Download or read book Understanding Socioeconomic Transformation in South Africa What has not changed two decades into democracy written by Alson Bhebe and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-05-27 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a narration of the prevailing socio-economic environment in South Africa. A background is given on how this environment evolved. More than two decades into democracy, the third largest economy in Africa is failing to offer economic independence to its indigenous citizens. It is quite concerning that the economy is creating billionaires by the day whilst the majority of the population is wallowing in poverty. The book discusses how this environment can be changed. A few practical examples are also used to justify assumptions made. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in understanding the socioeconomic environment and interested in influencing a transformational trajectory. The book is written in plain and simple fashion that can be understood by anyone. An Index is included for those seeking to use the book for academic purposes to navigate with ease.

Download or read book Socio Economic Rights in South Africa written by Malcolm Langford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out to assess the role and impact of socio-economic strategies used by civil society actors in South Africa. Focusing on a range of socio-economic rights and national trends in law and political economy, the book's authors show how socio-economic rights have influenced the development of civil society discourse and action.

Download or read book New South African Review 6 written by Devan Pillay and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-01-29 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wide-ranging essays demonstrate how the consequences of inequality extend throughout society and the political economy Despite the transition from apartheid to democracy, South Africa is the most unequal country in the world. Its extremes of wealth and poverty undermine intensifying struggles for a better life for all. The wide-ranging essays in this sixth volume of the New South African Review demonstrate how the consequences of inequality extend throughout society and the political economy, crippling the quest for social justice, polarising the politics, skewing economic outcomes and bringing devastating environmental consequences in their wake. Contributors survey the extent and consequences of inequality across fields as diverse as education, disability, agrarian reform, nuclear geography and small towns, and tackle some of the most difficult social, political and economic issues. How has the quest for greater equality affected progressive political discourse? How has inequality reproduced itself, despite best intentions in social policy, to the detriment of the poor and the historically disadvantaged? How have shifts in mining and the financialisation of the economy reshaped the contours of inequality? How does inequality reach into the daily social life of South Africans, and shape the way in which they interact? How does the extent and shape of inequality in South Africa compare with that of other major countries of the global South which themselves are notorious for their extremes of wealth and poverty? South African extremes of inequality reflect increasing inequality globally, and The Crisis of Inequality will speak to all those general readers, policy makers, researchers and students who are demanding a more equal world.

Download or read book Global Trends 2040 written by National Intelligence Council and published by Cosimo Reports. This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

Download or read book Our Continent Our Future written by P. Thandika Mkandawire and published by IDRC. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy. Finally, they stress that Africa must, and can, compete in an increasingly globalized world and, perhaps most importantly, that Africans must assume the leading role in defining the continent's development agenda.

Download or read book Sustaining Life written by Theodore Powers and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-02-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ethnographic account of the South African AIDS movement and activists From the historical roots of AIDS activism in the struggle for African liberation to the everyday work of community education in Khayelitsha, Sustaining Life tells the story of how the rights-based South African AIDS movement successfully transformed public health institutions, enabled access to HIV/AIDS treatment, and sustained the lives of people living with the disease. Typical accounts of the South African epidemic have focused on the political conflict surrounding it, Theodore Powers observes, but have yet to examine the process by which the national HIV/AIDS treatment program achieved near-universal access. In Sustaining Life, Powers demonstrates the ways in which non-state actors, from caregivers to activists, worked within the state to transform policy and state-based institutions in order to improve health-based outcomes. He shows how advocates in the South African AIDS movement channeled the everyday experiences of poor and working-class people living with HIV/AIDS into tangible policy changes at varying institutional levels, revealing the primacy of local action for expanding treatment access. In his analysis of the transformation of the state health system, Powers addresses three key questions: How were the activists of the movement able to overcome an AIDS-dissident faction that was backed by government power? How were state health institutions and HIV/AIDS policy transformed to increase public sector access to treatment? Finally, how should the South African campaign for treatment access inform academic debates on social movements, transnationalism, and the state? Based on extended participant observation and in-depth interviews with members of the South African AIDS movement, Sustaining Life traces how the political principles of the anti-apartheid movement were leveraged to build a broad coalition that changed national HIV/AIDS policy norms and highlights how changes in state-society relations can be produced by local activism.

Download or read book Land Reform Revisited written by Femke Brandt and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Land Reform Revisited engages with contemporary debates on land reform and agrarian transformation in South Africa. The volume offers insights into post-apartheid transformation dynamics through the lens of agency and state making. The chapters written by emerging scholars are based on extensive qualitative research and their analysis highlights the ways in which people negotiate and contest land reform realities and politics. By focusing on the diverse meanings of land and competing interpretations of what constitutes success and failure in land reform Brandt and Mkodzongi insist on looking beyond the productivity discourses guiding research and policy making in the field towards an informed view from below. Contributors are: Kezia Batisai, Femke Brandt, Sarah Bruchhausen, Nerhene Davis, Elene Cloete, Tariro Kamuti, Tarminder Kaur, Grasian Mkodzongi, Camalita Naicker, Fani Ncapayi, Mnqobi Ngubane, and Chizuko Sato.

Download or read book Globalization And Reform In Higher Education written by Eggins, Heather and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 2003-12-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the key issues that are involved in reforming higher education to meet new global challenges. It draws on a team of distinguished international researchers from North America, Africa, Australia and Europe who consider particular topics: the reform of governance and finance, the funding of higher education, managerialism, accreditation and quality assurance, the use of performance indicators, faculty roles and rewards, and the cultural, social and ethical dimensions of change.

Download or read book Unlocking markets to smallholders written by Herman D. van Schalkwyk and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-03-10 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses the institutional, technical and market constraints as well as opportunities for smallholders, notably, emerging farmers in disadvantaged areas such as the former homelands of South Africa. Emerging farmers are previously disadvantaged black people who started or will start their business with the support of special government programs. Public support programs have been developed as part of the Black Economic Empowerment strategy of the South African government. These programs aim to improve the performance of emerging farmers. This requires, first and foremost, upgrading the emerging farmers skills by providing access to knowledge about agricultural and entrepreneurial practices. To become or to remain good farmers they also need access to suitable agricultural land and sufficient water for irrigation and for feeding their cattle. Finally, for emerging farmers to be engaged in viable farming operations, various factors need to be in place such as marketing and service institutions to give credit for agricultural inputs and investments; input markets for farm machinery, farm implements, fertilizers and quality seeds; and accessible output markets for their end products. This book develops a policy framework and potential institutional responses to unlock the relevant markets for smallholders.

Download or read book Post colonial struggles for a democratic Southern Africa written by Carolyn Bassett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National liberation, one of the grand narratives of the twentieth century, has left a weighty legacy of unfulfilled dreams. This book explores the ongoing struggle for legitimate, accountable political leaders in postcolonial Southern Africa, focussing on dilemmas arising when ex-liberation movements form the governments. While the spread of multi-party democracy to most countries in the region is to be celebrated, democratic practice often has been superficial - a limited, elitist politics that relies on the symbols of the liberation struggle to legitimate de facto one-party rule and authoritarian practices. Using country cases from Tanzania, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia, the collection explores three subthemes relevant to postcolonial governance in Southern Africa: how the struggle for liberation shapes the character of political transformation, the nature of rule in one-party dominant states headed by former liberation movements, and the processes of governance and resistance in post-liberation contexts. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.

Download or read book Academic Life in the Measured University written by Tai Peseta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While a life in academia is still one bestowed with enormous privilege and opportunity, on the inside, its cracks and fragility have been on display for some time. We see evidence of this in researchers bemoaning time spent applying for grants rather than doing research; teachers frustrated at the ways student feedback data are deployed to feed judgements about them; and doctoral students realising that they have little chance of securing full-time academic work. Yet in the public policy domain, the opposite appears true: academics left to their own devices in their elite ivory towers, rarely ever do enough. This collection addresses the fact that academic life deserves to be rigorously researched. Its emphasis on the measured university traces how academic life had ceded itself to the logics of perverse measures, and raises questions about whether the contemporary university may well have become too measured to adequately counter the political times now upon us. The contributors explore the ways in which measurement inhabits paradoxical positions in these spaces. It sketches the contours and consequences of mismeasurement, including the personal costs to academic staff. It examines our desires and fumbled efforts at institutional transformation, and it puts on display our own ethical conduct. The collection concludes with a call to chart a course for a revitalized moral economy of academic labour. This book was originally published as a special issue of Higher Education Research & Development.

Download or read book Housing the Poor on the African Continent written by Mfundo Mandla Masuku and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-13 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the circumstances surrounding state-provided, low-cost housing for people at the lower end of the housing market in Africa. It deploys Ubuntu philosophy to unpack the provision of housing security to citizens, arguing that interpreting housing rights within Ubuntu philosophy recognises the spirit of reciprocity and collective solidarity as fundamental to meeting the housing needs of low-income groups. In essence, the volume reflects on the values of Ubuntu and informs both policy and practice by guiding policymakers, researchers, and practitioners with the episteme of basic human rights and the Ubuntu philosophy. It pointedly grapples with issues that resonate with efforts by African governments to protect vulnerable citizens from multidimensional poverty, homelessness, gender-neutral policies, and self-help housing schemes. The book’s insights raise red flags concerning the realisation of Ubuntu as a vehicle earmarked to deliver adequate and sustainable housing delivery outcomes. The volume is a must-read for academics, researchers, practitioners, government officials, and leaders from various sectors.

Download or read book Social Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa written by Ndangwa Noyoo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines the current social policy in post-apartheid South Africa and proposes an alternative social policy agenda to create a new development pathway for the country. Taking social policy as a vehicle that will facilitate the creation of a new society altogether, namely the "Good Society," the author argues for the adoption of policy that will socially re-engineer South Africa. The author shows how the policy tools and development interventions which were undertaken by the post-apartheid state in driving South Africa’s transformation agenda failed to emancipate many individuals, families, and communities from the cycle of intergenerational poverty and underdevelopment. He contends that social policy interventions that foster the social re-engineering of South African society must take place to untangle the inherited colonial-apartheid social order. This book includes comparative analyses on the Global South and Global North to present the ways in which countries such as post-Second World War Great Britain and Sweden, and post-independence Zambia of the 1960s and 1970s, were able to use social policy to create new societies altogether or places similar to the "Good Society." The conceptual and methodological issues that form the basis for this book reside in public policy-making and the public good and will be of interest to scholars of social policy, social development, and South African society.

Download or read book South Africa s Democracy at the Crossroads written by Daniel Silander and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2022-04-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa's democracy faces increasing challenges from within, whether from protest, bad governance or general public dissatisfaction. South Africa ́s Democracy at the Crossroads explores the question; what are the challenges to future democratization in South Africa?

Download or read book Global Challenges and Local Reactions Czech Republic and South Africa written by Hana Horáková and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2014 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an interdisciplinary perspective on the large-scale processes of socio-economic and political change of two "young" democracies: post-apartheid South Africa and the post-socialist Czech Republic. As the political transition in both countries coincides with the intensified effects of globalization, especially with the advent of neoliberal economic ideologies and policies, the two countries exhibit a number of common features and parallels in their respective transitions and post-developments. The book's chapters describe the particular place(s) South Africa and the Czech Republic occupy in the dual processes of internationalization and globalization. (Series: International Politics / Internationale Politik - Vol. 19) [Subject: Politics, Economics, European Studies, African Studies]

Download or read book Transformation from Below White Suburbia in the Transformation of Apartheid South Africa to Democracy written by Ursula Scheidegger and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa is an example of a relatively successful political transition. Nevertheless, the first democratic elections in 1994 did not change the systemic and structural inequalities, the socioeconomic legacies of discrimination or the alienation of the different population groups. At the centre of this study is the transformation potential of two formerly white neighbourhoods in Johannesburg Norwood and Orange Grove. Both neighbourhoods have experienced considerable demographic changes and the various population groups differ in terms of their expectations and their willingness to adjust to the changes provoked by the transition. At the local level, patterns of discrimination and oppression continue. Spaces, opportunities and leverage of social networks engaged in the community are influenced by the resources people are able to access. Moreover, cooperation is contested in a context of pervasive inequality because there is no incentive for privileged groups to change arrangements that benefit them. In this context of conflicting interests and unequal access to power and resources, decentralisation and the promotion of participatory structures in local communities are a problem and the reliance on local networks as agents of development is questionable.

Download or read book The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions written by Stephan Haggard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last two decades, there has been a widespread movement from authoritarian to democratic rule among developing countries, often occurring against a backdrop of severe economic crises and the adoption of market-oriented reforms. The coincidence of these events raises long-standing questions about the relationship between economic and political change. In this book, Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman explore this relationship, addressing a variety of questions: What role have economic crises played in the current wave of political liberalization and democratization? Can new democracies manage the daunting political challenges posed by economic reform? Under what economic and institutional conditions is democracy most likely to be consolidated? Drawing on contemporary political economy and the experiences of twelve Latin American and Asian countries, they develop a new approach to understanding democratic transitions. Haggard and Kaufman first analyze the relationship between economic crisis and authoritarian withdrawal and then examine how the economic and institutional legacies of authoritarian rule affect the capacity of new democratic governments to initiate and sustain economic policy reform. Finally, the authors analyze the consolidation of political and economic reform over the long run. Throughout, they emphasize the relationship between economic conditions, the interests and power of contending social groups, and the mediating role of representative institutions, particularly political parties.