Local Government, Local Governance and Sustainable Development

Getting the parameters right

City of Broken Dreams brings the global debate about the urban university to bear on the realities of South African rust-belt cities through a detailed case study of the Eastern Cape motor city of East London, a site of significant industrial job losses over the past two decades.

While the informal sector is the ‘forgotten’ sector in many ways, it provides livelihoods, employment and income for about 2.5 million workers and business owners. One in every six South Africans who work, work in the informal sector. Almost half of these work in firms with employees; these firms provide about 850 000 paid jobs – almost twice direct employment in the mining sector. The annual entry of new enterprises is quite high, as is the number of enterprises that grow their employment. There is no shortage of business initiative and desire to grow.

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.

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?