South Africa

Growing up in Zimbabwe, I vividly remember listening to the soulful music of various South Africans on my grandmother's supersonic gramophone stereo.

Kenneth Blaauw, a traditional fisher and champion of rights for small-scale fishers died at the weekend, from a stomach-related illness. He was 57.

Manuel Castells, one of the leading social scientists of our time, asserts that throughout history universities have frequently played critical roles in the social transformation of societies, in addition to their traditional role of knowledge production and the training of a skilled national lab

In the broader scheme of things, how significant are the recent waves of protest that have engulfed South Africa over the past decade?

If that well-worn cliché about never wasting a crisis applies to anything, it is the labour movement today. Contrary to some current rhetoric, the movement does not need to return to what it was: it needs to become something different.

Various columnists and opposition politicians, whether from the Democratic Alliance or the Economic Freedom Fighters, have repeatedly called for President Jacob Zuma’s head. They want him out and it is often insinuated that if he were gone, things would be better in South Africa.

After almost 21 years, affirmative action has not taken root in South Africa and most sectors of the economy, including academic institutions, remain “untransformed”.

10 March 2015

Everyone seems to have an interest in food policy these days, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with its ‘Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa’, to the G8 with its ‘New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition’, to social movements, civil society networks and those who simply care a

This article deals with the contemporary South African political economy of higher education in order to show how problems and challenges such as access and equity are compounded and convoluted through the intervention of elitist institutions and actors.