Africa’s bumpy road to regional economic cooperation (6)

SOUTH AFRICA REMAINS a major pillar of Africa in many ways. The fortune of the entire continent has been, and will continue to be, influenced by South Africa. But for how long? Historical and contemporary realities warrant this question, to which definite answers may not be far-fetched. South Africa is brought under focus here for its pivotal role in Africa. For good or for bad, and like it or not, South Africa deserves special attention as it is not an island to itself, but it affects — as it is affected by — other countries within the continent. Presently, South Africa records first in Africa in many areas, with varying impacts on the country and other African countries, some positive and some negative. On the positive side, South Africa remains a major economy, driven mostly by the industry and service sector contributing 24.46 and 62.75 percent to the revenue total value added. In the services sector, education stands out, particularly university education for foreign students. South Africa remains an important regional hub for education in Africa and has the largest population of foreign students in the continent. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, there has been a marked upsurge in the enrollment of international students in South Africa. As of 2019, there were 40,712 foreign students in South Africa, of which an estimated 33,281 were from sub-Saharan Africa, while the rest were from North America, Western Europe and Asia. These reflected a reduction from 43,000 foreign students in 2014, also down from a record high of just over 70,000 in 2011. Notwithstanding that downward pressure on enrolment, South Africa still maintains its status as an attractive study destination for African students for many reasons.

An independent South Africa cannot validly claim self isolation from other African countries, just as other African countries cannot afford to ignore South Africa. Nearly nine of the top ten sending countries to South Africa are located in sub-Saharan Africa. And South Africa prides itself in having some of the best universities in the continent. Three of South Africa’s universities are included in the top 300 of the worldwide rankings. The University of Cape Town is ranked as Africa’s top university. Stellenbosch University and University of the Witwatersrand are other top contenders. In the intake of international students, South Africa is considered the eighth most popular destination  in the world, with 2.2 percent of the global share, and the only country in Africa that receives far more foreign students than it sends abroad, with many of the institutions heavily reliant on fees that are nearly the same as home students within many of South Africa’s 23 public universities, in what can be praised as South Africa’s relatively strong, accessible and affordable higher education system. Somehow still, international students — mainly from Africa — reportedly contribute significantly to South Africa’s GDP and balance of payments. Although higher education can be regarded as the catalyst to reshape a struggling economy, reduce the unemployment rate as well as poverty, the future of South Africa’s economy can be described as worrisome. The staggering 55.5 percent poverty rate is a great impediment to higher education, which further reinforces South Africa’s inequalities that were institutionalised and have lingered from the apartheid era, with educational disparities remaining long in the aftermath of Apartheid.

South Africa is an affluent country. But the wealth distribution is masked. Beneath the veneer, what looks like wealth in South Africa is concentrated in the hands of a few, with the majority living in penury. As such, the World Bank has designated South Africa as the “most unequal country” in the world, with race playing a determining factor in a society where 10 percent of the population owns more than 80 percent of the wealth with the persistent inequalities faced in the process of recovering from its Apartheid past. One of the manifestations of the unequal status has been associated with the racial disparities in higher education and other areas of social and economic lives. As recently as in 2018, nearly 50 percent of Black and “Colored” (biracial) South Africans did not complete secondary school while more than 80 percent of White South Africans did. In addition, only 4.3 percent of the Black students that completed secondary school enrolled in a higher education institution, and only 4.1 percent had a degree as of 2020,  According to the World Bank, the household head that achieved some higher education in South Africa has the risk of poverty reduced by about 30 percent compared to household heads with no schooling. Historically, South Africa’s racially oppressive history erected educational and — by extension —  development barriers, and circumscribed access to inclusive and affordable education, thereby blocking a key pathway out of poverty for Black South Africans, especially since the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which segregated schools by race and the other lesser-known Extension of University Act of 1959 prohibited non-Whites from attending formerly “open” universities. The smouldering of racism in the form of white supremacy ideologies still enjoys some visibility in many South African top universities. The prospects of black South Africans within their own country look bleak, except something drastic is done. With an  estimated 80 percent of all jobs in 2020 requiring science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, South Africa needs continued expansion to make provision for the indigent and less privileged students of today and near future.

The health profile in the South is worrisome, particularly as occasioned by one major disease. South Africa carries the largest share of the global HIV burden and a nationally representative population, based on previous household surveys. South Africa has the largest number of people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) worldwide. The country has the highest number of people afflicted with HIV of any country, and the fourth-highest adult HIV prevalence rate, according to the 2019 United Nations statistics. In South Africa, persistence of the HIV epidemic and associated gender and racial disparities is a major concern after more than 20 years of democratic dispensation and efforts to create a more healthy and equal society. As part of the signs of South Africa’s attributes as the most unequal country, gender and racial disparities rooted in structural and contextual inequalities remain important factors for the maintenance of the generalised HIV epidemic in the country. Poverty has been identified as an overarching factor that increases the disparity associated with HIV prevalence between genders and among race groups emanating from historical and contemporary unequal cultural, social and economic status in South Africa. Women with low socio-economic status reportedly suffer more of unequal gender power dynamics, which forces them into relationships that expose them to a higher risk of HIV infection than men, as they get involved in risky sexual behaviours such as transactional and intergenerational sex under a condition of social and economic inequities linked to poverty, social exclusion and growing disparity in healthcare,

The South African Apartheid policies were focused on economic and health advances for the minority White race group up to the early 1980s, subjecting Black Africans living in South Africa to extreme inequalities on account of their race. Black African communities still remain the most marginalised in all societal echelons. Consequently, the concept of race and an unequal society still bears relevance in South African society. Quite frightening are the statistics from South Africa such that, in 2021 alone, a record of 7.5 million people with HIV was reported, with 18.3 percent adult HIV prevalence and 51,000 AIDS-related deaths. South Africa’s “hyper-endemic” HIV epidemics have also been traced to the complacency of the people toward the rate of new infections at all levels and the absence of an emergency response, especially for young people. Embarrassingly, Jacob Zuma as vice president once openly confessed to having sex with a young woman who was a known HIV patient. The problem is not limited to South Africa alone as a country. It is spread to other nearby countries. A UNAIDS dataset sourced from the World Bank, in 2019 indicated that the HIV prevalence rate for adults aged 15 to 49 was 27 percent in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and 25 percent in Lesotho. The estimated overall HIV prevalence rate is approximately 13.7 percent among the South African population and the total number of people living with HIV (PLWHIV) in 2021 was estimated at approximately 8.2 million. A previous forecast projected the annual number of deaths due to AIDS to peak with 487,320 AIDS deaths in the year 2008 and the total population of South Africa to be 23 percent smaller by 2020 than it would have been without AIDS as life expectancy at birth was expected to hit a low of 45.6 years in the time period between  2005 and 2010, while over 2.5 million AIDS orphans were projected for South Africa. With the prevalence of HIV/AIDS epidemics over the past two decades, epidemiological logic would have suggested imminent implosion of South Africa’s population and calls to question the increase in population annually ascribed to South Africa, which brought its population figures to 60.6 million people in 2022, from 50.6 in 2008.

Despite its wealth, South Africa remains unsafe and insecure as lives are vulnerable to hazards from violence. South Africa is notorious for the magnitude of murder cases, with exceptionally high rates of murder, gender-based violence, robbery and violent conflicts that tend to dwarf the dreaded armed jihadists’ deadly attacks in the Sahel region of Africa. In 2020 alone, murder rates reported in South Africa were estimated at 33.46 per 100,000 population. In 2022, more than 7,000 people were murdered over three months leading up to November, according to new police statistics. These pose serious implications for safety of lives, property and enterprises for a country considered the financial capital of Africa and has great negative impacts on the perception of the country. Investments and lives are prone to attacks in South Africa and these are potential deterrents to foreign direct investments in the country.

Climate crisis is now having a very significant impact on South Africa. Some high impact infrequent weather events may have indeed now become very frequent. In April 2022, the death toll in the province of KwaZulu-Natal reached over 448, with over 40,000 displaced, following intense floods and landslides, resulting from the heaviest rainfall in 60 years, that devastated places in and around the port city of Durban according to South African officials. It destroyed over 12,000 houses, many roads, bridges, electricity, water treatment plants, and mills, forcing the Durban port — the most important port in sub-Saharan Africa — to halt logistics and supply chain operations due to road blockages and damages, just as communications were severely disrupted as more than 900 of cell phone towers were reportedly down from the floods. According to the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government’ estimates, billions of rand worth of damage was caused to properties and infrastructure by the floods. The impacts can be more and beyond South Africa alone. The pestilence called COVID-19 pandemic shook South Africa in 2020 and 2021, especially with its persistence, 4.05 million confirmed cases of infections, 103,000 mortalities and the lockdowns. Leaving South Africa alone by most African countries to weather the COVID-19 storm was antithetical to the emerging sense of regional cooperation. A prosperous South Africa is desirable, if only for its own sake as a country or for the sake of Africa. It is time the countries of Africa closed ranks on development issues as the success of one is the success of all and the failure of one is the failure of all.

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