Browsing Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences by Title
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Turner, Stephen (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape & Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere Inc. (CARE), 2005)[more][less]
Abstract: The study compares the livelihoods and inter-household sharing mechanisms in a Lesotho village across a 28 year period. The report examines the complex socio-economic structures and systems that are in place in the rural village. Despite external signs of improved housing standards, the study finds ominous signs of growing vulnerability as much of the community's economic backbone has been lost. Options for assistance by external agencies and by social protection systems are explored. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/70 Files in this item: 1
Turner_Livelihoods2005.pdf (882.4Kb) -
Isaacs, Moenieba; Hara, Mafaniso (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: This research investigated the drivers and the impact of HIV and Aids in fishing communities in South Africa, in order to assist the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism: Marine and Coastal Management (DEAT:MCM) with mainstreaming of HIV and Aids into policy on fisheries. The research was based on in-depth analysis of four fishing communities in the Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/67 Files in this item: 1
Isaacs_Mainstreaming2008.pdf (319.2Kb) -
du Toit, Andries (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, 2011)[more][less]
Abstract: This paper considers the role of ‘measurement’ and other forms of poverty knowledge in a context where the nature and direction of global economic growth is creating ‘surplus populations’ suffering various forms of marginalisation in the global economy. It links the development of different forms of poverty knowledge with the ways in which states and non-state agents seek to ‘govern’ poverty and poor populations, and with the ‘biopolitics’ whereby calculations are made about the differential allocation of resources towards different sectors of the global population. The paper argues that addressing the root causes of poverty requires social actors to go beyond the narrow limits of institutionally sanctioned and bureaucratically invested ‘poverty knowledge’ that currently dominate policy thinking. Rather than seeking to understand poverty by measuring the characteristics of members of populations, they should try to understand poverty as an aspect of social relations, and try to come to grips with differential insertion of populations in the fields of force of modern globalised capitalism. Analysis should abandon simple notions of ‘marginalisation, and come to grips with the agency of poor people and the complex relationships between informality, marginality, exclusion and incorporation. Ultimately, however, a more nuanced understanding of the role of poverty knowledge in present day biopolitics does not bring with it any easy answers: rather, it challenges applied social scientists to be more aware of the responsibilities they bear as producers of 'useful' knowledge in a time of increased global instability. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/580 Files in this item: 1
WP20.pdf (622.6Kb) -
Pretorius, Joelien (Institute for Strategic Studies at the University of Pretoria, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: The relevance of the Non-Aligned Movement has been in question since the end of Cold War bipolarity. In the post-Cold War order, whether interpreted as cosmopolitan, unipolar, multipolar or globalised in nature, there are still challenges to the main purpose of the Non-Aligned Movement, which can be defined as the pursuit of self-determination and development for so-called Third World states. The rise of China is impacting on the current world order, possibly returning it to a kind of bipolarity, which the Non-Aligned Movement members can exploit. In addition, the 'Beijing Consensus' may provide new terms on which developing countries can be integrated into the global economy in a way that would accommodate and encourage their development. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/472 Files in this item: 1
PretoriusWorldorderChina2008.pdf (226.8Kb) -
Piper, Laurence (Unisa Press, 2011)[more][less]
Abstract: This article explores the significance of an important event, namely, the Pioneers of Participation workshop held in November 2009 in Cape Town, for public participation advocacy in South Africa. By tracing the shifting consciousness of one participant, a key provincial official (Jackie O whose name has been changed), the article shows both how such events can change mindsets to create better informed, better inspired and more connected advocates for public participation, and that this transformation is not necessarily permanent. Hence, it is argued that events like the Pioneers workshop are best located in a broader advocacy strategy appropriate to the particular context of state-society relations. In South Africa’s case it is argued that this strategy ought to focus on the twin objectives of policy reform – both to make formal participatory spaces more inclusive, democratic and empowered and to support the emergence of independent, popularly rooted yet technically competent civil society formations that are capable of mediating both popular needs and the policy system. How these objectives ought to be realised is an open question, but it is clear that events like the Pioneers workshop can be a galvanising and mindset changing resource in this broader strategy. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/584 Files in this item: 1
PiperParticipation2011.pdf (1.131Mb) -
Cliffe, Lionel (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2007)[more][less]
Abstract: Since the 2005 Land Summit, new approaches to land reform have been on the agenda, yet there remains little clarity on the way forward. The main focus has been on means of accelerating the redistribution of land through new modes of acquiring land. Acquisition is an important matter but if treated in isolation risks mis-specifying the core problems evident in land reform in South Africa. A new phase of land reform located within a wider agrarian reform is needed and will require new institutional arrangements. Any alternative strategy will have to revise the institutional mechanisms that have been handling land reform thus far. Are the procedures and the institutions that are in place to design and implement land reform adequate and appropriate to the kind of new tasks envisaged? What new farming units and activities are intended, and what post-transfer support will be required to make this agricultural system productive? This paper explores mechanisms appropriate to one kind of agricultural alternative: a vision of a productive, small-scale essentially household farm sector. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/66 Files in this item: 1
Cliffe_Policy2007.pdf (365.8Kb) -
Piper, Laurence; Nadvi, Lubna (Zed Books, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: This chapter seeks to explore the character of popular mobilization in South Africa, mostly at the local level. This is done through exploring the interaction of two independent processes. The first concerns the relative empowerment of political parties and the disempowerment of civil society (especially social movements) by the democratization process in South Africa. The second concerns the introduction of new institutions of public participation in local governance. Hence, while the latter are portrayed as ‘invited spaces’ in which communities can engage the local state constructively, the poor design of these spaces, a lack of genuine will on the part of elites and the relative power of key social actors mean that, in practice, they are either meaningless processes or simply co-opted by political parties. Notably, civil society has tended either to disengage from the local state and focus on provincial and national levels, or to resort to forms of popular protest to be heard by local government – the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector usually favouring the first approach and social movements the second. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/488 Files in this item: 1
PiperPartyDominance2010.pdf (133.1Kb) -
Luescher-Mamashela, Thierry (Faculty of Education, University of the Free State, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: The racial desegregation of the student bodies of historically white universities in South Africa has had significant political implications for student politics and university governance. I discuss two key moments in the governance history of the University of Cape Town (UCT) critically. The first involves the experience of racial parallelism in student governance in the late 1980s and early 1990s, making specific reference to the re-conceptualisation of the UCT Students’ Representative Council (SRC) as a ‘NUSAS-SRC’, along with the recognition of the political salience of race in the student body. The second traces the origins of the demographic representivity rule in the university’s statute to student demands for the dissolution of the UCT Council, and its replacement by a Transformation Forum in the early 1990s. I thus show that the recognition of race as politically significant in university governance is the outcome of a deliberate struggle, by students in general, and black students in particular, to de-privatise and politicise any sense of racial/racist marginalisation, and therefore to open up race as a topic for deliberation in the political realm of the post-apartheid university. Thus, the institutionalisation of race has come to serve the interests of the struggle for non-racialism. Description: Research article URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/226 Files in this item: 1
LuescherDesegregation2009.pdf (145.3Kb) -
Nleya, Ndodana; Tapscott, Chris; Thompson, Lisa; Piper, Laurence; Esau, Esau (Unisa Press, 2011)[more][less]
Abstract: Protest politics in South Africa has a long history and has been deployed differentially in different historical moments. Whereas protests formed an important vehicle during the fight against apartheid, their rebirth and propulsion to the centre of the struggles in the post-apartheid dispensation have come as a surprise to many. A majority of these protests, so-called ‘service delivery protests’, are reported as emanating from communities’ dissatisfaction with municipal service delivery as well as problems relating to lack of communication between council and councillors on the one hand and citizens on the other. In this article, we interrogate data from five study sites located in Cape Town and Pietermaritzburg. While we found support for the importance of service delivery, our data contradicts many widely held assertions as regards what causes these protests. We were able to show, for example, that these so-called ‘service delivery protests’ may actually emanate from reasons that extend beyond service delivery. Since our data indicates that levels of participation in Cape Town are higher than in Pietermaritzburg on the one hand, illustrating perhaps the different provincial contexts, there is also variation between the relatively high participation rates of the ‘black African’ sites of Langa and Khayelitsha, on the one hand, and the lower rates of the ‘coloured’ site of Bonteheuwel, on the other, which we ascribe to the disengagement of the community in Cape Town, from both local and national politics. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/555 Files in this item: 1
NleyaProtestPolitics2011.pdf (2.491Mb) -
Pretorius, Joelien (University of the Free State, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: This article traces the politics of meaning-fixing with respect to the role of the defence force as apartheid declined from the mid-1980s, as it was negotiated from a current to a past organising principle of the “security imaginary” in the period 1990 to 1994 and as the post-apartheid period commenced after the 1994 elections. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/454 Files in this item: 1
PretoriusSecurity2008.pdf (663.5Kb) -
Naicker, Visvanathan; Combrinck, Theodore; Bayat, Abdullah (University of the Western Cape: School of Business and Finance, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: Executive Summary: By almost any measure, most South African public schools, and schools in the Western Cape, are underperforming academically. For a number of years, there has existed a wide degree of consensus among education stakeholders, and particular government, that the problems in our schools extend beyond academic under-achievement. Massive budget allocations, overhauling curricular, restoring skewed learning resources, retraining educators and attempting to deal with the more pressing community problems and social ills that influence the results of a school are all necessary interventions. But, unless there is a concurrent improvement of schools from a „business‟ management point of view, there is no guarantee that the resources allocated to schools, both materially and in the form of educators, will be optimally deployed. Principals need to be occupied with the tasks of managing and leading teaching and learning i.e. instruction leadership, not managing routine administration. In recognising the potential of school administrative personnel to provide relief and support for the administrative role of principals, the Western Cape Government initiated a training course – the CSBA – in July 2008 for school business administrators. The ground-breaking pilot programme was completed in February 2010. Thereafter the WCED commissioned an evaluation of the results achieved. The purpose of the evaluation is to inform the WCED‟s plans for development of the course going forward. This report represents a synopsis of the findings of the evaluation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/412 Files in this item: 1
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Manenzhe, Tshililo; Lahiff, Edward (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2007)[more][less]
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Pretorius, Joelien (Faculty of Military Science, Stellenbosch University, 2005)[more][less]
Abstract: American plans for Missile Defence (MD) and the weaponisation of space should be analysed in the larger framework of the contemporary Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA).1 Soviet military analysts have written about this revolution from as early as the 1970s, but it was the application of information age technology (IT) in the 1991 Gulf War that captured the imagination of military planners and policy makers, especially in the US. The US is actively pursuing an RMA, conceptualised as integrating new IT into weapons systems and integrated command, control, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) and, in turn, doctrinal, operational and organisational change in the military to take advantage of information dominance on the battlefield. This relates to MD and the weaponisation of space in two ways. Firstly, very few countries have the financial and technological capability to modernise their defence forces along the lines of a US-defined RMA, which means that they may resort to so-called asymmetric means to exploit the vulnerabilities or weaknesses of a strong, conventional power. Ballistic missiles (in association with chemical, biological or nuclear payloads) are one of the asymmetrical threats most commonly cited in speeches and military documents of the US and used as justification of MD. Secondly, the RMA increases the US military’s reliance on space-based military assets for C4ISR. Placing weapons in space to protect these assets is seen as a logical step to ensure a key aspect of US dominance on the battlefield. This paper explores the extent to which the strategic framework of the RMA has a bearing on US MD and space weaponisation arguments. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/455 Files in this item: 1
PretoriusDefenceMilitary2005.pdf (261.3Kb) -
Pretorius, Joelien (Sage, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: This article proposes the notion of a security imaginary as a heuristic tool for exploring military isomorphism (the phenomenon that weapons and military strategies begin to look the same across the world) at a time when the US model of defence transformation is being adopted by an increasing number of countries. Built on a critical constructivist foundation, the security-imaginary approach is contrasted with rationalist and neo-institutionalist ways of explaining military diffusion and emulation. Merging cultural and constructivist themes, the article offers a ‘strong cultural’ argument to explain why a country would emulate a foreign military model and how this model is constituted in and comes to constitute a society’s security imaginary. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/452 Files in this item: 1
PretoriusMilitaryIsomorphism2008.pdf (262.1Kb) -
Africa, Cherrel; van Rooyen, Garth (SUN Press, 2012)[more][less]
Abstract: Small parties and independents play an important role in South Africa’s democracy. It is on the level of the local that these small parties and independents have some chance to make indents in terms of winning a few wards that could turn them into council kingmakers, or at least represent some particular local constituency needs. This chapter examines the multitude of small and micro-parties, as well as independent candidates in the 2011 local government elections. It first features classification-based endeavours to ‘make sense of this multitude of often-neglected but crucial political players in South Africa’. The classifications use the number of contesting candidates and election outcomes as the two classificatory principles. The chapter also explores the increase in contestation by independent candidates. Thereafter it investigates the details of their results, and the reasons for their largely dismal displays in local election 2011. The chapter concludes that while these political actors remain largely in an underworld of small and micro-parties, they retain enthusiasm for electoral contestation, thus continuing to add value to multi-party democracy in South Africa. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/550 Files in this item: 1
AfricaSmallParties2012.pdf (142.9Kb) -
Dubb, Alex (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2012)[more][less]
Abstract: This paper argues that the rise and decline of small-scale sugarcane grower (SSG) production in KwaZulu-Natal must be historically located within a changing structural relationship with miller-processors, in turn conditioned by shifts in regulatory frameworks. Critically, the emergence of SSG production in the late-1970s–1980s can be traced to industry-subsidised initiatives disguised as micro-credit which brought commercially inalienable Bantustan land into cane production with strong miller oversight. From the late 1980–1990s, however, the elimination of these subsidies encouraged millers to withdraw from direct oversight and to subcontract support to farmers, while simultaneously instigating an increase in SSG numbers by removing restrictions on grower registration. Enduring drought must certainly be understood as a central proximal factor in the rapid decline of SSGs, but their rapid increase in the first place was structurally fragile. This paper further strives to provide insight into the shifting class dynamics of SSGs under constrained conditions of production, utilising survey data from seventy SSG homesteads and life-history interviews in two rural wards of the Umfolozi region. Although proceeds from sugarcane have represented an important source of cash-income for homesteads, deteriorating terms of exchange and barriers to expansion in land and capital have placed a greater emphasis on sparse off-farm income opportunities for stabilising consumption and enabling limited re-investment in production. The centrality of income-diversification for simple reproduction and limited accumulation has rendered the dynamics of social differentiation both unstable and reversible. The paper concludes by exploring the implications for agrarian reform policy. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/571 Files in this item: 1
DubbSugarcaneFarming2013.pdf (913.9Kb) -
Gottschalk, Keith (Routledge, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: This article introduces and analyses South Africa’s space programme. This divides into three phases. First was the age of amateurs 1947-1962. Second, between 1963-1993, South Africa’s apartheid ancien regime started various missile projects. A secret military space launcher programme aimed at orbiting reconnaissance satellites. Under US Government pressure, this was cancelled before the first democratically-elected government came to power, and the facilities for manufacturing and testing solid propellant missiles destroyed. But South Africa still maintains a nucleus of space heritage infrastructure, including a coastal space launch range with telemetry capabilities, satellite testing and integration facilities, and modest aerospace and software industrial sectors. Third, South Africa became a democracy in 1994, and rolled out the legal and institutional infrastructure for a space programme. It is increasingly active in COPUOS and other international forums. South Africa has started to shape a new space policy, this time with public transparency. Since developing countries have severe resource constraints (aggravated by global recessions) the reviving future of South Africa’s space programme clearly needs to involve bilateral and multilateral partnerships. First fruits are that South Africa has negotiated with Algeria, Kenya, and Nigeria, the African Resource Management constellation, to pool imagery and other remote sensing data from all their microsats. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/155 Files in this item: 1
GottschalkAstropolitics2010rev 2011.pdf (477.9Kb) -
Aliber, Michael; Baiphethi, Mompati; de Satge, Rick; Denison, Jonathan; Hart, Tim; Jacobs, Peter; van Averbeke, Wim (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: Within the ambit of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa, government is leading a process to define a Second Economy Strategy, and has identified the agricultural sector as a site of opportunity, potentially fostering a larger number of smallholder agriculturalists. In an effort to identify an implementable program to support the smallholder sector, this study closely analyses what makes particular South African smallholdings in various settings successful and what factors contributed to their success. A broad definition of agricultural smallholding is employed including independent operators, group farmers, subsistence farmers and commercial farmers. ‘Supporting the smallholder sector’ is conceptualised as consisting of four distinct strands, namely the prospects and measures for: improving the performance of subsistence-oriented smallholders; encouraging/enabling currently subsistence-oriented smallholders to benefit from a more commercial orientation; improving the performance of commercially oriented smallholders; and increasing participation in smallholder agriculture among those (especially rural dwellers) who do not practise agriculture. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/391 Files in this item: 1
AliberSmallholders2009.pdf (1.825Mb) -
Aliber, Michael (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2011)[more][less]
Abstract: This second volume of Strategies to support South African smallholders as a contribution to government’s second economy strategy contains sixteen case studies that comprise the main data for the analysis detailed in Volume 1. This collection of case studies provides a useful resource on its own, providing a rich and diverse repository of narratives depicting various types of smallholders in diverse circumstances and environments. As researchers were given the latitude to deviate from a standardised approach, this volume reveals the authors’ different styles, different emphases, and indeed different disciplinary strengths. The ‘unit of analysis’ also differs across case studies: some are studies of single individuals, others focus on particular schemes or projects, and still others involve a comparative analysis of individuals or projects. Due to the complexity of categorising the case studies they have been simply grouped by province, and are ordered, roughly, from southwest to northeast. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/392 Files in this item: 1
AliberSmallholders2011.pdf (4.092Mb) -
Luescher-Mamashela, Thierry (2011)[more][less]
Abstract: This paper proposes a framework for understanding student involvement in different domains of university decision-making based on the various reasons brought for and against student involvement. It briefly outlines the historical origins of student participation in university governance with specific reference to student activism and the experience of university democratisation of the 1960s and early 1970s. By means of a review of scholarship, the paper then discusses various reasons for and against student involvement in university decision-making debated in academic literature: with respect to students’ political power as an organised group and stakeholders in the university; with reference to students’ role and position as users and consumers (as against notions of community membership); in relation to democratic principles and the purposes of higher education in society; and on the grounds of the potential positive consequences of involving students in university decision-making. Finally the different reasons for student involvement in university governance and related conceptions of student are modelled against different domains of university decision-making as a way of providing a new lens for understanding (and changing) the involvement of students in university decision-making. The paper concludes by illustrating the application of the framework and its transferability to other educational contexts. Description: International Journal of Leadership in Education (ILJE) Emerging Scholar Manuscript Competition 2011 Awarded “Finalist” in the "Graduate Student Category" URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/220 Files in this item: 1