While the South African government is tackling poverty amongst its citizenry as a national priority and has developed various pro-poor initiatives, how generously do ordinary South Africans give of their own time and money to assist with the alleviation of poverty, and why?

This occasional paper proposes the development of an information framework for sustainable development in South Africa and sets out a global action plan. It discusses the country's ability to provide the information required to address actions stipulated in Agenda 21, a foundational document of sustainable development.

This book appraises the transformation of infrastructure policy in South Africa since 1994. This volume looks at efforts to establish equitable infrastructure and service delivery in the sectors of water, health, land, electricity, housing and transport. It concludes that transformation has been uneven and has had a differential impact on different groups.

This collection provides fresh perspectives on the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (ICU). By far the largest black political organisation in Southern Africa before the 1940s, the ICU was active in six African colonies as well as in global trade union networks.

Language, Culture and Decolonisation discusses the importance of language in decoloniality from a global perspective, and the decolonisation process from the disciplinary vantage points of history, politics, philosophy, and literary studies.

This regional study forms part of a survey of public perceptions in three southern African countries. It outlines the opinions of a representative sample of adult residents of Lesotho on a range of socio-political, economic and other issues. It will be of interest to students, scholars, policy-makers and NGOs throughout the SADC.

Since 1994, local government in South Africa has become more important than ever before. It has been described as the 'hands and feet' of government, and is expected to play a key role in development.

But to what extent does local government support women's empowerment and gender equity? Do integrated development plans (IDPs), which give strategic direction to the work of a municipality, benefit gender equity or women's rights?

This is an examination of the transformation of South Africa's apartheid local government system into a development-oriented system of municipal governance. Continuing short and long-term interventions by both the central and provincial governments will be needed if local government is to deliver its desired outputs.

This occasional paper explores lessons that the unresolved Israel-Palestinian conflict can draw from South Africa's 'negotiated revolution'. Six realms are compared: economic interdependence, religious divisions, third party interventions, leadership, political culture and violence. The author also sheds light on the nature of ethnicity as well as the limits of negotiation politics.

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.

State of the Nation 2018 covers a diversity of perspectives that highlight the interrelationship and intersectionality between structural, economic, cultural and psychosocial dimensions of the South African social experience. Specifically, the authors analyse the complexity of poverty and inequality beyond an over-determination of the economic and the wealth index in South Africa.

The political freedoms ushered in by the post 1994 transition were seen at that time as the basis for redressing long-standing economic deprivations suffered by the majority of the population. The reduction of poverty, in all its dimensions, was the goal.