South Africa and Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 652 (1) ◽  
pp. 222-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Saunders

This article examines aspects of the complex relationship between South Africa and the rest of Africa from the presidency of Nelson Mandela through those of Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, showing how the relationship changed over time and exploring the influences that shaped South Africa’s policy on and toward the continent—a policy that has largely been determined by the presidency rather than the Department of Foreign Affairs/International Relations and Co-operation. To understand the changing relationship between South Africa and the rest of the continent, it is necessary to consider, first, the history before 1994, then the dramatically altered situation that the transfer of power in South Africa brought about, Thabo Mbeki’s interventionist approach to Africa in general, and Jacob Zuma’s ambiguous involvement in continental affairs. The article concludes with some speculative thoughts on the role that South Africa may play on the continent in the future.

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ockie C. Vermeulen

In good times and in bad: The tumultuous relationship between the church and the organ - is divorce inevitable? Through the ages, a delicate relationship has existed between the church and the pipe organ. Since the 10th century, the organ established itself as a unique instrument in service of worship. This relationship was not always a steady one, and this article investigates the tumultuous affair between the two parties. In part one of the article, which is a historic perspective, the relationship is discussed by looking at different cultures and uses of the organ in the worship service. This gives a sense of when and how the relationship came into being and developed or deteriorated. In part two, the current situation in the Afrikaans Reformed service is explored by conducting several unstructured interviews with key role players in the theological and musical world of South Africa. In part three, the study ventures into speculating about the future of the organ in the worship service by briefly looking at the attitude of the organist and spirituality of the postmodern church goer. In essence, this article reflects on whether the marriage between church and music instrument is solid or on its way to the divorce court.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The relationship between organ and church has to be reconsidered. The use of the organ in the worship service has to be taken under scrutiny, and a new relationship agreement between the two partners has to be formulated.


Author(s):  
Martin Eisner

This study uses the material transmission history of Dante’s innovative first book, the Vita nuova (New Life), to intervene in recent debates about literary history, reconceiving the relationship between the work and its reception, and investigating how different material manifestations and transformations in manuscripts, printed books, translations, and adaptations participate in the work. Just as Dante frames his collection of thirty-one poems surrounded by prose narrative and commentary as an attempt to understand his own experiences through the experimental form of the book, so later scribes, editors, and translators use different material forms to embody their own interpretations of it. Traveling from Boccaccio’s Florence to contemporary Hollywood with stops in Emerson’s Cambridge, Rossetti’s London, Nerval’s Paris, Mandelstam’s Russia, De Campos’s Brazil, and Pamuk’s Istanbul, this study builds on extensive archival research to show how Dante’s strange poetic forms continue to challenge readers. In contrast to a conventional reception history’s chronological march, each chapter analyzes how one of these distinctive features has been treated over time, offering new perspectives on topics such as Dante’s love of Beatrice, his relationship with Guido Cavalcanti, and his attraction to another woman, while highlighting Dante’s concern with the future, as he experiments with new ways to keep Beatrice alive for later readers. Deploying numerous illustrations to show the entanglement of the work’s poetic form and its material survival, Dante’s New Life of the Book offers a fresh reading of Dante’s innovations, demonstrating the value of this philological analysis of the work’s survival in the world.


Author(s):  
Dale C. Copeland

This chapter summarizes the theoretical and practical implications of the trade expectations theory, including the relevance of its logic for the future of US–Chinese relations. It then considers the implications of this approach for international relations theory, focusing on its broader importance for thinking about liberal and realist theories that are not focused on economic interdependence per se. The chapter then turns to an examination of the contemporary US–China relationship. It contends that China's growing dependence on external raw materials and markets along with its expectations for the future are critical to predicting the likely shape of the relationship over the next two or three decades.


Author(s):  
Davies and

This chapter looks at the relationship between commerce and health, some of the choices involved, and the impacts they have on total health. Public health specialists and policymakers have only recently begun to explore the complex relationship between commerce and health, what it has been in the past, what it is now, and importantly what it could look like as we re-build society post COVID-19. The role that work and employers play in our individual, family, and collective health, security, and prosperity has developed over time, and the dependence of companies on the health of their workforce, and their vulnerability when employees are ill, has changed too. The private sector can contribute to health in its immediate community, and nationally through the products it promotes, the working conditions for its employees, and the causes it supports.


2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 708-727
Author(s):  
A G Van Aarde

“The RDP of the Soul”, violence, revenge, tolerance and Paul’s appeal for enduranceThis article links up with both the Fourth Nelson Mandela Commemorative Lecture presented by the previous President of the Republic of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in 2006, titled the “RDP of the Soul” and with the book of Dr Richard Burridge (King’s College, University of London), Imitating Jesus, in which he shows how biblical ethics has shaped South Africans’ lives since colonialism, apartheid and post- and neo-colonialism. The article argues that moral leadership by the Christian faith community in South Africa which combats violence by rising up in compassion against injustice can counter-balance the spiralling out of retaliation through revenge. The article describes tolerance in terms of the Pauline concept of endurance and the internalisation of hope for the future. Perseverance despite suffering is seen as the contents of tolerance in the midst of aggressive opposition against the essence of life experienced in terms of an individual’s thinking, willing and feeling. The article is a reworked version of a bilingual commemorative public lecture in English and Afrikaans presented on the occasion of the University of Pretoria’s centenary celebration and is dedicated to Professor Dr P J G Meiring, a member of the Commission of Peace and Reconciliation in South Africa.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Yihenew Wubu Endalew ◽  
◽  

Until alternative theories that sought a serious consideration of third world states in International Relations (IR) proliferated in the last quarter of the 20th century, knowledge production remained monopolized by dominant Western-centered theories. Historical Sociology in International Relations (HSIR) is one of the approaches that aimed at directing IR towards more inclusive inquiries that acknowledge temporal and spatial variance; especially against ahistorical and ‘asociological’ foundations of Neorealism. Despite this motivation, most of the studies and debates within HSIR are concentrated on illustrating the approach’s applicability in the study of Western states. Through a review of the available literature, this paper aims to demonstrate the promise of HSIR in explaining the relationship between domestic and foreign affairs of third world states. To achieve this objective, the paper mainly draws from the works of John Hobson and Fred Halliday and suggests the incorporation of third world states in the inquiries and debate within HSIR.


Politeia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vusi Gumede

From a policy perspective, the question naturally arises as to whether there have been major changes in policy making and associated issues in South Africa since 1994. Arguably, the first five years or so focused on institutional reforms and legislative interventions. In the late 1990s the South African government established specific processes and institutions for policy development and coordination.  In 2005-6, specific processes and institutions for long-term planning and monitoring and evaluation were formally established. The paper examines the evolution of policy making and coordination in South Africa since the late 1990s, it also reflects on monitoring and evaluation as well as long-term planning. The erstwhile Policy Coordination and Advisory Services (PCAS), which had been the main engine of policy (coordination and other aspects) in post-apartheid South Africa that was established towards the end of 1997 in the Office of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki (at the time) was disbanded in 2010. The PCAS, popularly known as the Policy Unit, coordinated all policies and reforms, and led in planning as well as monitoring and evaluation, among other responsibilities. From 2010, functions were institutionalised or strengthened (e.g. government departments have been established to deal with planning as well as monitoring and evaluation). There have not been major shifts and/or changes in policy coordination, planning as well as monitoring and evaluation since the late 1990s. However, there appears to be a shift in emphasis to focusing more on implementation. This might have been one of the biggest mistakes of the Jacob Zuma administration because capacity for policy thinking is critical. It would seem that the Thabo Mbeki administration focused specifically on policy. The Nelson Mandela administration, which was a Government of National Unity, was largely focused on various policy, legislative and institutional reforms with very limited capacity for policy making, coordination and monitoring and evaluation as well as long-term planning. 


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Pietersen ◽  
Melodi Botha

PurposeAlthough emerging research has linked impulsivity with the decision to start a business, scholars have yet to draw implications for later-stage entrepreneurial outcomes. Furthermore, the authors have still to derive a parsimonious profile of the multidimensional impulsivity construct which can be positively linked to the entrepreneurial context. This paper proposes and tests a model to explain how impulsivity may relate to entrepreneurial perseverance—a construct typically regarded as a pivotal later-stage entrepreneurial outcome.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 807 owner-managers using an online survey and augmented with the novel use of longitudinal data from the central registrar of companies in South Africa. Covariance-based structural equation modeling and a D2 indexing approach for forming an entrepreneurship-prone impulsivity profile were employed.FindingsResults show that multidimensional impulsivity is significantly, but differentially, related to entrepreneurial perseverance; the perceived desirability of entrepreneurship mediates this effect for two of the four impulsivity dimensions. In particular, the authors find evidence that insufficiency of deliberation enhances, while urgency hinders, perseverance—reflected behaviorally through the filing of annual returns over a three-year period. Furthermore, the authors derive a new entrepreneurship-prone impulsivity profile which begins to suggest an intraindividual profile of impulsivity traits which may be beneficial to the entrepreneurial context.Originality/valueBy demonstrating how impulsivity impacts entrepreneurial perseverance over time, this paper advances emerging research on the relationship between impulsivity and entrepreneurship, while contributing to explaining why the perseverance decision is not simply a matter of venture pecuniary benefits and feasibility.


2019 ◽  
pp. 210-232
Author(s):  
Ashwin Desai ◽  
Goolam Vahed

This chapter examines the complex relationship between diaspora and citizenship. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi famously developed his tactic of satyagraha on South African soil, cementing a deep relationship with India. Against this background, this chapter examines new diasporic connections between Indian South Africans and India, buoyed by the Indian government’s introduction of a number of measures such as a new ministry, an annual official diaspora convention in India, and the offer of special status for members of the Indian diaspora, but fell short of granting dual citizenship, arguably over concerns about security. This chapter provides a detailed examination of the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to South Africa in 2016. This politically and strategically important visit of 2016 generated intense debates over the relationship between India and its diaspora, India and South Africa, Indians and Africans, and Hindus and Muslims.


Author(s):  
Susan Coetzee-Van Rooy

AbstractThe relationship between nations (or states), languages and social cohesion have been studied over time. Contexts like Africa and India challenge the conceived Western notion of “one-nation-one-language”. Insights about multilingualism and social cohesion from complex sociolinguistic contexts like South Africa could provide a deeper understanding helpful for promoting social cohesion in emerging “super-diverse” situations across the globe. This article reports on selected data from a longitudinal language repertoire survey conducted over three periods (1998, 2010 and 2015) in the Vaal Triangle region in South Africa. It discusses the views of multilingual urban students (N=1900+) about the relationship between multilingualism and social cohesion. The main findings are that the multilingual African home language participants believe that being multilingual is related to social cohesion, while this is not a prominent finding for Afrikaans home language users (who are mainly bilingual). The data from the South African context indicate the importance of multilingual repertoires as instruments that support the fostering of social cohesion in complex settings. Multilingual repertoires facilitate communication that enhances the building of better relationships and a deeper understanding between people in diverse settings. The implications of the findings for emerging “super-diverse” global societies are discussed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document