The “New Dawn” must deliver on vital projects in community development

The “New Dawn” must deliver on vital projects in community development 

President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a new era of hope, “ New Dawn” for the country pledging to tackle corruption, unemployment and inequality.

President Cyril Ramaphosa

 

The New Development Bank has committed R19.86bn towards South Africa’s development projects as it launched its regional office in Sandton, Johannesburg in 2017.

A number of national and international companies made major investment announcements during President Cyril Ramaphosa's Investment Conference in October 2018 that was called to rally investors to plough money into the country’s ailing economy. A total of R134-billion was pledged with the aim of reviving the country’s economy.

The government has developed the National Development Plan (NDP) and has embarked on an infrastructure development drive with the allocation of much needed financial resources for its implementation.  

To encourage an even spread of infrastructure development to tackle, not only backlogs on economic growth, but poverty alleviation as a whole, a programme of focussed Spatial Development Initiatives (SDI) was undertaken by government as reported by Treasury in 2000. This programme is a short-term investment strategy that was aimed at unlocking inherent economic potential in specific spatial locations in southern Africa. The key issue in this regard is whether SDI projects was prioritized in terms of their ability to create jobs.

There were four main SDI objectives:

Export orientation and earning foreign exchange

1. Sustainable job creation
2. Better utilisation of existing infrastructure and resources
3. Broadening the ownership base of the economy to small and medium entrepreneurs, farmers and fisher folk.

Understandably, Treasury would have a market driven outlook focused on big scale contributions to the GDP, but has the focus of government changed to meet the basic needs of our people?

Our country has examples of long-standing spatial policies that was driven by narrow ideological objectives that generated few enduring benefits. These policies and objectives ignored economic principles and failed in contextualising the underlying social problems or empathy of vulnerable communities. Many of the well-intended developmental project initiatives were hampered by poor government coordination and vision, primarily due to construction disasters, cost over-runs, and lack of project oversight.

Some of the project challenges were:

•M1 Highway Footbridge: Collapse of footbridge leaving two people dead. Two days before the incident it was announced at a meeting that bolts were missing in the structure

•Gautrain:Cost: cost overruns – Initial cost R7bn eventual cost was around R30.462bn.

•Medupi Power Station: Cost overruns -R118.5bn to R160bn excluding interest during construction

•PRASA: New locomotives bought from Spain at a cost of R600 million, were of the wrong height for safe travel on SA’s rail network.

•Magaliesburg Secondary School in Ga Mohale: lengthy project delays

•Dr Harry Surtie Hospital in Upington: 11 year project delays, building costs escalated from R290 million to R1.8 billion

In 2015, in a Business Day article by Mark Allix , he stated that Consulting Engineers SA (Cesa ) said " that the government must make hard economic decisions about SA's infrastructure development or face possible further unrest over service delivery "

Infrastructure development programmes are essential, but some may be more vital than others. 

The Mbashe Local Municipality in the Eastern Cape is incredibly a rural area. It is claimed that there are no toilets, no taps, no electricity and the only source of water is from a few springs in the area. These springs are polluted by grazing animals and children playing in the water. In many of our rural communities we have children competing with cows for drinking water.  

In Kgotlopong in the Limpopo province water from the Kgotlopong River is used for domestic purposes, severely compromising community health. Although no source of running water, which is intended for human consumption, can be presumed to be free from pollution and a potential risk to public health government must act to mitigate such risk. A significant proportion of residents in rural communities in South Africa are exposed to water-borne disease and their complications through drinking of water from springs and rivers. These diseases include a variety of bacterial, as well as fungal, viral and parasitic infections

Water is a basic need and access to this resource is a basic right and may be more important for a rural community than getting the roads fixed. The same can be said about sanitation and electricity.

The National Development Plan is a long-term process earmarked for conclusion in 2030. South Africa can achieve more in the short term if government, business, labour and civil society reach consensus on national priorities.

The development and application of an effective stakeholder engagement strategy, that includes community participation, is key, as it will allow community involvement in determining the future of their own lives.  The vulnerable communities, will also be allowed to determine their own list of priorities.

In engaging with communities, their priority needs must be determined and joint decision making should take centre stage on how infrastructure development projects will best address their needs.  

Consideration of priorities should be the attainment of basic rights as enshrined in the constitution. Addressing the most basic human needs such as access to running water, adequate and decent waste disposal and health risk-free sanitation, electricity and decent housing must take first preference.

The bucket toilet system and informal settlements should be declared a crime against humanity and earmarked for eradication. 

Constant community engagement is important to keep communities abreast of developments and to allow them an opportunity to provide their input on the expected impact of projects, site allocation, job creation and opportunities for local SMME’s.

The government might determine that projects need to be labour intensive, but one needs to ensure that quality and standards should never be compromised.  Adequate training and skills development programme should be conducted where labour is required.

It becomes important for municipalities to ensure that these IDP’s are aligned to the NDP.

Any large-scale new development project must be decided upon based on a municipality’s overall approach and vision for growth in the locality and must not be adding a further access barrier or economic stumbling block to the people’s advancement.

New housing, primary health care facilities and schools must be in the same proximity and must be within reach of economic activity like shopping centres, factories and other manufacturing facilities.

New developments must contribute to social cohesion and be surrounded by sports and recreation facilities to instil a sense of community pride and ownership.

This will inevitably mean the provision of a full basket of services to communities.

Let’s hope the “new dawn” we have now entered in our country allows for consciousness to create a better life for all.

Let agroforestry mitigate climate change and poverty alleviation

Human presence in nature cannot only be ascribed to the physical experience of the forest environment and its biota through walks, hiking, biking, hunting, retreats, to ruminate in the kingdom of ancestral spirits and to partake other devotional rituals. Forest and other bushveld don't only have these social benefits, but economic, food security and water management programs could immensely benefit the broader society.




The National Development Plan (NDP) offers a long-term perspective, defines a desired destination and identifies the role different sectors of society need to play in reaching that goal according to the then Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe. It has the ambitious aim to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030.




As a conscious project leader I see it as my duty to identify project specific opportunities to achieve these noble aims, but being conscious requires me to sensitize others about determining priorities when identifying such projects cognizant of the social and economic environment we live in.




A conscious project leader will never present a business case for the development of a new road in a community whilst that very same community does not have access to proper sanitation and tap water. The development of the new road will be at the expense of meeting peoples’ basic needs.




With the infrastructure development being the buzz term in addressing socio-economic challenges in our country we should extend this from primarily focusing on the built environment to the natural environment. Green buildings and green cities may be attractive, but the development of our natural resources to derive social and economic benefits can go a long way in addressing poverty and household food insecurity challenges in our country.




Development of our natural resources for local economic stimulation and job creation, without degrading and depleting our resources, should be considered more intensely. 




In the forestry sector, in advancing the objectives of the National Development Plan (NDP), Forestry South Africa in its presentation, “The Footprint of Forestry in the National Development Plan,” only calls for further education training and extension services for small scale timber growers. Meanwhile the governments Agricultural Policy Action Plan, that was developed precisely to attend to the implementation of the NDP, mainly focuses on large scale commercial timber production and small-scale timber growers without consideration to developing the agro-forestry sector to achieve the objectives of the NDP.




The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has reported that South Africa has wide-ranging and treasured forest resources. Our forests are prized for their biological diversity, medicinal and local uses and for their aesthetic and spiritual beliefs.




Human presence in nature cannot only be ascribed to the physical experience of the forest environment and its biota through walks, hiking, biking, hunting, retreats, to ruminate in the kingdom of ancestral spirits and to partake other devotional rituals. Forest and other bushveld not only has these social benefits, but economic, food security and water management programmes could immensely benefit the broader society.




These forests provide a diverse set of habitats for plants, animals and micro-organisms and the ecosystems within which they live. Our forest are the most important repositories of terrestrial biological diversity.




These plantations also support a multi-billion-rand industry, employing over one-hundred thousand people, which is managed for sustainable production.


Our country is faced with a growing population, with little new land available for agriculture, ageing farmers, urban migration, and lack of interest by our youth in agriculture and depleting natural resources.




These all impact on food production and food security in our country. Food security is not just about access to food, but also depends on a supply of nutritious food. Although South Africa is food secure, we cannot celebrate household food security because of poverty and in most instances abject poverty in our country.




Our agricultural systems need to be transformed, environmental degradation reversed, policies and governance improved, and better access to markets established for small-scale agro-processing and agro-forestry entrepreneurs.




A new innovative way of integrating the forest and bushveld with agriculture, crops and livestock, that would significantly improve livelihoods, food security and environmental stability, needs to be employed.




Agro-forestry, as this new innovation, offers a progressive way to achieve major gains in poverty reduction and food production.




Agro-forestry is an integrated approach to farming by using the benefits of linking trees and shrub production with crops and livestock. It combines forestry and agricultural technology to create more productive and sustainable land-usage systems.




Agro-forestry is often considered a cost-effective strategy for climate change mitigation. Tree-based farming systems may store carbon in soils and woody biomass, and they may also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from soils. The significant carbon sequestration potential of agro-forestry stems not so much from a high carbon mass, but from the large areas that are potentially suitable for agro-forestry.
South Africa possesses that potential.


Agro-forestry is a practice that respects the environment and has obvious landscape benefits.
Carbon sequestration projects in forestry and agro-forestry, to mitigate global warming and provide economic opportunities for poverty stricken communities living adjacent to the forest, must be implemented.




The need to increase community participation in the forest and bushveld economy is of utmost importance. These communities must also be granted sole rights to collect firewood, to produce and collect no-wood products like herbs, flora, medicinal plants, bark and fibres.




Resin tapping from trees is labour intensive and simple equipment is needed and it does not affect saw timber production in any way. In fact, tree resin including gum and latex fluid extraction plays a particularly important role in trees by rapidly sealing over wounds used as introductory pathways by invading insects and fungal disease agents.

38 species of Corkwood trees are found naturally in Southern Africa and some of these Commiphora species in South Africa have edible fruit. These trees are known for their historical and biblical association as providers of the earliest healing balms and fragrances and may add value to the flourishing commercialization of natural health products in our country.

Pine is another tree species from which resin is extracted. Distillation of pine trees yields two main products mainly turpentine and rosin. The active promotion of resin collection of trees not only contributes to job creation but increases our manufacturing capacity and these products can be supplied cheaper to the built and construction industry than imported products.




Honey, herbs, nuts, seeds, fresh and dried fruit production is also some of the many alternatives to income generation from agro-forestry.




It is however important to emphasize that insecure land tenure rights on forestry land by local communities hampers our people from deriving economic opportunities in forest. Resin rights cooperatives or groups of resin tappers are able to secure quasi property rights.




Most likely efforts to avoid and mitigate the risk of deforestation and the starting and spreading of wild forest fires would be more successful if local communities share in the economic benefits in our forest and bushveld.




Let us consciously consider utilizing the forest to meet the objectives of the NDP and create opportunities for agro-forestry inclusive of developing, at the point of extraction, local agro-forestry processing plants.

Hilary Promises Stronger Ties with South Africa

Well-the Clinton's always had a close relationship with South Africa. In fact they have close ties with Madiba (Nelson Mandela) and her husband started many community-based projects in our country.

However she now represents a state. A state seen as the global oppressor.

So what are the cost of these stronger ties.

Under the George Bush Administration many people felt a sense of urge to challenge this country. Many protest occured in our country all targeting the US State.

Let the Obama adminsiration deal decisively with aid, africa's debt and agricultural fair trade.

Stronger ties must be based on sound principles of building a better society for all and not one based on inequality.

Its Easier to Pry on Your Friends

Armed with new and established Web sites, people are uncovering surprising details about colleagues, lovers and strangers that often don’t turn up in a simple Internet search. Though none of these sites can reveal anything that isn’t already available publicly, they can make it much easier to find. And most of them are free.
Zaba Inc.’s ZabaSearch.com turns up public records such as criminal history and birthdates. Spock Networks Inc.’s Spock.com and Wink Technologies Inc.’s Wink.com are “people-search engines” that specialize in digging up personal pages, such as social-networking profiles, buried deep in the Web. Spokeo.com is a search site operated by Spokeo Inc., a startup that lets users see what their friends are doing on other Web sites.
Have fun

Third Force Behaind Xenophobic Attacks in SA

The police have “concrete evidence” of a suspected third force involvement in attacks in and around Johannesburg, the Gauteng Legislature heard on Tuesday.

The police have “concrete evidence” of a suspected third force involvement in xenophobic attacks in and around Johannesburg, the Gauteng Legislature heard on Tuesday.

“The police now have concrete evidence of those involved in orchestrations and they are dealing with it,” said Gauteng MEC for Sport Barbara Creecy. She was speaking on behalf of Community Safety MEC Firoz Cachalia during a debate on the spate of violence in Gauteng in the past week. Creecy said the total number of arrests related to the unrest now stood at 297.