Latest news with #RebeccaDavis
Daily Maverick
5 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Watch – Rebecca Davis reports from Ukraine: Can South Africa stay neutral?
Hearing firsthand stories from Ukrainians about Russian atrocities can't help but leave you ashamed of Pretoria's stance on this awful war. Daily Maverick's Rebecca Davis reports from Ukraine.
CNA
22-05-2025
- Politics
- CNA
South Africans exasperated by Trump false claims during Ramaphosa meeting
JOHANNESBURG: South Africans expressed dismay on Thursday (May 22) at how US President Donald Trump's false claims of a white genocide dominated a conversation with President Cyril Ramaphosa, and many wondered if his trip to Washington was worth the trouble. Ramaphosa included popular white South African golfers in his delegation and he had hoped talks with Trump in the White House on Wednesday would reset relations with the United States, which have nosedived since the US leader took office in January. But Trump spent most of the conversation confronting his visitor with false claims that South Africa's white minority farmers are being systematically murdered and having their land seized. "He didn't get Zelenskyyed. That's what we have to hang onto (He) did not get personally insulted by the world's most horrible duo of playground bullies," Rebecca Davis of the national Daily Maverick wrote. At a February White House meeting, Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him ungrateful for US military aid, and Zelenskyy heatedly tried to argue his case. For some, though, Ramaphosa's cool composure raised the question of what was achieved by his having subjected himself to the onslaught. "I don't think it was the right call. I don't think we need to explain ourselves to USA," 40-year-old Sobelo Motha, a member of a trade union, said on the streets of Johannesburg. "We ... we know there's no white genocide. So for me, it was pointless exercise." The South African president arrived prepared for an aggressive reception given actions in recent months by Trump, who has cancelled aid to South Africa, offered refuge to white minority Afrikaners, expelled the country's ambassador and criticised its genocide court case against Israel. But throughout, Trump wanted only to discuss the treatment of white South Africans, playing a video and leafing through articles that he said proved his allegations. Foreign ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri defended Ramaphosa's handling of the encounter, saying it was important that the two leaders engaged. "It's not in the president's (Ramaphosa's) nature to be combative. (He) looks at issues calmly, matter-of-factly. I think that's what we expect of our presidents," he told Reuters. FRINGE GROUPS IN SOUTH AFRICA Three decades after the end of apartheid in South Africa, some fringe groups lament the loss of white power that democracy brought and point to persistent economic crisis and corruption. Wider disillusion - not just among white South Africans - over the state of the country cost Nelson Mandela's legacy party its majority in last year's election. White South Africans make up less than 8 per cent of the population and are still the most affluent group, controlling three-quarters of private land. While South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world - about 20,000 a year - most victims are black. Data collected by white farmers themselves does not support the notion of a genocide. Afrikaner farmers' union TLU-SA has counted 1,363 white farmers murdered since 1990, or an average of 40 a year - far less than 1 per cent of total murders. South Africa's richest man, Johann Rupert, owner of Richemont group that owns brands like Cartier, was at the White House meeting and told Trump crime was a problem "across the board". Still, for more than a decade, global far-right chatrooms have been circulating the notion that whites are persecuted, views that appear to have influenced Trump, a large number of Republican politicians and his ally, South African-born Elon Musk. "I think the misinformation campaign by various right-wing groups and various Afrikaner groups was extremely successful," white South African writer Pieter du Toit told Reuters. "They have been feeding the idea of white victimhood into the right-wing ecosystem in the United States for years." Back home, though, most white South Africans take a more nuanced view. "In its entirety, the violent crime in South Africa should be looked at," Owen van Roen, 47, a global commodity trader, said in the affluent streets of Johannesburg's Sandton financial district.
Reuters
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
South Africans praise Ramaphosa for keeping cool amid Trump attack
JOHANNESBURG, May 22 - South Africans praised President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday for keeping his cool amid U.S. President Donald Trump's false claims of a white genocide in their country, but wondered why their leader had made the trip to Washington. Ramaphosa had hoped his talks with Trump in the White House on Wednesday would help reset relations with the United States that have nosedived since the U.S. president took office in January. But Trump spent most of the conversation confronting his visitor with false claims that South Africa's white minority farmers are being systematically murdered and having their land seized. South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world, but the overwhelming majority of victims are Black. "He didn't get Zelenskyed. That's what we have to hang on to," Rebecca Davis of the national Daily Maverick, herself a white South African, wrote in a column. "It was impossible not to feel for Ramaphosa, who had been bombarded with messaging before the trip that he should under no circumstances lose his cool (or) rise to the bait. So he didn't." In a meeting at the White House in February, Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Zelenskiy heatedly tried to argue his case. For some, though, Ramaphosa's composure raised the question of what he had achieved by subjecting himself to that onslaught. 'I don't think it was the right call. I don't think we need to explain ourselves to USA," 40-year-old Sobelo Motha, a member of a shopkeepers' union, said on the streets of Johannesburg. "We ... we know there's no white genocide. So for me, it was pointless exercise." The South African president arrived prepared for an aggressive reception, bringing popular white South African golfers in his delegation and hoping to discuss trade. But in a choreographed performance, Trump pounced, moving quickly to a list of concerns about the treatment of white South Africans, which he punctuated by playing a video and leafing through a stack of articles that he said proved his allegations. Foreign ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri defended Ramaphosa's handling of the encounter. "Most importantly, the two presidents engaged," he told Reuters by telephone. "It's not in the president's (Ramaphosa's) nature to be combative. (He) looks at issues calmly, matter-of-factly. I think that's what we (should) expect of our presidents," he added. Many in South Africa were baffled that the world's most powerful man could believe easily disproved claims about ethnic cleansing of white South Africans that circulate on far-right social media. Most victims of violent crime in South Africa are Black and poor. South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, of which 44 were linked to farming communities. Of those, eight of the victims were farmers. "I think Trump is naive and he's dealing with America's issues. So I don't think he has time to actually verify the facts," said Kudakwashi Mgwariri, a student at the University of the Witwatersrand.
RNZ News
13-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Feature interview: the film exploring the decline in community
Join a club and save democracy. 30 years ago, political scientist Robert Putnam published research explaining that people were becoming increasingly disconnected from each other and disengaged with their communities because they stopped joining clubs, going to church or participating in school groups. Pete Davis was one of Putnam's students. His sister Rebecca was a producer at NBC news. Together they tracked Putnam down and put together a documentary about the decline in community and connection called Join or Die. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
Daily Maverick
13-05-2025
- Daily Maverick
AI prompts us to rethink the very foundations of higher education systems
Rebecca Davis raises some important questions in her Daily Maverick article, ' Cheat GPT crisis – SA universities faced with a burgeoning degree of AI-written academic assignments '. She points out, as others have, that 'students are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to do their assignments and as detection tools fail, universities are scrambling to rethink their assessment methods'. She suggests further, quite correctly, that some institutions are in denial about the scale of the problem. In a follow-up piece, ' Chat GPT poses an existential threat to universities and the integrity of degrees ', Associate Professor Andy Carolin from UJ suggests that the availability of Chat GPT has created the risk of an 'ever-increasing number of students who hold certificates that fraudulently certify their mastery of skills and content knowledge that some of them may have only barely attempted'. He concludes by suggesting that while 'it may go against the enthusiastic embrace of technological innovation', there may be no other choice than to insist on a return to in-person discussions, tests and examinations. There can be no doubt that AI raises serious questions about how universities should conduct assessments, but this is really only the tip of the iceberg. AI 'offers' or 'threatens' (depending on your outlook) to fundamentally transform knowledge, teaching, learning and assessment as we currently know it, as well as the people and the institutions that offer it. Consequently, the discussion and debate should prompt us to rethink the very foundations of our current higher education systems. It is important to highlight that it is not only large language models (LLMs) which are being applied in the education sphere, but these are being combined with symbolic AI, for example, which is more effective in structured, rules-based areas such as learning pathways, competency alignment, student progression, adaptive testing and so on. This is sometimes referred to as neuro-symbolic AI or LLM and planner architectures. Some of the areas which are of relevance to this debate – and which of course all require much more depth than is possible here – include the following: Rethinking what constitutes knowledge and competence; The development of teaching and learning materials and accompanying assessments; The delivery of teaching and learning and the conducting of assessments; The future for teaching and administrative staff; Qualification and changes in hiring decisions by employers; and The future of tertiary institutions. Rethinking knowledge and competence Historically, universities have placed significant value on knowledge retention, ie testing whether students can recall facts, formulae, or processes. However, with hybrid AI tools now capable of delivering detailed, real-time answers, the educational benefit of this type of memorisation must be questioned. We have historically managed the transition away from times tables and recalled theorems to calculators which do this work for students and working people, and it is this mind-shift – in this case with AI – that we are being asked to make today. This is not to suggest that some retained knowledge is not important – it clearly is. But most tertiary institutions worth their salt will be far more focused on building the competence of their students to think critically, to be creative, to collaborate and communicate effectively – the well-versed core 21st Century skills. These are already widely acknowledged as more important metrics than recalling specific data points. It surely cannot be correct to suggest that the use of AI stands in opposition to these core competencies? AI applications certainly raise the bar in terms of what can be achieved, but those who make extensive use of AI will know that the refining and synthesising of AI outputs through intelligent and creative prompting can be a very challenging process requiring high levels of creativity and critical thinking. This suggests, therefore, that if private and public universities wish to have students capable of using AI effectively when they enter the new world of work, they will need to assess students' 21st Century skills in both unaided as well as aided formats. 'Unaided' assessments which also seek to test some measure of knowledge retention may well, as is suggested by Carlin, require in-person formats, though arguably this could include online face-to-face formats. 'Aided' assessments would involve required AI use, disclosure by the student and a close examination of the discovery and prompting processes to reach the final learning outcome. The development of teaching materials and accompanying assessments A major part of the life of a lecturer has traditionally been the development of lectures and the assessments that go alongside these materials. Hybrid AI has, however, already demonstrated its ability to generate teaching materials and accompanying assessments at various levels of complexity. This form of AI can create course outlines, lesson plans and reading materials by drawing on datasets that cover an extensive range of academic subjects. These models can synthesise concepts into coherent, digestible materials suitable for different learning outcomes. Hybrid AI can also automate the creation of formative and summative assessments. Through natural language processing, it can craft questions ranging from multiple-choice quizzes to more open-ended prompts designed to test higher-order thinking skills. It would be naïve to assume that AI is not already being used by some lecturers to do precisely this – to create and update lecture notes and to develop new assessments which reflect changing global events. Are we to regard this as some form of cheating? It would seem churlish to deny lecturers the opportunity to be more efficient and effective in their work by using AI applications, judiciously, of course, when the rest of the world is doing precisely this. Teaching, learning and conducting assessments Taking this a step further in the life of a lecturer, it should be recognised that hybrid AI can increasingly assume the role of a digital lecturer and learning facilitator by delivering material through interactive, multimedia presentations and real-time discussion prompts. Intelligent tutoring systems, for instance, can parse student queries and tailor responses with immediate and context-relevant explanations, mirroring the support offered by a human instructor. Additionally, hybrid AI can track each student's engagement and comprehension through analytics and offer timely, data-driven guidance to help them grasp difficult concepts. This kind of on-demand, personalised assistance ensures that students receive support at their own pace. More sophisticated AI-based tools can even adapt materials in real time, based on learner feedback, to support the level at which the learner is most comfortable. When it comes to assessments and marking, hybrid AI can automate much of the process, from generating relevant test questions to scoring responses. Beyond merely checking correct or incorrect answers, modern AI-driven systems can interpret open-ended responses and evaluate them for conceptual clarity and depth of understanding. Implications for teaching and administrative staff The capacity of hybrid AI in terms of teaching, learning and assessment clearly suggests that the roles of many lecturers will change over time. Initially, they are likely to be freed from many menial and repetitive administrative tasks associated with student administration. Then, increasingly with information being so readily available in such great quantities instead of being focused on 'the lecture', it is likely that lecturers will gravitate more towards student support and in-person assessment. However, as support and self-learning become increasingly personalised through hybrid AI applications, the requirement for lecturer support in even these areas is likely to diminish. Likewise, with administrative staff, hybrid AI is well suited to take on many tasks associated with admissions, quality assessments, accreditations and qualifications' administration. This is already a reality. So over time, maybe quite a short time, significantly fewer lecturer and administrative posts are likely to be required. For current and future students – we will all be lifelong learners – the upside will probably be significantly cheaper education as tertiary institutions that offer online options, having recovered their initial investments, will be able to offer qualifications at significantly lower fees than is now the case. Again, this trend is already very discernible. Qualifications and employer hiring decisions It has already been suggested that it is likely that the assessment of knowledge retention will decline in importance, so qualifications will increasingly need to reflect less about what learners know and more about how learners can apply their own knowledge and the knowledge that they are able to generate through AI applications. Furthermore, as the pace of change speeds up (largely through technology) and competencies have to be rapidly updated, qualifications are likely to become more modular and flexible. Instead of granting a single, comprehensive degree, institutions may increasingly move towards stackable micro-credentials or digital badges tied to distinct competencies, allowing learners to continuously update and demonstrate their abilities. Additionally, non-traditional providers of education — such as industry organisations or even AI-based platforms — could gain more legitimacy in awarding recognised qualifications. Students of the future may therefore earn credits across multiple providers and compile them into a unified record or 'portfolio', verified and authenticated by blockchain or other secure systems. This decentralised approach would diversify educational pathways and enable continuous upskilling, moving beyond the one-time awarding of a conventional degree. As qualifications begin to change, employer hiring decisions are likely to change as well, and these two processes will each drive the other synergistically. Employers are already increasingly focusing on demonstrable skills and practical outcomes. Their recruiters often weigh assessments of real-time problem-solving or proof of project-based achievements more heavily than a traditional diploma or degree. This will be supported by hybrid AI systems and applications which enable recruiters to verify skill levels through performance data, such as coding challenges, simulations or portfolio reviews. Recruiters themselves are likely to dwindle in numbers as the formal interview is replaced by hybrid AI-driven platforms which take on tasks like candidate matching, pre-screening, and initial interviews. The end of universities? Does this mean an end to bricks and mortar and online universities and colleges as we know them today? Well, not tomorrow. It is likely that some tertiary institutions will be able to continue offering their teaching and learning in a more 'traditional' format, which at least eschews some of the pressures from the AI revolution. But these are likely to be already well-branded, boutique institutions which cater in the main part for wealthier students who can afford premium fees. But for the vast majority of learners in South Africa and the world more broadly, the cost of education is paramount and hybrid AI is already making education increasingly affordable. The day is probably not long off when we see private and public teaching and learning institutions involving automation at virtually every stage of the student lifecycle. Admission decisions will be determined algorithmically, factoring in everything from academic records to psychometric assessments derived from online interactions. Class content — lectures, readings, tests — will be generated and updated in real time by hybrid AI, with intelligent tutoring systems offering one-on-one support tailored to individual student needs. Assessments will be administered and graded by hybrid AI tools capable of interpreting both structured and unstructured responses, providing instant feedback and analytics on a student's strengths and weaknesses. Administrative tasks — from financial aid calculations to scheduling — will also run autonomously, with minimal human oversight required for exception handling or strategic decisions. In this scenario, students will interact with a near-seamless digital ecosystem that delivers personalised learning and credentials requiring only minor human intervention to handle aspects of policy compliance, complex student welfare matters or moral and ethical queries. Good or bad development? From a pedagogical or andragogical perspective, this is probably a question to which we don't really know the answer, and one which we should probably approach with as much data as possible, rather than through dogma and belief.
