HARDKNOCKS CLASS
The class of 2020 endured a disruptive, difficult school year. While the pass rate is down on previous years, there are some reasons to be upbeat
The 76% matric pass rate might be a better result than the carnage that was expected after a year of pandemic lockdown and disruptions. But a closer look at the results shows that more than 50% of the potential class of 2020 — the pupils who were enrolled in grade 2 in 2010 — either repeated a grade (or several), or dropped out of the education system before reaching matric.
And according to education activist organisation Equal Education (EE), the department of basic education’s own calculations show that even taking into account people who complete matric after leaving school, the proportion who attain it remains around 50%.
The 76.2% pass rate is down on the 81.3% achieved by the class of 2019, but basic education minister Angie Motshekga has noted the difficult year the class of 2020 faced.
“Had it not been for the Covid-19 pandemic, the class of 2020 could have been the best performers, since the inception of the national senior certificate,” she said on announcing the results last week.
But EE senior researcher Stacey Jacobs warns that the matric results should be interpreted with caution.
“They do not take into account the number of learners who leave the system before reaching their grade 12 year, nor those learners who are held back,” she says. “Therefore they potentially overestimate the pass rate.”
For a more accurate picture, EE calculates the grade 2 throughput rate alongside the traditional pass rate (see graph). It’s not a perfect measure, says Jacobs, but it is “a better indicator of the overall health of the education sector”.
Taken this way, the throughput rate for the class of 2020 sits at just 46%. Still — and notably, considering the year it was — that’s up 4 percentage points on 2019’s results. And there were improvements in the throughput rates in each province (though all are still below 50%), except the Western Cape, which dropped from 51% to 50%.
As in the past, inequality remains entrenched in the educational system, the organisation says.
“Our grassroots organising in five provinces [Eastern Cape, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and Gauteng], as well as EE’s member-informed research, consistently shows that the inequalities in the education system play out more at schools in rural communities, townships [and other] poor and working-class areas,” says Jacobs.
If anything, the Covid-19 pandemic has widened SA’s educational divide, according to the Kagiso Trust.
Kagiso communications head Mandisa Tselane says the development agency has partnered with the department of education in a number of rural areas to try to bridge the educational divide, with positive results.
But as schools were closed and learning moved online last year, access to quality education became even more of a challenge for pupils in rural areas.
“[These] children had to face issues of connectivity,” Tselane says — and that’s before factoring in data costs and the price of a smartphone or computer.
2020 matriculant Sinoyolo Mpela was one such student. Not only were there constant connectivity issues in KwaGcina, the rural Eastern Cape village where he lives, but facilities where he could get online — such as internet cafés — were far away.
With schools shut, Mpela had to teach himself for much of the year.
“I didn’t have any smart device other than my cellphone,” he says. With a monthly budget of R200-R300, he “downloaded study material and tutorial videos”.
These, along with the government’s educational TV and radio broadcasts, and motivation from his teachers at St Teresa Senior Secondary, helped him to gain a firm grasp of the material.
“I never watch SABC 3, but it became my go-to channel,” Mpela says.
“Even after we went back to school, there was little time to catch up on our curriculum; we had to put in 5-6 hours of work at home, daily, to catch up.”
Mpela’s efforts paid off: he achieved a distinction in every subject. And, with an average of 81%, he was the top pupil in the Joe Gqabi district.
His results, he says, were a godsend for his mother, a single parent.
“My mom is a community health-care
worker and my grandmother is a pensioner,” he says. Between them, the two women are the only adults earning an income in the five-person household.
Mpela’s efforts earned him the Matthew Goniwe Top Achievers Merit Bursary, and have taken him to the University of Cape Town (UCT) — something he has been working towards for the past 12 years.
Not that similar learning challenges haven’t plagued SA’s universities.
UCT vice-chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng says universities are aware of the special challenges caused by Covid, pointing to how limited data access and uneven availability of electricity at home can hamper online learning.
“We are bringing students onto campus so they can have access to free Wi-Fi and a dedicated space to study, which they often do not have at home,” she says.
Importantly, she notes that many of SA’s students are first-generation university students.
“They do not have the ‘cultural capital’ of growing up with parents who are professionals, in homes with easy access to books and the internet. But they have the potential to become teachers, scientists, writers, researchers and academic leaders,” Phakeng says.
It is, however, up to academics to teach in such a way that new students can “master the university environment”.
“When students come into university and fail, nobody critiques us as academics — they say they are ill-equipped from high school,” says Phakeng, adding that this is unfair to teachers who are making the best of what they have.
In some cases, that’s not much at all. For example, even though the Eastern Cape education department announced a drive to get grade 12 pupils tablets for online learning, the matrics at Mpela’s school did not receive these luxuries.
“When other schools were receiving their tablets, our teachers told us not to worry ourselves, but to stay focused on our goals, and that’s what we did,” he says.
This is the reality for many rural pupils, says Tselane.
“Whereas many learners had access to teachers, whether it was through Google Meet, WhatsApp and even television, many rural learners did not,” she explains.
For this reason, the Kagiso Trust focused on reaching students through radio — the most widely used medium in rural areas.
“Teachers had to be trained to be broadcasters,” she says. “In essence, as an NGO, we focus on the whole pipeline of education — teacher development included.”
Luckily for Mpela, as part of his bursary he also received a laptop. But he still faces a vastly different introduction to university than students from previous years.
As soon as he and the rest of the first year students were registered at UCT, the entire group was quarantined. And when they begin their classes, these will be a departure from previous years too.
“Undergraduate teaching at UCT this year will use a combination of online learning activities, face-to-face teaching of small groups in adequately ventilated venues, and physically distanced activities in low-density labs and studios, operating on a rotation basis, to reduce the number of people in each space at any time,” says Phakeng.
“These new ways of teaching can also free up human capacity, allowing lecturers to manage their course loads more easily,” she says. And that may make higher education more sustainable, if it allows increased enrolment in certain courses.
Freshers week at the start of the academic year would normally be a time for lots of parties, but the UCT campus and others around the country are eerily quiet.
“We are initiating a range of activities to help students not only to slot into their studies but also to find ways to connect with others who share their interests, so they can have a more balanced life,” says Phakeng.
Asked how he feels about the reality of university life compared with the expectations he has nurtured over the years, Mpela shrugs.
“All I want is to get my [BScEng in electrical and computer engineering] and move my community and country forward in technology,” he says.
Even after we went back to school, there was little time to catch up on our curriculum, we had to put in 5-6 hours of work at home, daily, to catch up
Sinoyolo Mpela
There are always two sides to a story, they’ll tell you. They’re wrong — as “they” so often are. Stories aren’t boxes. They don’t have sides, and they don’t hold a finite amount of meaning waiting to be safely unpacked. There are always infinite interpretations of a story, and exegesis can often be a random affair, based on who you are and what you need to believe. Oh, and how much time you spend on Twitter.
Last week, The Guardian reports, 50 upper and lower house members of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party opposed a legal change that would allow women to keep their birth name after marriage.
Japan is one of only a few industrialised countries where it’s illegal for married couples to have different surnames, and it’s been that way since 1896.
I note in parenthesis, and I’ve written about this before: in a recent Reuters Institute study on gender representation in news editorial management in 11 countries, Japan scored a perfect 0 for the number of women editors in charge. So we’d be predisposed to see the law prohibiting married couples from having different surnames as the usual patriarchal oppression. Which it is — but with some details that are either ironic, or proof that patriarchy is so strong it doesn’t need to mess around with the finer points.
Though the country’s civil code requires married couples to share a surname, it actually doesn’t stipulate that it has to be the man’s name. As an enlightened couple, you could both choose to take the woman’s surname. In practice, of course, “women take their husband’s name in 96% of cases”.
And it turns out that one of the MPs calling for the status quo to remain the same is Japan’s minister for women’s empowerment and gender equality, Tamayo Marukawa.
None of us, I hope, would use these snippets as any sort of evidence to justify the retention of a patriarchal status quo. I merely note them to highlight the fact that there can be extraneous factors that complicate a simple reading of an issue — in this case, the issue of who gets to name things, and for what reasons.
Also last week — a big week in the naming world — sports, arts & culture minister Nathi Mthethwa announced some name changes for places in SA. Among others, Port Elizabeth International Airport became Chief Dawid Stuurman International Airport and Uitenhage became Kariega. There was a royal swap out, as East London Airport was named King Phalo Airport, and King
William’s Town became Qonce.
King William, by the way, once made a famous pro-slavery speech, saying “the proponents of the abolition [of slavery] are either fanatics or hypocrites”. Oh, how sad it is to see our history suppressed by the ANC!
But the name change that caused all the trouble was that of Port Elizabeth, now called Gqeberha.
Well, I say trouble, but it isn’t really. It’s mainly just a few people whining. It’s interesting, though, to think about what their clichéd complaining says about who they are and, by way of extrapolation, where some of us are as South Africans.
Quite why Port Elizabeth should become such a rallying cry for conservatives is a mystery. Most people just called it PE or iBhayi anyway.
And I’m pretty sure that many of the people who now self-identify as lifelong Port Elizabeth fans think the city is named after Queen Elizabeth. They’ll be surprised to hear that the Windy City is in fact named after a settler named Lizzie, who was given to nearincessant flatulence on the voyage to SA.
If you look at some of the bitter responses, it’s hard not to see racism, entitlement and sheer stupidity. One of our regular hot-take contrarians on social media, without any apparent shame, tweeted: “How the fuck am I supposed to pronounce these names”, alongside a list that included Gqeberha, Kariega, Qonce and Nqanqarhu (formerly Maclear).
It’s a breathtaking example of someone who really, really believes the world should be set up for their convenience.
The fact that renaming a colonial city might be a way to heal some wounds of the past, and to give people who had identity and culture taken from them a modicum of justice and comfort, is irrelevant. What counts is that you’re interfering with the way I want the world to be set up: to accommodate me and my ego.
But as with the Japanese MPs and their wish to retain the naming conventions of their particular brand of patriarchy, there is always some nuance to go with the irony.
I imagine the people complaining about name changes feel their identity and culture are being taken from them, and that is never a nice thing, no matter how justified. And just to be clear, this is justified. But I understand: for generations, you’ve lived in and identified with a place, you have an entire history that has made you what you are, and now you have to start again.
The thing is, you’d think this experience would make you more empathetic about why we need to change colonial-era names. Not vehemently opposed, on the basis that it’ll make these places harder for tourists to find.
There are also those who believe the government should be spending money on more urgent things, such as housing or infrastructure. These are sometimes the same people complaining bitterly because the government isn’t paying for our waterpolo teams to go to the Olympic Games.
You can feel sympathy for those who fall under the purview of Mthethwa’s portfolio, though. I’m sure there are some very desperate artists, musicians and others who would love to benefit from some government largesse. Or even some more crumbs.
The EFF approves of the name changes, but has decided to double down and ask for more of them, and also for Die Stem to be removed from the national anthem. It’s also suggested that
Cape Town’s name be changed to //Hui !Gaeb, as proposed by the Khoi community in 2012.
If this happens, I can pretty much guarantee that the explosion of outrage by our pet racists and tame QAninnies will cause the internet to crash.
The DA, you’ll be amazed to hear, opposes the name changes, calling them “vanity pet projects … during a pandemic that has left the economy in tatters and millions more without work and even the hope of finding employment”.
“Minister Mthethwa should be ashamed,” the DA rails. “He is a failing minister in charge of a rotten department.”
The party was pretty happy to change its name from the New National Party to the Democratic Alliance back in the day, but I guess you only want to forget apartheid when it suits you. (OK, technically it was a merger of the Democratic Party, the NNP and the Federal Alliance.)
Again, under all the fulminating and grandstanding, the DA does have a point — it’s just not quite the point it thinks it is.
If Cape Town were to become //Hui !Gaeb, the explosion of outrage by our pet racists and tame QAninnies would cause the internet to crash
Say what you will about the governing party, bless its expensive silk socks, but it never leaves us wanting when it comes to corruption scandals, malfeasance and general incompetence. Which is not to cavalierly dismiss everything good that the government does. But, with the best will in the world, you’d be hardpressed to accentuate the positives right now.
Spending money on trying to redress some of the semiotic wrongs of our extremely troubled history is not a standout example of bad government, though.
Once again, we have to ask ourselves who is doing the whining, and what lurks behind their sometimes spurious rationales.
The Japanese ministers opposing the law change that would let married women keep their surnames claim it’s because “allowing couples to have different surnames would harm the traditional family unit”.
And I suppose the South Africans opposing our name changes could just be really nice people who genuinely worry about tourists getting lost. But it’s way more likely that they’re gleefully lapping up another opportunity to cloak privilege and racism in the guise of sociopolitical concern.
SA will have enough vaccines to weather the Covid storm, say experts. But whether they arrive ahead of winter or by the end of the year, and whether those who most need the shots will get them first, will likely pose bigger problems than the supply.
Drug manufacturer Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has not yet specified when SA will receive 11million doses of its vaccine — a single shot that doesn’t require extreme cold storage and has been shown to prevent death from Covid. Those close to the process say 2.8-million doses will arrive between April and June, but no more are likely to arrive until winter, when Covid-19 infections may spike.
Pfizer is set to have about 2.8-million doses of its two-shot vaccine ready for SA from the end of March. But as of Tuesday, the government and the pharmaceutical company had yet to sign an agreement.
Aspen’s Stavros Nicolaou, who is working with Business for SA on the vaccine rollout and the private sector response, cautions that SA won’t get enough vaccines by winter, when people “cuddle and huddle” and are confined indoors, which drives transmission of the virus.
It is for this reason that Dr Aslam Dasoo, leader of the Progressive Health Forum, is pushing for the private sector to be permitted to buy its own vaccines now — provided they are distributed to those most at risk.
In the longer term, though, SA is unlikely to have “a dearth of vaccines”, says Nicolaou.
In fact, a draft statement from J&J, which the FM has seen, suggests the firm is in talks with the government over the purchase of a further 20-million doses of its vaccine.
Overall, there’s been a general lack of information from the government about timelines for its vaccine rollout.
Dasoo, who is in regular communication with government, believes this is because the government itself doesn’t know when the vaccines will arrive.
However, he adds that the National Treasury has allocated rollout funding for 2022, suggesting that it is aware that vaccination will not be completed this financial year.
There is growing interest in the J&J vaccine — particularly since it became the third vaccine approved for emergency use by the US Food & Drug Administration.
It is not certain whether US approval will push SA further back in the vaccine queue. When asked about this, J&J simply reiterates that it has allocated 11-million doses to SA and a further 500-million to the Covax vaccine facility, which SA is part of.
But Nicolaou says “the singular focus of both the private and the public sector, health minister Zweli Mkhize and his team [and] Treasury colleagues is looking at rescheduling or accelerating some of the current supply pipeline”.
Nicolaou is the strategic trade executive at Aspen, one of seven companies contracted to formulate and fill J&J vaccines.
It has offered to mix and package 300million doses for J&J, but has yet to hear how many the drug company requires. It can, however, only start manufacturing once the vaccine has been approved by the SA Health Products Regulatory Authority.
Covid-19 is not something that’s going to go away
What is really the subject of private sector discussions is how the larger vaccine rollout will work.
As those close to the rollout speak of politicians in more rural provinces apparently jumping the queue during the health worker rollout — and chaos at Steve Biko Academic Hospital, where doctors reportedly brought in nonqualifying family members for a shot — implementation is going to have to be a lot stricter.
Modelling by the private sector and Discovery Health suggests that SA will need to roll out about 250,000 shots a day if it is to distribute all vaccines as they arrive in the third and fourth quarters.
This will require that every public and private hospital is used, along with all pharmacies, occupational health units, mining hospitals, mobile clinics and tents at shopping centres, explains Nicolaou.
Dasoo, for his part, is sceptical that the supply will be large and consistent enough to keep up this momentum.
Vaccinologist Prof Shabir Madhi has a different take. He believes SA needs to “recalibrate” its expectations around Covid19 vaccines, as only the Novavax vaccine has so far been shown to stop mild disease and likely transmission in relation to the variant of the virus prevalent in SA.
This means widespread vaccination won’t stop the disease spreading; the vaccines we have now can only prevent severe disease and death.
That’s why Madhi believes SA should have kept the 1-million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine it is selling to AU countries and used them to prevent severe disease in the elderly.
In the end, he says, what is most important is to ensure that the 10-million people who most need the vaccine — those older than 65, the morbidly obese, the immunocompromised and diabetics — receive it.
“I think what we need to appreciate is that Covid-19 is not something that’s going to go away,” he says.
Shabir Madhi
Afoul, eggy odour across the highveld has left a bad taste in the mouths of residents, but it may be a while until the culprit is identified.
On February 13, Gauteng Weather reported a strong sulphur smell in the province, pointing to southeasterly winds from Mpumalanga as the source. Many Gauteng residents complained on social media of breathing problems, burning eyes, blocked noses and bad chests.
A few days later, the SA Weather Service issued an alert advising that air quality was unhealthy for sensitive groups, including asthmatics and people with lung and heart disease.
Experts said the rotten egg smell was a strong indication that the pollutant in question was hydrogen sulphide (H²S), not sulphur dioxide (SO²), which is often described as smelling like burnt matches.
The health effects of H²S vary according to concentrations in the atmosphere, and can cause conjunctival irritation and irritation of the respiratory tract, according to the Life after Coal campaign. In higher concentrations, it can damage the lungs and respiratory system. Children are particularly vulnerable to the health effects of air pollution.
As the smell wafted across the highveld, it prompted an investigation by the department of forestry, fisheries & environmental affairs, which hot-footed over to Sasol’s Secunda operations — the prime suspect.
“The only thing we can do is to state the facts,” said Sasol CEO Fleetwood Grobler. That is, that all operations were running within the applicable atmospheric emissions licence limits, he explained.
On Sunday, the department confirmed that the SO² and H²S levels from the Sasol facility were indeed within the limits.
It’s now investigating other possible sources of the elevated H²S levels.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that H²S concentrations should not exceed 5.02 parts per billion (ppb) within a 30minute averaging period.
On February 12 the Lebohang monitoring station recorded “extreme peaks” of 234ppb, the department says. And the Springs station recorded 220ppb on February 16.
In Pretoria, the weather service’s Irene station measured H²S levels above the WHO recommendation on February 12 and 15-17, reaching a peak of 61ppb on February 16.
SO² levels meanwhile appear to have been in compliance with ambient air quality standards all of that week.
The department also found that a low-pressure system north of the Mozambique Channel gave rise to an uncommon circulation pattern over the region, pushing air pollution from the industrial region of Mpumalanga into Gauteng.
Once its probe is completed, the department has promised to make the findings public.
According to Nicole Loser, head of the pollution & climate change programme at the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), if emissions exceed a company’s permit limits, its officers may be guilty of a criminal offence under air quality laws and liable to a R5m fine or imprisonment for up to five years.
It is also a criminal offence to unlawfully and intentionally or negligently commit any act or omission that causes significant pollution — a crime that carries a fine of R10m per offence.
The department is now investigating other emitters of H²S, including power plants and wastewater works, but says it is not ruling out the possibility of a cumulative impact from a number of operations in the area.
GroundWork says it’s unfortunate that the pollution had to reach Gauteng for there to be renewed interest in an issue that people elsewhere on the highveld have faced for years
Rico Euripidou, health campaigner at environmental justice group GroundWork, says it’s unfortunate that the pollution had to reach Gauteng for there to be renewed interest in an issue that people elsewhere on the highveld have faced for years.
In 2019, GroundWork and the Vukani Environmental Movement, represented by the CER, launched the “deadly air case”, litigation in the Pretoria high court to have the poor air quality in the “highveld priority area” — a known air pollution hotspot — declared a violation of the right to an environment not harmful to health or wellbeing. The matter will be heard on May 17.
If successful, the environment minister, Barbara Creecy, could be forced to design regulations enforcing its air quality management plan — and, ultimately, holding big polluters in the area to account.
When music and entertainment retailer Musica was at its peak, it operated about 150 stores around SA, and was selling close to five out of every 10 CDs in the country. Now the chain is set to close at the end of May — brought to its knees by systemic shifts in buying patterns and the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We were part of the mall culture, and we were part of the high street culture with music buying,” says Derek Goosen, who co-founded the music store chain with his father, George, back in the 1960s — a spin-off of the familyowned transport business.
Back when Goosen was still at school, his father — determined to run his own business — bought an old Bedford truck to move household furniture, and set up an office in the Cape Town suburb of Plumstead. But a pivot to music seemed inevitable: George was a devotee of classical music, his wife was a voice and choral trainer, and everyone in the family played musical instruments.
So in 1963, they decided to use the office space to sell records, and the music shop, drawing from its transport business origin, was named Fleetway Record Bar.
Though the shop initially focused on classical music, the family soon learnt that the worlds of Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard were more profitable. In fact, Goosen told radio station 5FM last month, the first seven single the business sold was Jeremy Taylor’s Ag Pleez Deddy.
In that interview, Goosen recalled the excitement of learning how to buy and sell music, and getting into the routine of dealing with new sounds and music representatives (there were only two suppliers in SA at the time: Gallo Record Co and Teal Record Co).
“The 1960s was an incredibly exciting time,” he said.
In 1967, on opening a second store in Cape Town, the family decided that the business needed a trading name with more universal appeal. And so Musica was born.
“It was an experiment,” Goosen tells the FM of the expansion. The second store was on the first floor of St George’s Street. And when a third outlet opened, this one on Adderley Street, it was again upstairs and off the main drag.
Despite the position, music lovers flocked to these early Musica stores. It was a particularly memorable period, Goosen told 5FM — the time of the great British music explosion led by The Beatles.
“We were in the right place and the right time for that — a huge catalyst for our early growth.”
Expansion, however, wasn’t rapid: Musica opened 10 stores in the Cape before going national and opening a Durban outlet in 1981 — the year Prince Charles and Lady Diana got married, Goosen recalls.
Having made the “big decision” to expand throughout SA, Musica grew to more than 50 outlets over the next 10 years, with several acquisitions and new stores — and even a listing on the JSE in 1988. It was a special milestone for a family-run business, he tells the FM.
But by the early 1990s, the business was overstretched and in need of “a significant capital injection”, Goosen says.
Help arrived in the form of New Clicks Holdings — and in particular its CEO, Trevor Honneysett, who was passionate about music and the home entertainment opportunities the family business offered. So, in 1992, the retail group bought Musica — despite the Clicks board’s initial reluctance to buy a new business.
The fit wasn’t obvious. Clicks was a fastmoving consumer goods company, more about pack and price. However, Goosen says, Clicks added some valuable retail disciplines to the mix.
“[Honneysett] was flexible enough to allow us to do things a bit differently,” he says.
It was this latitude that resulted in the marketing campaign that had the most impact for the business: the “Listen with your soul” campaign developed by Jupiter Drawing Room. It triggered an amazing response from music lovers all over the country.
Goosen believes Musica peaked between 2005 and 2010, when different ways of consuming music — downloading, online and streaming — were emerging.
Under pressure to change its business model in the face of alternative listening options, Musica expanded its range to include film, video games, electronic accessories, branded clothing and books.
But it was swimming against the tide: for years already there’d been a shift to digital consumption of entertainment. And over the past decade global music giants such as HMV, Virgin and others have disappeared. So the demise of a business rooted in bricks-and-mortar entertainment retail seemed unavoidable.
In January, Clicks said it would close Musica at the end of May due to the “structural shift globally to the digital consumption of music, movies and games from the traditional physical format”.
Turnover had been declining for years; Covid and the lockdown were simply the final straw.
By then, Clicks had already closed 19 Musica stores, and the remaining 59 were set to close as leases expire. Where feasible, Musica staff would be absorbed into the parent company’s health and beauty network.
How does Goosen feel about the end of the Musica era?
“My dad developed the brand name and I developed the growth of the stores. There was a lot of passion and emotion put into the business over 40 years. But, to be honest, with the changing patterns of consumption it was inevitable. It didn’t come as a shock to me — in fact, I’ve been amazed [at] how the Clicks group re-engineered the offering to keep sales alive,” he tells the FM.
“It’s sad to see the demise of any brand, but it was inevitable.”
The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) has launched its first green bond. The €200m bond was issued through a private placement with French development finance institution Agence Française de Développement (AFD).
DBSA group executive for treasury and balance sheet management Ernest Dietrich responds to questions from the FM.
What is a green bond?
A green bond is a type of bond instrument exclusively applied to finance or refinance eligible green projects — essentially projects that contribute to environmental sustainability.
What is the DBSA’s definition of a green project that would be eligible for funding, and on which sectors will the bond focus?
It will be applied to projects that contribute to climate mitigation and/or adaptation; that are aligned to SA’s National Development Plan objective of an “environmentally sustainable and equitable transition to a low-carbon economy”; and that are aligned to UN sustainable development goals.
The inaugural issue is intended primarily to refinance select renewable projects under SA’s renewable energy independent power producer procurement programme. For future issuances renewable energy projects, including wind, solar, small-scale hydro and certain biomass energy projects would qualify.
Measures to facilitate the integration of renewable energy into grids and promote energy efficiency (such as green buildings and smart grids) would also be eligible. Other categories that would be supported include low-carbon public transportation, including electric rail, trams and other vehicles, and water and ecological infrastructure.
The bond will conform to the bank’s recently released green bond framework, which reiterates the DBSA’s commitment to playing a role in the just transition to a low carbon economy. It is also aligned with the International Capital Market Association’s green bond principles.
Will there be any investment restrictions or mandate exclusions for the green bond?
The proceeds of the green bond will not be used to finance any infrastructure projects that demonstrate clear and substantive environmental and social risks which cannot be mitigated. In particular, it won’t finance carbon-intensive projects, large hydropower schemes that involve significant environmental risk or require significant human resettlement, and nuclear power.
AFD is the sole investor in the DBSA’s inaugural green bond issue. How significant is the tie-up with AFD, and why choose an international development finance institution?
We chose the route of a private placement rather than a public issuance for the certainty it provided both in the final pricing and in the size of the issue, particularly in the face of the market contraction and risk aversion inflicted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The DBSA has a long-standing, close partnership with the AFD. The green bond private placement is yet another in a long line of infrastructure financing facilities that have been concluded between the two institutions, and is a show of confidence in the DBSA and its sound governance structures.
How significant will the green bond be in terms of supporting climate-resilient and green development in SA? Do you see it as a game-changer for green financing in SA?
Depending on the extent of changing investor preference, green bonds might become the go-to instrument for financing climate mitigation or adaptation projects. Investors and lenders are increasingly shifting to impact investing, or at least becoming more demanding in terms of see-through into how investment proceeds are used. So it is becoming increasingly important to explore funding instruments and structures that provide for this.
For the DBSA, our green bond framework is just a first step towards developing further use-of-proceeds bond issuance frameworks … as we see these as a means to either attract dedicated impact investor interest or stimulate appetite on the side of the bank’s traditional investor base.
Is SA making any real headway in formulating a plan to manage a just transition away from coal, and will the green bond have any role to play in that regard?
The DBSA is in the midst of an iterative internal process aimed at crafting the bank’s just transition investment framework. Once finalised … it will define the DBSA’s intended role in supporting a just transition, both in SA and on the rest of the continent.
The bond is just one of many instruments used to finance climate mitigation and adaptation — so yes, as with all the other facilities deployed in this regard, it will contribute to financing the transition to a low carbon economy.
In the north of Botswana, where Namibia’s Caprivi Strip cuts east towards Zimbabwe, the diamond-producing country lays claim to just 150m of Zambezi River waterfront. It is here, at Kazungula, that Africa’s only quadripoint is located — a meeting of the territories of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Kazungula is also the site of a new 923m road and rail bridge that could upend the established freight route from SA into the rest of Africa.
As the main link between SA’s seaports and the northern reaches of the Southern African Development Community, Beitbridge — between SA and Zimbabwe — has for years been the busiest border post in the region. Zimbabwe’s international trade ministry says about 600 trucks pass through that border each day. That’s in addition to about 60 buses and 2,000 light vehicles. It makes for an average 15,000 people a day crossing between the countries. The commercial traffic alone accounts for monthly revenue of $45m.
But the $260m Kazungula Bridge between Botswana and Zambia, completed late last year, is set to create a new gateway into Africa when it finally opens. That was supposed to happen this week, on March 1.
And, in a move apparently aimed at routing traffic to the new bridge, Zambia announced last month that, as of March 1, road freight of more than 16t would be barred from crossing its border with Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls. That border, just 75km east of Kazungula, carries commercial traffic of about 100 trucks a day.
But due to “logistical issues”, the opening of the bridge has been delayed indefinitely, a source at the border told the FM on Monday. On the same day, Zambia announced it had delayed its freight restrictions, which will now come into effect on “a date to be communicated soon”.
Not that Zambia has explicitly linked the new bridge with restrictions at Victoria Falls.
Zambia Revenue Authority spokesperson Topsy Sikalinda says the restrictions are aimed at safeguarding the tourist trade in the border town of Livingstone. “We are doing this in order to preserve the [Victoria Falls] bridge,” he told media recently. “And we also want to bring sanity in the city of Livingstone. As you know Livingstone is a tourism capital. We have a lot of trucks that make a lot of noise and bring disorder, so we certainly need to bring sanity.”
For Stevenson Dhlamini, an economist at Zimbabwe’s National University of Science & Technology, the pending restrictions are an act of bad faith.
“Zambia is giving an indirect excuse for the reason behind its decision to block commercial traffic [at Victoria Falls],” he tells the FM. “It’s like one lover dumping the other and saying: ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ The fact remains that the decision would benefit the new route.”
Not that there aren’t compelling reasons for truckers to take their goods from SA on the longer Kazungula route. First, says Dhlamini, Zimbabwe’s roads are “dilapidated and not good for durability of trucks”. Second, toll fees are high. And, he says, police corruption on the roads is rife.
But Stanley Kamanga, a Zimbabwean trucker, tells the FM that Botswana’s strict Covid-19 containment measures will probably deter truckers from taking the new route.
“In Botswana every time you arrive or leave you are tested [for Covid] … But with Zimbabwe and SA tests are done after four weeks of travelling in between [the countries],” he says. “If it wasn’t for relaxed terms between Zimbabwe and SA, we would consider the new route.”
Joseph Musariri, CEO of the Shipping & Forwarding Agents’ Association of Zimbabwe, is concerned about the impact Kazungula could have on Zimbabwe. “More than 70% of commercial cargo passing through
Beitbridge is in transit to countries such as Zambia, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” he tells the FM. “So the opening of Kazungula could affect us.”
To counter the threat, Beitbridge border is undergoing a $300m upgrade. Initially, this will involve separating buses, commercial trucks and light vehicles into different streams to avoid congestion, says Zimbabwe local government & public works secretary Zvinechimwe Churu.
The aim of the modernisation project — set to take three years — is to make Beitbridge “a hub of choice”, says Churu.
After the 2003 publication of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynn Truss’s witty milestone book on English grammar, a critic bemoaned grammar “fascists” who want to “stop the language moving into the 21st century”.
This past week, however, it’s become clear that, even in the 21st century, punctuation still makes an enormous difference — not just to panda jokes, but also to liability for payment of hard cash.
In fact, punctuation has suddenly become critically relevant in Namibia, where about R97m is at stake in a case between the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (Cran) and the Mobile Telecommunications Company (MTC).
A couple of years ago Namibia’s Supreme Court decided that a section of the law — in terms of which
Cran could in effect levy a tax — was unconstitutional and set it aside. Now there is a dispute over exactly when the apex court intended that declaration of unconstitutionality to take effect.
Almost unbelievably, the key to the dispute lies with the punctuation of the four-paragraph order at the end of the court decision. A set of quotation marks around the order, to be exact.
A lot is riding on those marks. If the court’s order — and the quotation marks — means the law was unconstitutional from the June 11 2018 date of judgment, then R97m will be payable by the MTC. However, if the Supreme Court intended the invalidity to start from September 29 2016 — the date of the original high court order, as reworked by the Supreme Court — then the company won’t have to pay.
Boas Usiku, the high court judge contemplating these punctuation issues, said that if an order is clear and unambiguous, then the words used, “including punctuation marks”, are to be given their ordinary grammatical meaning, unless that would result in an absurdity.
The order within the quotation marks refers to the law becoming invalid “from the date of this judgment”. But which judgment was the Supreme Court talking about: its own, or the high court judgment it had overturned, then reworked?
In his decision, Usiku said that, because the Supreme Court was quoting the high court, the relevant date of invalidity would be that of the high court judgment. The opposing view had been that the date of invalidity should be the date of the Supreme Court judgment.
Why would the Supreme Court have put the substituted order in quotation marks, Usiku asked. Generally, as a “rule of grammar”, quotation marks are a device “for recognising others’ words and voices”. Here, the Supreme Court put the words of the order in quotes “so that a reader can recognise the words and voice of the high court”.
The Supreme Court was indicating, via its quotation marks, that this should have been the order that the high court issued, and thus the high court’s date was the relevant one, Usiku said.
Conflicting judgments
Some months ago, another high court judge found in favour of the view that the invalidity was from the date of the Supreme Court’s decision, so there are now two opposing views on this R97m question.
As for the Supreme Court itself, in February 2019 Cran formally asked the court to “interpret its order” and explain which date it had in mind. But, four months later, the court “declined” to do so.
Usiku said he is aware that there are now “two conflicting judgments” on how to interpret the order of the Supreme Court, and he would be willing to grant leave to appeal, if it were sought.
Even if no-one asks for leave to appeal the ruling, this is not the end of the matter — Cran will still have to prove that the R97m is payable. But with Usiku’s decision on when the law became invalid, that should be as easy as eats shoots and leaves.
The key to the dispute lies with the punctuation of the Supreme Court’s fourparagraph order