Book and Book Chapters (Faculty of Law)
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Browsing by Author "de Visser, Jaap"
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Item From the Community Law Centre to the Dullah Omar Institute: The Path of Engaged Research(UWC Press, 2020) Steytler, Nico; de Visser, JaapCommencing its life as a research, advocacy and constitution-building entity in 1990, the Community Law Centre, later becoming the Dullah Omar Institute, has over the past 29 years played a significant role in the shaping of South Africa as a constitutional democracy. It is one of UWC’s premier research institutes. Given the purpose of this book, this chapter seeks to analyse the dynamic relationship between the University leadership, on the one hand, and the entity, on the other. It provides a sketch of how the University executive management, under the leadership of different Vice-Chancellors, engaged with the academic and community project of the Centre/Institute. As such it is not a full history of the entity for that many more pages are required. It is, in the often-spoken words of Brian O’Connell, trying ‘to make sense’ of what made the Centre/Institute tick and its relationship with the University. This historical journey is roughly divided into the tenure periods of the four Vice-Chancellors of UWC over the last 30 yearItem Real or imagined local autonomy: Experiences from local government in Ethiopia, South Africa and Zimbabwe(Koninklijke Brill NV, 2021) Chigwata, Tinashe; de Visser, Jaap; Ayele, ZemelakCentralized rule has been common in Africa, and almost all African countries implemented, constitutionally or otherwise, programs of centralization from the time they achieved independence from colonial rule. They did so with the declared purposes of modernization, achieving economic development and nation building (Godefroidt, Langer and Meuleman 2016). However, these lofty goals were not achieved; African countries remain characterized by underdevelopment, lack of democratic rule, corruption and ethnic-based conflicts. Many blame the centralized and extremely bureaucratized government and governance systems and decision-making processes for worsening, if not causing, these problems (Addisson 1998; Jackson 2002). In the past three or so decades, therefore, there has been a general move in Africa towards decentralization and reducing bureaucracy. This trend is part of a global movement, based on the recognition that central government was too big, inaccessible, remote and inefficient in terms of bringing about development and democratic rule (Sharma 2009).Item South Africa: Surfing towards centralisation on the Covid-19 wave(Routledge, 2021) Steytler, Nico; de Visser, Jaap; Chigwata, TinasheWhen the Covid-19 pandemic reached its shores between February and March 2020, South Africa was already in a vulnerable situation – socially, economically, and politically. Although the country’s population, estimated at 59.6 million in 2020, is two-thirds urban, thus facilitating the spread of the virus, its age cohorts mitigated against Covid-19’s devastating impact – 28.6 per cent of the population is below 15 years old, and only 9.1 per cent is 60 years and older. Nevertheless, other factors placed the country at heightened risk. More than half of the population is poor, and the unemployment rate stands at 42 per cent (Statistics South Africa 2020); in South Africa, one of the most unequal countries in the world, the poor and unemployed are predominantly black. In 2018, social grants were, after salaries, the second main source of income for 45.2 per cent of households, with about 13.1 per cent of households living in informal dwellings.