INSIGHTS • WOMEN IN POLITICS

Transcending Gender in Politics

BY Mike Pothier | Programme Manager, SACBC Parliamentary LIAISON OFFICE, CAPE TOWN

A FEW years ago, I wrote a column in Worldwide about women in politics in South Africa. I wondered whether it was the case that women bring something different or ‘special’ to politics:

One sometimes hears it said that having more women in politics would increase the chances of consensus and agreement; they would be less belligerent and egotistic, more willing to see other points of view, and more likely than their male counterparts to put aside personal ambition in favour of serving the nation. Certainly, one can think of quite a number of women in our political life of whom that is true, but there are probably just as many of whom it is not. In any event, we should be careful of applying stereotypes, or of thinking that there is some kind of ‘female ideal’ that we should be trying to foster in political life.

Since then, we have seen many women achieving the highest office in various countries. Theresa May and Liz Truss became prime ministers of the United Kingdom. Nicola Sturgeon was first minister of Scotland for some years. Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, Sanna Marin in Finland, Samia Suluhu Hassan in Tanzania, and Magdalena Andersson in Sweden all became their countries’ first heads of government. The United States also chose its first female vice president, Kamala Harris, in 2020.

So there does seem to be something of a trend—I have certainly missed out a few in the list above —but it is still not clear that the increasing presence of women at the pinnacle of their political systems has brought any noticeable change. Some of those I’ve mentioned certainly made a major impact on their countries, Ms Ardern perhaps most notably. The two Nordic women left less of a legacy, but at least they pioneered the possibility of female national leadership. Ms Sturgeon led Scotland with great firmness and determination, but shortly after stepping down, she was arrested following allegations of irregularities in her party’s finances—an outcome we tend to associate more with male politicians.

Liz Truss had an ignominiously short tenure of only 50 days, making her the shortest-serving prime minister in the long history of that office in the UK. During that time, she pursued economic and fiscal policies as egotistically as any male politician might have done.

Maybe the whole idea of the empathetic, unifying, self-giving female politician is nothing more than a sexist cliché

On the other hand, Ms Hassan in Tanzania has earned considerable praise for enacting reforms, including the removal of restrictions on the media, and seeking rapprochement with various opposition parties and figures that had been marginalised, and even threatened, by her predecessor.

Looked at this way, it is a mixed picture; we certainly cannot discern a clear pattern internationally suggesting that having women in the most senior posts leads to better political outcomes. The same seems to be true in our own country. Only a handful of senior female ANC leaders were implicated in state capture allegations, but quite a few have shown themselves to be pretty mediocre cabinet ministers and deputy ministers. It is hard to think of a single one who has put her duty to the country ahead of loyalty to her party; in this, they are no better, or worse, than their male counterparts. The same is broadly true, it must be said, of prominent women in the opposition parties. (I note that my assessment a few years ago was more optimistic in this regard.)

Does all this tell us anything useful? Possibly. On the one hand, maybe it is simply the case that politics is an occupation that attracts people—male or female—who tend to be ego-driven, thick-skinned and ambitious; who are competitive and belligerent by nature. If so, then the stereotypical feminine virtues will not be found very commonly in the halls of political power.

On the other hand, maybe the whole idea of the empathetic, unifying, self-giving female politician is nothing more than a sexist cliché. Maybe those who look for that ‘special touch’ that women supposedly bring to political life are looking for something that doesn’t actually exist.

INSIGHTS • YOUTH VOTE

Why are so many youths not voting?

BY Mike Pothier | Programme Manager, SACBC Parliamentary Liaison Office

IN A little over a year, in the 2024 South African national and provincial elections, we will have the chance to determine South Africa’s political future. Elections are very much about the future. You can use your vote to influence the way the country is run in the years to come.

The younger you are the more important it is that you register as a voter, that you think carefully about your vote, and that you make every effort to cast your ballot on election day. Young people will be living with the outcome of electoral choices for a much longer time than their parents and grandparents will be.

At the time of the Brexit referendum in Britain there was a strong argument that, because of the long-term ramifications of leaving the European Union, young people’s votes should carry more weight than those of the elderly. Instead, older people turned out in large numbers to vote, and many of them voted to leave the EU. Many 20-30 year-olds didn’t vote and now they are going to live with the consequences for decades to come.

We are facing a similar problem in South Africa. At the time of our last national and provincial elections in 2019, it was estimated that around 4 million citizens between 20 – 29 years had not registered to vote. In the 2021 local government elections, 90% of 18-19-year-olds failed to register, and there is little sign that they have been registering since then and the turnout of young voters next year is likely to be lower than ever.

In a country where democracy was achieved only after a long struggle, and at great cost, this seems puzzling. Why are our young people apparently not interested in helping to secure a better future for themselves?

It’s a complex question and one with many possible answers. We must be careful not to generalise across the board about young people, most of whom do indeed care deeply about their, and the country’s, future; we must also not make the mistake of thinking that South Africa is alone in this respect—many democracies are experiencing a similar trend. Nevertheless, we can certainly offer some reasons.

One is education. Even though schools have the subject of Life Orientation, it seems that civic education, in which children are taught about their rights and responsibilities as citizens, is generally very poorly handled. Teachers are often not properly trained themselves, and some may shy away from talking about what they see as ‘political’ matters in the classroom. Therefore, many children leave school with little idea of the importance of voting and of responsive citizenship.

Another reason lies in the general decline in trust in public institutions. This is not only a South African phenomenon—younger people in established democracies have less faith than their elders in governments, political parties and parliaments. This is linked to the much wider access people now have to alternative sources of information and opinion via social media and other technologies. Unfortunately, but perhaps understandably, this results in increased scepticism and cynicism about long-established political processes and institutions. (The same phenomenon is at work, it seems, in the decline in formal religious practice among young people in the developed world.)

A factor that might be specifically applicable to South Africa is that you would have to be approaching 40 years of age in order to have any personal memory of the pre-democratic, apartheid, era. The great prize that was won in 1994, the right to vote regardless of race, clearly means less to people who were not even born then than it does to older generations.

Whatever the reasons, this is a serious problem for our country’s political well-being. For all its faults there is no better system than democracy, and it cannot work without proper electoral participation. People of all ages, but young people especially, must be encouraged to put aside their mistrust and cynicism and use the opportunities that democratic elections give them to make a better future than the past.

Between now and the 2024 elections there will be at least two registration weekends organised by the Electoral Commission. Let’s make sure we do whatever we can to encourage our young people to register and then vote.

INSIGHTS

ON HUMAN WORK

BY MIKE POTHIER | PROGRAMME MANAGER, SACBC PARLIAMENTARY LIAISON OFFICE

FORTY-TWO years ago, Pope St John Paul II published his encyclical letter, Laborem Exercens, ‘On human work’. In the opening paragraphs of the letter, John Paul notes that “human work is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social question.” Human work takes place “in the midst of many tensions, conflicts and crises, which, in relationship with the reality of work, disturb the life of individual societies and also of all humanity.”In these two short quotes alone, there is much on which we in South Africa can reflect.

Time and again, surveys show that the primary social concern of our people is work—or, more accurately, the lack of work. Our very high rates of unemployment have been eating away at our social fabric for decades. Children grow up malnourished and stunted, and unable to learn properly at school. Youth and young adults develop a sense of hopelessness and desperation that can lead to self-destructive and anti-social behaviour. Adults, especially men, find escape in alcohol. Domestic violence and family breakdown are commonplace.

All these “tensions, conflicts and crises” are related to the question of work, and there is no doubt that they “disturb the life” of our society very severely. So, have we done enough to resolve the causes of unemployment, and thereby address its disturbing consequences?

Every State of the Nation Address, and every Budget speech, refers to unemployment and to the measures the government plans to undertake in order to create jobs. Indeed, over the years, a variety of policy interventions and programmes have been tried. The Extended Public Works Programme, for example, subsidises municipalities to provide short-term employment for unemployed people, mostly in jobs such as street cleaning, collecting litter, etc.

The Social Employment Fund (SEF) places mainly young people and women in part-time work in fields such as community safety, food kitchens, urban agriculture, and early childhood development. The fund partners with civil society organisations to provide supervision and training, in return for which the organisations are paid a fee. The Goedgedacht Trust, a Catholic rural development organisation based in the Swartland outside Cape Town, is one of those that has partnered with the SEF with very positive results.

The government also offers an Employment Tax Incentive to companies that employ young job seekers. Although it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of this incentive, it seems to be gaining acceptance among employers, and it has recently been extended for a ten-year period.

Worthwhile as these and other government initiatives are, however, they make only a small dent in the huge numbers of unemployed people. South Africa has never had an economy that offered full employment and, now that sectors such as mining and agriculture, which used to employ hundreds of thousands of people, are either declining or automating, reducing unemployment becomes even more difficult.

Some argue that our labour legislation is too protective of employees; if it is too hard for employers to fire people in bad times, they won’t hire them when times are good. The counter-argument is that easy ‘hire and fire’ policies may be appropriate in countries with near-full employment, such as the United States, but they are dangerous in places with historically high unemployment levels.

It is also often pointed out that the creation of jobs is not primarily the responsibility of the state. All the evidence shows that the private sector is the most efficient creator of jobs, especially in the small and medium sectors of the economy. What the state should do, and what it has failed to do in South Africa, according to some views, is to create conditions that are conducive to job creation—policy certainty, ease of starting businesses, favourable tax and regulatory environments, a stable currency and so on.

When unemployment hits 40%, as it has in our country, we can be certain that there will be no short-term solutions; we will have to tackle the problem over decades, not years. We cannot afford not to tackle it—if we don’t, we will find that our social problems simply grow deeper and more difficult to resolve. As Pope John Paul said: “Work is a key to the whole social question.”

INSIGHTS • PRESERVING DIGNITY

The Call to Welcome and Protect

BY Fr Peter-John Pearson | Director SACBC Parliamentary LIAISON OFFICE, CAPE TOWN

ISSUES AROUND immigration have become the benchmark for most of the world’s thinking and practices concerning political inclusion. The politics of exclusion is keenly felt in many areas of life; for example, by the poor and those excluded from access to the benefits of the economy. The exclusion of mobile people from the most basic respect for their dignity as human beings, the denial of their most fundamental human rights, including personal safety, and the lack of even the barest of welcomes, is a mark of immigration policies around the world; and, to our shame, it is an increasingly dominant mark of the South African political landscape.

South Africa was once hailed as an example of having a progressive approach to mobile people, a country which refused at the dawn of democracy to adopt an encampment policy for immigrants, and which sought rather to welcome them into the possibility of integration with local communities. Our country, which previously upheld constitutionally guaranteed rights for access to basic healthcare facilities and education, irrespective of status, is now moving stealthily in a very different direction. It is, as many have noted, not only the obvious policy exclusions that undermine the lives of mobile people but also the administrative inefficiency, the lack of political will, corruption and incompetence, as well as arbitrariness in the administrative processes, including the appeal systems, that seriously disadvantage these populations and render them vulnerable.

Pope Francis has proposed four verbs as a reliable guide for policies and practices concerning the immigration of all varieties. He speaks of “welcome, protect, promote and integrate”. Two of the most contentious of these across the globe, but also the two most obviously offended against in South Africa, are “welcome” and “protect”. It is therefore worth taking a closer look at the two.

Pope Francis and others have emphasised that welcoming means making broader, simple options available for those in need to enter destination countries legally and safely; this includes issues around family reunification. In South Africa, in recent months, there has been a controversy over the Minister of Home Affairs’ decision (cf. www.dha.gov.za) not to renew the visas of the roughly 177 000 Zimbabweans who have lived in South Africa at least since 2012 (though most since even before that date), who are here legally, who have contributed to the economy, and who should, under normal immigration jurisprudence, be eligible to stay here and to acquire a more permanent form of residence. This, for so small a group with so obvious a claim, would be exactly what is envisaged under the rubric of ‘welcome’—a safe, simple and legal way of allowing access to a country. Sadly, the Zimbabwean Exemption Permit case shows the utter reluctance of South Africa to comply with this verb.

In Church teaching, it is dignity, not status, which gives people the right to basic opportunities such as health and education

In mobile communities, the value and practice of protection is vital. It refers to the obvious level of protection against physical and emotional abuse, but it also pivots around the fact that safety and access to human rights should be available to everyone, irrespective of their status. This latter idea is quite contentious in most societies. In some places, there is an openness to affording rights to those with status—for example, those who have been accorded official refugee status or who have been given political asylum.

However, in Church teaching, it is dignity, not status, which gives people the right to basic opportunities such as health and education. These are explicitly guaranteed by the South African Constitution, but practice and politically expedient rhetoric have created a different reality which has illegally taken on a life of its own. It has taken litigation by civil society groups and, in some instances, explicit government directives, to secure the correct situation. Even now, there are many recorded breaches of this principle, indicating just how strongly anti-immigrant and xenophobic sentiments are held. It has sadly become part of the regular political discourse across political party lines and is increasingly normalised through everyday conversation. All this serves to render more unstable the already fragile social cohesion in South Africa, and it is for all of our well-being that we urgently need to stop the drift of our country in this iniquitous direction.

INSIGHTS • WATER

Refreshment and life

BY MIKE POTHIER | Programme Manager, SACBC Parliamentary Liaison Office, Cape Town

AT THE time of writing this article, around half of the land area of Pakistan was either under water or cut off from the rest of the country, as a result of floods. The eastern part of Australia was also heavily flooded, as was much of Nigeria. In all three countries, there was considerable loss of life and huge economic damage. In Pakistan and Nigeria, both heavily dependent on small-scale agriculture, the long-term consequences for food security are going to be severe.

Meanwhile, the western parts of North America are experiencing years of drought. This has created conditions for almost permanent wildfires and, in California especially, it threatens one of America’s, and the world’s food production heartlands. A much worse drought has been affecting the Horn of Africa, with people—especially children—dying in large numbers. In the failed state of Somalia, the situation is especially dire.

These crises highlight just how dependent we are on water. Without it we cannot grow crops or feed livestock; industry grinds to a halt and economies falter; and people have to migrate to more water-secure places, which brings with it all manner of risks—social instability, poverty, disease, overcrowding, and the hardships of life as a refugee. Much the same applies when we have too much water—flooding also destroys crops and animals, factories and homes, schools and institutions; and makes people refugees in their own land.

No wonder, then, that the word ‘water’ appears 47 times in Pope Francis’s encyclical letter on the environment, Laudato Si’. In paragraph 30 he declares that “access to safe drinkable water is a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights.” When people, particularly poor people, are denied access to clean water, “they are denied the right to a life consistent with their inalienable dignity”. Pope Francis issues a warning: “water continues to be wasted, not only in the developed world but also in developing countries which possess it in abundance.”

The Holy Father probably had in mind the kind of waste that we associate with excessive use—endless watering of large lawns and gardens; washing cars and hosing down driveways; people who take multiple baths or showers every day. These are all certainly worth noting, and people should be encouraged to avoid such excessive consumption, but there is another cause of wastage that is often overlooked, and it is one that we in South Africa need to face up to—infrastructure failure.

Recently, various parts of Johannesburg were without running water for protracted periods, in some suburbs up to nine days—but the Vaal Dam and the city’s distribution reservoirs were full! The explanation given by the authorities was that various major pumping and water treatment stations had been damaged by load-shedding or lack of proper maintenance; many of these installations are old and overdue for upgrading or replacement.

It is also reported that as much as 25% of the water distributed to consumers is lost to leaks and failures in the various pipes and valves before it reaches them; once again, maintenance backlogs are to blame. This is a familiar theme: much of the cause of Eskom’s current inability to produce sufficient electricity to meet the country’s needs is due to failure to maintain and upgrade power stations and transmission networks.

However, there is also some positive news. In 2018, after a few years of poor winter rains, Cape Town famously came close to ‘Day Zero’—the day when the taps run dry. The City Council, organised business and numerous NGOs and community organisations worked together to inform people about responsible water use, and increasingly heavy restrictions were imposed. With some exceptions, Cape Town’s citizens responded positively, despite much grumbling, and did what they could to limit water use. There was a strong sense of social solidarity and a realisation that climate change is likely to make this kind of challenge a regular thing.

In the end, good rains arrived before Day Zero and the crisis was avoided. But important lessons were learnt and many Capetonians will never go back to their previously wasteful ways. As more and more people experience the harm that too little, or too much, water can do, let us hope that all over the world we can rethink our relationship with water. Let us heed Pope Francis’s warning:

“We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2: 7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.” (Laudato Si 2)

INSIGHTS • FAITH AND POLITICS

Witnesses of political love

BY MIKE POTHIER | Programme Manager, SACBC Parliamentary Liaison Office, Cape Town

WHEN WE, as Christians hear the words mission and missionary, we probably tend to think of a previous era, when dedicated and courageous men and women, mostly from Europe, set out to bring the Gospel to Africa, Asia, the Americas and other ‘discovered’ parts of the world.

Today, with the steady weakening of faith in Europe, we talk about the re-missioning or re-evangelisation of the very countries that sent the old missionaries abroad in the first place. Among these, Indian, Filipino, Nigerian, Congolese priests and female religious from the global south leave their homelands to work in the once-fruitful Catholic vineyards of France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Ireland.

This mental picture of mission was no doubt only a partially accurate one, since there were also missionary activities within the old countries themselves, often focused on poor and marginalised communities; and because the missionary effort in Africa and other developing regions relied as much on the evangelising efforts of local catechists and faith-group leaders as it did on foreign priests and religious. The true picture of mission, however, is an even wider one that embraces areas of life that we usually do not consider to be missionary fields, e.g., politics.

The title of this column comes from a recent speech given by Pope Francis to the International Catholic Legislators’ Network, a body that promotes Christian values and witness among people holding public office, such as members of parliaments and other legislative assemblies.

Pope Francis noted that ours is a world in which so many vulnerable people depend on political authorities and institutions for the protection of their rights, and that this imposes a profound duty on those who devise policies and laws:

Catholic politicians should accompany “a leaven for the renewal of civil and political life and witnesses of political love for those most in need”

“Yours is the challenge of working to safeguard and enhance within the public sphere those right relationships that allow each person to be treated with the respect, and indeed the love, that is due to him or her.” To achieve this, Catholic politicians should become “a leaven for the renewal of civil and political life and witnesses of political love for those most in need.”

This idea of Christian witness in political life is not new, of course. Throughout history there have been politicians and holders of public office who have based their work on the values of truth, justice and solidarity. Many of them suffered for it, sometimes by declining to follow paths which would have been good for their careers, but bad for their consciences. Others, like the patron saint of politicians, Thomas More, paid the highest price, accepting death rather than compromising on what they held to be essential truths.

This field of mission is one that is particularly suited to lay people. The Second Vatican Council set this out in the document Gaudium et Spes, as follows; “Since they have an active role to play in the whole life of the Church, lay people are not only bound to penetrate the world with a Christian spirit, but are also called to be witnesses to Christ in all things in the midst of human society […] Those who are suited should prepare themselves for the difficult, but at the same time, the very noble art of politics, and should seek to practise this art without regard for their own interests or for material advantages. With integrity and wisdom, they must take action against any form of injustice and tyranny, against arbitrary domination by an individual or a political party and any intolerance. They should dedicate themselves to the service of all with sincerity and fairness, indeed, with the charity and fortitude demanded by political life.”

This, then, is the mission of the Christian in politics—to take action against injustice and to serve with charity and fortitude. The fact that relatively few politicians appear to live up to the requirements of this mission is disappointing, though given the many temptations of power and status, it’s not surprising. This should not stop us from encouraging Christians to venture into public life or from insisting that they do so, regardless of their ideological beliefs, first and foremost as witnesses of political love.

INSIGHTS • SOCIAL MEDIA

Empowering people’s politics?

BY MIKE POTHIER | PROGRAMME MANAGER, SACBC PARLIAMENTARY LIAISON OFFICE

A LOT has been written about how social media has undermined the powers of oppressive governments, and strengthened the voices of ordinary people. When the Arab Spring—the popular uprisings against undemocratic regimes in North Africa and the Middle-East—swept various dictators from power in the early 2010s, it was claimed that Facebook, Twitter and similar platforms were crucial in mobilising people, co-ordinating protests, and keeping the momentum going.

But the same platforms can be used for destructive purposes. Here in South Africa, when President Jacob Zuma was sent to prison last year his supporters used social media to orchestrate the riots and looting that so badly affected KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng. Likewise, every party congress or internal election sees millions of messages, for or against certain candidates, flashing from phone to phone across the country—some of these may contain helpful information, but many are simply an attempt to shout up one side and drown out the other.

There is also the problem that governments know very well how to use social media for their own purposes. In Russia, for example, social media channels are being employed to spread huge amounts of misinformation—‘fake news’—about the invasion of Ukraine. Repressive states can track social media messaging as a way of keeping tabs on activists, and of building up evidence against them.

They can also simply switch off, or ban, platforms they don’t like. The internet is regularly blocked by regimes which don’t want their people to have access to certain kinds of information. Facebook is banned in Iran and North Korea, as well as China—which also bans YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp and a host of others.

So, in the political world, social media is on the one hand, obviously a tremendously powerful tool for sharing information and organising people; but on the other hand, most platforms are pretty much as vulnerable to state interference as older, pre-digital age communications were.

Another limitation is that, while social media is great for immediate communication and for spreading messages, it doesn’t necessarily help to build structures. Genuine political organising needs time, hard work and commitment. After all, it is about service—or at least, according to Catholic Social Teaching, it should be. There is a saying along the lines that it is all very well signing an online petition, or re-tweeting someone’s clever comment, but if this is all you do nothing will change.

While social media is great for immediate communication and for spreading messages, it doesn’t necessarily help to build structures

This brings us to perhaps the biggest danger with social media in politics—that it encourages superficiality and promotes simplistic approaches to complex issues. The most notorious tweeter in politics was probably Donald Trump (before Twitter banned him for continually lying about his 2020 election loss). Firing out dozens of tweets every day, many of them personal attacks on his rivals and anyone who happened to disagree with him, may have delighted his supporters, but it certainly didn’t help them to understand the issues. It also failed to give them any sense of the nuances and grey areas that are almost always present in political debates. On Twitter and many other social media platforms, things are simply black or white, right or wrong.

Our own Helen Zille has fallen victim to this tendency on more than one occasion. Her infamous tweet about the benefits of colonialism was a case in point, as was her tweet about ‘economic refugees’ coming to Cape Town from the Eastern Cape. In both cases she tried to squeeze complex arguments into Twitter’s 140-word format—and it didn’t work. It’s a bit like reading someone’s short-hand notes—only the writer knows what they really mean.

So, as with any form of technology, social media can be used with good or evil intentions, and its results can sometimes be quite the opposite of what was expected. Will it really transform our way of doing politics? Will it reduce the power of professional politicians and give more influence to us ‘ordinary’ people? Maybe—but it is worth noting that none of the countries that experienced the Arab Spring have yet become stable democracies. Social media may have gone some way to initiating the spring, but it could not, by itself, bring in the summer.

INSIGHTS • POWER vs PARTICIPATION

The Synod: are we really walking together?

BY MIKE POTHIER | PROGRAMME MANAGER, SACBC PARLIAMENTARY LIAISON OFFICE

DEMOCRACY OFTEN disappoints us. Whenever there’s an election, politicians emphasise that that ‘we are in this together’, that ‘we must be united in dealing with the challenges’, and so on. The message is all about togetherness—they will exercise the political power we give them strictly on our behalf, remaining accountable and responsive to our needs.

However, once they have been elected, much of this commitment evaporates. As we know all too well in South Africa, the real motivation of many, perhaps most, of our politicians is to get their hands on power and thereby soak up its benefits— patronage, status, influence, and ultimately wealth.

Notions of ‘togetherness’ vanish into thin air. When disaster strikes, as it did recently in KwaZulu-Natal, we are not surprised to see the emergency water tanker driving directly to the Premier’s house—the pretence that he is a servant of the people is quickly replaced by the truth: he is actually their Lord, first in line for relief. Thus is power abused in the political world.

These thoughts come to mind when thinking about the forthcoming Synod of our Church, due to culminate in October 2023. This particular Synod is intended to be far more participatory than previous ones, and the Preparatory Document is full of the language of participation and ‘journeying together’—this being the very meaning of the word ‘synod’.

The document also recognises that the question of power—and the abuse of power —is a problem in the Church. One of the Synod’s objectives will be to examine ‘how responsibility and power are lived in the Church as well as the structures by which they are managed, bringing to light and trying to convert prejudices and distorted practices that are not rooted in the Gospel’.

What is needed—in both politics and the Church—is a major change of attitude realities faced in the various moments of human history

We know, obviously, that the terrible history of sexual abuse by clergy and religious in our Church has its roots in twisted power relationships; and to their credit the Church’s leadership in some countries have begun to take this seriously. However, there are so many other abuses of power that are simply accepted as normal and unremarkable.

While preparing this article I heard of a priest who will not allow The Southern Cross, our national Catholic magazine, to be sold in ‘his’ parish; he expects people to buy it at the nearest Catholic bookshop, which is closed at the times when people come to Sunday Masses. Another priest refuses to give communion to some of his African parishioners because he believes that the beads they wear are ‘pagan’. From time to time we still hear stories of people being refused burial from their parishes because they or their families are behind in the payment of their church dues.

These attitudes, rather than the nice-sounding aspirations in the Synod Preparatory Document are, generally speaking, the reality in our Church, just as self-advancement and greed are the reality in our political world, rather than the promises of servant leadership. As it would be naïve to believe that the abuse of political power might be ended by having another election, it would also be naïve to think that holding a Synod, even one more participatory than usual, will end the abuse of power in the Church.

It is noticeable, for example, that the exclusion on purely biological grounds of more than half the Church’s membership—women—from the possibility of ordained ministry, and therefore from positions of meaningful authority, gets only a passing mention: the Preparatory Document claims that ‘the opening of access to [the ministries] of Lector and Acolyte’ to them are a move towards ‘a greater appreciation of women’. Clearly, there is a long way to go!

What is needed—in both politics and the Church—is a major change of attitude. There is, unfortunately, not much sign of that in our politics. In the governing party, in particular, loyalty to comrades is still far more important than loyalty to the values of the Constitution or to stated commitments that office-bearers should ‘step aside’ when credibly accused of breaking the law.

And in the Church? Will this synod be a breakthrough to a more participatory and accountable Church? Let us pray that it will be.

INSIGHTS • FOOD SECURITY

A long way to go

BY MIKE POTHIER | PROGRAMME MANAGER, SACBC PARLIAMENTARY LIAISON OFFICE

IN THE Food security in South Africa report, published in 2019, Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) mentioned four aspects to food security. These are availability, accessibility, utilisation and stability.

Availability refers to the overall production and distribution of food across the country. Accessibility is about whether people can obtain, usually by buying, enough nutritious food to sustain a healthy life. Utilisation deals with whether or not food can be safely stored and cooked, and those who consume it are able to benefit properly from it. Stability is concerned with the availability and accessibility of food over the long term; this aspect recalls the Biblical notion of the seven years of plenty followed by seven lean years (Gen 41).

So the question of food security is perhaps more complex than it at first appears to be. In South Africa we generally enjoy a high level of food availability. In most years, we produce more than enough of our main staple crop, maize, to satisfy local needs, and to export to neighbouring countries. With the other major cereal crop, wheat, the situation is different—we grow only about half of our requirement and import the rest. When it comes to vegetables, fruit, meat and dairy, we are basically self-sufficient; if we import these it is because it is cheaper than producing them here, or to meet special tastes.

We don’t do badly as regards stability. We are all familiar with the problem of regular droughts, which can affect all kinds of food production, most seriously the maize crop. Fortunately, we can always turn to imports to make up the shortfall, and although this drives up the price, for those who have the money, the food of their choice is almost always available; rationing and empty shelves in the shops are not familiar to most of us.

Food accessibility in South Africa is a major problem; millions of our people cannot afford to buy enough food to keep healthy

The key qualification here, is ‘for those who have the money’. Food accessibility in South Africa is a major problem; millions of our people cannot afford to buy enough food to keep healthy. Over the last 15 years or so, between a quarter and a third of the population has been living below the food poverty line (the amount of money to satisfy minimum daily food, or calorie, requirements). In the last couple of years, with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, this proportion has almost certainly increased.

Food utilisation is also a problem. It is one thing to be able to buy food, but another to have the means to store it safely and hygienically, cook it properly, and ensure that when it is eaten it is still nutritious and beneficial to the body. Sometimes the wrong kinds of food are purchased, or foodstuffs are consumed in sub-optimal combinations e.g. eating multiple starches in the same meal, or unsuitable foods are given to children; all of this means that even if food is affordable, it ends up being wasted.

Many of these points were made in the government’s National Development Plan, published in 2012 and which had 2030 as a target for full implementation. We are now more than halfway through that period, and it is hard to argue that sufficient progress has been made generally, and in food security issues specifically. To quote from the StatsSA report:

Whilst South Africa is food secure at national level, the country is still food insecure at household level. About 13.4 million households had inadequate/severely inadequate access to food and about 1.6 million households experienced hunger in 2017. Households headed by females and those headed by black Africans are more likely to experience hunger and inadequate/severely inadequate access to food.

It is very unlikely that the situation has improved since 2019; it has probably worsened due to COVID-19. We have a long way to go before we can be satisfied that we have achieved the same degree of food security in individual households as we have at national level.

Insights • Outcomes

Government Fails the Test

BY MIKE POTHIER | PROGRAMME MANAGER, SACBC PARLIAMENTARY LIAISON OFFICE

IN MARCH 2018 a five-year-old girl called Lumka Mkhethwa died after falling into a pit toilet at the Luna Primary School in Bizana‚ Eastern Cape. Four years earlier another five-year-old, Michael Komape, died in similar circumstances at a school in Limpopo. At least another two young children—Lister Magongwa, 7, from Limpopo, and Siyamthanda Mtunu, 6, from the Eastern Cape—also drowned in pit toilets during this period.

After Michael’s death, various commitments were made by the government to eradicate pit toilets at schools, but these did not help Lumka or the others. After her death, President Ramaphosa instructed the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, to “conduct an audit of all learning facilities with unsafe structures‚ especially unsafe ablution facilities‚ within a month and to present him with a plan to rectify the challenges‚ as an emergency interim measure while rolling out proper infrastructure‚ within three months”.

That was in August 2018. Now, more than three years later, the SA Human Rights Commission is taking the provincial governments of Mpumalanga, the North West, the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape to court in an effort to force them to close over 3 000 pit toilets at schools, and replace them with safer sanitation facilities.

Clearly, the President’s commitments and the minister’s plans (if any were ever actually made) amounted to very little. There is no great mystery about eradicating pit toilets. If water is available, a septic tank system can be installed. In places where water is a challenge—and there are certainly many rural schools where this is the case—a bucket system can be used until such time as safer and more hygienic long-term solutions are achievable.

What this sad episode illustrates is a failure of governance—a failure by the government to do the simple things effectively and consistently. It could be argued that the field of education exemplifies this failure: every year since 1994, education has received the largest allocation in the national budget (19.4% this year), but it is fairly obvious that we do not receive proper value for such huge expenditure. We rank very low internationally when it comes to numeracy and literacy, for example, and over the years exam success rates have been artificially maintained by reducing the percentage pass requirement to as little as 30%. And, even with such low standards, only just over 40% of children who enter the schooling system emerge with a matric qualification twelve years later.

Again, all this is part of a bigger picture that stretches far beyond just education. Think of everyday things such as postal services, road maintenance and rail transport, not to mention the provision of electricity. In some parts of the country, such as Graaff-Reinet and Makhanda (Grahamstown) in the Eastern Cape, people have to rely on a private organisation, Gift of the Givers, for their drinking water—the government has in effect given up supplying this most basic need.

In fairness, we should note that in some areas government has been doing fairly well—for example, the effort to deal with COVID-19 has been quite impressive and shows what can be achieved when there is sufficient political will. By and large, the social security system also works well, and has been a life-saver for millions of poor South Africans.

Unfortunately, though, the stories of consistent success are relatively few. The trend in the delivery of essential public services, many of which are constitutionally mandated, is downwards, and there is little doubt that the ANC’s poor results in last year’s municipal elections reflect a growing disillusionment among its traditional supporters. When it comes to the essential measures of governance—whether the citizenry can rely on the state to keep them (and their children) safe, and to meet their most basic needs—the government is increasingly failing the test.