South Africa (Spring 2019)

My one and a half week in South Africa

By Vadika

One of the questions that come to my mind is regarding the right that a person should get when they are born. Its the access of resources.

A lot has come to surface since I wrote my first blog. I have learned a lot about South Africa in the past week.

The people in South Africa are very jolly. No matter where, they are always making jokes and laughing and even dancing on streets. There is a certain maturity in attitude considering the situation they are in. It felt as if their difficult life condition was understood and they were over complaining about it and just want to live their day happily. I met some people who had travelled weeks to move from Somalia to South Africa with their kids and wife, using different methods of transportation just to live a better life. The apartheid is a big tragedy in the generations of the families living there. Leave alone the end of apartheid, the reverse apartheid has created but more stress with the caucasians in South Africa. There is no equality even now.

I had the opportunity to meet some of the most passionate people working very hard for South Africa. Through them, I was able to get knowledge of the big issues like Education, Energy and Health.

There are families which are being raised by older siblings in the house or grand parents because the parents passed away because of HIV/AIDS. These are interfering with the education of kids. Parent less families are pretty common because of less application of sex education and facility. There is a big scare of crimes because of unemployment and sickness.

Majority of the population cannot afford healthcare and 30% of population has HIV, 30% of people are unemployed. So if approximately 30% of the population is sick, how do you hire the same population and train them to work long term? It is a cycle and each aspect of this cycle needs a lot of work and innovation in an industry like South Africa. Although their Human Development Index has raised in the past few years, there are still issues with the system. Doctors cannot perform their practice without fearing litigations, the insurance prices are higher to cover litigation costs and this makes it difficult for poor people to be healthy. So, they are trying to introduce a system like Obamacare to be able to cover most of the people. The success of this plan is questionable in a country like South Africa

Energy helps the infrastructure on many large things like purifying water or running a gas stove or reading for school. Load shedding has major impact on productivity. You go to a restaurant and they don’t have coffee because of the coffee machine is down. So, even after having the resources to make the product, the products are not available. This makes the whole system halt and less efficient. No one would want to stop cooking in the middle because the stove runs on electricity.

Another bias that adds to my lookout is, I have only seen the well to do cities in South Africa, Johannesburg or Cape Town which are tourism and finance hubs. It might be easy for people to get jobs there and resources but we don’t know how easy it is in rural areas. 65% of the population of South Africa is urban. The rest seemed to be in the rural areas. I can imagine the number staying stable if more people from other countries were able to cross borders and get refuge in South Africa and stay there because it is one of the better countries in Africa. Considering how fast the economy needs to support the number of people it has, South Africa might need maybe something that would be a combination of policy transformation, numbers, strategy and innovation.

One of the questions that come to my mind is regarding the right that a person should get when they are born. Its the access of resources. A person is born in a developed or underdeveloped country should have the same access to basic resources. So that a person’s development has nothing to do with the condition of the country like Syria. But the systems of the World are not built to do that. I am sure if kids were given the same resources as any kid in Europe or US, they would perform equally well.

The case for reparations?

By Kathryn

That requires direct action, a concrete gesture of respect that makes possible the beginning of a new chapter in our common life. Reparations are a drastic policy and hard to execute, but the very act of talking about and designing them heals a wound and opens a new story (New York Times).

Our program included a visit to the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, and it has provided much food for thought. While much of the museum was eye-opening (we never studied apartheid, or much of African history at all, in school - the basics I learned from the Disney Channel Original Movie, The Color of Friendship), I was surprised by the lack of present-day updates within the exhibits. The narrative the museum presents ends with the proceedings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1996.

This restorative justice commission was assembled “to bear witness to, record, and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations, as well as offering reparation and rehabilitation to the victims” (Wikipedia). It is largely seen as successful, and the Apartheid Museum finishes with an opportunity to view some of the heartbreaking public hearings. And that’s it.

As I discussed in my last blog post, racism is very much alive and well in South Africa today. The systems that apartheid developed don’t magically disappear once the laws are changed. “Using the national poverty line of $43 per month (in current prices), 47 percent of South Africans remain poor. In 1994, this figure was 45.6 percent.” (New York Times) When the previously quoted article was written in 2013, South Africa’s unemployment was at 25.4%. The most recent 2017 statistic has risen to 27.5% (CIA World Factbook).

Additionally, from 2008–2014, long-term unemployment was “highest among Black Africans with as many as 61.0% – 71.0% of that group looking for work for one year or longer. The unemployment rate among the white population group – ranging between 4.1% in 2008 and 7.3% in 2014 – is the lowest of all the population groups by a large margin, the data found.” (BusinessTech)

For this reason, I was surprised there wasn’t a present-day exhibit within the Apartheid Museum, an exhibit explaining the issues that still exist and what is being done to create solutions. Ending a visitor’s journey with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission makes South African apartheid feel done and behind us, when in actuality, it’s not.

I brought this thought to the attention of one of my classmates, and he responded with the thought that had been most on his mind - that while South Africa assembled the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Germany conducted the Nuremberg Trials, and Argentina held the National Commission on the Disappeared, the United States has done nothing to attempt to acknowledge or make good on the centuries of slavery and legal segregation of the country’s Black citizens (not to mention the American Indian populations the original colonizers decimated and following US government officials continued to destroy.)

These thoughts have remained with me since leaving South Africa, and so I’ve done some additional reading and research. The rampant racist views today, as well as the current inequities that are a direct result of past racist policies, make it clear to me that just as South Africa is not past apartheid, the United States is not past slavery and segregation. And we need to do more.

My research brought me to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2014 essay in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations.” For some reason, one of the anecdotes that struck me the most at the Apartheid Museum was a man’s story about the government kicking his family out of their home, an urban brownstone they had owned for centuries. After the family was relocated, the government razed the building. The man explained that they had been poor, but they at least had a home and a foundation on which to build their lives - now they were poorer and they had nothing. The United States government took at least 24,000 acres of land valued at tens of millions of dollars from over 400 victims, dating back to the period before the Civil War. And these numbers were found after a survey of only 1,000 individuals within 13 southern states (Los Angeles Times). Much of Coates’ essay discusses the US discriminatory housing policies and the ways in which they ensure the American Black population still struggles to reach economic success today.

“Liberals today mostly view racism not as an active, distinct evil but as a relative of white poverty and inequality. They ignore the long tradition of this country actively punishing black success—and the elevation of that punishment, in the mid-20th century, to federal policy,” Coates says.

While the Apartheid Museum acknowledges that apartheid didn’t truly end once the discriminatory laws were removed, it does suggest that it did end with the Commission (without mention, of course, of the fact that agreed-upon reparations are still to be paid out). The US history books - at least in the way I was taught, at one of the most well-reputed public school systems in the Greater Boston Area - suggested that once President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, legalized (and thus all) segregation ended. I never learned about the ways in which the government and our society legally forced Black families further into poverty. Or how the legacy of slavery and segregation lives on.

“Black home buyers—even after controlling for factors like creditworthiness—were still more likely than white home buyers to be steered toward subprime loans. Decades of racist housing policies by the American government, along with decades of racist housing practices by American businesses, had conspired to concentrate African Americans in the same neighborhoods,” Coates explains.

And in the United States, still we have not officially acknowledged these actions in any way. Our government has offered no apologies or reparations. No one has stood trial or admitted wrongdoing. We are pretending we’re moving forward and we’re in a better place - but there is little proof that either of these facts are true in any meaningful way.

“Political apartheid may have ended, but economic apartheid lives on,” Foreign Affairs stated when discussing the failure of the South African government to fulfill its promises of land redistribution (Foreign Affairs). The same holds true in the United States - legal segregation may have ended, but economic segregation lives on. I previously held my doubts about the effectiveness of reparations in an attempt to rectify a country’s wrongdoing - how can you put a price on people’s lives? How can a generation that wasn’t involved in the creation of the system attempt to quantify and offer apologies for the crimes of ancestors? I still believe you cannot put a price on people’s lives. There is no real rectifying for the terrible, terrible crimes of the past. But in order to attempt to stop the ongoing crimes of the present, we need to do something - we need a public reckoning, and reparations are a beginning. David Brooks, a well-known columnist for the New York Times, published a piece that expressed similar thoughts the day after my return to the United States.

Brooks eloquently put my thoughts into words, saying, “We’re a nation coming apart at the seams, a nation in which each tribe has its own narrative and the narratives are generally resentment narratives. The African-American experience is somehow at the core of this fragmentation — the original sin that hardens the heart, separates Americans from one another and serves as model and fuel for other injustices. The need now is to consolidate all the different narratives and make them reconciliation and possibility narratives, in which all feel known. That requires direct action, a concrete gesture of respect that makes possible the beginning of a new chapter in our common life. Reparations are a drastic policy and hard to execute, but the very act of talking about and designing them heals a wound and opens a new story” (New York Times).

I hope we can rise to this challenge.

Passion to create a better future

By Brian

The business trips were incredibly interesting and I was deeply moved by the work being done to further develop South African’s civil society and local business ventures.

As I sit back and reflect on my trip to South Africa, I know that I made the right decision to apply. It was truly an eye opening experience and I will treasure the memories for many years to come. The business trips were incredibly interesting and I was deeply moved by the work being done to further develop South African’s civil society and local business ventures. One theme echoed by just about everyone we encountered was that South Africa is a great place to live. I often felt like asking for people to elaborate on this, but never had the chance.

I wanted to hear more about this because I was taken aback by the extreme inequality around the country. Sandton, the business district that we stayed in, is comprised of high end luxury stores as far as the eyes can see. In fact, it is often called the richest square mile in Africa. However, just a short distance away are communities where people live in some of the most disturbing conditions I have ever witnessed. The stark contrast between the haves and have nots accentuates the two worlds that South Africans live in. Frequently we were told by the locals that people have chosen to move back to the impoverished townships to be closer to their families and communities. However I strongly disagree with this assessment and think people have relocated due to lack of jobs and the high unemployment levels in the country.

I realize that I shouldn’t be so quick to judge South Africa because all countries have their own warts and dark histories. Besides, I was very encouraged by the businesses we visited. It seemed that everyone we encountered was very passionate about their work and desire to help their community. This was evident by Secha Capital’s investments in small black owned businesses, through Room to Read’s mission to educate, with Eaton’s work to improve access to electricity, in Mandate Molefi’s focus on driving cultural change, with the WHO’s goal of eradicating tuberculosis, and through Wits RHI providing access to HIV tests. I know that many are doing their part to chip away at South Africa’s past and to create a better future and I look forward to witnessing major transformations across South Africa in the years to come.

Lack of “access”

By Krisha

I feel that access is a word that is very overlooked and can be over or misused in certain instances but what is ‘access’?

The overall trip was an amazing experience and has provided me with a life changing outlook on the luxuries of the United States and the needs of South Africa. I found that the effects of the apartheid similar to the effects of slavery are still very apparent and discouraging within this community despite the thoughts of some of the non-minority residents in the area. From the infrastructure and the work being done by organizations to just be on par to the health, education, inclusion etc standards around the world, it is clear that South Africa is in need of more reform and organizations that are looking after its people and not just the company’s bottom line. While some areas feel like downtown Boston, others show a complete opposite way of life filled with inadequate housing, limited to no electricity and lack of access to the necessities of life.

During a talk with Professor Flammer, I learned that similar to what I am constantly hearing and discussing at work, there is a lack of ‘access’ within the townships in South Africa. Access to standard living, access to quality jobs, health care, and much more. I feel that access is a word that is very overlooked and can be over or misused in certain instances but what is ‘access’? How do you offer access to health care, this includes education, transportation, care providers and more to areas that do not have the fundamentals to provide electricity? How does one make a roadmap or find/learn the know how to partner across organization and industry lines to create a platform of sorts to provide access? How can it be quantified in the various areas? Unfortunately I do not know the answer to this but am interested in learning more.

I also brought from this course the need to stand by and show proof that you are delivering on a goal. While some of the companies did not show or have a clear understanding of social impact and all it encompasses, I found that I respected the work of those that did understand and have a path to implement the impact they want in their community. While Social Impact is not currently my focus, I am interested in taking more courses on this subject as it seems to be universal for companies that have a mission or commitment to their communities.

Lasting impacts

By Lindsay

While in Johannesburg we also got to do some tourist activities and while I have wanted to go on a safari for my entire life, and it was amazing to see an elephant family, giraffes and zebras. It was going to be the Apartheid Museum, Nelson Mandela’s House and the Hector Pieterson Museum that will have lasting impacts on me.

Living in the United States it is easy to take electricity for granted. We expect that when you flick the switch on, the lights will come on, unless maybe there is a big storm and the power lines are down. This is not the reality currently in South Africa, yesterday I lost my power 3 times for two hours at a time, which maybe doesn’t seem like a lot except it has been happening every day for the past 5 days. A little background on South Africa’s electricity problem: Eskom is South Africa’s public electricity company. In 2007 South Africa started to experience widespread rolling blackouts, also known as “load shedding” as supply fell behind demand. Scheduled load shedding is controlled by way of sharing the available electricity among all its customers. By switching off parts of the network in a planned and controlled manner, the system remains stable throughout the day, and the impact is spread over a wider base of customers. Since February of this year a new round of load shedding began due to the failure of coal burning boilers at some power stations due to poor quality coal. This resulted in long running periods of level 4 load shedding across the country as we are here.

With load shedding on the top of my mind recently I am reminded of our visit to Eaton Electric where they made the point that while there needs to be improvement in healthcare, education and other areas, it is hard to address those areas without power. They have had some success with a microgrid installation in Wadeville, South Africa that has significantly reduced operating costs and improved the reliability of power at a manufacturing plant. After the installation of the microgrid, the Wadeville plant experienced overall energy cost savings of 40% on average, including a 65% reduction in peak charges. The levelized cost of energy (LCOE) was also reduced by nearly 10%. The microgrid system also allows continuous operation of manufacturing, regardless of the utility supply, eliminating losses in productivity due to power quality.

The other company visits were also enlightening. Our first visit was to Secha Capital, a company doing impact investing. Some of their operating companies include: Native Child, a plant-based natural hair and body care company; Stoffelberg Biltong and Geestep, an affordable, fashionable shoe company. What I found most interesting about Secha is that the only metric they use to determine impact is job creation, not even job creation among minorities, just job creation. Secha mentioned that this was the only metric they kept track of because it was the only metric the country incentivized them to keep track of. At this point they lack the human capital to keep track of other metrics. Due to the size of the company they are unable to grow outside of South Africa because part of their model is to insert their people into the company, which I think is an interesting business strategy and a reason for their success. While they may be social impact light I think the work they are doing is very interesting and I hope they can expand to the point where they can focus on tracking more sustainability metrics and expand their model into other African countries.

Room to Read was our next visit. Room to Read is a worldwide program that started in Nepal in 1998 when then-Microsoft Executive John Wood saw that schools there didn’t have books for students. Room to Read began working in South Africa in 2006. South Africa’s program works in teacher training in literacy, the creation of school libraries, and provides reading materials across South Africa’s 11 official languages. To date in South Africa Room to Read has reached 469 schools, 1,021 teachers and 362,180 students. What is cool about Room to Read is they make their own books, they come up with stories that they know the children will be interested in and are relevant to the kinds of South Africa, not just generic books that South African youth can’t relate to. As someone that never loved to read as a kid, seeing a group so invested in getting kids interested in reading from a young age was great to see, because a love of reading carries over into adulthood.

Mandate Molefi calls itself human resource consultants ,but in listening to CEO Nene Molefi talk, she talks about and preaches much more than that. She talked of diversity, equity and inclusion, unconscious biases, building effective teams and leadership development. My biggest take away was regarding unconscious bias and how we all have them. Take for example if you are interviewing someone and they might look like you have a similar background to you and you can see a younger version of yourself in them, if they struggle in an interview you may help them, give them a moment to collect themselves and then continue, then the next candidate come in and they two are struggling but they are male, from a different background and you have nothing in common, so you don’t think to offer him that moment to collect himself. You didn’t mean to favor one candidate over another it was an unconscious decision but one that definitely favored on candidate over another. So what can we do to not have these biases? Something as simple as talking about them up front so that everyone is looking out for them, and can help you avoid them.

Our last day was health day where we learned about the Tuberculosis outbreak at the World Health Organization and the AIDS epidemic at WITS RHI. While health has never been a major are of interest to me I though what WITS RHI was doing in bringing home tests to South Africa was really amazing. We were told about how in order to reach the UNAIDS target of  90–90–90—whereby, by 2020, 90% of people living with HIV will know their HIV status, 90% of people who know their HIV-positive status will be accessing treatment and 90% of people on treatment will have suppressed viral loads. Members of WITS went to taxi stands to try to get tests in the hands of people that may not otherwise get tested. They also offer, but do not mandate counseling, which is smart because some may not want counseling right after finding their status and others may come back for counseling, but in making it optional it makes it not so scary for people that might be scared away by mandatory counseling. In doing the outreach WITS believes they are at their first 90, where 90% know their HIV status. In polling our class, our class alone would not have met that 90% as knowing your status means having been tested within the last year.

While in Johannesburg we also got to do some tourist activities and while I have wanted to go on a safari for my entire life, and it was amazing to see an elephant family, giraffes and zebras. It was going to be the Apartheid Museum, Nelson Mandela’s House and the Hector Pieterson Museum that will have lasting impacts on me. To be honest I did not know much about Apartheid going into this trip, other than the basics, that it was South Africa’s system of segregation based on race, which I thought was probably similar to our own. I had never heard of Hector Pieterson – for those who don’t know who he was, he was a South African schoolboy who was shot and killed during the Soweto uprising, when police opened fire on students protesting the enforcement of teaching in Afrikaans. The part of the Apartheid museum that got to me most was watching the video of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.  It is hard to describe the feelings you have in hearing about the horrible things people did to others because they had a different skin color, while looking completely remorseless, but it is a feeling that will last with me and while it was hard to see and hear, I am very glad to have had the experience.