The 80/20 Report on Local Government examines the structure, roles, and responsibilities of local government, tracks the history of local government from the apartheid era into the present, provides hard data on socio-economic circumstances in each of South Africa’s local authorities, ranks all municipalities according to service delivery indicators, provides analysis of the data, and proposes solutions to the problems facing local government.
Reports
2 June 2014 - Political debate about South Africa is still hobbled by all manner of constraints that you simply don’t meet in discussions on contemporary British, French or American politics.
13 May 2014 - In the run-up to the election on 7th May many commentators suggested that some of the interventionist legislation recently enacted or promised by the African National Congress (ANC) was populist rather than ideological.
Picture South Africa in ten years: Are the angry poor rising up, seizing land and businesses? Will the ANC survive three more elections? Will the middle classes still braai in suburbia or will we go the way of Zimbabwe?
17 April 2014 - South Africa’s private sector makes a larger contribution to the country than is usually acknowledged. Apart from investment, growth, jobs, and tax, it pours billions into corporate social investment (CSI).
26 March 2014 - In August 2012 the Cabinet adopted the National Development Plan (NDP) as South Africa’s policy blueprint from now until 2030.
3 March 2014 - The first issue of @Liberty, published on 13th February 2014, carried the Institute’s twelve-point plan for a better South Africa. Reaction to a version put up on PoliticsWeb has been mixed. One person said the author of the plan, John Kane-Berman, was casting “pearls before swine, Johnnyboy”.
25 February 2014 - Media coverage of the Promotion and Protection of Investment Bill of 2013 (the Investment Bill) has focused on its role in replacing South Africa’s bilateral investment treaties with various European states. Representatives of these countries have broken their usual diplomatic silence to warn against the reduced protection it gives investors from their states. However, the true significance of the Bill goes very much beyond this.
18 February 2014 - Violent anti-government protest action in South Africa has increased dramatically in recent months. So much so that business, diplomatic, and government leaders are repeatedly asking the IRR what the demonstrations mean for the country’s future.
13 February 2014 - The National Development Plan (NDP) is the latest in a series of government plans to accelerate growth and increase employment. However, like its predecessors, the NDP fails to make the policy shifts essential to increased investment, growth, and jobs.
This report presents research by the South African Institute of Race Relations into the state of South African families and youth. The first part will describe the situation and structure of families, from orphans and child-headed households, through to absent fathers and single parents, as well as the effect of poverty on the family.