Ents Alfred Nzo District Municipality strategic Agenda

Fees must fall and education in Alfred Nzo
Challenges in South Africa’s education system include the fact that education quality remains poor overall and uneven across regions and population groups, which largely reflects the country’s historical legacy. Although private returns to schooling are shown to be large, especially at the tertiary level, they have been shown to be significantly lower for Black Africans relative to the national average, which may be linked to differences in school quality and persistent discrimination. Recently the issues of affordability of tertiary education has been brought to the fore via the fees must fall campaign in which University students led a national protest for free tertiary education.

Improving governance of education through for example improved teacher accountability will help increase cost-efficiency. To facilitate the role of the labor markets in poverty reduction, there is need to put in place policies and initiatives to correct the skill supply and demand mismatch.
In addressing the challenges facing Education in the Province, the Eastern Cape Planning commission have identified the following key action issues:
 Community ownership of schools
 Implementing mother-tongue-based language medium policies
 Developing well-grounded early childhood specialists/practitioners
 Developing teachers as public intellectuals
 Developing academic excellence in sciences and humanities in primary and secondary schools
 Adopting co-operative approaches to post-schooling institutions and designing programmes for community education.

Key Questions for policy consideration

 What are the determinants of learning outcomes across different population groups and across geographical areas of Alfred Nzo?
 What are the outcomes for learners completing high school or dropping out in secondary school, in terms of the higher education landscape?
 What are the key constraints faced by learners in trying to enter post-schooling institutions?
 To what extent does educational attainment or school performance of pupils from previously disadvantaged communities (including rural areas) contributes to their probability of penetrating the formal labor market?
 How do factors such as the learner’s gender, ethnicity, origin, family income, parents’

education and so on link to the learner’s school performance?

 Do accountability arrangements such as community participation, principal-teacher management teams help improve outcomes in previously disadvantaged schools?
 Resources constraints (e.g. lack of equipment) and teaching capacity constraints (e.g. lack of teacher training) in learning outcomes?
 What are the implications of fees must fall for poor students in higher education in South

Africa?
3.3 Diagnostic Review

3.3.1 Natural conditions

The Alfred Nzo District (AND) is a mountainous region stretching from the tops of the southern Drakensberg escarpment in the northwest (over 2,000 metres above sea-level and forming the border with Lesotho) down to the Wild Coast, about 120 kilometres away in the south-east.

The AND has about 30 km of coastline. Bordered by the Mtamvuna river (and KZN) in the northeast and the Tina river in the southwest, the AND has an area of 10,734 square km (the smallest area among the Eastern Cape’s six rural districts).
There is large climatic variation in the AND, from Alpine in the high mountain areas to subtropical in the coastal belt. Rainfall is generally quite high (900 to 1500 mm/year) particularly under the escarpment and near the coast.
Most of the AND falls within the upper Mzimvubu river catchment area or basin, and the district has deep and steep-sided river valleys of the Mzimvubu itself and three of its four main tributaries (the Tina, Kinira and Mzintlava rivers):
 The Tina river passes just to the east of Mount Fletcher

 The Mzimvubu passes just to the west of both Cedarville and Mount Frere

 The Kinira joins the Mzimvubu to the northwest of Mount Frere

 The Mzintlava passes just to the east of Mount Ayliff, and then flows down to

Flagstaff.
There are extensive wetlands at the base of the escarpment.
The vegetation of the AND is mostly grassland with pockets of indigenous forest. About 5%

of the district’s land area (or 50,000 ha) is judged to have high-potential for arable farming.¹

AND is very scenic.

¹ See ANDM Grain Masterplan, page i

(Note: Please disregard the location of Cedarville in this UrbanEcon map)

3.3.2 Socio-economic snapshot

The economy of AND is dominated by the public sector, accounting directly for 46% of the municipal economy², compared to 15% for SA as a whole. The business sector is mainly trade and other services, while the productive economy (agriculture, manufacturing and construction etc) is very small. The AND economy is consumptive rather than productive.

The total value-added of the AND economy is about R50 billion a year. Formal employment is about 50,000 jobs and there are also about 27,000 informal jobs. Matatiele LM has the largest economy and Ntabankulu has the smallest.
About 90% of households in AND are poor, unemployment is rife (particularly among the youth), and business employment is extremely small in relation to the working age population (and probably not showing much growth).
Most households rely on social grants and remittances to avoid extreme hunger.

² See ECSECC review 2017
In 2016 the South African Institute of Race Relations published a study (based on StatsSA’s

2016 Community Survey) that calculated a “deprivation and comfort index” for 8

metropolitan and 44 district councils and found the AND to be the worst off.³
 AND had lowest proportion of households with access to piped water inside their home or yard at 16%

 AND had the lowest employment rate at 53% (Johannesburg had the highest at 73%)

 AND also scores worst at income: 90% of the households get less than R1600 per month.
A question was introduced in the Community Survey 2016 that asked households what they considered to be the main problem or difficulty they were facing in their municipality presently. In addition to collecting data about the actual services and the quality of services that households have access to, asking households what they perceive as their main challenge or difficulty provides policymakers and planners with key data on how households understand or feel about their environment and the services in their municipality. Alongside the statistics of household services, employment and crime statistics, the results from this question could be useful to assess needs and analyse trends. Overall in South Africa, households listed (1) lack of a safe and reliable water supply, (2) lack of or inadequate employment opportunities, (3) the cost of electricity, (4) inadequate housing and (5) violence and crime as the main challenges that they presently faced in their municipality. The table below shows how perceptions vary between AND, EC and SA:
Leading challenges facing the municipality presently as perceived by households:

	^Al^f^r^e^d^N^z^o D^i^s^t^r^i^ct ^Ra^n^k^in^g	^Easte^r^n^C^a^p^e ^Ra^n^k^in^g	^Sou^t^h^A^f^ri^ca ^Ra^n^k^in^g
Lack of safe and reliable water supply	1	1	1
^Lack^of^r^e^li^a^b^le ^el^e^c^t^rici^t^y^s^u^p^p^ly	^2	^D^a^t^a^n^o^t^avail^a^b^le	^D^a^t^a^n^o^t^avail^a^b^le
^Ina^d^e^qu^a^t^e^h^o^u^s^i^n^g	^3	^2	^4
^Ina^d^e^qu^a^t^e^r^oa^d^s	^4	^4	^D^a^t^a^n^o^t^avail^a^b^le
^Lack^o^f/^i^n^a^d^e^qu^a^t^e employment opportunities	^5	^3	^2
^Ina^d^e^qu^a^t^e ^sa^n^i^t^a^t^ion	^7	^5	^D^a^t^a^n^o^t^avail^a^b^le
^Cost^of el^e^c^t^rici^t^y	^8	^D^a^t^a^n^o^t^avail^a^b^le	^3

Rankings for AND as opposed to the rest of the province show that infrastructure backlogs are perceived as key priorities in the district. These perceptions of households are relevant

³ See Daily Dispatch: http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2016/06/07/alfred-nzo- municipality-is-the-worst-area-to-live-in-sa-survey-finds/
to framing the Apex Priorities of Alfred Nzo District Council for the next five years (see

Chapter 6 below)

AND contains some valuable natural assets. For example, fertile lands, warm temperatures, fairly good soils and frost-free conditions (in some areas). The Wild Coast is considered the most spectacular eco-tourism destination in SA.⁴
Agriculture and tourism have long been identified as high-potential sectors to drive development, but despite several public sector interventions these sectors have not yet taken off.
3.3.3 People and human settlements

According to the Community Survey (2016) about 868,000 people live in the Alfred Nzo District (AND). Between 2011 and 2016 AND’s population grew faster than the Eastern Cape provincial total, and the population of Mbizana grew particularly fast:

	^%^c^h^a^n^g^e^of^p^o^p^ul^a^t^i^on^b^e^t^w^ee^n^2^0^11^a^n^d^2^0^1^6
^Nt^a^b^a^n^k^u^l^u	^3.9
^Um^z^imv^u^b^u	^4.2
^M^a^t^a^t^iele	^7.7
^Mb^i^z^a^n^a	^1^3^.5
^Al^f^r^e^d^N^z^o	^8.3
^Eas^t^ern^Ca^p^e	^6.6

The people of AND include Bhaca, Sotho and Mpondo. Traditional leaders are represented on the AND Municipal Council.

There are broadly three types of human settlements in AND:
 Low-density rural villages (average size about 700 people; villages are often contiguous)

 Small towns

 Higher density peri-urban settlements around the small towns
There is evidence of de-population of deeper rural areas (e.g. the Mzimvubu population fell by 5% between 2001 and 2011 according to census data) and fast growth of peri-urban settlements.

^L^o^c^a^l Municipality	^Po^pul^a^t^i^on (000s)	^Ar^e^a (square km)	^Po^pul^a^t^i^on density (people/sq km)	^S^ma^l^l t^o^w^n^s	^O^t^h^e^r^n^o^d^e^s
^M^a^t^a^t^iele	^219	^4352	^4^9^.6	^M^a^t^a^t^iel^e^/ Maluti Cedarville	^Qu^e^e^n^’s Mercy, Ematolweni, Thaba

⁴ Ibid

					^Chic^h^a, ^Nd^a^l^e^n^i
^Mz^imv^u^b^u	^200	^2507	^7^8^.9	^M^o^u^n^t^Ayliff Mount Frere	^Can^c^ele junction, Phakade junction, Phuthi junction
^Nt^a^b^a^n^k^u^l^u	^129	^1459	^9^4^.8	^Nt^a^b^a^n^k^u^l^u	^I^s^i^d^e^n^i ^B^omva^n^i
^Mb^i^z^a^n^a	^320	^2415	^1^2^3.5	^B^i^z^a^n^a	^Mz^a^m^b^a Kubha junction, Mpunfu (new N2), Ndlovu
^TOTAL	^868	^1^0^7^3^4	^80^.1