Believing your own Advertising

The Minister of Basic Education spent a lot of time and effort in promoting what her Department has done in the past year, leading any seasoned ANC watcher to understand that the real meat of her presentation still to come, the percentage of learners to pass the Matric examination, was almost certain to be worse than the worst of their expectations.  The excuses, that the number of ‘learners’ writing the examination was greater than it has ever been, and the fevered efforts to ‘save’ those who failed in a single grade for the third time, were no more than window-dressing to draw attention away from the appallingly bad results her Department has achieved, results that will scar many youngsters for the rest of their lives, and do much to damage what little of the South African economy that remains in operation after two decades of ANC bungling.  The stark fact is that the Department of Basic Education, despite having a huge budget at its disposal, has managed to allow, or possibly force, almost 30% of people who have given up as much as a quarter of their lives in an attempt to gain an education that will enable them to become useful, productive members of society.  The significantly better results obtained in the Western Cape, 84,7% passing against a national average of 70,7%, proves that the young people of the nation are capable of producing significantly better than is now being achieved.  The only difference between that Province and the rest of the country that means anything is that it is under the competent management of the DA, rather than the cadre-dominated incompetence of the rest of the country.  When the national average of the private schools is brought into the picture, at better than 90% passing, the true state of the inability of the ANC to provide the country with anything approaching an acceptable level of education is highlighted.  One can only wonder when the ANC voters, all of whom are adversely affected by this incompetence, will start to understand that loyalty to the myth that the ANC has built about itself is destructive, almost to the point of being suicidal.

Of course, all of this ignores the fact that the Matric examination passed by these ‘learners’ is at a much lower level than they could expect in most of the world.  What used to be accepted at face value by the Western world as an indicator of a degree of competence is now treated with suspicion.  Even the Bachelor degrees (those gained after study at a University for at least several years, not the Matric certificate now promoted by the Minister as a Bachelor degree) are treated with suspicion abroad, to the extent that they carry very little credibility in an employment situation.  And with good reason.  The Law Society, not many years ago, reported that Ll B graduates were no longer able to use language effectively!  The ‘increased’ pass rate boasted of by the Minister in years past has been bought at the cost of imposing a lower standard in the examinations.  This has hit South African business hard, and probably accounts for the fact that so many of those with new degrees are not employed – they are probably not capable of doing the work that a Matriculant would easily handle in the years before the ANC stamped its personality on the education system.  The ANC has worked hard to compensate for this inadequacy by imposing the BBEEE regulations, to ensure that a proportion of the ‘previously disadvantaged’ are given employment, no matter how limited their capability is to do a decent job.

The incompetence of the ANC to manage the economy of a once-sophisticated country has been demonstrated repeatedly, in the Eskom debacle, which has set back South African development by years, in the inability (unwillingness?) of the Police to stem the rising tide of crime that has threatened to drown the country, in the inability and demonstrated lack of desire of Parliament to hold the State President to the standards of conduct required by the Constitution, absolving him of any liability in the expenditure of R245 000 000 of State funds on his private home (remember the fatuous statement by Zuma that he was not aware that so much money was being spent on his private property?), in the lack of service by the Post Office (the Bryanston Post Office was closed three months ago, without any notification to renters of Post Office boxes, apart from a single notice in the window, put up a few days ago, saying that the persons expecting post could collect it at the new location, which was expected to ‘open soon’, and giving telephone numbers, neither of which are answered), in the Department of Trade and Industry’s inability, after many months warning, to respond to the American Government’s demand for the dropping of an import duty on chicken, failing which South Africa will be excluded from the benefits of AGOA (the deadline given by President Obama was 30 December 2015, but, of course, we saw fit not to respond in time – the ANC Government appears to be totally incapable of acting on time, even preemptively!), with the probable result that many agricultural and other exports to the USA will become subject to import duties in that country, at a time when South Africa needs every dollar of export sales it can achieve, in the Department of Homeland Affairs’ disastrous insistence on a new visa regime, requiring every applicant for a visa to attend personally at the Consulate (there are two in the entire area of China!), resulting in a loss of foreign tourism to the country at a critical time for the economy, in the arrogant and undemocratic, if not unconstitutional behavior of President Zuma in replacing an internationally-acceptable Minister of Finance with an unknown backbencher (unknown except for his disastrous tenure as Mayor, ending in his house being burnt down by desperate citizens – perhaps not a bad example of how to deal with his boss!), and then backtracking a few days later by reappointing Pravin Gordhan, who was himself sacked a couple of years earlier, presumably for failing to rubber-stamp Zuma’s corruption.  The examples are legion.  It is hard to think of one Government Department that has not committed some act of flagrant stupidity or incompetence, and if one adds corruption on a large scale to the list of qualities not desired in a Government Department or body, the only place to look for a righteous man is in the Western Cape.

Listening to the lengthy explanation of the Minister of Basic Education about the excuses for her Department’s failures, excuses claimed as achievements, one was struck by the fact that she dwelt so extensively on the care and attention given to the ‘progressed learners’, those who were simply advanced to the next grade up after failing for two successive years.  She was proud to state that some 6 000 of those ‘progressed learners’ had passed Matric in 2015, and she promised increased care and attention to them.  It is hard to understand how 6 000 children (probably young adults by then, who have spent at least 15 years clogging up the educational system) can merit so much attention when the remaining three-quarters of a million matriculants, representing the apex of a pyramid of at least ten million(!) struggling pupils in the school system, are struggling under the grossly ineffective educational system!  Surely the place to start any corrective action is where the bulk of the problems lie? 

That seems to be typical of the ANC policies – find a group that commands a lot of publicity at grass-roots level, and lavish money on it.  The publicity, hopefully, will last long enough to carry the Government over to the next crisis, such as the Marikana shootings, which have now resulted in the construction of R110 million of houses.  Fortunately, the more outspoken of those subject to this sort of publicity-directed action are starting to speak out, questioning the basis on which those few chosen to receive such largesse at the expense of the cash-strapped State have been selected.  The answer is probably that they offer Zuma and his cohorts the best photo opportunities!  One would be forgiven for believing that the criteria for action by the ANC cover first the question of which projects can most easily be skimmed for corrupt purposes, then which will be the best to secure the ANC an election victory (as confirmed by the Deputy State President, Cyril Ramaphosa, when he stated that the most important thing for the ANC is to secure an election victory!)  Any other consideration, such as the good of the country, or the creation of an economic structure in which job-creating investors will feel at home, are of secondary importance.

These chickens will come home to roost, and the signs are increasingly strong that the roosting will take place much sooner than the ANC would wish.  Until then, the flight of Capital, the loss of brainpower and experience, the deterrence of investment, the loss of foreign markets, will all continue, at an increasing pace.