The Limits of “Good Law”: Civil Society Regulation in South Africa and Ethiopia

At the end of apartheid, the South African government adopted laws regulating civil society that are widely seen as “good” laws: laws designed to encourage and facilitate a thriving civil society sector. In 2019 the Ethiopian government repealed the repressive, decade-old Charities and Societies Proclamation and replaced it with a much more open and permissive regulatory system, also aimed at facilitating a thriving civil society sector. This article compares South Africa's post-apartheid civil society organization (CSO) laws with Ethiopia's 2019 law, to examine the different and overlapping ways in which these regimes attempt to advance the interests of CSOs against an historical background of state oppression. In doing so, it examines what “good” regulation of CSOs constitutes in practice and finds that there are significant limits to the effectiveness of regulatory change in addressing the many, complex problems CSOs face, especially in the wake of political and legal oppression.

Implementation of Big Data Analytics for Government Enterprise

Within the South African government, there is an increasing amount of data. The problem is that the South African government is struggling to employ the concept of big data analytics (BDA) for the analysis of its big data. This could be attributed to know-how from both technical and nontechnical perspectives. Failure to implement BDA and ensure appropriate use hinders government enterprises and agencies in their drive to deliver quality service. A government enterprise was selected and used as a case in this study primarily because the concept of BDA is new to many South African government departments. Data was collected through in-depth interviews. From the analysis, four factors—knowledge, process, differentiation, and skillset—that can influence implementation of BDA for government enterprises were revealed. Based on the factors, a set of criteria in the form of a model was developed.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Environmental Education Programmes in Promoting Sustainable Living in Secondary Schools

Environmental education has been contemplated as the field of study enabling people to live a sustainable livelihood. In recent years, the South African government took an initiative to integrate Environmental Education into all learning areas or subjects. Despite such inclusion, a gap still exists between what is learned in class and what learners are actually doing in their daily activities. Alexander and Poyyamoli, (2014: 1) suggest that Environmental Education is an essential advancement to encourage learners to save, protect and improve the local environment. As a result, the present paper seeks to examine the effectiveness of environmental education programmes in enforcing sustainability behaviours in school children and how it fosters the acquisition of knowledge and understanding, skills, attitude and behaviors compatible to sustainability. The paper employed sustainable indicators as an instrument to evaluation the effectiveness of environmental education programmes in promoting sustainable livelihood. Questionnaires were distributed to teachers, principals and learners from twenty schools in the district. Participants were subjected to pre-test, innovative sustainable living programmes, and post-test assessment. The results of the pre-test portrayed a gap of learners' knowledge, skills and attitude towards their environment, whereas the post-test results confirmed that EE promotes sustainable living when forged with EE programmes.

TAXATION OF HOLDING COMPANIES IN THE NETHERLANDS: A SOUTH AFRICAN OBSERVATION

The South African government has expressed an intention to market itself as a gateway to investment in Africa. This will be achieved inter alia by redesigning certain aspects of the tax laws in order to encourage investment into South Africa in the form of headquarter companies as a special kind of holding companies. The Netherlands has over time adjusted its tax regime to achieve the same goal, viz, to attract holding companies for investment into European countries and globally. Specifically, the Dutch participation exemption and the advance-tax ruling system have been hailed as the key tax instruments that are instrumental in attracting foreign residents to setup holding companies in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the intentional absence of various tax instruments such as controlled foreign-company provisions and exchange-control regulations further enhance the Netherlands’ suitability to host holding companies. In light of the South African government’s intentions to attract holding companies, it is important to study the Dutch system applicable to holding companies to see what attributes, if any, South Africa could also adopt.

TRANSFORMATION OF GOVERNANCE IN STATE-OWNED COMPANIES: THE CASE OF SOUTH AFRICA AS A DEVELOPING COUNTRY

The basis of this article is an article published by Thomas (2012) whose objective was to track over a two-year period the performance of five strategic South African state-owned enterprises with regards to issues of governance. These enterprises were ESKOM, South African Airways (SAA), South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Telkom, and Transnet. The paper revealed that there were serious transgressions in these entities and recommendations were made to address these. The aim of this article therefore was to establish whether or not the transgressions reported by Thomas are still happening within these entities. The data was collected from the 2014/2015, 2015/2016, 2016/2017, and 2017/2018 financial reports of these entities. The study revealed that the transgressions are still taking place. With regards to issues of sustainability SAA and SABC continue to make loses, with SAA continuing to be bailed out by the South African government against the will of the South African general public. Fruitless and wasteful expenditure increased in all the five entities mentioned above and no serious action has been taken by the South African government to hold the people responsible accountable. While Telkom, Transnet and Eskom were making profits these profits are not at the envisaged level.

The Views of Public Service Managers on the Implementation of National Health Insurance in Primary Care

Background The South African government is implementing National Health Insurance as a monopsony health care financing mechanism to drive the country towards Universal Health Coverage. Strategic purchasing, with separation of funder, purchaser and provider, underpins this initiative. The NHI plans contracting units for primary healthcare services to function as independent sub-district purchasers and District Health Management Offices to support and monitor these contracting units. This decentralised governance model to the operational unit of primary healthcare, the heartbeat of any universal healthcare system, is critical to programme success. The views of district-level managers, who are at the centre of the planned phased rollout will shed light on current policy implementation.ObjectivesThis is a qualitative study to explore district and sub-district managerial views on National Health Insurance and its implementation. Methods Purposive sampling was used to identify key respondents from a major urban district in Gauteng, South Africa, for participation in exploratory in-depth interviews. This study employed framework analysis within MaxQDA software for robust thematic analysis. Results Managers viewed National Health Insurance as a social and moral imperative but lacked clarity and insight into the National Health Insurance Bill and relevant implementation strategies. The majority of respondents had not received any engagement or had the opportunity to engage in policy formulation. District managers highlighted several pitfalls in current organisational operations. National and provincial government continue to function in a detached and rigid top-down hierarchy. The voices of coalface managers and workers, who live the reality of South African healthcare service provision, go unheard and unengaged. The findings of this study dishearteningly echo lessons already learned around established pillars of universal healthcare implementation such as human resources, multi-lateral stakeholder engagement and collaboration, devolution of governance with empowerment and capacitation of district managers. These findings imply that the South African Government has failed to anticipate and address these challenges and raises questions around reflective and experiential practices of the South African government. Conclusion It appears that strategic purchasing is not being operationalised in PHC. NHI policy implementation appears trapped in a rigid top-down hierarchy. District managers need to be engaged and capacitated to operationalise the planned decentralised purchasing-provision function of NHI.

Carbon tax to lower emissions: the likely impact of carbon emissions tax on households in South Africa

The South African government, along with other countries, has signed the Paris Agreement to commit to lowering carbon dioxide emissions. This has led to the introduction of carbon tax in different countries to combat global warming. The Mexican government was the first to introduce carbon tax amongst the emerging economies back in 2014, while the Argentine government implemented carbon tax in January 2018. The South African government followed suite and introduced carbon tax effective 5 June 2019. Households are expected, however, to be weighed down by the levy as the carbon fuel levy will be implemented at 9 and 10 cents per litre on petrol and diesel respectively. The impact on strained households’ income is expected to emanate from the already high fuel prices, which have been on a rising trajectory since the beginning of 2019.

Ethnicity, Tribalism, and Xenophobia in a South African Rural-Based University

The South African government has lobbied institutions of higher learning to recruit academics from across Africa to address the challenge of shortage of skills. Some universities have indeed exploited this opportunity. However, it has emerged that these nationals get to face unbearable anti-social behavior from the locals. Among others, these expatriates contend incidences of tribal-ethnic tensions and xenophobia. Multiple theories were adopted to assist the analysis. The results revealed that there was evidence of tribalism, ethnicity, and incited xenophobia at this university. Furthermore, the study found that the acts of tribalism and ethnicity cut across the university community. The study revealed that deaneries and departments reflected ethnic-tribal orientations depending on the tribes of the respective incumbents in those sections. The university should recognise that it has become a space of cultural diversity where people should be recognized outside the ethnic and tribal framework of locality.

Implementation of Big Data Analytics for Government Enterprise

Within the South African government, there is an increasing amount of data. The problem is that the South African government is struggling to employ the concept of big data analytics (BDA) for the analysis of its big data. This could be attributed to know-how from both technical and nontechnical perspectives. Failure to implement BDA and ensure appropriate use hinders government enterprises and agencies in their drive to deliver quality service. A government enterprise was selected and used as a case in this study primarily because the concept of BDA is new to many South African government departments. Data was collected through in-depth interviews. From the analysis, four factors—knowledge, process, differentiation, and skillset—that can influence implementation of BDA for government enterprises were revealed. Based on the factors, a set of criteria in the form of a model was developed.

Who is responsible for protecting my health during the COVID- 19 pandemic?

Since the report of the first COVID-19 infected person in South Africa, COVID-19 moved from being a distant threat to a new reality overnight. Metaphorically, COVID-19 could be described as rain, and in order to be protected one would need to stand under an umbrella. The fundamental question that stems from this is who is holding this protective umbrella? Is the government holding the umbrella or are we holding the umbrella? In this article/commentary/perspective, we briefly discuss the responsibility of the South African government and the individual during this global pandemic, the reasoning behind the implementation of lockdown and the consequences thereof. We conclude that both government and citizens need to cooperatively take responsibility and work together to fight COVID-19. The protective umbrella needs to be held by both government and by ourselves.