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defensefilms · 2 years

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The New Politics Of South Africa As Written By Defense Films

The following blog post, is a kind of rough draft/framework for a book I want to write about South African politics.

Think of this as a kind of manifesto that focuses on the kind of policies and legislations that can hopefully improve the lives of the average South African by focusing on the prospective implementation of the following key issues/policies.

Drugs, Cape Town And Free Zones

Taxes And A New Regulatory Body

Legislating The Alcohol Industry

Ensuring The Delivery Of Basic Services

Revamping Free Education Infrastructure

Eradicating Corruption Within The South African Police

Improving Health Care And Introducing Free Health Care

A New Prison Reform And Rehabilitation System

Relegislating Small Businesses For Economic Growth

Key Issues, Policies, Legislations

1. Drugs, Cape Town And Introducing Free Zones

For decades now residents of the Cape flats have suffered under a never ending wave of crime and poverty with no real end in sight.

From corporate involvement to governmental, policing and then community orientated legislation have all failed to completely redress or address a culture of drugs and gang violence.

Among the key problems when police do attempt enforcement strategies that will likely conclude in a raid, is that they invariably disrupt citizens.

What I would propose is for there to be legalized drug use and drug sales within a given location, outside of residential areas, a minimum of 5km away from the school or hospital on the outermost perimeter of the district/ward.

The idea here is to separate the drug use and gang violence from the citizens by giving them a space and funneling all criminal activity into one area.

Now of course, there is the threat of gang members being in closer proximity to each other, and more cases of violent incidents, but I fear we may already past that threshold, with violence already affecting the daily lives of citizens who would be better off without the gang violence.

Having all drug sales and drug-related violence pushed to one part of the neighborhood/ward/district, will ease some of the pressure for the police from both an enforcement perspective and hopefully, in terms of investigations.

The likelihood of the police doing and effective investigation will be heightened of the amount of places the incident could have occurred in, is within a 5 km radius.

At a communal level, this initiative will require help from some key people within any distric we choose to implement it in.

These are:

Drug intervention specialists

Gang intervention activists

Community activists

Local primary school principals, high school principals, and as well as Department Of Education representatives.

Station commanders of all the surrounding police departments.

Upon successful implementation, the first mandate of the government is to leverage the existing small business infrastructure (small scale car mechanics, hair salons, spaza shops and taverns) and organize as many of them as franchisees with the intention of growing the small business sector in the Cape flats.

The reason this is important is that while you can separate the criminals from the tax payers, most drug dealers have access to cash on hand and that will give them an advantage in bringing the community back in to the criminal element.

To curtail this, you must ensure that the community gains something from the absences of the dealers and the users, and the best incentive, is a way for them to make money on their own, and have something to protect, so as to discourage any financial dealings with the gangsters.

Should the FreeZone intitiative succeed in Cape Town, then the goal will be to use it to alleviate drug related violence throughout the country.

2. Taxes And A System That Fosters Accountability

What we need is a system that allows the average tax payer to go and look for themselves exactly how tax revenue is being allocated in their ward, city, town or province.

What I suggest is that Tax Revenue, and exactly how much tax revenue should be displayed to the public, the way the stock exchange lists the value of a stock.

Complete and utter clarity, 24 hours a day, every single day, with regards to the displaying of THE EXACT AMOUNT of funds available in the tax revenue,

Furthermore, we must create an accountability bureau with the goal of tracking all tax monies, and should taxes monies be rendered/ withdrawn for the sake of service delivery, or for the sake of issuing funds for a tender, not only will that transaction be a matter of public record via display, there will be tax accountability officers taske with tracking the expenditure of those monies ditributed.

The accountability officers should not be tasked with procurement of tax revenue at all. They are solely responsible for ensuring that monies taken out from the countries tax revenue are used appropriately, and only for the stated intention, and that includes procuring the change/remains from the expenditure.

Key to implementing this is creating the right kinds of legislation to empower the accountability officers by giving them access to South African Police personnel upon request, giving their cases and investigatoins priority and allowing the National Prosecuting Authority to act upon their findings in cases of deviance, thievery or fraud.

3. Re-Legislating The Sale, Distribution and Consumption Of Alcohol

I propose that the country must curtail the availability of alcohol in South Africa and for all of the county’s major distillers, breweries and outlets to export no less than 70% of their inventory over seas and across borders to other countries..

The 2nd piece of legislation to aid the limiting of alcohol is for South Africa’s bars, liquor stores, taverns and restaurants to cease sales of alcoholic beverages for a maximum of 5 hours per day.

That would mean that local liquor outlets should only be operational and serving beverages from 6pm-11pm.

Furthemore the legal drinking age in South Africa should be raised to 23-years of age,so as to curtail early exposure to alcoholism.

4. Restructuring The Implementation Of Service Delivery

-Across All 278 Municipalities, 8 metropolitans, 44 districts and 226 local municipalities.

To support the new tax accountability system and among the chief mandates to be implemented and entrusted to the tax accountability officers is related to service delivery.

How services and essentials are delivered to the impoverished communities in South Africa has long been an issue. Electricity, water, access to medical care, services and products are often not delivered to the intended to recipients.

Tax accountability officers must ensure the end of this by tracking government spending with regards to these communities, and in cases where service delivery was entrusted to a private company/business via a tender, the accountability officers must ensure that the service has been rendered or is in working condition, and that all moneis are properly accounted for.

5. Revamping Free Education Infrastructure

Improving existing free schooling infrastructure

Redefining what constitutes a private and a public school

Allowing private schools to operate as private institutions

Revamping government education curriculums (introduce early financial education, early introduction to the sciences)

The INTEC initiative and introducing trade skills to learners post high school.

Intergrating the South African Qualifications Agency, The Council For Educators and the Department Of Education in implementing

The first legislation that needs to be passed to affect positive changes in the education sector, is redifining more acurately what constitutes a private school and what constitues a public school.

Particularly with schools registered in quintiles 4 and 5 according to the Department of Education, where each student is allocated less than R1000 toward each child’s education, and the quintiles that also have the most financially self-sustainable schools.

This legislation would also allow schools in quintiles 4 and 5 to operate as fully independant businesses and allowing a free market as far as private schools are concerned, while also freeing up more of the total budget to be used on the poorest sectors of education and schooling.

Furthermore, the remaining schools, listed from quintiles 1-3, wll undergo a revamp of the education curriculum, with a bigger focus on the fields of financial planning, science, technology, and in some provinces, agriculture.

The implementation of these changes to the curriculum wll require careful strategic planning, because all schools will need to have new infrastructure installed like computers, tablets, cellphones, and this also means, installing new security at all local schools in quintiles 1-3.

The third piece of legislation will be the creation of a free post highschool tertiary college infastructure, where citizens of any age can attend to learn skills in trades like welding, plumbing, electrical maintanance, carpentry, metalworks, accounting, computer literacy, agriculture, administration and human resource management.

Ideally, this model would resemble something closer to American community colleges, where a citizen of any age, gender, class or race, can enroll and learn skills in variety at no monetary cost.

6. Eradicating Corruption Within The South African Police Service And Empowering The Prosecution Of Tax Thieves

Empowering Hawks and separating them, allowing them to run independantly of the SAPS.

Eradicating Corruption with the SAPS

Empowering the National Prosecuting Authority, supporting legislation that will limit any chance of another incident like State Capture.

Instituting a 20-year statute of limitations on white collar crime, tax fraud and embezzlement, to really empower prosecutors to engage in prolonged investigations into high-level crime and tax theft, with the goal of allowing prosecutors to act retro actively regarding investigations, prosecutions and recovery of tax payer monies.

The first and most important mandate relating to law enforcement and crime prevention must be legislations that empower the National Prosecuting Authority and enabling them to pursue more investigations into corruption at both the governmental and corporate levels.

The first way to do this is to extend the statue of limitation on white collar crime, racketeering, embezzlement, money laundering, tax fraud and/or thievery to 20 years or more.

The idea is to give the prosecutors and investigators more leeway to prosecute crimes and recover tax moneis retroactively.

The next piece of legislation is one that allows the Hawks, South Africa’s anti-corruption unit to be run 100% independent of the South African Police Service.

The creation of new office spaces, new databases, filing systems, operations, administration, investigators and officers, completely outside the jurisdiction and oversight of the South African police, and this will extend even further into active and on-going investigations and prosecutions.

Any and all internal affairs and investigations into the South African Police Service and it’s officers will be conducted by the Hawks and will be given priority by the National Prosecuting Authority.

7. Improving Health Care Infrastructure And Introducing Free Medical Health Care

Financing the improvement of our healthcare system to Increase the number of hospitals, quality of facilities and number of hospital staff throughout the country.

Implementing free health care for South Africans below a specific income.

Aggressively integrating traditional healers into the formal medical health sector.

The Traditional Health Practitioner’s act of 2007 provides us with a starting point as far as legislation that intergrates the traditiona and formal health sectors is concerned, but what we don’t have is on-the-ground integration and combined utilization of both traditional and formal medical practices by the working public.

For instance a more practical way to apply the act of 2007, would be to have formally trained doctors doing check-ups and diagnosis along side a traditional healer.

The ideal is for traditional healers to more actively participate in the medical services sector and function almost as auxiliary hospital staff.

The economics of how this would work is where the variables lie. For instance, one way to organize this would be to have traditional healers register under a local hospital but that on it’s own does not provide the kind of financial incentive for local traditional healers.

The other way is for traditional healers to receive government subsidies, and in this way they can be financed to have a premises of their own where they can take consultations and have a formally trained nurse or doctor on hand for additional consultation or vice-versa.

The point is that South Africa’s public health care sector needs help and there is already a culture that can help accomplish this, if the formal and public health sector can integrate traditional healers in a way that the public sees as helpful.

The National House of Traditional Leaders is a body comprised of traditional healers from all over South Africa and the formal medical sector must lean on this body to help bring in, organize and streamline local traditional healers in South Africa’s poorest areas so as to intergrate them faster and help alieviate the understaffing of South African public hospitals.

8. A New Prison Reform and Rehabilitation System

The rates of violent crime in South Africa have become a kind of black mark on our country’s justice system and the rates of repeat offenders point to a further indictment of out prison reform system an whether it does indeed reform it’s inmates..

A country riddled in poverty is a country riddled by crime, and one thing that is clear, is that beyond policing and innovations in enforcement, one thing we can address, is how prisoners are reformed.

There are plenty of statistics and studies that prove that the more modern and somewhat humane practices used in Eastern European countries are indeed something to aspire to, and indeed using methods like these is not a matter of needing an ideal economy or any kind of distant future, to begin implementing more humane policies.

One of the ways to perhaps get better results and also achieve reconcilliation between victims of crime and inmates, are programs that facilitate direct, face-to-face dialogoue between the two parties.

For instance, in a situation where the victim of a murder has left a family behind that is now earning a grant from the government from having lost their provider, it will be the responsibility of the inmate to deliver the grant paymment, via a payslip already in the grant recipient’s name; to the grant holder directly and fac-to-face, every month.

Programs like these ensure a direct communication, and helps past violent offenders, see the effects of the damage they’ve done while also being part of the solution.

Among the key issues to be addressed is finding ways to remedy the alienation and isolatoin that inmates and prisoners have from the broader society, by implementing new inmate parole programs especially with regards to non-violent offenders.

Having a parole program that allows inmates to leave the prison facilities and either work or accomplish tasks in active society, and then return to the facility while they are serving their sentence so as to prepare them for life on parole and eventually freedom.

There are two ways to effectively intergrate former inmates back in to society.

The first is by incentivizing businesses to hire newly freed inmates in the form of grants and subsidies that pay businesses for hiring a certain number of former inmates.

Another is by creating businesses that exist specifically to hire inmates in the agricultural sector.

Inmates/ felons must face their victims or families of their victims.

A revamped parole system that aggressively implements putting former inmates back in to society.

State-owned businesses created specifically to support ex-inmate work programs, and which sectors/industries should be subsidized most aggressively in hiring former inmates.

Involving The Land And Agricultural Development Bank

9. Relaxing Small Business Legislation To Spur Economic Growth?

How does an economy grow?

Infrastructure Spending

Relaxing Regulation for small businesses and micro transactions, the return of sole propietorships.

Legitimizing and integrating the informal business sector

Re-legislating sidewalk spaza shops

Involving Black Owned South African Banks and Leveraging Their Expertise To Spur Growth In The Country’s Poorest Communities

SOURCES:

Daily Maverick.com On The NPA’s 2022 progress:

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2022-07-07-npa-is-finally-reaching-solid-ground-to-deliver-justice/

State Owned Enterprises:

https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/soe-s

Wits University On Healthcare 2021:

https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/opinion/2021/2021-07/healthcare-in-south-africa-how-inequity-is-contributing-to-inefficiency.html

News24.com on Free Schooling In South Africa:

https://www.news24.com/parent/learn/learning-difficulties/why-the-no-fee-school-policy-in-south-africa-demands-a-serious-review-20220408

The Department Of Basic Education On Expanding Access To Free Education:

https://www.education.gov.za/ArchivedDocuments/ArchivedArticles/FreeBasicEducation0617.aspx

BMC Health Services On Public Health Issues In The Free State:

https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-019-4862-y

Herbert Smith Freehills On White Collar Crime And Statute Of Limitations:

https://hsfnotes.com/africa/2019/11/21/south-africa-white-collar-crime-law-and-practice/#:~:text=Section%2018%20of%20the%20CPA,as%20murder%2C%20rape%20or%20treason.

World Health Organization On Universal Health Coverage:

https://www.who.int/health-topics/universal-health-coverage#tab=tab_1

World Health Organization On Health Financing:

https://www.who.int/health-topics/health-financing#tab=tab_1′

Investopedia On Economic Growth:

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/032415/what-are-some-ways-economic-growth-can-be-achieved.asp

Economic Research By Federal Reserve Bank Of Saint Louis:

https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2013/09/01/what-are-the-ingredients-for-economic-growth/

News24.com Article on The Capture Of Denel:

https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/investigations/the-deal-that-broke-denel-how-a-uae-firm-snapped-up-the-crown-jewels-for-just-r208-million-20220723

IOL On Careers In The Trades:

https://www.iol.co.za/education/matric/why-a-career-in-trade-might-just-be-the-right-fit-for-you-fa51ada5-bee3-49ee-8f6f-65f96769f9b8

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