Brief Historical Review of Membrane Development and Membrane Applications in Wastewater Treatment in Southern Africa

1992 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. R. Botha ◽  
R. D. Sanderson ◽  
C. A. Buckley

Away back in 1953 few people in the world, let alone South Africa, knew or had heard about membrane desalination, but there was an increasing awareness that electrodialysis had considerable potential for the desalination of brackish water. In South Africa the development of the new gold fields in the northern Orange Free State and the problems posed by the presence of excessive volumes of very saline mine waters stimulated interest in desalination and the CSIR* in collaboration with the mining industry became involved in the development of the electrodialysis process. By 1959 the largest brackish desalination plant in the world had been built and commissioned. South Africans were thus in the forefront of this technology, even to the extent of making the required membranes locally. Our historical review of membrane development and the applications of membrane technology in Southern Africa encompasses both pressure- and voltage-driven processes. Examples of the pressure processes are microfiltration, ultrafiltration and charged membrane ultrafiltration or nanofiltration, and finally reverse osmosis with fixed and dynamically formed membranes. The voltage-drive processes considered are electrodialysis and electrodialysis reversal.

1979 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 24-29
Author(s):  
John Chettle

Henry Kissinger is supposed to have said that the situation in Southern Africa was the most complex in the world today, and I sometimes wonder which of us has more of a problem dealing with it–we South Africans in trying to solve the sometimes intractable dilemmas of a divided and heterogeneous society, or Americans in trying to work out what on earth is going on down there.


2018 ◽  
Vol 114 (9/10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanislaus Nnadih ◽  
Mike Kosch ◽  
Peter Martinez ◽  
Jozsef Bor

Sprites are the optical signatures of electrical discharges in the mesosphere triggered by large lightning strikes associated with thunderstorms. Since their discovery in the late 1980s, sprites have been observed extensively around the world, although very few observations of sprites from Africa have been documented in the literature. In this paper, we report the first ground-based recorded observations of sprites from South Africa. In 2 out of the 22 nights of observations (11 January and 2 February 2016), about 100 sprite elements were recorded from Sutherland in the Northern Cape, comprising different morphologies (carrot (55%), carrot/column (11%), unclassified (21%), column (13%)). The sprites were triggered by positive cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, which had an average peak value of ~74 kA and were observed at distances from ~400 km to 800 km. The estimated charge moment change of the lightning discharges associated with these events was in agreement with the threshold for dielectric breakdown of the mesosphere and correlates well with the observed sprite brightness.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan A. Boesak

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, 50 years ago on 04 April 1968, has been recalled in the United States with memorial services, conferences, public discussions and books. In contrast, the commemoration in 2017 of the death of Albert John Mvumbi Luthuli, 50 years ago on December 1967, passed almost unremarked. That is to our detriment. Yet, these two Christian fighters for freedom, in different contexts, did not only have much in common, but they also left remarkably similar and equally inspiring legacies for South Africa, the United States and the world in the ways they lived their lives in complete faith commitment to ideals and ways of struggle that may guide us in the ongoing struggles to make the world a more just, peacable and humane place. For South African reflections on our ethical stance in the fierce, continuing struggles for justice, dignity and the authenticity of our democracy, I propose that these two leaders should be considered in tandem. We should learn from both. This article engages Martin Luther King Jr’s belief in the ‘inescapable network of mutuality’, applies it to the struggle for freedom in South Africa and explores the ways in which South Africans can embrace these ethical ideals in facing the challenges of post-liberation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 569-586
Author(s):  
Peya Mushelenga

This article discusses aspects of Namibia’s foreign policy principles and how they impact on the values of democracy, and issue of peace and security in the region. The article will focus on the attainment of peace in Angola, democratisation of South Africa, and security situations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Madagascar and Lesotho. The main question of this article is: To what extent has Namibia realised the objectives encapsulated in her foreign policy principles of striving for international peace and security and promote the values of democracy in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region? The assumption is that though relatively a newly established state, Namibia has made her contribution towards democracy, peace and security in the Southern Africa region and the world at large.


1988 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Cobbe

Lesotho has long had the distinction of being one of the more anomalous states not only in Southern Africa, but in the world. It is entirely surrounded by another country, the Republic of South Africa. It is ethnically and linguistically very homogeneous. It is a monarchy. Physically, the lowest point in Lesotho is higher, in vertical distance above sea level, that that in any other country. Its economy is marked by some extraordinary paradoxes, such as agriculture being the main economic activity of the bulk of the labour force albeit the origin of a small fraction of total income, imports enomously exceeding exports and being larger than domestic output, and fewer citizens working for cash inside the country than outside.


Jus Cogens ◽  
2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Fowkes

AbstractWhat is the relevance of the Indian case for South Africa? And what should South Africans, and the rest of the world, make of the claim in Madhav Khosla’s India’s Founding Moment that we should recognize India as ‘the’ paradigm case for modern constitutional democracy? The constitutional projects of India and South Africa are naturally connected, but Khosla’s book helps to bring out what is perhaps the most important of the connections. Both are founded on an insistently democratic constitutionalism, in places where most inhabitants had long been told they were not suited or ready for democracy. Both display the conviction that boldly giving the vote to all, in these circumstances, is a powerful way to construct a democracy. This idea is crucial for understanding many aspects of both constitutions. This makes India a natural paradigm case for South Africa and many others. The stronger claim, that it is ‘the’ paradigm case and should succeed the United States to this status, can become more complicated once one tests it out globally (like the US claim). Finland and Ireland are especially strong and earlier examples of what Khosla sees as ground-breaking in India. Latin America’s somewhat different post-colonial trajectory makes India a more imperfect paradigm there. But that said, treating India and its founding as paradigmatic may well be the single best step to take for a more balanced view of the constitutional world, and this book’s elegant erudition makes it a real scholarly pleasure to do so.


2010 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 687-690
Author(s):  
Dilip Menon

South Africans see themselves as a nation that loves sport, but with the World Cup in football imminent, there appears to be a sense of exhaustion both in the media and among the population. One important reason is that football does not dominate the public imagination of sport, as cricket and rugby do. The game is played and loved in the black townships, the fortunes of African football-playing nations are followed devotedly, and players such as Didier Drogba have a larger-than-life standing in the country. But football has not become a metaphor for the nation, as rugby and cricket have become. Whether this reflects a racial affiliation alone is hard to get at, because the local team, Bafana (which could be genially translated as “the boys”), are eighty-eighth in the FIFA rankings, without a ghost of a chance of winning the Cup, while at rugby and cricket, South Africa are world beaters.


Author(s):  
Monique Marks ◽  
Jenny Fleming

Efforts by police organisations to unionise and to increase their social and labour rights is an international phenomenon, and one that is becoming  more vigorous in the Southern African region. However, many governments are wary of police unions and limit their rights, or refuse to recognise them at all. This gave impetus to the formation of the International Council of Police Representative Associations (ICPRA), in September 2006. Two of ICPRA’s aims are to assist and advise police unions all over the world and to provide the international police union movement with a voice for influencing policing futures. In South Africa, the Police and Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) is assisting police in the subregion and has become a symbol of what is possible for police even in repressive states. In a rapidly changing police labour environment, police unions have the capacity to confront existing (undemocratic) occupational cultures, to promote organisational accord and to forge positive reform.


Author(s):  
Seán Patrick Donlan

 This issue of the Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal (South Africa) sees the publication of a selection of articles derived from the Third International Congress of the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists (WSMJJ). That Congress was held at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel in the summer of 2011. It reflected a thriving Society consolidating its core scholarship on classical mixed jurisdictions (Israel, Louisiana, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Quebec, Scotland, and South Africa) while reaching to new horizons (including Cyprus, Hong Kong and Macau, Malta, Nepal, etc). This publication reflects in microcosm the complexity of contemporary scholarship on mixed and plural legal systems. This complexity is, of course, well-understood by South African jurists whose system is derived both from the dominant European traditions as well as from African customary systems, including both those that make up part of the official law of the state as well as those non-state norms that continue to be important in the daily lives of many South Africans.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document