The Nature of the Agrarian Land Question in the Republic of South Africa

Abstract . Most of the land in South Africa is dommnated by 4.5 million Whites. A tiny fraction of this key resource is designated for Black occupation in Black townships in White South Africa and for Black ownership in the ten “homelands.” Several interrelated factors account for the lop sided land distribution that exists in South Africa. The two most important factors are the removal of native occupants from the majority of the land, accomplished by early Dutch settlers, and legislative measures that were designed to guarantee a White controlled economy and foster economic development by assuring an abundant supply of disenfranchised and cheap black labor The extent of the inequality in the land distribution suggests that, from the viewpoint of ownership and control, Blacks were better off prior to 1652 when the first Dutch settlers arrived at the Cape.     

Does land use planning shape regional economies? A simultaneous analysis of housing supply,internal migration and local employment growth in the Netherlands

Why has job growth over the past decades been weaker in the Dutch Randstad area than in surrounding regions? In a simultaneous equations analysis, we find that employment has adjusted to the regional supply of labour. Net internal migration was predominantly determined by regional housing supply, and not by employment growth. Growth of the regional housing stock appeared insensitive to changes in the number of people and jobs. This lack of responsiveness to demand conditions is consistent with the presence of strong restrictions on residential development near the main Dutch cities, suggesting that the current regional distribution of economic activity in the Netherlands reflects land use planning decisions.     

南非标准化的改革与发展

近年来,南非政府越来越重视标准化工作,并通过《南非共和国标准法》和《强制性规范的国家规制机关法》两部法律来推动南非标准化工作的改革,使其标准化工作朝着既符合市场化原则,又符合世界贸易组织（WTO）规则的方向发展。本文重点对《南非标准法》、《强制性规范的国家规制机关法》两部法律进行了深入的分析和解读,并对南非国家标准及其他出版物以及南非的强制性规范与技术法规进行介绍,总结和分析了南非标准化的特点。     

2010年南非世界杯对中国足球的启示

2010年南非世界杯已经落下帷幕,但32强的表现令我们回味,尤其是亚洲球队的表现更是令人称赞。通过总结南非世界杯比赛,提出世界足球的发展趋势,分析中国足球的现状,提出对中国足球发展的建议和可行措施。     

The African Continental Free Trade Area

Monopolies continue to dominate world trade by controlling global production and distribution chains. Neither free trade nor fair trade has transformed this system; the recent rise in nativism and pseudo-protectionism has not, and cannot, address these problems either. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest free trade area in the world, promises to be different. AfCFTA rejects classical, neoclassical, and Marxist theories of trade, appealing, instead, to non-aligned pan-Africanism. It advocates continental free trade as a way to overcome the lingering effects of slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism. However, its exclusive focus on continental Africa, its disinterest in systemic redistribution, and encouragement of the private appropriation of socially created land rents prevents AfCFTA from achieving its goals. In fact, AfCFTA might actually foster inequality—progress alongside of poverty—and in so doing, undermine the very essence of this trade regime. What Henry George (1886) called “true free trade,” a theory based on making land common by socializing land rent, offers a more promising and powerful model through which to achieve the pan-African agenda. Indeed, only true free trade can definitively decolonize global trade.     

The Stock market impact of social pressure: The South African divestment case

Using the South African divestment case, this study tests the hypothesis that social pressure affects stock returns. Both short-run (3-, 11-, and 77-day periods) and long-run (13-month periods) tests of stock returns surrounding U.S. corporate announcements of decisions to staf or leave, South Africa were performed. Tests of the impact of institutional portfolio managers to divest stocks of U.S. firms staying in South Africa were also performed. Results indicate there was a negative wealth impact of social pressure: stock prices of firms announcing plans to stay in South Africa fared better relative to stock prices affirms announcing plans to leave.     

南非标准化发展趋势研究

文章通过对国家标准馆馆藏的南非国家标准文献资源的调查，利用定量分析方法试从南非标准时效性、技术领域等方面分析南非标准化发展趋势，确定南非重点发展的标准化领域，从而为我国开拓南非新兴贸易市场提出参考性建议。     

South Africa's Victory Against Capitalism

The South African economy is widely misrepresented, not least by the Western media, as being an oppressive capitalist regime. Walter Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Virginia, demonstrates how South Africa's economy has been socialist for many decades. What South Africa requires is less socialism, not more.     

Moving up the Ladder or Stuck on the Bottom Rung? Homeownership as a Solution to Poverty in Urban South Africa

In the global South, policies providing property titles to low-income households are increasingly implemented as a solution to poverty. Integrating poor households into the capitalist economy using state-subsidized homeownership is intended to provide poor people with an asset that can be used in a productive manner. In this article the South African "housing subsidy system" is assessed using quantitative and qualitative data from in-depth research in a state-subsidized housing settlement in the city of Cape Town. The findings show that while state-subsidized property ownership provides long-term shelter and tenure security to low-income households, houses have mixed value as a financial asset. Although state-subsidized houses in South Africa are a financially tradable asset, transaction values are too low for low-income vendors to reach the next rung on the housing ladder, the township market. Furthermore, low-income homeowners are reticent to use their (typically primary) asset as collateral security for credit, and thus property ownership is not providing the financial returns that titling theories assume.     

Application of a bias-corrected meta-frontier approach and an endogenous switching regression to analyze the technical efficiency of conservation tillage for wheat in South Asia

Conservation tillage (CT) options are among the most rapidly spreading land preparation and crop establishment techniques globally. In South Asia, CT has spread dramatically over the last decade, a result of strong policy support and increasing availability of appropriate machinery. Although many studies have analyzed the yield and profitability of CT systems, the technical efficiency impacts accrued by farmers utilizing CT have received considerably less attention. Employing a DEA framework, we isolated bias-corrected meta-frontier technical efficiencies and meta-technology ratios of three CT options adopted by wheat farmers in Bangladesh, including bed planting (BP), power tiller operated seeding (PTOS), and strip tillage (ST), compared to a control group of farmers practicing traditional tillage (TT). Endogenous switching regression was subsequently employed to overcome potential self-selection bias in the choice of CT, in order to robustly estimate efficiency factors. Among the tillage options studied, PTOS was the most technically efficient, with an average meta-technology ratio of 0.90, followed by BP (0.88), ST (0.83), and TT (0.67). The average predicted meta-frontier technical efficiency for the CT non-adopters under a counterfactual scenario (0.80) was significantly greater (P?=?0.00) than current TE scores (0.65), indicating the potential for sizeable profitability increases with CT adoption. Conversely, the counterfactual TE of non-adopters was 23% greater than their DEA efficiency, also indicating efficiency gains from CT adoption. Our results provide backing for agricultural development programs in South Asia that aim to increase smallholder farmers’ income through the application of CT as a pathway towards poverty reduction.     

The Swiss Solution for South Africa

The example of Switzerland in devolving decision-making away from a central state towards community bodies with reduced powers offers a readily adaptable solution to the political turmoil in South Africa. FrancesKendall, co-author with Leon Louw of the best-selling South Africa: The Solution, presents her proposals forreform.     

Employment equity in Canada and South Africa: progress and propositions

In 1998 the South African government attempted to redress historical workplace discrimination through the introduction of the Employment Equity Act, largely modelled on the Canadian legislation. This paper provides a background to the rationale for employment equity and related practices in both Canada and South Africa. Policies and practices are compared and progress achieved thus far in both countries is discussed. Suggestions for future consideration by South African policy makers and business leaders are proposed that include issues that are more difficult to legislate, yet which will determine the optimal progress of employment equity in South Africa. The issues highlighted in this regard pertain to top management commitment, the development of holistic human resources policies and practices, the appreciation and management of employee diversity and the creation of inclusive organizational cultures that address historical systemic discrimination.     

THE BENEFITS AND COSTS OF MONETARY UNION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA: A CRITICAL SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE

Abstract.  With the 14 members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) having set the objective of adopting a common currency for the year 2018, an expanding empirical literature has emerged evaluating the benefits and costs of a common-currency area in Southern Africa. This paper reviews that literature, focusing on two categories of studies: (1) those that assume that a country's characteristics are invariant to the adoption of a common currency and (2) those that assume that a monetary union alters an economy's structure, resulting in trade creation and credibility gains. The literature reviewed suggests that a relatively small group of countries, typically including South Africa, satisfies the criteria necessary for monetary unification. The literature also suggests that, in a monetary union comprising all SADC countries and a regional central bank that sets monetary policy to reflect the average economic conditions (e.g. fiscal balances) in the region, the potential losses (i.e. higher inflation) from giving up an existing credible national central bank, a relevant consideration for South Africa, could outweigh any potential benefits of trade creation resulting from a common currency.     

The Development of Accounting Regulation in Extractive Industries in Australia, South Africa and Canada

In view of the economic significance of extractive industries, the special accounting issues raised, and the numerous calls over many years for standardization, there has been less regulation of their accounting than as expected. The development of accounting regulations and practices in the extractive industries in 3 countries is reviewed, which are Australia, South Africa and Canada.     

China and international market integration: Evidence from the law of one price in the Middle East and Africa

We model market integration in the Middle East and Africa by analyzing price dispersion and testing the law of one price (LOP) on highly-comparable actual local retail prices of 135 goods and services across 23 countries in the region over the period of 1990–2016. Second-generation panel estimators are applied to four price benchmarks: Regional average, South Africa, China, and US prices. Cross-regional price dispersion diminishes considerably over time up to 2008, particularly for non-tradeables around China price. The test of LOP indicates the percentage of convergent prices is highest in China price benchmark, followed by US, South Africa, and regional average benchmarks. Direct estimation of the convergence speed confirms this order. Overall, the results show evidence of increasing market integration in Middle East and Africa but it appears to be driven by global forces and, especially, the rise of China as a new economic power. The results show that some emerging market economies, such as China, can step up and promote integration while traditional economic powerhouses, such as the USA and UK, disengage from international economic relations.     

Brown and Green in Durban: The Evolution of Environmental Policy in a Post‐Apartheid City

This article concerns the politics of environmental policy as it has been evolving in the South African city of Durban. How has the end of apartheid impacted on environmental issues and concerns? Since 1994 (actually 1996 from the standpoint of local government), the transition to democracy has brought about a shift from purely green policy to the growing salience of what we may call brown issues. The article first considers the elements of what we would now denote as environmental policy under the old regime and then outlines the policy shifts in recent years. The second half of the article looks at what have emerged as the most significant policy issues with regard to the environment, the future of the South Coast Industrial Basin, the environmental concerns that arise from the construction of new housing settlements and (more briefly) debates about the future of the Bay of Natal and some of the issues at play in the development of an integrated social health policy. With South Africa’s emergence from isolation, international mandates for environmental controls and planning have been formally adopted; this article argues that the actual application of policy from word to deed is another matter. Democratization has opened up debates and created a far healthier climate for the discussion of urban issues, but formal institutional and procedural changes are far from sufficient to ensure new approaches on the ground. The presence or absence of effective environmental lobbying from community organizations and of environmental champions within the bureaucracy are critical factors. The planning process in Durban, inevitably subject to immediate political pressures, is still far from achieving the more holistic ambition of integrating environmental and developmental concerns.     

长沙市住宅地价空间分布研究

本文根据长沙市市区2008年-2012年的土地交易资料,结合近年来长沙市住宅土地的具体出让情况,采用GIS空间分析方法,得到地价等值线图,并结合地价相关理论知识,分析了长沙市市区住宅地价的空间分布特征及其影响因素。研究表明:(1)住宅地价空间分布具有一定的连续性和变异性;(2)距商业中心的远近对住宅地价的空间分布有重要的影响;(3)住宅用地对居住环境质量要求较高。     

Unplanned buying and in-store stimuli in supermarkets

Manufacturers and retailers in industrialized countries spend large sums on advertising and/or in-store promotion in the hope of increasing sales of their merchandise through ‘impulse’ buying. Results are reported in this paper of the unplanned buying behaviour of 450 consumers in 15 major supermarkets in South Africa compared with similar studies in the United States and the United Kingdom. The findings indicate that unplanned buying is higher in the United States than in South Africa, but that the importance of in-store stimuli holds true across cultures. Analysis of other variables such as brand loyalty, specific outlet, and presence of a shopping list is also reported on a cross-cultural basis.     

Equilibrium exchange rates in South Eastern Europe,Russia, Ukraine and Turkey: Healthy or (Dutch) diseased?

This paper investigates the equilibrium exchange rates of three South Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania), of two CIS economies (Russia and Ukraine) and of Turkey. A systematic approach in terms of different time horizons at which the equilibrium exchange rate is assessed is conducted, combined with a careful analysis of country-specific factors. For Russia, a first look is taken at the Dutch disease phenomenon as a possible driving force behind equilibrium exchange rates. A unified framework including productivity and net foreign assets completed with a set of control variables such as openness, public debt and public expenditures is used to compute total real misalignment bands.     

Idioms of Accumulation: Corporate Accumulation by Dispossession in Urban Zimbabwe

David Harvey's notion of ‘accumulation by dispossession' has inspired a wide range of studies in different places. But it has hardly registered in the area of urban land grabbing in Africa and what the role of local capital has been in these processes. In this article, I use archival data, field observations and insights from key informant interviews in Harare to examine how the 1990s neoliberalism and the post‐1999 Zimbabwe crisis created new opportunities for accumulation of wealth through the irregular and fraudulent transfer of public urban land into private hands, including those of reputable corporate institutions. I provide a summary of the literature on contemporary land grabbing, raising questions about and providing new insights for a comparative understanding of the transformative role and nature of the state, postcolonial African cities, anti‐capitalist struggles, and the status and meaning of planning in different settings.