ANYBODY remember the National Development Plan (NDP)? The economic initiative was the hallmark of successive ANC administrations. As late as January 2017 the plan was being touted as a vision for 2030, “the product of hundreds of interactions with South Africans, input from tens of thousands of people, extensive research and robust debate throughout the country”. When Pravin Gordhan was hastily recalled from London, whilst on an economic roadshow, it was the NDP, with its broad vision that he was selling to investors.
The markets were reassured by the long-term stability promised by Pretoria bureaucrats, and, after the Nene fiasco, (a foretaste of what was to come) not only was the economy in recovery, but the currency was even experiencing a bull-run, making the Rand one of the world-beating currencies of 2017, at least this was until President Jacob Zuma fired his finance Minister again, and then half-his cabinet while embarking on a course which took South Africa directly into the headwinds of currency volatility and the ire of ratings agencies. Within a short space of a week, the gains and momentum of the past 12 months were wiped out, as local banks lost heavily, and borrowing money on international markets suddenly became a lot, lot harder.
What happened? Can one put this down to the simple cult of personality surrounding the President? The Guptas and the intrigues of Nkandla and Pretoria, or BRICS? Here is one alternative version of events, and no doubt there will be others:
Frustrated by electoral inroads being made to the left and right of the party, the centrist ANC realised that something drastic needed to be done. Instead of meeting the official opposition the Democratic Alliance (DA) whose market-friendly policies and promise of renewal had resulted in astonishing gains at the polls, in both the City of Johannesburg and metros of Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, NEC party insiders decided to quietly drop the NDP focus in favour of a new mantra — that of ‘Radical Economic Transformation’ (RET)
In effect, the ANC were now adopting the policies of the far-left Economic Freedom Front (EFF), promising massive changes in ownership, whilst debating expropriation of property without compensation, (an all too familiar bait and switch strategy) and thus a sure sign that groups such as Black Land First (BLF) were also beginning to dictate the ruling party agenda. Exactly what RET represents, is anyone’s guess. In all likelihood, it is mere code for a hodge-podge of incoherent leftist policies. If the ANC is to survive at the polls come 2019, it will have to enter into coalitions, and the dilemma remains that the DA and EFF are on opposite sides of the political fence so to speak.
The resulting drift to the far-left by the ANC under Zuma (even if by some accounts, simply empty promises) has had severe consequences. The fallout couldn’t get any worse than if Hugo Chavez had to suddenly arrive back from the dead, flogging the statist focus of big government and the anti-private property rhetoric which nearly destroyed Venezuela. So while ratings agencies were hammering the bond market, and the parastatals were still on life-support, we saw the travesty of Malusi Gigaba and the trillion-Rand nuclear debacle (read: expensive mega-projects) getting everyone in a tizz.
Unless Pretoria figures out a way to print money without encouraging further Rand depreciation, the big bucks flagship projects and renewable energy procurement touted before the downgrade are all but DOA. The only questions remains: Can the NDP be saved (or scaled back?), or will it take a defeat at the polls to realise, that when it comes to economic policy, nothing in South Africa is cast in stone? That the ANC is unlikely to be in power come 2019, with a workable NDP or not, is slowly dawning. Some 100 000 people from across the spectrum, marched on Friday while calling for the President to resign.
IF draconian plans announced by Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba to ban all Internet porn are put into effect, South Africa could end up with its very own “Great Wall of China” restricting digital freedom and abolishing net neutrality in the process.
Net Neutrality is not just the idea that all datastreams should be treated equally, but rather the notion that national borders and regional boundaries do not extend to the Internet. In other words, an html page created in South Africa can be viewed in America and vice versa, without needing a passport or incurring an interconnection tax.
Google recently pulled out of China because of concerted attacks on its search engine by the Chinese government. It is the one example of a nation which has shunned Net Neutrality (and open borders) in favour of a separate “electronic homeland” if you will.
If the home affairs ministry has its way, applying the kind of national hegemony one finds aboard fishing vessels for instance, tier one service providers would be forced to filter information, which includes Google searches, in effect introducing the exact same kind of censorship found in mainland China.
Forcing tier one networks to do the job of the Film and Publications Board, aka the ANC censorship & morality committee, would seriously infringe upon constitutional guaranteed freedoms such as the right to receive or impart information. It would also set a bad precedent by forcing sites such as YouTUBE and MySpace to censor themselves. Although the bill is geared towards pornography, it opens the door to more repressive forms of censorship such as the kind once experienced during the apartheid regime.
The bill is aimed at the “total ban of pornography on the internet and mobile phones.”
According to Myadsl and IOL, Gigaba said it was noted that unlike in the physical world where a reasonable effort could be made for pornography to be kept away from children, in the online world, pornographic sites were often “parked deliberately next door” to educational sites, often with names almost identical.
Current legislation, particularly the Film and Publication Act, provided for a ban on child pornography, whereas theproposed bill provides for a total ban on pornography on electronic channels using the wider definition of pornography already available in the Sexual Offences Act.
That Gigaba, who claims to have an MA in pedagogics from University of Durban-Westville, has absolutely no clue how the Internet and the economy works can be seen by his incorrect comparison of a motor car and the Internet: “Cars are already provided with brakes and seatbelts; it is not an extra that consumers have to pay for,” he said.
“There is no reason why the internet should be provided without the necessary restrictive mechanisms built into it,” Gigaba also said in a proposal that would cost billions, and necessitate the complete overhaul of the industry as we know it.
Are we adults or children?
Exactly how such a “restrictive mechanism” would work is open to debate, but doing so would set in motion a repressive technological environment which would destroy South Africa’s claim to digital freedom and net neutrality.
A far better solution than placing walls around various parts of the Internet would be to make website blocking software available to the public, allowing individuals to make decisions for themselves. But it is doubtful whether such a solution would satisfy an ignorant, uneducated and backward home affairs department intent on exercising ministerial decree over the entire Internet, thereby placing all websites under the ambit of the Film and Publications control board and the mother grundies at Luthuli House.
South Africa does not have to censor itself. There already exists legal mechanisms for issuing take-down notices via ISPA for sites which contravene copyright law, and an international legal instrument instead of a technological quick fix would thus be far more desirable.
In any event, introducing censorship technology would invariably slow down the Internet while introducing all sorts of problems with vetting what may or may not be watched by an inquisitive public. If the department simply closes down domains without any review process, where is the public interest? Who determines what is politically correct or incorrect on any given day?
It is also doubtful if any of the arguments deployed by the minister are actually about child access to pornography or even so-called “child porn”. What is implicit in the statement by home affairs, is the idea that government alone should be responsible for determining the content of Internet discourse — the nature of freedom of speech on the Internet, communication itself. Instead of being treated as citizens with equal rights, South Africans are being treated like children, subjects of the Dept of Home Affairs.
It really does reminds one of the dark days when apartheid censors blacked out news copy and published lists of banned publications which included girlie magazines and works by Karl Marx
Gigaba thus appears to have dumped The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Frere in favour of the Collected Works of Joseph Stalin, pulling off a putsch of sorts which could destroy South Africa’s fragile democratic revolution.
Those who wish to censor digital freedom should therefore be told in no uncertain terms – We are adults, we should decide for ourselves which pages we want to read, which images we wish to view, and which political party should be in power.
IF draconian plans announced by Deputy Home Affairs Minister 