MIL Africa Engine

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria

Adolph Johannes Brand was born on 9 October 1934 in Cape Town. He would become better known as Dollar Brand and then Abdullah Ibrahim, an artist of mixed ethnic descent who personified the city’s multiculturalism and represented it on the world’s stages.

He went to school in District Six, a municipal inner city area with residents of diverse backgrounds. Due to the enforcement of apartheid it was declared a “white area” in 1966 and the community was removed by force in 1982. It was the creative ambience in which he started to play piano aged seven.

A bebop-inspired jazz musician performing as Dollar Brand, he had his first musical successes in the mid-1950s. He became Abdullah Ibrahim when converting to Islam in 1968, and his deep religious spirituality was an essential ingredient to his music.

Ibrahim’s more than 70 records received numerous prestigious awards. His deep spirituality, solemn dignity and soul has also been captured in the documentary films A Brother with Perfect Timing in 1987 and A Struggle for Love in 2005.

As a political scientist of southern Africa, I have written about Ibrahim as a defiant public intellectual, placing his work within his unique worldviews.

He personified the special brand of multiple identities and belief systems, consolidated and transmitted over generations among a variety of descendants in the urban settings at the Cape. His spirituality was not only a source of resilience but also defiance, his humanity political without any need for ideology.

In search of genuine expressions through music, he became an icon of a counter-world to the apartheid regime, taking sides by being and living up to what he was.

The early years

In 1959 he began to play in the Sophiatown-based band Jazz Epistles with other South African legends Kippie Moeketsi, Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Johnny Gertze and Makaya Ntshoko. They recorded Jazz Epistle Verse One as the first black South African jazz LP record.

In 1962 Ibrahim left for Europe, touring (with Gertze and Ntshoko) as The Dollar Brand Trio. In Switzerland the South African jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin put them in contact with Duke Ellington. Together Ellington and the Trio made two recordings (including Benjamin on the second one).

The Trio entered the circuit of international jazz festivals and toured Europe. In 1965 Ibrahim and Benjamin married and moved to New York, where he played at the Newport Jazz Festival. He continued close collaboration with Duke Ellington and interacted with some most renowned jazz musicians of the time.

Despite his international fame, he never forgot where he came from. Mandla Langa, a writer who was the African National Congress-in-exile’s cultural attaché in Europe, has observed:

He could have lost all connection with South Africa, but he chose not to.

A personal experience illustrates the point: when performing in West Berlin in the mid-1970s, a few exiled Namibians living there visited him backstage before the concert. When on stage to play before a packed auditorium, he stopped after intonating a few notes on the piano. Turning around, he looked at the group and declared, “Ek speel net vir julle.” (I only play for you).

Mannenberg and Cape jazz

A turning point in Ibrahim’s career (then still mainly known as Dollar Brand) – and a watershed for South African musical history – was his short return to South Africa during the mid-1970s.

Mannenberg, a 14-minute track capturing the atmosphere of the Cape Flats, was recorded in June 1974 in one take as an act of collective improvisation. It was released on the album Mannenberg – Is Where It’s Happening.

As historian John Edwin Mason observed, its unique combination of musical vocabularies and idioms, rooted in South Africa, yet aware of international trends, helped to make it “the most iconic” composition in South African jazz history.

Within a year it sold more copies than any other South African jazz album. Being subsequently performed by some of the band’s members at political protest gatherings, it became a song of resistance and resilience. A fellow jazz musician from District Six declared it “the most powerful anthem of the struggle in the 1980s … which had no words, it simply referred to a series of styles of music that was influenced by black culture”.

These were automatically associated with being free, to have an identity. Ibrahim’s fusion of melodies in his improvisations resembled a mixture of American jazz with local genres such as marabi and mbaqanga, but also langarm, vastrap and ticky draai. This blend is known as Cape jazz. More recordings followed with African Herbs (1975), Banyana – Children of Africa and Black Lightning (both 1976).

Triggered by the Soweto uprising of 16 June 16 1976, Ibrahim declared his support for the African National Congress and returned to New York. In 1978 he released Anthem for the New Nation. Another milestone became African Marketplace, recorded in 1979 with a 12-piece-band – ranked as number 70 in a list of The 100 Jazz Albums that Shook the World.

Returning home

A legend in his own lifetime, Ibrahim returned to South Africa after he met the newly-released Nelson Mandela 1990 in Germany, who told him to come home. In 1994 he performed with a symphony orchestra on occasion of Mandela’s inauguration as president. Mandela reportedly referred to him as “our Mozart”.

In 1999 Ibrahim founded an academy for South African musicians in Cape Town, where he also initiated the Cape Town Jazz Orchestra, launched in 2006. In 2016 he performed with Hugh Masekela for the first time since 1960, reuniting the legendary Jazz Epistles to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Soweto uprising.

A solo piano recording was released in 2008 as Senzo (meaning ancestor in Chinese and Japanese, and a nod to his father’s name, Senzo, which also means creation in South Africa’s Nguni languages). As a review in All About Jazz ended:

Abdullah Ibrahim is a true inheritor of the ancestral name.

Upon release of The Balance in 2019, his first album after five years, The Wall Street Journal titled: A Jazz Master Continues to Grow.

In 2024 he released his final recording, an expansive and critically acclaimed double album called 3.

A legacy beyond music

Ibrahim has been a midwife to musical expressions under apartheid, which were a form of resistance based on one’s own human dignity, self-respect and confidence as protest against oppression and discrimination. He did this without noise, rather – like his personal habitus – calm, steadfast and determined, resting in himself.

He contributed to a new culture under – and after – apartheid. Abdullah Ibrahim played a significant role in the creation of something new. There will be no other like him.

– Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim crafted a magnificent new culture for South Africa
– https://theconversation.com/pianist-abdullah-ibrahim-crafted-a-magnificent-new-culture-for-south-africa-155059

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Edwin Mutyenyoka, Senior Researcher, Arnold Bergstraesser Institute

Kenya hosts nearly a million refugees, mainly from South Sudan and Somalia. Many of them have been living in refugee camps for decades.

Now, the country is attempting a major shift in refugee policy. The Kenyan government and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) developed the Shirika Plan, launching it in March 2025. The policy aims to move refugees away from long-term encampment and integrate them in society.

Drawing on their research on refugee governance and migration in Kenya, Edwin Mutyenyoka and Franzisca Zanker explain the opportunities and challenges the plan presents for refugees and host communities.

What is the Shirika Plan?

The Shirika Plan seeks to shift refugee management away from a camp-based system largely overseen by the UN towards a government-led model centred on inclusion into the local economy. The plan is a by-product of Kenya’s Refugee Act of 2021, which seeks to include and protect refugees better.

The plan builds on the success of two pilot models: the Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-Economic Development Plan and the Garissa Integrated Socio-Economic Plan. They showed that refugee inclusion can strengthen both refugee and host economies.

The Shirika Plan will convert camps into county-administered municipalities. There will be investment in roads, water systems, healthcare and education in places that host refugees. Developments are designed to serve refugees and host communities.

The plan is closely aligned with the UN’s refugee frameworks. These encourage governments to move beyond emergency assistance and towards allowing refugees to work, use public services and contribute to local economies.

The plan’s six pillars include sustainable economic development and climate action.

Implementation is expected to take place in three phases and requires an estimated US$943 million.

The first phase (2025-2028) is the transition period. It lays the foundations: putting regulatory and policy frameworks in place and turning camps into municipalities. There’s an emphasis on building local capacity too.

The second phase (2029-2032) is the stabilisation period. It will evaluate the transition, and strengthen institutional capacity and financial management. This phase will also build on peaceful co-existence between refugees and host communities.

The final phase (2033-2036) – the resilience period – aims to fortify financial structures, diversify revenue and build the resilience of communities. This is to reduce dependence on external support.

Why does Kenya need such a plan?

Kenya has become a major destination for both forced and economic migrants in the region. This is due, in part, to the country’s relative political and economic stability. A higher Human Development Index, vibrant secondary economy and a largely welcoming host society have created a good environment for refugees.

Kenya was home to 954,851 refugees and asylum seekers in 2025. This makes it the fifth biggest host in Africa and 13th largest in the world.

Kakuma and Dadaab refugee camps in the northern region are home to over 800,000 refugees and asylum seekers between them. They are two of the biggest shelters for forced migrants in the world.

Most of the refugees in these camps – mostly from Sudan and Somalia – have lived there for up to 30 years.

In addition, surveys by organisations such as the Mixed Migration Centre and IOM Kenya estimate that between 100,000 and 200,000 refugees – mostly not registered – live in cities like Nairobi and Mombasa.

Kenya has gone through significant challenges, however, between the Refugee Act of 2021 and the launch of the Shirika Plan in 2025. A severe economic crisis ignited fierce protests and put mounting pressure on public services. In addition, humanitarian aid cuts, both globally and in Kenya, have been swift and severe.

Rather than relying on repeated emergency appeals, the Shirika Plan aims to attract development financing, while reducing tensions between refugees and host communities through shared access to services and economic opportunities.

This reflects a broader shift towards linking emergency assistance with longer-term economic and social inclusion.

The plan also offers a chance to address protracted displacement by making camps obsolete, while enhancing local development in remote areas.

What happens next?

The next challenge is implementation. The first years of the Shirika Plan are vital to show it can actually work.

In the first phase, planned initiatives centre on expanding livelihood opportunities, strengthening local services and improving coordination between humanitarian and development actors. Financing will be critical for success.

Kenya has secured substantial international support for refugee-hosting and economic integration. This includes a Sh155 billion (US$2 billion) loan from the World Bank in 2024 that requires Kenya to integrate 400,000 refugees into the economy by 2027.

For Kenya, the plan is a complete change of policy direction, away from a focus on security concerns and threats to close refugee camps. Closure threats happened most recently in 2021 but were quashed by the high court in 2024.

The emphasis is now on inclusion, local development and burden-sharing.

Success will depend not only on funding, but on the government’s ability to deliver tangible benefits for both refugees and host communities.

What are the risks?

First, the Shirika Plan relies on a system of differentiated assistance. This means support is tailored to refugees’ levels of need rather than provided equally to everyone. However, misconceptions of preferential treatment risk fuelling tensions between different refugee groups.

Second, moving vulnerable refugees out of camps could create new challenges. Many have spent years with limited access to education, jobs and public services. Competing in open labour markets could be particularly challenging for refugees who have long lived under UNHCR-operated enclosures.

Third, although more than 75 public engagement forums have been held across Kenya, some refugee and host-community representatives report feeling excluded from the design of the plan and broader decision-making processes. Concerns have also been raised about public awareness, accountability and oversight mechanisms. This is a worry as public support is vital to the plan.

Fourth, funding shortfalls are a risk to the plan. Supporting programmes aimed at building capacity during the transition period require consistent financial investments.

Where does this leave the plan?

The alternative – continuing to confine nearly a million people to underfunded camps – carries far greater risks than the challenges outlined above.

As the wheels of the Shirika Plan start turning, there is a need to invest in the municipalities hosting refugees.

A gradual reduction in UNHCR’s direct role should also create greater space for refugee-led organisations, whose local knowledge and community ties are useful to identify needs and support integration efforts.

– Kenya wants to close refugee camps: the promise and risks of its ambitious new plan
– https://theconversation.com/kenya-wants-to-close-refugee-camps-the-promise-and-risks-of-its-ambitious-new-plan-283486

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Andreas Scheba, Associate Professor, University of the Free State

South Africa faces a housing backlog of at least 2.6 million units, for more than 12 million people. The state supply of new, subsidised housing has declined over the past decade and the government’s housing policy is shifting.

It sees the private sector as becoming the main provider of “affordable housing”. The market, according to the Banking Association of South Africa, is households earning up to R34,400 gross per month (US$2,111). Yet most residents in South African cities earn far less than that. (The national median household income in 2023 was R7,980 or US$490.) Much more affordable accommodation is therefore needed.

We are housing and urban scholars based in South African and Austrian universities, who have conducted extensive research on how housing ideology, policies and practices shape urbanisation.

In this article we draw on research we have done on social rental housing in South African cities and in Vienna, Austria. We don’t suggest the policies should be the same. After all, these are very different places. But a side-by-side look can be useful.

Vienna is often considered the capital of social housing. About 43% of the Viennese housing stock is state-subsidised rental housing, including municipal-owned flats and apartments run by limited-profit housing associations.

South African cities have seen a massive roll-out of state-sponsored, low-density ownership housing, but the housing backlog and informality continue to grow. Delivery of subsidised rental housing and higher-density, mixed-income apartments has remained slow.

We believe at least three aspects of Vienna’s social housing policy have potential for South African cities:

• sustained political commitment – policies, laws and regulations backed up by adequate financial and institutional investments

• a pro-active and market-shaping state

• making social housing part of the urban fabric and the public consciousness.

Sustained political commitment

Vienna’s large social housing stock is the result of a century of political commitment and investment in housing as a human right, recognising its powerful role in improving workers’ welfare and building integrated cities.

For the city, housing was never just a revenue-generating asset. Dating back to the Red Vienna period (1919–1934), interrupted by Austro-fascism and the Nazi regime, the social democratic city government has made housing central to its urban welfare politics. Especially subsidised rental housing.

Housing projects were considered part of social infrastructure, together with public facilities (clinics, transport, education), outdoor spaces, social amenities (creches, laundries, libraries), art, and employment opportunities.

Colloquially called “people’s palaces”, social housing apartment blocks symbolised the political promise of providing high-quality living to working-class people.

The city planted subsidised rental in all areas to promote social mixing.

Proactive and market-shaping state

Translating this political commitment into results required a capable and active state. It demanded a government that shaped land and property markets to maximise public value.

Vienna has taken an active role in social housing delivery, whether as a direct provider, regulator or collaborator. And, unlike many other cities in Europe, it never sold off its own municipal housing stock in the late 20th century.

The city currently manages over 220,000 rental apartments, accommodating a quarter of the total urban population. This makes Vienna the largest public landlord of social housing in Europe. After a period of non-expansion, it decided a decade ago to resume investment in rental stock.

A key element of its policy is the use of private capital and third sector (neither state nor profit-driven) organisations to promote the delivery of affordable rental accommodation. So-called limited-profit housing associations – private, cooperative, or non-profit entities – provide apartments at cost-based, regulated prices.

These organisations plan, develop and manage social housing accommodation and are bound to the Austrian Limited-Profit Housing Act. This law says any surpluses must be reinvested in building new rental housing.

Regulation includes rental caps, indefinite-term contracts and quality assurance requirements.

The city’s Fund for Housing Construction and Urban Renewal is a professional property management company, governed by a trust chaired by the city council. It buys, manages and releases land for state-subsidised housing construction and subsidises urban renewal projects. Active land management and a social housing zoning law allow affordable land to be designated for state-subsidised housing.

Working closely with city departments, especially planning and infrastructure, the entity acquires, prepares and releases land for social housing.

Another vital role is organising developers’ competitions, which function as a quality assurance mechanism. Interdisciplinary juries assess competing proposals according to four criteria: economy, architecture, ecology and social sustainability. Development rights are then awarded to the highest-quality project consortium.

Financing is a mix of federal and regional subsidies, loans, and earmarked contributions. For example the housing subsidy levy is a payroll-based contribution shared equally between employers and employees.

Social fabric of social housing

Social housing in Vienna is central to the overall housing system rather than a safety net for the poorest. Income thresholds are set to include large parts of the population and support social mixing.

Barriers for newcomers are still in place: they must live in the city for two years before they can access municipal housing. But renting remains a secure form of tenure that is widely accepted by the population.

Quality sustains this broad-based appeal. Social housing offers attractive, well-designed living environments.

This process draws on a deep pool of expertise, within the municipal administration and among non-profit housing providers, planners, academics and independent advisors.

Social housing is spread across Vienna rather than pushed to the periphery. People from different backgrounds live side by side.

Reflections for South Africa

Vienna’s experience provides a useful point of reference for reflecting on how social housing delivery could work in South Africa’s cities.

Firstly, social rental housing should be understood as an urban and economic policy. Its benefits go far beyond providing shelter, as it can make the city a more egalitarian, inclusive and productive space. It can improve workers’ welfare, reduce poverty, and promote socio-economic mobility.

As such, it deserves greater political commitment and resources from all spheres of government.

Secondly, getting results requires the state to actively shape property and land markets for public value. The City of Vienna has never just focused on enabling private-sector development. It shows what municipalities can achieve when they strategically use their assets, regulatory powers and resources to get public value from private investments.

Third is the importance of embedding social housing into a city’s social fabric.

The key is to appreciate social rental housing as shared wealth. Not to idealise individual property ownership. The public has to understand the benefits of well-located, higher-density, subsidised rental accommodation.

It also requires tapping into the technical, financial, organisational and other expertise across sectors and spaces in South Africa. Residents, housing justice movements and civil society organisations all have something to offer.

– South Africa is short of 2.6 million homes: Vienna’s approach to social housing offers useful lessons
– https://theconversation.com/south-africa-is-short-of-2-6-million-homes-viennas-approach-to-social-housing-offers-useful-lessons-282638