For those of you who didn’t recognize it, the above title comes from a Destiny’s Child song popular in the late ‘90s. I hear that the Houston group which included Beyoncé might be set for a reunion performance at this year’s Super Bowl, which I hopefully will be able to watch on TV in the early Monday hours here. Regrettably, my use for the lyrics in today’s writing is inspired less by happiness at Houston girls finding success on a grand stage and more by apoplexy caused by the actions of South Africans.
I have mentioned in previous posts that one of the most important things I have learned from my time in the Peace Corps is that development does not occur simply because one has access to resources. It is rather how one utilizes one’s resources that makes the difference. There are certain days in my time here in South Africa in which this fact is made frustratingly clear, and unfortunately, today is one of those days. Before I get to what currently has me seeing red let me offer another example of what I mean.
One of the Peace Corps volunteers here is a middle aged man from Massachusetts with a background in computers. He’s a fantastic guy, and I don’t think there is anyone (at least no American) that does not immensely enjoy having him around. For his service, he was assigned to assist with a community computer centre that was built and sponsored by Vodacom, one of the largest telecommunications companies in southern Africa. The intent of the centre was to provide computer training and free internet access to populations that might not otherwise have the opportunity. When my friend first arrived at the centre, Vodacom was on the verge of removing their funding and abandoning the project because of the mismanagement that had occurred by the local staff. (Because it is supposed to be a community centre, local members of the community were employed rather than Vodacom employees.)
This American, through much hard work and persistence and despite having any authority, managed to get the centre up and running again, and was able to train a good number of people through the computer courses that he began offering. His main problem in providing such training, however, has been that every several weeks the centre’s electricity is interrupted, after which it usually takes a few weeks to get the electricity restored. Based on such a description, most people would probably assume that this was due to poor electrical infrastructure and/or insufficient power generation. The funny and sad thing about it, though, is that it is neither.
The reason why this man’s centre has gone without power so many times is because the woman responsible for the centre’s finances did not bother to pay the electricity bill. Again, based on such a description, one might assume that this was because there were not enough funds. The centre, however, is sponsored by a major telecommunications company, so funding is not the issue. The money is there, the woman simply did not do her job and pay the bill. One might excuse this the first time as an oversight, but as I mentioned above, this has happened multiple times over the past 17 months, and the person hired to manage the centre has taken no action. The woman has not been fired, reprimanded, or even had the responsibility for paying bills taken away from her. To make matters worse, when the bill goes unpaid and the electricity is shut off, the electrical company charges a re-connection fee to restore power. Money is thus, wasted, instead of being channeled towards new computers and community computer education. The centre is currently again without power for the same reason, and my friend is finally being moved by Peace Corps to another assignment because despite all efforts and patience, he simply cannot help if the staff continues to operate in such a fashion.
I have experienced similar situations at the school where I work. When I first arrived, the school was not responsible for paying its own bills because of financial mismanagement and theft that had occurred in the past. For this reason, all bills were paid directly by the provincial Department of Education. Unfortunately, such an arrangement did not serve the school much better than when the school’s account was being plundered by local officials.
We went through a period of 3 weeks in which we had no phone use because the bill had gone unpaid. I used my own money and cell phone to call various officials at the Department to try to figure out what was going on and how the situation could be resolved. After being passed from one person to another, always finding people out of the office, leaving multiple messages (none of which was ever returned), I was finally able to get a hold of a relevant person. When this woman picked up, and I stated the reason for my call, it was immediately evident she wished she had not answered my call and had actually been avoiding me.
What I discovered was that the woman in the finance section of the Department of Education who was responsible for paying our school’s bills was on vacation for several weeks. Neither she nor the department had made any arrangements to pay the bills prior to her leaving or to assign the responsibility to someone else in her absence. The response I received was that the bills would be paid when she returned from vacation, but that we were out of luck until then. There was not much more I could do, so I had to leave the matter at that. Again, as far as I know, no action was taken against the woman for such behaviour, and no plan was made to handle things differently in the future. I guess schools will just have to continue being without telephone and electricity when people go on holiday.
Which leads me to today. My school was finally given back control of its finances in the middle of last year. The council of local people responsible for governing the school, elected as treasurer an unemployed young man without any financial qualifications or experience. As the year wore on, it became obvious that this young man was being negligent in his responsibilities such that checks were being written without documentation, receipts were not being kept, and yes, bills were not being paid. The principal actually had to pay the telephone bill out of his own pocket one month because the bill had not been paid and the telephone company was threatening to disconnect the line if payment was not given that day. I was finally asked at the end of the year to take a look at the school finances to see if I could help put things in a bit more order. When I did so, I discovered a number of “irregularities”, to put it nicely. Probably because the annual report from the school was not forthcoming, the Department of Education eventually sent in their own team to investigate, though, as far as I know, again, no action was taken.
When I showed up for the new school year at the beginning of January, I found that the same man was still holding the cheque book for the school and still responsible for the finances. Not like I was surprised, of course. Then early this afternoon, I was summoned to the school clerk’s office to assist her with a computer issue. There was an error that was occurring with the software we use to report our student data to the Department. Upon looking at it, I told her that it was not a problem I could solve and that we needed to call the IT support person at the Department of Education. Her response: “We can’t. The phone’s been disconnected because the bill was not paid.”
So now I sit here at my desk, typing on my computer, as probably one of the only people who is experiencing higher blood pressure as a result of this incident, trying to figure out why I still get upset at this kind of stuff after 19 months of experiencing it. Oh well, I think, I’ll just take a deep breath, laugh, and download Destiny’s Child’s song as my new ringtone.
