Daily Archives: March 31, 2021

Frantz Fanon once quipped: Africa is shaped like a revolver, and Congo is the trigger.

More than 60 years later, I think the French philosophers assessment is only half true. It leaves out Somalia which once held the crown as the Switzerland of Africa, but is now again on the verge of political disintegration.

To use a trigger, one must first ready the gun. Perhaps that was where Fanon should have added Somalia to his observation.

One of the reasons for Somalias pivotal role is its location. On one of the worlds busiest shipping routes, the locus of the Horn of Africa, Somalia lies on the Gulf of Aden, which, through the Bab-el-Mandeb and then the Red Sea, connects Europe and North America to east Africa, Asia and the Middle East. To avoid the Gulf of Aden would mean taking all imports and exports to and from the Middle East including energy supplies around the entire African continent to reach European and US markets.

The battle to pick up the greasy reins of a much beaten-down Somalia has resumed in winner-takes-all fashion. After the countrys 2021 presidential and parliamentary election was once again postponed, the obvious and important question is whose fingers will be in charge of the safety catch this time?

Will it still be those of western-backed President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed? Some influential clan leaders, including leaders of several federal states, do not want to see him re-elected.

Or will it be those of pirates off Somalias coast, hijacking ships in the Gulf of Aden; a serious threat to international shipping which gives an idea of the threat to international peace that another bout of state collapse in Somalia represents.

Or, worse, could the al-Qaida franchise al-Shabaab capitalise on the ongoing electoral impasse to overrun the capital Mogadishu?

If the international community still cares at all about Somalia, which already lags behind much of Africa in economic, health and development indicators, it should scale up state-building quickly. Playing midwife to free and fair elections as a gradual path to enhancing accountability after 30 years of military rule, civil war and a lack of functioning government is paramount.

In 2017, the international community hammered out a unique clan-based electoral system for a country that the UN labelled the worlds most corrupt nation. It gave clan elders the power to handpick a 14,000-strong electorate, who in turn voted for 275 members of the lower house and 54 senators.

That election, which saw President Mohamed come to power, was described by the Mogadishu-based anti-corruption group, Marqaati, as the most expensive vote-buying campaign in human history. The election not only created conflict between Mohamed and clan leaders, who felt cheated, but also hampered the ability of Somalias population of 16 million to hold their president accountable.

Will the next election be a new vote-buying exercise, denying Somalis another opportunity to improve governance and confront their countrys myriad challenges, including the insecurity that has seen so many Somalis leave as refugees and had such a knock-on effect on the rest of the region?

History has shown, time and again, that an undemocratic Somalia is a danger to itself and to international commerce. It is worth remembering what happened in 1991, when Somalia collapsed and Somaliland declared independence. No one predicted the obliteration of Somalias socio-economic tissue, leading to a million people, including 300,000 children, starving to death.

Now, 30 years on, the devastating drought, arid rainy seasons, and other disasters and diseases caused by the climate emergency, have made Somalia even more fragile than it was then. According to UN statistics, more than 2 million Somalis are still displaced, and about 2.2 million Somalis are now at risk of starvation.

To this, add the havoc that coronavirus is wreaking on Somalis and the growing al-Shabaab violence, gathering pace all the time, as disaffected and hungry young men join its ranks. If Somalia is left to descend into a constitutional crisis leaving the security threats unchecked as a result what chance have Somalias people of bringing back their nation from the brink?

The international community has a vested interest in what happens here in that shipping lane as well as in that ticking militant timebomb. All is not lost.

Somalia has made great progress in recent years. The diaspora and younger people are becoming active in rebuilding their country, and there have been two transitions of power which have passed off in relative peace.

Events on the ground provide the new US administration of President Biden, working with regional powers, a fresh opportunity to side with Somali people fighting for free and fair elections.

But will the US and other world leaders seize the moment and side with Somalis instead of their corrupt leaders? The battle-weary people of Somalia dont need any more triggers.

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The world has a vested interest in Somalia. Will it act to stop its collapse? - The Guardian

On March 23, the Suez Canal, one of the worlds busiest transport arteries, became blocked in both directions when the ultra-large Golden-class container ship Ever Given (operated by the firm Evergreen), en route from Malaysia to the Netherlands, ran aground cross-ways. For nearly a week, the massive vessels remained lodged along both embankments of the man-made waterway. According to various estimates, every day of blockage was costing the global economy approximately $9.6 billion (Lenta, March 25). Between 2015 and 2020, approximately 90,000 ships, carrying a total of 5.5 billion tons of cargo (approximately 12 percent of world trade), traversed the artery. Moreover, the Suez Canal serves as the main transportation route for hydrocarbons being shipped from the Middle East to the European Union and the United States (Finam.ru, March 25). The commodity data tracking company Kpler has noted that the obstruction by the Ever Given resulted in seven tankers (carrying 6.3 million barrel of oil) being stuck in the Canal, temporarily raising global oil prices andmore importantlybreeding uncertainty among investors (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, March 26). By the following Monday (March 29), the Egyptian authorities finally succeeded in freeing the container ship and moving it out of the way.

The dramatic episode triggered a wave of exhilaration inside Russia, amplifying voices and institutions that have long wanted to more aggressively promote the Northern Sea Route (NSR)an east-west maritime passage along the countrys Arctic coast, connecting the Asia-Pacific and Europe. First to react was the Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, which launched a Twitter campaign mocking the Suez and praising the NSR as its alternative (Katehon.com, March 26). Simultaneously, Russias representative to the Arctic Council (Moscow will hold the chair of this international organization in 20212023), Nikolai Korchunov, contended that the incident at the Suez Canal reinforces the need to develop the NSR as a viable alternative so as to minimize global trade and transportation risks (News.ru, March 26).

And even though transportation via the Suez has been largely restored (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, March 29), the internal debate among Russian experts regarding the subsequent economic outlook for the NSR is unlikely to cease. Based on a survey of recent Russian-language sources discussing the incident, two main camps can be ascertained.

The first group (the mainstream) contends that the temporary shutdown of the Suez route opens up a window of opportunity for the NSR. As stated by the head of the Public Movement for the Support of Navy, Mikhail Nenashev, [T]his is a signal for all major naval powers [] if alternative routes, like the NSR, are not developed, some huge economic losses are likely to occur in the future (Riafan, March 24). The director of research on developing markets at the Skolkovo School of Management, Alexei Kalinin, emphasized that, as an alternative to Suez, the NSR could provide not only a geography-related comparative advantage but also superior ecological sustainability (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, March 25). Finally, the director of the Institute of Socio-Economic Research at the Financial University Under the Government of the Russian Federation, Alexei Zubets, has argued that although the Suez Canal has heretofore been the worlds most reliably transportation artery, its reputation has now been shaken, giving opportunities not only to the NSR but also Russias transcontinental railways (Regnum, March 26).

The second group of experts, on the other hand, expresses doubts that Russia will be able to seriously capitalize on the recent Suez logjam. For instance, economist Dmitry Adaminov proclaimed that last weeks impassethough troublesomewould not have a fundamental impact on global transportation networks and/or the attitudes of international suppliers. Indeed, any increase to the overall role of the NSR as a major transportation artery remains hampered by fundamental questions and uncertainties related to the seasonal state of the northern polar icecap and the Arctic transit capabilities of shippers. The most serious question, however, lies in the realm of infrastructure in the Russian High North, which isat least for nownot ready to meet such ambitions plans as profoundly challenging the Suez Canal. Thus, while the NSR is an important transportation artery, it is mainly vital to Russia as a means to develop its Arctic region (Rueconomics.ru, March 25). Russian media outlets have also argued that were global oil and natural gas supply chains to be seriously disrupted for an extended period, perhaps that would significantly increase Russias hopes of raising the NSRs profile and attracting foreign transportation companies. For now, however, hydrocarbon delivery disruptions via the Suez have only ever been temporary; thus, the prospect of a tectonic shift in maritime shipping remains a vague and theoretical notion (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, March 26). Illustratively, the head of the transport-logistics holding company Sovfrakht, Dmitry Purim, asserted that for the NSR to become a real alternative to the Suez Canal, the entire Arctic icecap has to melt completely; until then, all such talk is groundless (RBC, March 24).

In the final analysis, four main takeaways are worth noting. First, compared to the Suez Canal, the Northern Sea Route does admittedly have several comparative advantages (not least that it is significantly less prone to becoming blocked), and global climate change gradually boosts its competitiveness. The Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring of Russia (Rosgidromet) has reported that the year 2020 broke yet another record in terms of temperatures, and the Arctic icecap has decreased by five to seven times in comparison with the 1980s (RBC, July 4, 2020). Specifically, the area of ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean reportedly shrank to a record low of 26,000 square kilometers last year (Fishnews.ru, March 26, 2021). Russia, as the only country in the world at the moment with a relatively large fleet of icebreakers, can certainly try to capitalize on this climactic trend. Second, as noted by a great number of experts, the NSR willassuming the first condition is fulfilledbecome more economically attractive if the necessary funding for the development of local infrastructure is obtained (tens of billions of dollars, based on the most conservative calculations). Realistically, only China could help Russia with these means, yet it is doubtful that Beijing will allot the necessary funding (Ridl.io, May 8, 2020). Third, the melting of the permafrost in the High North could result in ecological tragediessimilar to the Norilsk disaster (see EDM, June 29, 2020 and July 7, 2020)that would have damaging economic and reputational implications for Russia. Finally, if the EU and US expand their economic sanctions against Russia and/or the Bering Strait becomes a dangerous bottleneck, the commercial attractiveness of the NSR will markedly collapse.

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The 'Suez Jam': A Window of Opportunity for Russia's Northern Sea Route? - Jamestown - The Jamestown Foundation

CSUN history professor Natale Zappia and a team of researchers find clues for coping with climate change in the past. Their findings appear in the most recent edition of the journal Nature. The above is a woodcut print, The Weather Peasant, by Sebald Beham from 1542 that states it is cold weather but it does not harm.

Clues for surviving the dramatic fallout from climate change can be found in the actions of people who lived centuries ago and managed to adapt, even thrive, despite significant climate shifts caused by two different ice ages.

This conclusion by an international team of researchers from such disciplines as archaeology, geography, history and paleoclimatology including California State University, Northridge historian Natale Zappia challenges the notion that dramatic climate changes inevitably plunged societies into crisis and even collapse. Their findings, Towards a Rigorous Understanding of Societal Responses to Climate Change, appear in the journal Nature.

We use the theme resiliency a lot in the article, said Zappia, an associate professor in CSUNs Department of History and director of the universitys Institute for Sustainability. So much of the research on climate change focuses on the hard science impact of the warming planet, and its dramatic impact on societies in broad terms. We looked at it from a different angle. We looked at the full scope of how people responded and adapted to what was happening around them because of a changing climate, in this case during two different ice ages.

Yes, we are in the middle of a crisis when it comes to climate change, he continued. We are headed toward a precipice. If we are going to survive, we are going to have to learn how to be more flexible as a culture. Looking at history, what societies have done in the past, can give us a roadmap for how we can move forward, adapt and maybe thrive.

Zappia said the researchers came together to find a better way of studying what they called the history of climate and society (HCS), a term they coined for the transdisciplinary study of past impacts of climate change on humanity. Traditionally, what they called HCS involved researchers in a variety of disciplines that study climate change including archaeology, genetics, geography, history, linguistics and paleoclimatology work within their own fields and rarely in interdisciplinary teams.

Zappia and his colleagues wanted to develop a method by which HCS scholars could work together to find more sophisticated connections between climate and society. They used that method to develop case studies of societies that adapted to two of the most-studied periods of natural climate change: Late Antique Little Ice Age of 6th and 7th century and the Little Ice Age of the 13th to 19th centuries.

Working together, the researchers found that diverse societies and communities were resilient in the face of climate change, meaning that they responded in ways that maintained their essential structure, function and identity.

Some even adapted to exploit new opportunities created by shifting environmental circumstances, Zappia said. We uncovered several common characteristics of societies that coped well with climate change, including strong trade networks, the ability to be mobile and the capacity to learn from past mistakes.

Zappia said the researchers who focus on the history of climate and society often used to predict disastrous consequences of future climate change. the doom and gloom facing humanity.

Our research showed that pre-modern societies could effectively respond to the climate created by the two ice ages, suggesting that, with sufficient political will, effective adaptation will be possible for us, too, Zappia said. It also provides a roadmap for HCS scholars to develop more rigorous and, ultimately, more convincing studies of the impact of climate change on past societies studies that could help us better anticipate the challenges of our hotter future.

In addition to Zappia, the research team included Dagomar Degroot, Department of History at Georgetown University; Kevin Anchukaitis, School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona; Martin Bauch, Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe at the University of Leipzig, Germany; Jakob Burnham, Department of History, Georgetown University; Fred Carnegy, School of European Languages, Cultures and Society at University College London; Jianxin Cui, Northwest Institute of Historical Environment and Socio-Economic Development at Shaanxi Normal University, China; Kathryn de Luna, Department of History, Georgetown University; Piotr Guzowski, Institute of History and Political Science at University of Bialystok, Poland; George Hambrecht, Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland; Heli Huhtamaa, Institute of History and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern, Switzerland; Adam Izdebski, Paleo-Science and History Independent Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Germany; Katrin Kleemann, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich and Department of History, University of Freiburg, Germany; Emma Moesswilde, Department of History, Georgetown University; Naresh Neupane, Department of History, Georgetown University; Timothy Newfield, Department of History, Georgetown University; Qing Pei, Department of Social Sciences, The Education University of Hong Kong; and Elena Xoplaki, Department of Geography and Center for International Development and Environmental Research, Justus-Liebig-Universitt Gieen, Germany.

College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Department of History, Featured, History, Little Ice Age, Natale Zappia

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Researchers Find Clues for Coping with Climate Change in the Past - CSUN Today

SOUTH AFRICA-GLOBAL

The protests were sparked by a combination of factors related to student fees and debt. The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) could not guarantee payment for all the first-year students who qualified to register, and some universities refused to register students with outstanding debt.

The University of the Witwatersrand declared that its outstanding student debt had reached ZAR1 billion (about US$68 million).

Responding to the turmoil at a number of campuses, and to a call by various student organisations to lock down all universities, a South African Sunday Times editorial on 14 March stated that yet again, the government gets a failing grade for its handling of student aid.

The editorial argues that, after raising the expectations of students by the #FeesMustFall protests in 2016 and the subsequent announcement in December 2017 by then president Jacob Zuma of free higher education for poor students, government should have sensed that the start of the academic year would be a critical moment, and should have prepared accordingly with care and sensitivity.

One would have expected the same level of preparedness by the universities, and that government and the universities would have been communicating about the spectre of student fees.

A failure of connectivity and policy

Another Sunday paper, City Press, followed a similar line on 14 March, stating lets end this annual ritual. It refers to the recommendations of the Heher Commission in 2017 that recommended a form of fee-free education while studying, but an income-contingent loan to be repaid after graduation at a low interest rate.

City Press elaborates that, on the morning of the ANCs elective conference during 16-20 December 2017, Zuma announced that the government would fully subsidise fee-free higher education for poor and working-class students.

The newspaper claims that Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology Dr Blade Nzimande and the South African Treasury were blindsided by this announcement.

City Press claims that this promise was made in order to garner support for Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in her contest with Cyril Ramaphosa for the presidency of South Africa at the 2017 ANC elective conference.

From evidence given at the Zondo Commission, which is a public judicial investigation into government corruption and fraud in South Africa, it is quite clear that Zuma, like many other presidents in Africa, offered students free higher education in order to gain support (or popularity) when he also knew that his cronies had been stealing the money that could have supported student financial aid.

Both newspapers imply that the latest crisis could have been anticipated by having a closer relationship with the students, and by having better information. In other words, the current protests could be seen as both a failure of connectivity and policy.

A brief history

In 1995, the late former president Nelson Mandela appointed the National Commission on Higher Education (NCHE) to develop a policy framework to transform higher education in the new South Africa.

The three central features to be addressed were increased and more equitable participation, greater responsivity to social and economic issues, and greater cooperation and partnerships in governance structures and operations.

The NCHE stated in its final report that student financial aid schemes would be a critical component to developing policies for a new higher education funding system.

The NCHE understood from the first day that higher education could not be transformed without a dramatic increase in participation by black students, and that this would require student financial aid.

The report identified the risk that, without financial support, progress achieved through public funding reforms could be negated by inadequate and ad hoc student financial aid policies that are at cross purposes with institutional and tuition fee policies.

It could be said that this is, to large degree, exactly what has happened.

The report also stated that student financial aid policies are important instruments in enabling key principles such as equity and developing human resources for development.

The NCHE proposed a mixed bursary and loan scheme, and emphasised that diversified ways should be explored to assist students to repay loans.

It also recommended that the scheme should be extended to part-time and private institutions.

Two central issues that the NCHE did not resolve are worth mentioning. The first was that, during 1995, Peter Scott, who interacted with the NCHE, published his influential book The Meanings of Mass Higher Education.

In it, he argued that, from evidence around the world, a central feature of socio-economic development was a differentiated and massified higher education system.

On the one hand, a much larger proportion of the population must obtain post-school education in order to respond to new higher level skill needs. Equally important is a differentiated system with higher education institutions that specialise in high-level professions and new knowledge production.

The notion of differentiation was strenuously opposed within the NCHE, particularly by the retired rectors of historically black universities who wanted redress, with the aim of South Africa having about 20 or so University of Cape Town-type universities.

There was strong support for massification within the NCHE, but the South African National Treasury was adamant that there were insufficient funds to support massification.

It could be argued that not accepting these two principles are at the heart of South Africas enduring student aid crises and contributes significantly to the stagnant economy.

Another proposition discussed within the NCHE, but not accepted by Treasury, was income contingent loans (ICL).

An international expert on student financing informed us that the Australian system is probably the best and most sustainable model: an ICL system which is fee-free while a student studies with loan repayment starting after graduation.

Special features included low repayments during the first 10 years with gradual increases thereafter. In some cases, repayment stretches out to near-retirement.

Since loan repayment is part of the tax system in Australia, students do not have to repay if they are unemployed or earn less than the taxable income threshold. However, if the student leaves the country, they have to repay the loan in full.

Another important feature of the Australian system is that it is handled by the countrys Treasury, which precludes the need for an additional NSFAS-type bureaucracy.

But, when consulting the South African Treasury in 1995, the response was that, with so many white employees leaving, or taking early retirement, they did not, and would not, have the capacity to deal with the additional administrative burden.

An Australian higher education expert claims that, 25 years later, their ICL system is making a significant contribution to increasing participation, and contributes to affordability and sustainability.

The student contribution to the overall funding of the universities is about 20%. (The current COVID-induced crisis in Australian higher education where many of the staff have been subject to salary cuts or even retrenchments is due to a shortfall in government funding and an overreliance on inflated fees for students from a number of Asian countries.)

The rise and the demise of NSFAS

NSFAS replaced, in 1999, the Tertiary Education Fund of South Africa when NSFAS was converted into a statutory body.

NSFAS transferred funds to the universities that then allocated money to deserving students. The main function of NSFAS was to decide on the allocation to each university and to collect the student loan repayments.

During its first phase in the early 2000s, NSFAS became a much-admired student grant and loan scheme, and was studied by a number of countries. Nicholas Barr from the United Kingdom pointed out that there have been few successful student financial aid schemes in developing countries.

However, by 2008, as the scheme grew, administrative problems began to emerge at NSFAS head office and at a few historically black universities.

Instead of providing these universities with administrative support, NSFAS was nationalised into a kind of state-owned enterprise, with an ever-increasing staff complement and rising student debt.

Following the establishment of the Department of Higher Education and Training, or DHET, in 2009, the Minister of Higher Education and Training at the time, Blade Nzimande, pressurised NSFAS board members to resign, although they were in the middle of a NSFAS review and the implementation of a turnaround strategy.

A new CEO, appointed through the cadre deployment process, was followed by the departure of some skilled staff. A former NSFAS employee described this process as the de-professionalisation of NSFAS.

The graph below should have been a signal that trouble was coming. It shows that, from 2009, there was a collapse in debt collection, and that, by 2014, uncollected debt had reached ZAR3.7 billion.

There was another signal that compounded the problem and should have set off even louder alarm bells, as illustrated in the graph below.

Governments contribution to university income increased from ZAR15.93 billion in 2000 to ZAR21.21 billion in 2013; as a percentage, it decreased from 49% to 40%.

Third-stream income almost doubled (from ZAR8.78 billion to ZAR14.26 billion), but remained at the same proportion (27%) of university income.

Student fees compensated for the decrease in government funding: in 2000, fees made up 24%, but by 2013, 33% of university income came from student fees. Over the same period, the proportion of students on NSFAS increased from 2% to 13%.

During the period 2000 to 2013, the average annual inflation rate for the country was roughly 6%, but, for the university sector, it was at around 11%.

A vice-chancellor at the time said that, with such a shortfall in the governments spending on higher education, the only way they could balance the books was by increasing fees.

What is often not discussed, are the levels of inefficiency and wasteful expenditure at South African universities.

At the same time, the government drastically increased funding available to NSFAS from ZAR1.4 billion in 2010-11 to ZAR3.9 billion in 2014.

The combination of the de-professionalising of NSFAS as an organisation, reducing its debt-collecting powers and flooding it with new money overwhelmed the organisation.

These problems escalated with the significant increase in government funding to ZAR24 billion in 2019-20, and an astronomical increase from ZAR4.3 billion in 2016-17 to ZAR24 billion in 2019-20 (see the Medium-term Expenditure Framework or MTEF allocation below).

As early as 2018, pressure started mounting for then minister of higher education Naledi Pandor to fire the chief executive of NSFAS and disband its board following the ongoing challenges in disbursing money for students who were promised free education.

During 2020, parliamentary oversight committees heard that the 2018-19 and 2019-20 financial years had been the worst in NSFASs administration: Year after year, from that period, the situation worsened. This is the period in which the entity was under an administrator who was supposed to turn it around, but worsened it.

This escalated as parliament decided in November 2020 to hold an inquiry into NSFAS corruption allegations, which included aspersions that the student scheme administrator hired friends and acquaintances without following due process.

On 10 March 2021, as student protests started on South African campuses, the Select Committee on Education and Technology, Sports and Arts and Culture heard that irregular and wasteful expenditure continues to emerge as NSFAS accounts are reconciled.

The chronic state of maladministration within the financial aid scheme resulted in irregular expenditure that amounted to ZAR7.5 billion in 2017 and 2018.

The auditor general also highlighted the problem of the failure of NSFAS to consult the minister in revising the criteria and conditions for loans and bursaries in 2018-19 and in 2019-20, and that resulted in NSFAS carrying irregular expenditure of ZAR50 billion.

In a recent television interview, the former statistician-general, Dr Pali Lehohla, said that NSFAS is unnecessary; as is the case with a number of other state-owned enterprises, and there are better and more efficient ways of dealing with student financial aid.

Elites are tight-fisted

Sociologist Manuel Castells states that one of the four important functions of the university is to select a meritocratic elite.

Elaborating on a version of elite selection in Africa, renowned scholar Mahmood Mamdani, in his book Scholars in the Market Place: The dilemmas of neo-liberal reform at Makerere University (2008), states that: The purpose was to train a tiny elite on full scholarships which included tuition, board, health insurance, transport and even a boon to cover personal needs ... from the perspective of the student this was an extraordinary opportunity; from the view of society, an extraordinary privilege.

The generosity to the elite expanded as pressure mounted to take in more students. This had two consequences. When Makerere University could not afford to pay its staff, it introduced a two-tier system: free public higher education during the day and private fee-paying students in the evening.

By 2008, Mamdani described this commercialisation of Makerere as a devaluation of higher education into a form of low-level training with no research.

It is only in very rich countries such as Norway that the system can massify and be free.

Norway is not simply rich, it is one of the most equal societies, it has almost full employment, and one of the highest tax recoveries in the world with oil and salmon as a backup.

In South Africa, a university education is close to the apex of elite formation. See below the progression from starting school to graduating.

Globally, and in Africa, there are considerable benefits to obtaining a university degree. Graduate employment is at more than 90%, and in some fields close to 100%.

According to a World Bank report, in Sub-Saharan Africa, private returns to higher education are higher than returns to primary and secondary education.

The region with the highest private returns to higher education is also Sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa, a country with the highest level of inequality in the world, also has the highest private returns to higher education in the world.

In response to this data, former statistician-general Pali Lehohla said in 2016 that there is no such thing as free higher education and that the term should be banned.

He added that, considering the high private returns and the fact that South Africa has such high graduate employment, the fees policy question is: Do students pay while at university or while they are working?

Of course, throughout history, the elite resist paying back, even when it is obviously harming the lower classes, and ultimately their own privileges.

In many African and other countries, this takes place even if it collapses the education system. It is at that point that the elite of the elite send their children overseas.

What to do?

What did China do? The Chinese government responded to the Tiananmen Square youth protests with a new higher education law in 1995, which declared higher education a pillar of socio-economic development.

Three main strategies were:

Massification (participation increased from about 15% to more than 50%) but with strong differentiation (China selected and funded 100 world-class universities);

A dramatic increase in government spending on higher education, from under 1% to 3.5% of GDP;

Introduction of tuition fees with a loan scheme (Rural Credit Cooperatives supported by the China Development Bank with 10- to 15-year repayment periods).

The Chinese put massive funding into Project 211 and then Project 985 to develop 112 top-class universities at international level.

They called it From National Elite to World-Class. In 2020-21 China had 15 universities in the top 100 world rankings. No other developing country, including South Africa, has one.

In 2018 China enrolled 95,502 new PhD students. Massifying with strong postgraduate programmes is key to development.

China achieved the fastest expansion of undergraduate and postgraduate students in the history of higher education.

When China was a tuition-free elite selection system, it was a third-class system with a few elite universities, but none were rated as world class.

What the Chinese model shows is that higher education is not just a free path out of poverty into the elite, it must be one of the pillars of socio-economic development with a pact between different role players.

One of our problems is that, currently, South Africas ruling party does not even have a pact with itself.

The Heher Commission proposed an income-contingent loan system, which takes students circumstances into account and ensures a more sustainable system with government contributing close to 3% of GDP while student repayments contribute 20% of the higher education budget.

The commissions proposal would result in fee-free education for some students who do not, in the course of their careers, reach an income threshold appropriate for a repayment obligation.

Application and registration fees would be scrapped across the board, and students with debt, who have graduated, would be offered income-contingent loans as well.

It was also recommended that tuition fees (and residence fees, if applicable) should be paid directly to the institution at the start of the academic year, and that the participation of NSFAS in the funding of university students be replaced with income-contingent loans administered by South Africas Treasury.

NSFAS could be retained, in a much scaled-down version, to assist with the provision of the funding for technical and vocational education and training students, if such retention is considered necessary. This proposal is very close to the tried and tested Australian model.

The rest is here:

Free higher education: Crises that could have been foreseen - University World News