With Africa for Africa

Towards quality education for all

How do actors in the educational field respond to the changing skills demands of the future? Research teams from the Labour Market Intelligence Partnership (LMIP) undertook a set of experimental and innovative case studies to improve our understanding of how current research intersects with a rapidly changing future.

In this fascinating collection, full of different textures, narratives and nuances, sixteen authors have begun to tackle the task of writing South Africas history from an overtly feminist perspective, giving readers an opportunity to understand and reflect on debates about real womens power in completely new and fresh ways.

This paper presents findings from a module in the HSRC's 2006 South African Social Attitudes Survey that was designed by the Centre for the Analysis of South African Social Policy at the University of Oxford. Respondents were asked for their views on issues relating to the importance of work and the relationship between social grants and employment. The findings demonstrate a strong attachment to the labour market among the unemployed, support for more financial assistance for poor people including those who are unable to find work, and no evidence that social grants in South Africa foster a 'dependency culture'.

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.