scholarly journals THE STRATEGIC COMPETITIVENESS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN MINING INDUSTRY IN THE AGE OF THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Steven Zulu ◽  
Tinus Pretorius ◽  
Elma van der Lingen
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Operating Costs ◽  
Financial Sustainability ◽  
The South ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Innovation Strategies

The South African mining industry has a history of a range of major challenges, including high operating costs that have had a negative impact on mines’ profitability and financial sustainability. The advent of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies has opened up new opportunities for the mining industry, among other things, to improve its cost-effectiveness and future competitiveness. Most South African mining companies have begun to adopt Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies; however, quite a large number of their projects have not been successful. The main objective of the paper is to conduct an integrative literature review to determine why some of the companies in the minerals, mining, and processing industry have not been successful in implementing Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies. The findings of the study outline areas of organisational and technological capability on which the industry could focus when developing future innovation strategies.

scholarly journals THE RELEVANCE AND IMPACT OF SOUTH AFRICAN LABOUR LAW IN THE MINING SECTOR: A FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION PERSPECTIVE

Obiter ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Faheemah Karolia-Hussain ◽  
Elmarie Fourie
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
South African ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The South ◽  
Mining Sector ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
The Impact

The mining sector is one of the contributors to the South African economy and improving productivity is important if it is to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Thus, the technologies that will be created by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) are important to the mining sector. However, if this leads to mining companies being less reliant on labour, then these changes will have a negative impact on the jobs of mineworkers.This article looks at the legal framework that governs the mining sector in South Africa in the context of 4IR. The Labour Relations Act (LRA) provides for collective bargaining and strike action, but collective bargaining in the South African mining sector is failing and has not produced the desired result. Strike action has become more common and strikes are often violent and unprotected. Secondly, occupational health and safety risks are present in the mines despite protective legislation – namely, the Mine Health and Safety Act (MHSA). Workers experience harsh working conditions underground. Lastly, workers’ skills need to be developed if they are to retain their jobs in 4IR. In terms of legislation, workers should receive training if such training is available for their sector. Consideration urgently needs to be given to the impact on and relevance of 4IR to the labour legal framework in the mining sector. Furthermore, changes to the law in readiness for 4IR and its impact on the workforce in the mines should be considered.

scholarly journals A South African Public Law Perspective on Digitalisation in the Health Sector

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Firoz Cachalia ◽  
Jonathan Klaaren
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
South African ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Public Law ◽  
The South ◽  
Working Paper ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution

We explored some of the questions posed by digitalisation in an accompanying working paper focused on constitutional theory: Digitalisation, the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and the Constitutional Law of Privacy in South Africa. In that paper, we asked what legal resources are available in the South African legal system to respond to the risk and benefits posed by digitalisation. We argued that this question would be best answered by developing what we have termed a 'South African public law perspective'. In our view, while any particular legal system may often lag behind, the law constitutes an adaptive resource that can and should respond to disruptive technological change by re-examining existing concepts and creating new, more adequate conceptions. Our public law perspective reframes privacy law as both a private and a public good essential to the functioning of a constitutional democracy in the era of digitalisation. In this working paper, we take the analysis one practical step further: we use our public law perspective on digitalisation in the South African health sector. We do so because this sector is significant in its own right – public health is necessary for a healthy society – and also to further explore how and to what extent the South African constitutional framework provides resources at least roughly adequate for the challenges posed by the current 'digitalisation plus' era. The theoretical perspective we have developed is certainly relevant to digitalisation’s impact in the health sector. The social, economic and political progress that took place in the 20th century was strongly correlated with technological change of the first three industrial revolutions. The technological innovations associated with what many are terming ‘the fourth industrial revolution’ are also of undoubted utility in the form of new possibilities for enhanced productivity, business formation and wealth creation, as well as the enhanced efficacy of public action to address basic needs such as education and public health.

scholarly journals Emerging response-abilities: a reflection on the 2019 SOTL in the South conference

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Shashi Cullinan Cook
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Learning Context ◽  
The South ◽  
Scholarship Of Teaching ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Creative Commons ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
University Of Technology

The second biennial ‘SOTL in the South’ conference was held at the Central University of Technology (CUT) in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in October 2019. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL) is gaining increasing traction in South African universities, and this conference was a collaboration between the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at CUT, and SOTL in the South. The theme of this conference was ‘Creating space for Southern narratives on Teaching and Learning’ and the keynote speakers were Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Joanne Vorster, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Catherine Manathunga. In this piece I reflect on the conference and identify some of the narratives that emerged from it. I share some of the discussions by keynote speakers and presenters which help to expand discourses on the interconnectedness of decolonisation, and economic, social and environmental justice, and I explain why I look to ‘Southern SOTL’ for guidance in negotiating contradictions in my teaching and learning context. In this piece I consider the response-abilities of higher educators to contribute to these urgent matters.Key words: SOTL in the South, research in teaching and learning, global South, north-south, decolonisation, 4IR, fourth industrial revolution, response-abilityHow to cite this article:Cullinan Cook, S. 2020. Emerging response-abilities: a reflection on the 2019 SOTL in the South conference. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. v. 4, n. 1, p. 69-85. April 2020. Available at: https://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=135This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

scholarly journals The emergence of an education policy dispositif in South Africa: An analysis of educational discourses associated with the fourth industrial revolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aslam Fataar
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Research Association ◽  
The South ◽  
African Education ◽  
Generic Skills ◽  
Fourth Industrial Revolution ◽  
South African Education ◽  
The Impact

The notion of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) has recently entered the public and policy domain in South Africa. It has rapidly found resonance in policy discourse and the popular media. It has also entered the language of educational policy and institutions. The impact of 4IR on educational thinking and practice has hitherto not featured in academic discussion on education in South Africa except for a keynote plenary session at the annual conference of the South African Education Research Association (SAERA) in Durban (October 2019). The South African Education Deans Forum recently published a call for the submission of chapters for a book on teacher education, 4IR, and decolonisation. In this article, I develop an address that I delivered at the SAERA 2019 conference as part of the plenary panel. The article consists of four sections. The first offers a consideration of the entry of 4IR discourse into the educational imaginary. I suggest in this section that 4IR discourse has installed a socio-technical imaginary in South Africa's unequal educational dispensation. The second section concentrates on the construction of educational governance. Based on research on 4IR-related policy making, I discuss the policy directions taken by the Department of Higher Education and Training and the Department of Basic Education in giving effect to ways of engaging with 4IR in each of their domains. The third section features a discussion of the impact of technological disruption on society, the economy and education. The final section presents a discussion of the emerging educational architectures in the 4IR and a critical consideration of the curriculum and pedagogical dimensions of 4IR, which, I argue, are informed by an orientation that prioritises the acquisition of generic skills. Sidelining knowledge and concepts as central to the structuring of the curriculum, a generic skills approach succumbs to what might be called a knowledge blindness that holds pernicious consequences for epistemic access in South Africa.

scholarly journals IV.—The Somabula Diamond Field of Rhodesia

1906 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 459-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. P. Mennell
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
The South ◽  
New Era ◽  
Centre Of Gravity ◽  
Diamond Mining ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of The South ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Important Branch

The last few years have inaugurated a new era in the history of the South African diamond deposits, inasmuch as rich bodies of diamantiferous ground have been located at great distances from localities which have previously been worked successfully. The group of which the Premier Mine is the best known member is the most striking example of this extension of area, but the centre of gravity of the diamond-mining industry seems to be gradually shifting northward, and the opening up of the interesting deposit of the Somabula Forest, so far north of any other known occurrence, foreshadows the development of an important branch of the industry in the Cinderella of the South African provinces, as Rhodesia has been not inaptly termed.

Postcolonial Liberation: Decolonizing Biblical Studies in the South African Postcolony

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald O. West
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The South ◽  
Biblical Hermeneutics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
African Black ◽  
History Of ◽  
Land Economics ◽  
The 1960S

Liberation biblical interpretation and postcolonial biblical interpretation have a long history of mutual constitution. This essay analyzes a particular context in which these discourses and their praxis have forged a third conversation partner: decolonial biblical interpretation. African and specifically South African biblical hermeneutics are the focus of reflections in this essay. The South African postcolony is a “special type” of postcolony, as the South African Communist Party argued in the 1960s. The essay charts the characteristics of the South African postcolony and locates decolonial biblical interpretation within the intersections of these features. Race, culture, land, economics, and the Bible are forged in new ways by contemporary social movements, such as #FeesMustFall. South African biblical studies continues to draw deeply on the legacy of South African black theology, thus reimagining African biblical studies as decolonial African biblical studies—a hybrid of African liberation and African postcolonial biblical interpretation.

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