Category: News Blog

On 14-15 November 2016, the PSPPD II team on the Firm Survey analysis project will be presenting their research results at the ERLN (Learning Network) workshop titled “Economic Development for Employment:  Sub-national strategies”

In a Parallel Session on Firm Level Data, Glen and Myriam will be presenting the following: “In with the new and out with the old? An exploration of the role of industrial estates in manufacturing performance based on a survey of firms in the eThekwini Metro” Glen Robbins, Myriam Velia, Jana Rogoll & Audrey Chiedza (University of KwaZulu-Natal).

The SARChI team has released its next Technical Paper (September 2016) based on the climate change and poverty reduction project (PSPPD II) titled:

Technical paper No. 7 * Adaptation to the Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture in eThekwini: a literature review. Author: Precious Shezi and Mvuselelo Ngcoya. http://hdl.handle.net/10413/13346

Conclusion summary: 

The eThekwini Municipality has shown strong innovative strategies and activities on climate change adaptation. Putting the improvement of the quality of life of its urban poor remains the main goal in the official planning systems of the municipality and its counterparts. In this era of the changing climate affecting agricultural activities across the world, both small-scale and commercial farmers are adjusting their practices. Commercially, farming has had to adapt to diversified land use plans as well make choices of inputs which would be resilient and work within forecasted conditions. There is also evidence of shifting public policy to adapt to forthcoming changes. The Municipality has designed a food security strategic plan that intends to complement its climate change policy documents. Certainly, the Municipality’s food security vision declaration aims to guarantee that eThekwini population has a strong and resilient food security status. Urban agriculture is one of eThekwini’s policies supporting urban agricultural programmes and activities, although this policy is complemented with the rural agricultural policy (under the rural area-based management). These include the organic and sustainable agricultural initiatives, essential food sovereignty, food security, economic empowerment and environmental sustainability for eThekwini residents and the Municipality’s green leadership, which is mainly responsible for implementing approaches to aid poor citizens to adapt to climate change.

The SARChI team has released its latest Technical Paper (September 2016) titled:

SARChI Technical paper No. 5 * A review of contested perspectives on climate change finance. Authors: Mandy Lombo, Siyabonga Ntombela, Okem Andrew Emmanuel and Sarah Bracking.  http://hdl.handle.net/10413/13337

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

There is an overwhelming consensus that climate change is a reality that requires urgent attention through mitigation and adaptation strategies. A slow rise in aggregate funding and investment towards projects which incorporate adaptation with respect to the consequences of climate change or mitigation of the known causes of climate change has occurred globally. This illustrates the increased intention of the public and private sectors to find appropriate interventions which work towards the lowering of carbon emissions or finding ways for the public to adapt their current behaviour to the eminent changes of climate. In this report, we present a critical review of literature on climate change financing. The review engages the meaning, sources and monitoring of the flow of climate finance. We also present discourses on issues related to the evaluation of the social impacts of climate finance on intended beneficiaries. These debates are contextualised in eThekwini Municipality’s approach to climate change adaption and mitigation. We note that there are many concerns regarding climate change finance that require further attention. These issues range from whether or not climate finance should form part of official development assistance (ODA), how funds should be distributed and who should climate change initiatives benefit. These issues could hamper the implementation of many useful strategies and much needed finance could end up funding projects that are not for public benefit. Furthermore, there is a conspicuous absence of appropriate and standard criteria for projects to meet in order to qualify as a climate change initiative. The lack of explicit requirements for projects to provide co-benefits to communities remains an unsettling problem and allows for substantial room for funding of unsuitable and in some cases, non-existent climate change projects. Much work still needs to be done to setup the identification criteria and measurement frameworks to help with issues of transparency, accountability and tracking of climate finance. This is especially needed in developing countries in order to curtail the misuse of climate funds in all tiers of government. There is also an urgent need to create a system that will govern, prescribe and monitor the use of climate funds for the betterment of the eco-systems, non –human species and humans.

**24 Aug UPDATE: this event is postponed due to today’s closure of UKZN’s academic programme**

The SARCHI team (Glen, Myriam and Claire) presents research on Durban’s manufacturing industry, 24 August 2016 (11:45am-13:00pm) at the School of Built Environment and Development Studies seminar series.  The title of her seminar is “Skills Constraints in Medium and Large Manufacturing Establishments in the Ethekwini Metro: Evidence from a Firm Survey”.

The venue is at UKZN’s Denis Shepstone Building, Level 8, Room 808.  Please read the abstract below.

The SARCHI Chair presents research on climate finance, 10 August 2016 (11:45am-13:00pm) at the School of Built Environment and Development Studies seminar series.  The title of her seminar is “Changes in environmental governance and climate finance”.

The venue is at UKZN’s Denis Shepstone Building, Level 8, Room 808.  Please read the abstract below.

Research Master’s student and former SARChI research assistant recently reflects on his experience at a workshop (13-14 June 2016) titled, “Zimbabwe’s Despondent Political Economy”, a workshop to honour the late Professor Sam Moyo.

On 13-14 June 2016, the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of Built Environment and Development Studies (SoBEDS) and Centre for Civil Society (CCS) hosted a workshop in Durban to honour the late Professor Sam Moyo. The workshop was titled, “Zimbabwe’s Despondent Political Economy” and it sought to remember and build upon this Professor’s academic contributions to Africa’s political economy as well as political ecology. I was privileged to not only attend this workshop but to have an opportunity to present some elements of my research on the second day. The South African Research Chair (SARCHi) team was well represented at this workshop with Danford Chibvongodze, Freedom Mazwi, Joy Mabenge, Kathleen Diga and Professor Sarah Bracking all in attendance. Some of the work they presented will be highlighted below.

I have never been one to follow the road that many have travelled, hence this piece will be structured in a seemingly random way to allow the various presentations to form a complete picture of my experience and interpretation of the workshop. One of the concluding remarks in my presentation was that the crisis in Zimbabwe should be seen and addressed in a holistic manner.  It is not only a political crisis but a socio-economic one and it is worsened by a crisis of accumulation and desperation. This workshop in so many ways reinforced this argument, but at the same time, challenged those present to either develop new ways or revamp old ways to understand the Zimbabwe experience. The regional context is unique when attempting to apply some of the theories already in existence and perhaps falls short of capturing these experiences. A look at Joy Mabenge’s presentation, “Political Transitions and Social Justice” highlights this. Please forgive me if I have made a ‘boat out of reeds,’ but something that caught my attention in his presentation was around political transition. He argued that Zimbabwe was not easily identifiable or classified in regards to which transition it was in within the existing frameworks of transitions.

Freedom Mazwi, a former student of Professor Sam Moyo and current PhD student under SARChI, presented on the “Agrarian Structure and Social Stratification in Chiredzi”. He brought our attention to the legacy of Zimbabwe’s land reform, the challenges and prospects for farmers especially in the Chiredzi district. It gave me insight around the nexus between politics and agrarian prospects within the post-colonial state. What stood out for me was his explanation of how a dual agrarian structure was replaced by a tri-modal structure with competing modes of production. It unpacked the complexity around the social stratification of resettled farmers that has been seemingly oversimplified by media, and at times those aligned with political parties in Zimbabwe. Adrian Nel also presented on the “Land Reform in Matobo District, Matabeleland” reinforcing some of the complexities that were arising as well as the challenges and opportunities.

Danford Chibvongodze presented on “The Street Vendors of Bulawayo” this was a part of his PhD thesis “Rethinking “Informality” and “Street Trading” in a Despondent Urban Economy:  the Case of Bulawayo”. While Danford touched on a number of things, something that resonated with me was there is growing realisation that Bulawayo’s informal economy might well be the ‘real economy,’ and he challenges us to stretch this thinking a little further. I felt that in the case of Zimbabwe or other countries in an economic crisis, more attention should be paid to informal economies not as a ‘cancer’ or other activities outside of the norm of which needs to be ridden. But rather, informality could be approached as an adaptive measure that citizens participate in for survival within an economic crisis that was likely not from their own direct actions. Similarly along these lines, Martin Magidi presented on “Sustaining livelihoods in De-industrialising Norton” presumably to see how people survive in a town where formal jobs are on the decline.

Professor Sarah Bracking presented her new book, “The Financialisation of Power: How Financiers Rule Africa” (published under Routledge 2016). To be honest, some of it was beyond my understanding, but like a sponge dipped in water, I did retain something. Unfortunately or fortunately that which was retained was tainted by my own preconceived notions. I won’t attempt to explain the whole rational behind her argument or summaries, as I may likely be way off. That, however, won’t stop me from expressing what I got from the presentation. Firstly, I picked up that the word ‘financialisation’ has been used in various ways, hence the concept itself is a contested one. Secondly, the literature around financialisation has been a critique of its effects without explicitly dealing with what it actually is. Financialisation, from my understanding, has resulted in dark pool trading, African governments bearing the brunt of costs in regards to ‘white elephants’ at the expense of their citizenry, and the proliferation of illicit flows of cash to offshore accounts. For me, her book spoke to the global super structure, and how it affected African countries in regards to flows of capital.

Briggs Bomba’s presentation was called “Stop the Bleeding of Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) from Harare,” and it touched close to home. It was an eye-opening presentation as it unpacked why there were issues such as cash flow shortages in Zimbabwe. Currently, these effects have led to the potential introduction of Bond notes which have in turned led to the rise of social movements such as the hashtag campaign #thisflag. Briggs, in his work, also highlights the implication of IFFs on development and ways of arresting these outward flows.

Farai Maguwu’s presentation on “Conflict Diamonds and Zimbabwe’s New Poverty” led to robust discussions about how the political economy sustains a regime through a system of patronage and what possible strategies are there for its resolution. His extensive work which he discussed gave us first-hand accounts of what has been going on in Chiadzwa, and its implications for women and locals at large.

I can by no means exhaust all that was discussed and presented, but I shared some of the things that caught my ear. When some of the presenters read this, they may say that is not what I meant to say or that was not the focus of my presentation, and for that, I APOLOGISE. I will still stand firmly alongside what I feel is a reflection of my time at the workshop. The experience itself was rich and highly rewarding as I got the chance to hear first accounts of things that I only read about. I had the privilege of discussing the political economy of Zimbabwe and strategies on ways to resolve political and socio-economic issues in Zimbabwe.

You can download the presentations in the link below

Sam Moyo Memorial Workshop Presentations at UZKN CCS(1)

Malcom Munyaradzi Chiororo is currently doing his masters in Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is a Zimbabwe national, his research interests include issues of social justice, inequality and political economy in post-colonial states with an emphasis on Southern Africa.

The SARChI Chair recently published the following journal article in RoAPE:

Sharife, K., & Bracking, S. (2016). Diamond pricing and valuation in South Africa’s extractive political economy. Review of African Political Economy, 1-20.

ABSTRACT

This article explores the valuation and marketisation of diamonds in South Africa from 2004 to 2012. It argues that there is no positivist foundation for a ‘real’ or ‘fair’ price from which derogations can be measured, which constitutes a challenge for establishing transfer pricing in the context of tax justice. Instead, there is a performative valuation process wherein artificial underlying values are assigned which then condition prices and tax liabilities. Thus it is not the essential nature of diamonds per se that conditions a ‘resource curse’, but corporate control over the marketisation process in the context of enclavity and oligopoly.

The SARChI team has released its latest Technical Paper titled:

“Technical paper No. 6 * Early Childhood Development_and Poverty Reduction in South Africa: A literature review.  Authors:  Mbali Mthembu, Nduta Mbarathi, and Kathleen Diga”

Executive Summary

Early Childhood Development (ECD) has become a priority sector within South Africa, particularly in respect to ensuring equity and high quality of care for the youngest members (ages 0 to 5 years old) of the population. South Africa is also burdened with high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment as well as unequal levels of service delivery and public provision of infrastructure. Given the recent development and request for feedback on the provisional ECD policy, there would be a benefit to examine the current state of this draft policy, its respective white papers, and its national and international mandates as well as to understand their relationship to South Africa’s context of poverty. Furthermore, child poverty remains a major concern in the country, particularly in respect to the geographical and living conditions where children live, study and play. This paper wishes to bring to light literature on poverty and, from a multi-dimensional lens, understand how early childhood development provision, whether it be through its programming or the physical centres themselves, are affecting the lives of children, particularly those within households living in urban poverty. ECD are intended to provide children with a safe facility to stay and with some standards of conditions which would allow children to learn and improve their skills. ECD also provides parents with the ability to leave their children in safe places so that they can work or learn. The proximity of ECD centres, their costs, the staffing and their physical conditions influence the choices of parents to leave their children at an ECD centre. The ECD centres within informal settlements are also explored in this paper, given the need for further understanding of such physical infrastructures within a municipality’s planning. Planning for ECD centres within the ‘grey areas’, such as informal settlements or those located in traditional land, can be problematic, especially for ECD managers or principals in gaining access to much needed ECD resources through the appropriate departments. Those parents who have limited and erratic income stream are provided with inadequate choices which may put a mother and/or father in difficult situations of child care. The ECD policy would benefit poor households, particularly those living within informal settlements, through understanding the conditions of the poor and their limitation of choices in ECD centres. In understanding their limitation, government could help provide a more meaningful policy which caters to their needs.

by Kathleen Diga

Under the SARChI programme, I recently co-presented a conference paper in the main plenary at the international information & communication technologies for development (ICTD2016) in Michigan, USA.  I presented with her co-author, Mr Ndumiso Ngidi, from the Durban University of Technology within a panel on social media and internet access.  The paper is titled “’Asijiki’ and the capacity to aspire through social media: the #feesmustfall movement as anti-poverty activism in South Africa”.  I have been attending this conference each year since 2009 and I always look forward to the latest research in the field.

The paper highlights some of the social media content and personal narratives which were gathered during the height of the October 2015 protests in South Africa.  The wave of student-led protest has been the accumulation of frustration and injustice around economic transformation in the country.  We attempt to locate the specific event within Appadurai’s theory of cultural capacity – capacity to aspire (2004).  The research findings illuminated the aspects of the politics of recognition, compliance and future orientation within the student narratives. The capacity to aspire framework further advocates for the strengthening of the capability of the poor and to cultivate their voice.  The presentation synopsis that I presented is written up below and shares some of the main points of the paper.

Student protests  or “incidents of revolt or unrest which constitute serious challenge to established order” have a long history and remain a feature in university life, certainly in South Africa (Nkinyangi, 1991).

During October 2015 last year, South Africa was swept by a wave of student-led protest, initially set against the hike of university tuition fees. The scale of protest was unprecedented.  Twenty South African tertiary institutions within a few days were closed, causing national shut down. What was campaigned under the hashtag, #feesmustfall – was described as the country’s most broadcasted and largest act of youth defiance in the country’s short democratic history.

The paper provides detail on the features of social media use by students and others to garner awareness, solidarity and mobilisation.

Image from the Soweto uprising

(image taken by S. Nzima)

We also commemorate the 40^th year anniversary of Soweto uprising 16 June 1976. The photo here was taken by Sam Nzima and it is a photo of Hector Pieterson, high school student from Soweto being carried away and who was gunned down during the 1976 student protest.  The protest was against a discriminatory education policy which imposed inferior education curriculum for then segregated black students. This image galvanised the country and global liberation movements, and ultimately led to the demise of the unfair apartheid era.

Students today remain steadfast to see change. From a reading of 2015 protest messages, students felt little difference from 1976 to today. Although one salient difference between 1976 and 2015 was the use of social media. Its use has allowed for the voice of students to express their lived experiences and everyday struggles of being part of the education system.

In 1994, the first free and democratic election in South Africa took place.  There was a hope for a ‘new’ South Africa grounded in freedom.  The election campaign by the current government had promised a better life and free quality education for all.  Nelson Mandela himself quotes the power of education.

All this seemed plausible at the time, with a country consumed with hope and energy.  However, 22 years later, while much change has occurred, there is also a wane of enthusiasm due to a view of little economic transformation. Around 45% are income poor (population of about 50 million), SA has one of the highest levels of income inequality (Statistics South Africa, 2015).  However there is a growing trend of ICT adoption and ownership.  What is the role of these contemporary tool of the digital within this context? The promises of a better life have yet to materialised.  Young South Africans are growing impatient for change.  They feel their liberation is not yet complete.

Informational Activism

Student protest and activism in general are evolving.  Protests historically relied on conventional media (the power of TV and radio) and word-of-mouth in order to advance student protest.  Bringing students together was relatively slow, facilitating meetings weeks before and coordination taking some complex organisation.  Conventional media also have choices on story coverage, depending if it was within their editor’s interest.

Social media, notably Twitter, offers alternative channels of communication, wider reach and spread.  Egypt, although not a student protest, was one of the first protest noted for its use of social media, being called the “facebook revolution.”

Halupka (2016) argues contemporary civic engagement is an evolving process with a fluid mix of new digital action within traditional participation.  Termed information activism – these are the digital expressions within a spectrum of participation. In this paper, we look at digitally engaged citizens who become part of the combined mobilisation and street protest.

The South Africa #feesmustfall campaign is noteworthy for the use of social media. During the heated period of October 2015, one source claimed 300 tweets per minute were being sent.  The campaign not only pushed against tuition fee hikes, but students shared personal vignettes of their plight with inequality.  We unpack the social media messages and the capacity of students to express their lived experiences and their hopes for change.  This re-imagined future is unpacked under a theoretical frame “the capacity to aspire”. A few presentations and the movie last night (Joyojeet Pal’s production of ‘For the love of a man’) made mention of aspirations.  How do we make sense of aspirations?

Appadurai states the ability to use voice is to “debate, contest, inquire and participate critically” (2004). The protest is framed not just as a need to lower tuition fees but rather as broader dissent to persistent structural inequality.

The breakdown of the capacity to aspire fall into three concepts:

The politics of recognition, compliance, and future orientation.

Politics of recognition is the ethical compulsion to admit that there are those who live and share a worldview much different from one’s own.  Once we accept this difference, there are markers which show that their opinions do not accept the views of others.  In the case of October 2015, the expression of student voice through social media brings the voices together and produce a cultural consensus to advance their interest of equality and dignity.

Compliance – it is to interrogate the personal reflection of one’s place in society and challenge this norm of the margninalised.  The poor are frequently encouraged to subscribe to the norms which further diminish their dignity and exacerbate inequality.  The paper thereby reflects the student voice AGAINST compliance of social norms, it is a resistance against the continuation of poor conditions.

Finally, future orientation is a navigation towards the future of a person.  It is a prospective path to bolster one’s self and the ability to change current conditions of one’s well-being.

Protest is an opportune moment to take intervention in realising the aspiration of change.

‘Asijiki’ translated from the Nguni language – is an evocative phrase literally stating ‘we do not turn back’.

Ndu then presented on the research findings, particularly around censorship and portrayal of conventional media of the protest, and the messages of aspiration. For more information on the findings of the paper, please do take a read of the paper cited as:

Ngidi, ND., Mtshixa, C., Diga, K., Mbarathi, N., & May, J. (2016) ‘Asijiki’ and the capacity to aspire through social media: the #feesmustfall movement as anti-poverty activism in South Africa. Presented at the International Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD2016) conference, University of Michigan. 3-6 June 2016, Michigan, USA.

I am grateful to my co-authors for producing this paper.  We received positive feedback including via twitter from our conference participants and one blog in Spanish from a writer, Zinnia Quiros (http://entreparentesis.org/dame-tuit-potente-lanzare-calle/) who did not attend the conference!

I also attended the ICTD African Researchers network open session that I had help co-founded in 2010. It was great to again meet up with Bobby and Kweku who have been instrumental in keeping this network going. In this session, I led a group through the concepts of “development”.  The discussion summarised is that we as researchers need to be clear as to how we define the concept in our research.  I also attended the ICTD ethics open session titled “Invitation to Co-Formulate Minimum Ethical Standards in ICT4D”which was led by Dorothea Kleine and Andy Dearden.  Led through participatory methods, the hope is to bring practitioners, computer scientists, social scientists, developers together with a common ethical platform when engaging in ICTD research.  All in all, this smaller conference gave me the chance to catch up with several researchers I have known through the years as well as meet some whose research I have been following for some time.  The research presented as notes or plenary papers are rich in depth and understanding of issues concerning social change.  I look forward to participating again in the next conference!

Dr. Andrew Okem recently presented his research at the Conference on Child Poverty and Social Protection in Western and Central Africa held at the ECOWAS commission in Abuja, Nigeria. The conference was jointly organised by UNICEF WCARO (Western and Central Africa Regional Office), the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Equity for Children. Okem’s attendance at the conference was made possible through a grant facilitated by CROP.

 Dr Okem, who is a Senior Researcher with the South African Research Chair Initiative in Applied Poverty Reduction Assessment in the School of Built Environment and Development Studies (BEDS), presented a paper titled “A Comparative Analysis of Child Social Protection in Nigeria and South Africa”. In his presentation, Okem noted that despite being among the largest economies in Africa, Nigeria, and South Africa are both characterised by high levels of poverty and inequality. The burden of poverty in these countries is disproportionately borne by children who have to contend with malnutrition, inadequate health care and other poor socio-economic conditions. Okem’s presentation unpacked the similarities and differences that underpin child social protection in both countries. His presentation noted that although both countries are characterised by high child poverty, South Africa has made more progress in the design and implementation of child-related social protection programmes that are geared towards not only alleviating child poverty but also improving other socio-economic conditions of children. The progress in the South African context was linked to a number of factors including South Africa’s political history, her rights-based approach to social protection, the adoption of an overarching child-related social protection policy, a higher proportion of GDP spent on social protection (despite having a smaller population size) and a strong administrative framework. Dr. Okem’s presentation resulted in extensive discussion on the rights-based approach to child poverty and social protect.