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South Africa is one of the countries that contributed significantly to the development of the global 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (the 2030 Agenda) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to eradicate poverty, protect the environment and work towards peace and prosperity. In its commitment to contribute to the 17 SDGs, the country has, together with the United Nations, finalised the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for 2020-2025 under the new guidelines released in 2019. Domestically, the country recognises the importance of local government, as the sphere closest to the people, in administering government duties, making it a potentially significant role player in localising the implementation of the SDGs. The question that frames the contention of this paper is whether South Africa has administrative provisions for local government to meet its SDG targets. The paper is largely informed by a qualitative methodology that adopts a discourse analysis approach. Theory building and a critical scholarship review of journal articles, official government documents and books are methodological ways of obtaining data. The realist epistemology of the study undertaken presumes that some of the SDGs are embodied in the basic local government functions. However, this research found that South Africa has no lucid mandate for municipalities to implement its SDG obligations. It therefore recommends ways as to how municipalities can strategically localise and drive the SDG agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automotive manufacturing industry in South Africa has received little sustained academic attention in terms of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) or Broad- Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE). This current contribution is an attempt at laying the basis for greater focus on B-BBEE in the industry. It critically reflects on the economic position and contribution of the automotive manufacturing industry, presents a definitional framework for B-BBEE, and develops an initial critical evaluation of its B-BBEE performance. Our contribution draws attention to how a generalised shift occurred from the narrower BEE to B-BBEE. We unpack the B-BBEE equity equivalents trajectory and foreign-controlled multinational corporations within the automotive manufacturing industry's framework. The methods used include an examination of automotive industrial transformation, policy, and its performance, as well as stakeholder documents and meeting proceedings. Our conclusion reflects on the Automotive Industry Transformation Fund as a synthesis that emerged from the B-BBEE trajectory in the automotive manufacturing industry, and how this positively relates to production development and industrial transformation. This contribution argues for a production development and industrial transformation approach to B-BBEE, with deepening and widening domestic value addition as key objectives and an integral part of localisation, greater attention on diversifying and growing the lower tiers of the supplier base and increasing employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education in the 21st century must have a vision that will support and empower teachers to face the demands of the digital age. The use of information communication technology (ICT) in education can serve this end but ensuring access to digital resources will not address the digital disparity. Culture and language play an equally important role in exacerbating and maintaining the digital disparity as the traditional factor of access. In the study reported on here we investigated the experiences and attitudes of Setswana-speaking teachers in 3 primary schools in the North West province, South Africa, as they were exposed to online software in Setswana, an indigenous African language. Purposive sampling was used to select 7 teachers for the study. Two research questions were answered using systematic self-observation (SSO) instruments, the participant observation (PO) instrument and the in-depth interview (IDI) instrument to determine the experiences and attitudes of the teachers. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data. It was found that accuracy of translation was key for adopting and using software in an African language. The teachers felt that English was the language of ICT and that African languages were not intellectual languages and did not have the capacity to be used in ICT. It is, therefore, recommended that more must be done to translate software into African languages and an effort must be made to raise the status of African languages in academic and technical fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migration, enterprise and the related language and culture dynamics are critical to South Africa and Zimbabwe. In the past, some scholars were of the view that the language and cultural communities created by migration pose a threat, and others argued that they are advantageous. This article presents a single-factor analytical approach to issues, which suggests that co-existing modalities should be worked out for the host citizens to accept the migrants without reservations. This acceptance is imperative as its negation results in some contexts to the flaring of ugly xenophobic manifestations. The argument presented in this article is pertinent to African languages and education, the African Union, the United Nations, civic, humanitarian organisations, respective governments, interested stakeholders and language communities, amongst others. It provides insight on how to manage cultures and morals among migrants of diverse categories. The article used a mixed research methodology. It reviews ideas on migration globally and in Africa in particular, analysing how migration contributes towards emerging language and cultural societies or communities. A sample of 100 respondents was used for this study. The paper suggests that there should be unity, deregulation and liberalisation of movement of people across the continent for trade and skills-sharing to improve sustainability. The article intends to guide African leaders to co-exist and to encourage fair competition for continental expansion, poverty alleviation and development of positive international language policies. It is one of the recent attempts to expound on the existing perspectives on migration dynamics and the formation of viable diasporic language communities in Africa and highlight their contribution towards ubuntu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human rights are an increasingly common language of advocacy for civil society organisations, but are these groups using the same words to mean different things? Although the spread of human rights has been well examined, little attention has been paid to the content of these rights as understood by civil society actors in diverse settings. Focusing on this gap in the literature, this paper examines how personnel in human rights-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Botswana and neighbouring South Africa perceive human rights. Drawing on interview-based case studies of two human rights-based organisations operating at the national level, I analyse how activists draw on domestic context to interpret human rights. This paper argues that personnel in these NGOs understand and articulate human rights in distinct ways that are shaped by and responsive to the contexts in which they live and work. Emerging from a more homogenous consensus-based culture, Botswana respondents are more likely to integrate cultural concepts, emphasise inclusion and understand human rights as timeless and innate. Reflecting South Africa's progressive constitution, unequal society and a history of struggle, South African respondents highlight contrast, agency, change over time and the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author examines how hymn tunes composed in South Africa in the second half of the 19th century were localised by the student body at the College of the Transfiguration in Grahamstown. The tunes are all found in the isiXhosa Anglican hymn book, but originally come from three sources, all linked to Christian missionary work in the Eastern Cape (Amaculo ase-Lovedale,Birkett's IngomaandSt Matthew's Tune Book). All the tunes were written to accompany hymns with trochaic metre, which isiXhosa usually displays naturally. The author finds that colonial elements of harmonisation (allied to western functional harmony) are radically diminished by the students, using local techniques such as skipping 3rds and localised westernisms. In other words, the colonial elements of harmonisation are completely reinterpreted by the students so as to produce music which is more uniquely Southern African. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

South Africa׳s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (the REI4P) is an extensive initiative to install 17.8 GW of electricity generation capacity from renewables – wind, solar, biomass, biogas and hydropower – over the period 2012–2030. Although at the outset the REI4P seemed an expensive option, designed only to deflect criticism of South Africa׳s high carbon footprint and excessive dependence on coal-based electricity generation, the escalating costs of the latter, the rapidly falling costs of photovoltaic and wind power, and the increasingly competitive bidding process of the REI4P have changed this prospect. At the conclusion of round three, the weighted cost of energy has reached a 23% discount to the cost of new coal-based generation and a 28% discount to global renewable energy prices. The bidders׳ commitments to local employment creation have similarly increased from 11 to 18 jobs/MW. The programme is now well placed to deliver on a broad range of objectives, including regional development and black economic empowerment. However, maximum benefit from the REI4P will not be secured without some revision to aspects of the bidding and procurement process. More specifically, the local content provisions need to be tightened to drive higher levels of local manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South African solar resource is vast. By utilising this resource effectively, concentrating solar power (CSP) offers the ability to efficiently store thermal energy until needed for electricity generation. This technology can therefore assist the total electricity system to link demand and supply. Nevertheless, CSP is still entering the commercialisation phase and, as the learning rate sets in, the cost is expected to decrease significantly; thus providing a dispatchable renewable energy option that is competitive with conventional options. A major dilemma needs to be overcome. Until sufficient CSP capacity is installed each year, the localisation potential, and the overall economic benefit for the country, will not materialise. This in turn could stall the technology. This paper presents a techno-economic scenario to show that a CSP industry can be established now that exceeds the threshold for setting up economies of scale, reduces the cost of electricity, and increases energy security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationalisation of the higher education sector across the world has become the norm and this is also true for South African universities. Another dimension has with increasing intension moved into the foreground, namely the need to Africanise South African higher education. The imperatives of these two dimensions are often portrayed as polarised positions and it is thus perceived that the one negates the benefits of the other. This article argues that compatibility exists between internationalisation and Africanisation of higher education in South Africa. To substantiate this argument, the conceptualisation of internationalisation and the Africanising of South African higher education, from selected literature, is presented. Subsequently, it is shown why these two conceptualisations could be perceived as contradictory to each other, and hence some touch points for finding compatibility between them are identified. Some pointers for further research are also indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]