scholarly journals South African Tax Incentives To Alleviate Unemployment: Lessons From United States Of America Approaches

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 769
Author(s):  
Liza (ESM) Coetzee ◽  
Hanneke du Preez ◽  
Natasha K. Smale

A quarter of the labour force in South Africa is currently unemployed with the majority of the unemployed being unskilled youth. One of the major causes seems to be the commanding power of trades union resulting in a high minimum wage for unskilled workers, which results in a reduction in the demand for unskilled labour. To reduce the current unemployment rate in South Africa, policy decisions should be focused on youth employment with emphasis on skills development. Policy should also stimulate growth of small, medium and micro enterprises in order to stimulate job creation. A literature review indicates that current tax incentives in South Africa do not incentivise employers to hire unskilled youth labour, and are not applied on a wide enough scale to significantly impact the overall unemployment statistics. The proposed youth wage subsidy will increase the demand for unskilled labour by reducing the cost of labour. However, to have the desired impact, the participation rate must be high. The proposed subsidy was analysed against the successes and failures of subsidies implemented in the USA. It was found that many of the flaws identified in the USA have been avoided.Based on the above, the recommendation is that the proposed youth wage subsidy is plausible in a South African context and should be implemented. The main concern is that newly employed youth would replace workers who do not meet the qualifications of the subsidy. This would have to be taken into account by policy makers.

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Van der Merwe ◽  
Philippus Cloete ◽  
Herman Van Schalkwyk

This article investigates the competitiveness of the South African wheat industry and compares it to its major trade partners. Since 1997, the wheat-to-bread value chain has been characterised by concentration of ownership and regulation. This led to concerns that the local wheat market is losing international competitiveness. The competitive status of the wheat industry, and its sub-sectors, is determined through the estimation of the relative trade advantage (RTA). The results revealed declining competitiveness of local wheat producers. Compared to the major global wheat producers, such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany and the USA, South Africa’s unprocessed wheat industry is uncompetitive. At the same time, South Africa has a competitive advantage in semi-processed wheat, especially wheat flour. The institutional environment enables the importation of raw wheat at lower prices and exports processed wheat flour competitively to the rest of Africa.


Author(s):  
Lindy Steibel

Lewis Nkosi is increasingly recognized as one of South Africa’s foremost literary critics, and also as an iconoclastic writer of novels and plays. His years as an exile during the apartheid era meant, however, that his reputation within South Africa was for some time less secure than it was abroad. Born in Chesterville, a black Durban township, Nkosi came from a female-headed, working-class family. He was mission-schooled in Eshowe and then embarked on a career that began with a short but important journalistic stint at Drum magazine. To take up a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard in 1961, Nkosi left South Africa on a one-way exit permit. For the rest of his life he lived variously in England, Zambia, Poland, the USA and Switzerland, following a writing and academic career. Nkosi’s style is a distinctive one, at odds with much of the naturalist writing that characterized South African black ‘protest’ fiction of the apartheid years. Influenced by the writings of Faulkner, Kafka and Joyce, Nkosi’s style is modernist, suggestive and symbolic. His loyalty to form, and to the stringent demands of a modernist perception of art, is evident in his critical essays, gathered into three collections: Home and Exile (1965), The Transplanted Heart: essays on South Africa (1975), and Tasks and Masks: themes and styles of African literature (1981).


2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gladys Ganiel

AbstractThis paper uses a comparative perspective to analyze how multiracial congregations may contribute to racial reconciliation in South Africa. Drawing on the large-scale study of multiracial congregations in the USA by Emerson et al., it examines how they help transform antagonistic identities and make religious contributions to wider reconciliation processes. It compares the American research to an ethnographic study of a congregation in Cape Town, identifying cross-national patterns and South African distinctives, such as discourses about restitution, AIDS, inequality and women. The extent that multiracial congregations can contribute to reconciliation in South Africa is linked to the content of their worship and discourses, but especially to their ability to dismantle racially aligned power structures.


Africa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. J. Dawson ◽  
E. Fouksman

AbstractA wealth of new writing has emerged around the future of labour, focusing on thinking beyond employment in imagining the futures of ‘surplus populations’ no longer needed by labour markets. These new imaginaries include radically expanded forms of redistribution, such as unconditional cash transfers or universal basic income. But what are the views of the ‘surplus populations’ themselves? This article uses ethnographic research in an informal settlement in South Africa to understand why the unemployed or precariously employed poor are themselves often reluctant to delink labour and income. In particular, we focus on the discursive use of ‘laziness’ by urban unemployed young men. The varied (and often contradictory) ways in which these men employ the laziness discourse sheds light on the logics linking waged work and money in our informants’ social imaginaries. It illuminates the underlying contradictions and complexities of such logics, including those of gender, relational obligations, expectations of citizenship, and the inevitable tensions between aspirational hopes and economic realities. To begin thinking ‘beyond the proper job’, to use Ferguson and Li's phrase, we must unravel and understand such nuanced logics that continue to bind together hard work, deservingness and cash – even for those left out of labour markets.


2021 ◽  
pp. 734-756
Author(s):  
Daniela Casale ◽  
Dorrit Posel ◽  
Jacqueline Mosomi

Abstract: This chapter provides an overview of women’s participation in the post-apartheid South African economy. It documents rising labour-force participation among women, as well as an increase in the share of total and high-skilled employment held by women. However, it also highlights some of the persistent challenges, among them that women’s labour-force participation, access to (high-skilled) employment, and earnings remain well below men’s using the most recent labour force data available. A key constraint to women’s success in the labour market is the additional responsibility they face in the home. The chapter uses data from various sources to show that women retain primary responsibility for the household and the provision of care in South Africa. Finally, attention is drawn to how the Covid-19 crisis has not only exposed the value of this unpaid labour to society, but also the difficulty of performing this work alongside the demands of paid work.


2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Tsampiras

AbstractThis article focuses on the micro-narratives of two individuals whose responses to AIDS were mediated by their sexual identity, AIDS activism and the political context of South Africa during a time of transition. Their experiences were also mediated by well-established metanarratives about AIDS and ‘homosexuality’ created in the USA and the UK which were transplanted and reinforced (with local variations) into South Africa by medico-scientific and political leaders.The nascent process of writing South African AIDS histories provides the opportunity to record responses to AIDS at institutional level, reveal the connections between narratives about AIDS and those responses, and draw on the personal stories of those who were at the nexus of impersonal official responses and the personal politics of AIDS. This article records the experiences of Dennis Sifris, a physician who helped establish one of the first AIDS clinics in South Africa and emptied the dance floors, and Pierre Brouard, a clinical psychologist who was involved in early counselling, support and education initiatives for HIV-positive people, and counselled people about dying, and then about living. Their stories show how, even within government-aligned health care spaces hostile to gay men, they were able to provide support and treatment to people; benefited from international connections with other gay communities; and engaged in socially subversive activities. These oral histories thus provide otherwise hidden insights into the experiences of some gay men at the start of an epidemic that was initially almost exclusively constructed on, and about, gay men’s bodies.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adele Berndt ◽  
Jane P. Wayland

Purpose – Locally authored textbooks are used at tertiary South African institutions to assist in marketing research studies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the readability of locally authored marketing research textbooks in South Africa and compare them with international (USA) texts. Design/methodology/approach – South African marketing research textbooks (authored locally) used at South African institutions were identified. Electronic versions of the textbooks were used and analysed using accepted readability formulae. The same procedure was used with texts produced in the USA and the findings of each were compared. Findings – The South Africa texts scored higher on the Flesch Reading Ease score than US texts, which links to the target audience of these books (undergraduate students), while also being cognisant of the reading skills of the target audience but their score still describes them as “difficult”. Research limitations/implications – The original formulae and theory tend to be dated, though there are recent studies into readability in other areas of business studies. There are also those that question the applicability of readability formulae in the tertiary environment. Practical implications – Instructors need to ensure that material is at a suitable reading level to maximise the student's learning. For publishers and authors, this means that the examples and illustrations used need to be linked to the context in which the student lives and functions, and not just focus on the English used in the text. Originality/value – While studies have been conducted into the readability of US textbooks, there is little published research into the readability of regional marketing research textbooks in other contexts to facilitate comparison.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
JHvH De Wet ◽  
Y. Erasmus

Purpose: The aim of this study was to test whether findings by Johnson and Soenen (2003) regarding indicators of successful companies in the USA also apply to South African JSE-listed companies. Problem investigated: To date, no South African study has tried to determine the indicators of the financial success of local companies specifically along the lines of Johnson and Soenen's (2003) study. Determining whether the indicators found to be most highly significant in the US study also apply in South Africa would constitute valuable information in the South African context. Approach: The study tested the significance of the linear relationships between possible indicators of financial success and three measures of financial success for South African companies and compared them to the results of the US study. Findings: The findings revealed that the relationships are far less significant for South African companies. Value of research: The study highlighted the fact that indicators of financial success for US companies are not necessarily contributors to the success of South African listed companies and that models developed in different environments should therefore be used with caution when applied in South Africa. Conclusion: Further studies need to be undertaken in order to identify the most significant South African indicators of corporate financial success.


2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 485
Author(s):  
Mareli Dippenaar

The objective of the study was to compare the tax instruments (both incentives and disincentives) applied in selected developing countries (four BRICS countries, namely South Africa, China, Brazil and India) to reduce their emissions from electricity generation, in an attempt to identify areas for possible improvement or expansion in South Africa. Increased renewable energy, energy efficiency and research and development relating to these fields can contribute to the reduction of emissions resulting from electricity generation. A number of similar tax incentives were identified in the countries, the majority of which appear to be more beneficial in the comparative countries than in South Africa. It could be worth considering improving some of the existing incentives in South Africa to be more beneficial to taxpayers. In addition, a number of tax instruments that are applied in some of the comparative countries, were identified and suggested for consideration by the South African government.


2020 ◽  
pp. 155-159
Author(s):  
J Markram

Unintended pregnancies are very common and it is estimated that almost 45% of all pregnancies in 2011 in the USA were not planned. In South Africa the situation could even be worse as it is common knowledge that we have a very high teenage pregnancy rate. It puts the already overburdened health system under enormous pressure.


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