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The salience of universities in regional development has increased with the ascendancy of corporatization of public utilities, especially given the pre-eminence of the notion that these institutions create and enforce "learning regions" wherein knowledge generated is used for the enhancement of economic productivity and innovativeness. Under South Africa's state capitalism, most state-backed corporations have literally gobbled public funds, insisted on increased autonomy and behaved like private multinational companies, whilst their regional development impacts remained inconclusive. A reasonable geographic perspective should hold that, notwithstanding the effects of globalization, universities' regional development impacts are strongly "attenuated over space and distance". In this context, a democratic South Africa's restructuring of the higher education system should raise vexed questions of the regional development impacts of the former Bantu Universities. Given the significance of knowledge and research to regional development, this article concludes that Limpopo and Eastern Cape Province as well as Northern Cape and Mpumalanga Province, which are in the process of establishing their first universities, will continue to lag behind Western Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and North West Province. It argues that the heightened public financial support to former Bantu Universities will remain a public opportunity-cost because these institutions' orientation, as per their apartheid spatial-fix, is not amenable to the establishment of "learning regions". The article concludes that under state capitalism former Bantu Universities are denied their traditional contributions to the viability of informal businesses, simultaneously as their potential capacity to create and enforce "learning regions" remains virtually non-existent. Given the spatial-fix of the racially-inspired higher education landscape, the article concedes that corporatization of public utilities under democracy needs to be supplemented by deliberate state effort to build knowledge transfer networks with local and extra-local universities in a structure that deliberately embeds the less favoured regions and foster the spirit of innovation therein. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p863

This article posits that the BRICS set serves to create a "regional" business space for exclusive operations of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) of member states. Far from being forecast as leading emerging economies of future significant standing on the global stage, the BRICS of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is trapped in the binary-paralysis of private-public partnership governance. The article examines the BRICS set conditionalities and principles for conduct of international relations in order to demonstrate that member countries' continued reverence of state capitalism governance, manifested through SOEs "champions", will precipitate intra-set economic and political conflict in ways that perpetuate domestic political-economy of poverty and inequality. It argues that state capitalism, and a nuance hybrid of SOEs that are supported through public funds in order to operate on the global business platform in the same way as private multinational corporations that pursue commercial financial interests, does not serve societal goals of justice and equity. Given that the establishment of the BRICS is framed on the set being the centre of future global growth, consolidation of state capitalism and the nuance hybrid of SOEs imply that domestic poverty and inequality will continue unabated, as public investment share of education and health remains negligible. The article demonstrates that state capitalism and SOEs "champions" governance, is inherently biased towards greater public investment in industrial production rather than social objectives. It concludes that multidimensional and income poverty will continue to be intensive whilst inequality remains stark among the BRICS member states, whilst their cultural, historical and ideological diversities stimulate economic and political conflict in international relations. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n25p238

Abstract: Women constitute the majority of rural dwellers experiencing the worst effects of poverty while carrying the responsibility of securing a living for their households. Historically, rural women have practised a multiplicity of livelihoods that have always remained survivalist and less effective in generating cash income. However, well‐intended state interventions through Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) projects for women's empowerment have instead removed women from their practice of survivalist livelihoods without offering them the necessary enabling conditions to establish independent biographies for practice of 'modern' cash generating strategies. Based on a systematic sample of 177 households and interviews with women in Ga‐Ramogale, this article concludes that PAP projects have, rather than empowering women for sustainable participation in rural development, deepened their poverty and deprivation by enticing them away from the practice of livelihoods for which they had developed experience, skills and knowledge over years, and thereby effectively engendering increased reliance on dependency‐oriented livelihoods.

Discusses political and economic liberalization, focusing on neo-liberal agenda in Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR), New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), and foreign direct investments; policy options.

This article seeks to examine the association of the concept of governance of international relations and, by implication, human population migration, through the rigid practices of "sovereignty-state-territory triad" with the fomentation and exacerbation of societal stereotypes, attitudes and perceptions of xenophobia in Africa, in general, and South Africa, in particular. Ascriptions of the majority of population migration as "international" affirms the centrality of the operationalisation of the "sovereignty-state-territory triad" in understanding the fragmentary constructions of societal attitudes and perceptions of people resident in distinct geopolitical entities ascribed as national territories. State and non-state governance entrapments with this triad perpetuate societal stereotypes that are in concurrence with bordered-territories where populations described as citizens are stimulated to protect endowments and resources of the land against the perceived destruction associated with the conduct of the out-groups. Unsurprisingly, the theorisation of human population migration has equally been intricately involved with environmental conservation and securitisation of biodiversity that enables land dispossession of the vulnerable sections of the population through the Western economic narratives of "Peace Parks". Simultaneously in Southern Africa, the concept of African Renaissance, inescapably embedded with "cooperation and conflict" at all scales, has offered a buzzword to be realised through "Peace Parks" that have evidently failed to deliver reaffirmation of African cultures, continental emancipation and democratisation. The preeminence of societal stereotypes, attitudes and perceptions of xenophobia and violent abuses of African immigrants in South Africa provides vivid illustrations of the inconsistencies and non-linearity of concepts such as African Renaissance and "Peace Parks". This article asserts that measures for repairing the landscapes of xenophobia among Africans, especially in South Africa, will remain pipedreams if they are not embedded with adaptive governance designed to undermine the rigidities of the "sovereignty-state-territory triad", prevalent in the international relations.

Universities are by their origin controversial and contested public spaces, with perennially precarious relationships with the state and society. The South African University has not been an exception to this norm; and, political democratization necessitated its restructuring and transformation into learning organization. This article argues that the Department of Higher Education and Training's (DoHET's) 2008 interventions have ironically reinforced the triumph of managerialism over transformational leadership in the governance of the South African University. Reverence for managerialism and over-bureaucratization eroded the necessary public spaces for innovativeness, imaginativeness, risk-taking, application of common sense and experimentation required for the transformation of the South African University. The most vivid manifestation of the triumph of managerialism is in the DoHET's technocratic funding model for the South African University. The article concludes that the potential for transformational leadership has faced intractable governance dilemmas of a disabling environment that is diametrically opposed to qualities of charisma, inspiration, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration. It suggests that the present South African University yawns for re-humanize, democratization and collaborative strategies which place emphasis on personal relationships, cross-cultural communications, integration of heart and head as well as judicious mix of soft and hard tactics, given the historical legacies of apartheid and racial segregation. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n27p1655

The post-1994 General Elections ascendancy of the African National Congress (ANC) to state power entailed party evolution as a social system lest the curse of liberation movement popularity dislodgement with shift to ruling party politics. Transition from liberation movement to ruling political party is embedded with contradictions, paradoxes and contestations relating to organizational constitution with "individuals and assets as its elements" or "communications and actions". Evidently, the ruling ANC has increasingly become synonymous with internal squabbles rooted in personalities and power mongering for both party and state. Post-1994 ANC organizational evolution appeared to lack a complementary autopoietic layer that defines systems of communications and actions, away from the nostalgic principle of democratic discipline founded in the allopoietic character of individuals and assets. Consequently, the post-1994 ANC sustained the liberation movement legacy that compromises state governance qualities of responsiveness, effectiveness, accountability, enduring civic duty, inclusivity and service of public interest, because individuals and actions are non-reproducible. Armed with the modernizing project apparatus, former President Mbeki sought for a departure of the conduct of party and state presidency from conventional wisdom prescribed to by former President Mandela, thereby entrenching a dreaded culture of slate political party voting with the appendage of the promise of state resources control and power politics patronage. This article identifies the 2007 Polokwane Elective Conference of the ANC as an important turning point in this political party's anniversary "life story"; and, it concedes that the party has to consciously detest glorification of individuals and assets in order to evolve through communications and actions based on ideal political virtues, which would be transposed onto the state by instilling a sense of civic duty, shared ownership of state machinery and popular mobilization of the citizenry. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n15p630

This paper uses politico-social capital theorisation of the relationship between public trust and democracy in order to demonstrate the interdependence of the African National Congress' (ANC's) declining electoral fortunes and the increasing public trust deficits in South Africa's state, constitutional democracy and political institutions. As desktop-based research, the paper conducts literature survey to distils the relationship between public trust, as social capital, in institutions of society, and electoral performance and formation of societal leadership vacuum, within complexities of the political-economy and political culture and system such as those entrenched in South Africa under the ANC's 28-year rule. The paper analyses statistical evidence from Afrobarometer's 2022 survey about South Africans' public trust in state and political institutions from 2006 to 2021, as well as national, provincial and local government election results from the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) from 1994 to 2019, to corroborate its theoretical framing. It makes three findings, thus: there is a direct relationship between the ANC's declining electoral fortunes and the erosion of public trust in institutions of society; the ANC's 28-years of state governance has created an ominous societal leadership vacuum, setting South Africa's democracy on the precipice of civil strife; and, the ANC's declining electoral fortunes will persist into the foreseeable future because public trust is hard to regain and sustain once eroded.

This article explores theorisation that identifies the locus of South Africa's scorched-earth lived experiences in the fixation on scientific dogma and conceptual binaries as well as governance utopianisms, wherein the latter are derivatives of the former. It explores South African's lived experiences over the past 28 years in order to demonstrate that politicians' reverence for governance utopianism has failed to appreciate the unity of realities, facts, values, objectivities, subjectivities, permanences, fluxes and changes, which consist of complex intricacies that are not amenable to dogmatic "incontrovertibly true" sets of authoritative principles and catchy governance utopianisms, because humanity's imagination and creative thought are experimental in nature given the diversity of spatialities and "geography differences." From desktop-based research literature survey and theorisation, the article advances a theoretical argument that if "science is one," and if reality is unitary, then fragmentary theories and models are creatures of humanity's world of imperfections. Additionally, the article analyses statistical evidence drawn from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) in order to demonstrate that the scorched-earth metaphor is real for South Africa's 28-year democratic governance. It finds that in South Africa's twenty-eight years of democratic experiment, lived experiences resemble scorched-earth metaphor with no silver lining in sight. Philosophically, the paper concludes that if what resides on God's left is on humanity's right, then the "rightness" and/or "leftness" of people consists of intractable complexities of particularity, individuality and incommunicability that have led to fragmentary science, fixation on dogma and binaries as well as politicians' reverence for governance utopianisms, simultaneously as society's lived experiences resemble normalised scorched-earth.

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This article argues that xenophobia is not a natural state of being for any society; instead, it is a product of socialisation which becomes excessive with violent abuses of the out- group immigrants where such conduct is institutionalised through state apparatus. In this context, post-apartheid South Africanisms cannot be generalised as intrinsically xenophobic because the dreadful societal attitudes and violent abuses are evidently products of institutionalized governance for socialization of public perceptions of hostilities and animosities through the politics and struggles of politico-socio-economic resources. The coinage and officialdom of rainbowism was admission that construction of a new national identity around culture was a virtual impossibility; and, the result was usurpation of exclusionary citizenship that came to define insiders away from outsiders. This notion of citizenship promised access to state and pubic resources, which did not materialise, leading to frustration against government and targeting of out-group African immigrants. Hence, the apparent "felt" collective threat among in-group communities against out-group immigrants over the untenable alibi of job and women stealing as well as acceptance of below minimum wages are inherently functions of irrational jealousy. This article frames this argument through a rigorous examination of the theorisation of xenophobia as "new racism", models of governance of xenophobic societal attitudes for public hostilities, animosities and violent abuse. Furthermore, it examines constructions of new South Africanism, African Renaissance, exclusionary citizenship, exceptionalism, differentness and the society's frustration with politico-socio-economic resources exclusionism amidst constitutional inclusivity, tolerance, cultural pluralism, inviolate human rights and the political elitism's hyperbolic public stunts of a better life for all.