Tens of thousands of supporters of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), rallied to celebrate the ANC’s 100th birthday this weekend. The ANC was established in 1912 in the central South African city of Bloemfontein, where the celebrations were held.
ANC members during the early days
The ANC is credited with being the first inclusive African liberation movement, uniting South Africans from diverse ethnic and economic groups. The ANC led the opposition to apartheid, the state-enforced racial segregation that persisted in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.
The government’s ban on organized opposition meant the ANC was soon classified as a terrorist organization, and many top ANC leaders spent decades in South Africa’s prisons. Most notably, Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison before leading negotiations that led South Africa to a multi-racial democracy.
As promised in my blog post yesterday, here’s an update on some of First Lady Michelle Obama and family’s latest adventures in South Africa and Botswana. Over the last day or so, Mrs. Obama and her family toured the Mandela Foundation, met with Nelson Mandela himself, visited South Africa’s apartheid museum and rubbed shoulders with South Africa’s First Lady Nompumelelo Ntuli-Zuma. But here’s some fun stuff that I want you to catch up on…
Here’s footage of Mrs. Obama and family getting off the airplane in Pretoria, South Africa. Apparently, Mrs. Obama’s orange and black geometric print jacket is by Nigerian designer Duro Olowu -– great way to show her support for African commerce. And the girls proudly sported giant South African flags.
A new report, “Low Quality Education as a Poverty Trap” by the Social Policy Research Group at Stellenbosch University, has provided a troubling assessment of the quality of education available to children in South Africa. The study reports that by age eight, school children from the most affluent 20 percent of South Africa’s population were already far outperforming children from poorer families, showing stark distinctions between the prospects of children from poorer communities and those from more affluent communities at an early age.
The top 20 percent of state schools have adequate facilities and attract the best teachers, mostly because they charge tuition fees.
One South African farming community is reclaiming the vineyard with something called Oesfees, a festival that captivates Western Cape communities every spring. Combining their annual wine harvest with traditional food and dance, the farm workers of Franschhoek Valley keep their culture alive through music and spirit. Though the 2011 celebration took place a few weeks ago, ONE couldn’t resist highlighting some of the cultural merriment for our A-List series. Take a look at the video below:
In the development community, we tend to message in the abstract: Africa. Poverty. Transparency. Mortality. Growth. These words make for snappy elevator pitches and clever tweets, but they can also numb us to the reality and difficulty of what we do, and we can too easily lose sight of the unique people and programs for whom development efforts are intended.
Sister Suzan with Erin Hohlfelder
I feel so lucky to travel around sub-Saharan Africa with ONE, because I get to come face-to-face with the people who are recipients, distributors and designers of development programs. I flew to Johannesburg, South Africa, last Tuesday with a few of my colleagues, and my time here so far has yet again allowed me to meet up with some really impressive people who have devoted parts (or all) of their lives to making their country a more healthy, stable and just place.
Take Sister Suzan, the head of the antenatal clinic at Chris Hani Baragwanath “Bara” Hospital on the outskirts of the Soweto slum. She’s worked at Bara for 35 years — through apartheid, through the emergence of the HIV pandemic, through the previous government’s refusal to allow antiretroviral treatment for AIDS, and (most notably of late) through major progress.
When AIDS first hit Soweto, mothers who were pregnant couldn’t get drugs to prevent the spread of HIV to their babies or to protect themselves. In the early 2000s, a single dose of treatment (nevirapine) was available for the babies, but mothers struggled to access treatment early enough to stay healthy, and as many as 50 percent of babies were still born HIV-positive. Now, all mothers who come to Bara can receive treatment and counseling services from Sister Suzan and her staff, and rates of mother-to-child transmission of HIV have been reduced to less than 5 percent across Soweto.
Grassroot Soccer staff members
Or, take the staff of Grassroot Soccer (GRS), a motley and energetic crew of both South Africans and Americans on year-long internships. GRS taps into the energy of thousands of children ages 10 to 19 who aspire to be star athletes and teaches them the life skills they’ll need to prevent the spread of HIV and to feel empowered along the way. When we weren’t kicking around soccer balls on the field, we heard impressive testimonies from the staff members — many of who became emotional when describing their commitment to the work they did on a daily basis, often having seen the devastating impact of HIV in their communities and families firsthand.
There are not enough blog posts to profile all of the Sister Suzans here. In less than a week, we’ve met up with health experts, brave AIDS activists, innovative thinkers — and they all have a lot of great advice for ONE on how we can be smarter advocates. Each of these people has one other thing in common — they are working on development projects that have benefited from US foreign assistance.
In fact, the message we’ve heard over and over is that US funding for programs like PEPFAR and the Global Fund helped to lay the groundwork for massive scale up of health efforts and a more sustainable path for the South African government to adopt a majority of the responsibility for health services themselves (another ONE colleague in Jo’burg, Josh Lozman, will have more on that in a later blog post).
So, it was with great anxiety that we received news this week that the House Appropriators had submitted massive cuts to the international affairs budget.
Like the catchy words used by the development community, budget cuts are often abstractions that disguise the true negative impact they make. It’s hard to conceptualize what less money means when it’s just a series of numbers (can you really tell the difference between $200 million and $190 million on paper?).
But this week has reminded me that when we think budget cuts, we should think about what it means for Sister Suzan’s ability to ensure that all mothers can prevent their babies from being born with HIV. We should think about what it means for the jobs of South Africans and Americans alike, working at GRS to ensure that the next generation of kids can have lower rates of HIV and higher rates of education and skills. We should think about what it means for the civil society groups and doctors who are doing selfless work every day to make sure people don’t have to suffer from diseases that aren’t even a nuisance in the western world. Because Americans have been generous and bold with our foreign aid investments, and our partners in the developing world can’t afford for us to hide behind the abstractions in this critical moment.
In recent years there has been real progress in efforts to improve livelihoods and fight poverty and disease. Although affected by the global recession, African economies bounced back quickly and are amongst the fastest growing in the world.
But despite this progress, too many still live in extreme poverty. And even those who don’t fall within the technical definition of poverty often suffer as a result of poor governance and a lack of opportunity.
Yet balanced against these challenges are real signs of hope.
Rapid advances in technology – together with our greater understanding of how to harness it – are accelerating the ability of citizens to demand improvements in the services their government provides, just as they are enabling governments to improve the supply of services to their citizens.
New technologies are also enabling other progress: entrepreneurs can expand their markets to reach the most marginalised people, and the most remote producers can sell their goods at fairer prices because their mobile phones allow them to find out the real market rate. And with these developments come the hope of a more equitable form of growth in years to come.
It is within this context that ONE will be hosting a dynamic discussion on the role of transparency and technology in promoting and driving economic development in Johannesburg on 15 February. The ONE Africa Symposium 2011 will feature several speakers in short inspirational 10-minute presentations about ideas that will help shape ONE’s work.
We will hear from students, policy makers, technology experts, academics and creatives, from all over Africa. Together we’ll highlight innovations that can drive increased transparency and accountability in governments and corporations. Throughout the symposium, we hope to amplify ideas that can inform policy makers and inspire entrepreneurs and activists. These ideas could ultimately transform Africa.
On tour in South Africa, Daughtry visited the US-supported Anovo Clinic and the Nike Training Center in Soweto with ONE’s Africa Director Sipho Moyo. Anova Clinic focuses on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and the Nike Training Center is a place where children in Soweto train for soccer and learn more about HIV prevention and treatment — Nike is a partner of (RED). Stay tuned for more updates from Daughtry’s time in South Africa. Here are two photos from their trip:
On tour in South Africa, Daughtry visits (RED) partner Nike’s Training Center in Soweto, with ONE African Director Dr. Sipho Moyo and Lynette Mollett, Brand Events Manager for Nike Football South Africa.
In South Africa on tour, Daughtry and ONE African Director Dr. Sipho Moyo visit the U.S.-supported Anova Clinic in Zoyo, Soweto, which focuses on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
