Unshackling the chains of homelessness in the City of Tshwane: A critical appraisal of the current policy in the light of national and local policies and strategies

ABSTRACT

This article provides a critical appraisal of the current Homelessness Policy for the City of Tshwane in the light of national and local policies and strategies. Both a literature review and policy analysis were conducted to attain the main aim of this article. Documents consulted and used in this process included the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, the Freedom Charter, the National Development Plan 2030 and the Tshwane Vision 2055. The study was prompted by the need to find a lasting solution towards the challenge of homelessness in the City of Tshwane through governmental and non-governmental interventions. Recommendations for the appraisal of the current policy document will be directed to the City Council which is empowered by the provision of the Municipal Systems Act, Act 32 of 2000, Section 11(3) to revise the current policy document.     

International responses to homelessness: Lessons for the City of Tshwane

ABSTRACT

Reports of increases in the numbers of homeless people are pouring in from all over the world yet many governments still do not consider homelessness worthy of a policy response in its own right and relegate it to the periphery of either housing or social (welfare) policy arenas and interventions. In the introductory sections of this article, reference is made to the current extent of homelessness in the world and the rise to prominence of a rights-based approach to homelessness. This is followed by a brief overview of responses to homelessness in Australia, the USA and some European countries. A few of the key components of these responses and their relevance for homelessness policies in South Africa and the City of Tshwane are identified.     

Engaging with homelessness in the City of Tshwane: Ethical and practical considerations

ABSTRACT

Policies and practices aimed at developing more engaged universities that are responsive to the needs of society have become key features of the higher education landscape of most countries. Visions of universities ‘engaged’ in matters of local importance increasingly require academics to reframe their scholarship as some form of ‘engagement’. This requirement has been addressed in many different disciplines and has been met with ambivalence. Academics who see engagement as a new form of ‘public good’ find it enhancing of their teaching and research activities, while others view engaged work as unnecessary and problematic ‘third mission’ activities that impede on ‘normal’ academic work. This article aims to contribute to these debates by interrogating the paradoxes of action and inaction. Drawing on recent experiences in reviewing a policy on homelessness for a municipality in South Africa, the article seeks to bring the ambiguities and challenges of engagement into greater visibility.     

Equalizing opportunity through small business development: A south african perspective

The active development of the small firm sector is thought to present a vehicle highly appropriate to the task of equalizing opportunity in a very unequal society—the developing country of South Africa. This article seeks to evaluate the merits of the above assumption. It calls for a closer understanding of the unique difficulties encountered by a minority business group that has experienced a long history of prejudice and discrimination, namely the black, essentially small business sector of South Africa. The author calls for careful appraisal of available development initiatives in order to effectively serve the interests of this group.     

Job Creation and Destruction in South Africa

Analysts of the South African labour market have mainly used household surveys to analyse the labour market. It has been more difficult to explore the labour demand of firms, as a result of limited data availability. We use the Quarterly Employment Statistics survey, an enterprise survey conducted by Statistics South Africa, to explore how South African firms create and destroy jobs, thereby shedding light on many of the policy questions that are relevant in a high unemployment society like South Africa. We find that job creation and destruction rates are similar to those found in Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries. There is little evidence that labour legislation creates rigidities that prevent firms from hiring or firing workers. We also find that larger firms are better net creators of jobs than small firms and that net job creation rates are negative in manufacturing. Our research has important policy implications – particularly for the South African National Planning Commission's 2030 plan, in which new jobs are envisaged to come mainly from small‐ and medium‐sized firms. Our research suggests that this scenario is not likely without changes to policy or legislation.     

Successful SMEs in South Africa: The case of clothing producers in the Witwatersrand

The objective in this article is to examine the key determinants of successful SME development in post-apartheid South Africa. The determinants of successful SME growth are investigated by concentrating upon one specific branch of manufacturing, namely clothing production in the Witwatersrand. The article unfolds through four sets of material. First, a review is undertaken of research concerning the factors influencing successful SMEs in sub-Saharan Africa. Major themes are the elements of successful individual enterprise, successful clusters of enterprises and of available research in South Africa. In section two, attention turns to the case study and outlines key features of the development of the South African clothing industry. Section three presents the findings from 27 detailed interviews conducted with successful clothing producers in the Witwatersrand. Overall, it is concluded that the South African research confirms certain of the findings relating to trajectories of successful SME development in other parts of Africa.     

Development policy and water services in South Africa: an urban poverty perspective

This paper explores the impact of overall macroeconomic development policy on water service delivery policy and urban poverty in South Africa. It scrutinises ambiguous definitions of ‘urban’ in the literature, which tend to obscure the extent of urban poverty in this country. This is crucial given that a large proportion of the urban poor live in informal settlements, which are sometimes lumped with rural areas. Informal settlements are generally characterised by limited essential services such as housing, water supply, storm-water facilities and sanitation services. Water services, like other social services, retain the racial imprint of apartheid. Consequently, water policy in South Africa attempts to address water issues from an equity perspective. By analysing the effects of the tariff subpolicy within the water policy, the paper recommends that free basic water should be made available only to poor households.     

MONETARY POLICY IN RWANDA: A COINTEGRATION ANALYSIS

Countries in Africa are increasingly becoming similar in outlook, especially as regards monetary policy. With a view to conducting a long‐term study of monetary policy in Africa, we apply an empirical test for the coherence of inflation targeting, first conducted by Nell (2003 ) for South Africa, to data from Rwanda. We find that like South Africa, Rwanda has a stable money demand function and the adoption of an inflation target is a wise policy option. Also, the Rwandan money market needs just over five quarters to eliminate half of any monetary disequilibrium. These results are of some interest to economists and policy makers for all the countries in the increasingly interconnected continent of Africa.     

ASSESSING MONETARY POLICY IN SOUTH AFRICA IN A DATA‐RICH ENVIRONMENT

This paper examines the efficacy of monetary policy in the South African economy using a data‐rich framework. We use the Factor‐Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) methodology, which contains 110 monthly variables for the period 1985:02‐2007:11. The results, based on impulse‐response functions, provide no evidence of the price puzzle observed in traditional Structural Vector Autoregressive analysis and confirm that monetary policy in South Africa is effective in stabilising prices. Unlike the traditional vector autoregressive approach, the FAVAR methodology allows further analysis of a large number of variables. Variables from real and financial variables react negatively to a contractionary monetary policy shock. Finally, we find evidence of the importance of a confidence channel transmission following a monetary policy shock.     

Did primary healthcare user fee abolition matter? Reconsidering South Africa's experience

South Africa waived user fees for primary healthcare in 1994 and, again, in 1996. The first waiver focused on young children, elderly adults, pregnant women and nursing mothers, while the 1996 reform waived fees for the remainder of the population, subject to means tests. We take advantage of household survey information to examine the impact of the policy on a subset of the reform-eligible population. Although it was expected that public healthcare facility usage would have increased post reform, no statistically significant evidence supported such a claim. Therefore, our results are consistent with some very recent research examining the 1994 reform, but are generally at odds with the general impression in the literature that user fee abolition matters when it comes to alleviating inequities in access to healthcare.     

Developing a competitive concentrating solar power industry in South Africa: Current gaps and recommended next steps

The paper provides an overview of the attractiveness of the global concentrating solar power (CSP) industry, analyses South Africa's current capabilities in developing a CSP manufacturing capacity, and then makes recommendations regarding policy measures and an associated industry roadmap for developing a competitive CSP industry in South Africa. The analyses highlight that cost reduction is currently the most important stumbling block for the large-scale rollout of CSP. From a supply, or technology-push, perspective, changes such as cost-effective production methods, improved products through directed research and development, and reductions in operating and installation costs could be implemented. From a demand, or technology-pull, perspective, more ambitious targets need to be incorporated into the current South African policies with reliable support schemes to ensure long-term investment security for CSP systems. Recommendations are made accordingly. Specifically, South Africa should continue to promote strategic collaborations with potential CSP investors to access funding possibilities for projects.     

The Mystery of Missing Real Spillovers in Southern Africa: Some Facts and Possible Explanations

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the economies of South Africa and its neighbours (Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe) are tightly integrated with each other. The multiple interconnections suggest that South Africa's GDP growth rate should affect positively its neighbours'. However, our review of the available econometric evidence and our panel growth regressions suggest that there is no strong evidence of real spillovers in the region after 1994, once global shocks are controlled for. More generally, we find no evidence of real spillovers from South Africa to the rest of the continent post‐1994. We investigate the possible reasons for this lack of spillovers. Most importantly, the economies of South Africa and the rest of Sub‐Saharan Africa might have decoupled in the mid‐1990s. That is when international sanctions on South Africa ended and the country re‐integrated with the global economy, while growth in the rest of the continent accelerated due to a combination of domestic and external factors.     

History of industrial decentralization in South Africa (part II)∗: Historical development and impact of the policy

This research deals broadly with the history and development of industrial decentralization in South Africa. It provides a basic analysis of a number of inseparable historic, political and economic issues, and is presented in two parts. The first part firstly traced the economic forces that generated current concentrated patterns of economic activity in South Africa, and secondly, reviewed the origins of the industrial decentralization policy. It concluded that despite a relatively rigid natural regional economic structure that developed historically, and despite the continued presence of the economic forces that brought this structure about, the government began with a policy of industrial decentralization in 1960. The second part of the research, published here, firstly assesses the development of the policy in an attempt to indicate reasons for major changes, and secondly discusses the impact of the policy with reference to current evidence. It concludes that the industrial decentralization policy may have had serious economic consequences to date, but may nevertheless have a continued role in the ongoing political development of the country. The approach throughout has been to provide a relatively compact'chronology of the policy and its antecedents.     

LOGISTICS COSTS IN SOUTH AFRICA – THE CASE FOR MACROECONOMIC MEASUREMENT

In South Africa, logistics optimisation is largely managed from a microeconomic perspective. This paper makes the case for macroeconomic logistics measurement, presents the results of the country's national logistics cost model and proposes the first key macroeconomic logistics indicators for South Africa. The research shows that South Africa's logistics costs are higher than the global average. The majority of these costs are attributable to road transport, of which the biggest cost driver is fuel, which in turn is determined by volatile oil prices. This poses a significant exogenous risk to logistics cost management in South Africa. The risk can be mitigated through a structural adjustment in long‐distance freight transport (from road dominated to rail dominated). The paper concludes by proposing two key macroeconomic logistics indicators to facilitate this process.     

ON THE CYCLICALITY OF SOUTH AFRICAN FISCAL POLICY

This paper examines the cyclicality of government revenue, spending and the key fiscal balances in South Africa during 1972‐2001. The results suggest that while government revenues were largely acyclical, government spending appears to have been predominantly counter‐cyclical, in line with the recommendations of neoclassical analysis. In addition, countercyclical government spending appears to have translated into a countercyclical policy stance overall. This finding contrasts markedly with the results from other empirical studies of South Africa and other emerging market and developing economies, which typically indicate procyclical fiscal policy.     

THE CYCLICALITY OF MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICY IN SOUTH AFRICA SINCE 1994

This paper uses a structural vector‐autoregression approach to discuss the cyclicality of fiscal and monetary policy in South Africa since 1994. There is substantial South African literature on this topic, but much disagreement remains. Though not undisputed, there is growing consensus that monetary policy has contributed to the remarkable stabilisation of the South African economy over this period. The evaluation of the role of fiscal policy in stabilisation has been less favourable and there is little evidence that a countercyclical fiscal stance was a priority over this period. This paper considers these issues in an empirical framework that addresses some of the shortcomings in the literature. Specifically, it constructs a structural model in contrast with the reduced form models typically used in the South African literature, incorporates the dynamic interaction between monetary and fiscal shocks on the demand side and supply shocks on the other, and avoids controversy over “neutral” base years and the size of fiscal elasticities. The model confirms the consensus on monetary policy, finding it to have been largely countercyclical since 1994. On fiscal policy, this paper finds evidence of pro‐cyclicality, especially in the more recent period, though the policy simulations suggest that the pro‐cyclicality of fiscal policy has had little destabilising impact on real output.     

A survey of the adoption of cleaner technology by South African firms

South African firms have been slow to adopt cleaner technologies, and little research on this topic has been carried out in South Africa. This article reports on the results of a survey of 26 firms in South Africa that had recently adopted cleaner technology. The survey results indicate that market-led factors are seen as the most significant in prompting firms to adopt cleaner technologies. Proactive market factors, such as obtaining a competitive edge and taking advantage of a market opportunity, are rated highest. The results suggest that the adoption of cleaner technology in South Africa is often a 'win-win' situation in which firms and the environment both benefit.     

South Africa's titanium industrial policy: A product space perspective

South Africa is a globally significant player in the titanium raw mineral production industry but does not play a large role in its downstream mineral processing. Since downstream activities generate much higher value added, the government has sought to support the end-to-end titanium value chain to capture more value from raw titanium before export through ‘beneficiation’-related policies. This paper applies the input–output product space methodology to generate an overview of those sub-sectors within the titanium value chain that are likely to support long-term economic growth in South Africa. We then evaluate whether the selected global value chain activities are supported by the current industrial policy and/or whether a focus on currently excluded global value chain activities is recommended. Our results confirm that although beneficiation appears to make sense in the titanium industry in South Africa, it should (from a product space perspective) be applied neither automatically nor sequentially moving down the value chain. The paper concludes with the shortcomings of the approach and various avenues for future research.     

History of industrial decentralization in South Africa (Part I): The regional concentration of industry and the historical basis of the policy∗

This research deals broadly with the history and development of industrial decentralization in South Africa. It provides a basic analysis of a number of inseparable historic, political and economic issues, and is presented in two parts. This first part begins by tracing the economic forces that generated current concentrated patterns of economic activity in South Africa, and goes on to review the origins of the industrial decentralization policy. It concludes that despite a relatively rigid natural regional economic structure that developed historically, and despite the continued presence of the economic forces that brought this structure about, the government commenced with a policy of industrial decentralization in 1960. The second part of the research firstly assesses the development of the policy in an attempt to indicate reasons for major changes, and secondly discusses the impact of the policy with reference to current evidence. It concludes that the industrial decentralization policy may have had serious economic consequences to date, but may nevertheless have a continued role to play in the ongoing political development of the country. The approach throughout has been to provide a relatively compact chronology of the policy and its antecedents.     

What we have learnt from post-1994 innovations in pro-poor service delivery in South Africa: a case study-based analysis

Service delivery is vital for alleviating poverty in South Africa. This paper contributes to the dialogue on how to maximise the impact of pro-poor service delivery by considering evidence from a wide selection of case studies to distinguish the successes and failures of post-1994 pro-poor service delivery. Case evidence brings to light four important points: that decentralisation and participation can reinforce historical distributions of privilege; that community ownership is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for effective service delivery to individuals in rural communities; that when managed well private outsourcing can benefit the poor; and that the abolition of user fees is often not the best way to ensure access to basic services. The paper cautions against overly ambitious and idealistic policy making. When a policy fails because of its lack of flexibility or its disregard for the constraints of the implementation context, this failure should be attributed to short-sighted policy making and not to implementation failure.