Recent and upcoming events

The political economy of neighbourhood activism in Cape Town

Submitted by Kathy Forbes on 16 March, 2012 - 14:24
Event type: 
Seminar
Date and time: 
Thursday, 22 March, 2012 - 13:00
Presenter(s): 
Luke Staniland
Venue: 
CSSR Seminar Room R429 Leslie Social Science Building
Abstract / Description: 

This presentation examines the emergence and evolution of ‘progressive activism and organisation’ between 1976 and 2006 in the African township of Guguletu and the coloured township of Bonteheuwel within the City of Cape Town. Focusing on youth, student and adult involvement in struggle over thirty years it compares both how activism has changed over time (including as a result of democratisation) and how it differed between and within these two communities.

Focusing on people's positions within the state’s economic and distributional networks and the impact of historical experience of class formation on expectation it challenges views of community struggles as dualistic conflicts between classes, races or between the oppressed and forces of global capital. Instead it argues that throughout the thirty years under consideration the City’s political economy combined with changing political opportunities for activism to create complex coalitions of competing and collaborating class forces. These coalitions shaped a local activism that has been characterised by its diversity and fragmentation, as much as its unified sense of struggle and purpose.

 
 
LUNCH WILL BE SERVED.  AVAILABLE FROM APPROX 12:40

Socio-economic, biological and behavioural correlates of HIV status among young Black South Africans in Cape Town, South Africa

Submitted by Kathy Forbes on 2 March, 2012 - 11:11
Event type: 
Seminar
Date and time: 
Thursday, 8 March, 2012 - 13:00
Presenter(s): 
Nicoli Nattrass
Venue: 
CSSR Seminar Room R429 Leslie Social Science Building
Abstract / Description: 
ABSTRACT
 
Data from a panel study of African men and women aged 20-30 in Cape
Town, South Africa, reveals a clear association between HIV prevalence
and the number of years of sexual activity, which is consistent with
arguments that emphasise sexual behaviour as the key driver of the
epidemic. Having engaged in a concurrent sexual partnership increases
HIV risk for young men, and full circumcision reduces it.  HIV risk
for young women (but not young men) is also affected by socio-economic
status, measured in terms of participation in post-school education
(relative to making a transition from school to work, or school to
employment). Among young men, higher socio-economic status is
associated with safer sex, in terms of condom use, but the effects of
this are offset by the effect of having more than two sexual partners
and engaging in concurrent partnerships. The analysis suggests that
both sexual behaviour and socio-economic status matter, but that these
dynamics are highly gendered.
 
 
LUNCH WILL BE SERVED FROM APPROX. 12:40

"The Doctor Is In": An Exploration of the Role of Affirmative Action in Medical School Admissions Policies in Addressing Geographic and Demographic Maldistribution of Physicians

Submitted by Kathy Forbes on 24 February, 2012 - 13:39
Event type: 
Seminar
Date and time: 
Thursday, 1 March, 2012 - 13:00
Presenter(s): 
Zoe Gauld
Venue: 
CSSR, R429 Leslie Social Science Building
Abstract / Description: 
Abstract:

In recent years, the use of ‘race’-based affirmative action at the University of Cape Town Medical School has become a highly contested subject. However, the practicality of implementing an alternative inequality-reducing policy remains unknown. The present study aims to discover whether is it possible to develop a multi-dimensional points system to replace the current ‘race’-based affirmative action, and what the impact of such a policy would be on the ‘racial’ demographics of the admitted student body and their likelihood of responding to South African healthcare needs. Based on the relevant existing literature, various point systems are developed, which award points for attributes such as rural origin or disadvantage, in addition to academic achievements. Subsequently, the impact of these point systems is assessed in comparison to the impact of the current ‘race’-based affirmative action policy. The data suggest that, within the context of the University of Cape Town Medical School, it is possible to utilise other factors other than ‘race’ to create an effective affirmative action policy aimed at redressing inequality. Additionally, such a policy has promising implications for addressing both demographic and geographic maldistribution of South African physicians

LUNCH WILL BE SERVED FROM APPROX 12:40

Exposure to violence and educational outcomes in Cape Town

Submitted by Kathy Forbes on 16 February, 2012 - 16:24
Event type: 
Seminar
Date and time: 
Thursday, 23 February, 2012 - 13:00
Presenter(s): 
Duncan Pieterse
Venue: 
Centre for Social Science Research, R429 Leslie Social Science Building
Abstract / Description: 

We explore the relationship between exposure to violence during childhood and educational outcomes in the context of higher than average rates of violence in Cape Town, South Africa and the disproportionate exposure to violence of young South Africans (black and coloured youth in particular). We match official police crime statistics at the neighbourhood level to the Cape Area Panel Study (CAPS) to provide a unique descriptive analysis of violence in Cape Town and determine the extent of selection bias using matching techniques. Using three measures of educational outcomes (numeracy and literacy test scores, dropout and high school exam results), we: (i) estimate kernel density functions of continuous educational outcomes measures by race and exposure to violence; and (ii) remove constant differences in unobserved family and neighbourhood background that may bias the results by using sibling and neighbourhood fixed effect models. In the baseline regressions, the measures of exposure to violence are significant and have a large negative effect on educational outcomes (with the exception of literacy scores). In the sibling and neighbourhood fixed effect regressions, the effect remains for two of the four measures of exposure to violence during childhood. These findings are robust to the inclusion of birth order effects.

The Indian Battle for Access to Medicines: Lessons learned, battles won, and struggles ahead

Submitted by Eduard Grebe on 23 January, 2012 - 15:05
Event type: 
Public lecture
Date and time: 
Thursday, 26 January, 2012 - 18:00
Presenter(s): 
Leena Menghaney
Venue: 
Wolfson Pavilion Lecture Theatre, UCT Medical School
Abstract / Description: 

Leena Menghaney

High quality and affordable generic anti-retrovirals (ARVs) from India have been central to the significant scale-up in the HIV response. Due to generic competition, mainly from India, an ARV treatment regimen which cost R5,000 a month per patient in the late 1990s can be bought today for less than R100 per month. Affordable ARVs have allowed for millions of people to receive treatment, with 6.6 million people worldwide, 1.59 million of whom are in South Africa, on ARVs today. A 2010 study showed that between 2003 and 2008, more than 80% of ARVs used in Africa were purchased from India.

Access to medicines campaigners in India were crucial to ensuring that the government included important public health safe guards in their updated Patents Act. Indian activists have since pushed for these public health safeguards, such as patent oppositions, to be used in order to promote generic competition. These battles have been crucial to high-quality, affordable generic ARVs and other medicines.

But now these hard-fought gains are being threatened: Pharmaceutical companies and powerful northern governments are pushing the Indian government to over-turn essential public health safeguards included in the country’s Patents Act. This threatens medicine access for millions of people across the globe.

Understanding the experience of Indian activists is important for African health activists, government and policy makers campaigning for affordable medicines.

Leena Menghaney, the Indian campaigner for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Access Campaign, will speak about the Indian experience of access to medicines, detailing the campaign for the pro-public health Patents Act; patent oppositions in India; and the current fight against the Swiss drug company Novartis and the controversial Free Trade Agreement currently under negotiation with the European Union. A lawyer by training, Leena has worked for MSF’s Access Campaign since 2005. She is based in New Delhi, India.

Political budget cycles and intergovernmental transfers in a dominant party framework: Empirical evidence from South Africa

Submitted by Ncedeka Mbune on 28 November, 2011 - 14:42
Event type: 
Seminar
Date and time: 
Thursday, 1 December, 2011 - 13:00
Presenter(s): 
Verena Kroth, London School of Economics
Venue: 
4.29 CSSR, Leslie Social Science, Upper Campus
Abstract / Description: 

Are intergovernmental transfers to South African provinces used to implement political budget cycles (PBCs)? This paper integrates the existing PBC literature with two distributive politics models, in order to test whether South African intergovernmental transfers are used to target swing provinces or core support provinces prior to an election. The empirical analysis of a unique panel dataset comprising South Africa's nine provinces over the period 1995-2007 generates the following results. First, in the year before an election, core support provinces receive higher transfers from the central government. Second, this increase is driven by the conditional grant, which is the non-formula-based component of total intergovernmental transfers. Third, the increase in provincial revenue in core support provinces displays compositional patterns, with increased spending on welfare, roads and safety in the year before an election. These findings offer a first analysis of PBCs in South Africa and provide evidence for the hypothesis that both the level and composition of intergovernmental fiscal transfers are subject to the politically motivated targeting of core support provinces. This shows that even in a dominant party framework an incumbent may choose to target regions strategically and implement PBCs through the use of intergovernmental grants.

Refreshments will be served.

Tata ma chance: Contingency and the Lottery in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Submitted by Eduard Grebe on 14 November, 2011 - 17:48
Event type: 
Seminar
Date and time: 
Thursday, 17 November, 2011 - 13:00 to 14:00
Presenter(s): 
Illana van Wyk (HUMA, UCT)
Venue: 
Robertson Room, R451, 4th Floor, Leslie Social Science Building
Abstract / Description: 

Since its inception in March 2000, the South African National Lottery has been treated as both a developmental boon and as a dangerously exploitative new consumer product. In both discourses the poor feature prominently; as recipients of Lotto largess and as its most frequent victims. Both academics and the National Responsible Gambling Programme have traced the poor’s participation in the Lottery to their financial illiteracy and to their extraordinary millennial hopes. Based on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in Cape Town’s townships in 2008/2010, this paper puts paid to such interpretations by looking at the economic realities and lottery participation of ‘the poor’. I contend that poor people in these areas have adapted enormously flexible ways of dealing with the multiple contingencies that mark their lives. This flexibility often translates into very modest investments in the Lottery, both financially and in terms of hope. As such, playing the Lottery is just one of a range of ways in which people ‘make a plan’ and ‘tata ma chance’ (take a chance).

Governance in Africa in a Worldwide Perspective: What the Data Tell Us, and the Challenges in Constructing and Using Governance Indicators

Submitted by Eduard Grebe on 31 October, 2011 - 17:00
Event type: 
Seminar
Date and time: 
Friday, 4 November, 2011 - 13:00 to 14:00
Presenter(s): 
Daniel Kaufman (Brookings Institution)
Venue: 
CSSR Seminar Room (4.89 Leslie Social Science)
Abstract / Description: 

This special CSSR seminar will be offered by Daniel Kaufman, Senior Fellow in the Global Economy Program at the Brookings Institution and former director of the World Bank Institute.

Refreshments will be served

The Impact of AIDS on Local Government Performance: Evidence of the Third Wave of the AIDS Epidemic

Submitted by Eduard Grebe on 26 October, 2011 - 14:37
Event type: 
Seminar
Date and time: 
Thursday, 27 October, 2011 - 13:00 to 14:00
Presenter(s): 
Robert Cameron (UCT), Per Strand (UCT) and Lauren Smith (UCT)
Venue: 
CSSR Seminar Room (4.89 Leslie Social Science)
Abstract / Description: 

Only ten years ago, alarming scenarios were predicted for nascent democratic states in Africa as a consequence of the third wave of the AIDS epidemic. The erosion of capacity caused by AIDS mortality, some argued, would trigger wars and reverse recent gains in democratic governance. However, whereas case studies have been able to detail the AIDS-related attrition among staff with responsibility to deliver essential services, and small-n comparisons have argued for an ‘AIDS pattern’ in the mortality of Members of Parliament, no study has so far been able to link the epidemic to data on governance outcomes. On the basis of more recent data from South Africa’s districts and municipalities, this paper argues that such an effect can now be specified. In addition to providing support for the argument, the statistical analysis provides a basis for making strategic choices about which districts would be optimal cases for more qualitative comparative analyses to understand the mechanisms that make local governance more or less vulnerable to the effects of AIDS.

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