Books

After more than twenty years of democracy in South Africa, the history of the liberation struggle is losing relevance in the national consciousness as the country grapples with the pressing challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment.

The search for quality education in post-apartheid South Africa, quality education, interventions to improve learning and teaching, education crisis, District Development Support Programme (DDSP), Education Quality Improvement Partnership Programme (EQUIP), the IMBEWU programme, the Integrated Education Program (IEP), Khanyisa School Programme, the Learning for Living (LFL) Project, Quality Learning Project (QLP),

The South African government has prioritized a reduction of poverty and increased food security in rural parts of South Africa through agrarian transformation. As the bearers and beneficiaries of rural development initiatives, smallholder farmers, including those keeping livestock, loom large in this arena. Likewise, on international development agendas steered by bodies such as the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), smallholders are prioritized as the engines of national economies.

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.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is set to become the largest telescope on Earth, and also the largest science project in Africa. From September 2011 to August 2012, the SKA featured regularly in the South African media. In The Stars in Our Eyes, author Michael Gastrow dissects the representation of the SKA in the South African media in the period under discussion. Who were the main actors in this unfolding narrative? Who held the stage and who were marginalised? Where did gatekeeping occur and why? What was the relationship between journalists and scientists? How did the story unfold in the social media as opposed to the print media? Drawing on mass communication theory and science communication theory, The Stars in Our Eyes: Representations of the Square kilometre Array Telescope in the South African Media addresses critical gaps in the literature on science communication, particularly with respect to science communication in an African context.

This profound and deeply compassionate study aims to reach into the complexities of political violence in South Africa between 1960 and 1994, and to expand our understanding of the patterns of conflict that almost drew South Africans into a vortex of total disintegration during the apartheid era.

This collection of papers assesses the state of the social and human sciences in South Africa. Contributors present a historical overview of different methodological approaches within South African social sciences. They record attitudes towards these developments and address the issue of interdisciplinary work.

HIV bio-behavioural surveys conducted among men who have sex with men in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg using respondent-driven sampling

The 2015 TIMMS Grade 5 study was administered for the first time in South Africa in August 2015. The study was led by a team of researchers at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in collaboration with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).

The 2015 TIMMS Grade 9 study was administered in August 2015 by a team of researchers at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in collaboration with the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). This was the fifth time that South Africa has participated in TIMSS since 1995. In addition to the learner assessment data, the study also collected contextual information from learners, teachers and school principals, making it possible to explore the factors that are related to Grade 9 mathematics and science achievement.