South Africa's integration efforts within the Southern African Development Community: Regional supremacy or coalition?

Regional integration has manifested itself to be an integral part of Africa's postcolonial economic growth blueprints. It was viewed as a mechanism for African states to enhance their development and work collectively, improve their cooperation, and enhance peace and security. Nevertheless, regional integration initiatives are often seen to succeed when spearheaded by regional hegemons. By narrowing this to southern Africa, from 1994 after the first-ever democratic elections and after also becoming a member of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), South Africa was regarded as a state capable of spearheading regional integration. This was a result of its relatively robust economy and military power in comparison with other SADC states. As a result, it was poised to utilize these vast resources to the benefit of the SADC. However, over the last two and a half decades, its regional stance has often come under a lot of scrutinizing due to its ambiguous foreign policy doctrine, particularly in southern Africa. Basically, its post-1994 foreign policy projections towards the region have often not been implemented as attested and have often lacked clear articulation. Nevertheless, this paper argues that South Africa has made positive strides in the SADC's regional integration endeavors post its democratic transition. Its vast regional investments and diplomatic and military interventions have played a crucial role in the development and security reforms in the region. Although it is portrayed as a regional hegemon, it has nevertheless used its regional standpoint to the benefit of the region and further contributed to regional integration post the apartheid era.     

Soft Power and the Currency of Sports: (Re)imagining South Africa’s Rising Hegemony in Africa

Commenting on the utility of sports as a development facilitating instrument, Nelson Mandela, in 2000, remarked that it “has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else can. Sport can awaken hope where there was previously only despair”. Madiba’s iconic statement captures the changing reality of the international system wherein states appreciate the soft power potential of sports as a subtle alternative for gaining political advantage in the international arena. This also lends credence to the argument that politics permeates all elements of social existence, including sports. In view of the preceding, this paper interrogates the rising attractiveness of South Africa in Africa and perhaps globally through the lens of its sporting engagements. From the last decade of the 20th century, South Africa’s status in the sporting world has attracted much international and scholarly attention. The article examines how South Africa negotiates the overlapping arena of politics, sports and foreign policy to normatively secure a regional hegemonic posture through a blend of strategies. These include successful bidding and hosting of sporting mega-events; involvement in the development of sporting codes and local sports content across Africa and a positive cumulative ranking in international competitions vis-à-vis other contenders for regional powerhood. The analysis takes the position that South Africa’s strategy of sports diplomacy masks its aspiration for regional hegemony and this pattern is uniquely relevant for shaping empirical understanding of power politics in Africa as well as appreciating the ideational potency of soft power as a constitutive element of what makes a regional hegemon.     

Carbon emission,solid waste management,and electricity generation: a legal and empirical perspective for renewable energy in Nigeria

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - This research investigates the necessity for transformation of wastes to energy for environmentally friendly and improvement in...     

Communicating South Africa’s soft power: Agents,instruments and recipients

New scholarly literature that focuses on the currency of soft power is emerging in the analysis of South Africa’s foreign policy. This nascent strand of discourse seeks to capture the nexus between the ideational value of soft power and Pretoria’s foreign policy. Despite pockets of literature in this regard, there has been little analysis of the communicative settings and adaptations of soft power in the South African context. Within this analytical context, this article aims to contribute to existing discourse on South Africa’s soft power by probing the agents, sources and subjects involved in its cultivation and unpacking the links between these communicative environments. These issues are critical, given the recent emphasis on the role and utility of soft power for achieving South Africa’s foreign policy ambitions. The article stresses that, in the long term, the deepening of South Africa’s soft power capability and influence will depend largely on the extent of the strategic calibration between the communicative realms of actors, instruments and recipients.     

Experiential and emotional encounters of women planners in Africa

Women planners in Africa do not constitute a critical mass: their numbers remain negligible and their output unrecognised, while mentors and role models still tend to be male. Women's experiences are undervalued, and their knowledge is often excluded in policy, project planning, and implementation. This article arises not from systematic academic research but from confessional, reflective, pilot research based on personal experience and the experiences reported by 25 women planners between 1999 and 2004. It deliberately seeks to break the monotony of drawing from survey results which are often detached from experiential and emotional encounters. Using anecdotal material from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, it examines the training and professional environment of the ‘planneress’; and discusses the emotions, expectations, and experiences of female planners in everyday encounters.     

A survey of research foci and paradigms in media and communication Master's dissertations and doctoral theses in South Africa

This study set out to evaluate the foci and paradigms of research in media and communication at Master's and doctoral levels in South Africa. A sample of 241 dissertations and theses in the communication, journalism and media studies programmes of nine universities, from 2004 to 2013, categorised into historically black, historically white Afrikaans-medium and English-medium, were obtained from the databases of the National Research Foundation and some of the universities. The findings show that the production of PhD theses is far lower than that of Master's dissertations. Qualitative design tended to be the dominant approach adopted, followed by a mixed methods approach, and the quantitative approach. The focus of most of the theses is journalism, followed by general media studies. The findings further show that historically black universities bottom the table in the production of related theses and dissertations, while white English-speaking universities top the list. Also, there is evidence of a relationship between the historical origin/language of the universities and the research designs adopted, as well as the research focus of the theses. The article recommends, among others, the need for a clear-cut statement of research methodologies and designs in such theses and dissertations, greater motivation for enrolment in PhD programmes, a strengthening of historically black universities for better performance in postgraduate research, and the incorporation of the experimental method in media research in South Africa.