Changing Social Policy

The Child Support Grant in South Africa

Covering a breadth if issues, the international developement specialists who have contributed to this volume significantly deepen our understanding of the key socio-economic issues in the first decade of South Africa's democratic Governance.

Locating the South African challenges within a broader international perspective, the issues covered include all the major economic growth challenges confronting South Africa - employment, industrial policy, urban governance, the informal economy - and the social challenges of poverty , inequality, HIV/AIDS and health policy. The key development debates of the post-apartheid era are outlined and the success or otherwise of a decade of reform and experimentation is considered.

Community meetings seldom lead to significant change in urban policies, and have been accused of being sterile, sedative, or manipulative. This book starts from a simple question: why do people then continue to participate in these meetings, sometimes massively, and on a regular basis? Authors from a variety of disciplines explore the multiple roles of these �invited� spaces of participation. From consolidation of individual social status and networks, to the construction and framing of the local �community�, the display of political or group loyalties and maintenance of clientelist exchange, access to information, rumors or gossip but also forms of education on who and what is the state, invited spaces of participation are also, crucially, places of emergence of collective awareness, through shared expressions of frustration, that can lead to political mobilisation and other, less institutionalised forms of participation. This book, unpacking community politics and rethinking the complex articulations between ��invited� and invented� spaces of participation, is of relevance for international and national audiences interested in urban governance and local democracy.

Lauretta Ngcobo’s death in November 2015 robbed South Africa and the African continent of a significant literary talent, freedom fighter, and feminist voice. Born in 1931 in Ixopo in the then Natal Province, South Africa Ngcobo was one of three pioneering black South African women writers – the first to publish novels in English from the particular vantage point of black women.

The use, management and regulation of urban space comes under the spotlight in this occasional paper that highlights a new kind of global urban form, 'postmodern urbanism'. The author uses two aspirant world-class cities, Johannesburg and So Paulo, to describe the spatial fragmentation of the urban landscape.