‘Education is your ticket out of here’ is a phrase many a child living in the densely populated and impoverished township, yours truly included, hears and had to hear all the time while growing up: from our parents, our teachers, our peers. And the revered late President Nelson Mandela famously said “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”.
It’s easy to believe if you hear and tell it to yourself all the time, but if the means to a good education remains abysmal 27 years after the end of apartheid, it is no surprise that the World Bank lists us among the world’s most unequal countries today.
And with the Covid-19 pandemic and the closure of schools forcing over half-a-million children in South Africa so far to drop out, this inequality gap is only set to widen.
The New Yorker writes in commentary this week that Mandela’s dream for South Africa is in ruins, with the racial, class, education and economic divisions spawned by apartheid still defining the country three decades after he was freed.
But how to move government on this? For Badat it is perhaps “time to return to the grassroots, local-level, street-by-street activism, mass mobilisation and organisation of the 1980s that helped us win our democracy to now defeat the scourges of hunger, inequality, poverty, unemployment and pervasive corruption that the governing party seems unwilling to tackle or is incapable of addressing”.
Be that as it may, the world is in desperate need of ideas and ways to educate us out of poverty and hopefully the two-day global education summit currently underway will open the book on how to use our most powerful weapon to change the world.
Here’s a roundup of the world’s top and most interesting headlines:
SA Business
A rare Cullinan diamond sold for R600 million two weeks ago – a bigger one has just been found – Business Insider
Commuting to and from work becomes risky for South African women amid rising taxi violence – South China Morning Post
President Ramaphosa throws money, rather than a Cabinet reshuffle, at his security problem – Daily Maverick
Global Business
Fed surprises, says more progress has been made towards start of ‘tapering’ – ShareCast
Big Tech back to work? Where each company stands on employee vaccinations – Mashable
‘We lost our life savings in a cryptocurrency scam’ – BBC News
Markets
Tencent is the world’s worst stock bet with $170bn wipeout – Bloomberg
Asian stocks up over Chinese effort to calm markets, Fed decision – Investing.com
Under siege, China EdTech giants take steps to curb fallout – Bloomberg
Opinion
Four things that count when a South African graduate looks for work – The Conversation
Let’s solve the learning crisis together – Financial Times
Why you are a rare breed if you own a small business in South Africa – BusinessTech
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