Showing posts with label Pictures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pictures. Show all posts
Friday, October 31, 2014
Qualifications scandal divides South Africa
Ellen Tshabalala is alleged to have lied about her university qualifications
It might seem like a rather trivial scandal - something easily overlooked at a time when South Africa is mourning the violent death of its national football team captain and the credit rating agencies are circling overhead, poised to issue more warnings about the country's struggling economy.
But the mystery surrounding Ellen Tshabalala's academic qualifications demands attention.
It is an issue that seems to have divided South Africa.
To some it is a story that reveals nothing more than the enduring legacy of apartheid. To others it is a very modern outrage that exposes the shamelessness now infesting South Africa's democratic institutions.
Ms Tshabalala is the chairperson of South Africa's national broadcaster, the SABC, and for months she has been declining - with varying degrees of indignation and legal casuistry - to answer MPs who want to know if,as they allege, she lied about the impressive university qualifications she claims to have earned.
Ms Tshabalala is in good company.
The SABC's chief executive, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, has also been accused of lying about his qualifications on his official CV.
Political connections
And then there is the case of Pallo Jordan, a prominent ANC stalwart and public intellectual, who recently admitted that he had never earned the doctorate that always seemed to attach itself so confidently to his name. And there are others...
So what? Plenty of South Africans point back to the racist apartheid system and the demands of the liberation struggle, which denied generations of black people a decent education and access to the necessary opportunities and qualifications to thrive.
Some believe President Zuma is unfairly protecting Ms Tshabalala and Mr Motsoeneng
If some of them are now forced to tweak their CVs in order to meet some abstract job requirements, then surely the system itself is at fault.
"We need a change of attitude, to get rid of this rather inappropriate elitism... and to distinguish between a lack of qualifications and a lack of ability," says Stephen Friedman, a prominent political analyst whose own doctorate is "just a piece of paper that people take much too seriously here".
In the case of Pallo Jordan, the consensus seems to be that he made a foolish, sustained, but ultimately pardonable error of judgment.
But the situation at South Africa's national broadcaster has provoked far less sympathy, amid allegations that President Jacob Zuma is protecting his allies at the expense of due process.
'No sense of shame'
"They lied about it. If you're politically connected you can get away with it," fumed another political commentator, Justice Malala.
"You have these two who are seen as defenders of President Zuma at the SABC, which makes them virtually untouchable."
The high-handed manner in which Ms Tshabalala has rebuffed parliament's enquiries about her qualifications has led many South Africans to believe she must have political "cover" at the highest levels.
"For me what the Zuma administration has allowed is for people to lose their sense of shame - that this is the right thing to do," said Mr Malala
"The lines between right and wrong are becoming blurred. They can just tough it out," he added, citing the chairperson of the national carrier SAA, as another alleged beneficiary of presidential protection.
And before long, what starts with seemingly minor disputes about qualifications soon expands into a broader theory about Jacob Zuma's own legal battles, the controversial manner in which corruption charges against him were dropped before he became president, the exorbitant taxpayer-funded refurbishments to his private Nkandla home, and the growing belief that some of South Africa's most important institutions - not the least the prosecutor's office - are being stretched and bent out of shape in order to protect Mr Zuma.
Source: bbc.com/news
Is the Ebola epidemic ending in Africa?
Q: Is the Ebola epidemic ending in Africa?
A: No one knows exactly what is going on in West Africa. Several medical groups, like Doctors Without Borders, are reporting that they suddenly have far more beds than patients. In some cases, there are empty beds at centers where, just a few weeks ago, people were dying on the streets outside because there was no room.
The trend is especially noted in Liberia, the hardest-hit country. Laboratories are getting fewer samples to test. Ambulance crews are picking up fewer bodies. The World Health Organization confirmed that new cases were dropping.
But health authorities are warning that it is too early to celebrate.
It is important to remember that this happened once before, on a smaller scale. In March, after alarming reports from Guinea that a rural outbreak had reached the capital, the W.H.O. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent experts in to help. The epidemic spread to Sierra Leone, and then to Liberia. But cases grew only slowly, and by May, most of the experts were withdrawn. At the time, there was more worry about MERS in Saudi Arabia.
In early August, the chief scientist for Britain’s foreign aid agency said the “end of the epidemic was in sight.” He was wrong. About 800 people were known to be dead then. Cases had actually begun to explode in July, and now about 5,000 are dead.
There are some theories as to why the numbers seem to be going down. The leading one is that more West Africans now believe that Ebola exists, are afraid of it, and are touching each other less.
In that way, it is like lung cancer, only on a speeded-up time scale. It took 30 years for Americans to fully accept that smoking caused lung cancer. Once they believed, fewer started smoking. Deaths from lung cancer are now much lower than they used to be because many Americans in their 50’s and 60’s didn’t start as teenagers, or quit. But you wouldn’t say that the lung cancer epidemic is over.
Because poor West Africans often have many people sleeping in one room, Ebola spreads in households. Because the incubation period is up to 21 days, it often kills the family slowly, one by one. But for each other family that keeps the virus from entering its household, that can mean five or six fewer deaths.
Other theories are that tens of thousands of home-care kits have been handed out. They contain gloves, bleach, a bucket, plastic bags and a bleach sprayer. Using them around the sick, and especially during burials, may have helped.
Alternatively, hospitals may be empty because more people are dying at home. In Liberia, it has been reported that families are refusing to bring in their relatives because, if they die, they will be cremated.
Another report is that taxi and minibus drivers are refusing to take passengers who are bleeding or vomiting to hospitals. That forces them to die at home – which is cruel, but could slow the spread of disease to other passengers.
It is also important to remember that epidemics typically come in waves. The reasons for some are obvious, like the weather: flu cases rise in winter, polio cases rise in summer. Pox diseases like smallpox, measles and chickenpox used to surge every few years after a new set of young children was born. For other diseases, the reasons are not clear. Ebola may simply be having a moment between waves.
Source: well.blogs.nytimes.com/
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