Suchergebnisse

Executive turnovers during September 2003 and September 2004 were moderate, as was the case the preceding year. The reason for this is that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has made it a rule to limit change of cabinet members (Inoguchi, 2004). The Liberal Democratic Party's Presidential election took place in September 2003, giving approval to Koizumi to continue without rival candidates. Koizumi reshuffled his cabinet on September 22, with key cabinet ministers kept intact. They included Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, Welfare and Labor Minister Chikara Sakaguchi, Economics, Finance and Monetary Affairs Minister Heizo Takenaka. Besides a portfolio to each of the two coalition partners, Koizumi saw to it: (1) that the execution of his structural reform would be spearheaded by a non-compromising reformist academic, Takenaka; (2) that faction-based appointments be reduced to a minimum by appointing those who are not tainted by old-fashioned factional affiliations and ties, i.e., three non-parliamentary members and four female ministers.

The paper starts with a brief autobiographical reflective narration of my own experience as asocial worker. The purpose is to demonstrate and contextualise the interaction, change andinherent ambivalences in relation to my own experience of post-qualifying learning. I qualifiedas a social worker in 1978. My first employment was with the Department of Social Welfare(Coloured Affairs) in the Western Cape. During the first week of my induction I wasintroduced to two important people, my supervisor and the "In-service training manager"(ISTM). My supervisor was responsible for supervising my day to day workload. The ISTMwas exclusively responsible for guiding and testing me on the content of a thick lever-arch filecalled the in-service training manual. The latter contained all the relevant legislation, policiesand departmental procedures that I had to study and know before becoming a permanentlyemployed social worker and public servant. Every Friday I would religiously go to the inservicetraining guru to be tested on the contents of the file. The ISTM was also kept informedby my supervisor about my performance on the job and would comment on my progress asindicated by my "stats". The latter was a record of how many clients I had seen and what theresults achieved on each of these were. This process would continue until the in-servicetraining was satisfactorily completed.

Der Autor stellt neue Veröffentlichungen vor, die anläßlich des 50. Jahrestages des deutschen Überfalls auf Polen am 1.9.1939 erschienen sind. Angesichts der großen Zahl von Neuerscheinungen wählt er nur einige aus, um damit eine grobe Orientierung zu ermöglichen. Es handelt sich hierbei sowohl um Aufsatzsammlungen als auch um Monographien, die sich mit der Entwicklung in Deutschland und anderen Staaten vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, mit der deutschen Besatzung in Polen, mit Stalins Plänen vor dem deutschen Angriff auf die UdSSR sowie mit dem deutschen Angriff auf die Sowjetunion befassen, ferner um den Band von R. Giordano über die "Pläne der Nazis nach dem Endsieg". Der Autor kommt bei Betrachtung der Veröffentlichungen zu dem Schluß, daß sich ein weiterführender Forschungsschwerpunkt abzuzeichnen beginnt, dessen Ziel es ist, "die Rekonstruktion von Motiven, subjektiven und objektiven Handlungsspielräumen sowie wechselseitigen Beeinflussungen" zu erarbeiten. (AG)

As a consequence of the fundamental reconstruction and development processes, including alarge-scale macroeconomic stabilisation strategy, South Africa's economic growth hasconsistently averaged 3% over the last decade. It is expected that the government's newAccelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) will increase theeconomic growth rate from its current level to 4.5% by 2010 and 6% by 2014 (Yemek, 2006).Yet with the majority of its citizens living in poverty (with less than $1 per day), South Africaremains one of the most unequal societies in the world (Statistics South Africa, 2004).Although there has been some improvement over the last decade, the stubborn legacy ofapartheid persists and can be seen in the concentration of poverty and underdevelopment inblack communities. Twenty four million of South Africa's population of 45 million are blackfemales who live below the poverty datum line (Statistics South Africa, 2004). Using theexpanded definition of unemployment, Statistics South Africa (2004) estimated that 41% ofthe economically active population was unemployed in 2004. There is, therefore, growingconcern that the strategies employed thus far to raise the unacceptably low standards of livingof South Africa's vulnerable populations, who continue to lack access to basic services andemployment opportunities, are lagging far behind what is needed.

Numerous civil society organisations as well as the National Children's Rights Committee(NCRC) and UNICEF supported South Africa's post-apartheid government to institutionalisechildren's rights as a fundamental pillar of the new democracy. Towards this end, in 1995 thegovernment ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Child (1989) (the CRC). Drawing onthis international standard, children's rights was enshrined in Section 28 of the SA Constitution(1996). Further to cover the particular vulnerabilities of African children, the government alsoratified the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (the ACRWC) in 2000.Collectively these instruments seek to ensure that children have a range of integrated political,civil, cultural and socio-economic rights. In addition to the general human rights to equality, abasic education and the right to dignity, children have additional socio-economic rights,including the right to family and parental care, or to appropriate alternative care when removedfrom their family setting; to basic nutrition, shelter, health care, social services and to beprotected from maltreatment, neglect, abuse and degradation. By ratifying the internationalchildren's rights instruments and through its national constitutional provisions for children'srights, the SA government accepted an obligation to put in place mechanisms to realise theserights. However, the nation made these laudable commitments within a context of the hugeresource and capacity challenges required for their implementation.