DR ANDRE HEFER|

As one of the largest institutions in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, Nelson Mandela University is on a water emergency and sustainability drive to address the looming Day Zero crisis.

The projections are that the four Summerstrand campuses and the Bird Street Campus in Central could be without water from the end of September 2021 or earlier.

Certain areas in the metro could be subjected to water outages as early as July 2021.

At great but necessary cost to Mandela University, the institutional water management and risk mitigation plan has been accelerated. The plans, upscaled from June last year, are well into the implementation phase.

These plans are predominantly focused on the Summerstrand campuses (Ocean Sciences, North, South and Second Avenue) as these are situated in an area classified as a red zone for municipal water supply.

At full capacity, the university’s total water usage across all its campuses is 1.5 megalitres or 1.5-million litres per day during peak periods. Up to 70% of this usage is on the South Campus.

During this Covid-19 period, there are 18,000 students and approximately 2,500 staff members on the North and South campuses. This includes 3,500 students living on campus residences.

The residences are 97% full as many of the students who live in circumstances that are not conducive to online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic, applied to return to campus.

READ: Unflushed toilets threaten children’s health at Langa High School

The university is doing everything it can to ensure that students and staff will continue to enjoy a supply of water come Day Zero.

A water emergency management team comprising water scientists and technical support staff, that works closely with the municipal disaster management command centre and the Business Chamber water task team has been constituted.

Emergency management measures are being implemented along with a comprehensive water awareness campaign to bring our students and staff on board and ensure they actively assist in reducing water consumption on campus and curtail any wasting of water.

In anticipation of the progressive and drastic reduction of supply, a three-prong water emergency management strategy has been implemented on the campuses since last month.

The strategy, which includes the use of technology, source diversification and user adaptation solutions, is intended not only to mitigate negative impacts of the current drought but also advance the ongoing institutional sustainability drive.

The technical team is working hard to increase the storage capacity of critical buildings and residences that do not have emergency water reserves. Most buildings already have some storage tanks and an additional 95 x 5,000l water tanks have been purchased to be installed at critical areas across our campuses.

These efforts build on the 36 meters and electronic readers already installed at student residences on the North, South and the 2nd Avenue campuses. Three bulk meters were also installed on South Campus, as well as electronic remote readers. An additional 58 meters for all other South Campus buildings are currently being installed.

Also being explored is the installation of flow restrictors on the taps while also replacing the flushing mechanisms of toilets to a cistern-less system using flush valves. These valves are expensive to install but are very hard-wearing and long-lasting. They flush directly from the water supply, using up to half the water of a cistern system. By mid-August 150 flush valves would have been installed on the South Campus.

READ: Day Zero: Sadtu accuses Premier Helen Zille of delaying water plan announcement

The sport fields historically accounted for about 20% of total water use on the Summerstrand campuses. The university is now buying water (at R2.20 per kl as opposed to R17 per kl for potable municipal water) for its sport fields and gardens from the Cape Recife Waste Water Treatment Works which generates quality return effluent (RE) water to a treatment standard that is safe for irrigation, which if not used would go into the ocean.

Some 1.7Ml of RE water per day can be extracted and stored in a recently built 1.3Ml holding dam.

The new residences will use alternative water sources for flushing toilets and urinals. Two existing residences are already using RE and two more will do so by year end.

RE is a massive solution for universities, big businesses and operations in the Metro and beyond, as toilet flushing accounts for approximately one-third of all water usage per day. It’s criminal to use potable water for this purpose.

Two boreholes linked to the North Campus and Sanlam Residence Village residences, have been drilled. They are achieving a good yield of 80,000-100,000 litres per day. The university is exploring adding boreholes on Missionvale and Second Avenue Campuses.

However, with approximately 150 boreholes drilled over the past two years across the metro, institutions and residences need to be mindful of the negative impact boreholes can have on groundwater reserves.

It is generally accepted that user adaptation is one of the highest impacts and cheapest approaches, and the university has significantly stepped up its water awareness campaign on campus and among students and staff.

The awareness campaign includes close consultation with students on the proposed emergency water management solutions. Every single member of the university community needs to play their part since if the institution runs out of water, students and staff would have to return and stay home. Needless to say, this would be disastrous for the academic project.

Dr Andre Hefer is a Sustainability Engineer at the Nelson Mandela University.

NYAKALLO TEFU|

Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande said he is concerned that the lootings and burning of shopping malls and centers will affect the price of food which will impact students.

Nzimande was speaking at Soshanguve Crossing in Pretoria this week as part of governments clean-up operations.

There has been unrest in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal where residents have been looting shopping malls and centers.

“Of course, students are part of the community, I am very much concerned about the threat of food security for instance, that is being posed by the malls that have been destroyed,” said Nzimande.

Students across the country are currently not attending class following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement that all schooling activity be stopped as the country stays on alert level 4.

The president’s decision was based on how the number of Covid-19 cases in the country continue rising as the country has entered the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday the President addressed the nation regarding the unrest that has been happening in both provinces, calling for calm.

“We are called upon, wherever we may be, to remain calm, to exercise restraint, and to resist any attempts to incite violence, create panic or fuel divisions among us,”  said Ramaphosa.

The president said people should rather join those individuals and communities who are working with the police to prevent looting, and those members of the public who have provided tip-offs and information about instances of criminality.

The shopping mall Nzimande visited is one of the biggest malls in Gauteng and employs over 1300 workers and some students from surrounding schools either work there or shop for food there.

“People would have lost jobs or would be unable to shop for food if the mall was looted so we thank the Soshanguve community,” said Nzimande.

The Minister said however, in KwaZulu Natal, things are not the same.

“In places like eThekwini and Pietermaritzburg students are going hungry like other members of the community,” said Nzimande.

The Minister said what is worse is that the prices of things like bread have gone up and there are people who are exploiting the fact that there is a shortage.

“We are glad that there have not been any reports of damaged university or residence buildings during the unrests in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal,” said Nzimande.

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) on Wednesday announced that it has officially vaccinated over 500 000 people in the education sector across the country.

This is only 80% of teachers the national department planned to initially inoculate and does not include the extra 200 000 more people for whom the department requested an extension in order to add them to its vaccination programme.

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said last week that the extension became necessary when additional doses for basic education personnel became available.

“The extension will enable the sector to vaccinate more people but also to mop up where some sites experienced some technical challenges resulting in delays,” said Motshekga at the time.

READ: Teacher vaccination programme extended

Things became even worse for those in the education sector wishing to get their jabs when some in the KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng province vaccination sites became affected by ongoing riots.

However, the department of health assuaged concerns of those in the education sector and said their appointments will be automatically rescheduled for those unable to be inoculated.

““Anyone who had been scheduled to be vaccinated at sites in districts or areas that are affected by the unrest are advised to defer their vaccination,” said National Health Department Spokesperson, Popo Maja.

Some teacher unions have expressed doubts at the statistics provided by the department while others said they hope more than 80% of the 582 000 teachers were vaccinated.

National Professional Teachers’ Organization of South Africa (Naptosa)’s Basil Manuel said Naptosa sincerely hope that is more than 80% of education staff were vaccinated. “We know there was a bit of a rush on centres but we are very happy with the outcome,” he said.

The Education Union of South Africa (EUSA) said it is dissatisfied with how the department of health and the department of basic education handled the entire pandemic.

EUSA’s Spokesperson Kabelo Mahlobongwane said South Africa needs to hop onto getting learners to be educated from home because the pandemic is here to stay.

“We have come to a point where we accept the pandemic to be an endemic, the department should have already rolled out how education can happen without having to go to school,” said Mahlobongwane.

READ: DBE minister addresses vaccine hesitancy

He added that the union was still concerned that the vaccines were still not safe.

Mahlobongwane said some teachers who have been receiving the vaccine have “mysteriously passed away”.

“I have seen reports of teachers who were healthy and young passing away after taking the vaccine. At this stage we don’t know if it is the vaccine but it is shocking to us that this is happening,” said Mahlobongwane.

Motshekga said those who were not able to get vaccinated during the drive should try and get vaccinated before schools open on 26 July.

Extra reporting by Nyakallo Tefu.

The social devastation of mass unemployment renders South Africa a non-viable society for millions. Something must give.

Unemployment in the United States peaked at 24.9% during the Great Depression. On the eve of Adolf Hitler’s ascension to power in 1933, unemployment in Germany was at 24%. The protests that launched the Arab Spring in 2011 were ascribed, in part, to what the International Labour Organization called an “extremely high youth unemployment rate of 23.4%”.

In Gaza, the unemployment rate was 43.1% at the end of last year. We know what Gaza is. It is a ghetto formed by violent dispossession and sustained with violent repression. It is walled and surveilled. Its residents are subject to routine organised humiliation. There are organised ideological attempts to expel them from the count of the human race. Their protests are met with ruthless and spectacular violence.

In a 2009 essay on Gaza, John Berger, a writer for the ages, borrowed two lines from Kurdish poet Bejan Matur: “A place weeping enters our sleep / a place weeping enters our sleep and never leaves.”

In South Africa, unemployment is at 42.3%. The rate for young people is 74.7%. The scale of this social devastation is extraordinary in global terms. A 2019 survey placed the youth unemployment rate in the country, then calculated at 57.47%, as the worst in the world – a position it has held since 2017.

Millions of young people find that the world does not extend them any kind of welcome. They are, in the words of poet Lesego Rampolokeng, “frustrated hoisted then dropped against the rocks of promise”.

READ: Ramaphosa has no plausible strategy for reducing youth unemployment

Millions of people endure blocked lives, passing time in a stasis marked by tightening circles of shame, failure, fear and despair. Some start to sleep most of the day. Some turn to transactional forms of religion, offering submission in the hope of reward. Some succumb to the temptation to dull their pain with cheap heroin. Some take what they can from who they can, how they can. Some, often supported by the grace of family, friends and community, manage to find a way to hold on to enough hope to keep going.

People rendered as waste

The weight of what all this means for these people and their families, the colossal squandering of their gifts and possibilities, are not taken as a crisis for our state, the people that govern it or most of our elite public sphere.

Lives are rendered as waste, voices as noise rather than speech, protests as traffic issues or crime. People are told that their suffering is a matter of personal failure, their attempts to cope with their situation consequent to moral dissolution. They can be murdered by the state during a protest or an eviction without consequence.

It is unsurprising that the demand to be recognised as human is often central to the language of popular protest. It is telling that the phrase “service delivery protests” is relentlessly imposed on much more complex phenomena by those whose unconscious investment in organised dehumanisation is such that they simply cannot recognise that the plainly expressed yearnings of the oppressed often extend far beyond aspirations for the basic means to sustain bare life.

It is not uncommon for thousands of people to apply for jobs that offer drudgery, exploitation and exhaustion for meagre rewards. People have died in stampedes for these kinds of jobs.

New forms of work are often precarious, and often organised with the aim of ensuring that employers can avoid the obligations imposed by generations of trade union organisation and struggle. The unions operate on the terrain of constant crisis, gearing up to oppose austerity in the state and fighting a long, losing battle to retain jobs as deindustrialisation escalates.

Exclusion from the count of the human

Neither democracy nor the NGOs calling themselves ‘civil society’ or the public sphere are really taken to include the people as a whole. Millions of people just don’t count as people. Weeping enters their sleep. It comes to sit in their bones. It comes to structure their sense of themselves, their place in their families and their understanding of the world.

We know what Gaza is. But do we understand what South Africa is?

READ: Youth unemployment: Is the solution a change in mindset?

South Africa is a chunk of territory, its borders drawn by an invading force, its people violently conquered, enslaved, dispossessed of their land, wealth and autonomy, contained in ghettos and forced into forms of labour – domestic, agricultural and industrial – structured as racial servitude. Violence built a system of racial appropriation, exploitation and exclusion, and violence sustained it.

The sequence of popular organisation and struggle that began in Durban in the early 1970s moved into the Soweto revolt and then the growing power of the trade union movement. The urban insurrection that followed in the 1980s, often organised by or in the name of the United Democratic Front, raised the possibility of radical democracy, popular power and deep structural transformation.

But an alliance between contending elites, backed by imperialism, was able to take the initiative in the early 1990s and follow the broad outlines of the standard path towards liberal democracy developed at the end of the Cold War. The people were thanked for their service, given rights on paper and sent home.

The ANC in power moved swiftly to co-opt or dissolve grassroots organisations, while union leaders were brought into the new circuits of state, corporate and party power. It was able to begin to make progress towards the deracialisation of the middle class and elites through enabling legislation and other forms of regulation. Later on, a new class of politically connected elites became wealthy – sometimes massively wealthy – by appropriating public funds. Impoverishment and inequality worsened. 

Repression

When new social movements like the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign and the Landless People’s Movement emerged at the turn of the century, they were met with paranoia and repression. When popular protest, usually organised through road blockades marked out with burning tyres, began to become a ubiquitous backdrop to everyday life from 2004, protesters were murdered by the police at a steady clip. 

When a movement, Abahlali baseMjondolo, emerged from these protests, it was met with slander, assault, arrest, torture and murder. When workers on the platinum mines struck outside of the authority of a co-opted union in 2012, they were massacred.

The ANC was committed to opening access to elite spaces, but it showed no commitment to fundamentally transforming society in the interests of the majority. The question of who has access to the fortified nodes of wealth was, and remains, intensely contested. The question of what happens to the people locked out remains largely ignored, apart from empty and often cynical rhetorical gestures.

READ: South Africa’s youth unemployment crisis – a ticking time bomb

Where there have been advances, such as the expansion of the grants system or the antiretroviral rollout, they were not aimed at achieving anything beyond sustaining bare life. RDP houses were smaller and more poorly constructed than the township houses built under apartheid, and often extended rather than contested the logic of colonial spatial planning.

A non-viable society

There is no commitment to the flourishing of the majority, let alone to a fundamental shift in political and economic power. 

As grants come in, the money is taken to the supermarkets, to white capital. The state has not even bothered to undertake a project as basic as serious urban land reform and support for small-scale farming cooperatives and markets that would allow impoverished people to grow their own food and sell it to each other.

Across space and time, very high rates of unemployment, especially among young people, have led to major social upheaval, sometimes taking progressive forms and sometimes marked by an attraction to authoritarianism and a will to scapegoat vulnerable minorities. South Africa is not a viable society for a large proportion of the people who live here, and if history is a reliable guide to the future, something will have to give.

The question is what gives – and what comes next? Will an authoritarian figure bent on displacing the crisis onto migrants step into the breach? Will our politics throw up more of the sort of crude chauvinists who took the recent by-elections in Eldorado Park? Will we have to endure our own Trump or Bolsonaro? 

Will there be a long stasis in which the impoverished majority is governed with escalating violence as the better-off take what they can before getting out? Or will there be new forms of democratic popular power able to make some progress towards bending the state to their will, disciplining capital and insisting that every life be counted as a life?

None of these possibilities are foreclosed, and there are many more. But what is certain is that most of our people are young and urban, and most of them are without work. No social force will be able to decisively shape our future without the participation or sanction of these people.

This article was first published by New Frame.

ONYINYE NWANERI| 

This World Youth Skills Day, let us commit to galvanising a skills revolution that creates a more independent, agile and empowered workforce which can adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of the workplace. Let us reimagine the working environment and what it means to be employed and economically active. The days of the traditional school-to-industry pipeline are behind us, and learning is no longer a finite journey that ends with employment. It is rather an odyssey that has to continue throughout one’s career.

Improving the quality of African graduates entering the workforce is as important as keeping existing workforces up-to-date with the skills requirements of organisations. Innovative practices such as reverse mentorship programs in which junior and senior workers exchange their skills, knowledge and understanding are already challenging old ideas about skills acquisition and work experience.

Work experience requirements in traditional organisations remain a major gatekeeper for graduates wanting to use their skills to participate in the economy. Cultivating work experience should also form part of the higher education and training experience, skills training should be an integral part of any organisation’s daily operations.

In the post-pandemic ethos of the 21st century, we are no-longer required to only focus on traditional forms of employment and economic activity. Current students and those of the future have a myriad of options available to them, outside of traditional employment, especially as Covid-19 has normalised the idea of remote working and fully virtual workspaces.

This is the era where Africa should be producing more consultants, freelancers and entrepreneurs rather than focusing on providing existing organisations with employees. So as we move to optimise the skills for the digital age, we should also be empowering young people to get the most of those skills within and outside the confines of traditional employment.

This is a charge that needs to be taken up in higher education programs. Universities, colleges, TVET colleges and training/skills development organisations need to create well-rounded and independent graduates who are not dependent on the traditional school-to-industry pipeline. This could also open up young African graduates to a whole world of employment and work opportunities outside of Africa as well, making young African graduates better positioned to take part in the global economy.

According to a November 2020 report: Mapping of Digital and ICT roles demand in South Africa commissioned by Harambee, many South African organisations do not have a clear understanding of their current and future digital skills requirements. This is further exacerbated by archaic and disparate viewpoints of the functions and roles of human resources (HR), IT and operations executives in highly digitised and technology-enabled work environments.

One of the key challenges for South African employers highlighted in the report is the dire shortage of digital and ICT skills and a lack of available digital talent pipelines.

Post-Pandemic skills demand

According to Linkedin’s Top Trending Jobs data analysis in the first six months of 2021, ICT related skills are still the most sought after by employers, followed by skills in finance, sales and education. The high unemployment rate in the country is not just a product of an ailing economy, but also a higher education and skills development system that is not producing graduates which match the particular skills supply and demand situation in the country. But this alone, won’t solve the discrepancy between the needs of organisations and the growing unemployment rate in the country.

A recent report by the International Labour Organisation highlights the growing role of informal employment among highly skilled individuals in challenging and redefining the role of skilled labour in developing economies. This highlights the need for creating highly skilled African graduates who can compete in this space as part of combating unemployment and inequality.

According to the ILO report which focused on Brics countries, the informal economy is seeing an influx of high –skilled qualified youths, mostly women, engaged as workers in the rapidly growing platform economy, but without proper labour contracts and social protection coverage. Collaborative efforts to regulate this growing sect of informal employment could greatly improve its potential as an economic game changer in Africa.

As the report’s recommendations suggest, there is a case to be made for countries to undertake a systematic review of how each country supports informal work and enterprises using methods best suited for that country’s economic landscape. We believe this should begin at the level of higher education and skills training, where syllabi can be adapted to include exposure to industry in more meaningful and innovative ways.

World Youth Skills Day 2021 is themed around adapting technical and vocational skills providers for the digitalised post-pandemic era. This year, we are also celebrating the creativity and resilience of youth in times of rapid change and strife.

Afrika Tikkun Services calls upon all organisations and institutions concerned with the development of young people to collaborate in these efforts and bring together the unwavering resilience and creativity of young people with the unlimited resource pool which can be created by a collective effort to invest in the potential of young skilled African graduates.

One cannot overstate the importance and power of a skilled young person in disadvantaged communities the world over. These are the future employers, leaders and planners who will eventually transform developing countries into thriving economies.

Onyinye Nwaneri is CEO Afrika Tikkun Services, reimagines the future with an employed African youth.

NYAKALLO TEFU|

The Department of Health said on Tuesday that anyone who cannot get their vaccination due to the ongoing protests in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal can schedule it for another day.

This is because of violent protests in both provinces where citizens are looting shops, damaging public property and closing roads.

The Department of Basic Education last week announced that the vaccination drive for educators across the country would be extended to Wednesday, 14 July.

“The extension will enable the sector to vaccinate more people but also to mop up where some sites experienced some technical challenges resulting in delays,” said Minister Angie Motshekga.

The vaccination drive for educators started on 23 June 2021.

READ: Teacher vaccination programme extended

The minister said in the past few days, they have seen an increase in the number of educators wanting to be vaccinated.

The Department of Health said the vaccination drive of educators will not be affected currently due to the protests happening.

“Anyone who had been scheduled to be vaccinated at sites in districts or areas that are affected by the unrest are advised to defer their vaccination,” said National Health Department Spokesperson, Popo Maja.

Maja said if it is not clear whether an area has been affected, the public is advised to contact the vaccination site to which they have been scheduled before proceeding to the site for the administration of vaccines.

“The Department will publicise a list of affected areas and sites as soon as it is available,” said Maja.

Adding that the Electronic Vaccine Data System will automatically reschedule appointments for those unable to attend. Maja said the system is programmed to rescheduled up to two missed appointments.

Minister Motshekga said they have been monitoring vaccination sites across the country.

“We did so because we appreciate the fact that we were prioritised and we really wanted everybody who qualifies to be vaccinated,” said Motshekga.

READ: DBE minister addresses vaccine hesitancy

The department of health said some pharmacies and medical centres have been looted and stock has been stolen.

“The public is warned not to buy any medicines offered for sale by anyone other than registered medical practitioners, pharmacies or hospitals,” said Maja.

Wednesday 14 July is the last day for teachers across the country to receive their vaccine.

“The extension of the programme will also allow those who had missed the opportunity to get jabs initially to be vaccinated,” said Motshekga.

So far, the number of teachers vaccinated stands at 437388, out of 582 564 educators and staff who are yet to be vaccinated.

When the vaccination drive commenced for educators, 300 000 doses were allocated to be administered over a period of 10-days.

More vaccines were then delivered to the country as 582 000 educators were to be vaccinated.

The Department of Basic Education (DBE) has called on all teachers in the sector to participate in the National Teaching Awards happening later this year.

The awards were established in 2000 to recognise, celebrate and acknowledge the strides made by teachers to ensure that learners are supported in order to progress from grade to grade.

The competition is open to all teachers in the public schooling sector registered in terms of the South African Schools Act.

The awards are aimed at motivating teachers to continue the selfless endeavours they make for the benefit of the country.

“The work of teachers have now been further complicated by the emergence of the Coronavirus which has disrupted the schooling sector in a manner never seen before,” said DBE Spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga.

Mhlanga said as a result of the extra-ordinary efforts made by teachers under extreme conditions the department has introduced new awards to pay homage to individuals who have demonstrated commitment, dedication, and sacrifice during crisis situations.

To this end new categories have been added and they are the National Best Teacher Award, S/Hero Award and Learner Award.

He said other categories are Lifetime Achievement Award, National Learner Award, Excellence in Maths teaching, Grade R teaching, Special Needs, Primary school teaching and Secondary School teaching etc.

The closing date for entries is 31 July 2021.

Adding that because the awards will be conducted during a period when the country is confronted with the Covid-19 pandemic, the department will have to conduct activities in adherence to the Covid-19 protocols.

PETER RULE|

The teacher stands in front of her Grade 4 class. The 45 nine and ten-year olds are crammed together at desks, huddled over shared books. Some are sitting on the floor. “Now, class, read from the top of the page,” the teacher says. They comply in a slow sing-song drawl.

“Stop,” says the teacher. “It is not ‘Wed-nes-day’, you say it ‘Wensday’. It is what?” “Wensday,” the class responds. “Again.” “Wensday.” The reading resumes, the teacher frequently stopping to correct her pupils’ pronunciation.

Sometimes the children read aloud in groups. At other times, she calls a child to come to the front and read aloud. Not once does she ask a question about what the story means. Nor do the children discuss or write about what they have read.

This is the typical approach to how reading is taught in most South African primary schools. Reading is largely understood as an oral performance. In our research, my colleague Sandra Land and I describe this as “oratorical reading”. The emphasis is on reading aloud, fluency, accuracy and correct pronunciation. There is very little emphasis on reading comprehension and actually making sense of the written word. If you were to stop the children and ask them what the story is about, many would look at you blankly.

Pronunciation, accuracy and fluency are important in reading. But they have no value without comprehension. Countries around the world are paying increasing attention to reading comprehension, as indicated by improving results in international literacy tests.

The problem with the oratorical reading approach is evident in the results of the recent Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2016 tests. PIRLS’ purpose is to assess reading comprehension and to monitor trends in literacy at five-year intervals. Countries participate voluntarily. Learners write the test in the language of learning and teaching used in Grades 1 to 3 in their school.

The tests revealed that 78% of grade 4 pupils in South Africa fell below the lowest level on the PIRLS scale: meaning, in effect, that they cannot understand what they’re reading. There was some improvement from learners writing in Sesotho, isiNdebele, Xitsonga, Tshivenda and Sepedi from a very low base in 2011, but no overall improvement in South Africa’s performance.

South Africa was last out of 50 countries surveyed. It came in just behind Egypt and Morocco. The Russian Federation came first followed by Singapore, Hong Kong and Ireland.

South Africa also performs poorly in the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality surveys. These show that in reading and numeracy South Africa is lagging behind much poorer African countries such as Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Our research on reading at a rural primary school and an adult centre in the KwaZulu-Natal province showed that the oratorical approach to teaching reading was dominant both in the school and adult classes. Both adults and children were not learning to read with meaning, and so were not achieving literacy despite attending classes. Our findings confirmed the results of other South African studies.

So where does the problem lie and how can South Africa address it?

Rote learning

To understand the situation more deeply we interviewed teachers and explored how they had learned to read. We found that they teach as they were taught; an indication that oratorical reading is a cycle repeated from one generation to the next unless it is broken.

Teachers told us they assessed pupils’ reading ability just as they were assessed by their teachers: by having them read aloud. Marks were allocated for individual oral reading performance. This was based not on understanding the passage, but on fluency and pronunciation. There was no written assessment of reading comprehension. Reading was about memorising sounds and decoding words.

This suggests that the problem in learners’ performance lies in how reading is taught in most South African schools. Learners are taught to read aloud and pronounce correctly, but not to understand the written word and make sense of it for themselves. Another consequence is that the pleasure and joy of discovery and meaning-making are divorced from school reading.

New approaches

There are no quick fixes, but there certainly are slow and sure ones. The first is to get reading education in pre-service teacher training right. A report by JET Education Services, an independent non-profit organisation that works to improve education, found that universities don’t give enough attention to reading pedagogies.

Universities need to teach reading as a process that involves decoding and understanding text in its context, not just as a “mechanical skill”. Countries such as India, with its great diversity and disadvantaged populations, have begun to address the need for this change in how reading is taught.

The second “fix” concerns in-service training. The Department of Basic Education has a crucial role to play here. Teachers need to reflect on how they themselves were taught to read and to understand the shortcomings of an oratorical approach.

Effective reading instruction, such as the “Read to Learn” and “scaffolding” approaches, should be modelled and reinforced. In a multi-lingual African context, strategies that allow teachers and learners to use all their language resources in making meaning should be encouraged. Teachers’ own reading is vital, and can be developed through book clubs and reading groups.

The school environment is also crucial. According to the PIRLS interviews with principals, 62% of South African primary schools do not have school libraries. These are central to promoting a reading culture, as work in New Zealand shows.

Schools should develop strategies such as Drop Everything and Read slots in the timetable, library corners in classrooms, prizes for reading a target number of books and writing about them, and creating learners’ reading clubs. Learners can draw on local oral traditions by gathering stories from elders, writing them and reading them to others.

Finally, the home environment is vital. The PIRLS research showed that children with parents who read, and especially read to them, do better at reading. Our research found that children with parents who attended adult classes were highly motivated to learn and read with their parents. Even if parents are illiterate, older siblings can read to younger children. The Family Literacy Project, a non-profit organisation in KwaZulu-Natal, has done excellent work in creating literate family and community environments in deep rural areas, showing what is possible.

Developing families as reading assets rather than viewing them as deficits can help to strengthen schools and build a reading nation.

Peter Rule is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University

The University of Pretoria (UP) this month made history with an unprecedented 100% pass rate in the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) April Initial Test of Competence (ITC) results.

UP obtained a 100% pass rate in the SAICA ITC exam for first-time writers and an overall pass rate of 99.4% for all candidates.

These historically exceptional results place the university in first place in South Africa.

Head of Department of Accounting and the Chartered Accountancy Programme Coordinator Professor Madeleine Stiglingh said not only did the number of African black candidates from UP increase but for the first time ever, the pass rate for our African black, coloured and Indian students is an unprecedented 100%.

“It is higher than the pass rate of the white candidates at 99%,” said Stiglingh.

Stiglingh said the number of African black candidates increased by 7% while the pass rate increased from 86% in 2020 to 100% in 2021.

SAICA administers two professional exams per year and the results of the first of the ITC exams were recently released.

Stiglingh said the university’s pass rate is not only substantially higher but that UP has achieved the highest pass rate in the country for our African black candidates.

According to SAICA, the national pass rate for all African black candidates is 52%.

A total of 3 887 (2020 – 3 657) candidates wrote the April 2021 ITC, of which 2 507 (2020 – 2 149) passed. UP contributed 174 candidates to the April 2021 ITC.

UP’s first-time pass rate averages at 94% over a period of 15 years, making it one of the most consistent among the country’s universities.

The Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, Professor Elsabé Loots, commended Professor Johan Oberholster, the 2020 CA Coordinator, the Heads of the four academic departments in the faculty and all the lecturing staff on this stellar achievement.

“We are extremely proud of the performance of our students in the latest ITC results that clearly demonstrate that UP continues to be one of the leaders in the education of chartered accountants,” said Loots.

Professor Tawana Kupe, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of UP, congratulated the students.

Kupe said UP is delighted with this pass rate.

“Our students achieved an amazing pass rate in the midst of a pandemic. You have shown resilience and tenacity,” he said.

Aune Angobe was born in Ongongo village in the Omusati region in Namibia. She was raised by her grandparents who have now both passed away.

Angobe studied at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and will graduate with her Master of Science in Molecular and Cell Biology cum laude on 19 July – achieving over 95% for her course. 

“I was privileged to have grandparents who knew the value of education. I attended primary and secondary school in the northern part of the country under their tender care.

“Throughout my schooling journey I’d always enjoyed science subjects, and I have no doubt that I was a scientist from birth,” said Angobe.

Adding that despite her poor family background, she studied hard and matriculated with good grades.

In 2013, Angobe was granted admission to the University of Namibia for an honour’s degree programme in microbiology. She was funded by a government loan.

Growing up in rural Namibia, Angobe had never used a computer before she enrolled at university.

Even prior to her master’s studies at UCT, she said she had never travelled south of Windhoek.

READ: UCT’s Executive MBA programme is still number one in Africa

“Excitingly, I got news of admission to UCT from Associate Professor Inga Hitzeroth, a potential project supervisor for my MSc in Molecular and Cell Biology.

“My MSc research focused on developing a plant‑made diagnostic reagent for the detection of Porcine circovirus (PCV) antibodies in South African swine herds,” she said.

Angobe said she chose this focus specifically because pigs are a main contributor to the economy, especially in Southern Africa.

She said for years, pork production has been facing significant losses because of PCV.

Angobe added that her study aimed at producing a cheaper diagnostic reagent for use in a rapid diagnostic kit, which will potentially help local farmers to diagnose their pigs earlier.

South African institutions consistently make up the majority of all those “best universities in Africa” lists. South Africa is the economic hub of the African continent. International students choosing to study in South Africa will have a number of social and academic opportunities wherever they study in the country and most local universities have active international academic offices.

But there were challenges.

READ: Nzimande on student debt, financial exclusions and infrastructure backlogs

Angobe said one of her biggest challenges was funding.

She said she remembered clearly that when she arrived in Cape Town,  she did not have funds to cater for her accommodation and living expenses.

She only had R500.

“I was accommodated by a friend in a residence where I stayed for about two weeks. During this period, my supervisor, my friend and I were constantly worried about how I was going to survive.

“We then decided to approach Student Housing.

“I went there and cried my lungs out to them. I clearly remember the officer asking me how I had left Namibia without knowing where I was going to stay,” she said.

“My response was, ‘I don’t know, but I just want to study’,” she said.

Adding that Student Housing eventually granted her accommodation.

Angobe said soon after this, her supervisor introduced her to the Aunt Vivien of the Cohen Scholarship Trust.

She said another challenge in addition to funding was being in a foreign country.

“It was not an easy transition. I always felt like an outsider, and I struggled to overcome the language barrier.

“Also being far from my support system, especially my family and friends, I really felt the gap,” she said.

However, she said she also found a way to create a support system away from home and that the Biopharming Research Unit became her family.

“They all played an important role in my achievement, and I am thankful to all of them.

“I would like to thank the Biopharming Research Unit, the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation, the Sam Cohen Scholarship Trust, and the MCB department for financial assistance towards my studies,” she said.