UCT Press

Contested Karoo

Cherryl Walker, M. Timm Hoffman — Wed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0200

This inter-disciplinary collection explores significant land-use changes in South Africa’s semi-arid Karoo region and their implications for social justice and the environment, across different scales. It brings together recent scholarship by established and younger researchers, in both the social and the natural sciences, to examine the ways in which the Karoo is being reconfigured as a new ‘resource frontier’ and the tensions and contestations that result.

Along with ongoing mining, major investments in astronomy (notably the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope), in renewable and non-renewable sources of energy (solar, wind, potential shale-gas mining), in biodiversity conservation and commercial game farming are reshaping land use and authority in this vast and long-marginalised area. While promising significant benefits to society at large, these developments are built on older histories of dispossession and extractivism – histories that many Karoo residents fear are being reproduced in new forms today. Collectively these dynamics place this unique region at the centre of national and global concerns around climate change, the politics of knowledge production, the conservation of threatened biodiversity, and the meaning and possibility of sustainable development.

These issues are explored through a series of case studies of selected developments, complemented by chapters providing more historical context and general overviews. While challenging perceptions of this region as a peripheral wasteland, this collection raises conceptual and policy questions that resonate far beyond the Karoo itself. It also highlights the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in research aimed not only at understanding but also at responding appropriately to the mounting challenges of our time.

For print-on-demand, please email: orders@africansunmedia.co.za.

From Boys to Men

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0200

The current emphasis in research and education on women and girls is fraught with problems. It has raised a concern that boys and men should be included in research and intervention work on gender equality and transformation. As a result, academics with a background of many years of work in women’s and gender studies undertook a research project focusing on the construction of masculinities among young men. From Boys to Men was born out of this project.

This highly original work arises from the conference ‘From Boys to Men’, held in January 2005. It represents the work of some of the best-known theorists and researchers in masculinities and feminism in South Africa, on the continent and internationally. The subjects covered are based on rich ethnographic studies, mostly in South Africa, but also elsewhere in Africa.

Acknowledging that there are multiple versions of masculinity and that some are more valued than others, this book is concerned with documenting both hegemonic discourses on masculinity, as well as resistances and challenges to dominant forms of being a boy or man in different contexts of space and time. From Boys to Men provides valuable material for those working with issues of gender, identity and power, and will sharpen understanding of males, inform community-based interventions and facilitate theory-building.

‘This impressive collection of research on men, boys and masculinities would have been impossible just a generation ago. It took the worldwide impact of the women’s liberation movement, and the many feminisms that have since developed, to bring gender into focus … and to bring men into focus as participants in a gender system.’

Raewyn Connell, Professor at the University of Sydney & author of Masculinities, 1995

‘Given the extant paucity of research and literature on masculinities, this book will undoubtedly prove to be an invaluable resource for scholars in the field of gender studies. The editors of the volume should be commended for this timely, well-constructed and significant contribution to the literature on masculinities studies, both in South Africa and internationally.’

Norman Duncan, Chair of Psychology, University of the Witwatersrand

‘Setting this collection apart from existing scholarship on masculinities in South Africa is its interrogation of the gendered rhetoric of boyhood and manhood in the context of HIV/Aids. This is a multilayered and rich collection that suggests masculinities have the potential to be unmade and remade. The volume usefully opens up new avenues of analysis, telling us that masculinities are always in process, under negotiation, contradictory, for ever in crisis.’

Vasu Reddy, Gender and Development Unit, Human Sciences Research Council

Hostels, homes, museum

Noëleen Murray, Leslie Witz — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0200

The history of Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum, opened in 1998. Lwandle, about 40 km from Cape Town, was established in the 1950s by the apartheid state as a “native location” to house temporary migrant labor.

"Murray and Witz's discussions of architectural restoration, memory and oral history effortlessly incorporate academic debates that have raged for several decades. Through meticulous documentation they show the steps taken to restore a migrant labour hostel, providing an invaluable guide for heritage scholars and museum practitioners." Professor Cynthia Kros, Wits School of Arts

“This book provides a unique and critical insiders' account of the varied and uneven processes through which museums take shape and change. It is a first-rate and original study that is of significance to work on museums, heritage, South African history, and institutional formation.” Professor Corinne Kratz, Emory University

Architect Noëleen Murray is an academic in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of the Western Cape. She was the principal editor of Desire Lines: Space, memory and identity in the post-apartheid city.

Leslie Witz is a Professor in the History Department at the University of the Western Cape. He is the author of Apartheid's Festival: Contesting South Africa's national pasts (2003).

Running to stand still

Theo Covary — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The electricity supply crisis that gripped South Africa in 2007 impacted heavily on economic productivity, political stability, and every citizen.

To date, all attempts to understand how the country’s Electricity Supply Industry (ESI) has evolved focus narrowly on Eskom. This approach has become increasingly limited over the last 15 years as the national utility continues to spiral deeper into operational failure. Yet, commentators and analysts have paid little attention to Municipal Electricity Undertakings (MEUs) – the utilities responsible for distributing electricity at municipal level – which started operating two decades before Eskom was formed in 1923.

Through a detailed historical account, Running to Stand Still shows how MEUs have contributed to the country’s broader ESI. The book disentangles the complex linkages that have developed between Eskom, MEUs, and the three spheres of government. In doing so, it examines two fundamental but diametrically opposed government objectives. First, the ideal of having financially self-sufficient municipalities that in reality are over-burdened and have to rely heavily on revenue from electricity distribution to cross-subsidise their operations. And second, to have a national utility that generates electricity at the lowest cost to provide the country’s energy-intensive economy with a competitive advantage.

These path-dependent practices have endured for more than a century and have cemented institutional lock-in that blocks much-needed sectoral reform. This is aptly demonstrated through the case study of the country’s most powerful financial centre and largest MEU, Johannesburg, which is currently in a state of crisis.

Mainstreaming climate change in urban development

Dianne Scott, Helen Davies, Mark New — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Cape Town’s drought crisis grabbed global headlines in 2018 and its causes and solutions were – and continue to be – hotly debated. But managing water shortages and other climate change impacts have been integrated into the city’s urban policy-making for some time, in response to rapid urbanisation and uncertainty about the exact nature, timing and magnitude of city-scale climatic changes.

This book presents initiatives at the local government level, across a range of departments, from environmental resource management to housing, stormwater management, water management, energy management and spatial planning. In addition, it records the progress made and challenges faced in mainstreaming climate change into urban policies, processes, programmes and practices, a problem facing most urban areas around the world.

The text was co-produced by academics and municipal officials, including economists, engineers, ecologists, geographers and planners, who worked collaboratively in a process of mutual learning. This hybrid process, where practitioner experience is coupled with an academic and research perspective, has produced an ‘insider’ view of urban development and climate change governance through the lens of theory. The result provides new practice-based knowledge for policy-making in the transition towards more sustainable cities in the face of climate change, particularly those in the global South.

Waves of change

Maria Hauck, Merle Sowman — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The oceans that meet along the southern African coast contain a diversity of ecosystems ranging from tropical coral reefs to cool-water kelp forests. Many of the coastal and marine species living in these waters are resources that are harvested by coastal communities to provide important sources of nutrition, income and livelihood.

However, ongoing over-exploitation of fisheries resources, the degradation of coastal areas and conflicts among coastal resource users, call for urgent intervention. Co-management is being explored as a possible strategy to address these problems. This approach reflects a worldwide trend to involve local user groups and communities in the management of coastal and fisheries resources.

This book provides an overview and analysis of nine coastal and fisheries co-management case studies in South Africa. It outlines the concepts and theoretical underpinnings of co-management and examines the policy and legal framework governing coastal and fisheries resource management in South Africa.

Waves of change provides policy makers, resource managers, researchers, learners and environmentalists with a comprehensive understanding of co-management in South Africa. Case studies examine co-management in action, highlighting the conditions conducive to success, as well as the positive outcomes and principal challenges of this approach. The viability of implementing coastal and fisheries co-management in the South African context is explored and comparisons are made with international experience.

Fighting poverty

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Unquestionably, poverty and inequality are among the major challenges that face South Africa today. In this well-researched, comprehensive volume, the authors:

• use new techniques to measure and analyse household inequality and poverty in South Africa;

• analyse the nature and functioning of vulnerability in the labour market;

• explore the links between labour market participation and household poverty and inequality;

• investigate current social and labour market policies; and

• examine the implications of current anti-poverty policies and strategies.

An exciting aspect of this ground-breaking work is the proposals for the development of new and effective strategies to fight poverty in South Africa.

Genes for Africa

Jennifer A. Thomson — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In Genes for Africa, Jennifer Thomson separates fact from fiction and explains why and how GM crops can help us combat poverty, starvation and disease in the developing world, in a safe and responsible way.

In the first part of the book the author explains the technology and looks at the differences and similarities between genetic modification, conventional plant breeding, and natural processes such as cross pollination and mutations. Subsequent chapters are devoted to controversial issues such as food safety (for GM crops and organically grown food), patents, labelling, regulations and controls, and there is a question-and-answer section where the author addresses oft-repeated concerns and fears. The book ends with a focus on Africa and possible future developments in GM technology.

Glossaries, interest boxes, appendices with additional technical information, and a comprehensive list of web sites add value to this accessible and informative volume.

Taking action on climate change

Harald Winkler — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Making a just transition to a low-carbon economy and society is one of the most difficult challenges globally. In South Africa, which needs to address poverty and inequality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions presents a daunting challenge. Nonetheless, the South African government initiated a process to develop long term mitigation scenarios. These were based on rigorous research, involving a group of strategic thinkers across a wide range of stakeholders. This book describes the technical work on potential mitigation actions that built enough confidence for the South African government to set an ambitious strategic direction in mitigating climate change.

Without constraints, emissions will quadruple by mid-century, whereas science requires that they be reduced in absolute terms by then. Readers will find here an analysis of a wide range of detailed mitigation actions and proposals for four strategic options that South Africa can pursue.

Upgrading informal settlements in South Africa

Liza Rose Cirolia, Tristan Görgens, Mirjam van Donk, Warren Smit, Scott Drimie — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Informal settlements are a pressing urban challenge in South Africa and elsewhere in the world. Intervention and investment are needed, not only to improve material conditions, but also to combat social and political exclusion and marginalisation.

What would a progressive upgrading agenda for informal settlements entail, and how could it be achieved? This has been widely debated in South Africa and internationally. In Upgrading informal settlements in South Africa: A partnership-based approach, the editors argue that approaches which are participatory and incremental offer possibilities which are both radical and attainable. This agenda departs substantially from conventional housing delivery models, requiring a reassembling of policies, programming, practices and – most importantly – power.

The 26 chapters of this book are written by researchers and practitioners from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences, and explore various aspects of participatory and incremental upgrading. They cover a wide range of topics, from alternative infrastructure technologies to redesigned fiscal frameworks. Together, these chapters articulate an agenda as contested and complex as informal settlements themselves.

This book documents, synthesises and reflects on a strong body of innovation and reflection that can inspire policy-makers, practitioners and researchers to continue to improve and transform approaches to upgrading informal settlements in South Africa and beyond.

Sharing benefits from the coast

Rachel Wynberg, Maria Hauck — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Coastal resources are vital for communities in developing countries, many of whom live in abject poverty. These resources also hold significant value for a number of different sectors such as mining, fisheries and tourism, which supply expanding global consumer markets. Although these activities provide opportunities for economic and income growth, global patterns indicate growing levels of economic inequality between custodians of these resources and those exploiting them, as well as an increasing incidence in poverty.

This book provides novel analyses of these issues, drawing from empirical research in South African and Mozambican coastal communities. It aims to deepen our knowledge about coastal resource use, who benefits and who loses and in what circumstances, why benefits and losses are distributed in the way that they are, the main blockages that prevent greater equity, and strategies to enhance more equitable benefit sharing. These findings have relevance and application for coastal livelihoods, rural governance and resource sustainability — not only in the research sites, but across a world in which community rights are increasingly undermined through land grabbing, unequal power relations and externally driven development interventions.

Who gets in and why?

Jonathan Jansen, Samantha Kriger — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

A main road snakes from the City Bowl in the north to Fish Hoek in the south, along which corridor sit some of the most prestigious academic schools on the continent, in sight of Africa’s leading tertiary institution, the University of Cape Town. This is a study of patterns of racial segregation in the elite primary schools of one of the ‘whitest’ and wealthiest areas of South Africa, the southern suburbs of Cape Town. What keeps these elite schools ‘white dominant’ in a province and country that is overwhelmingly black? How do schools administer their admissions policies such that the outcome is white-majority enrolments? Why does a post-apartheid government allow ‘white dominant’ schools to exist? This is the first available study on the micro-politics of primary school admissions that addresses the question ‘Who gets in, and why?’ against the backdrop of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. For this reason, among others, the book holds significance for international scholarship on education policy and politics while at the same time offering practical value for South African parents who struggle to get their children admitted to these elite schools.

The House of Tshatshu

Anne Kelk Mager, Phiko Jeffrey Velelo — Wed, 03 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

‘In 1852 Sir George Cathcart pronounced that the amaTshatshu chieftaincy no longer existed: “I have broken and banished the tribe”, he boasted. This deeply researched book, at once clear-sighted and moving, traces the consequences of this proscription to the present day. In the course of a detailed examination of 200 years of this Thembu chieftaincy, Mager and Velelo illuminate a number of large and pressing themes in South African history. These include the contested meanings of chieftaincy and ethnicity; the complex politics and violence of settler colonialism and apartheid-era Bantustans and their consequences in the present day, and the meaning of land and land restitution in the context of the continuing neglect of rural populations. In 2013 the Tshatshu chieftaincy was finally restored and its new incumbent installed in a powerful ceremony, but with history weighing so heavily on this story, it seems unlikely that this is the final chapter.’ – Megan Vaughan, University College of London

‘The authors recognise that they are differently positioned in relation to this history and that while they belong in the story, it does not belong to them. They pose pertinent questions for political reform and gender relations: Can institutions which have been tainted by a hostile past be harmonised with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that are the fundamental guides for South Africa’s democracy? How these and other questions are handled throughout the book is impressive.’ – Professor Luvuyo Wotshela, University of Fort Hare

Food security in South Africa

Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Viviene Taylor — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Ensuring that every man, woman and child has access to adequate food at all times is one of the basic social and political goals of democratic South Africa, a right which is guaranteed in the country’s Constitution as in international law. Yet food insecurity remains widespread and persistent, at levels much higher than in countries with similar levels of per capita GDP. What in South Africa’s policies, institutions and ideas is creating the paradox of strong commitments and weak outcomes?

Examining the channels by which households acquire food – through production, exchange and social transfers – the chapters of this book highlight many gaps in policy response. They argue that access to food cannot be achieved solely through cash transfers or increasing national production. Rather, what is needed is a much broader set of policies, a coordinated strategy involving diverse sectors, and the mobilisation of civil society to claim this right.

This book makes a timely contribution to the debates, alternatives and issues around food insecurity from a human rights perspective.

Steward leadership

Kurt April, Julia Kukard, Kai Peters — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Steward Leadership is a form of leadership which focuses on others, the community and society at large, rather than the self. Many senior leaders and executives across the globe appear to move into a steward leadership mindset when their careers have matured, or when they are in the second half of their life- or career cycles, whereas executives of around 30 years old are typically focused on their personal self-interests.

The authors of Steward leadership: A maturational perspective, who teach MBA and executive courses around the world, conducted research into the aspects of steward leadership to see if they could develop the tools to mould steward leaders at an earlier age. Working with MBA students, they tested nine stewardship attributes: personal vision, personal mastery, vulnerability and maturity, risk-taking and experimentation, mentoring, raising awareness, shared vision, valuing diversity and delivering results. The authors also interviewed industry leaders internationally to gain qualitative insights into the concept of steward leadership.

The result is a practical framework for steward leadership which provides the theoretical and consulting tools with which organisations can develop stewards, whether through training programmes, mentoring programmes, coaching initiatives and/or personal development practices. The authors present steward leadership as a more viable alternative to current leadership concepts, providing a roadmap by which current and potential leaders can be guided into developing their leadership abilities – and become the mature stewards of the future.

State, governance and development in Africa

Firoz Khan, Euonell Grundling, Greg Ruiters, Zwelinzima Ndevu, Basani Baloyi — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The inspiration for this book was a Summer School on State, Governance and Development presented by distinguished academics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Written by young African scholars, the chapters here focus on state, governance and development in Africa as seen from the authors’ vantage points and positions in different sectors of society.

The book opens with three forewords by eminent African scholars – Ben Turok, Johan Burger and Mohamed Halfani. The chapters that follow examine rent-seeking, patronage, neopatrimonialism and bad governance. They engage with statehood, state-building and statecraft and challenge the mainstream opinions of donors, funders, development banks, international non-governmental organisations and development organisations. They include the role of China in Africa, Kenya’s changing demographics, state accountability in South Africa’s dominant party system, Somalia’s prospects for state-building, urban development and routine violence, and resource mobilisation.

At a time in which core institutions are being tested – the market, the rule of law, democracy, civil society and representative democracy – this book offers a much-needed multi- and inter-disciplinary perspective, and a different narrative on what is unfolding, while also exposing dynamics that are often overlooked.

The Victoria Mxenge Housing Project

Salma Ismail — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

At the beginning of South Africa’s democratic change in 1994, the Victoria Mxenge Housing Project was founded by a group of 12 women who lived in shacks on the barren outskirts of Cape Town. These women had come from rural areas and were poor, vulnerable and semi-literate. Yet they learned how to build, negotiate with the government and NGOs, architects and building experts, and form alliances with homeless social movements locally and internationally. The desolate piece of land they occupied is now a thriving, sustainable community of more than 5 000 houses.

Over a period of 10 years Salma Ismail tracked the history of the Victoria Mxenge Housing Project, from its start as a development organisation to its evolution into a social movement and then as a service provider.

Through the stories of these women, she describes the choices a social movement made when caught up in the struggle to mobilise for housing and become service providers in a context in which the state did not live up to its social responsibilities. The text weaves together perspectives on the usefulness and limitations of Popular Education, the value of local and traditional knowledge, and of experiential learning and learning in an informal context. This book taps into the growing international interest in ‘citizen learning’ in the context of social movements.

The Reb and the rebel

Carmel Schrire, Gwynne Schrire — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The personal histories of an immigrant father and his Cape-born son burst from some tattered Hebrew notebooks and a translucent typescript, giving the Jewish diasporic settlement in South Africa an immediacy seldom encountered before. The manuscripts of two Schrires – Reb Yehuda Leib (1851-1912) and his youngest son Harry (1895-1980) – include a diary, a memoir and an epic poem. They reveal tiny details of shipboard life below deck; major issues of religious belief and practice in Lithuanian shtetls, Johannesburg goldfields and District Six homes; and global issues of mass migration, pandemics and war. They show how community formation in Cape Town replicates the orthodoxy of di alte heym even as the new generation is integrated into a life undreamed of in the Old Country. Analyses of the contexts and authors, together with Appendices which include a genealogy, glossary and catalogued artworks, combine here to make the South African Jewish past come alive.

Sustainable options

James N. Blignaut, Martin P. de Wit — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This well-researched, important text argues a case for the use of environmental resource economics (ERE) as an analytic framework for the conceptualisation and design of sustainable policy options. Sustainable options integrates economic theories and concepts on the one hand with social and environmental challenges on the other.

Applying ERE in a developing context, like that of South Africa, is critical given the country’s dependence on natural and environmental assets. The sustainability of the economy and the welfare of the country’s people are at stake.

Environmental management is, therefore, an economic concern. This is illustrated clearly in the first section of the book, which examines a broad range of welfare indicators, thus providing an overview of the macroeconomic performance of the South African economy.

Sustainable options is not only for academics and students from the economic, political and biophysical sciences. The book’s hands-on approach and explicit linkages to the real world of economic development makes it invaluable for policy-makers and environmental practitioners faced with the dauting task of making trade-offs between developmental and environmental concerns.

The Strategic Corporal revisited

David W. Lovell, Deane-Peter Baker — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

As we enter an era of multidimensional warfare, and technological innovations continue to accelerate the pace of war, the importance of decisions made by junior military leaders — some of them with strategic impact – continues to grow exponentially. US Marine Corps General Charles C. Krulak coined the term ‘The Strategic Corporal’ nearly two decades ago, and it is more relevant today than ever.

This book is the first scholarly analysis of the challenges facing Strategic Corporals – and those who seek to prepare and equip them – in the 21st century. The topics addressed include leadership and education, military culture, peacekeeping, counterinsurgency, cyber warfare, and private military contractors and NGOs in the contemporary battlespace. Also included is a historian’s reflection on General Krulak’s development of the ‘Strategic Corporal’ concept, and a practitioner’s response to the scholarly arguments contained in the book. This book will be of interest to scholars of contemporary security and armed conflict as well as practitioners who are, or serve alongside, today’s Strategic Corporals.

The education triple cocktail

Brahm Fleisch — Tue, 12 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The education triple cocktail brings together rigorous quantitative and qualitative research on a new approach to improving foundational teaching and learning for schoolchildren living in working-class, poor and remote rural communities in resource-constrained systems like South Africa. At the core of this book is the theory and evidence for a powerful, new, interlocking and mutually reinforcing change model. Inspired by the AIDS treatment story, the approach brings together structured daily lesson plans, appropriate and high-quality educational materials, and one-on-one instructional coaching to help teachers transform their instructional practices in early grade classrooms and thereby improve learning outcomes. For education systems defined by low levels of early grade learning and profoundly unequal outcomes, The education triple cocktail offers a theoretically informed, evidence-based way forward.

This book will be of immense use to teachers, students of Education, policymakers and parents.

Nature divided

Timm Hoffman, Ally Ashwell — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In the same way that South Africa’s people were divided along racial lines, so too was its landscape – into the predominantly communally farmed lands of the homelands and self-governing territories, and commercial farming areas. These divisions, reflected both in former government policy and local practice, have profoundly affected land degradation in South Africa.

This book, the product of extensive research, is based on a landmark report on land degradation arising from South Africa’s commitment to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. It reflects the first complete assessment of South Africa’s land degradation problem, taking into account not only agricultural and ecological concerns, but also the socio-political and historical contexts. It places previously unavailable information in the hands of those who need it most – politicians, agricultural extension officers, and communal and commercial farmers. It will also be of interest to students and teachers.

At once sobering, challenging and optimistic, this book is a call to action. It shows that we are all affected by the extent of land degradation in South Africa.

Rethinking leadership

Kurt A. April, Robert Macdonald, Sylvia Vriesendorp — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In the twenty-first century, leaders are having to speak a new language, create fluid organic structures, and recognise organisations as systems with self-renewing capacity.

Rethinking leadership explores what real leadership means, encouraging the reader to look within – examine assumptions and make explicit the trusted mental models, seek out reflective space and embark on the journey of authentic self-expression.

The reader is encouraged to ask such questions as; “What do these issues, these challenges, mean for me and the organisation?” “What action should we take to turn these challenges into limitless possibilities?”

Topics covered in Rethinking leadership include:

* Awareness – The Metaskills of the Leader

* Openness – The Times are a Changing

* Simplicity – New Science and Leadership

* Complexity – Uncertainty and Change

* Connectivity – Communication, Conversation and Dialogue

* Ambiguity – Leadership Incongruities, Tensions and Paradoxes

Post-conflict reconstruction and development in Africa

Theo Neethling, Heidi Hudson — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

During the 1990s, nine out of ten of the bloodiest conflicts occurred on the African continent. And despite some 20 peacebuilding operations in Africa in the last 25 years, there is still a significant lack of cohesive strategy to target the key areas in the regeneration of a conflict-ridden country. An Afrocentric perspective is therefore a suitable starting point for research into the possible strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding.

It is clear that a military approach to peace missions needs to include developmental, economic and governance support to ensure lasting stability and human security. Furthermore, an army needs to be equipped and trained for these multiple roles that previously were regarded as secondary functions, but are now priorities in peace mission involvement.

The authors of this book consider the problems around the concept of ‘post-conflict’ and the blurring of military and civilian roles, analysing the UN roles in the DRC and Sierra Leone, as well as the African Union Mission in Burundi. The main context of the book, however, is the South African Army’s strategy, which has been developed with the African Union’s 2006 Post-conflict, Reconstruction and Development Needs Assessment Guide in mind. This book emanates from this plan. It therefore also explores South Africa’s policy imperatives to integrate development projects and peace missions, involving the military as well as civilian organisations.

While this book is not intended as an instruction manual, it hopes to ignite an understanding of the particular processes required to develop a sustainable and cohesive post-conflict peacebuilding strategy within the African environment.

Southern African liberation struggles

Hilary Sapire, Chris Saunders — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This collection of essays brings together a set of new perspectives on the many liberation struggles in southern Africa, struggles that have continuing significance today. What links were there between different forms of struggle in the region? What was the wider context, including international solidarity work? What roles did different actors play in these struggles? Among the topics analysed are African National Congress operations in Zambia, Swaziland and Lesotho; the fate of the Pan-Africanist Congress; Muslim involvement in the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique; what happened in the camps of the South West Africa People’s Organisation in Angola; and violent and non-violent struggles in the Eastern Cape in the 1980s. A number of chapters focus on anti-apartheid activities in Britain. Anyone interested in the complex nature of these struggles, and their local and global legacies, will find this collection, based on innovative research, essential reading.

Relocations

Imraan Coovadia, Cóilín Parsons, Alexandra Dodd — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Relocations is a collection of compelling and original essays by world-renowned as well as emerging writers, artists and thinkers, including novelists André Brink, Henrietta Rose-Innes and Imraan Coovadia, poets Gabeba Baderoon and Rustum Kozain, artists William Kentridge and Neo Muyanga, and social activist Zackie Achmat.

The essays, which began their lives as part of the Great Texts / Big Questions lecture series at the University of Cape Town, cover a wide range of subjects, from Gandhi to Don Quixote, from opera to visual art, from trout-fishing to Marx and Lincoln. These imaginative explorations all engage in meaningful and often unusual ways with the current landscape of South African culture and creative thinking, reflecting on culture in the wake of decolonisation and asking crucial questions about the place of the arts and humanities in a postcolonial world.

Multilingualism in the classroom

Margaret Funke Omidire — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Most education settings in South Africa and other post-colonial emerging economies are multilingual and diverse. Indeed, this is true of classrooms in developed countries as well. Yet English continues to be the language of instruction from the early grades. The authors of this book draw attention to the negative effects of this practice on achievement, retention and dropout rates, psychosocial wellbeing and community development. And they support the need to view indigenous languages as assets and resources within classrooms.

Societal emancipation and transformation begin in the education setting, and no transformation discourse can be successful if the issues surrounding multilingualism are not properly addressed. Teaching and learning pedagogies that ignore the complexities and dynamics of multilingual classrooms are simply reinforcing past worldviews and improved learner-achievement results cannot be expected unless things are approached differently.

This book, written by authors from across Africa and the United States, with first-hand experience in research and teaching, focuses mainly on teaching pedagogy. Importantly, it is evidence-based in its analysis and guidelines which detail contextually appropriate strategies to support teachers and students’ learning and development. It is a resource not only for teachers and learners in multilingual contexts worldwide, but also for policy-makers, researchers and student teachers in the education space.

Informal settlements

Marie Huchzermeyer, Aly Karam — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This is an open, enlightening and useful book for scholars, activists, citizens and decision makers who consider that forced or market-driven evictions should stop and that the situation of slum dwellers must be improved, even beyond the limited Millennium Development Goals. – Professor Yves Cabannes, Development Planning Unit, University College London and Convenor, UN Advisory Group on Forced Evictions

Addressing the housing problem has been one of the key concerns in post-apartheid South Africa, and the last two years have seen a major shift from the policy which was in place during the first ten years of democracy. The upgrading of informal settlements comes as a new addition to the revised housing policy, at a time when international bodies have prioritised the improvement of the lives of slum dwellers. The subject matter of this book is therefore highly topical, and is likely to be of interest to a wide audience within South Africa and elsewhere. – Professor Vanessa Watson, School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, University of Cape Town

Everyone needs a safe place to live. Every family should have a secure home from which to pursue the adequate standard of living which, over twenty-five years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserted was a fundamental entitlement of every man, woman and child on this planet.

Over half a century later, the global community and national governments remain far short of this goal. Informal settlements have become a particular challenge. Upgrading the overall conditions for our urban poor is an urgent priority, since it is the key to the far more effective pursuit of many other of the Millennium Development Goals. I therefore commend this book as an important contribution, not just to theoretical debate, but to practical policy development and implementation, in South Africa and beyond. – The Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town

Nadine Gordimer

Denise Brahimi; Vanessa Everson, Cara Shapiro — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Renowned French scholar Denise Brahimi critiqued the works of Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer in her book, Nadine Gordimer: La femme, la politique, le roman. This translation, by Vanessa Everson and Cara Shapiro, brings to an English readership a new perspective and a greater understanding of Gordimer’s writing. With its nuanced philosophical interpretation, it traces Gordimer’s literary evolution from her earliest fictional output to her later works, positioning the analysis against the political backdrop of the struggle against apartheid, the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, and the emergence of the new regime. Readers with an interest in issues of distorted power relationships based on notions of ‘Otherness’ will find its insights compelling and informative.

Land, power & custom

Aninka Claassens, Ben Cousins — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Land is a burning issue in South Africa, as in Africa more widely. Land, power & custom: Controversies generated by South Africa’s Communal Land Rights Act deals with tenure reform in the former homelands, and the implications for power and gender relations.

It aims to contribute to public debate about land reform and controversial new legislation. The book is relevant to those concerned with customary law, human rights, anthropology, sociology and political science, as well as people working on land and development issues.

In search of equality

Stefanie Röhrs, Dee Smythe, Annie Hsieh, Monica de Souza — Tue, 05 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Over the past half century several African countries have drawn up new constitutions, many of which have included a commitment to advancing women’s equality. Decades later, has constitutional reform brought gender equality to women in Africa? And what does gender equality mean in the everyday lives of women on the continent?

The contributors to this volume provide insights into women’s rights in seven African countries – Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda. Each looks at the causes, context and consequences of the struggle to uphold women’s rights. Their case studies illustrate property-grabbing in Malawi, women’s citizenship in Nigeria, and the rise of hate crimes and sexual violence against black lesbians in South Africa, among other issues.

This book also draws attention to some of the overarching themes and recurring patterns across the continent, which include:

* the continued oppression of women through the law itself

* the challenges of legal pluralism

* the persistent problem of access to justice

* the gap between legal protections on paper and implementation of these rights in practice

* the limitations of strategic litigation and

* the need for other forms of collective activism to advance women’s rights.

Policy-makers, legal professionals and NGOs involved in human rights, and academics and students in the fields of constitutional law, gender studies, African studies and sociology will find value in this ground-breaking volume.

Domains of freedom

Thembela Kepe, Melissa Levin, Bettina von Lieres — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Freedom ... Justice ... Citizenship ... What do they mean in South Africa today? In striving for them, have historical inequalities been recognised? Have political changes over the last 20 years translated into economic redistribution? Have the struggles for social change enhanced the project of decolonisation? Examining a wide range of social issues, from economic policy, land reform, gender politics and healthcare access to trade union mobilisation, heritage discourses, rights debates, citizen participation and migration policies, Domains of freedom shows that social change in South Africa should not be understood as either a catastrophic failure or an overwhelming success. This book makes it clear that South Africa’s recent history of freedom reflects the deep complexities and non-linear trajectories of building egalitarian societies more globally. Its authors are researchers who have all contributed significantly to understanding the meaning of freedom in their own subject areas. The result is a comprehensive overview which is useful for anyone keen to understand the complexities of freedom in South Africa today.

HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa

Jean Baxen, Anders Breidlid — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Popular understanding of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa is riddled with contradiction and speculation. This is revealed in HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, which explores the various contexts in which debate about HIV/AIDS takes place and examines how the pandemic is perceived by scholars, religious leaders and traditional healers, among others – in communities in and around South Africa. Using a social theory lens, the book focuses on not only the cultural and contextual practices, but also the methodological and epistemological orientations around HIV/AIDS in education that shape community and individual interpretations of the disease.

The book avoids a simplistic approach to the pandemic, by exploring the complex and sometimes contradictory spaces in which HIV/AIDS discourses are negotiated, and thus goes some way to present a more hermeneutic profile of the HIV/AIDS problem. HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is as much about identity construction as it is about HIV/AIDS. The authors recognise the interrelatedness of sex, sexuality, identity and HIV/AIDS in the shaping of individual and collective identities and have thus gone beyond merely asking questions about what people know.

Students, lecturers and researchers in education, psychology and sociology, as well as anyone involved in social activism, health or community work, will find this book stimulating.

A Dictionary of South African Indian English

Rajend Mesthrie — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Bunny chow, larney, lakker, roti-ou, thanni, Satyagraha, Kavady ... these are all terms from South African Indian English, an important dialect in South Africa, particularly KwaZulu-Natal, and one of the better-known varieties of English in the Linguistics literature. It arose out of the language accommodations that occurred as Indians arriving in South Africa in large numbers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries adjusted to life in a new colony. Out of a high degree of multilingualism, it was English that eventually became the main language of South Africa’s one-million-strong Indian community. Yet because of the colonial and apartheid hierarchies and separations, English developed as a major dialect in the community drawing to a large extent on its own resources. Today it is a vibrant dialect, increasingly found in plays and novels and even advertising in South Africa.

A Dictionary of South African Indian English is based on hundreds of hours of dialect interviews and close word-for-word transcriptions, and on historical, literary, culinary and other sources. Altogether 1700 terms are given explanations, pronunciation guides where necessary, language origin, examples of their use and citations from literature. This book is the author’s tribute to this aspect of South African culture and ultimately a contribution to the broader sociolinguistic literature.

From prohibited immigrants to citizens

Jonathan Klaaren — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Jonathan Klaaren blends legal and social history in this engaging account of early conceptions of South African citizenship. He argues that distinctively South African notions of citizenship and nationality come out of the period 1897 to 1937, through legislation and official practices employing the key concept of ‘prohibited immigrant’ and seeking to regulate the mobility of three population groups: African, Asian and European. Further, he makes the case that the regulation and administration of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent, in particular, provided the basis for the vision and eventual reality of a unified, although structurally unequal, South African population.

This book fits into the growing field of Mobility Studies, which seeks to understand and document the migration of people both within and across national borders, while exploring the origins of those borders. In addition to nationality and citizenship, it touches on African pass laws, the origins of the Public Protector, the scheme importing Chinese labour to the gold mines, the development of internal bureaucratic legality, and India-South Africa intra-imperial relations.

With its attention to the role of law in state-building and its understanding of the central place of implementation and administrative law in migration policy, this book offers a distinctive focus on the relationship between migration and citizenship.

Confronting fragmentation

Philip Harrison, Marie Huchzermeyer, Mzwanele Mayekiso — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The fragmentation of South Africa’s cities persists despite the ending of apartheid. New forms of segregation are emerging in the context of globalisation and a largely neo-liberal policy environment. This poses an enormous challenge for policy-making, planning, and community activism. Although there has been an improvement in service infrastructure in certain parts of South African cities since 1994, the major structural changes required to alter the trajectory of urban change have not yet happened.

Confronting fragmentation: Housing and urban development in a democratising society provides a provocative, careful, analytical perspective on the problems of fragmentation, with particular relevance to the provision of urban shelter. The cross-national nature of the author team reflects the fact that many of the issues facing South Africa are being experienced globally.

This is a fascinating book. The text is both theoretical and practical. It will be of great value to policy-makers, planners, community leaders, and students in the field of development and the built environment.

Child and adolescent development

Mark Tomlinson, Charlotte Hanlon, Anne Stevenson — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Global public health has improved vastly over the past 25 years, and especially in the survival of infants and young children. However, many children, particularly in Africa, continue to live in poverty and in unhealthy, unsupportive environments, and will not be able to meet their developmental potential. In other words, they will survive but not thrive. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) stress sustainable development, not just survival and disease reduction, and the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health proposes a Survive (end preventable deaths), Thrive (ensure health and wellbeing) and Transform (expand enabling environments) agenda. For children to thrive they must make good developmental progress from birth until the end of adolescence.

Addressing the social determinants of developmental problems, this volume offers a broad, contextualised understanding of the factors that impact on children and adolescents in Africa. Unlike other works on the subject, it is Africa-wide in its scope, with case studies in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa. Covering mental health as well as physical and social development, it looks at policies and practice, culture and priorities for research, identifying challenges and proposing solutions.

Cities with ‘Slums’

Marie Huchzermeyer — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The UN’s Millennium Development Target to improve the lives of 100 million ‘slum’ dwellers has been inappropriately communicated as a target to free cities of slums. Cities with ‘Slums’: From informal settlement eradication to a right to the city in Africa traces the proliferation of this misunderstanding across several African countries, and explains how current urban policy, with its heightened focus on urban competitiveness and associated urban policy norms, encourages this interpretation. The cases it presents cover a range of conflicts between poor urban residents and the local and national authorities that seek to curtail their ‘right to the city’. It offers disturbing insights into post-apartheid South Africa’s urban trajectory, with uneasy parallels in other African countries, both in the form of ‘slum’ eradication drives and in ambitious, but flawed, flagship pilot projects. The book aims to inspire a wider understanding of, sympathy for and solidarity with struggles against informal settlement eradication in South Africa and beyond, and argues that the right to the city, in its original conception, has direct relevance for urban contestations in Africa today.

The Anatomy of a South African Genocide

Mohamed Adhikari — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0200

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Dutch-speaking pastoralists who infiltrated the Cape interior dispossessed its aboriginal inhabitants and damaged the environment with their destructive farming and hunting practices. In response to indigenous resistance, colonists formed armed, mounted militia units known as commandos with the express purpose of destroying San bands. Pervasive settler violence ensured the virtual extinction of the Cape San peoples. In 1998 David Kruiper, the leader of the ≠Khomani San who today live in the Kalahari Desert, lamented ‘… we have been made into nothing’. His comment applies to the fate of all the hunter-gatherer societies of the Cape Colony who were destroyed by the impact of European colonialism.

Beyond impunity

Kenneth R. Ross, Asiyati Lorraine Chiweza, Wapulumuka O. Mulwafu — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

"This comprehensive, compelling, accessible and timely volume should be compulsory reading to academics, policy makers, social activists, and the general public in Malawi and elsewhere on the continent. It is the best book I have read recently on the country’s complex, contradictory, messy, and disappointing political and socioeconomic dispensation since the dawn of the era of multiparty democracy in 1994. It mirrors the trajectories, and provides critical insights and invaluable lessons on, Africa’s enduring struggles to construct democratic developmental states as envisaged by the late great Malawian public intellectual, Thandika Mkandawire.

The quality of the chapters is as impressive as the range of topics covered is exhaustive. Each of the sixteen chapters is extensively researched, cogently argued, and well written. Admirably, the chapters combine copious empirical data and sophisticated theoretical analysis. They often seek to place the developments in Malawi in the wider African, and sometimes global, contexts, thus illuminating the general literature on the political economies of Africa’s postcolonies and the global South more broadly. This is one reason this book should appeal to a much wider audience than its Malawian emplacement might otherwise suggest.

The authors represent the cream of Malawian scholars, both seasoned and upcoming, located in the universities, think tanks, and public agencies. Some are renowned public intellectuals who have honed their professional lives and praxis in the often demanding and dangerous whirlpool of social activism. They all write with fervour and a sense of urgency, while maintaining the academic disposition of dispassionate analysis. This is an uneasy balance to maintain, but many are able to pull it off. They seem animated by the lingering spirits of a national intelligentsia from the bygone era of African nationalism that was driven by the historic and humanistic struggles and agendas for self-determination, nation-building, democracy, and development."

- from the Foreword by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Vice Chancellor, United States lnternational University-Africa

Just transitions

Mark Swilling, Eve Annecke — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Current economic growth strategies around the world are rapidly depleting natural resources and eco-systems. Just Transitions provides an overview of these challenges from a Global South perspective. How do developing countries eradicate poverty via economic development, while encountering the consequences of global warming and dwindling supplies of clean water, productive soils, cheap oil, minerals and other resources? How do they address widening inequalities, as well as the need to rebuild ecosystem services and natural resources?

This book considers a just transition, which reconciles the sustainable use of natural resources with a pervasive commitment to sufficiency (where over-consumers are satisfied with less so that under-consumers can secure enough). It synthesises a range of different literatures to illuminate new ways of thinking from a sustainability perspective. It rethinks development with special reference to the greening of the developmental state, explores the key role that cities could play in the transition to a more sustainably urbanised world, highlights the neglect of soils and examines the potential of sustainable agriculture to feed the world. Case studies drawn from Africa detail the challenges, but they are set in the context of global trends. The authors conclude with their experience of building a community that aspires to live sustainably.

Making urban places

Roger Behrens, Vanessa Watson — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In recent years there has been a growing consensus among town planners, and other involved professionals, that a change of approach is required. This shift has been fuelled by the demise of apartheid-based town planning and an acceptance that urban reconstruction and development is a priority. An important gap, however, has been the absence of an alternative concept of urban spatial organisation.

The intention of this book is to provide guidance to professionals involved in layout planning, by putting forward an approach which is significantly different from that which has prevailed in South Africa in recent decades. The authors stress the need for uniqueness in settlement formation and argue amongst other things, for pedestrian-oriented road geometries, integrated neighbourhoods, extroverted public facilities and an emphasis on the collective functions of services, instead of more conventional car-oriented road geometries, neighbourhood cells, introverted public facilities and an emphasis on residential service functions.

Substance use and abuse in South Africa

George F.R. Ellis, Dan J. Stein, Kevin G.F. Thomas, Ernesta M. Meintjes — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

South Africa’s high levels of substance abuse represent one of the most pressing health problems afflicting the country. In particular, alcohol, stimulants such as tik (methamphetamine) and opiates such as heroin are devastating communities, aggravating poverty and crime, and contributing to child abuse and gender violence.

Substance Use and Abuse in South Africa emerges from research being conducted by members of the Brain-Behaviour Initiative (BBI) at the University of Cape Town. This innovative set of research projects links neuroscience and behavioural science to social issues, providing fresh perspectives on the health problems afflicting South Africa. This ground-breaking book examines the problem of substance abuse from multiple perspectives, including recent discoveries in brain and behavioural science, and also takes a public health view. Its focus ranges from brain imaging, which shows the effects of drug abuse on the brain, to the psychology of addiction, and on to policy and prevention. This is the first book to address the nature of this problem in an integrated way, written by local researchers at the cutting edge.

Towards employment-intensive growth in South Africa

Anthony Black — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Since the great triumph of South Africa’s democratic transition, there have been many achievements; but there have also been many disappointments. Without doubt, the greatest failing has been the lack of progress in addressing poverty and inequality. The main culprit has, in turn, been massive and growing unemployment. With an official unemployment rate of 25%, South Africa is a complete outlier among developed and developing countries. High unemployment underpins extreme poverty and inequality and is a major contributor to social dislocation. Unemployed human resources on this scale also constitute a major drag on growth.

In a country with substantial resources and a government which claims to be serious about addressing the issue, this lack of progress is not only troubling but puzzling. Much more rapid growth is clearly essential, but is it enough? This book argues that growth has to be more employment intensive. If we optimistically assume an annual growth rate of, say, 4%, it will make a big difference whether employment grows at 1%, 2% or 3%. A key message of the book is that specific attention must be paid to raising the employment density of growth.

The volume brings together 25 leading economists and other social scientists from South Africa and abroad. They present a penetrating analysis of the unemployment problem, as well as proposals to deal with it. Their contributions provide an overview of employment issues, internationally and domestically, and address the impact of the structure of the economy on unemployment. Particular attention is paid to rural communities and the manufacturing sector, as well as to specific policies such as wage subsidies and public-employment programmes.

South Africa Pushed to the Limit

Hein Marais — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

South Africa’s democratic government has worked hard at improving the lives of the black majority, yet close to half the population lives in poverty, jobs are scarce, and the country is more unequal than ever. For millions, the colour of people’s skin still decides their destiny. In its wide-ranging, incisive and provocative analysis, South Africa Pushed to the Limit shows that although the legacies of apartheid and colonialism weigh heavy, many of the strategic choices made since the early 1990s have compounded those handicaps. The big winners of the transition, Marais demonstrates, have been the country’s conglomerates, especially those active in the finance sector. The basic structure of Africa’s biggest economy, however, remains largely intact and continues to serve a gilded minority, which now accommodates sections of the new political elite. The government, meanwhile, has squandered crucial leverage in a series of errors and miscalculations – at huge detriment to efforts to reduce poverty and inequality. The book explains why those choices were made, where they went awry, and why South Africa’s vaunted formations of the left – old and new – have failed to prevent or alter them.

Building on his acclaimed book Limits to Change, Marais examines South Africa’s most pressing issues – from the real reasons behind President Jacob Zuma’s rise and the purging of his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, and how the African National Congress replenishes its power, to piercing analyses of the country’s continuing AIDS crisis, its economic path, the changes wrought in the world of work, and the unfolding struggles over belonging and identity. South Africa Pushed to the Limit presents a riveting, benchmark analysis of the incomplete journey beyond apartheid.

Traditional African religions in South African law

T. W. Bennett — Fri, 08 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Since colonial times, traditional African religions have been misunderstood and misrepresented. Victims of the prejudice of Christian dogma, they have been said to be nothing more than magic and superstition, or at best mere ancestor worship. South Africa’s new constitutional order, however, with its celebration of diversity and its guarantee of equal treatment, demands a change in thinking. Traditional African Religions in South African Law is a collection of essays which explores indigenous African beliefs in the South African legal system. Its comprehensive coverage includes issues of witchcraft, animal sacrifice, the African Initiated Churches, environmental protection and traditional healing and medicines. It further considers ubuntu as an underlying ethic, the freedoms of religion and culture and the distinction between them. By bringing together the perspectives of law and religious studies, this book challenges current perceptions and underscores the complexities of South Africa’s modern multicultural society.

Primary Healthcare Spending

Okore Apia Okorafor — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The geography of healthcare financing is important in addressing inequities and inequalities in population health. This is particularly true in developing countries where there are significant disparities in socioeconomic and health status between regions. Many countries, however, are adopting a fiscal federal system, in which decision-making about the use of state financial resources is granted to lower levels of government. What impact does this have on the equitable distribution of resources to primary health care? Decentralisation has the potential to improve the efficiency of health service delivery and speed up the response to community needs, but are sufficient funds being allocated to where they are most needed?

Primary Healthcare Spending highlights key factors that can help to achieve equity in the allocation of primary healthcare resources within fiscal federal systems and decentralised health systems in general. It explores a wide range of ways of spending found in fiscal federal systems around the world and how they impact on the equitable distribution of primary healthcare resources. Although South Africa is used as a case for discussion, the issues raised in the book are relevant to all countries operating under a fiscal federal system and those that operate a decentralised health system.

Primary Healthcare Spending is an important reference for policymakers in health organisations, researchers in the field of health policy and health economics, agencies involved in providing support to health systems and students in the area of health administration and health policy.

Raw Life, New Hope

Fiona C. Ross — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Raw Life, New Hope is the story of one community’s efforts to secure a decent life in post-apartheid South Africa. For residents of The Park, a squalid shantytown on the outskirts of Cape Town, life was hard and they described their social world as raw. Their efforts to get on with the messy business of everyday life were often undercut by cruel poverty. Despite their inhospitable conditions, they sought to create respectable, decent lives for themselves. When the opportunity was presented to move into formal housing in The Village, the community was fired by a great optimism. They grabbed at the possibility of living respectably, with stable families, decent work, enduring social relations and the trappings of consumerism.

Based on research conducted over eighteen years, Raw Life, New Hope tells this community’s story and explores how everyday lives are fashioned through relationships, reciprocity and language. Told in a lively and engaging voice with detailed descriptions, animated characterisation, verbatim quotes from interviews and conversations, it gives the reader a sense of the particularity of people’s lives and makes the characters come alive. It offers a rare glimpse into the complex and contradictory ways of life of people living on the margins of society.

Public works and social protection in sub-Saharan Africa

Anna McCord — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Widely implemented throughout Asia, Latin America and Africa, often with funding from major international donor agencies, Public Works Programmes are perceived to present a ‘win-win’ policy option. They respond to growing challenges of long-term under- and unemployment, providing jobs for the chronically poor while also creating assets for the state. As such, PWPs offer a welfare transfer which is also a tangible economic investment, promoting livelihoods and stimulating growth. But are they effective instruments for providing social protections and responding to unemployment? McCord explores these critical questions, drawing on research into more than 200 PWPs across Africa, using extensive field analysis, survey work, and interviews with PWP workers themselves, as well as public works experience from Asia, the USA and Latin America.

Examining the potential and limitations of PWPs in providing social protection, McCord outlines major programme choice and design issues, exploring the assumptions underlying current policy preferences. While celebrating the performance of some programmes, the book makes a case for reconsidering the function of PWPs as a means of social protection. It argues that as currently designed, many programmes in the region may not offer significant social protection benefits for the working-age poor.

Rape Unresolved

Dee Smythe — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0200

More than 1 000 women are raped in South Africa every day. Around 150 of those women will report the crime to the police. Fewer than 30 of the cases will be prosecuted and no more than 10 will result in a conviction. This translates into an overall conviction rate of 4–8 per cent of reported cases. What happens to all the other cases?

Rape Unresolved is concerned with the question of police discretion and how its exercise shapes the criminal justice response to rape in South Africa. Through a detailed, qualitative review of rape dockets and victim statements, as well as interviews with detectives, prosecutors, magistrates and rape counsellors, the author provides key insights into police responses to rape.

A complex picture emerges, of myths and stereotypes, of skills deficits, of disengagement by police as well as victims. Responsibility for the investigation of the cases – and their ultimate failure – is shifted onto the complainants, who must constantly prove their commitment to the criminal justice process in order to be taken seriously.

The vast majority of rape victims who approach the criminal justice system in South Africa do not receive justice or protection. This book uncovers the fault line between the state’s rhetorical commitment to addressing sexual violence through legal guarantees and the actual application of these laws.

Innovation & Intellectual Property

Jeremy de Beer, Chris Armstrong, Chidi Oguamanam, Tobias Schonwetter — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In the global knowledge economy, intellectual property (IP) rights – and the innovations they are meant to spur – are important determinants of progress. But what does this mean for the nations of Africa? One view is that strong IP protection can facilitate innovation in African settings. Others say that existing IP systems are simply not suited to the realities of African innovators.

This book, based on case studies and evidence collected through research across nine countries in Africa, sheds new light on the complex relationships between innovation and intellectual property. It covers findings from Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa, across many sites of innovation and creativity including music, leather goods, textiles, cocoa, coffee, auto parts, traditional medicine, book publishing, biofuels and university research. Various forms of intellectual property protection are explored: copyrights, patents, trademarks, geographical indications and trade secrets, as well as traditional and informal mechanisms of knowledge governance.

The picture emerging from the empirical research presented in this volume is one in which innovators in diverse African settings share a common appreciation for collaboration and openness. And thus, when African innovators seek to collaborate, they are likely to be best served by IP approaches that balance protection of creative, innovative ideas with information-sharing and open access to knowledge.

The authors, who come from a range of disciplines, are all experts in their fields, working together through the Open African Innovation Research and Training (Open A.I.R.) network (www.openair.org.za).

The Kasrils Affair

Joel B. Pollak — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In 2001, on the heels of the disastrous Durban racism conference and the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States, South African cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils launched a declaration calling on South Africans of Jewish descent to protest against Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. In so doing, he launched a furious debate within the Jewish community.

The debate caused the leadership of the Jewish community to shift its political strategy, from the politics of open debate towards the politics of influence. The Jewish experience resembled that of other minorities and interest groups whose leaders came to be seen as ‘representing government in their respective communities rather than the community addressing themselves to government’, in the words of historian Hermann Giliomee.

The Kasrils Affair: Jews and minority politics in post-apartheid South Africa:

Documents the Kasrils declaration and its implications both for the Jewish community and South African politics in general.
Places the Kasrils affair in the context of South African Jewish history and of the ‘new antisemitism’ facing Jews around the world.
Gives an ‘embedded’ account of events, based on public commentary and interviews with South African Jewish leaders.

Youth Violence

Catherine L. Ward, Amelia van der Merwe, Andrew Dawes — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Youth Violence: Sources and solutions in South Africa thoroughly and carefully reviews the evidence for risk and protective factors that influence the likelihood of young people acting aggressively. Layers of understanding are built by looking at the problem from a multitude of perspectives, including developmental psychology and the influences of race, class and gender. The book explores effective interventions in the contexts of young people’s lives – their homes, their schools, their leisure activities, with gangs, in the criminal justice system, in cities and neighbourhoods, the media, with sexual offenders – and the broader socioeconomic context. Thoughtful suggestions are made for keeping an evidence-based perspective, and interventions from other contexts are (necessarily) adapted for developing world contexts such as South Africa. Youth Violence: Sources and Solutions in South Africa is a valuable source of information for practitioners, academics and anyone who has ever wondered about youth violence or wanted to do something about it.

The Gender of Psychology

Tamara Shefer, Floretta Boonzaier, Peace Kiguwa — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Psychology as a discipline has been criticised for perpetuating sexism, reproducing gender inequality, and neglecting marginalised perspectives. Internationally, an increasing attempt is being made to produce a critical gender analysis of the discipline and practice, and to theorise the contribution that psychology may make to addressing such issues.

Making an important contribution to this critique and written by a team of experienced authors, The Gender of Psychology addresses the diversity of psychological knowledge and practice through the lens of gender. The text is divided into three key sections:

‘(Re)production of knowledge in psychology’ focuses on gendered issues relating to knowledge production, research, authorship and publishing in psychology.
‘De/re-constructing psychological knowledge about gender’ addresses key areas of psychology that have theorised and researched gender issues, critically reflecting on psychology that has set itself up as an authority on issues of gender and sexuality.
‘Gendered practice and profession’ examines some of the professional areas of psychology, critically assessing the extent to which the applied aspects of psychology are sensitive to gender difference. It also explores the way in which psychology has tended to reproduce relations of power and control, and perpetuate normative, oppressive practices with respect to gender, sex and sexuality.

This accessible and interactive text will stimulate critical and applied thinking, and prove indispensable to students in the Social Sciences, particularly those in the disciplines of Gender, Women’s Studies and Psychology.

Written Culture in a Colonial Context

Adrien Delmas, Nigel Penn — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Ships, soldiers, missionaries and settlers drove the process of European expansion from the 16th to the 19th centuries. In doing so, they set in motion the circulation of images, manuscripts and books between different continents. The Portuguese Estado da India, the Spanish Carrera de Indias, the Dutch, English and French East-Indian Companies, as well as the Society of Jesus, all imaginatively fixed and inscribed the details of their travels and their discourses in letters, logs, diaries and histories. They also regulated the circulation of this material through the construction of archives, censorship, control of publications and secrecy. In addition, they introduced alphabetic writing into societies without alphabets, which was a major factor in changing the very function and meaning of written culture.

There is very little in the modern literature on the history of written culture which describes specific practices related to writing that were anchored in the colonial context. This book explores the extent to which the types of written information that resulted during colonial expansion shaped the numerous and complex processes of cultural exchange from the 16th century onwards. Focusing on writing in colonial Africa and the Americas, it ranges from rock art and proto-writing in Africa to the alphabetisation of Mexican scribes (tlahcuilos), from the missionary writing of Ethiopian Jesuits in the 17th century to travel writing and other forms of popular literature in the 19th century and official documents of various kinds.

Friend or Foe? Dominant Party Systems In Southern Africa

Nicola de Jager, Pierre du Toit — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

South Africa and Botswana share a border with Zimbabwe, and ostensibly the same political system, but are these countries, and their neighbour Namibia, on the same political trajectory?

Within southern Africa, there has been an observable increase in dominant party systems, in which one political party dominates over a prolonged period, within a democratic system with regular elections. This party system has replaced the one party system that dominated Africa’s political landscape after the first wave of liberations in the 1950s and 1960s.

Other countries in the developing world, such as India, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan, once had dominant party systems which have since developed into multi-party democracies. By comparing the political systems in southern Africa with these previously dominant party systems, this book seeks to understand the trend of dominant parties, and its implications.

The salient question posed by this book is: Which route are Botswana, Namibia and South Africa taking? It answers by drawing conclusions to indicate whether these countries are moving towards liberal democracy, as in the four non-African comparisons; authoritarianism, as in Zimbabwe; or a road in between.

An incomplete transition

World Bank Group — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

In preparation for its 2019–2022 Country Partnership Framework with South Africa, the World Bank Group has drafted a Systematic Country Diagnostic, which forms the basis of this book. Its aim is to strengthen understanding of the constraints in achieving two goals in South Africa: to eliminate poverty by 2030, and to boost shared prosperity. These goals are aligned with South Africa’s Vision 2030 in the National Development Plan. This book is the result of consultations and conversations with the National Planning Commission, government departments, the private sector, young South Africans, and other stakeholders. It identifies five broad policy priorities: to build South Africa’s skills base; to reduce the highly skewed distribution of land and productive assets and strengthen property rights; to increase competitiveness and the country’s participation in global and regional value chains; to overcome apartheid spatial patterns; and to increase the country’s strategic adaptation to climate change and water insecurity. The key obstacle to growth, investment, and jobs that has been identified is ‘the legacy of exclusion’. Undoing this is a long-term process, but renewed commitment by the political leadership to strengthen institutions and rebuild the social contract present an enormous opportunity in achieving progress towards South Africa’s Vision 2030, and this book suggests ways to accomplish this aim.

Access to knowledge in Africa

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The emergence of the internet and the digital world has changed the way people access, produce and share information and knowledge. Yet people in Africa face challenges in accessing scholarly publications, journals and learning materials in general. At the heart of these challenges, and solutions to them, is copyright, the branch of intellectual property rights that covers written and related works. This book gives the reader an understanding of the legal and practical issues posed by copyright for access to learning materials in Africa., and identifies the relevant lessons, best policies and best practices that would broaden and deepen this access. This book is based on the work of the African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) research network, launched in late 2007 as a network of researchers committed to probing the relationship between copyright and learning materials access in eight African countries: Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda.

Falls the Shadow

Kristina Bentley , Laurie Nathan , Richard Calland — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

The gap between the promise of the Constitution and the reality of life for most South Africans is a significant problem that requires urgent attention. This book explores that gap — its causes, its meaning and its implications.

On the face of it, the Constitution provides for the security of all the people in South Africa and it does this in many compelling ways. Yet the majority of the population are socially, economically, physically and psychologically insecure.

This gives rise to troubling questions:

What is the nature and extent of the gap between the constitutional promise of security and the reality of people’s lives?

Does the gap depend on biological and social criteria such as race, class, gender, health and nationality?

What combination of ideas, values, policies and financial and bureaucratic constraints accounts for the gap?

And most vitally, what are the implications for human suffering and the potential for conflict and violence?

Falls the Shadow tackles these questions in a forthright and rigorous fashion, alerting us to the dimensions and perils of the ‘constitutional shadow’ — a realm of diminished dignity, chronic insecurity and acute political danger.

Food for Africa

Jennifer Thomson — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Jennifer Thomson is one of the world’s leading advisors on genetically modified crops. In Food for Africa she traces, through anecdote and science, her career and the development of this area of research — from the dawn of genetic engineering in the USA in 1974, through the early stages of its testing in Europe and regulation in South Africa, to the latest developments in South Africa, where an updated Bioeconomy Strategy was approved in early 2013.

As a young scientist she chose to study bacterial genetics, negotiating her way in a very male-dominated arena. It led to her path-breaking involvement in the development of GM research in South Africa — where approximately 80% of maize grown currently is genetically modified for insect and herbicide resistance — and the spread of this technology to other parts of Africa. Experiments conducted with smallholder farmers in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique now mean that insect-resistant cowpea, disease-resistant bananas, virus-resistant cassava, drought-tolerant maize and vitamin-enriched sorghum can be grown in Africa successfully.

This book describes a remarkable personal and scientific evolution and looks to a future in which GM technology allows for the possibility of achieving food security throughout Africa by means of staple crops grown in difficult conditions by smallholder farmers.

Democratising Local Government

Susan Parnell, Edgar Pieterse, Mark Swilling, Dominique Wooldridge — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Local government is at the forefront of development. In South Africa the ambitious policy objectives of post-apartheid reconstruction and development hinge on the successful creation of a democratic tier of government close to the people. An entirely new system of ‘developmental local government’ has thus been introduced.

As is the case in many developing countries, the responsibilities of municipalities in South Africa have been extended dramatically, often without adequate resources. Managing municipalities for development therefore requires political will and strategic intervention. Democratising Local Government – the South African Experiment will assist officials, politicians and communities who wish to optimise their development ambitions within the new local governance framework. Lessons from the South African experience will be of use in many other countries, especially in Africa, where decentralisation is a major emphasis of development theory and practice.

The book provides a comprehensive introduction to developmental local government. It includes:

the design of the new local government system and the issues posed by decentralisation
an overview of specific challenges of urban and rural municipalities
a discussion of special issues facing local government including poverty, gender and environment
new tools for local government, including budgeting, indicators, municipal partnerships and capacity building.

The authors have extensive experience in policy formulation, municipal management and research on local government. They are activists, civil servants, NGO workers, consultants and academics. Their authoritative views are brought together in this important test to provide a solid foundation for working with and understanding local government in the developing world.

Growing the next generation of researchers

Lyn Holness — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

This book arises out of 12 years' experience with the University of Cape Town's Emerging Researcher Programme, through which upwards of the 650 early-career academics have passed. It identifies and promotes awareness of contemporary challenges in the local and global higher education context; explains the intrinsic nature of academia worldwide; and provides strategies for individual growth that result in sustained, high-quality research output. It also addresses institutional leadership whose responsibility it is to create an environment conducive to the flourishing of research and researchers. Unlike texts from the Global North, this book seeks to reflect a southern perspective, relevant to academics within and beyond the borders of South Africa. At the same time, it recognises that the experience of being an academic differs between countries, institutions and even within a single institution.

This book is divided into four parts:

Part 1: Welcome to academia focuses on the nature of the academic environment, on research as a core academic function, and on the fast-changing global and local research context.
Part 2: Developing a research profile: The art and craft of research introduces readers to the range of opportunities, tools and targets for personal research growth.
Part 3: Getting research into the public sphere discusses the dissemination and impact of research, mainly but not exclusively through publishing, and on the various strategies for and measures of research impact.
Part 4: Writing a thesis and supervising its production looks at the production of Master's and PhD theses from the students and supervisor’s perspective.

Consolidating Developmental Local Government

Mirjam van Donk, Mark Swilling, Edgar Pieterse, Susan Parnell — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Consolidating Developmental Local Government documents the dynamics of local government transformation and captures the key themes of the debates about policy options, lessons and key strategic decisions. These debates are aimed at ensuring that municipalities play a key role in creating more democratic, non-racial, equitable and sustainable communities, towns and cities.

Compiled and written by people who participated in one way or another in the experience of democratic consolidation, this text will be an indispensable resource for government officials, students, researchers, specialists, community leaders, businesses and the general reader. Critical questions are raised throughout the book about the kinds of challenges that all those involved with the future of local governance will face in the years ahead.

We are confident that policymakers, researchers and practitioners alike will find Consolidating Developmental Local Government a useful, thoughtful contribution to making local government and other spheres of government work better together to overcome poverty and inequality.

Solomon Lechesa Tsenoli, MP, Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Provincial and Local Government

Consolidating Developmental Local Government should be required reading for scholars and practitioners everywhere who care about inclusive and poverty-oriented development and are alert to the complexities and rewards of achieving democratic local government in cosmopolitan societies and complex institutional arenas.

Professor Jo Beall, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics

Burdened by race

Mohamed Adhikari — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0200

Since its emergence in the late 19th century, coloured identity has been pivotal to racial thinking in southern African societies. The nature of colouredness has always been a highly emotive and controversial issue because it embodies many of the racial antagonisms, ambiguities, and derogations prevalent in the subcontinent. Throughout their existence coloured communities have had to contend with the predicament of being marginal minorities stigmatised as the insalubrious by-products of miscegenation.

This book showcases recent innovative research and writing on coloured identity in southern Africa. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and applying fresh theoretical insights, Burdened by Race brings new levels of understanding to processes of coloured self-identification. This collection breaks virgin ground by examining diverse manifestations of colouredness across the region using interlinking themes and case studies from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi to present analyses that both challenge and overturn much of the conventional wisdom around the identity in the current literature.