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The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges for healthcare systems and political leaders across the globe. In this case study of Brazil, we argue that leadership failings at the highest level contributed to Brazil's relatively high and escalating death rates during 2020. Drawing on an analysis of a large amount of textual documentation drawn from media reports, we emphasise the role and consequences of President Jair Bolsonaro's political discourse and prioritisation of the economy. We focus on the first wave that swept across the globe between January and late June of 2020, arguing that Bolsonaro underplayed the seriousness of the epidemic, leveraged misinformation as a political strategy, promoted pseudoscience, and undermined the Ministry of Health. He also confronted subnational governments for adopting lockdown measures - a move that enabled him to blame regional governors for the short-term economic costs of COVID-19 related restrictions. We suggest that his denialist approach to climate change paved the way for his subsequent denialism of the seriousness of COVID-19 and for his undermining of social distancing, mask-wearing and other preventative responses supported by science. These sobering findings highlight the role that national leaders can play in undermining scientific approaches to both public health and the environment.

In March 2020, South Africa’s government imposed a severe lockdown in response to the covid-19 pandemic The economic and social costs of the lockdown—coming on top of preexisting unemployment, poverty, hunger, and deep inequality—resulted in strong pressures on the government to ease it just as the pandemic accelerated, especially in June and July The combination of pandemic and lockdown exposed anew incompetent state institutions (with limited capacity to deliver key services), poor leadership (through an entrenched dominant party mired in corruption), a largely supine Parliament, and weak opposition parties The courts and civil society have played important but insufficient roles in holding the executive to account © 2020 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press

My Commentary ‘Why are black South African students less likely to consider studying biological sciences?’ (S Afr J Sci. 2020;116(5/6)) has been criticised on a variety of grounds. Many of these involve misrepresentations or misunderstandings of my research. Some appear to be rooted in hostility towards quantitative social science paradigms. Many condemn what they see as racist assumptions and interpretations. I defend my explicitly exploratory research, showing that the research design was in line with standards for such research and was rooted in well-established existing literatures. I dispute that my research was in any way racist or entailed racial essentialism. Rather, it emphasized that attitudes and beliefs were better predictors of study and career choices than self-identified racial identities per se. I defend the analysis of the ‘red-green divide’, materialism, attitudes to wildlife and experience of pets and attitudes on other issues. I acknowledge some useful suggestions for further and fuller research to enhance an evidence-based understanding of the challenges of transformation facing the University of Cape Town and the conservation sector more broadly.

Haarmann, Haarmann and Nattrass describe the context, origin and development of the world’s first Basic Income pilot, located in Otjivero, Namibia. They discuss the evidence gathered and criticisms of the pilot and its assessment. They show that the Basic Income had an immediate impact on poverty, and particularly on child malnutrition, and that it fostered new small scale local economic activity. They suggest that the assumption that poor people are incapable of using a cash grant developmentally, and that the political elite is reluctant to adopt a social policy that would constitute a right, have resulted in a nationwide Basic Income not being implemented. Factual evidence will never be sufficient on its own. Only political will would enable a Basic Income to be implemented.

Felix started work as a gardener for a semi-private school in Cape Town in the 1980s. In 1994, he was living in a shack, in Imizamo Yethu, a largely unserviced ‘informal settlement’ in the Hout Bay valley. Soon after, his shack burnt down when a fire swept through the settlement, forcing him to rebuild and refurnish. In 2014, twenty years after the first democratic elections, he was still a gardener, but he was living in very different conditions. Much of the informal settlement of Imizamo Yethu had been transformed into a neighbourhood of two- and three-bedroomed houses, through what was in effect a public-private partnership that combined largely public funding with private management. Over the course of the preceding twenty years Felix’s wages had risen substantially in real terms, and he had a growing private pension fund. His employer had also assisted him in building a larger house than would have been possible with public funds alone. This enabled him to supplement his earnings with rent paid by tenants in his house (as well as in rooms built in the yard). Felix had also bought himself a second-hand car, and had extended the family’s home in the rural Eastern Cape. Felix was now a respectable, home-owning, working man and he voted proudly in each election. His life was still far from easy, however, and he struggled to pay the interest on the loans he had taken out to buy a car and furniture, and to build in the Eastern Cape.

In the 2000s, poor urban areas across South Africa were the sites of a wave of protests over service delivery, housing and political representation. This ‘rebellion of the poor’ (Alexander, 2010) reflected a ‘society’ that was ‘seething with fury’ (Bond, 2014: 1). Protests were almost always focused on immediate, local issues, although implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) they entailed a demand for a fuller social and political citizenship. At the same time, ‘new social movements’ (or, more precisely, social movement organizations) emerged to challenge ANC government policy on a national level. Taking advantage of the socioeconomic rights provided in the constitution, and showing great skill in media use and building coalitions with disparate organizations, these new movement organizations pushed the state towards more generous service provision and the ANC to pay more attention to the quality of its candidates for municipal office. Movement organizations drew on an anti-neoliberal ideology, but it is not clear that this ideology put down deep social roots. Whilst protests secured marginal gains, they tended to reinforce the broadly social democratic character of service delivery and representation. Crucially, protests focused on the extent of redistribution through the state, not on the economic growth path that reproduced massive unemployment and the ensuing (mal-)distribution of income. Calls were made for more populist pro-poor policies, a shift from a mixed economy to a more statist one and more participatory democracy, but none of these achieved significant momentum.

Neoliberal states require some capacity, most obviously to protect property rights, but social democratic states require a much wider range of capacities, to protect workers against exploitation and consumers against abuse, to raise taxes from the rich and to provide public services and income support to citizens, especially poor citizens. The likelihood of a state being social democratic is also likely to rise if it is more accountable. The South African state, after 1994, had considerable capacity, although this had important limits, and the state increasingly relied on non-state actors (and ‘neoliberal’ forms of governance) to implement even pro-poor policies. It was accountable to the governing party, but the design of its political institutions compromised its accountability to the electorate.

HIV/AIDS is the greatest health threat facing humankind - particularly for those people living in Southern Africa. Of the estimated 40 million people infected with HIV worldwide, over two thirds live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Southern African countries top the HIV prevalence tables. According to the World Bank, if AIDS had not affected Southern Africa, 'life expectancy would have reached 64 by 2010-15. Instead, it will have regressed to 47, reversing the gains of the past 30 years' (2001: 139). Figure 1 shows how life expectancy rose in the 10 Southern African countries during the 1970s and early 1980s, but then fell sharply in the 1990s as the AIDS epidemic and economic crisis took their toll.

Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 6, ‘to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases’, is unique among the MDGs because it emerged in the context of unprecedented prior international mobilization, especially around HIV/AIDS, thus both reflecting and facilitating an expanding international health agenda. MDG 6 built on the idea of “health as development”, originally articulated at the 1978 conference on primary health at Alma-Ata, but was profoundly shaped by the political traction and fund-raising successes of AIDS activism and the international AIDS response. This underpinned the expansion of MDG 6 targets to include antiretroviral treatment, helped forge partnerships to reduce the prices of antiretroviral treatment and essential medicine, thereby contributing to MDG 8 (“building partnerships for development”) and, in high HIV-prevalence regions, also to MDGs 4 and 5 (maternal and child health). The UN High-Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda recommends setting country-level health targets to achieve healthcare for all. Targets can help citizens hold governments to account by providing a focus for mobilization and a yardstick to measure progress. The data collection and policy monitoring pioneered by UNAIDS, and the involvement and support for civil society organizations achieved through the AIDS response, must be continued for this broader health agenda to succeed.

The South African economy experienced substantial growth and change over the twentieth century. By the time of Union in 1910, gold mining on the Witwatersrand had already and rapidly transformed what had been a peripheral agricultural economy into one that was industrialising around mineral exports. Gold attracted British capital and immigrants from Europe (as well as from across southern Africa), and made possible secondary industrialisation and four decades of sustained economic growth in the middle of the century. Between the early 1930s and early 1970s, the South African economy grew approximately tenfold in real terms. Even taking into account the steady increase in the population, real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita tripled (see Figure 11.1). Despite faltering growth in the 1980s, South Africa accounted for almost exactly one half of the total GDP of sub-Saharan Africa at the end of the apartheid period, in 1994.

South Africa is in the midst of a catastrophic HIV/AIDS epidemic with over 12% of the national population infected with HIV. Although representing less than 1% of the world’s population, nearly 10% of people living with HIV/AIDS reside in South Africa. Probably the most perplexing aspect of South Africa’s battle with AIDS is former President Thabo Mbeki’s rejection of AIDS science in favour of the ‘questioning’ stance of a small group of ‘AIDS denialists’. The story of denialism in South Africa and its political influence is well documented (Cameron, 2005; Gevisser, 2007; Gumede, 2005; Heywood, 2004; Nattrass, 2007) but nevertheless remains an enigma: why did President Thabo Mbeki go down this path? Why did he and his Health Minister reject all expert scientific opinion on AIDS pathogenesis and treatment – even in the face of rising social anger, loss of political standing both domestically and abroad, and at the cost of thousands of unnecessary deaths? How the government not oppose Mbeki and remain silent for so long?

In 1986 the Urban Foundation commissioned the authors to explore the impact on rural development of political‐economic relations between South Africa and the ‘homelands’. The exercise was inevitably speculative and ranged from a historical and statistical evaluation of these relations to policy prescriptions for rural development (Nattrass & Nattrass, 1986). This article draws on some of the ideas expressed in that study and provides updated statistics where possible.

This article explores the nature and history of organized business in South Africa. It describes the major racial, sectoral and other fault-lines which fracture the business community, and indicates that many of these are the legacy of apartheid. It points out that the relationship between business and the state was ambiguous, varied between the economic sectors, and changed radically over time. The latter sections of the article discuss the role of business in South Africa's transition (and the collective action problems which were experienced), and charts the developments which lead up to the creation of the mega federation Business South Africa (BSA). It is argued that BSA represents an important, yet fragile, step towards unity.

This article examines some of the collective action problems which beset South African business in national and regional accords. The first part concludes that incomes policy type accords at national level are unlikely to be successful in South Africa. The main part of the article considers accords at subnational level where conflicts of interest are more easily (but not entirely) resolved. This is done by means of two case studies of business acting collectively to promote regional or local development. The first looks at the role of organized business in the Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Consultative Council (ECSECC). It is suggested that the geographical divide between the various business organizations undermines the potential for collective action. The second describes the more successful local housing accord which was negotiated in Port Elizabeth.

A new political age has dawned in South Africa, yet the country remains plagued by inequality, weak growth and chronic unemployment. Nelson Mandela’s Government of National Unity now faces the delicate task of furthering redistribution whilst promoting industrial restructuring and sustained growth. The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) spearheads the attempt.

This chapter investigates certain political and economic questions raised by an evaluation of the KwaZulu-Natal Indaba.2 Briefly, the Indaba refers to a series of negotiations towards the construction of a regional alternative to apartheid, taking place between governing bodies and interest groups in the geographical region (nicknamed ‘KwaNatal’) comprising the white province of Natal and the black ‘homeland’ of KwaZulu. The most important participants in the discussions are Inkatha, the KwaZulu Cabinet (dominated by Inkatha), the Natal Provincial Council Executive, and various business lobbies, such as the South African Sugar Association, the Natal Chamber of Industries, and the Durban Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. At the time of writing, the talks were still in progress and only broad principles had been accepted by the participants.