(IRIN) – Ethembeni Enrichment Centre, a school in a run-down part of Port Elizabeth, the largest city in Eastern Cape, South Africa’s poorest province, has achieved a remarkable 100 percent pass rate for a dozen years. But officials from the education department, sent on a fact-finding mission to learn from the school’s success, are running more than two hours late. Irritation is discernible in the voice of school principal Elbe Malherbe – punctuality is one of the few rules that must be abided by teachers and pupils alike. “When … [it's time to] start, you start,” Malherbe told IRIN in clipped replies during a telephone interview. Then, in a sudden change of tone, she said: “I wish you could see through the phone what I am seeing.” It is the first day of applications for the 2011 school year and a woman in traditional Xhosa attire is filling out a form for her child. Ethembeni only accepts pupils whose mother tongue is Xhosa, which generally translates into poor and black. The annual school fees are R3,800 (US$506), excluding stationery. Many poor parents make sacrifices to keep their children in school, but Malherbe believes in affordable – not free – education, because it is an “investment by pupils, parents and teachers [that] everyone must buy into”. The language of instruction is English. Apart from not brooking tardiness, the school’s other non-negotiables are that class attendance is compulsory, home work must be completed, pupils must clean the classrooms and grounds every day, and parents must be involved in their child’s education. “The classrooms were barely furnished. The driveway to the school was a rocky, narrow passage … The school hall was packed with a few hundred eager faces, the children virtually sitting on top of one another on the floor … I saw struggle, hunger and poverty etched into each child’s countenance,” educationist and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State, Jonathan Jansen, recounted after a recent visit. “For any child to pass under these difficult circumstances, it would take a miracle,” he wrote. Yet nearly two-thirds of the 70 pupils in Ethembeni’s 2009 matric, or final year, class achieved a university-entrance pass, while other financially comparable schools hung on at the bottom of the academic achievement ladder. We’re not Einsteins here – we teach. It’s nice to be part of a winning team. With nothing, you can still be successful if the heart is right and the spirit is right The school has no library, no science laboratory, although there is a computer that gives the 400 pupils internet access. The government pays for 11 of the 17 teachers; the salary shortfall of the six other teachers has to come out of the school fees. The compactness of the school is part of its success. “In schools of a thousand [students], how can you know all the parents? If I have a problem with a child, or they have not done their homework, I phone their parents and they are here in five minutes,” Malherbe said. “We’re not Einsteins here – we teach. It’s nice to be part of a winning team. With nothing, you can still be successful if the heart is right and the spirit is right.” Ethembeni, which means “place of hope”, swims against the prevailing national current in education, where standards have been steadily declining – in contrast to school fees. More money, less education The government’s answer to the malaise is to throw more money into the education system; in the 2010/11 financial year it budgeted R165 billion (US$8.6 billion) for the sector, a 17 percent above inflation increase from the previous year. The matric, or final high school exam, is used as a benchmark for the state of education in South Africa. Of the 550,227 pupils who wrote their final examinations in 2009, 61 percent passed, and 19.9 percent of those achieved the required marks to qualify for tertiary education. Marius Roodt, an education analyst at the South African Institute of Race Relations, a policy and research organization, told IRIN the current teaching standard was akin to Bantu education – the system imposed by apartheid prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, who said blacks should only be educated to be “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. In 2004 the pass rate was 71 percent, and it has been on a steady downward trend since then “It is very unlikely that there will be an increase in matric pass rates. In 2004 the pass rate was 71 percent, and it has been on a steady downward trend since then, with each year reflecting a decrease. This is a trend that is likely to continue into the future, at least in terms of the quality of the qualification,” Roodt said. He attributed the decline to the political influence of the 240,000-member South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), the country’s largest teacher union and an affiliate of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), which is an alliance partner of the ruling African National Congress. “An example was when the union encouraged members to campaign for President Jacob Zuma prior to last year’s general election, instead of teaching,” he said. “Although teachers should be allowed to be unionized – like any profession in any democracy – the influence of SADTU is malignant and not benign. It is possible that SADTU has the interest of only its members at heart, and not that of the pupils in South Africa’s schools,” Roodt commented. “The reintroduction of the ’school inspectors’ system, which would greatly improve the quality of the country’s teaching, has been resisted by SADTU for some time. The union has also opposed systems to monitor teacher performance,” he said. School inspectors Zuma announced in his 2010 State of the Nation address that a system of oversight would be instituted to monitor schools and ensure that teachers were in class to teach. SADTU spokesperson Nomusa Cembi told IRIN that the union objected to the reintroduction of school inspectors, and did “not know where the president got the information that teachers are only in class for three hours, or so, a day.” Photo: IRIN Pupils at a Cape Town primary school Zuma first made the claim in a speech to school principals in KwaZulu-Natal Province, who gathered at the Durban International Convention Centre in August 2009. “We need to confront certain realities. For example, teachers in former whites-only schools teach in class for an average of 6.5 hours a day, while teachers in schools in disadvantaged communities teach for around 3.5 hours a day. The result is that the outcomes are unequal.” A recent survey published by Tokiso, an independent labour dispute resolution body, found that the teachers’ union was responsible for 42 percent of all work days lost through industrial action between 1995 and 2009. Cembi said this gave the impression that SADTU members “strike at the drop of a hat”. Tanya Venter, CEO of Tokiso, told a local newspaper, Business Day, that SADTU’s participation in the 2007 public sector strike was the main reason for the union recording such a high rate of absenteeism. A recent World Bank working paper: No More Cutting Class? Reducing Teacher Absence and Providing Incentives for Performance, found “each additional 5 percent increase in teacher absence reduces learning by 4 to 8 percent of a year’s learning for the typical student.” Cembi said responsibility for the deterioration of education should be shared among learners, teachers, the education department and the government. She was unable to provide any data on whether or not a SADTU teacher had ever been dismissed for poor performance. Zimbabwe’s loss, South Africa’s gain Government has been widely blamed for creating a critical shortage of teachers trained in science and mathematics after it closed teacher training colleges in 2000 and put the onus on universities to produce educators. The government is now considering re-opening the teacher training colleges. We are eager to recruit more foreign teachers because of the shortages One solution has been to recruit teachers from Zimbabwe. Dickson Masemola, head of education in Limpopo Province, which borders Zimbabwe, said his department had hired 600 Zimbabwean educators to teach maths, science and commercial subjects, resulting in a turnaround in academic performance. Mbali Thusi, a spokesman for the education department of KwaZulu-Natal, said a number of foreign teachers, especially in maths and science, were working in the province, and more would be hired because of the shortage of qualified teachers in these fields. “The problem is more severe in rural schools – most maths and science teachers prefer to work in urban areas,” Thusi said. “But we are eager to recruit more foreign teachers because of the shortages … We have sent requesting documents to the national department to give us a go-ahead. We want to recruit hundreds of these teachers to plug the holes in our system.” The head of the KwaZulu-Natal School Governing Bodies Association, Reginald Cheliza, told IRIN: “We would like our children to succeed in school, but it is clear that this is not happening. Some of the problems start at school level, others at provincial or even national level.”

(IRIN) – Madagascar’s political deadlock masks an increasingly fragile humanitarian situation that will keep deteriorating if no solution to the ongoing crisis is found.

A year after former President Marc Ravalomanana was forced from power by current President Andry Rajoelina and part of the army, the country is still without an internationally recognized government.

The African Union (AU) is set to announce what action it will take against Rajoelina and his administration, known as the Higher Transitional Authority (HAT), should they fail to implement agreed power-sharing measures – signed in 2009 with the leaders of Madagascar’s three other main political parties – by March 17, exactly a year after the coup-style change of leadership.

Amid the political turmoil and economic decline, aid organizations are worried about a worsening humanitarian situation and diminishing capacity to respond to emergencies on the disaster-prone island – in the most recent calamity, tropical storm Hubert struck Madagascar’s east coast on 10 March, killing at least 36 people and leaving some 37,000 homeless.

Dramatic cuts in public spending by a government struggling to deal with the combined economic impacts of a domestic political crisis and the global financial crisis has meant that basic commitments in sectors like health and education cannot be met.

“The one thing that … [everyone] should be able to agree upon is that the longer the crisis drags on, the worse the economic situation becomes for the Malagasy people,” said John Uniack Davis, Madagascar country director of CARE International, which works to reduce poverty.

“What has been difficult over the last year is that food security issues in the south have become more severe, and we have seen tropical storms and flooding affect some areas. As a result, we are seeing signs of declining livelihoods, but it is hard for outsiders to understand these various distinct and recurrent humanitarian crises and separate them from the political situation,” he told IRIN.

Economic hardship

It’s been a tough year. The World Bank noted in its February Programme Update that “the existing political situation and the global financial crisis are exacting a heavy toll on Madagascar’s economy, leading to a decline in economic growth and job losses.”

Falling demand for Madagascar’s main export products, including vanilla, cloves, coffee and shrimps, has reflected the downturn in global trade. As a direct result of the political crisis, international donors cut non-essential humanitarian aid, which previously accounted for up 70 percent of government spending, the International Monetary Fund noted.

The World Bank put job losses at 228,000, mainly in urban areas and largely as a result of a sharp decline in tourism and the suspension of a preferential trade agreement with the US, on which Madagascar’s textile industry had relied heavily. Up to 50,000 jobs are at risk as textile factories that can no longer afford to export to the US start closing.

According to the Bank, economic growth in Madagascar collapsed to just 0.6 percent in 2009, from 7 percent in 2008. The figures suggest that public investment is down by around 30 percent, construction by 40 percent, imports by 22 percent, and energy consumption by 15 percent.

Tax collection was down about a quarter in 2009, and a February brief by the Bank’s Lead Madagascar economist concluded that “authorities need to get more out of each dollar they spend. The local economy has certainly been in recession since the second quarter of 2009 and perspectives are even more sombre for 2010.”

Social hardship

Nearly 70 percent of Malagasy live below the poverty line, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). “In this context … ensuring the basic rights of the population remains crucial,” UNICEF said in a report released in February. “The situation presents a risk of increasing vulnerability levels, particularly of children and women.” 

With social investment estimated to have shrunk by around US$200 million, the corresponding cut in the health budget has brought the provision of basic services into question, in particular common inoculations like measles, tetanus, polio and BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin - a vaccine against tuberculosis), up to half of which is paid for by the government.

“Our priority now is to monitor child vulnerability and to respond accordingly, taking into consideration the erosion of essential services for children,” Bruno Maes, head of UNICEF Madagascar, told IRIN. The agency projects that expenditure on routine vaccinations will double in 2010 to plug the gap in government funding and ensure that children receive routine inoculations in 2010.

They have not abandoned the Malagasy population … who have already paid a high price for political instability in the past

Continued support

Despite some donor disengagement the international community has remained remarkably supportive said Benoit Kalasa, acting Resident Coordinator for the UN system in Madagascar. “They have not abandoned the Malagasy population … who have already paid a high price for political instability in the past.”

The World Bank, Madagascar’s largest donor, has processed no fund withdrawal requests since 17 March 2009, but “with a view to minimizing adverse impact on the lives of poor Malagasy citizens”, the Bank had resumed disbursements for critical project components with a “direct bearing on human well-being”, such as nutrition, HIV/AIDS and food security, the Bank said in its February statement.

USAID, another large donor, halted “development” aid but increased “humanitarian” aid. Richard Marcus, Director of the International Studies Programme at California State University in the US, who has just returned from Madagascar, noted that “very few donors have pulled out” completely.

Besides the money, it was also important that donors stayed “because it is relatively easy to ramp up funding if conditions allow when there is still an operating country office … it can take years before new funding initiatives can be negotiated and the infrastructure for funding can be established,” Marcus told IRIN.

Still, the reduction in project spending by donors is being felt, particularly in social sectors like education and healthcare, and “that pressure will increase dramatically in 2010,” Marcus warned.

“The current government is surely under financial pressure”, he said, and without external support from donors “It will be increasingly difficult to meet public salary demands. That is a priority in Madagascar, as civil servants are well organized and have a history of leading social action, particularly in the capital.”

Breaking the cycle

Resolving Madagascar’s political crisis is a long-term project that will take complex political reform and education. Since the beginning of the crisis the international community has taken the winding path of reconciliation between the island’s current and three former presidents. An International Contact Group has been formed to broker dialogue between the parties.

“There were several factors that sparked the current crisis: first among them was poor governance, characterized by a collision between public and private interests [under former president Ravalomanana],” said Guy Ratrimoarivony, director of the Centre for Diplomatic and Strategic Studies, based in the capital, Antananarivo.

“This helped spark popular discontent at a time when Madagascar was also suffering from the global economic crisis. Rajoelina was a catalyst, the person that came to represent the opposition.” He suggested that political dialogue should include national discussion of issues as complex as federalism and decentralisation.

Photo: Christina Corbett/IRIN

2009 was marked by political demonstrations

“To avoid a repeat crisis, I believe the civil society should play a role, and that it is necessary to completely restructure the republic. We need to start from the base, to see what people want and what they attach value to,” said Ratrimoarivony, who believes that Madagascar needs a new constitution to lay the foundation of a more stable state.

However, some observers say the strength of the civil society movement in Madagascar has historically been weakened by political bias. “Civil society is not independent, and successive governments have worked only with those groups that support them,” Hanitra Rafolisy, president of the National Union of Human Rights, a platform for rights groups, told IRIN.

“The number of people out of work rises every day, the number of children not in school rises every day, and every day the security situation deteriorates,” she commented.

Ratrimoarivony said finding a sustainable solution to Madagascar’s seemingly chronic political instability could take many years. “Education is fundamental; we need education and time. This may take one or two generations, but we must start now to change the mentality of young people.”

Marcus pointed out that “Every president since independence has manipulated the constitution to suit his needs. The populace appears, if anything, sickened by leadership, and perceive the problem as a battle between leaders from which they suffer, but of which they are not a part.”

ZimEye -If ZANU-PF  insists on its demand for the Movement for Democratic Change(MDC) to denounce sanctions imposed on its officials by the international community, MDC will call for their (sanctions) replacement with international arrest warrants  for all perpetrators of political violence, an MDC official has said.

In an exclusive interview with ZimEye on Sunday MDC Director of Security Kisimusi Ndhlamini said his party was going to call for the arrests of perpetrators of political violence if ZANU-PF continues to pressure his party to denounce sanctions.

ZANU-PF youths early this month marched in the city centre and gave MDC up to 24 March as an ultimatum for the party to engage the west in the lifting of sanctions which were imposed on its senior officials.

“As a response to that call we have decided to embark on a world-wide campaign demanding that those who committed crimes against human rights be given warrants of arrest and tried in the international court of justice.

“Sanctions were put as a result of human rights abuses. We have complained that those who committed such crimes be arrested and nothing has happened.

“We are saying ZANU-PF should respect the laws of the land in dealing with issues. The issue of sanctions is in the GPA and will be dealt with by the principals in the government not by supporters of MDC, whom ZANU-PF is threatening. We are worried because they are moving around threatening our party members with the June 27 2008 atrocities if sanctions are not lifted by 24 March.

“We know that they want to lure us into their traps of violence and I want to say we won’t fall into that trap. Instead we go legal if they want to do anything that threatens us,”said Ndhlamini

More than 200 MDC supporters were killed in 2008 by state sponsored terrorists. The perpetrators who include soldiers and state security agents are still freely walking in the streets despite the MDC’s calls for their arrests.

Civic organizations who were the most victims of the 2008 terror have produced a number of documents exposing human rights abuses that occurred during that time.

A recent report of that nature was launched last week by Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition titled ‘Cries from Goromonzi: Inside Zimbabwe’s Torture Chambers’.

ZANU-PF accuses MDC of calling for sanctions which resulted in more than 200 of its members having their international assets being frozen. MDC rejects that allegation arguing that the sanctions were a reaction by the west to human and property rights abuses that occurred in 2000.(ZimEye, Zimbabwe)

NEWZIMBABWE – Switzerland on Saturday extended travel restrictions on senior Zimbabwean officials as part of efforts by Western countries to force President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party to agree to political reforms in the country.

The Swiss Foreign Ministry said it was renewing a set of sanctions slapped on senior officials of Mugabe’s previous regime in March 2002.

“The measures include a prohibition on supply of military equipment and materials which might be used for internal repression and targeted financial sanctions such as freezing of assets owned by the 160-plus individuals in Switzerland,” the ministry said in a statement.

Individuals on the sanctions list are also prohibited from entering Switzerland or transit through the country.

The EU as well as the United States, Australia and New Zealand have maintained visa and financial sanctions against Mugabe’s government since 2002.

Both the EU and the US last month renewed the sanctions against the ZANU PF officials and some companies linked to the party insisting more needed to be done to facilitate reforms in the country.

Mugabe has demanded the complete removal of the sanctions, blaming them for the country’s near-economic collapse over the last decade.

The veteran leader has also used the sanctions to slow down implementation of a power-sharing pact he signed with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara in 2008.

Mugabe accuses Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party of not doing enough to get their Western allies to remove the sanctions.

His Zanu PF party has since vowed not to make any further concessions to its coalition partners in ongoing inter-party talks until the sanctions are removed.

NEWZIMBABWE – PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has said he will run in next year’s general elections but called for the deployment of peacekeepers to prevent a repeat of the violence which characterised the disputed 2008 polls. Addressing party supporters in Chitungwiza on Sunday Tsvangirai said international peacekeepers were needed to guarantee a free and fair election. “We agreed that within the next 18-24 months we (would) go for elections. So far we have gone through the first year and we are left with only a few months. We don’t want a violent election but an environment for a free and fair election. “We are not afraid of going for an election. I hear reports about violence, about houses being burnt. We have to stop the violence before the election. Let’s bring in foreign observers. “Why don’t we have a peace keeping force so that everyone (can) exercise their democratic rights? Why don’t we have a peacekeeping force so that we have peace and stability before we conduct an election? If we can’t do it ourselves lets use SADC and AU to create that environment for a free and fair election,” the MDC-T leader said.

Read more – http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-1974-PM+says+ready+for+elections/news.aspx

ZimEye – President Robert Mugabe has revealed that Zimbabweans might go for elections next year when the two-year period for the shaky government ends.

Mugabe said he would contest in the elections. He said the fresh elections would be held even if a new constitution is not in place.

Mugabe said he would contest in the elections if given the chance by Zanu-PF, a party that gave him a five-year term at the December congress.

“Yes I will contest the elections if Zanu-PF says yes. I will go for the elections,” said Mugabe.

Mugabe told editors of various media  organisations at Zimbabwe House Thursday that it was highly likely that elections will be held in 2011.

The polls will be harmonized just like the shamed 2008 March elections but Mugabe hinted that local government elections would be suspended.

Read more – http://www.zimeye.org/?p=14351

It has been a difficult few weeks for the Tories – the Ashcroft affair, talk of splits, erratic poll numbers and doubts over their economic policy. But at last they can enjoy some good news: no lesser global statesman than Robert Mugabe has offered David Cameron his endorsement.

“We have always related better with the British through the Conservatives than Labour,” Zimbabwe’s president said today. “Conservatives are bold, [Tony] Blair and [Gordon] Brown run away when they see me, but not these fools, they know how to relate to others.”

Mugabe fell out with the British government when, under his land reforms, he encouraged Zimbabweans to seize the farms of British descendants. After Mugabe was accused of rigging the 2002 election, Blair imposed sanctions on the Zimbabwean leader and some of his associates, banning their travel ban and freezing bank accounts.

Today Brown restated the British government’s position telling the visiting South African president Jacob Zuma, involved in brokering Zimbabwe’s unity accord, that the sanctions would not be lifted#

Read more – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/04/robert-mugabe-david-cameron-conservatives

  NEWZIMBABWE – PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has urged western countries to remove “all sanctions” on Zimbabwe, in the same week that the United States extended sanctions by another year.

Tsvangirai is growingly frustrated by western countries’ publicly-expressed doubts over the power sharing government he formed with President Robert Mugabe in February last year.

After meeting Soren Pind, Denmark’s Minister for Development Cooperation, on Monday, Tsvangirai said countries wishing to help Zimbabwe should do so through the unity government.

“If you want to support the people of Zimbabwe you have to support the coalition government,” Tsvangirai said in comments carried by state television.

Read more – http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-1945-PM+wants+all+sanctions+lifted/news.aspx

(IRIN) – Botswana is adopting a two-pronged approach to tackle abuse of its immigration system by increasing the sophistication of travel documents, visas and work permits, and putting more boots on the ground to apprehend undocumented foreign nationals.

Zimbabweans escaping their country’s continuing economic, political and social malaise – despite the formation of a unity government more than a year ago – have favoured neighbouring Botswana, one of southern Africa’s most prosperous nations.

Letso Mpho, acting spokesman for Botswana’s Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs, told IRIN that workplace inspections would be “intensified” from 1 March 2010, and special immigration assistants would accompany police and home affairs officials to help identify undocumented foreign nationals.

The government has also begun introducing electronic online passports (e-passports), and the computerization of work and residence permits for all foreign nationals. The current passport is to be phased out in 2011.

“The ongoing e-passport project will improve the security features of the Botswana passport. The document is machine-readable – it will be difficult to fake or even tamper with it,” Mpho said.

Britain, the former colonial power, has issued strong warnings to Botswana to improve its passport security systems or risk its citizens having to apply for visas to visit the UK.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88270

IRIN – South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ordered the Department of Home Affairs on 24 February 2010 to immediately release an Ethiopian asylum seeker from “unlawful” detention after he had languished in repatriation centres for over nine months.

Costs were also awarded against the Minister of Home Affairs and the Director-General of the Department in an order that Gina Snyman, of the Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) Refugee and Migrant Rights Project, termed a “scathing rebuke”.

LHR requested that the identity of the man not be disclosed for fear of retribution should he be deported to Ethiopia. He is a political activist of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a separatist organization “established in 1973 by Oromo nationalists to lead the national liberation struggle of the Oromo people against the Abyssinian colonial rule,” according to its website.

The man was first arrested in Port Elizabeth, on the south coast of the country, for being an “illegal foreigner” and then “detained at the Lindela Repatriation Centre for more than 275 days”, the LHR said in a statement.

The Lindela centre is in Gauteng Province in the north of the country, about 40km from Johannesburg, and is the main departure point for deporting and repatriating undocumented foreign nationals from South Africa.

“The court found that home affairs had no basis to detain the asylum seeker. Highlighting the clear illegality of the detention, the court suggested that the department either did not understand the law, or had chosen to ignore it,” LHR said.

Read more – http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88250