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This article explores children's consumption practices from a sociology of consumption perspective. The aim is to discover whether South African children, in their consumption of clothing, engage in symbolic consumption and to identify the ways in which they do so. Existing studies on children and symbolic consumption have largely excluded African children, hence this study represents an attempt to include their voices in the conceptualisation of childhood consumer behaviour. Data were collected through a survey of 192 children aged 10–14, using a questionnaire developed from the literature on symbolic consumption. The article presents the design and implementation of a quantitative empirical study into children's engagement in symbolic consumption. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to tease out the factors representing the ways in which children engage in symbolic consumption, while confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify the factor structure and test whether the data fit the model. The EFA revealed four factors that represent the ways in which children engage in symbolic consumption: identity, affiliation, perception, and image. The findings reveal that children use their clothing to create their individual identities, fit in with social groups, draw inferences about others through their clothing, and as a yardstick to gauge social image. This research furthers the enquiry into children as consumers while addressing the paucity of research related to African child consumers. The results of the study have implications for marketing practitioners, while also providing directions for future research.

Executive remuneration has been less analysed and there is need for scrutiny on executive compensation structures and their implications on corporate governance. The study aimed to ascertain the role of executive compensation in accelerating agency and governance problems for FTSE/JSE Top-40 companies from 2008 - 2016. A Generalised Method of Moments was employed, and the results revealed that executive compensation structures can be accelerants of agency and corporate governance problems as the performance was found to negatively affect directors' remuneration. Also, governance had a negative impact on remuneration. Share option trading results confirm agency conflict as net trades and the number of directors that traded on their share options were found to deteriorate with improvement in remuneration. Therefore, it is recommended that the remuneration of executives must be aligned with performance and corporate governance. Moreover, executive directors must exercise their share options after the vesting period and in years they meet predetermined performance targets. Companies should adopt the proposed executive remuneration model in their policies to ensure that executive remuneration considers the governance of the companies they lead. The study's proposed model can be modified in future studies to incorporate other performance matrices such as the six capitals. Keywords: Remuneration Model, Executive Compensation, Governance, Share Options

When governments around the world engage in public policy-making, quite often, the public officials and policy-makers are faced with discreet opposition from non-government organisations trade unions and civil societies. The public policymakers usually go ahead with the implementation of the suggested policy. For example, in South Africa (SA), Child Support Grant (CSG) was implemented in an attempt to alleviate poverty. This can be attributed to many factors, such as urgency in addressing the poverty gap in society and lack of interest from the members of the public in public policy-making. Based on capability and social security approach/strategy and rational approach, this study explores an outcomes-based evaluation of the CSG policy and its relationship with poverty alleviation in Mamelodi Township, Gauteng Province, SA. The empirical results indicate that there is a linkage or relationship between the reduction of poverty levels and the implementation of the CSG policy in Mamelodi Town. Keywords: Child Support Grant, Mamelodi, Poverty, Outcome-based Evaluation

Thabo Mbeki ist ein Mann der Tradition, lautet die These des Buches. Selbstverständnis und politische Überzeugungen, seine Haltung zu leadership, seine Identität, habe eine "institutionelle Tradition", die sich einzig und allein aus den Erfahrungen im ANC-Widerstand speise. Der Autor befasst sich darüber hinaus intensiv mit der Frage, wie Mbekis Persönlichkeit in den Medien konstruiert wird. Er erscheine dort einerseits als "viktorianischer Prinz" andererseits als "machiavellistischer Prinz". (DÜI-Sbd)

When emergencies arise, corruption levels rise even higher. It is a global phenomenon that the swift nature of disaster response becomes susceptible to ethics violations and non-compliance with procurement processes. This also means that opportunities arise for a wide range of procedure deviations that are likely to involve ethics malpractices. The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest global disaster that has brought procurement corruption to the fore. This has certainly been the case in South Africa since March 2020. This article presents four incidents (scenarios) where ethics malpractices linked to procurement were found and reported on; then it goes on to analyse these incidents. A qualitative approach is used to analyse the scenarios. The main objective of this analysis is to add practical evidence to prevailing literature on public service ethics linked to procurement. The scenarios are analysed and situated in the context of some of the dominant ethics theories. This is done to arrive at the article's main question: Why are ethics important in times of disaster? The article ultimately presents some scholarly reflections emanating from the analysis of the four scenarios. The prevailing opinion is that the interface between procurement and corruption remains fragile and necessitates continued efforts towards more tangible approaches in the fight against corruption. then presents some reflections on this question in the context of building a capable developmental state. Keywords: Procurement, Corruption, Ethics, COVID-19