarts.
The letter, signed by Mantashe, asked why the concerns were not coming through the structures of the ANC. It included the following questions of people who had been loyal members of the movement for more than 50 years.
Which branch of the ANC are you currently a member of?
What has caused you to mobilize a group of 65 comrades outside of the structures of the ANC?
Please advise us of who, if anyone, has paid for the costs of the mobilization of your group?
Please provide a brief summary of your understanding of the objectives of the group?
Many of the ANC veterans on the list were flabbergasted at being brushed off in such a manner and vowed to take the matter further; yet another rift likely to cause conflict and ructions in Africa’s oldest liberation movement.

A Slap In The Face Comrade

On a bright summer morning in the leafy Johannesburg suburbs, investigators from the Hawks – South Africa’s FBI – knocked on the door with a summons for the country’s Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. He wasn’t there and his family rang him to say there was a brigadier on the doorstep. This just two weeks before the crucial medium-term budget statement. A delicate budget that the ratings agencies will scrutinize as they ponder whether to downgrade South Africa’s economy to the dreaded junk status; a move that could mean higher interest rates, inflations, and more economic misery for an economy that’s already been 12 rounds with Mike Tyson in his prime.
“Not having found me at home, they proceed to go to the Treasury and I am not sure what happened there. Given the fiscal austerity, they might not have been given a cup of tea,” says Gordhan wryly.
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“A date has been set to collect my fingerprints, they have been in the system for a long time, I suppose they need to freshen it up in some way. But this is a moment when South Africans should really ask themselves who are the Hawks, or these few people in the Hawks, really serving, where do they get their political instructions from and for what purpose? All we are trying to do within the Treasury is represent South Africa, make sure we manage its finances properly, present the best foot forward we can on behalf of the country and do that which is right whether it is in respect of university fees or more housing to be built or more money to be made available for the right kind of procurement purposes or anything that a treasury does in a normal country. It looks like we are in for a bit of excitement going forward.”
This was the avuncular Gordhan at his dry best at a Gauteng Province event, in Johannesburg, a few hours after the summons landed. The former Communist Party member is used to blows in a lifetime in politics. He became active in politics in the late 1960s and spent four years in the political underground operating around his birthplace of Durban, on the coast of KwaZulu-Natal.
Gordhan was an unlikely revolutionary; he trained as a pharmacist, but lost his only job in the trade through his political activities. He spent the rest of the struggle in politics and was detained by police a number of times.
“I have known him through the liberation struggle for many years and I have never heard anything critical of him in all that time,” says Denis Goldberg, one of the men who faced the death penalty with Nelson Mandela in 1964.
Between 1999 and 2009, Gordhan was the Commissioner for the South African Revenue Service in the healthy years when the government used to take out advertisements to trumpet how the increasingly efficient system was gathering ever more revenue. It is from this abundant time that the fraud charge emanates.
On November 2, Gordhan will be charged, along with former colleague Oupa Magashula, with the misuse of public funds, said to be around R1 million ($71,000), in granting his former deputy, Ivan Pillay, early retirement, in August 2010. Lawyers say the case is wafer thin, but the very fact that a finance minister will stand in the dock will be enough to cause disquiet among foreign investors watching from afar.
The markets plunged on the day. The rand fell more than 3% within minutes of the announcement by the NPA.
Shaun Abrahams, the head of the NPA, has given Gordhan, Pillay and Magashula an opportunity to make representations to review the decision to prosecute or not. Magashula and Pillay have done so.
“I am currently considering the aforementioned representations… I have learned, through media reports, that [Gordhan] does not intend seeking me to review the aforementioned decision, I nevertheless invite [him]to make representations… by no later than 17h00 on 18 October 2016,” says Abrahams in a letter to Gordhan’s lawyers.
Gordhan refused. He says he has no confidence in the NPA’s willingness to give him a fair hearing.
“We have seen the letter by Freedom Under Law and the Helen Suzman Foundation dated 14 October 2016 in which we were copied. We invite you to withdraw the charges against our client in the light of the grounds set out therein. Our client does not intend to make representations to you for the considerations previously articulated,” his lawyer, Tebogo Malatji, of Gildenhuys Malatji Inc, said in a letter to Abrahams.
Political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi believes November 2 is merely the beginning.
“I think there will be additional charges. I think this case is far from over,” he says.
Matshiqi believes the rule of law is important and scoffs at the picture portrayed in the press of this being a case of good and evil; fiscal discipline versus the removal of a minister to ease access to  state funds.
“I think the only thing we can quibble about is who, of the two, is the less evil. As far as I am concerned these are two wolves in sheep’s clothing. The only difference is one has better quality sheepskin.”
CEOs took out full page advertisements in newspapers in support of Gordhan; everyone from the Chamber of Mines, to Gauteng Premier David Makhura, to the short-term insurance industry, made statements backing the man.
Marches are also planned and hopes fanned that one of Africa’s biggest economies can paper over the cracks in time to avoid the dreaded downgrade at the end of the year. The reality is the damage has already been done.

Protect Yourselves At All Times And  Come Out Fighting

More than 22 million people in Africa have diabetes; equivalent to the population of Angola. It’s a startling enough statistic, and South Africa’s First Lady Bongi Ngema-Zuma is championing the fight against this silent killer, through the Bongi Ngema-Zuma Foundation.
It’s a hot Sunday afternoon in Waterkloof Ridge, east of Pretoria in South Africa, when we meet Ngema-Zuma in her mansion. She settles in her lounge singing a church song and wearing a black dress and beaded necklace.
Diabetes has been close to home for Ngema-Zuma; she lost her mother and aunt to the disease. This led her to start a foundation in her mother’s memory; she had battled with diabetes for nearly three decades.
“I come from a family that is highly affected by this disease. When my mother gave birth to my younger sister, she had gestational diabetes. But it went away. And then in 1973, when I was in grade one, she was diagnosed with type two.
“At the time I did not know what diabetes was or to read the correct glucose levels. But I observed how she changed her lifestyle. She had the disease for so many years, and was never on insulin because she was active and [watched] what she ate,” says Ngema-Zuma.
In 1982, her mother’s condition got worse, she went blind in a way, and the disease also led to a sore between her toes; and the doctors had to amputate a toe.
“They had to cut off her foot as well&#8230; we knew she wasn’t going to make it. She said the day they start cutting her body, we should allow her to rest in peace.”
The Bongi Ngema-Zuma Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 2010, the same year she took to the spousal office, aims to fight diabetes.
“Before I started the foundation, no one was speaking about diabetes, I had never seen an advert about it which meant there was not much being done about it, so I thought it was the right time,” says Ngema-Zuma.
The foundation encourages people to test early.
“By the time you start seeing symptoms it means that the disease has been in your blood for a long time, now the signs are indicating that your body is deteriorating. And if complications start to show, it might be too late. People should test so that they can prevent it from progressing, and adopt a healthy lifestyle,” she says.
Considering her family history, Ngema-Zuma acknowledges she is not prone to the disease, which is why she is an advocate for it.
Ngema-Zuma is the fourth of five wives married to South African president Jacob Zuma, a role that is not easy.
“As the first lady I had to understand that the public voted for my husband to be president, not me. Thing is, nobody trains you for what people expect from you, and sometimes expectations can be too much. The best is to know who you are, what you want to achieve and just focus.”
She uses her office to empower women and children, and for rural development.
“It is sad that in more than 50 countries, I’m the only first lady who speaks about diabetes.
“I know that while I’m in this office, I have a little amount of influence to say something and make change,” says Ngema-Zuma.
Ngema-Zuma is also a member of the International Diabetes Federation. When not buried under paperwork in her office, she travels overseas, in the United States, to give talks on education and healthcare development.
Her dream is to open a diabetes center of excellence.

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Using Her Good Offices

<h2>‘The Crisis Could Be With Us For The Unforeseeable Future’</h2>
The tear-inducing image of a young boy washed up on a beach in Turkey last year dominated headlines for weeks. His small, lifeless body had finally presented the true picture of the greatest crisis of our times. His death became a metaphor of the desolation and helplessness faced by the millions forcibly displaced.
The boy was later reported to have been on a boat with his family from his hometown Kobani in northern Syria, a country torn apart by war for years. He was one of 11,000 children reported as displaced every day, the victims of forced migration.
His father would later explain to reporters that their boat suddenly capsized as they were making a final and desperate attempt to escape the conflict-ridden state by sea.
This illustration is but one of many that has continued to grab headlines over the years. The refugee crisis is real and the biggest casualties are children.
Antonio Guterres, the former United Nations High Commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), highlights in the UNHCR Global Trends 2014 report: “We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before.”
Children form an overwhelming majority, at least about half, of the world’s total refugee population upwards of 60 million.
Chaos has long descended on the world but the lack of political will by global leaders is robbing children of their childhood, families and identity.
On a recent visit to Johannesburg, British politician, activist and author, Professor Peter Hain, the Lord Hain of Neath, said the refugee crisis is a calamity for women and children.
“This global phenomenon capitalizes on the shortcomings of states, adequate political standards need to be established in order to create change,” he told FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
While governments are not as willing to initiate processes to mitigate the rising numbers of refugees, particularly children, Amnesty International earlier this year conducted the Refugees Welcome Index; the global survey revealed that government refugee policies and citizens are on opposite ends, with the important call to integrate the refugees into economies.
The fight continues for children, though. They are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation in unfamiliar, often crowded conditions they have no control over.
Mosa Moremi, national child rights and advocacy advisor of SOS Children’s Villages South Africa, tells us processes to integrate children into society are very difficult.
“In my experience, sometimes children are brought into the country by parents who have migrated and then they are later abandoned. They are left with nothing.”
She highlights that giving these abandoned or unaccompanied children adequate care becomes challenging and the system is riddled with layers of red tape.
Professor Hain echoes this sentiment, stating that the crisis which manifests in “a seemingly impotent international system led by the United Nations could be with us for the unforeseeable future”.
It’s no comforting thought that one estimate suggests that 80% of the world’s refugees are in developing countries and yet less than 9% are hosted by six of the world’s richest nations. And, the rise of right-wing populism ideas, as Professor Hain stresses.
This means that many will continue to face racism, xenophobia and discrimination, imposing an unprecedented new burden on children who often have little understanding of the social, political and economic discourse of a society.
In the pages that follow, FORBES WOMAN AFRICA speaks to three young migrants in South Africa, who now live in a limbo, hurt and homeless.
<h2>Sarah (16) and Kudzai (15) Mathe</h2>
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One night in 2009 when Sarah and Kudzai Mathe, nine and eight respectively, were asleep after another long day selling tomatoes, onions and fruit, their stepfather returned home drunk as he did everyday but this time, he attempted to rape them.
Sarah was able to break free from his grip. She grabbed all her courage, and the money she had saved on the day with Kudzai, and together, they ran, not knowing where they were headed.
As they ran, Kudzai looked back. In the blackness of the night, she could see the house their mother raised them in fade into the distance, never to see it again. The girls had spent their early years with their parents in a small town in Harare, Zimbabwe.
“Our parents got divorced when we were still young. Our stepfather didn’t even hide that he didn’t love us,” they say.
Shortly after their mother’s new union, they stopped attending school.
“He told us he didn’t have money to pay for school fees and that’s when we started selling fruit and vegetables on the street.”
Whilst other children walked to school or waited for the bus in the mornings, Sarah and Kudzai would set up their stall.
“The other kids would laugh at us because we wore rags and sometimes had no shoes.”
Things got worse when their mother fell ill and passed away in 2009.
“There was no longer place for us in that house. Our stepfather just brought in different wives every night and spent most of the money we would make.”
The day after they ran away from home, as they wandered the streets, Kudzai suggested they go to South Africa.
“I heard about it and thought we could get on the bus and just go.”
They arrived at a bus station and spoke with one of the drivers who directed them to the bus that would take them to South Africa.
“When we got onto the bus, the driver asked us how much we had and I pulled out all of our savings and he grabbed it and said we should find seats,” Sarah says.
“We were so hungry and the lady we sat next to on the bus gave us an apple each. We ate them like we’d never eaten before.
“After a few hours, the bus made a stop at Beitbridge; the driver told us to get off and that he would be back for us.”
They waited for the bus driver for two weeks. He didn’t come back for them. And they were only nine and eight years old.
When it dawned on them that the bus driver was not going to be back for them, they found work handing out flyers to travelers passing by the border bridge. They were paid R30 ($2) each a week and saved that up to pay malaicha, which Sarah explains means carriers. The malaicha would help them get to South Africa.
“We paid the R200 ($15) we’d saved and we were on our way.”
With Sarah and Kudzai were five other men.
“As we walked through the forest and then the Limpopo river, what scared us the most was that any one of the men could rape us, we were the only girls and the night our father almost raped us was fresh in our memory,” recalls Sarah.
Kudzai does not say much apart from a nod or a sigh throughout the interview. But she says now: “We really thought South Africa was so far.”
After over 12 hours of walking, they found themselves in Messina, the northernmost town of Limpopo.
“We looked for work but no one would hire us.”
In time, they found an old woman who paid them R50 ($3.6) a month to clean and do the laundry. “It wasn’t that hard for us because we were used to working.”
They used the money to pay for a lorry ride to Johannesburg in September 2009. They were two of the lucky ones. When they got to Johannesburg, they were directed to the Methodist church in Braamfontein. They have since been moved and “life is good”.
“We are back in school and I love maths but I’m not that good at it,” Kudzai giggles.
“We also have each other and that’s what matters,” says Sarah, her smile brightening up a face hardened by experience.
<h2>Maqhawe Garikayi (17)</h2>
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When Maqhawe Garikayi was arrested by border security for attempting to illegally cross over into South Africa from Zimbabwe in 2012, he was not discouraged. Shortly after he was released, he tried again, and succeeded. He was 13.
Four years on, Garikayi barely looks up as he tells his story.
“I never knew my birth mother and I don’t know if I have any siblings. All I had was a stepmother who saw me as her worker, not her child. She just didn’t love me.”
Garikayi couldn’t get along with his her. At the age of 13, he was questioning his existence and toying with the idea of running away from home. Thoughts of where he would run away to and how he would survive were secondary as survival instincts compelled him to get away from what he describes “a toxic environment”.
As a young boy who was not attending school and knew no stability, he was left with little choice.
“I left home with nothing but the clothes I was wearing. I had no money. I had no documents. I heard about South Africa and how it was the land of milk and honey so that was where I was going to go.”
The second time he tried to cross the border illegally, he was able to sneak past security.
“After [hitch-hiking], I walked through a forest and then through the forceful waves of the Limpopo river. I just followed other groups of people I assumed were also on their way to South Africa.”
Trouble awaited young boys like Garikayi in Messina, where he was robbed of his clothes, and beaten. He had to cover his nudity with a discarded blue overall he found.
“I cried, I thought I was going to die.”
Garikayi mustered strength and made his way to a filling station in Messina. He spent the night there and the following morning, wandered into a suburb and knocked on doors for food and some clothes. Eventually, he was handed a pair of blue shorts, sandals and a T-shirt. After a few days, he was able to make his way to Johannesburg, in a pick-up truck.
Garikayi remembers spending almost eight months on the streets, surviving on whatever he could find in trash bins.
“It was funny the way I always found KFC in the bins, a lot of people wasted that,” he says with a hint of a smile.
Garikayi has since been taken in by an organization that is currently sending him to school, clothing him, feeding him and ensuring he has a warm bed to sleep in every night.
His dreams of being an accountant and having a family of his own have a fighting chance but he sobs and whispers: “My greatest wish is for a mother, I don’t know why God gave me this life.”
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<h2>Wasithanda Hadziperidzega (21)</h2>
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On April 28, 2014, Wasithanda Hadziperidzega decided to leave home in pursuit of a better life, a life he thought he would find in South Africa.
But sadly, the journey and destination were a far cry from his dreams.
Originally from Ghana, Hadziperidzega moved to Zimbabwe to live with his mother, a single parent raising four young children, a common scenario in the African narrative.
His mother worked in the public sector and could not afford a decent living.
Many, if not all public service employees, were left for weeks and even months at a time without income, left to live at the mercy of a government mired in turmoil.
“My mother would never tell us that she was struggling financially but I could see; I can see things.”
One day, at the age of 18, Hadziperidzega left home as he did every day for soccer practice. After the game, he listened to his peers talk about how tough life was in Zimbabwe.
He made up his mind.
“… The grounds [were] the only place we could talk about the country’s situation and Mugabe. It was safe. After we talked, I decided then that I was going to leave. All I needed was $53 for a passport and $30 for the bus,” says Hadziperidzega.
He never returned home.
Hadziperidzega remembers it took him no longer than five minutes to decide his new fate. The task was now to make the money.
He had heard about how he could collect a small fortune in Mashonaland West, another province in Zimbabwe. The opportunity presented itself in the form of an illegal gold mining job. The word out on the street was that it was lucrative. After months of struggling to infiltrate a mine called Toppers, he was finally in.
“All I needed was a hammer, a short chisel and that torch you put around your head; it’s dark in those mines, there’s no sun,” he laughs, but there’s pain in his eyes.
After months of hard and treacherous work in the depths of Zimbabwe’s gold pits, he was able to save up $120.
He applied for his passport and used the rest to buy a bus ticket to South Africa.
“I arrived in South Africa at around 11PM at Park Station. Have you ever been to Park Station?” he asks. “There is a huge waiting area and I just sat there and pretended to be waiting for someone.”
People came and went fetching their relatives who had come through from different parts of the continent but no one came for Hadziperidzega. And it was the dead of night.
He hides his sorrow with a nervous chuckle, saying: “I knew no one was coming for me but I was just being silly and hoped someone would fetch me but I knew no one, I didn’t even understand where I was, all I knew was that I was in South Africa.”
For days, Hadziperidzega wandered the streets of Johannesburg looking for some validation that he had found in South Africa the social and economic salvation he couldn’t find in his home country, anything to convince him that he had made the right decision.
All he would encounter were other young foreigners collecting rubbish, “looking horrible”.
Nothing was easy to come by, not even scraps of food.
“I would eat anything just to make my tummy happy but not my tongue,” he shrugs.
Over the past two years, he has moved jobs trying to earn a decent living.
He says he has survived police harassment and several death threats because of his nationality.
But Hadziperidzega has not stopped dreaming.
His mind in still in the football fields of Zimbabwe; and he hopes to one day become a soccer star.
“I definitely don’t want to further my education, my whole family is educated and look at them, they are all poor and they will die poor. When you have money everything is easy and that’s all I want,” he says in conclusion.

refugee-child-015

A Lonely  Planet For The  Child  Refugee

Regardless of whether Hillary Clinton becomes the next president of the United States (US) or not, women are slowly but steadily taking up political power.
The numbers of women leaders are still relatively low – only one-tenth of all leaders of the United Nation’s 193 member states are women and Clinton would be only the 19th female to currently govern her country. Research shows that over 60 of 142 countries have had women leaders at some point over the past 50 years, although most have held power for less than four years. Recent figures from UN Women also show that only 17% of government ministers are women, with most of their portfolios relating to social issues. And only two countries have a female majority in Parliament – Rwanda and Bolivia – although many countries have reached the one-third mark.
Clearly, there is still a long way to go. But here in the US, findings by the Pew Research Centre show that most women believe that whether Clinton achieves her second run for the presidency or not, a woman will be president at some point in their lifetime. According to one CNN poll, eight of 10 Americans think the country is ready for a woman president, but only one third think it’s a priority. Younger American women, it seems, take for granted the growing role of women in positions of power – both in government and business.
Among Clinton’s many detractors are those who would like to see a woman president but don’t necessarily believe she is the right woman for the job. Others are more appreciative of how much has changed since women first got the vote in 1920 (black women from the South faced voting hurdles until the 1960s), and are impatient to see Clinton in the White House as another important milestone on the path towards gender equality.
“When any barrier falls in America, it clears the way for everyone,” Clinton said when accepting the Democratic nomination for president in Philadelphia in July. A woman in the White House, she said, would be “another step in our journey as a nation”. She also said that her election would give “other women and girls the hope that, whatever their goals, they can achieve them in this country”.
Some political observers believe that when Barack Obama felled the race barrier by becoming the first black president of the US in 2008, the sense of urgency around getting rid of the gender barrier by appointing a woman president dissipated. Clinton has also struggled to overcome deep unpopularity among many voters – both men and women. Her alliance with big business has left many working class voters feeling that she does not have their best interests at heart.
That said, the blatant sexism shown by her rival, Republican nominee Donald Trump, has shined a bright light on the status of women in the country.
When Trump accused Clinton of playing the “woman card”, her quick online reply was seen as a boost for her campaign.
“If fighting for women’s healthcare and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the ‘woman card’, then deal me in,” she said. In no time, a plastic “support Clinton woman card” became another must-have accessory for her supporters.
Trump’s glamorous daughter Ivanka, a powerful businesswoman in her own right, has tried to cast her father’s macho politics in a more woman-friendly light. When she introduced him at the Republican convention in Cleveland, also in July, she listed a host of Democratic-sounding, pro-women policies on childcare and family leave that she said her father would introduce, even though none of these policies are on the Republican agenda.
Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, similarly, has tried to show Clinton’s softer, more human side, describing her as her “wonderful, kind, thoughtful, hilarious mother” when she introduced her at the Democratic convention.
The friendship between Ivanka and Chelsea is much in the media spotlight. Both are powerful, accomplished young women who have made the most of their highly privileged backgrounds. Despite a bitterly-fought election campaign and the obvious rancor between their parents, their friendship supposedly endures. “I’m not running for public office, and neither is she, so of course we’re still friends,” Ivanka said in one interview.
Ivanka is vice president of her father’s real estate empire, the Trump Organization, and Chelsea is vice chair of the multi-million dollar Clinton Foundation. One of them will play a pivotal role in the new presidency. And, whatever the election outcome, both these young mothers are likely to be highly-influential individuals – whether in business or politics – in the years to come. The same could apply to Obama’s two young girls, Malia and Sasha, who will come of age in an era where race and gender won’t be the obstacles they once were.
Elsewhere in the world, progress on narrowing the gender gap in political leadership is being made. Women are at the helm in powerful countries like Germany and the United Kingdom. Although none of the frontrunners for the next United Nations Secretary General are women, it is still possible that a female could land the top diplomatic post. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who is head of the world’s largest humanitarian agency, the UN Development Program, is a formidable leader who has her hat in the ring.
At the recent Social Good Summit in New York, Clark discussed the role of women in political power with another former woman president, Malawi’s Joyce Banda. Speaking to Barkha Dutt, an award-winning Indian television journalist, the two former state leaders shared their wisdom and advice for other women eying political office. They pointed out that many other countries have made more progress than the US in this regard, with Dutt reminding the audience that in Asian countries like India and Bangladesh women, have held office for years.
Clark, who campaigned in a climate where bumper stickers like “Ditch the Bitch” prevailed, said women in pursuit of political leadership had to brace themselves for many obstacles.
“Don’t accept people are going to roll out the red carpet for you. You have to roll out the red carpet yourself and kick the door down.”
Clark said women had to “turn a deaf ear to all the frankly misogynist things that are said about you. Everyone will have an opinion on how you look, how you dress, whether your teeth are crooked. You just have to look straight ahead, put your earplugs in and say I believe I can do this,” Clark said. On the UN Secretary General position she said she believed she had the right profile for the job. “So I’m standing my ground and saying I’m available.”
Banda, who walked out of an abusive marriage before becoming a leading politician and president of Malawi from 2012-14, said she did so at a time “when you didn’t walk out – especially in Africa”. Banda said she strongly believed that more African women had to become leaders. “Number one, because we have been leaders before. If you look into the history of the world before colonization we were already queens and leaders; we were leading our nations,” she told the audience. She also said it was crucial to support other women in their pursuit of top political jobs and not “dropping the ladder once we’ve arrived”, as former South African First Lady Zanele Mbeki once put it.
While Dutt wondered why so many successful women seem to feel the need to apologize for their ambition, Banda said she believed African women could benefit from a softer, more diplomatic approach or they would lose the battle before it had even begun. “Do I want to be shouting and antagonizing the people who need to open the way for me? That is the decision that we African women have to make.”
Banda, who herself lobbied for gay rights, recalled the time in 1995 when Clinton said that “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights”. At the time, Banda said she thought Clinton was “out of her mind”.
“I didn’t think I would see in my lifetime a time when everyone would accept that women’s rights are human rights”, but Clinton was right ahead of her time, and that time has arrived.

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From  The White House To The World

At Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, Nigeria, a group of angry customers are frantically trying to get answers from an Arik Air official. The scheduled 13:30PM flight to Johannesburg was cancelled just after 11AM for operational reasons, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded. Unsatisfied with the airline’s explanations, Dayo Obagun, Managing Director of Ryman’s Stationery Stores, is on the move to find an alternative flight.
“This is the third time Arik has cancelled a flight and it is especially frustrating because I have an important business meeting in South Africa this evening. Last time, I lost my ticket without reimbursement, so I know the shouting will not change anything and due to the economic challenges, all the other airlines are not operating at full capacity,” he says.
Obagun is on his way to South Africa to find new markets for his stationery business, which has seen sales drop by 50% in the past eight months. Due to the recent economic problems, he splits his time between managing his Lagos-based operations and developing new opportunities in other countries.
“The only way we can survive is by partnering with new clients. I am meeting a Dutch manufacturing company based in Johannesburg who are looking to expand to West Africa. This deal could be the difference between us staying afloat or sacking 30 people.”
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Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) suggest that Nigeria has slipped into a recession. According to the NBS, gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 2.06% in the second quarter of 2016. The country also took a significant hit from the fall in commodity prices when global crude prices slumped. The government’s strategy to curtail the decline in oil prices was to create a fixed currency rate which, according to the BBC, created a black market for the US dollar and squeezed the economy.
Rabih Patel is the head of reserve brands for a drinks manufacturer in Lagos. Survival is also the name of the game for his organization.
“This is the worst condition I have seen in the past eight years of being in Nigeria. We had to lay off 700 expatriates in our organization. We simply cannot afford to pay their wages anymore. My good friend is going back to India with his family because of the crisis. I suspect this may last for the next two years and what business is going to survive two years of this?” says Patel.
Interestingly, Patel has seen an increase in their more prestigious drinks brands, which is up 40% from last year.
“That only makes up about three percent of my overall sales so it doesn’t make that much of a difference. However, we have seen a decline in sales of our lager and other spirits and I had to slash my marketing budget by half since the beginning of this year.”
The statistics office confirmed that annual inflation also rose to 17.1% in July, from 16.5% in June, with food inflation increasing to 15.8%.
“The crash in global oil prices has devastated the economy which is dependent on the oil sector for about 70 percent of its sales revenue”, says Frederic Mann, Chief Economist at Genesis Consulting, a financial advisory firm in Abuja.
“We have always stated that the government’s decision to artificially keep the naira at the same level made the situation worse because it restricted the flow of foreign exchange in the system, which most companies need in order to import raw materials for manufacturing,” says Mann.
According to reports, about half a million jobs have been lost in Nigeria in the past six months. The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, confirmed that the government has spent more than N400 billion ($1.3 billion) in capital expenditure this year as part of a staggering N6.06 trillion ($30 billion) budget.
“The government needs to pull resources into non-oil assets to help move the country out of recession. The government plans to borrow $10 billion from debt markets, mostly from foreign sources, but how will that money be spent to stimulate growth in the economy?” says Mann.
At least technology entrepreneurs in Nigeria had something to cheer about after a surprise visit to the country by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.
At the end of August, Segun Idrisu, the Founder of I-farm, an app that connects buyers and sellers of agricultural products, had an unlikely visit from Zuckerberg while the billionaire was touring Africa.
“I don’t think words can describe the excitement when we realized what was actually happening. It is definitely a confidence boost for all the techpreneurs here and to have someone like [Zuckerberg] come all the way here, it shows that this is an industry worth paying attention to,” says Idrisu.
Zuckerberg’s visit to Nigeria, which is Facebook’s biggest market in Africa with 16 million visits every month, has renewed talk to increase investment in the technology and services sector.
Renaissance Capital told CNBC Africa that the services sector, which is worth 50% of Nigeria’s GDP, shrank by 1.3% year on year in the second quarter of 2016. The services sector and agriculture are most likely to rescue Nigeria, according to Mann.
For those like Idrisu, the tech scene provides a safe haven in the current economic climate. Zuckerberg’s visit to Lagos created some optimism for young entrepreneurs who are desperately trying to find new ways to make a living. The rest of the country’s Facebook status: sad.

Nigeria’s Facebook Status: Sad

As if Zimbabwe doesn’t have enough problems, in October the government will try what could be an ill-fated experiment of printing so-called bond notes.
It’s a reaction to the shortage of US dollars that have been legal tender in Zimbabwe since the Zimbabwean dollar disappeared. The shortage is so bad the banks are trying to ration dollars.
“I can only withdraw US$100 a day and that’s if I’m lucky. I have to wake up very early in the morning to queue, otherwise there will be no money in the ATM. If I come late I can find even 60 or so people queuing,” says Tukudzwa Mutasa, who lives in Harare.
The southern African country has been unlucky, to say the least, when it comes to currency. It printed its way into hyperinflation and even introduced bearer cheques that carried and outlived their expiry date. In 2008, it suffered catastrophic hyperinflation and even had a one hundred trillion dollar bill which could be exchanged for US$0.40. Almost 10 years later, it is worth more as a souvenir on eBay, where you can buy it for US$70.
This all led to the Zimbabwean dollar being ditched and the country adopting up to nine currencies from other countries.
The US dollar is king in Zimbabwe. In 2009, 49% of people used the US dollar, 49% used the rand and 2% used other currencies. In 2016, 95% of people use the US dollar.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) says the stronger US dollar is encouraging traders to take the currency out of the country.
“I can’t take the rand because it is weak. I buy the things I sell in South Africa and have to factor in costs, so I would rather sell in US dollars so that I make a little bit of profit otherwise I would be wasting my time,” says informal trader Chipo Dungare, in Harare.
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Into the mix, in October, come piles upon piles of what many see as worthless paper. Zimbabwe will use the gold standard, which is a monetary system where a country’s currency or paper money has a value directly backed by gold, to print its own version of the US dollar, called bond notes. There is a guarantee of US$200 million by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to back the bond notes. The scheme will also reward people bringing foreign currency to the country with a 5% incentive on all foreign exchange receipts.
Reserve Bank Governor, John Mangudya, says the bond notes, like the US dollar, will come in $2, $5, $10 and $20 dominations. This is unlikely to convince people to use it.
“This is a shakedown; casino economy presided over by dangerous clowns who don’t see beyond today. How can you explain repeating a failed experiment of 2008 of printing dollar signs and figures on bond paper and declare that as currency? Really? Do these people learn at all?” asks political economist, Maxwell Saungweme.
“This is the return of the Zimbabwean dollar by another name. It won’t work. It will crash on day one,” says a Harare-based analyst who chose to remain anonymous for fear of victimization.
Former Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, called citizens to anger.
“The return of the Zimbabwean dollar marks the gross admission by this regime that it has failed, and failed in absolute terms, and that it will drag everyone along in the plunge to abyss that now awaits this economy. It is a cynical, disrespectful and contemptuous move that has absolutely no logic, sense or justification on any rational ground whatsoever,” writes Biti on his Facebook page.
“Zimbabwe is effectively a supermarket economy consuming goods produced in other countries. In 2014, its exports were US$3.7 billion against imports of US$6.3 billion. 2015 was no better; exports were $3.2 billion against imports of US$6.03 billion.”
Promise Mkwananzi, Director of Zimbabwe Informal Sector’s Organisation, says this policy reveals confusion.
“The tragic result is that there is already panic and despondency in the country. This will cause an unprecedented decline in FDIs already at its all-time low. This will see the Zimbabwean economy continuing to suffer,” he says.
But the people running Zimbabwe believe there is no problem.
“The bond notes are coming no matter what because we are trying to solve a problem here. The media exaggerates what is going on here in Zimbabwe. They talk about protests but I don’t even know what they are talking about. It’s always business as usual here and often I have to see in the news that there was a protest,” says spokesperson of the office of the president, George Charamba.
Along with the RBZ and the government, the Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe (EMCOZ) is behind the bond notes, but it has reservations.
“The consultations before the announcement, if any, were less than inclusive and the confusion and fear that was created could have been anticipated and, to a large degree, reduced if not avoided. It would have given business the necessary confidence if it had also been announced whether this is a short, medium-term or long-term measure and the fate of the bond notes once they have served their purpose,” says EMCOZ president Josephat Kahwema.
What is certain is that in October the banks will be full of freshly printed paper. You’ll know for sure whether it’s worthless when you go to spend it.

Starting a  bon(d)fire

In 1966, if you drove through Gaborone and blinked you would have missed it. It was little more than a barren railway stop, in the middle of nowhere, on the way from Cape Town to Cairo. Those living here would have said there was nothing more to it than termite mounds and elephants.
At the time, this land-locked country was considered to be the poorest in Africa, with a per capita of $70. It had nine secondary schools, 50 university graduates, a railway line built by Cecil John Rhodes, and five kilometers of tarred road that stretched between Lobatse Station and the High Court.
From this backwater beginning Botswana has emerged as one of the fastest growing economies in the world and moved into the ranks of upper-middle income countries. Real GDP shows an average growth of 5% per annum over the past decade, at a time when the most advanced economies have been falling apart. In 2015, GDP stood at $14.39 billion. This remarkable growth, according to the World Bank, is because of diamonds hidden deep in Orapa, 521 kilometers north of Gaborone. The discovery was made in 1967, months after Botswana’s independence was declared on September 30, 1966, and the proceeds went to the state rather than colonial coffers.
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But, if you look closely at the white walls and fresh cement of Gaborone, cracks appear. In the week FORBES AFRICA arrived in Gaborone, unemployed youth clashed with police outside Parliament; four of them spent the night in jail.
It is called #UnemploymentMovement and uses social media to fuel support, much like South Africa’s #FeesMustFall student protests a year ago. It comes at a time when citizens question the government’s P100 million ($9.76 million) budget for its golden jubilee.
It is a big problem. One third of Botswana’s two million people are youth. The World Bank says poverty in Botswana is 17.8%, among youth aged between 15 and 24 its 34.10%. This is despite government spending 9% of its $14.39 billion GDP on free education.
One of those that spent the night in jail is Jones Banda, a committee leader behind #UnemploymentMovement. Speaking to FORBES AFRICA while on a march on August 13, he says the movement started with just one student, Tlamelo Tsurupe, standing outside Parliament with a poster. Within a week dozens more, including Banda, joined him.
“The youth of Botswana have realized our government can no longer place jobs for the youth&#8230; Most of our emphasis now is on the graduates. Why? Because it is [graduates] that are very frustrated. They have been educated by the government to take control of the economy and now the government is not absorbing them. Mind you, the students have loans to pay,” says Banda.
At the time of going to print, the BDP had not released an official statement concerning police assault at the protest on August 8. A permit was granted for the march held on August 13.
Banda believes unemployed youth make up more than 17.8%. This is because unemployed graduates have to register with the government, meaning that thousands of other students who are not graduates are not considered.
Banda’s stint behind bars hardened his resolve.
“Being in jail is almost as if I was home, not that I have ever been in jail. But for the movement it was a good thing. We felt the brunt of system and so we know now who is on our side. It was what we expected,” says Banda.
While students called for better employment, there are others who have managed to eke out a living.
A 32-year-old electrical engineering graduate, Kagiso Monkgatusi, makes his living from flying a P45,000 ($4,400) drone, one of the few owned and licensed in the country.
Monkgatusi, a photographer by trade, got the idea for his business after seeing footage on the internet. It led to him starting his small business, Africa Killer Bee Media, named because of the sound the drone makes in flight. The drone was given to him as a grant by the government-run Local Enterprise Authority. Monkgatusi’s success is an indication of Botswana’s potential.
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In Gaborone, there are small signs of burgeoning wealth; tarred roads glisten, as bright as the country’s diamonds, next to dusty sidewalks; malls, polished and pristine, are packed to the rafters with food, shoes and cell phone stores. The city center is a hive of activity as scaffolding rises on the skyline.
Botswana’s success is largely due to a stable government with strong fiscal management, reports the World Bank. President Ian Khama, whose photo hangs on the wall of every store you visit, has held office since 2008. He is the head of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) that has been in power since the first elections in 1965. Every president has been democratically elected and all stood down after their two-term limit.
At the very least, Botswana is trying hard to improve investment and growth in their small economy.
For the hungry investor, Special Economic Zones (SEZ) have been built in Lobatse, Gaborone, Palapye, Selibe Phikwe, Tuli Block, Francistown and Pandamatenga.
“In April, P1.6 billion, of P3.5 billion over three years, in tenders have been awarded and the focus is mainly on the construction of roads, health and education facilities. Other sectors that have been allocated package proceeds are manufacturing, tourism and agriculture,” says Moatlhodi Sebabole, Research Manager at First National Bank Botswana.
Sebabole says Botswana also has a five-year national development plan (NDP) which will focus on coal mining, base metals and diamonds. However, according to Sebabole, investors need to keep a careful eye on low agriculture and food security, stability of water and electricity, and low investment growth.
“The production side of the economy still remains under turbulence with the closure of some abattoirs as well as base metal mines like African Copper,” says Sebabole.
Regardless, Sebabole believes Botswana’s outlook over the next 10 years is promising. Focus will remain on infrastructure projects in water, rail and electricity, which will need financing of P100 billion (around $10 billion) by 2019.
Botswana is a far cry from the country that started with $70 per person a year and five kilometers of tarred road. Fifty years on, it faces new challenges that show how far the country has come – some might even go as far as calling it first world problems, including an educated and militant youth.

Young,  Jobless And ANGRY

Isolated from the world and within their own state, this has been the plight of the Saharawi people living in the refugee camps of Western Algeria for the last 41 years. They face human rights injustice, but unlike other refugees, it is in their own land.
The Polisario movement, the voice of the Saharawi ethnic group, says the territory reported to be illegally occupied by Morocco, belongs to the Saharawi people.
For years following a guerrilla war, they have tried and failed to claim ownership of the land from the Moroccan government. Now, according to the United Nations, they live in mud brick houses and tents in the harsh desert conditions of Tindouf Province, Western Algeria.
They have been locked in an armed struggle for liberation.
At the forefront of the movement are the Saharawi women who have increased their traditional role in the fight not only to reclaim their territory but to also salvage their self-determination as a people.
According to Catherine Constantinides, a human rights activist and executive director of Miss Earth South Africa, the power structure is unlike any other on the globe, particularly in Muslim culture.
“Women have a strong hold in the camps; they double as caregivers as well as liberation fighters. They also invest heavily in themselves educating one another and learning various skills. They exert the power there and the men respect this because they hold the camps together.”
Constantinides, who has dedicated her efforts to bringing to the fore their plight, emphasizes the world cannot fathom the dire conditions faced by the Saharawi people “until you see it”.
“The Saharawi people have less than nothing,” she says.
On one of her many visits to the region, Constantinides witnessed the dehumanizing of the people as they received food packets dropped by aeroplanes and water delivered in trucks.
The men cannot provide for their families so their children look to the skies for scraps of food.
This is just one illustration of the gap between humanity and policy regulations that leaves the Saharawis perennially stateless.
Moreover, there are no adequate health facilities for them.
“Child mortality is at its highest in Tindouf as women are forced to give birth in their mud houses or tents,” explains Constantinides.
“It’s devastating because children bring that spark of hope within that unfortunate situation.”
United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has since visited the refugee camps in an effort to reignite negotiations in the region and to end the dispute and bring liberation to the Saharawi people. During his visit, he said he “would spare no effort towards a just and meaningful solution” for the people in Western Algeria.
These are the kind of efforts activists like Constantinides want to see in the fight against the apparent global neglect of refugees.
“We have to find better ways of dealing with the crisis.”
One example that Constantinides refers to is the naturalization process she witnessed earlier this year in Virginia, America, on the fourth of July.
“This was an example of how in time systems can work if applied to crises to give people dignity.”
“We have to bring the concept back of supporting each other instead of building walls,” she sighs.
Until such time, the Saharawi people will continue fighting for their statehood, led by the women who Constantinides says will never give up, come hell or high water.

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Refugees In Their Own Home

Africa’s biggest platinum industry faces one of the most bruising years in its history. Unions and management have drawn battle lines for pay talks and a cloud of question marks hangs over the mining laws – dual uncertainty that could deter foreign investors from putting money in a country that produces 70% of the world’s platinum.
In July, pay talks for a new one-year deal began. Unions for 130,000 workers in South African platinum mines, sat down with the big three: AngloPlats, Implats and Lonmin. They are likely to prove tricky and drag on for weeks. The majority union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu), wants a 15% pay rise; the second largest, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), wants 20% across the board. Both unions are eyeing the recovering platinum price nosing above $1,000 an ounce for the first time in years. In August 2011, it was over $1,900.
<div id="attachment_5133" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5133" class="size-medium wp-image-5133" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Peter-Leon-017-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Peter Leon</div>
Demand for platinum, thanks to jewellery and automotive manufacturers, rose 10% in the first quarter of this year, according to the World Platinum Investment Council, while supply dropped 11%. It promises profit for South African mines if they can keep costs down; wages make up almost half of costs.
Amcu has 61% of the membership at AngloPlats, 62% at Implats and 82% at Lonmin. It holds the aces and will play a mean game for a minimum wage of R12,500 (around $860) a month. This wage has been the rallying call from Amcu ever since the bitter Marikana strike of August 2012. At the announcement of its demands in July, FORBES AFRICA questioned R12,500, saying it should be more like R20,000, taking into account four years of inflation.
“If we say R20,000 for the lowest paid, the employers are going to run away so we will go for R12,500 and work up from there,” says, the president of Amcu and part-time preacher, who appeared bullish and ready for action.
“We are applying for a pay rise here, not a strike. If the employers apply for a strike we will give it to them.”
The platinum employers are likely to be a tough nut to crack; inflation, at around 6%, is on their side. They are also struggling against years of falling commodity prices and productivity. On the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, AngloPlats shares lost two thirds of their value last year and Lonmin, kept afloat by a shareholders’ bailout in 2015, lost 99%.
Aside from the industrial problems, South Africa faces many more months of uncertainty over the country’s mining laws. Amendments to the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act – which governs mining – have spent four years going back and forth through Parliament; questions have been raised over the constitutionality of the amendments. Investors take a dim view of plans to make resources – like iron and coal for the steel industry – designated minerals under the law. That would mean miners accepting government prices and maybe having to ask permission to export. This could lead to a trade law complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO). China suffered a WTO ruling against it recently in a similar case concerning rare earth.
Then there are concerns about the discretion the law hands to the minister, giving him the power to cancel mining licences and prosecute.
“It is open to discretion, with unclear rules, which makes it very difficult to invest with that level of uncertainty and that is the long and short of it,” says Peter Leon, a mining lawyer with Herbert Smith Freehills, at a briefing in Johannesburg in June.
“We are going to a third rewrite without solving the problems of the first two.”
The bill is on its way back through the legislature and a number of bodies, including the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa. Leon and his colleagues say the chiefs came up with one of the best ideas yet – an independent body to allocate the state-owned mineral rights.
With Parliament adjourned for the August 3 municipal elections, mining experts fear it could be well into next year before South Africa’s mining code is fixed. Investors seek stability and regulatory certainty; with every passing month there is a risk more of them will turn away.

Platinum Blues

The road to the mining misery, in Louieville, Mpumalanga, is a picture of poverty; roads are crumbling and children roam the streets barefoot.
It has been five months since the fatal accident at the Vantage Goldfields, Lily Mine, near Barberton, Mpumalanga, and three people are buried in the rubble.
Yvonne Mnisi, Pretty Nkambule and Solomon Nyarende were buried, 80 meters underground on February 5, in a steel container where a crown pillar collapsed at the open pit gold mine.
Everyday Nkambule’s husband, 39-year-old December Mazibuko, wakes up to what he calls another day in hell.
We meet Mazibuko at his house made of mud, in Louieville, 20 minutes away from Lily Mine. He is on his way to apply for a child support grant at the clinic for his 10-month-old baby. Mazibuko says he had his last meal two days ago. With an empty fridge and electricity on zero units, Mazibuko lives on handouts.
“It’s tough,” says Mazibuko.
“I haven’t eaten. I sometimes get help from my family and neighbors, if they don’t come, it gets hard. I don’t know what to do and where to go to. The shops don’t give us food anymore because they know we don’t get paid anymore,” says Mazibuko, who worked at Lily Mine for nine years.
About 600 workers have been left without jobs since the mine collapsed.
In March, Mineral Resources Minister, Mosebenzi Zwane, promised families of the trapped a R200,000 (around $13,800) compensation and workers who survived R50,000 (around $3,500) each. The workers claim they’ve seen nothing.
“We didn’t get any money. They’ve been promising to pay us the money, ‘til now we haven’t received it,” says Mazibuko.
“We are very hungry. From now until December, the situation is going to get worse. How are we going to send our children to school? Already most of them are no longer going to school. I just want the bosses to pay us, if they can’t, then they should tell us. This is unfair,” says a Lily Mine worker, who didn’t want to be named.
On the day of the tragedy, 115 people clocked in for work and nearly all were rescued. The three missing were working in a steel container, used as a lamp room, which crashed down a sinkhole.
Rob Devereux, a business rescue practitioner, says they needed to raise R200 million (around $13.8 million) to dig a declined shaft 500 meters away from the sinkhole.
“We are in the process of raising the money. We offered all workers voluntary severance packages. Once we receive the funding, we’ll settle the workers’ salaries and rehire them,” says Devereux.
He says it might take up to a year for the mine to reopen.
“It will take about eight months to develop the rescue operation and the mine will open three months after that.”
Joseph Montisetsi, Deputy President of the National Union of Mineworkers, says they are planning to march to the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) in Johannesburg.
“We are calling on the DMR, as the regulator, that it must be in the forefront to make sure that the three employees trapped underground are rescued,” says Montisetsi.
The three missing workers were all breadwinners.
Dead or alive, the families say they want to find closure.
“We just want the mine to get Solomon out from the ground so that we as the Nyarendes can bury him,” says Wanda Nyarende, a cousin.
Through it all, Mazibuko hopes that his wife is still alive. Like most at this mine he feels abandoned.

A Despairing Demand From The Desperate

It’s bad news when a commercial bank collapses; it’s frightening when three of them go under within just eight months in a single market.
The back-to-back collapse of mid-tier Chase Bank, Imperial Bank and Dubai Bank sent chills across the Kenyan financial sector – eliciting a scramble for remedial measures, including consolidation and review of capitalization requirements for banks.
Chase Bank’s operations were taken over by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) in April after its management failed to declare KES8 million ($80,500) in insider loans, causing panic withdrawals and a run on the bank.
Imperial Bank was taken over in October after fraud was uncovered. Two months earlier, smaller lender, Dubai Bank, was put into receivership.
This state of affairs triggered anxiety on the health of the banking sector in Kenya even though regulators and the National Treasury have gone all-out to downplay the concerns, calling the bank closures “isolated cases”.
“I want to assure my fellow Kenyans that our financial sector remains strong and stable. The recent placing under receivership of three banks was due to specific factors related to these banks and not the whole banking sector,” says Finance Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich, as he sought to calm nerves over the health of the East African nation’s financial sector.
But even with the assurance, Rotich and his team at the Treasury are not resting. They are planning a raft of strategies, including consolidation, in an attempt to clear weak lenders from the Kenya’s banking sector and help restore confidence through larger and better capitalized outfits.
Rotich plans to re-introduce higher capital levels for banks to guarantee their financial health.
“Last year, I did table in this house specific measures to increase the capitalization of banks in order to ensure we have a strong and stable banking system but our efforts were not successful,” Rotich told the Kenyan Parliament in June when he presented his budget speech.
In 2015, Kenya’s legislators shot down Rotich’s proposal to raise commercial banks’ minimum capital fivefold to KES5 billion ($50 million) within three years, after CBK Governor Patrick Njoroge said such a move would strangle smaller lenders.
Rotich, however, is keen to push through the higher capital requirements this time round and by extension trigger consolidation of weak lenders in an attempt to prevent further financial glitches among the 42 licensed commercial banks.
“I am seeking to introduce the proposals and I am hopeful that members will look at them more favorably in light of the recent developments in our banking industry,” says Rotich.
The impending changes in bank capitalization requirements have already triggered action among small lenders that are keen on complying.
Midsized lenders, presently feeling the pressure to consolidate to capitalize on economies of scale and remain relevant, have already taken to mergers or pacts with private equities to boost the asset position.
I&amp;M Holdings, which has stakes in banks in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Mauritius, is set to finalize a KES5 billion ($50 million) deal to merge Giro Commercial Bank with its subsidiary I&amp;M Bank.
“In our view, the acquisition will have minimal strategy disruption given similarities of the two banks – both have conservative balance sheets and mainly target middle- to high-income customers as well as SMEs (small and medium enterprises),” the listed lender said in a statement in June.
Small-sized Kenyan lender Oriental Commercial Bank formally rebranded to M-Oriental Bank in June following the acquisition of a 51% stake in the shareholding of Oriental by Bank M Tanzania.
The Kenyan banking industry has also witnessed several other acquisitions recently, including the 75% purchase of Spire Bank (formerly Equatorial Commercial Bank) by Mwalimu Sacco and Nigeria’s Guaranty Trust Bank acquiring Fina Bank.
In 2014, investment group Centum also completed the acquisition of K-Rep Bank (now Sidian Bank) in a deal that raised Centum’s shareholding from 7.54% to 67.54%, having been a minority shareholder in the bank since 2004.
Centum’s acquisition was effected through Bakko Holdco Ltd, a non-operating holding company, to conform to CBK guidelines.
Kenya’s largest bank by asset base, KCB Group, is also looking at medium-sized lenders to buy as part of an expansion plan and is building up capital to boost its acquisition war chest.
“We will look for businesses where there can be synergy, where there can be ability for us to scale up, so medium-sized banks will be areas that we are focusing on today,” KCB CEO Joshua Oigara told Reuters.
In May, KCB Group shareholders gave a nod to the lender’s plan to raise KES10 billion ($100 million) through a rights issue later this year to boost its capital levels. KCB’s total capital stood at KES79 billion ($795 million) at the end of 2015.
KCB Group is expected to acquire a majority stake in Chase Bank after it was recently appointed to manage the mid-tier bank that only re-opened after a brief closure due to liquidity problems following a run by panicked depositors.
The government is also considering merging National Bank of Kenya (NBK), Development Bank of Kenya and Consolidated Bank, which it owns, in a bid to take advantage of having a large lender.
“We are making progress on the issue of consolidation because we now have a consultant who will soon be advising us on how to move. We expect to consolidate the state banks into one or two banks very soon,” Rotich said in April.
The changes in bank capitalization have also seen an inflow of private equity to try and boost the books of Kenyan banks.
In March, Fidelity Commercial Bank announced British private equity and asset management firm Duet Group had acquired a significant stake in the small lender. In the deal, Fidelity Bank will receive KES1.9 billion ($19 million) from the sale and boost its capital position, which was narrowly above mandatory requirements following an increase in adequacy ratios in 2015.
Furthermore, Norway’s investment fund for developing countries, known as Norfund, in partnership with NorFinance, an investment firm created by Norfund and private investors, purchased a 12.22% stake in Kenya’s Equity Group Holdings for an estimated KES26 billion ($261 million) from private equity group Helios Investment Partners.

Hoping For More  To Bank On

Fifty five years on and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is still haunted by the violent death of Patrice Lumumba. The first elected leader of the country came to one of the saddest ends of any leader in Africa in a tortured nation that has found peace elusive. His death; the agony of being beaten and paraded before television cameras, before being dismembered to oblivion in the bush, mirrors the intense suffering of his country.
A pan-Africanist to the core, Lumumba’s dream was a united Africa. A move that smacked of the Soviets, according to jittery foreign affairs officials at the height of the Cold War, in Washington, Brussels and London.
“We have known the atrocious sufferings of those who were imprisoned for their political opinions or religious beliefs and of those exiled in their own country. Their fate was worse than death itself. Who will forget the rifle-fire from which so many of our brothers perished, or the gaols in to which were brutally thrown those who did not want to submit to a regime of justice, oppression and exploitation which were the means the colonialists employed to dominate us?” read part of Lumumba’s famous Independence Day speech that was to prove his death warrant by convincing people in power that he should be removed.
“Had he lived, much of the violence that we see on the continent could have been prevented; and could probably have ushered in greater economic success and stability as economic liberalists would argue. Lumumba was not alone in this thinking during this period. Others who were leading this African union were: Milton Obote from Uganda, Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya, Julius Nyerere from Tanzania and Kwame Nkrumah from Ghana,” says Wendy Isaacs-Martin, the Acting Head of the Archie Mafeje Research Institute at the University of South Africa.
His death is regarded by the Belgian author, Ludo De Witte, as the most important assassination of the 20th century. After his death, the DRC descended into division and war.
“I ask you all to sink your tribal quarrels: they weaken us and may cause us to be despised abroad,” Lumumba foretold in his inauguration speech.
Many accuse the American and Belgian governments for his death, but it is likely a lot more complex that. One factor is uranium from the country’s mines that was used to manufacture the first atomic weapons used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US and certain European countries would not trust such strategic raw materials to someone who was leaning towards the Soviets.
Isaacs-Martin says Lumumba stands as the icon of the intellectual potential Africa possessed in post-independence years.
“Like many of his peers he represented an intellectual discourse that saw the need to create social cohesion within the continent and a national identity within their particular countries,” she says.
“He also represents something that is often forgotten in our current understanding of Africa during the Cold War. In the eventual legacy of failed and successful coups that has plagued Africa, Lumumba, in being deposed and then killed four months later, represented the epitome of Africa’s potential and how the continent was essentially robbed from establishing itself in a post-colonial and bi-polar period.”
Lumumba’s assassination was one of many: Amilcar Cabral (Guinea); Felix Moumie (Cameroon); Sylvanus Olympio (Togo).
“Their assassinations marked the beginning of demise in effective political leadership and eroded the potential foundations for African philosophical, sociological and political thought. Instead there has been a trend to support the coercive wing into political leadership that continues to prove ineffective but in the interests of existing (or potentially new) political elites and external stakeholders,” says Isaacs-Martin.
“The tensions between regional leaders that continue today represent an inability of Africans to see beyond their limited identities that have often been externally prescribed and exploited. Yet it was these very concerns that individuals such as Lumumba advocated against, focusing on advancing Africa beyond the limited thinking of resource extraction and authoritarian exploitative administrative systems.”
Lumumba’s body was never found; neither was another leader like him.

What could have been

Elections in Africa are not child’s play; if you run out of luck, you can pay with your life. This was true of Zambia’s Mapenzi Chibulu, an 18-year-old female opposition activist shot dead on the streets of Lusaka by police in political turmoil.
On July 9, in broad daylight, and a month before she was expected to join millions in voting for the next president, Chibulu lost her life. It forced the electoral body, the Electoral Commission of Zambia, to suspend campaigns for 10 days in Zambia’s capital.
As if the political turmoil was not enough, the copper producing country has done little to allay fears of investors, bearing hard currency, over a country that has struggled to diversify from mining.
The country, celebrating 52 years this year, is in turmoil as incumbent President Edgar Lungu, who has been in power for a year, is battling to stop opposition leader, Hichilema Hakainde, from wresting power. Lungu came in after President Michael Sata died in office. Hakainde is a businessman and a British-educated economist.
The two will face each other in a watershed election of August 11. Whatever the outcome, this election will be contested; whoever loses will claim electoral fraud after polls.
“For 50 years our nation has lived with peace, stability and freedom. There is no place for this type of violence in our society. I take a firm stance against any sort of violence in our democracy,” Lungu said in a statement.
To his opponents, his words ring hollow in the light of Chibulu’s death.
Political analysts say the electoral landscape, in the run up to the polls, has been punctuated by skirmishes between the ruling Patriotic Front and the opposition United Party for National Development.
“This comes as no surprise and we have been warning for months now that the political climate in Zambia was not conducive to free and fair elections and that the country risked losing its democratic reputation if authorities allowed this to continue,” says Gary van Staden, Senior Political Analyst at NKC African Economists.
“While the decision to suspend campaigning is a negative development, it at least provides some breathing space for authorities and political parties to put in place concrete measures to help take off the pressure that has been building over months now and threatens the credibility of the poll. The suspension of campaigning is the lesser of two evils but it remains an evil and any attempt to extend the suspensions will be unacceptable.”
While the election will pass, the challenges facing Zambia will not. Economists warn that politicians should not make it worse.
Herryman Moono, an economist from Economics Association of Zambia, says the unfolding political developments, marred by violence and government pressure on private media, has created political tension.
“The excessive use of force by the Zambia police, who are on record of cancelling opposition party rallies and recently the use of live ammunition leading to the killing of an opposition party supporter, while injuring others, is raising concerns about the security of the nation as we approach elections,” says Moono.
“These developments are creating anxiety among the local and international community. Should these continue, Zambia will slowly be perceived as a risky investment destination which has a strong and negative bearing on foreign direct investment in the short to medium term. An elevated risk profile arising from electoral violence can easily lead to subdued economic growth as investments – both local and international – dwindle.”
Moono adds that, beyond a damaged reputation and being a low grade investment destination, the Zambian currency would, in the midst of an electoral crisis, negatively affect the Zambian Kwacha which has been extremely volatile and poor-performing the past few years.
Thato Motaung, Associate Executive Director at the African Democratic Institute, says, to date, Zambia has experienced fairly peaceful and successful transitions of power; showing a promising trait of embracing the democratic will of the people.
“The key issues facing the build-up to Zambia’s election are mostly rooted in this insecurity. There is a large vocal citizenry, vigorous independent media, paired with a well-organized opposition; a combination that leaders often perceive as threatening. Hence we see the iron fist emerge in raids, police brutality and censorship in an attempt to pacify the perceived threat.”
On August 11, we will know who will take the reins.

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