Suchergebnisse

While South Africa has been the chosen host country for over 1,2 million asylum seekers/refugees it has at the same time, been struggling to address the needs of its own people who are still trapped in poverty with little prospects of employment. This limited exploratory, qualitative study was undertaken in Cape Town with a purposive sample of 21 key personnel from various NPOs providing a service to asylum seekers/refugees. Individual in-depth face to face interviews were carried out and the main findings were: Some of the officials at the Department of Home Affairs, health personnel, landlords, school principals, employers, bank officials and police officers were prejudicial in their practices towards asylum seekers/ refugees. The major constraints experienced by NPOs in this study were linked to a lack of funding and minimal government support, strained relationship with the Department of Home Affairs and difficulties in accessing refugees. And finally, the strategies adopted by these NPOs included networking with other service providers, engaging in advocacy, raising community awareness and liaising with government. Thus, more focused intervention strategies are needed to build social cohesion, address prejudices which fuels xenophobic attacks and raise awareness/educate various sectors about refugee rights. Given this burgeoning global problem, social work education and training should include curriculum content on migrant issues. Furthermore, larger studies using mixed methodology approaches would yield more nuanced data and provide for more strategic interventions.

The new South Africa is attempting to create a sense of national identity at the very moment when cultural globalisation is questioning not only traditional identities and values but also those of the modern nation-state. Yet the major forces (labour, nationalist, women, democratic, church, liberal) for the creation of a new South Africa have for decades been engaged with the ideas and practices of international solidarity. This paper examines two of the more intellectual radical journals in South Africa - one labour/socialist ("South African Labour Bulletin") and one women's/feminist ("Agenda") - which have demonstrated their particular understandings of the international solidarity during the apartheid and transition period. (DÜI-Hff)

Prophetic mission praxis is increasingly becoming difficult in the democratic South Africa. This article unearths and analyses the prophetic role played by faith communities in South Africa during the apartheid regime. It focuses on different approaches adopted by each of the major faith communities in response to apartheid. The author categorises the role of faith communities into three viz; those that supported apartheid, those that rejected it and those that adopted what he refers to as quiet diplomacy with regards to apartheid. Apart from Christian faith communities, the author also analyses the role played by other faith communities such as Islam and African Traditional Religions. Having this in mind, the author looks at the current situation with regards to the prophetic role of faith communities in the democratic South Africa and thereafter proposes a way-forward for a relevant prophetic mission praxis.

As in many other parts of the world, South Africa is witnessing the emergence of new forms of the family that are replacing the traditional family where two adults of different gender fulfil socially constructed roles and responsibilities. The South African government has established a school-based programme to support Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) in schools. The aim of this qualitative study was to determine the effectiveness of this programme within eThekwini Municipality in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal. The study found that the socioeconomic challenges associated with the escalating number of OVC are both structural and systemic with profound consequences. The school system fulfils the traditional role of the family by providing psychosocial care and support for OVC to build resilience; influencing family dynamics and calling for a re-think of the configuration and understanding of family. A conceptual framework is presented to foster a system which validates the school-based programme as a new form of the family for OVC. Ultimately, the changing function and structure of the family in contemporary society demonstrate that a paradigm shift is required to embrace the nexus between the school, family and community.

Developing countries share many common challenges in addressing current and future climate risks. A key barrier to managing these risks is the limited availability of accessible, reliable and relevant weather and climate information. Despite continued investments in Earth System Modelling, and the growing provision of climate services across Africa and India, there often remains a mismatch between available information and what is needed to support on-the-ground decision-making. In this paper, we outline the range of currently available information and present examples from Africa and India to demonstrate the challenges in meeting information needs in different contexts. A review of literature supplemented by interviews with experts suggests that externally provided weather and climate information has an important role in building on local knowledge to shape understanding of climate risks and guide decision-making across scales. Moreover, case studies demonstrate that successful decision-making can be achieved with currently available information. However, these successful examples predominantly use daily, weekly and seasonal climate information for decision-making over short time horizons. Despite an increasing volume of global and regional climate model simulations, there are very few clear examples of long-term climate information being used to inform decisions at sub-national scales. We argue that this is largely because the information produced and disseminated is often ill-suited to inform decision-making at the local scale, particularly for farmers, pastoralists and sub-national governments. Even decision-makers involved in long-term planning, such as national government officials, find it difficult to plan using decadal and multi-decadal climate projections because of issues around uncertainty, risk averseness and constraints in justifying funding allocations on prospective risks. Drawing on lessons learnt from recent successes and failures, a framework is proposed to help increase the utility and uptake of both current and future climate information across Africa and India.

Includes bibliographical references. ; Customary systems of marine resource governance have gained increasing attention internationally in the past three decades. Notwithstanding this, and despite the Constitutional recognition of customary governance and customary law in South Africa, the post-apartheid legislative reforms in the fisheries sector have failed to recognise customary systems of marine resource governance. Drawing on a case-study of the Dwesa-Cwebe community in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, this research aimed to describe and understand the customary marine resource governance system of this community and its relationship to living customary law. It explores how this customary system of marine resource governance has interfaced with statutory and other systems of law in the past and how it continues to develop in the current context. The findings from this research highlight the distinctive nature of the customary system of marine resource governance practiced by the community of Dwesa-Cwebe and their expressions of living customary law embedded in this governance system. The nature of this system is foundationally different to that of a Western statutory governance system. This customary system of governance has interacted with the statutory system for over a century, in part distorted by this system but retaining its integrity. In the context of the Constitutional recognition of customary systems of governance and customary law, this governance system now requires understanding and recognition in a new system of marine resource governance in South Africa. This thesis explores the contribution that this system of customary governance can make towards promoting socially just smallscale fisheries in South Africa. It argues that harmonisation of the statutory and customary system of marine resource governance demands an approach to governance theory and practice that is able to imagine an alternative 'ecology of governance'.

AbstractClimate change projections of increases in lightning activity are an added concern for lightning-prone countries such as South Africa. South Africa's high levels of poverty, lack of education, and awareness, as well as a poorly developed infrastructure, increase the vulnerability of rural communities to the threat of lightning. Despite the existence of national lightning networks, lightning alerts and warnings are not disseminated well to such rural communities. We therefore developed a community-based early warning system (EWS) to detect and disseminate lightning threats and alerts in a timely and comprehensible manner within Swayimane, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The system is composed of an electrical field meter and a lightning flash sensor with warnings disseminated via audible and visible alarms on site and with a remote server issuing short message services (SMSs) and email alerts. Twelve months of data (February 2018–February 2019) were utilized to evaluate the performance of the EWS's detection and warning capabilities. Diurnal variations in lightning activity indicated the influence of solar radiation, causing convective conditions with peaks in lightning activity occurring during the late afternoon and early evening (between 1400 and 2100) coinciding with students being released from school and when most workers return home. In addition to detecting the threat of lightning, the EWS was beneficial in identifying periods that exhibited above-normal lightning activity, with two specific lightning events examined in detail. Poor network signals in rural communities presented an initial challenge, delaying data transmission to the central server until rectified using multiple network providers. Overall, the EWS was found to disseminate reliable warnings in a timely manner.

Informed by a decoloniality lens and referencing motifs such as coloniality of power, knowledge, and being, this theoretical article analyses and problematises conflict, and reconstructs the experience of foreign and local prophets in South Africa. There is growing tension between foreign pastors and local pastors, with the former seemingly being popular because of performing &lsquo ; miracles,&rsquo ; huge followings, and, in some cases, through mafia tendencies, which ignite the notion that expelling them from South Africa can be a counter-hegemony strategy to deal with popularism and criminality. The articles respond to two questions in this article: What factors influence conflict between migrant and local prophets? and, how can the story of David and Jonathan be used as a starting point for collective engagement in a process to achieve peace and healing? The article ends with arguing that the Jonathanic theology of peace, if pursued by migrant and local prophetic movements in South Africa, can reconstruct the prophetic terrain and assist in facilitating a rehumanising process, in addition to enacting the ontological density that has been lost. The article ends by arguing that Jonathanic theology is doable and desirable as a sustainable solution for religious conflict in South Africa.