Sarah Logan | International Growth Centre
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October 9 marks 55 years since Uganda’s independence in 1962. The country’s economy has seen many changes during this time, affected by periods of political instability, civil war, fluctuating global commodity prices, and various economic reforms. Trends in recent years are positive, although some key challenges remain.
Economic data for the early years after Uganda’s independence is scarce. But economic growth appears to have been impressive for the first eight years. Agriculture dominated the economy, with cotton and coffee comprising <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/WBI/Resources/wbi37152and37153.pdf">76%</a> of exports. Five years after Uganda’s independence it joined forces with Kenya and Tanzania to form the East African Community, with the intention of creating a common market.
In 1971 Idi Amin overthrew President Milton Obote in a military coup and Uganda went into rapid political and economic decline. “Foreign” economic interests were <a href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/ueconomy.htm">eliminated</a> and some 70,000 residents of Asian and European descent were expelled from the country. Firms and factories that had been the backbone of Uganda’s economy were expropriated. This, combined with Amin’s massive military spending, sent the economy into free fall. External debt <a href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/ueconomy.htm">climbed</a> and Uganda’s investor confidence was shot. Regional relations deteriorated and the East Africa Community was disbanded in 1977.
Amin was finally overthrown in 1979 and Obote took over the presidency again. Uganda’s economy had been devastated and significant economic reforms were needed. This <a href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/ueconomy.htm">involved</a> removing price controls, floating the exchange rate, and tightening government spending. Owners of expropriated firms and properties were encouraged to return.
After five years of civil war, Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) took power in 1986. The economy was in deep <a href="http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators">recession</a>. With International Monetary Fund <a href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/ueconomy.htm">support</a>, the NRM undertook major economic reforms aimed at encouraging private sector growth and diversifying Uganda’s agricultural exports. Uganda’s over-reliance on a small number of agricultural exports, notably coffee, had left the economy vulnerable to fluctuations in production and swings in global commodity markets.
Under these early reforms, the Ugandan shilling was <a href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/ueconomy.htm">devalued</a> and budgetary constraints were adopted. Inflation, which had peaked at <a href="http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators">190%</a>in 1987, was brought down to <a href="http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators">26%</a> by 1991. Additional reforms further limited government spending and borrowing and significantly <a href="http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/ueconomy.htm">reduced</a>the size of the civil service and the army.
Over the past two decades, Uganda’s economy has developed in important ways &#8211; dependence on agricultural exports has eased, the services sector has grown, and regional trade and integration has strengthened. But there are still major weak spots, including a weak manufacturing sector and constraints on small and medium sized enterprises.
<h2>Breaking away from agriculture</h2>
Some progress has been made in diversifying Uganda’s agricultural exports and, although still dominated by food exports, the share of non-food merchandise exports has been increasing in recent years (see Figure 1 below). Exports of agricultural raw materials and ores and metals exports have declined, indicating that greater domestic value addition is taking place.
FIGURE ONE
<div id="attachment_286022" style="width: 764px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-286022" class="wp-image-286022 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Figure-One.png" alt="" width="754" height="543" />Uganda’s composition of merchandise exports. World Development Indicators.</div>
The composition of Uganda’s economy has changed quite significantly over the past few decades (see Figure 2 below). Agriculture’s contribution to GDP has shrunk, although it continues to employ some <a href="http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators">70%</a> of Uganda’s labour, and the share from services has increased from 19% in 1977 up to over 55% today. Industry’s share has also grown since the sector’s collapse in the early 1970s, but its growth has been more muted.
FIGURE TWO
<div id="attachment_286023" style="width: 764px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-286023" class="wp-image-286023 size-full" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Figure-Two.png" alt="" width="754" height="458" />Composition of Uganda’s GDP. World Development Indicators</div>
Within industry, manufacturing’s contribution to GDP has remained stagnant at around <a href="http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators">8%</a> for the last 15 years. Uganda’s manufacturing sector is small and dominated by micro, small and medium enterprises, which make up some <a href="https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Sherpherd-et-al-2016-paper.pdf">93.5%</a> of the sector, with agro-processing being a particularly important activity in the sector. These small firms are limited by a number of constraints including lack of access to high quality inputs, reliable and cost effective electricity, and affordable credit. As a result, they struggle to achieve the economies of scale needed to grow and increase their productivity.
<h2>Remaining challenges</h2>
Under the NRM, Uganda has experienced positive, albeit fluctuating, economic growth (see Figure 3 below). Growth of the services and industry sectors shows important progress towards structural transformation, shifting labour out of less productive agriculture and into more productive sectors.
Population growth, however, has remained high, averaging <a href="http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators">3.4%</a> since 2010. This has lowered net growth rates (economic growth less population growth) and eroded potential improvements in living standards.
Indeed, Uganda’s population growth has meant that GDP per capita growth has been on the decline in recent years. In contrast, Kenya and Tanzania have had lower population growth averages since 2010. In Kenya it’s been 2.7% and in Tanzania 3.1%. Both countries remain on <a href="http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=world-development-indicators">positive</a> and higher GDP per capita growth trajectories.
<h2>Looking forward</h2>
The East African Community was revived in 2000 and regional integration has made significant strides since then. A customs union and common market have been <a href="http://www.eac.int/integration-pillars">introduced</a>. Among other benefits, regional trade has been shown to promote regional <a href="https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Mayer-Thoenig-2016-Working-paper.pdf">peace</a> and bring economic development to <a href="https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Brulhart-et-al-2017-Working-paper.pdf">border areas</a>. Further integration, such as greater transport connectivity, could offer important advantages.
Continued growth of the services sector should be promoted. Attention should also be given to supporting manufacturing sector growth as it has the potential to create many low-skilled jobs. Easing the constraints faced by small and medium sized enterprises would facilitate firm growth, increase productivity, and raise manufacturing’s contribution to GDP and exports.
To <a href="https://www.theigc.org/publication/maximising-the-impact-of-fdi-on-domestic-industrial-capabilities-and-job-creation/">increase </a> Ugandan firms’ competitiveness it’s critical that production capacity is raised through training programmes and by matchmaking domestic suppliers with foreign firms. And firms need unrestricted access to high quality inputs if they’re going to be able to move into the export market.
The Ugandan government has an important role to play in supporting these efforts and, with government commitment, considerable economic gains could be achieved.

Taking stock of Uganda’s economy 55 years after independence

A new power struggle is unfolding in South Africa’s old homelands between global mining giants, traditional leaders and an impoverished rural populace.
Parts of an industry long used to labour unrest are now contending with community protests that have cut production of the country’s largest mineral export earner, platinum, and may shut some operations down altogether.
At the heart of the conflict are tribal leaders who have royal titles and feudal-style control over the homelands, poor rural areas designated to South Africa’s black majority by its former white minority rulers during apartheid.
Tribal leaders are also key allies of President Jacob Zuma, whose political base has become increasingly rural, and his African National Congress party has drafted a law that would cement their control.
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But with protests spreading across the homelands, the communities, mining companies and some within the ANC itself are moving to change what they see as an anachronistic system.
The traditional leaders have acted as intermediaries with companies which have discovered chrome and coal as well as platinum in the homelands and hope to find shale gas. Many locals say they are seeing none of the proceeds.
“If they don’t give us that 175 million rand ($13 million), we are going to shut down the mine,” said Chippa Langa, a leader of the community around the Mogalakwena platinum mine, referring to a community fund set up by Anglo American Platinum (Amplats).
To avoid such an outcome, a leading human rights lawyer is negotiating with the local royal house to allow community representatives more control over the fund.
“We are renegotiating the agreement to make it more accountable,” said the lawyer, Richard Spoor, whose work has included spearheading a class action suit against gold producers over the fatal lung disease silicosis which miners contract.
It is a plan that, if copied elsewhere, would dilute the power of the tribal leaders and could do the same to the ANC, which has ruled South Africa since the end of apartheid in 1994.
But Spoor says he and his legal team, who are acting for the communities rather than the mine, are not undermining tradition.
“Our view is that this more democratic model is far more aligned with traditional law and custom. We don’t regard the current very authoritarian top-down style of chieftanship as consistent with the traditional institution.”
Zolani Mkiva, head of presidency at Contralesa, the umbrella group for South Africa’s traditional leaders, agreed that the African way is bottom up, but said what he called isolated cases involving some mining deals were giving the chiefs a bad name.
“They tend to attract attention and create an impression that this represents the African way of leadership,” he said.
Chris Griffith, chief executive of Amplats, a unit of Anglo American, said the company was fully behind the restructuring of the community trust and was applying the lessons learned to other deals.
“What we are trying to do is get away from some of the previous structures where we felt obliged to pay the money over to the Kgoshi (chief),” Griffiths told Reuters, noting a new-style deal on a chrome project in February. At that project, there have been no protests so far.
<h3>LAND RIGHTS</h3>
Discontent has not been confined to Mogalakwena, the world’s largest open-pit platinum mine, where Amplats says protests two years ago cost it 8,600 ounces of its annual 200,000-plus ounces of production.
Impala Platinum’s Marula mine says it lost 10,000 ounces of almost 80,000 ounces of production in the last financial year to community protests that included road blocks, vehicle stonings and assaults on people reporting for work.
A nearby chrome project it set up with a tribal council &#8211; made up of a chief and his aides &#8211; has collapsed and Impala says it may soon have to close Marula, which would be the first such shutdown in South Africa linked purely to social upheaval.
Falling platinum prices have multiplied the pressure.
Implats CEO Nico Muller told Reuters the company would not change the structure itself but wanted the two sides to resolve their differences. “The way they apply the proceeds is perceived not to benefit the broader community,” he said.
Around Mogalakwena, set amid rust-tinged rocky outcrops in sweltering latitudes north of Johannesburg, resentment over grinding poverty runs deep.
“I never worked in the mine. I never got benefit, nothing,” said 57-year-old Leg Phalanea as he walked down a dusty street near the mine.
The bill before parliament formalises the current political system in the homelands with a clause allowing traditional councils to enter partnerships with any “body or institution”. It says such deals “must be beneficial to the community represented by such council”, but does not require consultation.
However, Richard Mdakane, an ANC MP who chairs the parliamentary committee on traditional matters, said villagers should have more say. “We are amending many clauses that were there just to make sure that the bill allows community participation in these processes,” he said.
Some in the ANC are seeking to go further by ending the chief’s role as custodians of land now regarded as communal by giving villagers title deeds to the land they plough.
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ANC Treasurer Secretary Zweli Mkhize &#8211; seen as a contender to replace Zuma as party chief at a December conference where policy positions will also be adopted &#8211; told Reuters: “We are discussing this issue. There is a huge discussion about what kind of land tenure we need in the former homelands.”
Tribal power is already ebbing in places such as Mogalakwena. Villagers there have agreed a new trust structure with four trustees: one from Amplats, one independent, and the other two from the royal Mapela clan, to replace a structure dominated by the tribal council.
Former chief Kgabagare Langa, who has been ousted in a dispute, said he is challenging his removal in court. The new chief, or Kgoshi, Hans Langa, said he could not comment on the restructuring as his lawyers were working on it.
Residents say they have received positive signals from the new chief’s camp and Amplats’ Griffith said the company was just waiting for him to settle in.
“It’s clear the new Kgoshi will want to see peace in Mapela,” said Jonathon Manamela, 53, treasurer of the Mapela Executive Committee, a community group involved in the talks. “Our culture believes you are a king because of the people.”
($1 = 13.5818 rand)
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Editing by Philippa Fletcher
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Protests test tribal authority on South Africa’s platinum belt

After a dozen years of recovery under Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping bring peace after civil war turned her country into a wasteland, Liberians are hopeful about their first democratic power transfer for 73 years.
Twenty candidates are standing to replace Johnson Sirleaf in a first round on Tuesday. With nobody likely to win a majority outright, the top two are expected to face each other in a run-off in around a month. While the election campaign has been rambunctious, it has been mainly peaceful so far, and most expectations are that it will come off without bloodshed.
Johnson Sirleaf, 78, has many accomplishments to boast since she became Africa’s first modern female head of state.
The economy is four times the size it was when she took office in 2005. The gangs of drug addled youths who raped and mutilated their way across the nation during a civil war that ended in 2003 are a vivid but receding memory.
Charles Taylor, the warlord who ruled in Liberia’s darkest days, is now in a British jail, serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity, including terrorism, pillage, rape, murder and sexual slavery &#8212; the first former head of state convicted by an international tribunal since Nuremburg.
Yet the country is still one of the world’s poorest. It survived another existential crisis three years ago with an outbreak of the Ebola virus that overwhelmed its health services. Residents complain of corruption from officials and poor public services, and say that while they are thankful for the peace that Johnson Sirleaf brought, they are excited about the prospect of change.
“For me, the only thing about this administration is peace. I gave her a plus in that,” said Timothy Sambulah, a taxi driver in the capital Monrovia. But, he said: “She has not been able to fight corruption. She failed to deal with people who took money to build their big houses.”
<h3>FRONT-RUNNERS INCLUDE WEAH</h3>
Among the front-runners seen as likely to win a place in the run-off are Vice President Joseph Nyuma Boakai, representing the ruling Unity Party, and football star George Weah, who lost to Johnson Sirleaf in 2005. Weah has served in the senate since 2014 for the opposition Congress for Democratic Change.
Candidates have held enthusiastic rallies attended by thousands of supporters wearing T-shirts, drenched by downpours in a carnival atmosphere.
Many have promised a break from the past. One poster carried around by opponents read: “Another six years of this&#8230;” with a photograph of a distressed woman seated in a damp home with walls made of corrugated iron.
“There will be no business as usual. We are going to end the era of selective justice so people are given equal protection under the law,” Charles Walker Brumskine, a lawyer running as the candidate of the Liberty Party, third biggest in Congress, told Reuters.
But one diplomat said it would be difficult to accelerate development just as millions of dollars in aid money pledged during the Ebola outbreak is drying up.
Liberia, Africa’s oldest republic, was founded by freed U.S. slaves in the 19th century.
Its recovery since the war has been remarkable. GDP for the country of 4.6 million reached $2.1 billion last year up from just $550 million the year Sirleaf Johnson took office.
A former finance minister in the 1970s who fled after a coup and worked for the World Bank and Citibank during her exile, she restored a measure of professionalism to a government that had been seized by a military junta in 1980 and collapsed under the predation of the warlords.
Outside her home country, Johnson Sirleaf has served as an ambassador for peace in an unstable region, donning colorful headscarves on diplomatic missions such as one last year to persuade Gambia’s ruler Yahya Jammeh to step down.
Still, many Liberians say she failed to stamp out graft and nepotism that have held the country back.
Her son Robert Sirleaf was a senior advisor and ran state oil firm NOCAL, which collapsed after his tenure as crude prices slumped in 2015. Her other son, Charles, was among 45 government officials suspended in 2012 for failing to declare their assets to anti-corruption authorities. She declared her own assets this year.
Last year a grand jury indicted government officials, including the speaker of parliament on charges including bribery.
“High level corruption has been a slap in the face for Liberians, most of whom live in abject poverty,” said Liberian political analyst Robtel Neajai Pailey who also criticized what she described as “hero worship” of Johnson Sirleaf.
(This version of the story corrects the gender of the pronoun in final paragraph to she from he, referring to expert)
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Additional reporting by Emma Farge; Writing and additional reporting by Edward McAllister; Editing by Peter Graff
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As Johnson Sirleaf exits, Liberians thankful for peace, excited about change

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After defying economic gravity for a year, Zimbabwe’s homemade U.S. dollars have fallen to earth with a bump.
Rumors the central bank was buying up black market U.S. dollars last month with one of its own versions of the currency created panic in a country scarred by the hyperinflationary spiral of 2008 that wiped out people’s savings.
The worthless Zimbabwe dollar was replaced by the U.S. dollar in 2009 but the economy has struggled over the last 18 months because of a massive domestic shortage of greenbacks.
As a result, cash, especially crisp, new, $100 bills, has enjoyed a steady 10 percent to 20 percent premium over dollars stored electronically in bank accounts &#8211; nicknamed “zollars”.
(For graphic on implied rate of Zimbabwe&#8217;s electronic dollars click: <a href="http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/ZIMBABWE-DOLLARS/0100409Q0MV/index.html">here</a> )
But two weeks ago, the rumors that even the central bank had run out of hard currency sent the premium soaring to nearly 50 percent, according to black market traders and unofficial measures of the zollar value.
“I am really scared that I will wake up one day and find my money in the bank is worthless,” said Jethro Nkosi, a computer technician at a hotel in the capital Harare.
The central bank has not published currency reserves since dollarisation and Zimbabweans worry it is creating zollars without the backing of sufficient reserves or gold, leaving the system vulnerable to a crisis of confidence.
Another currency implosion would also be a major headache for 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe as he seeks to extend his 37 years in power in an election in less than a year.
On Friday, buying $100 in cash via a bank transfer cost 145 electronic zollars, a marginal improvement on 160 last week. But on Sept. 23, when rumors of the central bank buying black market dollars swept Harare, the rate spiked to 185.
The price of everyday goods has also leapt as importers of food to fuel to medicine are forced to turn to an increasingly unfavorable and risky black market to pay for their wares.
In just one week, the cost of cooking oil, cereal and butter imported from South Africa leapt by as much as 30 percent.
<h3>DOLLARS BOLLARS ZOLLARS</h3>
One Harare banking source said the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s (RBZ) Fidelity Printers and Refiners division sparked the panic two weeks ago by offloading a large quantity of dollar “bond notes” to buy gold from small-scale mining firms.
When the newly minted notes, nicknamed “bollars”, hit the streets, currency dealers assumed the central bank was mopping up greenbacks from the black market, sending the of real dollars soaring.
Bond notes are the third form of dollars used in Zimbabwe, besides cash and zollars. Like their electronic counterparts, the quasi-currency notes are meant to be equivalent to dollars issued by the U.S. Federal Reserve but they are now worth less.
The notes, backed by an opaque $200 million loan facility from the Cairo-based Afreximbank, were first introduced in November. This week they were trading at 1.3 to the dollar after weakening to as much as 1.5 in late September.
The banking source said RBZ’s Fidelity, Zimbabwe’s sole gold trader, was paying mining firms for gold 60:40 in dollars and bond notes, compared with only dollars a month ago &#8211; and that had fueled suspicions the RBZ was running out of hard currency.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor John Mangudya denied Zimbabwe was locked in another currency crisis. He told Reuters the bank was spending $1 million in bond notes a week to buy gold but said that should not affect currency market values.
“In an economy with $180 million of bond notes, I am not very sure whether that amount could have been responsible for a few days’ change in economic fundamentals of premiums in the parallel markets,” he told Reuters.
<h3>CARS, HOUSES AND STOCKS</h3>
However, the situation is febrile and fluid.
To try to prevent a run on the domestic banking system, the government has tried to kill the black market with decrees giving the police more powers and stating that illegal currency traders face up to 10 years in prison.
Despite the warnings, illegal currency dealers continue to trade on Harare’s streets, albeit more discretely than usual because of plain-clothes police lurking in the shadows.
“This is the only way I can look after my family. But it will now be difficult to trade openly like we used to do,” said currency trader Theresa Chirwa, glancing over her shoulder as she shoved a wad of bond notes and dollars into her satchel.
Assessing the true value of zollars is difficult but economists have revived a gauge used during the hyperinflation era &#8211; the Old Mutual Implied Rate &#8211; which compares share prices of the Old Mutual insurance firm traded in Harare and London.
As the central bank rumors swirled last month, the premium for Harare shares over their London counterparts surged, meaning Zimbabweans need far more of their electronic dollars to buy the shares than someone in London using ordinary U.S. dollars.
Besides trying to get their hands on hard cash, Zimbabweans are also converting zollars into tangible assets such as cars or property, or piling into the stock market in the hope shares will hold value even if their bank balances are obliterated.
As a result, Zimbabwe&#8217;s main stock index, the ZSE Industrial <a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/markets/index?symbol=zw%21indzi">.INDZI</a>, has surged 77 percent in the last month to a record high of 433 this week. The index has tripled so far this year.
“I‘m investing in equity funds &#8211; hopefully that should give me some value for my money,” said Nkosi, the computer technician. “We don’t know what tomorrow holds.”
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Writing by Ed Cropley; editing by David Clarke
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In Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, hard currency just got a whole lot harder

South Africa Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba on Friday asked government pension fund Public Investment Corporation (PIC) to investigate concerns of irregularities at the asset manager to ensure transparency at the institutions.
The PIC has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after reports that the finance ministry had requested money from the pension fund to bail out struggling state firms. Gigaba has denied making such a request.
“We need to assure pension holders that those with political or economic power will not be allowed to unduly influence the PIC,” Gigaba said in a statement on Friday.
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Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by James Macharia
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South Africa’s FinMin Gigaba asks state pension fund to investigate concerns of irregularities

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 Police fired teargas at opposition activists in Kenya’s capital as protests mounted in cities on Friday calling for the sacking of election board officials involved in August’s cancelled presidential vote.
Crowds gathered in Nairobi, the western opposition stronghold of Kisumu and the port of Mombasa for the second time this week.
Kenya’s Supreme Court voided the Aug. 8 election citing irregularities without finding any individual at the election board responsible. [nL5N1M119T]
President Uhuru Kenyatta, who won the vote only to have his victory annulled, has accused the Supreme Court of bringing the country close to “judicial chaos”. Opposition leader Raila Odinga and his supporters have turned their ire on the election board for its role in the cancelled poll.
With three weeks to go until a scheduled re-run of the vote, politicians from both sides have traded insults and accusations, raising fears of further turmoil in the regional economic and transport hub.
The opposition is threatening to boycott the Oct. 26 re-run if election board officials are not removed and if parliament passes a proposed amendment to the election law that would prevent the Supreme Court from annulling the results again.
Earlier on Friday, the Nairobi county police commander said people would be allowed to protest, but anyone who tried to destroy property would “be dealt with firmly”.
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Reporting by George Obulutsa; Writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Alison Williams and Andrew Heavens
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Police teargas Kenyan vote protesters, crowds gather in cities

South African waste management company Interwaste (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=IWEJ.J">IWEJ.J</a>) fired KPMG as its auditor on Thursday, dealing another blow to the accounting firm ensnared in a scandal involving business friends of President Jacob Zuma.
Interwaste joins at least seven other clients including fund manager Sygnia (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SYGJ.J">SYGJ.J</a>) and broker Sasfin (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SFNJ.J">SFNJ.J</a>) to break ties with KPMG. It comes after KPMG’s own investigation found flaws in work it did for the national tax agency and the Gupta family, accused of using links with Zuma to win government contracts.
“The change in audit firm, which is effective immediately, was initiated by the company following the concerns recently raised regarding KPMG,” Interwaste said in a statement.
Interwaste, a Johannesburg-based company involved in the disposal and recycling of waste from mines and residential homes, has appointed Deloitte as its new auditor.
The decision came hours after KPMG South Africa’s chief executive told lawmakers the company would make sweeping changes to ensure the firm did not repeat “greatly disappointing” work it did for the three Gupta brothers.
Nhlamu Dlomu, who took up the top job in South Africa after most of the local board was sacked last month, said an announcement would be made in the coming days about an independent inquiry into its work at firms owned by the Guptas &#8211; Indian-born businessmen with close ties to Zuma.
“I have personally been greatly disappointed by how far we have fallen short of the standards we set ourselves,” Dlomu told parliament’s committee of public accounts.
“I am determined that these mistakes do not happen again, which is why we have already made a number of changes. I am leading other reforms,” she added.
<h3>HELD TO ACCOUNT</h3>
Dlomu said any person found by the investigation to have failed to do their job would be held accountable. She said the changes would also strengthen governance and ensure decision-making was more centralized.
KPMG is at risk of losing some its major financial clients with Barclays Africa (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BGAJ.J">BGAJ.J</a>), Old Mutual(<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=OML.L">OML.L</a>), Investec(<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=INLJ.J">INLJ.J</a>), Standard Bank (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBKJ.J">SBKJ.J</a>) and Nedbank (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NEDJ.J">NEDJ.J</a>) considering whether to drop it.
KPMG, whose local unit traces its roots to Johannesburg’s gold rush days in the late 19th century, is under investigation by South Africa’s Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors. Dlomu said it was cooperating with the probe and has handed over requested documents.
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Other clients to drop KPMG over the scandal are the African unit of German reinsurer Munich Re, energy investment firm Hulisani(<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=HULJ.J">HULJ.J</a>), the University of Witwatersrand, parliament and lobby group the Institute of Directors.
Several other global firms have faced problems due to their work for the Guptas including business consultancy McKinsey and public relations agency Bell Pottinger.
The Guptas and Zuma deny wrongdoing and say they are victims of a politically motivated witch-hunt. The Guptas and their companies have not been charged with any crime.
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Editing by Anna Willard and Keith Weir
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Scandal-hit KPMG South Africa vows reforms, loses another client

South Africa’s Eskom has asked consultancy firms McKinsey and Trillian to pay it back 1.6 billion rand ($117 million), saying that an internal inquiry had found that the state power utility’s decisions to make the payments were unlawful.
“The interim findings from Eskom investigations into the circumstances surrounding payments made to both the companies point to certain decisions by Eskom, and resultant payments, as being unlawful,” Eskom said on Thursday.
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The utility said in a statement it has written to both companies requesting their cooperation in returning the money.
McKinsey, the world’s largest management consultancy, said it was reasssured by initial findings of the Eskom inquiry that showed the consultancy did not authorise any payments to Trillian.
Trillian was not immediately available for comment.
A third of the money was paid to Trillian, a company at the time connected to the Guptas, a trio of Indian businessmen who South Africa’s anti-graft watchdog has alleged used their links with President Jacob Zuma to win government contracts.
The Guptas have denied any wrongdoing, saying they are pawns a plot against Zuma, who has also denied any wrongdoing.
McKinsey is under parliamentary investigation in South Africa for fraud over a $130 million contract to advise Eskom.
A U.S. risk management firm advised Eskom last year to withhold tens of millions of dollars in payments for advice from McKinsey, because the global consultancy’s “very unusual” payment model allowed it to charge fees in excess of market rates.
($1 = 13.6195 rand)
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Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Alexander Smith and Edmund Blair
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South Africa’s Eskom asks McKinsey, Trillian to return $117MN

South Africa’s central bank said on Friday it has not instructed banks on how to deal with KPMG after the auditing firm was entangled in a scandal involving business friends of President Jacob Zuma.
“The South African Reserve Bank would like to state categorically that it has not instructed banks on what steps they should, or should not take, with regards to their contracts with KPMG,” the bank said in a statement.
Sources told Reuters last week that the central bank had told top lenders they cannot fire KPMG because it might undermine financial stability.
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Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by James Macharia
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South Africa’s central bank says has not instructed banks on ties with KPMG

Hanne Kirstine Adriansen | Aarhus University
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The idea that knowledge is infused with power and politics may sound abstract, so let me offer an example from my own life to illustrate. I was invited to a dinner proceeding a conference in an African capital city. I had expected to meet all the other speakers. But it turned out to be only for the chosen few. I could not help wondering how we’d been selected. White faces outnumbered black ones, men outnumbered women – at a conference to discuss African universities’ future role.
It was an interesting example of the power and politics of knowledge. These are factors I believe should be addressed to ensure African universities and higher education can play a more powerful role in transforming our world and empowering women.
The UN says its 2030 Agenda, which is made up of 17 sustainable development goals, is aimed at “transforming our world”. Quality education and lifelong learning, along with gender equality and empowerment of women, feature in many of the goals.
Universities and higher education, however, receive little attention in this document. So it may seem odd to focus on higher education in relation to Agenda 2030 and women. But I’ve chosen this perspective because higher education institutions in general and universities in particular are important for achieving Agenda 2030’s goals.
Universities have two main objectives: to educate students and to produce knowledge. They play a major role in procuring the human and intellectual resources needed for fulfilling the various goals of Agenda 2030.
<h2>Power and politics of knowledge</h2>
There have been institutions of learning in Africa for more than 1000 years. But today the most common type of higher education has its rootsin colonial-era institutions.
Frantz Fanon, a Martinique-born Afro-French psychiatrist, philosopher and revolutionary, wrote about the colonisation of the mind some 50 years ago. He argued that colonised people tended to adopt their colonisers’ perspective. Independence in Africa did not really change this tendency, Fanon wrote.
African intellectuals have argued for many years that the continent’s universities and school systems in general reproduce(d) their colonial legacy. This happens, for instance, through curriculum and language. Benin’s Paulin Hountondji and Kenya’s Ali Mazrui are among those who have written about African scholars’ intellectual and epistemological dependency. Examples of this reliance can be seen in modern school books in parts of the continent.
It’s not for me as a European to judge whether Africa’s universities are still suffering from what Kenyan intellectual Ngũgĩ wa Thiong&#8217;o would call the colonisation of the mind.
However, I do know that knowledge production is never neutral. It is neither objective nor power free. African women’s narratives about their journeys in academia show how the power and politics of knowledge are intrinsically linked to gender. Race and history must also be considered. This means issues of colonialism, imperialism and dominance are never far away.
The narratives I have studied show that it is not always simple to determine who exercises power over whom and when. Zimbabwean researcher Bevlyn Sithole sees dominance in action when researchers take ownership over communities’ knowledge. She highlights the importance of co-producing knowledge:
<blockquote>Co-production of knowledge between scientists and communities is a prerequisite for research aiming at a more sustainable development path.</blockquote>
<h2>Marrying Agenda 2030 and local knowledge</h2>
This returns us to the question of Agenda 2030.
How can academics produce knowledge of local relevance and include the perspectives and cultures of the people in question? How can knowledge be built that promotes sustainable development and appreciates culture’s contribution to it, as called for in Agenda 2030’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals?
The debate about Africanisation of curriculum and knowledge production also relates to the discussion about universities’ role as local drivers of sustainable development.
The so-called global knowledge economy has placed increasing demandson universities to internationalise and compete beyond national borders.
Can a university be locally relevant, focusing its teaching and research on local sustainable development needs and also be involved in global competition with an increasing emphasis on standardisation? Transnational capacity-building projects are one way universities try to address both local and global commitments. I have participated in capacity-building projects myself.
It has been argued, though, that capacity-building projects and other types transnational collaboration can lead to dependency. Agenda 2030 is likely to result in more such projects, because this is where funding can be found.
It is imperative to knowledge production that academics continue to collaborate. But it must happen in parallel with the decolonialisation of knowledge and methodology. The question is how it can be done.
The first step is to pay attention to the apparent universality of knowledge. I would warn against moving towards a complete Africanisation of curriculum and knowledge production. The dilemma is that this may entail an unproductive essentialisation of the “African”: for example, who the “African” is, where the “African” lives, and what the “African” can study. And what is “African” knowledge, and who can produce it?
Academic institutions and individual academics should try to contextualise knowledge and pay attention to the difference between universal knowledge and dominant knowledge. Yet we should also acknowledge that without ideas about universality, universal human experiences and human rights, Agenda 2030 would never be realised.
<h2>Contextualising knowledge</h2>
African education will not reach its transformative potential through the mindless transfer of knowledge, theories and methods from other parts of the world. This will reproduce dependency.
Instead, empowerment of women and sustainable development require that more contextualised knowledge be produced. The power and politics of knowledge must be analysed. It is necessary to differentiate between dominant knowledge and universal knowledge and, through this process, decolonise the African academy.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in BUWA, a journal produced by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa.

The power and politics of knowledge: what African universities need to do

Shireen Hassim | University of the Witwatersrand
In 2007, barely a year after the man who went on to become South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, was acquitted on a charge of raping a young woman called “Khwezi” (the name given to Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo during her rape trial), gender activist Mmatshilo Motseipublished “The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court”. The book was an unsparing account of a society that allowed a prominent man to get away with acts of violence, of a criminal and justice system that was broken for the vast majority of those who were sexually abused, raped and tortured, and of a political system that had lost its compass.
Motsei was eminently qualified to write the book, as a survivor herself and as one of the pathbreaking group of activists who had begun the movement to end violence against women. Few read her book. Those that did were feminist activists and scholars who felt that she had given voice to their concerns, that she had released a collective howl from the gut.
Hardcore Zuma loyalists almost certainly did not read the book. Nevertheless they opened a new battlefront against Motsei, attacking her both publicly and privately.
Ten years later, broadcaster Redi Tlhabi has resurrected the story with her new book “Khwezi: The Remarkable Story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo”. This time the public response has been very different. Record-breaking audienceshave attended book launches. And radio conversations reveal a rapt public entirely consumed with the injustice done to Khwezi. The book sold out within weeks and is in reprint.
What has changed, many wonder? It is certainly not the story.
<h2>The story hasn’t changed</h2>
Kuzwayo’s story was first told in excoriating terms in 2006 by feminist academic Pumla Gqola. It was also told by Motsei and numerous academics analysing the violent condition of life for women and queer people in South Africa.
These accounts zeroed in on the shortcomings of the trial that allowed evidence that should not have been permissible, the social norms that denied women sexual desire and that demanded of women compliance with a patriarchal rendering of what constituted a rape-able person – certainly the child Khwezi, raped by at least one man in her community, was deemed to be consenting.
They exposed the almost complete inability of progressive organisations such as the African National Congress (ANC) and its tripartite allies, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and trade union federation Cosatu, to treat women and queer people as right-bearing members. All of these stories have been told, many times.
What’s different this time is that Tlhabi speaks into a South Africa that has changed. The pact of complicity that surrounded Zuma has broken. There are still those who are prepared to die for the “100% Zuluboy” as the T-shirts at the rape trial proclaimed. But they are no longer as powerful.
The tripartite alliance has fractured into innumerable feuding, chair-throwing, accusation-hurling bands of people without an ideological or moral centre. Zuma is now an acceptable target of vitriol. His endless Pyrrhic victories against those seeking to remove him from office have created a vast constituency of critics, not united by ideology, political affiliation or social identity but by a sense that something needs to change. It’s safe to hate on Zuma.
The moment does offer an opportunity, evident even to a jaded, cynical feminist. Tlhabi’s book has stepped into this political space with a clear-eyed argument about the small and everyday violations of women that make possible a culture of rape, “a war on women’s bodies”, to use Pumla Gqola’s terms.
<h2>Forthright style</h2>
Using her forthright style, and staking a reputation for honest and fair comment that was built over a long period as a host in talk radio, Tlhabi challenges South Africans to consider the violence that is normalised and invisible in human interactions. She invites people to consider everyday terms, she uncovers the assumptions behind legal terms, she shows readers how to read the discourses that underpin a rape culture.
In the trial, Zuma’s lawyers painstakingly presented Khwezi as a woman who was untrustworthy, inconsistent, hyper-sexualised and entirely to be dismissed. Tlhabi gives us Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo: a likeable, funny, garrulous, trusting woman, a loyal if exasperating friend and a caring daughter, someone who was loved by her friends and comrades.
Her family was the ANC, to be sure, but it was also a collective of feminist friends (old and young) who held her through the worst nightmares of the trial and subsequent re-exile. She shows us how one rape, one abuse, leads to another, that this violence is part of a never ending cycle.
Tlhabi is at pains simultaneously to honour the particular biography of Fezeka, while reminding readers that Fezeka is every woman. She does this well, mapping the single story against a contextual landscape of statistics and historical patterns of violence against women.
Fezeka died, tragically and unexpectedly, just a year before the book was published. Her death, too early, is a dramatic end to the personal story. But the publication of the book gives her a public life that, perhaps, she might have felt valorised the experiences that the trial so powerfully cast as lies.
The real lies, of course, are political. Fezeka was let down over and over again by a movement that she loved and trusted. Some leaders – such as Communist stalwart and Zuma critic, Ronnie Kasrils – come out of this sorry story well. Most, however, do not.
<h2>‘Burn the Bitch’</h2>
Throughout the trial, while Zuma played to the rabble of supporters outside the court, the ANC leadership watched in silence. It was silent when he sang his archetypal phallic and violent anthem “Awuleth’ Umshini wam’” (Bring me my machine gun) outside the court room, and silent when members of the ANC carried banners saying “Burn the Bitch”.
And, perhaps, the leaders who were not silent were the most shocking. The ANC Women’s League mobilised actively against Fezeka both in public and in private. They were the storm troopers of patriarchy.
In 2007, unity in the ANC was mobilised against truth and justice. Cosatu and SACP leaders and activists thought that the rape trial was a distraction from the “real” issue of “returning the ANC to the branches”. “One fool at a time,” to coin Fezeka’s favourite line, the ANC and its allies fell behind Zuma.
And no opposition political party offered meaningful support to Fezeka, happy perhaps to leave this dysfunctional family of the ANC to disintegrate.
<h2>What’s changed</h2>
South Africa has changed. In the wake of the trial, a new and assertive feminist movement seeded and grew. It began with the women’s rights organisation, “One in Nine”, formed expressly to support Fezeka, and has ballooned well beyond that.
Its daughters are everywhere &#8211; the four young women who held up banners during a Zuma speech at the Independent Electoral Commission in 2015, the queer black feminists on university campuses who are no longer prepared to tolerate violence in the name of unity, the artists and musicians and writers who are framing experiences in new ways. They too, are part of a new moment that makes possible a new conversation.
Yet. Yet. At least this reader, observing the hype surrounding the book, is still plagued by the question of who is listening, and what messages are being absorbed into South Africa’s political DNA. Will this book provoke the urgently needed attention to violence by the government, the police, the courts? Will people listening and reading ask themselves if they have enabled a culture of rape?
It isn’t just Jacob Zuma who stands accused of rape, after all.

Op-Ed: Why, a decade on, a new book on Zuma’s rape trial has finally hit home

This article was supplied to CNBC Africa by Standard Bank
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You’ve likely heard of business “going green.” From installing solar panels on rooftops, utilising recycling bins, and switching off lights after hours, there are a number of ways both employers and employees can adjust their behaviour to operate in an environmentally responsible way.
But that’s just one part of building a sustainable business. Along with environmental well-being, it’s also about social impact and economic viability. This could include skills training for employees, and improving the quality of life in the communities in which you operate in.
Sustainability at What Cost?
There’s often a misconception that sustainability initiatives are expensive and will erode profits. On the contrary, it has shown to be beneficial for business owners from the bottom-line up.
Using the example of Egyptian agri-business SEKEM, that used biodynamic agricultural methods to start Egypt’s first organic farm in the middle of the desert forty years ago, a Harvard Business Review article titled ‘Making Sustainability Profitable’ offers three approaches for companies to ensure their environmental efforts pay off financially:
<ul>
<li>Many, like Sekem, took a long-term view, investing in initially more-expensive methods of sustainable operation that eventually led to dramatically lower costs and higher yields.</li>
<li>Others have taken a ‘bootstrap’ approach to conservation: they started with small changes to their processes that generated substantial cost savings, which they then used to fund advanced technologies that made production even more efficient.</li>
<li>Some have spread their sustainability efforts to the operations of their customers and suppliers, in the process devising new business models that competitors find hard to emulate.</li>
</ul>
You don’t need to incur high costs upfront, but rather adopt a model that works with your available resources, and adapt it to your sector.
That’s exactly what AccorHotels set out to do when they launched their internal sustainability management system, dubbed Charter 21, which recommends over 60 actions hotels can take to reduce their environmental footprint.
The French hotel chain group that operates in over a dozen African countries, commissioned two independent studies to assess the financial return on a number of their sustainability initiatives. The first study focused on the corporate social responsibility expectations of the hotels’ B-to- B customers, while the second provided a statistical analysis of the influence of several sustainable development indicators on profitability and guest satisfaction. Both revealed that the more a hotel invests in initiatives that reduce their environmental footprint, the more positive its paybacks are, both in terms of (1) reducing costs of water and energy for example, and (2) Increasing revenues partly due to enhanced reputation and guest satisfaction.
Other key takeaways:
<ul>
<li>Sustainability should not be viewed as a cost to the business.</li>
<li>Highly visible sustainability initiatives can be a very effective way to differentiate a company in the minds of customers and strengthen customer relationships.</li>
<li>Formal programmes that include specific, measurable objectives and a framework for managing progress towards achieving them are critical to making sustainability a core part of doing business.</li>
</ul>
Another core part is getting the buy-in from staff members. One of the key actions of AccorHotels’ Charter 21 is training employees in environmentally friendly practices.
Fostering a Culture of Sustainability
By encouraging employees to follow sustainable practices, it could soon become a norm that has a lasting impact in the workplace and in their private homes. Think about something as simple as using energy-saving bulbs at office desk lamps, or utilising reusable glass instead of plastic cups at the water cooler. Consider the possible knock-on effect if this results in a conscious behavioural change where the employee now turns the household water geyser off when not in use, or ploughs biodegradable kitchen scraps back into the garden instead of disposing as waste.
It’s this way of sustainable thinking that lead a turtle conservationist at Cape Town’s Two Oceans Aquarium to start an eco-rooftop garden. Initially meant to feed the facilities’ green sea turtles, it soon evolved into a lush garden of waterwise indigenous plants and herbs that is shared among employees. Not a drop of water is wasted here, with the vegetation being nurtured by the condensation from nearby air conditioners. The sustainable rooftop garden now also functions as an oasis for employees during break time complete with recycled artwork, and a worm farm that feeds off lunch scraps which in turn becomes fertilizer that can be ploughed back into the garden.
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Nurturing Community-Based (Business) Partnerships
Sustainability relates to the future of your company and the broader community. Consider the impact of procuring goods and services from local businesses, or spreading your sustainability efforts to the behaviour of your suppliers and customers.
Kenya-based ICOSEED (Integrated Community Organisation for Sustainable Empowerment and Education for Development) have successfully nurtured a mutually-beneficial relationship with local farmers. Winner of the 2017 SWITCH Africa Green-SEED Awards, they buy banana stems from farmers, process it into balls of fibre, and then use them to produce (biodegradable) products such as bags and table mats. They even take it a step further by giving the by-product (slurry) back to the farmers to use for biogas or compost. ICOSEED factors in all three key tenets of sustainability in that they’ve accounted for environmental well-being by producing environmentally friendly products and promoting the use of slurry for compost and biogas digesters; social impact by providing job opportunities for stem transporters and extractors along with an alternative source of income for hundreds of farmers; and economic value.
The company now plans to Increase the number of farmers supplying banana stems from 400 to 9,000 by 2018, scale up the production capacity of banana fibre by buying new machinery, diversify the product range, and establish two new production sites in key banana growing areas.
ICOSEED has adopted a sustainability model that works with their available resources. They’re now able to reap the rewards by funding the advanced technologies that will increase their production efficiency, while also spreading their sustainability efforts to the operations of their suppliers. They encapsulate the ideal of a sustainable business, where environmental well-being, social impact and economic viability are obtained, demonstrating that sustainability indeed does make good business sense.

Why Sustainability Makes Good Business Sense

Nigeria’s financial crimes agency on Wednesday brushed off allegations by the wife of the country’s former president that it had conducted a “witch-hunt” against her.
Patience Jonathan, whose husband Goodluck Jonathan was the president of Africa’s most populous country from 2010 to 2015, accused the head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) of an “orchestrated plan” to tarnish her reputation and that of her husband.
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President Muhammadu Buhari took office in 2015 after defeating Goodluck Jonathan in elections during which he vowed to crack down on corruption. Buhari said state coffers were virtually empty when he assumed the presidency.
Last year, the EFCC froze four U.S. dollar bank accounts that the ex-president’s wife said she owned. Her spokesman said in September 2016 that the accounts in total contained around $10 million &#8211; a third of the sum reported in the Nigerian press.
A legal case is continuing in the commercial capital Lagos over the funds but she does not face criminal charges.
“The case is before the court where she (Patience Jonathan) has the liberty to state any claim,” an EFCC spokesman said.
In a statement signed by her media aide and dated Oct. 2, Jonathan’s wife accused the EFCC’s acting chairman of an “unjustified witch-hunt and media propaganda” against her and her family.
“It is either the EFCC is now led by people who cannot conduct proper investigations, or they are deliberately feeding the public with false information,” said the statement.
“We believe that she is being systematically persecuted and punished because of her unflinching support for her husband during the 2015 elections.”
A number of former government officials have faced criminal charges, which they have denied, since Buhari came to power. However, there have been no convictions.
The opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which was in power for 16 years prior to Buhari taking office, has accused the president of focusing on its members.
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Reporting by Camillus Eboh and Alexis Akwagyiram; editing by Mark Heinrich
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Nigeria anti-graft agency rejects ex-first lady’s “witch-hunt” accusation

South Africa’s business confidence index rose in September as merchandise import and export volumes increased, a survey showed on Thursday, after falling to its lowest in more than three decades in August.
The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (SACCI) monthly business confidence index (BCI) rose to 93.0 in September from 89.6 in August, which was the lowest level since the mid-1980s.
“Although the business climate improved on August 2017’s subdued business conditions, the slow growing economy still constrains business activity,” SACCI said.
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Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; Editing by Gareth Jones
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South Africa’s business confidence recovers in September

Hilton Worldwide (<a href="http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=HLT.N">HLT.N</a>) plans to spend $50 million over the next five years to renovate and rebrand 29 hotels in Africa, it said on Thursday, joining other chains keen to tap growing business and international travel on the continent.
One property will open in the Kenyan capital Nairobi by the end of this year and another in the Rwandan capital Kigali in 2018, it said in a statement.
There was 11 percent growth in Sub-Saharan African tourism in the past year, according to data from the U.N. World Tourism Organisation.
Hilton said the remaining additions to its 19 existing African properties would be operational within the next five years.
“The model of converting existing hotels into Hilton branded properties has proved highly successful in a variety of markets and we expect to see great opportunities to convert hotels to Hilton brands through this initiative,” said Patrick Fitzgibbon, Hilton’s senior vice president for development in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Earlier this week, Hyatt Hotels &amp; Resorts said it would open six new hotels on the continent by 2020.
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Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Mark Potter
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Hilton to add 29 hotels to its chain in Africa over five years

Edward Webster | University of the Witwatersrand
The goal of one united South African nation living prosperously under a constitutional democracy remains elusive. This is in spite of the constitution boldly declaring that
<blockquote>South Africa belongs to all who live in it, both black and white, united in our diversity.</blockquote>
The central issue raised by the struggle against racial injustice, colonialism and imperialism – what is referred to in South Africa as the National Question &#8211; reemerged dramatically three years ago. It started as a demand for the removal of the statue of arch imperialist and colonialist, Cecil John Rhodes, from a prominent position at the University of Cape Town. It rapidly grew into a powerful movement in support of decolonisation. The National Question, it appears, remains highly relevant and unresolved.
In a new book, The Unresolved National Question: left thought under apartheid a number of authors set out the multifaceted origins of the idea.
<h2>Political traditions</h2>
Four main contested political traditions have shaped this debate.
The first is the Marxist-Leninist tradition, which goes back to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and the debates between Lenin, Stalin and Manabendra Nath Roy of India.
At the centre of these debates was the idea of two distinct stages in the struggle for national liberation, a national democratic stage and then a socialist stage. This strategic approach was adopted by the Communist Party of South Africa &#8211; now the South African Communist Party (SACP), in 1928/1929. It later developed into the idea of South Africa as a colonialism of a special type.
The second is the Congress tradition, associated with the African National Congress (ANC) and its iconic leaders, Albert Luthuli, Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela. At the heart of this tradition is the idea of one non-racial nation. Historian Luli Callinicos shows how Mandela and Tambo steadily widened their concept of the nation to include all races.
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Professor Robbie van Niekerk, a South African expert on social policy, traces the roots of the ANC’s economic and social thought to the 1943 Bill of Rights of African Claims and the 1955 Freedom Charter. In these documents “the nation” can only be fully realised through the universal extension and provision of public goods by a democratic state. Or, as Luthuli put it, the new government should have as its objective the creation of a democratic welfare state with redistributive social policies in health, education and welfare.
The third is the Trotskyite tradition. This goes back to the thirties in the Western and Eastern Cape and is associated with the Unity Movement. This approach is developed in the book by the late Marxist historian and then activist Martin Leggasick. Leggasick and his colleagues were to form the Marxist Worker Tendency of the ANC developing Trotsky’s notion of the “permanent revolution”. Revolution, they argued, developed continuously and unevenly on a world scale, rather than proceeding through discrete chronological stages. Legassick was eventually expelled from the ANC.
Finally, there is the Africanist tradition identified with Robert Sobukweand the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC).
As political scientist Siphamandla Zondi makes clear, Africanism is a much broader tradition than the PAC. For the Africanists, the nation state is a product of Western modernity and colonialism. At the centre of the tradition is the notion of “epistemic disobedience”. The decolonisation of knowledge and its production are seen as a “rebellion against the neocolonised order of things”
<h2>Continuity and rupture</h2>
In the book, we discuss the debates that emerged after the banning of South Africa’s national liberation movements in 1960. We suggest that a process of continuity and rupture takes place. On the one hand, movements emerge that attempt to break with the past. These include:
<ul>
<li>the ethnic nationalism promoted by the apartheid government through its Bantustan policy,</li>
<li>the black consciousness movement associated with Steve Biko,</li>
<li>the emergence of a strong feminist movement,</li>
<li>the creation of a powerful workers’ movement with an emphasis on the primacy of the working class, and</li>
<li>a surprising outcome of the national democratic struggle &#8211; a “liberal” constitution.</li>
</ul>
But in spite of these new ideologies and movements, there is a great deal of continuity with past political traditions. Two examples illustrate this process of continuity and rupture.
The first one is the championing of ethnic nationalism and the endorsement of traditional Bantustan leaders after 1994.
We introduce the idea of the ethnic nation in the book through a chapter by Dunbar Moodie. He examines the debates that took place in the Afrikaner Broederbond. These show how liberal Afrikaner nationalist intellectuals, such as NP Van Wyk Louw, argued that Afrikaners cannot deny Africans what they claim for themselves, namely the right to self determination. Hence apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd envisioned the idea of the Bantustans culminating in a federation of “independent ethnic nations” in southern Africa.
The chiefs and tribal authorities that were created by apartheid were authoritarian, deeply undemocratic, and often corrupt. Yet they survived into the post-apartheid era.
The second example is the constitution and its Bill of Rights. There are those who believe that these rights, especially the socio-economic rights, such as the right to education and housing, provide the key to resolving the National Question.
Indeed, Jeremy Cronin and Alex Mashile, from the SACP, argue that under Thabo Mbeki the National Question was reduced to the deracialisation of monopoly capitalism. The goal of the national democratic revolution became the consolidation of a capitalist democracy by opening up South Africa to global markets and promoting a black capitalist class.
<h2>Resolving the National Question</h2>
What became clear in our conversations about the book that the National Question cannot be resolved solely through the country’s constitution. Much as it contains the potential for a far more radical transformative project than traditional liberalism, it cannot resolve the National Question.
The resolution of the National Question will require the resolution of what has been called the “social question”. This is a historic demand for the redistribution of wealth and the right of all citizens to education, health and welfare. Without addressing the legacy of land dispossession, economic exclusion, long term unemployment and racialised inequality, the National Question will remain unresolved.
The article is drawn from a recently published volume of research based essays titled The Unresolved National Question: left thought under apartheid. It was edited by Edward Webster and Karin Pampallis and published by Wits University Press.

Why the dream of a prosperous, united nation continues to elude South Africa

Weaknesses at KPMG South Africa are not systemic and reforms are underway to address mistakes made in work it carried out for business friends of President Jacob Zuma, the firm’s new local chief executive told parliament on Thursday.
KPMG sacked a number of South African executives last month after it found work undertaken for firms owned by the Gupta family &#8211; a trio of Indian-born businessmen with close ties to Zuma &#8211; “fell considerably short” of its standards.
DLOMU GREATLY DISAPPOINTED BY GUPTA WORK
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KPMG South Africa’s new chief executive Nhlamu Dlomu is “greatly disappointed” by the work it did for the tax agency and companies linked to friends of President Jacob Zuma, she told parliament on Thursday.
KMPG sacked a number of South African executives last month after it found work undertaken for firms owned by the Gupta family &#8211; a trio of Indian-born businessmen with close ties to Zuma &#8211; “fell considerably short” of its standards.
“I am determined that these mistakes do not happen again,” Dlomu said in a statement to lawmakers.
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