/ 18 January 2011

Letters to the Editor: January 14 2011

No As for M&G‘s report card
I possibly speak for many when I say the Mail & Guardian‘s Cabinet report card (December 23 2010) is an excellent example of how good branding and packaging can sustain consumer interest in a product, notwithstanding its poor quality and its failure to live up to its brand promise.

The report card’s performance assessment lacks research methodology, is clueless about monitoring and evaluation approaches and is simply a montage of journalists’ perceptions, some basic knowledge (sometimes ignorance) and unquestioning bits of what newspapers reported throughout the year.

The performance assessment of the department of rural development and land reform is an example of this, but the same basic mistakes litter all the so-called analyses of the performance of all ministers, the deputy president and the president.

Performance assessment must be based on agreed targets and standards, otherwise such an assessment inevitably depends on irrelevant variables, such as the relationship between the assessor and the assessed, the assessor’s level of expertise (or ignorance) of the subject, or the assessor’s inclination towards populism.

The report card’s starting point should have been the departments’ strategic plans and annual reports for a meaningful comparative performance analysis and, on the basis of this, pronounce on achievements or failures. Strategic plans are “performance agreements” and the basis on which departments are allocated resources for delivery. The M&G failed dismally on this basic understanding.

That the report card lacks any research, which is paramount for it to maintain a moral high ground, is evident in its lack of acknowledgement that within three months of its establishment, the new department of rural development and land reform had developed a clear vision, mission and strategies for the development of rural areas.

The M&G declares that the minister, Gugile Nkwinti, “has not given this increasingly important portfolio the kind of dynamic leadership it needs” but it should know (it has access to this information) and publish that the ministry, under the stewardship of Nkwinti, committed itself to resuscitating all land reform projects transferred to beneficiaries since 1994 that are currently not productive.

Our commitment to ensuring that the so-called “failed land reform projects” are a thing of the past is clearly articulated in our strategic plan. To achieve this, the department established the recapitalisation and development programme, with a clear strategy, implementation plan and a model to resuscitate and ensure their self sustainability.

R900-million was set aside for this important intervention and already in the Free State this new programme is recapitalising and developing 11 land reform projects. Examples can be given about other provinces. Does this not constitute dynamic leadership?

The unfortunate outcome of the M&G‘s shoddy work is that many South Africans who trust this publication are being misled. Is this a case of the media’s failure in self-regulation? Is this a justification for the need for a media tribunal? South Africa needs a free media, including the M&G, to sustain our democracy. But, please, do your work diligently before you can pronounce resolutely that others should resign. — Eddie Mohoebi, head of communication, department of rural development and land reform

The recent increase in the 2010 matric pass rate to 67,8% has exposed your Cabinet report card as a non-scientific tool that you use against the ministers you dislike. The E symbol given to Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga has exposed you as deriving pleasure from undermining the good work of some ministers. You blame Motshekga (“Take off the blinkers, Angie”, September 17 2010) even for matters that are far from her terrain.

I am still perplexed as to why your editorial blamed the minister for hosting the 2010 Fifa World Cup even though the school holidays remained within the outlined policy directives and there were no school days lost during the 2010 academic year.

Why do you fault Motshekga for the teachers’ strike when these matters are handled by a different ministry? To drag her name into these matters baffles me unless the agenda is to satisfy your desire to lambast ministers to prove your superiority.

To set the record straight, Motshekga has never been quiet on matters that relate to education. We launched the education recovery plan long before the beginning of the Easter holidays and extra classes were accelerated during the winter holidays with more than 700 000 learners across the country attending these classes before the World Cup.

The minister visited all the provinces to meet school principals of underperforming schools, supported by the deputy minister, Enver Surty, as we positioned the department to confront non-performance head on.

We received outstanding approval both locally and internationally, obviously excluding the M&G, when we reviewed the curriculum. All major role players, except the M&G, applauded us for our position on outcomes-based education. I thought this was proof of leadership on the side of Motshekga.

The department of basic education has in the past five years received an unqualified audit from the auditor general. So did the Gauteng department of education when Motshekga was there. Gauteng’s impressive matric performance confirms that Motshekga left a solid base in that province.

I know the M&G will not withdraw the grudging, emotional E symbol it awarded Motshekga or change its mind whatever the circumstances of whatever she does, but I hope you will treat her fairly. — Panyaza Lesufi, office of the minister of basic education, Pretoria

I am beginning to understand what is wrong with your Cabinet report card (apart from the fundamentally trivialising concept and the reactionary political values it incorporates). You award President Jacob Zuma a D, which is fair enough.

Then, however, you award Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe a B. Obviously, the deputy president plays a major role in the policy and administrative failures that characterised Zuma’s administration.

I admit that Motlanthe is a vastly superior human being and a much preferable politician than Zuma, but it should also be acknowledged that essentially Motlanthe has been the Invisible Man of the Cabinet in 2010. How can grading him so differently from his immediate boss be justified?

There are many similar anomalies. In basic education Motshekga gets an E, presumably because the education system has not improved in the past year. This is arguably a valid assessment (although in that case what is Zuma doing with a D?). But, in contrast, the higher education minister, Blade Nzimande, gets a C.

The higher education system has also not improved in the past year — some of the spheres over which Nzimande presides, such as the Setas, are in a worse state than anything Motshekga can be blamed for. It seems clear that these ministers are not being judged on their actual performance, but on something else.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan gets an A, which cannot be justified by the fiscal perils or the preposterous proposals over which he presides. Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi also gets an A, despite the disastrous state of public healthcare, which will undoubtedly be rendered worse by the national health insurance scheme he supports. Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies gets only a C, although he has done no more harm than the other two.

Basically, the report card is not meaningful because generally it does not address the real issues as much as the efficacy of a minister’s spin. It is also excessively kind to the subjects of examination, providing some of the deadbeats, dingbats and mugwumps who infest the Cabinet with undeserved credibility.

It’s almost as if someone told the M&G to go soft on Zuma’s Cabinet because the Cabinet’s mismanagement happens to produce the results some rich and powerful people were seeking. But, of course, that would be a preposterous conspiracy theory, né? — Mathew Blatchford, University of Fort Hare

And now for the good news …
The M&G is right to publish its Good News supplement alongside its exposés of corruption and lawlessness. Many among the former ruling white minority treat each revelation of the rulers’ wrongdoing as proof of South Africa’s imminent slide into dictatorship and kleptocracy.

But in eight months of reading the New York Times, not a fortnight went by without a report of the arrest or conviction for corruption of United States congressmen, senators, provincial legislators, mayors, police chiefs, prison chiefs, public servants, and even the impeachment of judges.

In short, these remain problems after two centuries of democracy. South Africa is now a normal Western democracy. Transparency International gauges it as less corrupt than, say, Italy, Greece or Latvia.

Eternal vigilance always remains the price of freedom. South Africa faces no apocalypse. Constant exposure of incompetence and corruption is simply part of the job description of the official opposition. — Keith Gottschalk, Claremont, Cape Town

The National RAPS (Repetitive Afro-Pessimism Syndrome) Research Institute would like to object most strongly to last week’s M&G Good News section.

The NRRI investigates one of South Africa’s most pernicious diseases and considers such a once-off section in your newspaper a threat to public health.

Most South Africans suffer from RAPS of one type or another. Good news offered and then suddenly withdrawn in the following edition of a newspaper leaves RAPS patients bewildered and vulnerable to a virulent intensification of their disease.

Many sufferers of this little-known illness are in denial. Public figures have yet to come out and declare that they are infected. Denial is made easier to sustain when the media briefly and intermittently features the achievements of ordinary people and organisations that are not corrupt, violent and grossly inefficient.

The NRRI believes investigative news­papers should publish only bad news so RAPS sufferers are induced in time to declare their disease. Alternatively, such papers should publish in every issue a well-researched and humorous mixture of the bad and good as befits a holistic and healthy human response to adversity.

Studies (yet to be completed) show that only the vigorous publication of the latter, week after week, will ease the worst psychosomatic symptoms of the disease.

These symptoms include debilitating private despair, demoralising intergender and intercolour cynicism, the destruction of socially responsible spirituality, incessant material accumulation, widespread emigration and, in the cases of terminal RAPS, violent crime.

An attack of RAPS can spread through a community in a matter of hours, transmitted orally by the story of a hijacking or by a newspaper report of the firing or assassination of a whistle-blower.

Yes, your newspaper must continue its brave attacks on maladministration and corruption. It should also strengthen the forces of resistance to the septic ulcers in political, business and public service by vigorously reporting on ordinary civil society organisations, entrepreneurs, faith groups and individuals who are making a healthy difference.

Who knows, you may even decide one day that one of the best inoculations against the spread of RAPS is the publication of a beautiful ­painting, poem or prayer. — Chris Mann, RAPS-afflicted professor of poetry, Rhodes

Building Bric by Bric
There can be no significant or sweeter victory for South Africa than to have shed the numbing weight of being part of a continent that has consistently darkened every one of its sparkling stars.

Likewise, there can be no greater validation of that phenomenon than to be invited as an equal partner by the Bric nations. Emerging markets, unlike their European Union counterparts, are markets of promise and potential and it is more important to appreciate and encourage their proven record of consistent growth and strong fundamentals than to let them choke prematurely on specific targets.

Yes, South Africa is incomparable in most respects to even the least of the Bric members, Russia, but there can be no doubt in our minds that over the past 17 years, with the greater political promise supplied by its transformative leaders and institutions, building arguably the strongest economy and political institutions in the world, consistently outperforming even the best countries in annual economic growth, that if there is any emerging market that is ready to lead, or play a larger role in the global body politic, it is South Africa.

This is the most obvious significance of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s invitation to President Jacob Zuma to attend the next Bric meeting.
It seems too many that it may turn out to be a permanent arrangement.

The profound effect joining such an elite global club will have on South Africa’s domestic market is immeasurable. For more than a third of the world’s emerging population to have the confidence it must have in our goods and services and our ability to be a profitable haven for investment beats whatever fear there may be about assumed or imagined manipulation. — Yonela Diko, Bellevue, Johannesburg