https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZwFmT7GMmM
Khalid Williams South Africa Study Abroad Exercise 1
If you happen to be in the South African town of Hermanus in the months of August to November for a semester abroad, you’ll be able to watch whales from some of the most amazing cliffs in Africa.
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Study Abroad | South Africa
A study abroad South Africa trip consists not only of a glimpse inside a spiritual and historical people, but also face-to-face encounters with some of the most beautiful wildlife and landscapes in the world.
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On pure economic indicators and all other indicators of development Africa is a dismal picture. Life expectancy has declined; mortality rates increase; heavily indebted, with over half the countries having debt that exceeds their GNP; GDP growth fallen; GDP per capita fallen as population growth gets out of control; health care is collapsing and so and so on. What has gone wrong with what after all is continent rich in mineral and material resources?
Too much medicine
There are several factors. First and probably most simple is that Africa after independence was not allowed to chart its own course. With good or bad intentions too many ” aid ” agencies have prescribed,subscribed and proscribed all sorts of panacea for Africa’s ” that they destroyed any capacity for that continent to solve its own ills. Africa has simply become a vegetable or as some say a huge experimental waste ground. This is really not far from the truth.
Another factor is that African governments after independence failed to formulate clear mission and objectives that could be translated into sound economic policies. Corruption and mismanagement took hold of almost every strata of society. This was further assisted by the aid agencies. Marginal benefits were put as further evidence for aid while government excesses on grand scale were overlooked.
For political reasons, Western governments supported dictatorships and turned a blind eye to corruption and mismanagement. Cold war politics meant that the major powers had to have a balance not only in armaments but also in allies. The drive to prevent communist influence in Africa meant keeping regimes in power that supported Western interests.
All too often these regimes were despots and perpetrators of the most sadist human rights abuses. Moreover aid agencies ignored every basic economic or social criteria for development assistance in favor of this higher political goal. This problem was further complicated by the fact that often the aid agencies will differ with their own governments. Thus vast sums were squandered on irrelevant constructions, large sums made their way into private accounts without so much as a whisper. What I call the “guilt” factor came in handy when others dare to complain of such corruption.
The “guilt” factor argument is” oh well, we are giving and that is the most important thing. Whatever, the President choose to do with it is his business. After all they are an independent and sovereign nation”.
The result is that today despite several billions poured, Africa is still underdeveloped and conditions are even worse than when they were at independence. My argument seems to point to the thesis that aid can work. Yes, I believe aid can work to alleviate poverty or change the society overnight. However, it cannot bring about economic development.
Rather it should be used to ease the pain of the unpleasant side effects of harsh monetary and fiscal policy which is precisely what was needed at this point. For example due to the cyclical nature of the markets that face Africa main exports, there often severe variations in earnings. These can be very damaging especially given the fact that some countries depend on just one commodity. What aid should do is to bridge the gap between these shortfalls in earnings.
Poverty can never be eradicated in a country; the aim should be to distribute wealth in a manner that ensures that the gap between the rich and the poor does not create social tensions.
Counter-productive
What “Aid” did to Africa was to exacerbate and indeed encourage irresponsible fiscal and monetary policy on the part of governments. There was some positive aspects of aid, but these were at the margin and as far as the big picture is concerned, too insignificant to alter the present argument. Look at how much money Norway has pumped into Tanzania and what condition that country is in today!
I seem to have pointed the blame at the aid agencies and the Africa politicians. My belief is that the development agencies had good intentions. The explanation for their failures stems from the fact that the Africans that they encountered were not educated enough to challenge their assumption. Thus very soon these agencies began to get the view that the African does not know what is good for them. In effect their mission was not simply to give aid, but to make decisions for them!
Bad Governments
To say that “people deserve the government they get” is a little too harsh on Africans. In many parts of Africa, after independence there were too few university graduates or technocrats to replace the white administrators. Political rhetoric and nationalism prevented any form of expatriates assistance from former colonial administrators. Those that saw themselves in power had got there on a platform of”we can do it ourselves”. Thus any notion of keeping the very people you have been fighting against was nonsensical. The truth was many nations could not” do it themselves”.
Governments ministers and officials with half-baked educational background suddenly saw themselves in power. They had little in the way of program or policy document. What matters was the trappings that the office brought and the personal gains one could get out of the office. Of course there some educated people. However, these quickly fell out with the government or sacrificed their principles for survival. The result of course was gross mismanagement, incompetence, corruption, graft on a scale that saw millions of Africans reduced to the lowest stage of survival.
Is it any wonder that if things have to change, we have to start with ensuring well educated take the reins of power. There is little doubt that part of the success of the Asian countries lies in pool of well educated politicians and planners in the 1960s. These individuals not only set a strategic orientation for their nations, but they continuously surveyed their environments to see new opportunities.
Education became a central plank of development policy. Not so in Africa- resources geared for such efforts were not used- Bad economic planning could be partly explained by such poorly educated civil servants. Take the case of monetary policy. At independence, most African countries inherit a monetary system based on the English pound, the French Franc or the Portuguese escudo. However in time nationalistic pride got in the way of financial practicalities and one country after another cut itself from the backing European currency and began turning out a spectacular array of non-convertible currencies. As one commentator note ” If nothing else the President got a chance to put their picture on the note”. And in the early and late sixties, since Presidents were short- lived it was inevitable that the currencies were too.
Many of these currencies were worthless and not even accepted in neighboring countries or in the international banking system for that matter. As the currency weakened, the general response was to print more money. In Nigeria, between 1975-1977 the money supply increased by 180%. And this was pretty much the case elsewhere.
As money supplies rose, inflation soared and in time rates of over 100% were not uncommon. In early post independence period as the public discontent grew, the greater the social control that was exerted by leaders. The greater the national debt, the greater the reliance grew of foreign grants to keep regimes in power.
Tribalism
Tribalism has been put forward by many writers as the root of Africa’s problems. Tribalism was made to look exclusively African. Events in the former Yugoslavia have shown that tribalism and ethnicity are not African preserves. Colonialism brought ethnic groups(tribes if you refer to Africa) that had nothing to hold them together except force and a colonial policy of divide and rule.
When people talk about tribal problems in Africa, I put the question on how they would feel, because of some historical error, you had to live with people that you have no desire to. The second World War in Europe created a Europe that fell into the East(Communist Bloc) and West(Capitalist Bloc). The countries of the East under Soviet hegemony manage to hold the different diverse groups found within these countries. As the Empire collapse, so has the desire for self government risen or some form of regional autonomy.
Yugoslavia has even manage to coin a new vocabulary, -“Ethnic cleansing”. What is very African about Tribalism is the way Africans choose to solve the problem. But even these atrocities cannot match the systematic methods of say Hitler or present day”Hitler’s” in Bosnia and Croatia.
More to the point, economically, tribalism in some countries has crippled the economy by diverting resources to unproductive efforts. It has also meant in some places governments did not capitalize on their best talents simply because they belong to the wrong group. Vast numbers of refugees have been created which has meant whole populations have been displaced, their economic productivity unrealized.
The Future
The collapse of the old order has created new economic partnerships, shift resources and emphasis, which has pushed Africa further into economic uncertainty and regression. The fall of Communism has opened up new areas in the world that are far more immediately attractive than Africa for investment purposes.
Eastern Europe provide valuable investment opportunities that are fast attracting capital. One of the legacies of the Communist era are the large numbers of scientist. These are fast becoming partners with establish Western companies for research into new fields.
Western Governments face constituencies that are increasingly frustrated with their governments wasting money on corrupt and hopeless leaders.
This is combined with the fact that domestic social problems are getting acute. Today Europe faces difficult social problems. Unemployment, lack of growth and increasing refugee problems from Eastern Europe. Indeed many experts believe that unemployment will become a more structural problem. What this indicates is that social services budget will become bigger. These factors make it all the more difficult for governments in the West to hand over large sums as they had done in the past. Finally, we see a new economic phenomenon or to be more precise, trade phenomenon-trade blocs.
lready in place is the European Community EC. The North Americans are working out with Mexico -NAFTA North American Free Trade Area. In South East Asia,we see increasing Japans activity in the region. This is made doubly so with the expanding Chinese economy. It is my belief that as Japan makes efforts to address her war past and apologize, this will clear the way for some kind of trade area.
Given this new world order, what does the future hold for Africa. It is my belief that some parts may never move from the traditional society that describe earlier on. War, famine and disease are the main preoccupation that any notion of social investment is ridiculous. The leadership is some cases actually perpetuate the situation thus guaranteeing their hold on power. However, there are a few that have the potential for spectacular development. Most impressive is Botswana. Botswana apart from South Africa is the fastest growing economy in Black Africa. This economy is characterize by a work ethic, skilled and an industrious labor force.
Namibia is also an impressive case. However that country has only been independent since 1990. Nevertheless its institutions and policies are on the right track.
The other group is lead by Kenya, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Gabon and to some extent Senegal and Zaire. There is another group that have all the ingredients but have yet to make any social investments. Some of these are actually at the bottom of UN list of poor quality of life. This group is led by Sierra Leone, followed by Uganda and Angola.
Multinational Corporations
In an increasingly global economic environment the role of the Multinational Enterprise (MNE), more commonly known as Multinational Corporations (MNCs), in fostering economic development is going to become increasingly important. Capital that is needed for domestic investment in the poor countries will come largely from investment by these organisations.
Western governments are going to find it increasingly hard to justify flows to African governments. In another respect there will be increasing demand in African countries that the private sector plays a more central role. These will need the resources and expertise of MNCs. This will be helped by the fact Aid agencies favor joint ventures between foreign firms and local companies as a viable path to development.
MNEs have much to offer the region in terms of capital, technology, innovation, managerial expertise, and access to world markets. It is important that the investment by MNEs is direct and not portfolio, for direct investment brings more than just financial resources. Further, it is important that MNEs source most of the materials locally so as to develop local skills and enterprises.
It has been suggested that the target sectors for encouragement of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) are the
(a) wood and paper products, (linked to forestry)
(b) textiles and clothing, (linked to textile fibers) and
c) metal products or food processing( linked to the extractive sector).
The objectives for African governments is to both attract the downstream diversification of multinationals already in the relevant extractive sector, and new the investment of multinationals whose operations in the more develop countries are tending to move downstream and may wish to relocate what for them are now upstream activities.
Dead Horses?
Africa is not like flogging dead horses. African countries are on a life support machine or as the world bank puts it, its in a state of transition. It needs it own doctors and experts to bring her back to life. To cure the ills of Africa is to understand its environment and no one can better Africa except Africans. The bottom line is you can take the horse to the stream but it she does not want to drink there is not much you can do. In the meantime you have wasted time. Africa is rich in mineral resources and has the potential for development.
It has the market potential to provide people in the industrialized countries with employment through its demand for unmet needs.
The growth potentials of the developed world are limited but in Africa there is a huge demand for food, clothing, shelter and consumer goods. What is needed as Philip Kotler points out is that the west puts purchasing power in the hands of these consumers. If this is not done the west will be saddled with over capacity and slow growth. On the other hand, there is body of opinion that believes that modernization goes through stages and that Africa is going through the same process. As such trying to speed up the process by interfering with its dynamics, merely causes cross-cultural and domestic conflicts. Evidence from South East Asian countries however indicates that this process does not necessarily have to follow a linear path. With the right set of policies, governments can make rapid development or even a leap.
What is urgently needed are several things. In the first place governments should try to recruit their well educated citizens who arc presently abroad. These individuals could be put in special ministries responsible for charting a future for the country. This stems from the fact that Africans that are capable of generating the kinds of ideas and policies that it would take to turn what Africa is today into a modern society or at least developing nations are all abroad. We must also encourage the African entrepreneur as in many parts of South East Asia.
What is needed in Africa is a system that propels the right people to power. Leaders that could respond to the needs of their peoples. Africa needs leaders that have the foresight for long-term constructive economic and industrial policy. Above all its needs leaders that recognized the need for social economic investments, without them, no sound economic or industrial policy will yield positive results.
Francis Stevens George
December 1993
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8060638
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In the 1950s, fascination, confusion, and even alarm are adjec-tives that best described the reaction of many political observers to the Chinese seeking friends and allies in Africa. An executive editor of the New York Times, Mr. Seymour Freidin, wrote:
Red Chinese drive into Africa involves a long range effort to dominate the continent totally and populate it with Chinese.
Mr. Seymour’s sentiments were not uncommon at the time. There was a great deal of confusion as to what the Chinese were actually up to. This was due in large part to the inconsistent nature of policies pursued by the Chinese in those early years. This was exemplified in the so-called split-level or dual diplomacy. Simply put, this was the pursuit of the “United Front From Above” (government-to-government relations), and the “United Front From Below” (support for wars of national liberation). In practice, this meant the Chinese would support “revolutionary” opposition groups while at the same time supporting the legitimate government of an African country. I take this up in Chapter 3.
To the question of this chapter, why Africa? The simple answer is ideology, manifested in both domestic Chinese politics and in her international relations. In particular, China’s emerging conflict with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the United States of America (USA) were to play a role in the Chinese drive into Africa. I will deal with the ideological factors in the next section.
First, I would like to briefly point to historical reasons which some Chinese leaders used as a primary argument for their interest in Africa. For example, they pointed to the fact that in October 1415, Chinese explorer and Admiral Zheng He reached the eastern coast of Africa and sent the first of two giraffes as gifts to the Chinese Yongle Emperor. Zheng brought gifts and granted titles from the Ming emperor to the local rulers, with the aim of establishing a large number of tributary states. Indeed, it is worth noting that China and Africa have a history of trade relations, sometimes through third parties, dating back as far as 202 BC and AD 220.
I will now deal with the domestic factors and the ideological disputes with the United States and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
DOMESTIC INFLUENCES ON CHINA’S DRIVE INTO AFRICA
At the Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist party in 1956, it was clear the new China had been making a determined effort to expand her influence in the outside world, particularly in the “vast intermediate areas” of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In Chinese eyes, the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America remain the potential field for revolutions of the Chinese type. This was one area in which they felt a special ideological leadership to offer. Ten years later, in 1965, this belief was exemplified by Lin Biao’s celebrated thesis entitled “Long Live the victory of the People’s war”. His core argument was that;
Comrade Mao’s theory of the estab-lishment of rural revolutionary base areas and the encirclement of the cities from the countryside is of outstanding and universal importance for the present revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed nations and peoples, particularly, those in Africa.
Furthermore, The CCP claimed that it was waging a class struggle in defense of Maoism, the true revolutionary, against allies of Nikita Khrushchev in the CCP-the so-called allied forces of “reaction”- and imperialism and revisionism in the world at large. The party described its actions as a ‘sharp class struggle’ and the ‘socialist education’ against “renascent bourgeois ideology, bureaucratic degeneration, and anti-party elements” in the Chinese Communist party (CCP).
If Mao was to gain complete control over his enemies and prove his ideological position correct, China had to find allies abroad to form the broadest possible United Front for a “struggle” against the “corrupting revisionist influence” of Russia and the imperialist drive of the United States of America. As Mao, not Khrushchev was the true revolutionary; the drive into Africa was an attempt to assert China’s ideological supremacy over USSR.
It is fascinating and quite remarkable in my view to see that China’s leaders in the late 1950s and 1960s did seriously consider Africa would be of key importance in realpolitik. They were consumed by the belief that Africa was both the center of the anti-colonial struggle and the center for the East and West to fight for control of the “intermediate zone”.
The theory of the “intermediate Zone” is an interesting one as it formed the foundation for this belief. Introduced by Mao in the late 1940s, the theory claimed that between the United States and the Soviet Union exist a vast “intermediate zone” mainly composed of “oppressed” non-Western countries, including China.
Before the “imperialist” United States of America could attack the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, they first had to control the intermediate zone, according to Mao. This then made Asia and Africa the central arena of the Cold War. When Mao and the Chinese Communist Party seized political power in China, they immediately proclaimed revolutionary China as a natural ally of the “oppressed peoples” in the “intermediate zone”. They saw themselves as champions that held the banner of anti-imperialism and anti colonialism, challenging the United States of America and other Western imperialist/colonial powers.
The belief, that they [The Chinese] were the flag bearers of the oppressed, was fostered by the fact that they made comparisons to key stages in Chinese revolutionary history to the situation in most of Africa during the years of decolonization. The implication was that the ‘unfolding African revolution’ would pass through similar stages. It was noted by Chinese leaders that some parts of Africa were going through similar experiences that China went through sixty years earlier during the Boxer uprising.
Some events for the independence struggle in Africa were likened to those which occurred in the Hsin-Hai Revolution of 1911, while others resemble what happened around the May 4th incident of 1919.
All this led some Chinese leaders to have a vision of a “third force”-drawn of nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America against the “double hegemony” of the nuclear giants-The United States of America and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. As we would later see, it was no surprise that the Chinese felt compelled to support various rebel and “freedom fighters” across Africa.
This support was based on a genuine desire to “free” the Afri-cans from what the Chinese saw as imperialism and hegemony. To this day, the Chinese still hold this desire, hence their lack of interference in African affairs.
INTERNATIONAL INFLUENCES ON CHINA’S DRIVE INTO AFRICA
It was a fact that Communist China, after its birth in 1949, faced a hostile external environment. Between the years 1952 and 1961, it was notably her unresolved territorial conflict with the United States of America over Taiwan (Republic of China-ROC), denial of the Chinese seat at the United Nations, and China’s concern with American alliances and bases in Asia.
The United States Government had embarked on a policy of isolating the Communist throughout the world at that time. The Truman administration in July 1950 had extended full diplomatic recognition and protection to Taiwan and proceeded to organize military alliances with other Asian powers surrounding China. Economic and commercial embargo had already been placed on activities with China.
The United States had further masterminded Operation Van-guard designed to make Taiwan attractive to African countries some of whom were gaining their independence. Operation Vanguard, launched in 1960, saw Taiwan begin to dispatch agricultural missions to assist emerging independent states in Africa with modernizing their agricultural production and to garner support for the Taiwan’s (ROC) representation in the United Nations. At one time, the number of Taiwan’s agricultural specialists in Africa exceeded 1,200. The ROC-Africa Technical Cooperation Committee was established in 1962 to further expand the program.
Taiwan, with the support of the United States had the Chinese seat in the United Nations and enjoyed support among the allies of the United States, including many African countries. China was quick to see that with the support of these African countries in the United Nations, the balance could possibly sway in her favor.
China’s ideological battle with the USSR was also to lead her to seek friends in Africa. I already discussed the CCP’s drive to establish their communist credentials in the “intermediate areas”. As the Sino-Soviet split became more pronounced, so did their divergent views on Africa.
The Chinese saw Africa as an opportunity to get on the International stage and break out of the United States of America isolation. The Soviets on the other hand, saw Africa as a means to expand their industrial strength and spread Soviet propaganda. These two distinct views were to manifest themselves after the Bandung Conference in 1955.
Thus, tensions with the United States and ideological conflict with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were key factors in China’s drive into Africa. China’s policies and actions were to be heavily influenced by these factors as we will later see in this work.
The next chapter looks at where and how Sino-African relations started.
The following is the First Chapter of my book: China and Africa Love Affair
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Francis_Stevens_George/1723405
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Whilst many foreigners dream of relocating or moving to South Africa, many foreigners are actually taking a chance and moving their families and lives to our beautiful country. As this process can often be difficult and tedious, more so if you are not correctly informed prior to your immigration process, there are many aspects of relocating to South Africa that is required to be thought through before the new adventure can begin.
Many foreigners only realize the amount of matters that have to be sorted through and arranged once they arrived in our stunning country. There is no need to stress, if all information is at least known before arriving, this will save you many nights of worry and many more days to enjoy our sunshine, beaches, mountains and beautiful flora and fauna with yourself or your family.
Transferring money, bank accounts, exchange control, taxation and investments information
– Transferring Money into South Africa For a foreigner wanting to reside in South Africa, or even if a foreigner wants to invest in the country in one way or another, an agent or consultancy is always the best to approach for the finer details regarding best exchange rates when transferring money, investments, transferring of money and tax implications.
– Bank Accounts in South Africa Opening up of bank accounts is a simple process, provided the correct documentation is supplied to the relevant consultant. If a foreigner wants to obtain a personal/individual bank account (while on a visitors visa), a “non-resident” account can be opened for that person. Whilst these accounts can have all the features of normal banking account, the “non-resident” accounts are restrictive in as much as they cannot generally receive deposits in Rands. Once on a temporary residence permits, these accounts are changed to “resident” accounts. It is best to speak to a Bank consultant to get the best possible service and views.
The foreigner’s closed corporation can obtain a business account, there would be no currency restrictions in terms of Rand deposits, as the closed corporation is viewed as a legal identity in its own right and in the foreigner’s case, is incorporated in South Africa. To receive the best service and required documentation, speak to a banking consultant or an agency that can assist with this nature of services.
– Exchange Control Upon transferring money to South a foreigner will be confronted with the exchange control regulations in South Africa.
South African Exchange Control Regulations are a set of laws controlling the in and outflow of money in South Africa. An authorised dealer in every major South African bank are required to make sure on behalf of the Reserve Bank that incoming and outgoing money complies with the regulations.
A foreigner can transfer an unlimited amount of money into South Africa. As long as the foreigner transfers the capital via a bank within South Africa, it will get registered with the Reserve Bank.
There are limitations in place when it comes to transferring capital out of South Africa. The rules and limitations for a foreigner depend on the status for exchange control purposes when the person arrives in South Africa. The Reserve Bank distinguishes between foreign nationals, temporary residents, immigrants and South African citizens.
Since the status of people relocating to South Africa varies according to the kind of permit they receive, individual advice is necessary.
It should be noted that it is not correct that foreigners relocating to South Africa cannot take any of the money they brought into the country out again. There are rules and regulations, but they do not permit the retransfer of capital introduced into South Africa.
– Taxation South Africa has a residence based tax system, which means that all tax residents are taxed on their worldwide income, irrespective of where it was earned.
Even in case that a foreigner is not classified as a tax resident in South Africa from the start, the foreigner will have to pay tax on income generated from a source within South Africa.
It is important that a person takes care to that he or she is compliant with both Revenue Services, the one in South Africa and the one in his/her home country. South Africa has signed double tax agreement with many countries to avoid that a person pays tax for the same income in two countries at the same time.
A foreigner should seek expert advice to determine from when they will be classified as a tax resident in South Africa and what consequences this status will have on your tax situation.
– Investments South Africa has always welcomed foreigners who invest in our country. For those foreigners who know only limited information on investment options, this matter should be dealt with by an expert financial controller or agency that can assist with this service. Investment in this country is on a large scale and many foreigners, who immigrate to South Africa, do not receive the best service, exchange rates, etc – therefore, causing losses, instead of financial gain. With a mixture of different opportunities and jurisdictions, it can prove to be a multitude of choices and decision to make.
Buying Property in South Africa
There are many opportunities to buy a property in South Africa, for a holiday home or for indefinite periods – there is an extensive market for those on the look out for the best possible properties that South Africa has to offer. Although the market is aimed at the “Seller” and the ‘Seller’s” needs, there are those agents who are on the side of the buyer (foreigner). These agents are the best to speak with concerning purchasing a property in South Africa, as they will always ask the right questions, find the best possible prices, areas, etc for the foreigner and family.
Prospective foreign buyers face a number of matters that are unique to those purchasing property abroad, some matters are: correct financing, exchange control matters, decreased knowledge of geographical areas, difference in buying method from abroad. It is best for the foreigner to find an agent or South African company who can assist with these matters and others, through the entire process, as to not leave the foreigner with questions unanswered but, to enable the foreigner to enjoy their time in South Africa and see their path leading to their new beginning growing.
School and Employment in South Africa
With all families, foreign or South African, finding the right school and employment in the country, if needed, is two of the most important aspects of relocating to another country.
In South Africa, there are many educational institutions, whereby children of foreigners (after obtaining a study permit for that school) spend most of the days. It is always important to find a school that has many of the activities that the child enjoys, some schools focus on sports activities and some schools focus on recreational activities, there are many schools which have a medium with both kinds of activities offered to their students.
South Africa offers many wonderful benefits to reside in, with its increasingly first-world infrastructure and its growing influence in the international market, career aspirations can constantly be fulfilled. If a foreigner would like to work in South Africa, the necessary work permit would need to be obtained in order for the foreigner to work legally in the country. It is best to speak with an immigration agency in order to find out what work permit would be best suited to the foreigner in question.
Permits for residence in South Africa
In order for a foreigner to reside legally in the country, irrespective of the visitor’s visa obtained either at the border when entering the country, or before arrival from the relevant Embassy, the foreigner would need to reside in South Africa on a valid permit constantly in order to prevent fines incurring, deportation back to the country of origin or imprisonment.
There are many different permits and these are issued at the discretion of the Department of Home Affairs to the foreigners who qualify for these appropriate permits.
– Visitor’s Extension Permit (holiday/visit) A visitors extension permit is issued to a foreigner only once in succession (after initial issuance of visitors visa when arriving in South Africa), therefore, the maximum stay that a foreigner can reside in South Africa on a visitors permit/visa is 6 months (160 days), this is dependent on the country of origin’s initial visitors permit, as many countries issue the visitors visa under 90 days, etc. Once the 6 months has come to an end, the foreigner would need to leave the country, or apply for a temporary residence permit (if the foreigner qualifies for a specific permit).
In order to receive a visitors visa at the border (i.e. airport), the foreigner who is entering South Africa is required to show a return ticket to the country of origin within 3 months (90 days) after arrival, if not, the officials at the borders are able to deny entry into South Africa.
– Study permit In South Africa, a foreigner who would like to study in an educational institution would require a South African study permit (temporary residency). There are 2 options for a study permit for the respective foreigner(s):
The first option would be for foreign families immigrating to South African with children from the age 6 to 16 (as all children from the age of 6 to 16 are required by law to attend schooling, therefore, requiring a South African study permit). If a child is young enough to attend crèche, pre-school, etc, provision may be made by the Department to issue a study permit to the child(ren), this is done with their own discretion. These permits are issued to the length of the schooling period, the maximum period length of a study permit is 3 years and these permits can be extended a number of times.
The second option would be for individual (stand alone) foreigners wishing to continue their studies in South Africa (e.g. university, college, etc). These study permits are issued by the Department of Home Affairs to the applicant who has been “provisionally accepted” to a South African Registered Educational Institution. These study permits are issued to the length of the course; this is done with the Department’s discretion and can be extended is necessary.
A person (foreign student), over the age of 16 years is able to conduct work for 20 hours per week during their term (semester) or when the workplace is a learning institution on a South African study permit.
– Business Permits Business permits are issued to foreigners who wish to operate a business in South Africa, whether it be closed corporations, sole proprietors, etc. These permits are issued to those foreigners who wish to invest in an already established business or establishing a new business.
In order to qualify for a business permit, the foreigner must submit proof stating that they wish to invest or have already invested an amount of (a) ZAR 2.5 million in cash in foreign currency, (b), a capital contribution of at least ZAR 2.5 million or (c) at least ZAR 2.5 million in cash in foreign currency and a capital contribution of ZAR 500,000 into the book value of the business in question, along with other substantial documentation proof (i.e. business plan).
If a foreigner wishes to invest less than ZAR 2.5 million into the book value of the business, a recommendation letter (waiver) is required by the Department of Home Affairs, these recommendation letters are issued by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to waiver the capitalized requirement. These letters are also issued for specific industries, e.g. Tourism industry (guest houses), information and communications technologies and others.
Business permits are issued usually for 24 months, but can be issued for up to 5 years, this is at the Department’s discretion. Before the expiry of this permit, the same can be extended.
Permanent Residency can be applied for based on the Business permit category, based on self-employed applicants who invest more than ZAR 2.5 million into the book value of the business. If a foreigner’s investment is less than the prescribed amount, waiting on the outcome of the waiver application is required to be done before permanent residence can be applied for.
For foreigners wishing to operate a business in South Africa, the best option would be to seek advice from an established Immigration company to receive the correct advice and protocol to be established to avoid future problems if done personally.
– Retired Permits A South African retired permit is issued to a foreigner who wishes to reside in South Africa for 6 months or longer, there are no age minimum or maximum requirements for this permit category.
A foreigner wishing to retire in South Africa and obtain a retired permit must be able to prove the following financials (a) ZAR 20,000 per person, per month for a maximum period of 48 months (four years) through cash assets, capital (bank statements), pensions, actual rental income or investment interest income for a temporary residency application or (b) ZAR 20,000 per month – life-long guaranteed income through pensions, actual rental income or investment interest income for a permanent residence application.
If a foreigner who would like to apply for permanent residence based on retired category and has not been married/in a permanent relationship for 5 years or longer, the above ZAR 20,000 per month, would be per person, resulting in the foreigners submitting proof of ZAR 20,000 per month, per person, each.
The retired person’s temporary residence permit is issued for a period of 6 months to 48 months (maximum period); the period on the retired permit is dependent on the financial income provided.
If a person would like to obtain a retired temporary residence permit, this retired permit only does not permit the holder to work in South Africa. A work endorsement would be required in order for the foreigner to conduct work. If a work endorsement is endorsed with the retired permit, this endorsement is specific, therefore, not allowing the holder to work at any establishment, but for the company employing the foreigner at that time.
No holder of a temporary residence retired permit is able to operate a business or study in South Africa.
– Life-Partner / Spousal permits All foreigners require a permit to reside legally in South Africa, whereby a spouse (husband or wife) or a life-partner (permanent relationship) of a South African citizen/permanent resident holder would need to apply for a spousal or a life-partner permit. A temporary residence permit can be issued to a foreign spouse/life-partner who has been married/permanent relationship to a South African for less than 5 years, but in turn, permanent residence can only be applied for once the couple have been married/permanent relationship for 5 years or more and can prove this time together.
It would be the more valuable option to apply for temporary residence first (whether married/permanent relationship for more or less than 5 years), as permanent residence takes approximately 18 months (these timescales are not guaranteed), therefore the foreign spouse/life-partner would be legal to reside in South Africa, whether applying for permanent residence or not.
It is very beneficial to obtain a South African spousal or life-partner temporary residence permit, as foreigners who are holders of these permits are able to work, operate a business or study in South Africa with the correct endorsement. This permit negates the need for work permits and business permits to be applied for and all the vast number of documentation that is required. While these spousal or life-partner permit endorsements require only a few additional documents to enable the foreigner to work/operate a business or study in South Africa.
If a foreigner will be conducting work, operating a business or studying in South Africa, it is best to know exactly what endorsement or company to work for, business plans or educational institution, as these endorsements are specific. Therefore, the name of employer/business or educational institution will be mentioned on the permit, not allowing the foreigner work for another company, operating a different business or studying with a different institution, without re-applying (with a new application) for a new specific endorsement on the spousal or life-partner permit.
The length of the temporary residence permit is issued by the Department of Home Affairs at their discretion and is issued for a period between 1 – 3 years. The South African spousal or life-partner permits can be extended at the end of their validity, provided that the marriage certificate or proof of relationship is submitted with the extension application.
– Relatives Permit While many foreigners who reside in South Africa do not have direct family in the country, there are foreigners who do have family (direct – 1st and 2nd kinship) residing permanently (obtained permanent residence) or are South African citizens in the country, these foreigners may apply for a relatives permit.
For temporary residency, the following lines of kinship may apply for temporary residency, parents, children, siblings. In order to apply for permanent residence, only parents and children are permitted to apply under this category.
The temporary residence permits are usually issued for a period of 1 – 3 years, these permits can be extended if necessary provided the documentation is supplied. Conducting work, operating a business or studying in South Africa is not permitted for the holders of this permit.
– Work permit In order for a foreigner to work in South Africa, a work permit is required to be obtained from the Department of Home Affairs. Obtaining a work permit can seem daunting and a complex process as foreigners often are informed by potential employers that they cannot employ them until a work permit is in place, this is not necessarily correct, as many immigration companies may contact the prospective employer and communicate the realities regarding work permit matters.
There are four types of work permit categories for foreigners wishing to conduct work in South Africa:
1. General Work permit – a foreigner wishing to apply for a General Work permit is required to provide a conditional offer of employment from a South African based employer amongst other documentation (i.e. advertisement, etc). This work permit is also required to include confirmation that the foreigner who is applying for this permit possesses the necessary qualifications, certified and approved by the South Africa Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and confirmation of the relevant work experience.
These permits are issued by the Department for a period of 1 – 5 years. A person, who has been residing in South Africa on a General Work permit for 5 years or longer, may apply for permanent residency thereafter.
2. Quota Work permit – a foreigner who falls within a certain professional criteria in which skills are considered scarce within South Africa are able to apply for a Quota Work permit. No employer is required for this permit to be applied for. This work permit is also required to include confirmation that the foreigner who is applying for this permit possesses the necessary qualifications, certified and approved by the South Africa Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and confirmation that the applicant has at least 5 years of relevant working experience in the appropriate field.
These permits are also issued by the Department for a period of 3 – 5 years. If a foreigner enters the country on a Quota work permit, the holder must submit confirmation of having secured employment within a specific category within 90 days of arrival (i.e. the Quota Work List issued by the Department of Home Affairs). After a foreigner receives a Quota Work Permit, while in South Africa, this foreigner is required to confirm employment in the specific category within 90 days of receiving the permit; thereafter a General Work permit is applied for to the Department of Home Affairs.
3. Exceptional/Extraordinary Skills permit – a foreigner who possesses exceptional skills may obtain this temporary residence permit. In order for a foreigner to qualify for this permit, the application for an Exceptional Skills permit must be accompanied by letters from foreign or South African organs of state or from an established South African academic, cultural, business body confirming the exceptional skills of the applicant. With these letters, any proof which substantiates the claim to exceptional skills/qualifications must be submitted, such as testimonials from former employers, publications or dissertations are required.
This exceptional skills permit is issued for a period of 1 – 5 years, at the Department’s discretion concerning the exceptional skills. Permanent Residency is permitted to be applied for under this category.
4. Intra-Company Transfer permits – a foreigner who is being relocated from a branch in the country of origin to a sister branch, subsidiary or affiliate in South Africa. The holders of these permits are seen as a temporary recruitment options for the employer by the Department of Home Affairs; therefore, these permits will only be issued for a maximum period of 2 years.
– Corporate Permit A Corporate permit is seen as a thread of a work permit, but is issued by the Department of Home Affairs to South African based companies (corporates) who wish to employ foreigners who may take up employment for the applicant for a limited time. These permits also offer these companies the possibility to employ great numbers of employees abroad.
Due to South Africa’s ever growing market, the corporate permit enables the companies, an excellent way to manage their human resources, as each application is aimed at an individual work permit for a predetermined number of required foreign employees, with this application, having to submit detailed job descriptions, specific requirements and the proposed remuneration in respect of each employee.
These are detailed and lengthy applications that require vast amounts of attention to detail. The Department issues corporate permits for a maximum period of 5 years. In order for an extension to be considered, the corporate companies have to appeal to the Department of Labour and Department of Trade and Industry that the positions they require are still in shortage in South Africa.
There are a number of other permits that can be applied for, if the foreigner qualifies, but the most common South African permit options would be the above.
With South Africa’s ever growing economy and population, it comes as no surprise that the matters, such as money matters, taxation, schooling, properties and permits, etc are required to be looked over, dealt with and knowledge increased prior to arrival in order for the foreigner to make the best possible decisions to make their new lives easier and run efficiently for themselves and their families.
Claire Roodman claire@intergate-immigration.com http://www.intergate-immigration.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2753956
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Lawyers
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
– President John F. Kennedy (1962)
This week may be one of the worst weeks for Nigerian judiciary and they might have made the much vaunted Sowore’s revolution inevitable. The first salvo was the list of judges released by the National Judicial Council replete with the names of their sons and daughters as well as hangers on. Second is the farcical decision in EFCC vs Kalu where the Supreme Court “suo motu” created a new section to the constitution of Nigeria by vacating a conviction duly given under an extant law. The strange rationale by the Supreme Court is that the presiding judge, now elevated to the Court of Appeal should not have pronounced the sentence. The Court conveniently ignored the fact that the accused counsel had invited the judge to come back and continue the hearing by a formal letter!
Gone are the days when Nigerian judiciary is famously celebrated as the last bastion of defense for the common man. The days of Kayode Esho, Chukwudifu Oputa, Muhammed Uwais is long gone. Our judiciary is no more like Caesar’s wife, above board. The problem however is not necessarily down to the hydra headed monster of corruption alone but a more sinister evil called, nepotism. It is my humble opinion that an opaque process for selection of judges led us to where we found ourselves this week. And the problem did not start with the current chief justice. The dysfunction and bastardization have been long in coming, and as we will find out in this piece, the cancer has eaten deep into the fabric of this nation. The revolution is inevitable.
Lawyers
What precipitate this write up is a social media post by a good friend of mine and I obtained his permission to repost his comment with my personal edits:
“It took Orji Kalu only 4 months including Covid lockdown challenge to move from the High Court to Supreme Court to get his so called sound judgment from Supreme Court while it took ten years to get his case completed at the High Court level. Ten good years! And we are told justice in Nigeria is not cash and carry? The Supreme Court is preparing the ground for a revolution and very soon something extraordinary will take place. The same Supreme Court that will give 2021 and 2022 court date for poor defendants, sat and summarily decide a case within 4 months while cases of those facing a life sentence languish in the labyrinth of jungle justice!”
My first response to the post, is to retort that the problem did not start with judiciary, but they seem to have led the “nunc dimitis” for the internment of democracy in Nigeria. The judiciary may have pushed us to the praecipe but they were not the only one. We all recalled the impunity days of PDP rule and how they ride roughshod on people’s right, celebrating acquisition of jets obtained from corrupt practices while hordes of masses suffer the indignity of scrapping for foods from the gutter. Towards the end of that era, we all thought, if we can just get a man of integrity into Aso Rock, someone who will brook no atom of corruption, we will change the country. The election of 2015 seems to have lulled Nigerians into thinking that all we need is someone or a duo with integrity, so we elect Buhari and Osinbajo, a puritan and a pastor and went home satiated. What we were not prepared for or more appositely choose to ignore is the fact that the vehicle that brought them into governance is none other than the decrepit system that PDP used to feather their nest. In the first 4 years, we were told that the problem is with the National Assembly where the legistlooters shifted their control of the vortex of power in Abuja, opposing every anti-corruption moves of the executives. Then come the last election where the ruling party now controls the executive and legislative arm, but corruption runs through the gamut of the judiciary and Aso Rock looks the other way while nepotism festers in its rank.
It is as if the cancer has completely swallowed up the entire fabric of the nation. Cases involving the poor dragged on for years while those who can afford senior advocate can get quick justice. Many warned that this will sound the death knell of democracy in Nigeria. Every attempt to even build on free and fair election has been truncated by the judiciary. What with the recent confounding judgment from Imo and Bayelsa. Our two gargantuan political parties now owned our judiciary lock, stock and barrel. They sit in smoke filled rooms to determine who will be governors, legislators and judges, and those who will play ball are readily appointed as pawns in the chest board of the Nigerian ruling class, wives, nephews, cousins, sons and daughters are made judges and senior advocates overnight without recourse to any modicum of meritocracy. A friend of mine recently quipped that the problem of nepotism is not just that it defeats meritocracy and breeds mediocrity but that it infects the entire body politics and renders it comatose. Corruption can be traced, and ill-gotten wealth recovered but nepotism is more sinister. Those who obtain position of power and authority through nepotism hold fealty only to their masters who appointed them. Such appointee will readily twist the constitution, made up section that does not exist all at the behest of their “godfather”. It is insidious and evil.
I graduated from Nigerian Law School 30 years ago, after an excellent stint at Great Ife. My class at Ife, drawn from the north, east, west middle belt and south-south has in its rank some of the best legal minds any country will be proud of. We graduated with high hopes to take on the world and change the land. Few of us found ourselves abroad on scholarship where we flourish and excel. Those in legal practice in Nigeria, either at the federal or state ministry of justice or private practice are the ones my heart bleeds for, especially those without access to members of the National Judicial Council. I have had the privilege to advance my career abroad as an attorney and public defender. I frequently sit on panels that recommend colleagues for appointment as judges in a fair, open and transparent process; something my colleagues in Nigeria could only dream of.
When I look at the state of Nigerian legal practice my heart bleeds. The career growth of colleagues in the legal profession in Nigeria is stunted not for lack of excellence but influence in the right place. Influence peddling is an art form in Nigeria and politicians used to have the exclusive preserve of selling it to the highest bidder, but our Judicial Council seems to have mastered the art. The problem will not be this pronounced if the sons and daughters they are foisting on Nigerian judiciary are steeped in the Nigerian experience or have a modicum of merit. As many of my colleagues are apt to complain, majority of the recent appointees hardly spend few years in Nigeria. They all went to schools abroad. Totally devoid of the Nigerian experience, and constantly removed from the everyday life Nigerians suffers under. Majority of them lives in the gilded mansions of their forbears in Abuja and other state capitals, where they are rarely touched by the “better angels of our nature” to use the phrase coined by Abraham Lincoln. It is therefore no surprise that they care only for what their “godfather” demand.
Let me however warns that the biggest mistake we could make is to think that the rot is only in the heart of our judiciary. Think again. Nepotism is next door, next street, next town and everywhere in Nigeria. It rampages through the land, be it North, East or West. Just look at our churches and mosques, who do you see minister or lead the prayers when the founder/visioner is not around? You guess right, if you say their sons and daughters. Gone are the days when Pa Fadayomi push to have a meritorious doctor of aerodynamics succeed him. Gone are the days when the leader of the faithful in Nigeria is selected by their aptitude in the knowledge of the Quaran. Nowadays, the exit of the leader is the beginning of the reign of the progeny. It has infected our colleges and universities, scholarship and opportunities that used to be available on merit are now exclusive preserve of the vice chancelor’s children and family members. Woe betide the school senate members that dare ask questions. Advertisement for jobs that has already been reserved for the children of the privileged are means to extort money in the form of application fees a la Abba Moro immigration recruitment scheme. A recent recruitment without advertisement at our apex bank reported by Sahara Reporters shows that successful applicants names were picked out of the rolodex of the governor. Commercial Banks staff are not an exemption, they are either recruited based on sex appeal or influential ministers/senators’ “recommendation” which doesn’t come easy for the educated but less privileged applicants.
A friend concluded an animated discussion on social media on this issue with a distinctively Nigerian resignation: “It is clear that those who do not want things to work properly in Nigeria are more powerful than those who are working towards finding solutions to our problems.” Again, my response is what do we have to lose if we embrace Omoyele Sowore’s revolution, even with its youthful disdain for experience? Especially when our current experienced leadership seems to treat the Nigerian masses with contempt. Look at it this way: They do not need our votes to win election, as they could procure midnight judgment in Abuja a la Bayelsa and Imo. They do not need to legislate to fill any lacunae in our constitutional experience as the Supreme Court proved in Kalu’s case. In fact, as long as oil flows and they have the means to fill their Cayman Island bank accounts, we may as well not exist. Greed and avarice have become the directive principle of Nigerian ruling class. To rescue ourselves from their vice grip, we need revolution now!
Francis Adewale
Tioluwanimi@gmail.com
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There is no better warning about the growing confusion that seems to be gradually beclouding the federal government’s response to the coronavirus challenge than the belief it betrayed last week that, perhaps, all it needs to calm the fears and apprehensions of Nigerians about its ability to halt the spread of the virus is to reel out a catalogue of activities President Buhari was said to have undertaken so far concerning the pestilence, whether the people felt their impact or not.
Now, if your family is starving badly, do you solve the rumbling signs of biting hunger in their stomach with some wild tales of the efforts deployed by you so far to feed them, or just keep quiet, give them food, and they will see and feel for themselves that you have played your role responsively and effectively? Or if you must talk, tell them something you have done whose benefits they can readily verify and identify with.
Indeed, some Nigerians are beginning to achieve the conviction that there must be something about being in government in this country that seems to diminish the reasoning ability of people once they get in there and deprives them of the capacity to realize when they have stopped making sense or even become downright annoying. This is very pathetic.
And so, last week, presidential spokesperson, Mr. Femi Adesina, issued a document entitled: “COVID-19: What President Buhari Has Done And Is Doing.” And, I suppose that with the release of that handout, the virus immediately received a deadly blow and vanished from the country! Aren’t we so blessed? Why then are Nigerians not on the streets celebrating the unprecedented feat?
A prominent item on Mr. Adesina’s list is the president’s March 29 broadcast. And what exactly did the broadcast achieve? The two things I can readily remember now is that Gen Buhari had announced the continuation of the school feeding programme for pupils who are all at home now due to the closure of schools as part of the efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Probably, nobody remembered to inform him and his speech writers that school children were on compulsory holidays, or are they going to send the food to them in their homes? Or, perhaps, somebody is trying to find a justification for the billions of naira we will be informed later was spent on the exercise?
Also, the president proclaimed the lockdown of Lagos and Ogun states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). And when he was through, he returned to his hideout – where only a few privileged eyes and ears see and hear from him, and then come out to tell us what they think he has said or done.
Now, what exactly was the lockdown meant to achieve? Okay, as social interactions are reduced, the chances of spreading the virus decrease. Yes, but what else? Has anyone seen any evidence that there were any plans to use the stay-at-home period to access the people and step up medical tests to determine how many people have become infected with the virus and how they could be attended to?
The government that was boasting that it was “adequately prepared” to tackle the virus was later to prove when the virus eventually arrived that it was only making empty claims as usual. A country of 200 million people has yet to demonstrate any capacity to test even a reasonable fraction of one percent of her population. And somebody is publishing a document to tell us what the president was supposed to have done or is doing. As if such boring tales will remove the cloud of gloom hovering over Nigeria?
Again, in a country where electric power is just an unaffordable luxury for many, how can a leader just lock down some states and return to his hideout to continue his “vacation” that was rudely interrupted by the loud, persistent and widespread demands that he should address his country even though some other presidents were doing daily briefings and leading the war against the virus from the front? As the markets closed and movements became restricted, how are those who could afford to buy and stock food items at home preserve them without electric power?
What of the greater population which depend on daily earnings for their survival? What is the government’s plan for them? Okay, we are hearing of palliatives that have been extended to this category of people and the billions of naira that have already been transferred to their accounts? Now, who has encountered the happy recipients of the twenty thousand naira (N20, 000) said to have been given to each of them? Are there really existing data showing the social and economic status of every Nigerian which is in the possession of the authorities? So, all the “poor and vulnerable” Nigerians now have bank accounts whose details are known to the government? So, why then are too many Nigerians very suspicious of these claims as shown in their social media comments? And why is such a rare display of kindness by this government not being celebrated? Or have the funds (if indeed any were shared) ended up in the hands of the same people who have more than enough to need them while those who are genuinely deprived remain terribly famished?
Already, the biting hunger out there is forcing a growing number of people to defy the no-movement decree and soon, the whole effort might be defeated, and the country will return to square one. Information Minister, Mr. Lai Mohammed, is threatening that the lockdown may be extended if Nigerians fail to behave themselves. But what he should rather have done is to hasten to school himself to realize that there is always a price to pay when leaders leave the country they claim to be governing in great disarray only to suddenly wake up when there is an emergency to grope for fix-quick solutions.
A few days after the president’s broadcast (that is, Tuesday, March 31), Daily Independent carried a front page lead story about 26 Americans who came into the country through the Murtala Mohammed International Airport and headed to Calabar without being screened. Now, who cleared their trip to the country and why were there no health officials available to screen them and ensure they were quarantined for 14 days before being allowed to fly to Calabar? Is it because they are Americans or clients of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or both? Does that automatically exempt any of them from being a carrier of the virus which is presently ravaging their own country? What kind of government claims to be fighting a virus with one hand and using the other hand to be undermining the efforts being deployed to contain it?
Okay, the Minister of Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire, has just announced that an 18-man Chinese team of medical “experts” will soon arrive the country to “assist” Nigeria in the fight against the coronavirus. Now, is it the federal government that asked China for help or was it China that volunteered their assistance? Indeed many Nigerians are vehemently opposed to this gesture at this time. Our own local medical experts have not shown any signs of being overburdened by the work, so what difference are these 18 Chinese doctors and nurses going to make? Will they, like the 26 privileged Americans, also be given express entry into the country or will they be isolated for 14 days as should be the case, before they would be allowed to start rendering their “assistance”?
Do we really need this Chinese gift now or is it that the government lacks the liver to politely decline their offer of help, despite the widespread apprehension among the citizenry about their involvement (since many Nigerians, habour strong fears that the gesture might turn out a Greek gift)? Even the umbrella body of Nigerian doctors, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), has come out to strongly oppose the coming of the Chinese medical team. Is it that our government is too intimidated to say NO to China’s offer probably because it has yoked itself so much with crushing debts due to its excessive borrowings from them – debts, whose positive effects on Nigerian lives many are yet to see?
I raise these points because, although, Nigeria has recorded one of the lowest deaths from coronavirus, it was the stubborn refusal of the government to close our borders when it became very necessary and urgent (and despite calls from well-meaning Nigerians) that led to the explosion in the number of confirmed cases that the country has recorded today. In saner climes, the government should have profusely apologized for that terrible miscalculation that is costing the nation so much now.
But it now has another opportunity now to gratify the yearning of Nigerians and reject the Chinese offer even if it is well-meaning and the fears about it are misplaced.
Now, what lessons is the government taking away from the scourge of coronavirus? Will they see the need to equip our hospitals this time and upgrade at least few of them to world standard now that they have realized the folly of always waiting to use public funds to send themselves and their families abroad to treat even minor ailments? For the first time in Nigeria, the naïve and largely misguided Nigerian leaders have found out that it is not always safe to seek solutions for health challenges outside the country and that there is afterall no place like home. This is hoping that the lesson will endure and be redemptive.
*Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye, is a Nigerian journalist and writer. (scruples2006@yahoo.com)
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History of the movement—Its philosophy—The value of hand training in the development of the brain and its significance in the making of man—A grammar of our many industries hard—The best we do can reach but few—Very great defects in our manual training methods which do not base on science and make nothing salable—The Leipzig system—Sloyd is hypermethodic—These crude peasant industries can never satisfy educational needs—The gospel of work, William Morris and the arts and crafts movement—Its spirit desirable—The magic effects of a brief period of intense work—The natural development of the drawing instinct in the child.
Manual training has many origins; but in its now most widely accepted form it came to us more than a generation ago from Moscow, and has its best representation here in our new and often magnificent manual-training high schools and in many courses in other public schools. This work meets the growing demand of the country for a more practical education, a demand which often greatly exceeds the accommodations. The philosophy, if such it may be called, that underlies the movement, is simple, forcible, and sound, and not unlike Pestalozzi’s “keine Kentnisse ohne Fertigkeiten,” [No knowledge without skill] in that it lessens the interval between thinking and doing; helps to give control, dexterity, and skill an industrial trend to taste; interests many not successful in ordinary school; tends to the better appreciation of good, honest work; imparts new zest for some studies; adds somewhat to the average length of the school period; gives a sense of capacity and effectiveness, and is a useful preparation for a number of vocations.
These claims are all well founded, and this work is a valuable addition to the pedagogic agencies of any country or state. As man excels the higher anthropoids perhaps almost as much in hand power as in mind, and since the manual areas of the brain are wide near the psychic zones, and the cortical centers are thus directly developed, the hand is a potent instrument in opening the intellect as well as in training sense and will. It is no reproach to these schools that, full as they are, they provide for but an insignificant fraction of the nearly sixteen millions or twenty per cent of the young people of the country between fifteen and twenty-four.
When we turn to the needs of these pupils, the errors and limitations of the method are painful to contemplate. The work is essentially manual and offers little for the legs, where most of the muscular tissues of the body lie, those which respond most to training and are now most in danger of degeneration at this age; the back and trunk also are little trained. Consideration of proportion and bilateral asymmetry are practically ignored. Almost in proportion as these schools have multiplied, the rage for uniformity, together with motives of economy and administrative efficiency on account of overcrowding, have made them rigid and inflexible, on the principle that as the line lengthens the stake must be strengthened. This is a double misfortune; for the courses were not sufficiently considered at first and the plastic stage of adaptation was too short, while the methods of industry have undergone vast changes since they were given shape.
There are now between three and four hundred occupations in the census, more than half of these involving manual work, so that never perhaps was there so great a pedagogic problem as to make these natural developments into conscious art, to extract what may be called basal types. This requires an effort not without analogy to Aristotle’s attempt to extract from the topics of the marketplace the underlying categories eternally conditioning all thought, or to construct a grammar of speech. Hardly an attempt worthy the name, not even the very inadequate one of a committee, has been made in this field to study the conditions and to meet them. Like Froebel’s gifts and occupations, deemed by their author the very roots of human occupations in infant form, the processes selected are underived and find their justification rather in their logical sequence and coherence than in being true norms of work. If these latter be attainable at all, it is not likely that they will fit so snugly in a brief curriculum, so that its simplicity is suspicious.
The wards of the keys that lock the secrets of nature and human life are more intricate and mazy. As H.T. Bailey well puts it in substance, a master in any art-craft must have a fourfold equipment: 1. Ability to grasp an idea and embody it. 2. Power to utilize all nerve, and a wide repertory of methods, devices, recipes, discoveries, machines, etc. 3. Knowledge of the history of the craft. 4. Skill in technical processes. American schools emphasize chiefly only the last.
The actual result is thus a course rich in details representing wood and iron chiefly, and mostly ignoring other materials; the part of the course treating of the former, wooden in its teachings and distinctly tending to make joiners, carpenters, and cabinet-makers; that of the latter, iron in its rigidity and an excellent school for smiths, mechanics, and machinists. These courses are not liberal because they hardly touch science, which is rapidly becoming the real basis of every industry. Almost nothing that can be called scientific knowledge is required or even much favored, save some geometrical and mechanical drawing and its implicates.
These schools instinctively fear and repudiate plain and direct utility, or suspect its educational value or repute in the community because of this strong bias toward a few trades. This tendency also they even fear, less often because unfortunately trade-unions in this country sometimes jealously suspect it and might vote down supplies, than because the teachers in these schools were generally trained in older scholastic and even classic methods and matter. Industry is everywhere and always for the sake of the product, and to cut loose from this as if it were a contamination is a fatal mistake. To focus on process only, with no reference to the object made, is here an almost tragic case of the sacrifice of content to form, which in all history has been the chief stigma of degeneration in education. Man is a tool-using animal; but tools are always only a means to an end, the latter prompting even their invention.
Hence a course in tool manipulation only, with persistent refusal to consider the product lest features of trade-schools be introduced, has made most of our manual-training high schools ghastly, hollow, artificial institutions. Instead of making in the lower grades certain toys which are masterpieces of mechanical simplification, as tops and kites, and introducing such processes as glass-making and photography, and in higher grades making simple scientific apparatus more generic than machines, to open the great principles of the material universe, all is sacrificed to supernormalized method.
As in all hypermethodic schemes, the thought side is feeble. There is no control of the work of these schools by the higher technical institutions such as the college exercises over the high school, so that few of them do work that fits for advanced training or is thought best by technical faculties. In most of its current narrow forms, manual training will prove to be historically, as it is educationally, extemporized and tentative, and will soon be superseded by broader methods and be forgotten and obsolete, or cited only as a low point of departure from which future progress will loom up.
Indeed in more progressive centers, many new departures are now in the experimental stage. Goetze at Leipzig, as a result of long and original studies and trials, has developed courses in which pasteboard work and modeling are made of equal rank with wood and iron, and he has connected them even with the kindergarten below. In general the whole industrial life of our day is being slowly explored in the quest of new educational elements; and rubber, lead, glass, textiles, metallurgical operations, agriculture, every tool and many machines, etc., are sure to contribute their choicest pedagogical factors to the final result. In every detail the prime consideration should be the nature and needs of the youthful body and will at each age, their hygiene and fullest development; and next, the closest connection with science at every point should do the same for the intellect. Each operation and each tool—the saw, knife, plane, screw, hammer, chisel, draw-shave, sandpaper, lathe—will be studied with reference to its orthopedic value, bilateral asymmetry, the muscles it develops, and the attitudes and motor habits it favors; and uniformity, which in France often requires classes to saw, strike, plane up, down, right, left, all together, upon count and command, will give place to individuality.
Sloyd has certain special features and claims. The word means skilful, deft. The movement was organised in Sweden a quarter of a century ago as an effort to prevent the extinction by machinery of peasant home industry during the long winter night. Home sloyd was installed in an institution of its own for training teachers at Nääs. It works in wood only, with little machinery, and is best developed for children of from eleven to fifteen. It no longer aims to make artisans; but its manipulations are meant to be developmental, to teach both sexes not only to be useful but self-active and self-respecting, and to revere exactness as a form of truthfulness. It assumes that all and especially the motor-minded can really understand only what they make, and that one can work like a peasant and think like a philosopher. It aims to produce wholes rather than parts like the Russian system, and to be so essentially educational that, as a leading exponent says, its best effects would be conserved if the hands were cut off.
This change of its original utilitarianism from the lower to the liberal motor development of the middle and upper classes and from the land where it originated to another, has not eliminated the dominant marks of its origin in its models, the Penates of the sloyd household, the unique features of which persist like a national school of art, despite transplantation and transformation.[1]
Sloyd at its best tries to correlate several series, viz., exercises, tools, drawing, and models. Each must be progressive, so that every new step in each series involves a new and next developmental step in all the others, and all together, it is claimed, fit the order and degree of development of each power appealed to in the child. Yet there has been hardly an attempt to justify either the physiological or the psychological reason of a single step in any of these series, and the coördination of the series even with each other, to say nothing of their adaptation to the stages of the child’s development.
This, if as pat and complete as is urged, would indeed constitute on the whole a paragon of all the harmony, beauty, totality in variety, etc., which make it so magnificent in the admirer’s eyes. But the “45 tools, 72 exercises, 31 models, 15 of which are joints,” all learned by teachers in one school year of daily work and by pupils in four years, are overmethodic; and such correlation is impossible in so many series at once. Every dual order, even of work and unfoldment of powers, is hard enough, since the fall lost us Eden; and woodwork, could it be upon that of the tree of knowledge itself, incompatible with enjoying its fruit. Although a philosopher may see the whole universe in its smallest part, all his theory can not reproduce educational wholes from fragments of it.
The real merits of sloyd have caused its enthusiastic leaders to magnify its scope and claims far beyond their modest bounds; and although its field covers the great transition from childhood to youth, one searches in vain both its literature and practise for the slightest recognition of the new motives and methods that puberty suggests. Especially in its partially acclimatized forms to American conditions, it is all adult and almost scholastic; and as the most elaborate machinery may sometimes be run by a poor power-wheel, if the stream be swift and copious enough, so the mighty rent that sets toward motor education would give it some degree of success were it worse and less economic of pedagogic momentum than it is. It holds singularly aloof from other methods of efferent training and resists co-ördination with them, and its provisions for other than hand development are slight.
It will be one of the last to accept its true but modest place as contributing certain few but precious elements in the greater synthesis that impends. Indian industries, basketry, pottery, bead, leather, bows and arrows, bark, etc., which our civilization is making lost arts by forcing the white man’s industries upon red men at reservation schools and elsewhere, need only a small part of the systemization that Swedish peasant work has received to develop even greater educational values; and the same is true of the indigenous household work of the old New England farm, the real worth and possibilities of which are only now, and perhaps too late, beginning to be seen by a few educators.
This brings us to the arts and crafts movement, originating with Carlyle’s gospel of work and Ruskin’s medievalism, developed by William Morris and his disciples at the Red House, checked awhile by the ridicule of the comic opera “Patience,” and lately revived in some of its features by Cobden-Sanderson, and of late to some extent in various centers in this country. Its ideal was to restore the day of the seven ancient guilds and of Hans Sachs, the poet cobbler, when conscience and beauty inspired work, and the hand did what machines only imitate and vulgarize. In the past, which this school of motor culture harks back to, work, for which our degenerate age lacks even respect, was indeed praise. Refined men and women have remembered these early days, when their race was in its prime, as a lost paradise which they would regain by designing and even weaving tapestries and muslins; experimenting in vats with dyes to rival Tyrian purple; printing and binding by hand books that surpass the best of the Aldine, and Elzevirs; carving in old oak; hammering brass; forging locks, irons, and candlesticks; becoming artists in burned wood and leather; seeking old effects of simplicity and solidity in furniture and decoration, as well as architecture, stained glass, and to some extent in dress and manners; and all this toil and moil was ad majorem gloriam hominis [To the greater glory of man] in a new socialistic state, where the artist, and even the artisan, should take his rightful place above the man who merely knows.
The day of the mere professor, who deals in knowledge, is gone; and the day of the doer, who creates, has come. The brain and the hand, too long divorced and each weak and mean without the other; use and beauty, each alone vulgar; letters and labor, each soulless without the other, are henceforth to be one and inseparable; and this union will lift man to a higher level. The workman in his apron and paper hat, inspired by the new socialism and the old spirit of chivalry as revived by Scott, revering Wagner’s revival of the old Deutschenthum that was to conquer Christenthum, or Tennyson’s Arthurian cycle—this was its ideal; even as the Jews rekindled their loyalty to the ancient traditions of their race and made their Bible under Ezra; as we begin to revere the day of the farmer-citizen, who made our institutions, or as some of us would revive his vanishing industrial life for the red man.
Although this movement was by older men and women and had in it something of the longing regret of senescence for days that are no more, it shows us the glory which invests racial adolescence when it is recalled in maturity, the time when the soul can best appreciate the value of its creations and its possibilities, and really lives again in its glamour and finds in it its greatest inspiration. Hence it has its lessons for us here. A touch, but not too much of it, should be felt in all manual education, which is just as capable of idealism as literary education. This gives soul, interest, content, beauty, taste. If not a polyphrastic philosophy seeking to dignify the occupation of the workshop by a pretentious Volapük of reasons and abstract theories, we have here the pregnant suggestion of a psychological quarry of motives and spirit opened and ready to be worked. Thus the best forces from the past should be turned on to shape and reinforce the best tendencies of the present.
The writings of the above gospelers of work not only could and should, but will be used to inspire manual-training high schools, sloyd and even some of the less scholastic industrial courses; but each is incomplete without the other. These books and those that breathe their spirit should be the mental workshop of all who do tool, lathe, and forge work; who design and draw patterns, carve or mold; or of those who study how to shape matter for human uses, and whose aim is to obtain diplomas or certificates of fitness to teach all such things.
The muse of art and even of music will have some voice in the great synthesis which is to gather up the scattered, hence ineffective, elements of secondary motor training, in forms which shall represent all the needs of adolescents in the order and proportion that nature and growth stages indicate, drawing, with this end supreme, upon all the resources that history and reform offer to our selection. All this can never make work become play. Indeed it will and should make work harder and more unlike play and of another genus, because the former is thus given its own proper soul and leads its own distinct, but richer, and more abounding life.
I must not close this section without brief mention of two important studies that have supplied each a new and important determination concerning laws of work peculiar to adolescence.
The main telegraphic line requires a speed of over seventy letters per minute of all whom they will employ. As a sending rate this is not very difficult and is often attained after two months’ practise. This standard for a receiving rate is harder and later, and inquiry at schools where it is taught shows that about seventy-five per cent of those who begin the study fail to reach this speed and so are not employed. Bryan and Harter[2] explained the rate of improvement in both sending and receiving, with results represented for one typical subject in the curve on the following page.
From the first, sending improves most rapidly and crosses the dead-line a few months before the receiving rate, which may fall short. Curves 1 and 2 represent the same student. I have added line 3 to illustrate the three-fourths who fail. Receiving is far less pleasant than sending, and years of daily practise at ordinary rates will not bring a man to his maximum rate; he remains on the low plateau with no progress beyond a certain point. If forced by stress of work, danger of being dropped, or by will power to make a prolonged and intense effort, he breaks through his hidebound rate and permanently attains a faster pace. This is true at each step, and every advance seems to cost even more intensive effort than the former one. At length, for those who go on, the rate of receiving, which is a more complex process, exceeds that of sending; and the curves of the above figure would cross if prolonged. The expert receives so much faster than he sends that abbreviated codes are used, and he may take eighty to eighty-five words a minute on a typewriter in correct form.
[Illustration: Letters per Minute x Weeks of Practice.]
The motor curve seems to asymptotically approach a perhaps physiological limit, which the receiving curve does not suggest. This seems a special case of a general though not yet explained law. In learning a foreign language, speaking is first and easiest, and hearing takes a late but often sudden start to independence. Perhaps this holds of every ability. To Bryan this suggests as a hierarchy of habits, the plateau of little or no improvement, meaning that lower order habits are approaching their maximum but are not yet automatic enough to leave the attention free to attack higher order habits. The second ascent from drudgery to freedom, which comes through automatism, is often as sudden as the first ascent. One stroke of attention comes to do what once took many. To attain such effective speed is not dependent on reaction time. This shooting together of units distinguishes the master from the man, the genius from the hack. In many, if not all, skills where expertness is sought, there is a long discouraging level, and then for the best a sudden ascent, as if here, too, as we have reason to think in the growth of both the body as a whole and in that of its parts, nature does make leaps and attains her ends by alternate rests and rushes. Youth lives along on a low level of interest and accomplishment and then starts onward, is transformed, converted; the hard becomes easy; the old life sinks to a lower stratum; and a new and higher order, perhaps a higher brain level and functions, is evolved. The practical implication here of the necessity of hard concentrative effort as a condition of advancement is re-enforced by a quotation from Senator Stanford on the effect of early and rather intensive work at not too long periods in training colts for racing. Let-ups are especially dangerous. He says, “It is the supreme effort that develops.” This, I may add, suggests what is developed elsewhere, that truly spontaneous attention is conditioned by spontaneous muscle tension, which is a function of growth, and that muscles are thus organs of the mind; and also that even voluntary attention is motivated by the same nisus of development even in its most adult form, and that the products of science, invention, discovery, as well as the association plexus of all that was originally determined in the form of consciousness, are made by rhythmic alternation of attack, as it moves from point to point creating diversions and recurrence.
The other study, although quite independent, is part a special application and illustration of the same principle.
At the age of four or five, when they can do little more than scribble, children’s chief interest in pictures is as finished products; but in the second period, which Lange calls that of artistic illusion, the child sees in his own work not merely what it represents, but an image of fancy back of it. This, then, is the golden period for the development of power to create artistically. The child loves to draw everything with the pleasure chiefly in the act, and he cares little for the finished picture. He draws out of his own head, and not from copy before his eye. Anything and everything is attempted in bold lines in this golden age of drawing. If he followed the teacher, looked carefully and drew what he saw, he would be abashed at his production. Indians, conflagrations, games, brownies, trains, pageants, battles—everything is graphically portrayed; but only the little artist himself sees the full meaning of his lines. Criticism or drawing strictly after nature breaks this charm, since it gives place to mechanical reproduction in which the child has little interest.
Thus awakens him from his dream to a realization that he can not draw, and from ten to fifteen his power of perceiving things steadily increases and he makes almost no progress in drawing. Adolescence arouses the creative faculty and the desire and ability to draw are checked and decline after thirteen or fourteen. The curve is the plateau which Barnes has described. The child has measured his own productions upon the object they reproduced and found them wanting, is discouraged and dislikes drawing. From twelve on, Barnes found drawing more and more distasteful; and this, too, Lukens found to be the opinion of our art teachers. The pupils may draw very properly and improve in technique, but the interest is gone. This is the condition in which most men remain all their lives. Their power to appreciate steadily increases. Only a few gifted adolescents about this age begin a to develop a new zest in production, rivaling that of the period from five to ten, when their satisfaction is again chiefly in creation. These are the artists whose active powers dominate.
Lukens[3] finds in his studies of drawing, that in what he calls his fourth period of artistic development, there are those “who during adolescence experience a rebirth of creative power.” Zest in creation then often becomes a stronger incentive to work than any pleasure or profit to be derived from the finished product, so that in this the propitious conditions of the first golden age of childhood are repeated and the deepest satisfaction is again found in the work itself. At about fourteen or fifteen, which is the transition period, nascent faculties sometimes develop very rapidly. Lukens[4] draws the interesting curve shown on the following page.
[Illustration: Motor, creative or productive power. Sensory or receptive interest in the finished product.]
The reciprocity between the power to produce and that to appreciate, roughly represented in the above curve, likely is true also in the domain of music, and may be, perhaps, a general law of development. Certain it is that the adolescent power to apperceive and appreciate never so far outstrips his power to produce or reproduce as about midway in the teens. Now impressions sink deepest. The greatest artists are usually those who paint later, when the expressive powers are developed, what they have felt most deeply and known best at this age, and not those who in the late twenties, or still later, have gone to new environments and sought to depict them. All young people draw best those objects they love most, and their proficiency should be some test of the contents of their minds.
They must put their own consciousness into a picture. At the dawn of this stage of appreciation the esthetic tastes should be stimulated by exposure to, and instructed in feeling for, the subject-matter of masterpieces; and instruction in technique, detail, criticism, and learned discrimination of schools of painting should be given intermittently. Art should not now be for art’s sake, but for the sake of feeling and character, life, and conduct; it should be adjunct to morals, history, and literature; and in all, edification should be the goal; and personal interest, and not that of the teacher, should be the guide. Insistence on production should be eased, and the receptive imagination, now so hungry, should be fed and reinforced by story and all other accessories. By such a curriculum, potential creativeness, if it exists, will surely be evoked in its own good time. It will, at first, attempt no commonplace drawing-master themes, but will essay the highest that the imagination can bode forth. It may be crude and lame in execution, but it will be lofty, perhaps grand; and if it is original in consciousness, it will be in effect. Most creative painters before twenty have grappled with the greatest scenes in literature or turning points in history, representations of the loftiest truths, embodiments of the most inspiring ideals. None who deserve the name of artist copy anything now, and least of all with objective fidelity to nature; and the teacher that represses or criticizes this first point of genius, or who can not pardon the grave faults of technique inevitable at this age when ambition ought to be too great for power, is not an educator but a repressor, a pedagogic Philistine committing, like so many of his calling in other fields, the unpardonable sin against budding promise, always at this age so easily blighted.
Just as the child of six or seven should be encouraged in his strong instinct to draw the most complex scenes of his daily life, so now the inner life should find graphic utterance in all its intricacy up to the full limit of unrepressed courage. For the great majority, on the other hand, who only appreciate and will never create, the mind, if it have its rights, will be stored with the best images and sentiments of art; for at this time they are best remembered and sink deepest into heart and life. Now, although the hand may refuse, the fancy paints the world in brightest hues and fairest forms; and such an opportunity for infecting the soul with vaccine of ideality, hope, optimism, and courage in adversity, will never come again. I believe that in few departments are current educational theories and practises so hard on youth of superior gifts, just at the age when all become geniuses for a season, very brief for most, prolonged for some, and permanent for the best. We do not know how to teach to, see, hear, and feel when the sense centers are most indelibly impressible, and to give relative rest to the hand during the years when its power of accuracy is abated and when all that is good is idealized furthest, and confidence in ability to produce is at its lowest ebb.
Finally, our divorce between industrial and manual training is abnormal, and higher technical education is the chief sufferer. Professor Thurston, of Cornell, who has lately returned from a tour of inspection abroad, reported that to equal Germany we now need: “1. Twenty technical universities, having in their schools of engineering 50 instructors and 500 students each. 2. Two thousand technical high schools or manual-training schools, each having not less than 200 students and 10 instructors.” If we have elementary trade-schools, this would mean technical high schools enough to accommodate 700,000 students, served by 20,000 teachers. With the strong economic arguments in this direction we are not here concerned; but that there are tendencies to unfit youth for life by educational method and matter shown in strong relief from this standpoint, we shall point out in a later chapter.
[Footnote 1: This I have elsewhere tried to show in detail. Criticisms of High School Physics and Manual Training and Mechanic Arts in High Schools. Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 193-204.]
[Footnote 2: Studies in the Physiology and Psychology of the Telegraphic Language. Psychological Review, January, 1897, vol. 4, pp. 27-53, and July, 1899, vol. 6, pp. 344-375.]
[Footnote 3: A Study of Children’s Drawings in the Early Years.
Pedagogical Seminary, October, 1896, vol. 4, pp. 79-101. See also
Drawing in the Early Years, Proceedings of the National Educational
Association, 1899, pp. 946-953. Das Kind als Künstler, von C. Götze.
Hamburg, 1898. The Genetic vs. the Logical Order in Drawing, by F.
Burk. Pedagogical Seminary, September, 1902, vol. 9, pp. 296-323.]
[Footnote 4: Die Entwickelungsstufen beim Zeichnen. Die Kinderfehler,
September, 1897, vol. 2, pp. 166-179.]
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Coronavirus (COVID-19) is right here to show us a lesson; I hope we be taught. Nigeria’s healthcare is unhealthy. But as an alternative of fixing it our rulers have been busy flying up and down to profit from different nation’s productive well being system. With Coronavirus, actuality is upon us. No extra operating abroad for medical trip. Our rulers can’t journey to the United Kingdom, United States of America or India anymore for medical care. These nations are additionally hanging on their final breath, battling to outlive the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2017, President Muhammadu Buhari spent 103 days in London receiving medical therapy for an undisclosed sickness, spending taxpayers’ cash as an alternative of investing within the nation’s healthcare. Thousands of Nigerians died in the identical interval from totally different sicknesses. More than 3,000 girls died of breast most cancers, greater than 2,000 girls died of cervical most cancers and greater than 1,500 males died of prostate most cancers, in line with World Health Organization (WHO) figures on annual most cancers mortality.
I had hoped that on his return to Nigeria, President Buhari would declare a state of emergency within the nation’s well being sector. Painfully, nothing of such occurred. Nigeria’s funds allocation to healthcare has remained lower than 5% of the whole funds for the previous 5 years. Simply put, in 2020 the federal authorities budgeted N2,000 (£4.2) for every Nigerian with a complete of N427.Three billion as funds allocation to the well being sector whereas the United Kingdom budgeted £2,159.6 for every citizen with a complete well being funds of £143.4billion. It is similar dismal story within the states throughout Nigeria. Healthcare isn’t a precedence. In some states in Nigeria, a hospital is a 20-minute boat journey and an hour-long automobile journey. Because many poor Nigerians don’t personal boats, a girl in labour may bleed to loss of life earlier than she reaches the hospital.
On March 22, 2018, Bill Gates, founding father of Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, criticized Nigerian authorities’s poor funding of healthcare within the nation. In his phrases, “One in three children is chronically malnourished.” This tragedy has large implications for the economic system. According to the World Bank, addressing the stunting disaster in Nigeria would add virtually $30 billion to Nigeria’s GDP. It is painful that regardless of Mr. Gates assertion, nothing has modified. Nigeria has remained one of many nations on this planet with the worst healthcare system with over 60 deaths per 1000 stay births. Nigeria has one of many worst most cancers survival charges on this planet, with solely 2 to three most cancers radiotherapy machines working at any time and fewer than 70 oncologists for a inhabitants of over 200 million.
COVID-19 is exposing the insensitivity of our leaders to issues that matter most to us. That Nigerians are disobeying the federal government’s security recommendation on COVID-19 is a transparent reflection of residents’ distrust for his or her leaders. Many Nigerians belief their non secular leaders greater than they belief our political leaders. Successive governments have failed the nation, and it doesn’t appear like factor will change anytime quickly.
Nigeria is a rustic the place our rulers make legal guidelines as we speak and break the identical legal guidelines tomorrow. The Nigeria Centre for Diseases Control (NCDC) adopted the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline and strongly inspired all Nigerians coming from sure nations to self-isolate and monitor themselves, as a method to comprise or to delay the unfold of COVID-19. The president’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, returned from Germany and as an alternative of isolating himself he was leaping from one state to a different, attending occasions and conferences with totally different folks, breaching the federal government’s personal advice and inserting the lives of different Nigerians in danger!
Now that COVID-19 is in Nigeria we have to face it with all that we’ve. But can we? The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) is now the nation’s solely perceived hope. Many Nigerians have been calling NCDC scorching traces, criticizing NCDC for not testing sufficient folks. But we must always face the music and never the dancer. NCDC is crippled and never effectively outfitted to guard Nigerians from the illness.
In 2016, NCDC budgeted N3.7m for its recurrent and N248m for capital allocations. That is a complete of N251.7m. Out of this, solely N155m was launched to the centre. In the identical 12 months, 1,166 Nigerians died of Cerebrospinal Meningitis. In 2017, the NCDC had a funds of N1.5b. Only N782m was launched. In the identical 12 months, greater than 120 Nigerians contracted Monkeypox and 7 folks died from the illness. That identical 12 months, the Presidency budgeted N77m for Aso Rock lease, N1b for journeys and sitting allowances, and N94m for meals. In 2018, the NCDC had a funds of N1.9b. Only N654m was launched. In the identical 12 months, N7.2b was proposed for Presidential Air Fleet. N440m was proposed for necessary improve and set up of stay TV and web service within the presidential aircrafts, N375m for brand spanking new cabin administration, N418m for the touchdown gears. In whole, over N1b was budgeted for the presidential aircrafts which is used for medical tourism and frequent journeys overseas.
On November 12, 2018, the NCDC institution invoice was signed by President Muhammadu Buhari, because of the efforts of Senator Mao Ohuabunwa, the then Chair, Senate Committee on Primary Healthcare and Communicable Diseases. On this premise, the NCDC was empowered with a laws for its work in stopping and making ready for outbreaks of infectious illnesses. Interestingly, the NCDC acquired the worst funds in 2019, the 12 months following the passage of the NCDC Act. The Centre had a funds of N1.4b, however solely N224m was launched. In the identical 12 months, over 472 Nigerians have been identified with Lassa fever and over 110 folks died from this viral hemorrhagic fever. Clearly, NCDC can’t carry out magic. They need assistance. Nigeria is grossly under-testing for COVID-19, the laboratories usually are not sufficient, and NCDC and its affiliate businesses wouldn’t have sufficient manpower and sources.
Months in the past, being unwell evoked empathy; as we speak being unwell evokes concern. The concern of COVID-19? No! It is the concern of not gaining access to the care that you just want, the concern of absence of ventilators, the concern of a damaged well being system. It is the concern of loss of life. Our political leaders have stolen from the sick by corruption. Many Nigerian governors construct non-functional hospitals of their states. Usually, after the commissioning of those hospitals, all of the CT Scan, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and different medical machines—a few of them faux—are returned to the place they have been bought or left to rot.
Hospitals in Nigeria are among the worst on this planet. Our educating hospitals at the moment are museums the place lower than 5% of medical trial and analysis is occurring due to poor laboratory. Medical tourism has due to this fact grow to be the norm. Dubai hospitals, Saudi Arabian hospitals, and so on., are promoting in Abuja and Lagos for Nigerian sufferers. They are recruiting Nigerian docs, together with consultants. Nigeria isn’t solely going through “brain drain,” we’re additionally going through “patient drain.” Our docs and nurses work within the worst situations. Hazard allowance for well being staff is about N5,000 whereas wardrobe allowance for members of the National Assembly runs into hundreds of thousands.
Now is the time for Nigeria to confront its healthcare disaster. The Nigerian authorities should settle for its failure. Our political leaders should brace as much as their duty and critically replicate on the issue their greed has delivered to Nigeria. This is the time to put money into a result-oriented healthcare system. Health is wealth because the saying goes. healthcare system is the muse of any nation.
If we survive COVID-19, we have to contemplate a legislation to limit all public officers from searching for medical care overseas. It could also be perceived as strict, however it can save future generations since we don’t know which pandemic would come subsequent and when.
Let’s give each Nigerian an area to stay and a not probability to die.
Runcie C.W. Chidebe is Executive Director, Project PINK BLUE. He is at the moment a Commonwealth Scholar on Transforming and Leading in Health Care at Birmingham City University, United Kingdom. He tweets @runciecwc
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KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah authorities in principal will not be permitting Ramadan bazaar all through the state this yr in the trouble to curb the Covid-19 outbreak.
State Secretary Datuk Safar Untong mentioned the ruling was in line with the federal government’s resolution to ban the ‘tamu’ and farmer’s market.
“The state government will make an official announcement (regarding this matter) including the standard operating procedure (SOP), among others, involving every activity to be carried out in the state,” he informed reporters right here, at this time.
Safar mentioned the state authorities was now in the method of finalising the SOP, together with the operation hours of each grocery store in the state, to make sure the outbreak can be completely contained.
“If previously the SOP and the operation hours were not standardised, now we want to standardise them, for example, in supermarkets; every worker and shopper must wear face masks and use the sanitiser,” he mentioned.
Meanwhile, Safar mentioned the Public Works Department (PWD) has been ordered to restore or exchange damaged primary requirements in each quarantine centre in the state.
“Any quarantine centre in Sabah that needs repairs, we will fix them using the state’s government allocation, although the buildings are owned by the Federal government. I am sure PWD is now in process of repairing (broken basic needs in quarantine centres),” he mentioned, in response to a viraled video on social media, which confirmed unsatisfactory situation at a quarantine facility in the state.
A complete of 28 quarantine centres had been established in Sabah to isolate people suspected to be constructive Covid-19 and susceptible to infecting others.
Commenting on quarantine lodging in three-star motels, Safar mentioned Sabah in the intervening time had been utilizing two three-star motels to deal with people who returned from overseas and wanted to bear the 14-day quarantine.
“However the costs will be borne by those involved,” he mentioned, including that the federal government’s quarantine centres had been freed from cost and had meals served. — Bernama
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