The Chaos Precinct: Johannesburg as a port city

_

Add event to calendar

Silencing Racism in Post-1994 South African Scholarship - A book talk on Colorblind Tools

SCIS Seminars

About the speaker: 

Lerato Shai is an independent labour economist and career coach. Her current focus is the acceleration of women’s labour market outcomes underpinned by a feminist lens. Lerato has recently completed a policy and institutional review of women’s economic participation in South Africa for the National Planning Commission. She is currently supporting Ilifa Labantwana to develop a childcare agenda for South Africa, and Harambee to secure funding to expand the ECD workforce as part of the Bana Pele 2030 strategy. She was previously the Director in the Presidency responsible for the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention. As a career coach, Lerato works with women to unlock clarity, build confidence, and cultivate conviction in their careers. She holds a Master of Commerce (Applied Economics) from the University of Cape Town and coaching certification from Thoughtsmiths Coach Training.

Abstract: 

The seminar will present a paper on South Africa’s childcare system, which operates within a contested hybrid care regime and is characterised by fragmentation, market-led provision, and insufficient government funding. Despite constitutional and policy commitments to gender equality and early childhood development (ECD), access to affordable, quality childcare remains limited, disproportionately affecting low-income households and reinforcing women’s burden of unpaid care work. This paper adopts a systems-based framework to review the structure, challenges, and transformative potential of South Africa’s childcare system. The country has a significant opportunity to realise a ‘triple social and economic dividend’ by investing in a well-functioning childcare system. The paper concludes with five strategic policy recommendations to realise this: (1) adopt a systems approach to childcare policy and planning; (2) increase and reallocate funding to ensure sustainability and equity; (3) implement existing recommendations on service provision and child maintenance enforcement; (4) close national data and evidence gaps; and (5) shift societal norms around care.

Read the full report: Unlocking affordable and quality childcare to benefit women_ report

Add event to calendar

Green Extractivism and the Political Economy of Emissions

SCIS Seminars

Add event to calendar

SCIS Annual Inequality Lecture – Exploring the Changing Dynamics of Inequality in Africa

Speaker Bio

Ernest Aryeetey

Ernest Aryeetey is an Emeritus Professor of Development Economics at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana. Until July 2024, he was the Secretary-General of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), a network of 20 of Africa’s flagship universities. He is a former Vice-Chancellor of University of Ghana and was also previously Director of ISSER. Ernest Aryeetey was the first Director of the Africa Growth Initiative of Brookings Institution, Washington D.C.

He has held academic appointments at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London), Yale University and Swarthmore College in the U.S. at various points in time. Ernest Aryeetey was a member of the Governing Council of the United Nations University (2016-2019) and was also previously Chairman of the Advisory Board of the UNU-World Institute for Development Economics Research (Helsinki). He is currently the Board Chairman of the African Economic Research Consortium. He was, until December 2021, the Board Chairman of Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited. He holds honorary degrees from University of Sussex (UK), Lund University (Sweden), Stellenbosch University (South Africa), University of Ghana, Legon (Ghana, University of Health and Applied Sciences (Ghana), University of Glasgow (UK) and University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa).

One of Ernest Aryeetey’s strategic priorities as Vice-Chancellor at the University of Ghana was to develop the University into a research-intensive institution that supports structural transformation in Africa. As ARUA Secretary-General his major pre-occupation was to show that collaboration was key in making African universities more competitive globally while remaining relevant to their communities.  

Abstract

Africa remains one of the world’s most unequal regions. This situation is shaped by a complex interplay of structural barriers, fragmented labour markets, premature deindustrialisation, and reliance on low-productivity agriculture. Most new labour market entrants find only insecure, low-mobility work, while a privileged few accesses wage employment. These challenges are compounded by several other factors, including climate change and external shocks, which deepen intergenerational poverty and gender disparities. Inequality in Africa is not a natural outcome of economic growth but the result of policy choices that affect how individuals and households respond, institutional legacies, and power structures that favour elites, as evidenced by persistent illicit capital flight and rent-seeking.

This address will explore how factors behind inequality play out in today’s Africa and what it will take to tackle them. The paper will highlight the need for accelerated structural transformation, progressive fiscal reforms, and stronger redistributive mechanisms. It will demonstrate that reducing inequality requires systemic changes, including aligning economic growth with equity, harnessing technology for inclusion, and fostering regional cooperation on taxation and climate resilience. The appropriate reliance on social protection programs will also be highlighted, with an emphasis on employment as the best form of social protection. Without bold reforms, Africa risks becoming home to most of the world’s extreme poor. Africa’s experience demonstrates that inequality is not inevitable but a product of history and policy—and therefore can be changed.

Finalised_Program

Add event to calendar

Book Launch: Navigating Africa’s Climate Development Nexus by Saliem Fakir

INVITATION: Book Launch: Navigating Africa’s Climate Development Nexus by Saliem Fakir Hosted in partnership with the African Climate Foundation

You are warmly invited to the launch of Navigating Africa’s Climate Development Nexus, a timely and thought-provoking new book by Saliem Fakir. In an era of mounting climate urgency, this book explores how Africa can chart a path toward climate resilience and economic justice—balancing development imperatives with sustainability.

This event brings together leading voices at the intersection of climate, policy, and inequality to engage in a powerful conversation about the future of the continent.

Add event to calendar

Staging a special economic zone (SEZ): Economic representation amid uncertainty

Labour dynamics and SEZs

Julia Hampton is a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID). Based on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in a Special Economic Zone in South Africa, her thesis investigates how, in a context of chronic long-term unemployment, an intervention aimed at fostering market inclusion ends up reproducing and legitimising poverty and inequality. She joined ODID in 2019 as a Rhodes Scholar to pursue an MPhil in Development Studies. Prior to Oxford, Julia completed an Honours degree in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts in English, Economics, and Economic History at the University of Cape Town.

Abstract:

This seminar will be based on a paper that examines the staging of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in South Africa. It shows that economic policy concepts do not format the economy in their image but instead animate documentary representations of the economy in the abstract, as a manageable, future-oriented object. Going further, the paper explores the productive role of doubt in sustaining this abstraction. The doubtful spectacle of technical control is stabilised on a fragile basis through the everyday labours of differently positioned actors to suspend disbelief in scripted economic futures: state officials’ commitments to inclusion; consultants’ trade-offs between technical certainty and optimism; and unemployed participants’ tactical engagements for the sake of marginal livelihoods, recognition, and influence. In doing so, the paper expands theories of performativity by showing how ‘the economy’ is sustained not just by economics, but by the pragmatic, affective, and ethical reasons diverse actors have to instrumentalise economics in their own lives.

Add event to calendar

The redistributive and regulatory role of the state

Join Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) & Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) for the redistributive and regulatory role of the state webinar on 15 Nov

Please join our panel of distinguished speakers Prof Sarah Cook (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies), Dr Abigail Osiki (University of the Western Cape), Ms Mery Laura Perdomo Ospina (ILAW Network), and  Dr Ruth Caste-Branco (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies) as they discuss among others: 

• How social policy can respond to the changing world of work(ers)?
• How the state can extend public services and social protections to historically marginalized sectors?
• What are the possibilities and limitations of the redistributive role of the state?

Ms Seipati Mokhema (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies) will chair what promises to be a robust engagement

Add event to calendar

Limits of Social Citizenship: Unemployment insurance & the reproduction of the SA capitalist state

SCIS invites you to a hybrid seminar titled The Limits of Social Citizenship: Unemployment insurance and the reproduction of the South African capitalist state.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a hybrid seminar titled The Limits of Social Citizenship: Unemployment insurance and the reproduction of the South African racial capitalist state on 6 February 2025, 12:30 - 14:00. Dr Courtney Hallink, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at SCIS, will present this seminar. 

Abstract: 
Three decades following the end of apartheid, racial stratification continues to be reproduced along historically constituted lines. In this study, I ask how the institutionalisation of unemployment insurance during the periods of segregation (1910-1947) and apartheid (1948-1994) continues to affect the racialisation of social citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa. In other words, I ask how unemployment
insurance legislation continues to undermine the democratisation of social citizenship in the post apartheid present. I use a historical sociological approach, engaging process tracing while also drawing from historiographical literature and sociological theory. I draw extensively from legislative acts, parliamentary debates (Hansards), reports from various commissions of inquiry, and other relevant government and non-government materials. Grounded in social reproduction theory; racial capitalism; critical whiteness studies; and racial states, the study demonstrates how unemployment insurance was used to consolidate the White minority state by buttressing racial segregation and the reproduction of the capitalist system. Despite the UIF’s origins in the consolidation of a racial state, its core structure remains the same following the end of apartheid. This study sheds light on what this means for
working-age adults in contemporary South Africa.

About the speaker:
Dr Courtney Hallink is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. She recently completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge. Courtney also holds an MSocSci in Sociology from the University of Cape Town and a BA (Hons) in International Relations from the University of Toronto. Courtney’s scholarly work explores the intersections between work, unemployment,
and social policy. She is particularly interested in examining the ways in which the historical institutionalisation of social citizenship reproduces stratification along the dimensions of race, class, and gender in the (post)-colonial present. Courtney’s work is theoretically grounded in social reproduction theory; race and capitalism; critical whiteness studies; and racial states. Her scholarly work informs current debates on South Africa’s Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant and the Universal Basic Income grant (UBIG). Courtney is also a coordinator at #PayTheGrants, a community-based organisation fighting for the continuation of the SRD grant and the introduction of a UBIG.

Register:  Meeting Registration - Zoom

Click here for more information on our upcoming seminars.

Add event to calendar

Inequality and Elite Power: What Is the Problem and What Can Be Done?

SCIS invites you to a round table discussion on Inequality and Elite Power: What Is the Problem, and What Can Be Done? on 19 Feb 2025, 13:00 - 14:30 (SAST).

The Wealth Inequality and Elites research stream invites you to a roundtable titled Inequality and Elite Power: What Is the Problem and What Can Be Done?

About the project:
Inequalities and the elite capture of economic and political power threaten democratic governance and social cohesion globally. The increasing concentration of wealth and income at the top creates fractures and biases in our economic and political systems, undermining social progress, inclusive societies and sustainable development (Hujo and Carter 2022, 4). Yet, despite the terrible toll of inequality, there remain considerable gaps in research and knowledge on the group of actors responsible: elites.

Recognising this, the Economic and Social Research Council-funded project ‘Transnational elites and the reproduction of inequalities’ delves into the inner workings of elite network building within business communities—key mechanisms of elite formation and consolidation. This project focuses on three critical dimensions: the intermediaries who train wealthy members of a global leadership organisation in appropriate behaviour, the new sites and forms of elite cohesion the organisation reveals, and the role of the family in driving elite reproduction and consolidation.

The project invites you to this public roundtable to discuss the role and influence of elite cohesion, identity formation and reproduction in India and South Africa with the aim of understanding the actors and relationships driving inequalities, critical if we are to build a more equitable and just future.

Meet our panel of experts and scholars:

• Ujithra Ponniah - Senior Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) on the ‘Wealth Inequality and Elites’ research stream. 
• Maggie Carter - Senior Research Analyst at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in the Transformative Social Policy Programme. 
• Katja Hujo -  Head of the UNRISD Bonn office and leads the Transformative Social Policy Program. 
• Masana Mulaudzi -  Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a South African political economist.
• Seeraj Mohamed - Deputy Director for Economics in the South African Parliamentary Budget Office and Adjunct Professor in the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). 

Register: Public Roundtable registration link.

Add event to calendar

Wealth Inequality & Elites International Workshop

Join the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at this workshop.

Virtual click to register >>

In-person click to RSVP | Venue: Wits Club

Add event to calendar

Book launch: Capital Order, How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism

SCIS invites you to a launch of Professor Clara E. Mattei's book, Capital Order, How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism on 23 March 2023

Clara E. Mattei is an Associate Professor in Economics at The New School for Social Research of New York City and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton in 2018-2019.

Her research focuses on the relationship between fiscal, monetary, and industrial policies in contemporary capitalism. In particular, she studies the logic of austerity policies and how they shape our society.

Her recent book, Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (University of Chicago Press, November 2022) has received widespread acclamation: A Financial Times Best Book of the Year “A must-read, with key lessons for the future.”—Thomas Piketty

Add event to calendar

Post-Covid Economic Recovery Learning Series

Dismantling power asymmetries in the global financial infrastructure: Pathways towards a democratic and economically just recovery

SCIS invites you to the Dismantling power asymmetries in the global financial infrastructure: Pathways towards a democratic and economically just recovery webinar on 20 April, 14:00-15:30 (SAST). 

This is the first of three learning sessions in the Post-Covid Economic Recovery Learning Series. The overarching objective of this learning series is to influence the international development policy discourse based on the experiences of economies and countries in the global South and to dismantle narratives that have historically deprived communities of the necessary resources for addressing the multiple social and economic challenges that they face. 

The learning series will attempt to answer some of the following questions:

1. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the social and economic landscape of countries in the global South (e.g. economic growth, public finance, poverty and inequality, gender equality, and employment)?
2. What are the gaps between what is being discussed at the international level and the reality of what communities are experiencing on the ground?
3. What policies are required for protecting livelihoods and building resilient economies in a post-Covid-19 economic recovery?

The Post-Covid Economic Recovery Learning Series is a collaboration of the Ford Foundation Plus Fund Initiative for Economic and the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. 

Add event to calendar

International Conference on New Technologies and the Future of Work in the Global South

The three-day New Technologies & the Future of Work in the Global South International Conference will take place from 17-19 July 2023, in New Delhi.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at Wits, in partnership with the Institute for Human Development and the International Labour Organisation, are organising a three-day international conference themed New Technologies and the Future of Work in the Global South. The conference is scheduled for 17-19 July 2023, in New Delhi. Click this link for more information. Enquiries: Robin.Drennan@wits.ac.za.

The conference aims to address some important issues and concerns in the wake of technological change and emerging forms of work which have important implications for the future of work and for workers. Apart from academics, scholars and experts from policymaking, civil society, industry, worker's organisations and international organisations will contribute to the deliberations of the three-day Conference.

Research papers related to the conference theme, underpinned by the core question of how to address the issue through the right mix of strategies and policies, are invited from scholars and researchers, from both Global South and North.

Add event to calendar

Post-Covid Economic Recovery Learning Series: Towards a Gender Just and Caring Economy

Towards a Gender Just and Caring Economy

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to the second learning session titled: Towards a Gender Just and Caring Economy. It will focus on the experiences of women and members of the LGBTQIA community and the strategies and opportunities for achieving gender equality in the post-covid recovery.  The webinar will take place on 25 May, 14:00-15:30 (SAST).

This is the second of three learning sessions in the Post-Covid Economic Recovery Learning Series. The session will explore issues around employment, land, and livelihoods. It will also look at the importance of a caring economy and the disproportionate and gendered nature of how care is provided and accessed in the global South.

The overarching objective of the Post-Covid Economic Recovery Learning Series is to influence the international development policy discourse based on the experiences of economies and countries in the global South and to dismantle narratives that have historically deprived communities of the necessary resources for addressing the multiple social and economic challenges that they face. 

Add event to calendar

Professor Keith Hart: Africa and Europe at the Crossroads

SCIS invites you to a hybrid Lunchtime Seminar: Africa and Europe at the Crossroads to be presented by Professor Keith Hart on 16 May, 13:00 - 14:30 (SAST).

Africa and Europe at the Crossroads 

https://www.academia.edu/99925313/Africa_and_Europe_at_the_Crossroads

Africa and Europe are actors in a three-act drama: the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. In 1900 Europe had 25% of the world’s population, Africa 7.5%. In 2100 Africa will have 40%, Europe 6%. The EU’s institutional defects -- its inability to resolve its monetary, economic and political problems -- point to inevitable decline, while Africa’s prospects in an aging world have never been more promising. Africa doubled its population since 1900 in an urban revolution. Its disparate regions now converge on the model of the Old Regime and are ripe for liberal revolution. Fragmented nation-states need to build more effective regional trade federations. African exports, apart from minerals, should focus on supplying the rapidly expanding world market for cultural services. A recent World Bank/IMF conference focused on global demographic change: India now surpasses China, and in 2100 half the world’s children will be African. The Asian exporters already plan for this future, but the West is nostalgic for the world its racist empires once made.

Professor Keith Hart

Keith Hart is Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a full-time writer who has lived and worked in 24 countries on four continents. He has homes in Paris and Durban. Keith believes that engaged intellectuals should try to understand and shape emergent world society. He was Distinguished Visiting Professor at Wits School of Social Sciences (2007); Honorary Professor in the School of Social Development, UKZN (2008-13); and Co-founder and International Director of the Human Economy Programme, University of Pretoria (2011-18).

Self in the World https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HartSelf can be purchased through Ike’s Books, Durban https://ikesbooks.com/.  An inspection copy is available in the Department of Anthropology.  A colourful Lagos interview with an African slant is at https://bordersliteratureonline.net/globaldetails/keith_hart. For more information, see his website at https://keithhart.academia.edu/.

Add event to calendar

Green Transition for Whom? Strategies for achieving climate-resilient economies in the global South

Green Transition for Whom? Strategies for achieving climate-resilient economies in the global South

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to the third and final learning session titled:  Green Transition for Whom? Strategies for achieving climate-resilient economies in the global South. 

The webinar will take place on 22 June, 14:00 - 15:30 (SAST). It will be available in English, Spanish, and French languages.

This learning session will reflect on the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on efforts towards sustainable development in the global South, and the key strategies for achieving a green transition based on the multiple challenges currently facing individuals and communities in these regions. By centering the experiences of women, youth, and communities in the global South, the session takes an alternative approach from the top-down policy recommendations which have dominated the sustainable development discourse.

The session seeks to answer the following question: What would a green, just and inclusive recovery look like based on the experiences of communities and economies in the global South?

Add event to calendar

South Africa's Spending Choices

UNICEF and SCIS' Public Economy Project (PEP) invite you to a public seminar titled South Africa's Spending Choices on 27 June from 09:30 to 13:00

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) Public Economy Project (PEP) invite you to a public seminar reflecting on “South Africa’s Spending Choices: a review of the 2023 Budget”.

The overall objective of the seminar is to explore and debate South Africa’s 2023 macro-fiscal framework and spending choices to address poverty, inequality, and socio-economic rights ahead of the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement in October.

The seminar will provide a forum for participants to share the main trends in the expenditure of the South African budget and their implications for public services and the realisation of socio-economic rights.

Add event to calendar

Is Inequality Causing Pandemics and, If So, How?

SCIS invites you to a seminar by Dr Matthew Kavanagh titled Is Inequality Causing Pandemics and, If So, How? on 4 July (15:00 - 16:30)

About the seminar:

We are living through multi-pandemic era with rising inequality. Outbreaks from COVID-19 to MPox quickly spread around the world, HIV remains a pandemic we seem not to be able to shake. This comes at a time of mounting inequality within countries and very specific forms of geopolitical inequality between countries. Are these two realities linked?  Exploring the economic, social, and political drivers of pandemics, this talk lays out what we know, what we're struggling to know, and the urgency of an inequality-busting rather than inequality-reinforcing approach to pandemic preparedness. 

About the speaker: 

Matthew Kavanagh, PhD, is the Director of the UNAIDS-Georgetown University Collaborating Centre on HIV Policy and Inequality and special advisor to the Executive Director of UNAIDS. A political scientist by training, he also leads the HIV Policy Lab working to empirically understand and politically shift the policy environment for tackling pandemics. 

Add event to calendar

Recasting Workers’ Power: Work and Inequality In the Shadow of the Digital Age

SCIS and FES invite you to the launch of Edward Webster and Lynford Dor's book - Recasting Workers’ Power; Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age

Join the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung for a hybrid book launch of Emeritus Professor Edward Webster and Lynford Dor's recently published book:  Recasting Workers' Power: Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age (Bristol University Press / Wits University Press)

There is a widespread view that labour as a counter-hegemonic force has come to an end. This theoretically innovative book based on ground-breaking field work challenges this pessimistic “End of Labour Thesis”. Drawing on labour process theory and the power resources approach the book shows how the power of  workers’ is recast as work is restructured. As capital overcomes obstacles to accumulation through various fixes, the working class and its organisations are restructured . By highlighting the struggles of largely precarious and informal workers in sub-Saharan Africa, the book clearly articulates the challenges workers face but suggests some grounds for optimism in the new and hybrid forms of organisation emerging on the shadows of the digital age.

The question raised by these findings is whether these embryonic forms of worker organisation – what the authors call the “Southern trend” – are sustainable and could become the foundations for a new cycle of worker solidarity and union growth. Despite the changes brought about by globalisation and digitalisation, the book shows how informal solidaristic groups among workers continue.

The authors conclude that if traditional unions continue to focus on those workers in stable jobs the growing number of precarious workers will be left without a voice and will have to build their power afresh.  The result will be deepening inequality and a diverging labour movement. What has been called “dualization” will shape Southern labour’s future

Add event to calendar

Annual Lecture: Recent changes in the global income distribution and their political implications

SCIS invites you to the 2023 Annual Inequality Lecture to be presented by Professor Branko Milanovic

Professor Branko Milanovic will present the 2023 lecture titled Recent changes in the global income distribution and their political implications. The online lecture will take place on September 19th, 16:30 - 18:00 (SAST)

Professor Milanovic will discuss the evolution in global inequality over the past two centuries, with a focus on the most recent 2008-2018 estimates, and will draw political implications of the important changes that are taking place in the global distribution of income. In particular, it will focus on the rise of the middle class in Asia, income stagnation of the rich countries’ middle classes, reshuffling of global income positions, and the emergence of the global plutocracy. It will discuss possible future evolution of global inequality in which the roles of India and large African countries will become increasingly important.

Branko Milanovic is a Research Professor at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), Senior Scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-economic Inequality at CUNY, and Visiting Professor at the Institute for International Inequalities at the London School of Economics. His main area of work is income inequality, in individual countries and globally, including in pre-industrial societies.

Add event to calendar

Renewable energy, the just transition and inequality: insights from SA’s renewables procurement

SCIS & ACF invite you to a webinar on Renewable energy, the just transition and inequality: insights from South Africa’s renewables procurement

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) in partnership with African Climate Foundation (ACF) will be hosting an online roundtable discussion on  Renewable energy, the just transition and inequality: insights from South Africa’s renewables procurement on 30 October 2023, 17:00 -18:30 (SAST)

Low- and middle-income countries across the world are facing the dilemma of needing to decarbonise and industrialise in the context of an electricity supply crisis. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy is one of the first steps taken in any process of decarbonisation to address climate change. The energy transition is complex and holds significant economic risk. It requires strong governance and a capable state as well as coordination across government, community organisations and the private sector. This mammoth task requires the State to adopt policies that balance social, economic and climate objectives while reviewing past policies that may no longer be appropriate. This paper discusses the de-risking approach and the investment-centred approach to an energy transition, and using the case study of South Africa, argues for the necessity of an investment-centred approach to achieve a transition which supports local development and energy security. In analysing the example of South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REI4P), we highlight important learnings for the energy transition, which provide a useful window into the wider carbon transition.

To hear more, register here.

Add event to calendar

Book Launch: Paperless

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies in partnership with Jacana Media invite you to the launch of Paperless - a novel by Buntu Siwisa on 21 Nov '23

Paperless is an émigré, coming-of-age, campus novel with a dash of espionage. It centres on Luzuko Goba, a South African doctoral student at Oxford University. Set almost entirely in Oxford at the turn of the twenty-first century, Luzuko rides three Oxfords – white Oxford, black Oxford, and the underbelly of illegal Oxford.

He navigates the worlds of Africans in Oxford – the illegal immigrants, the undocumented, and the students. Mired in these worlds, he also grapples with his own personal struggles. The writing of his debut novel is a failure. His thesis is not taking shape. His romantic relationship has ended. And then he must also figure out the meaning of his relationship with his political exile father who has just died, a man he had only seen once in his life.

Siwisa captures the tensions between the relentless immigrants’ pursuit of a secure and comfortable livelihood, the complexities of migration, and how you find home in a place set on highlighting why you don’t belong. The novel explores identity and belonging against the canvass of racism and class. It delves deeper into finding oneself in personal and political spaces that collapse into one. It also takes up on the meaning of exile and exilic consciousness against shifting interpretations of African democracies.

This is a book about migrants, legal and illegal, out of time, out of place, on the wrong side of the UK’s department of immigration. Embark on a journey that is anything but straight through these individuals united by their 'paperless' status.

Dr Buntu Siwisa is a Senior Researcher at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies. With a D. Phil. In Politics and International Relations from the University of Oxford (St. Peter’s College), he has varied work experiences in academia (Politics and International relations), civil service (Foreign relations in southern Africa), and civil society (Peace and Security in Africa; conflict analysis and management).

Add event to calendar

The JET P, JET IP and Implementation Plan in South Africa: Implications for inequality and workers

The JET P, JET IP and Implementation Plan in South Africa: Implications for inequality and workers session will take place on the sidelines of COP28. 

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) at Wits University and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) invite you to their co-hosted session titled The JET P, JET IP and Implementation Plan in South Africa: Implications for inequality and workers happening on the sidelines of COP28. Join researchers Katrina Lehmann-Grube (SCIS), Boitumelo Molete (COSATU), Brian Kamanzi, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) and Lebogang Mulaisi, Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) who will be in conversation.

Add event to calendar

Sovereign Debt Seminar

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies' Public Economy Project (PEP) invite you to a webinar on Sovereign Debt on 7 Dec '23, 14:30 - 16:30 (SAST)

Join our upcoming seminar to learn about Sub-Saharan Africa's escalating public debt crisis. Explore the impact of global economic shifts and the COVID-19 pandemic on the
region's debt levels, now nearing 60% of GDP. Discover how African nations are navigating these challenges amidst limited revenue-generating capabilities, rising debt service
costs, and volatile commodity markets. Engage in critical discussions on strategies for sustainable debt management and economic resilience. In conversation will be Leslie Mensah, Economist/Research Fellow, Institute for Fiscal Studies (Ghana),  Bernard Njiri, Senior Research Analyst, Institute of Public Finance (Kenya) and Rashaad Amra, Visiting Researcher, Public Economy Project (South Africa).

Add event to calendar

Intersectional Development Research Learning Series

SCIS invites you to a webinar, Promoting Intersectional Development Research Learning Series, on 25 April '24 at 2 pm SAST

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to the first of three sessions in the Intersectional Development Research Learning Series. The first session, Promoting Intersectional Development Research, will take place on 25 April 2024.  The webinar will start at 2 pm SAST/8 am ET. 

The main aim of the session is to understand intersectionality, its origins, and its relevance for addressing the challenges that developing countries in the global South face. 

Background
In 2023, SCIS in collaboration with Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), undertook research to understand intersectionality and its relevance in global South contexts. The project resulted in eight case study reports that illustrated the diverse application of intersectional approaches in multiple countries across the global South.

Promoting Intersectional Development Research Learning Series is an opportunity to learn and share knowledge about the opportunities and challenges of integrating intersectionality in development research to address persistent inequalities around the world. 

Add event to calendar

Gaza as Epicenter: An Alternative Reading

SCIS & WISER invite you to join us for a special online seminar of the African Political Economy Seminar with Tareq Baconi on 14 May, 18:00 - 19:30 (SAST)

Tareq Baconi will present an online seminar titled Gaza as Epicenter: An Alternative Reading. Baconi is Board President of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. He serves as book review editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies. Currently, Tareq is working on a book about decolonization in the 21st century. He is also the author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018). His writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, the Washington Post, among others. Previously, Tareq served as a senior analyst for Israel/ Palestine at the International Crisis Group based in Ramallah.

The seminar will proceed on the basis that all participants have read the articles hyperlinked below:

• An Inevitable Rupture: Al-Aqsa Flood and the End of Partition | https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/an-inevitable-rupture-al-aqsa-flood-and-the-end-of-partition/
• What Was Hamas Thinking? | https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/22/hamas-gaza-israel-netanyahu-palestine-apartheid-containment-resistance
• Gaza Without Pretenses | https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/10/11/gaza-without-pretenses/

Add event to calendar

Technological Upgrading and Educational Composition of the Workforce

SCIS invites you to a hybrid seminar with Dev Nathan titled Technological Upgrading and Educational Composition of the Workforce on 17 May, 09:00 -10:30 (SAST)

In the global production system, there is a division of labour, based on a division of knowledge between lead (headquarter) firms and contract suppliers. While lead firms have, so far, largely been located in the Global North, some countries of the Global South have advanced along to progress from supplier to headquarter firms. This paper studies the manner in which the skill requirement or educational composition of the workforce changes in this process of technological advancement. The countries studied are China, India, and South Korea with the USA taken as the comparator country. The paper starts with the overall trajectory of technological development in these countries. It then analyses the ways in which firm-level R&D, taken as the indicator and driver of firms’ technology development strategies, is related to changes in productivity and the educational composition of the workforce. The paper shows that there is a broad positive correlation between the three variables, R&D investment, labour productivity and educational composition of the workforce. It points to the need to advance this analysis to look at other workforce indicators, such as the gender composition, wages, the quality of employment and the nature of supervision. At a methodological level, the paper argues that it is necessary to look at the role of a firm within a GVC to understand the composition of its workforce.   

Professor Dev Nathan is a 2023/2024 Cameron Schrier Equality Fellow at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS). He is also with the Institute for Human Development, Delhi, and a Visiting Scholar, The New School for Social Research, New York. Research Director at GenDev Centre, Gurgaon, he is  Series Co-editor of Development Trajectories in Global Value Chains, Cambridge University Press.

Just Out: Reverse Subsidies in Global Monopsony Capitalism. 2022 
Witch Hunts: Culture, Patriarchy and Structural Transformation,  2020 
GVCs and Development in Asia: Challenges of Upgrading and Innovation, 2018
Labour in Global Value Chains in Asia, 2016

Add event to calendar

The Role of Fiscal Think Tanks

The Public Economy Project at SCIS invites you to The Role of Fiscal Think Tanks seminar on 16 May, 15:00 - 17:00 (SAST).

The Public Economy Project at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to the launch of their Working Paper, The Role of Fiscal Think Tanks in Fiscal Policy: Global patterns and lessons for South Africa. The launch seminar titled the Role of Fiscal Think Tanks, will be looking at the vital role of fiscal think tanks in today's turbulent fiscal and democratic landscapes. Drawing from Philipp Krause's paper on Fiscal Institutions, we will discuss some important institutional differences that shape fiscal policymaking and how those differences affect a think tank’s role. Lastly, we will consider the most important types of fiscal think tanks that have emerged, with reference to some country examples, and make some suggestions for implications for South Africa. 

Add event to calendar

Seminar: Digital Technologies Reshaping Inequalities in the Post-Apartheid Housing Market

SCIS invites you to Julien Migozzi's seminar, Segregation “bit by bit”: Digital Technologies Reshaping Inequalities in the Post-Apartheid Housing Market

Urban Studies Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oxford University, Julien Migozzi, will present a seminar titled Segregation “bit by bit”: Digital Technologies Reshaping Inequalities in the Post-Apartheid Housing Market on 24 May 2024, 09:00 10:30 (SAST). 

Migozzi will discuss how the digitalisation of the housing market reshapes urban segregation and social stratification in post-apartheid South Africa. I use a mixed-method framework that weaves in-depth fieldwork with the analysis of property sales and census data in the Cape Town metro area. I first unpack how the housing market, previously structured upon the racial categorization of people and places, was reconfigured as a flow of data through the adoption of digital technologies, especially credit scoring, allowing the real-time and automated classification of home seekers. I then explore how the spatial evolution of housing prices and mortgage lending intersect with and affect patterns of urban segregation. Finally, I demonstrate how in the context of racialized indebtedness and enduring segregation, the roll-out of digital technologies enabled a selective financialization of housing that operates “bit by bit” through the use of credit scores: on the one hand, I examine how lending practises remain highly selective, tracing mortgage securitization at the neighbourhood level; on the other, I situate how digital platforms allowed the unprecedented rise of institutional investors and enabled the surge of the rental market. This market shift shapes contemporary patterns of urban change while consolidating housing wealth inequalities engineered by racial capitalism. Finally, I discuss how the digital re-mediation of the market encourages us to re-think the contemporary mechanisms of segregation in the era of algorithmic sorting and rentier capitalism

Add event to calendar

Onward To Liberation: Samir Amin and the Study of World Historical Capitalism

SCIS invites you to a seminar titled Onward To Liberation: Samir Amin and the Study of World Historical Capitalism on 31 May 2024, 09:00 - 10:30 (SAST).

You are warmly invited to a seminar by Dr Salimah Valiani titled Onward To Liberation: Samir Amin and the Study of World Historical Capitalism.

Samir Amin (1931-2018 ), Africa's preeminent radical economist, did pioneering work on a question still relevant: How to understand the world as an interconnected whole. Trade and financial liberalisation,
migration, and borderless ecological destruction have made this question increasingly apparent to the global majority in the 21st century. But as early as 1957, Samir Amin began tracing the dynamics of
world inequality in what he called accumulation on a world scale. Often referred to as a Marxist, Amin’s thinking sparked much of what would come to be known as world-systems analysis. World-systems
analysis draws from Marx’s historical materialism, and other concepts, without reifying Marx’s thought as a reading of world history.

In her paper, Valiani demonstrates that passing through Marx, eurocentric economic history, historical sociology, and international relations, the collective oeuvre of Samir Amin and his world systems interlocuteurs is eclectic theoretically and methodologically. Working through multiple disciplines, world-systems analysis employs class, surplus, race, coloniality, hegemony, and other concepts to trace world inequality from 1492, thus contributing to understanding long term social change in the service of the ongoing task of human liberation

Dr Salimah Valiani is a senior researcher at SCIS on the Climate and Inequity Research Project.

Add event to calendar

Seminar: Older Persons, Care Needs and Social Grants

SCIS warmly invites you to a seminar with Prof Elana Moore titled Older Persons, Care Needs and Social Grants on 11 June 2024, 14:00 - 15:00 (SAST)

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) is pleased to welcome Professor Elena Moore who will discuss her latest research on Older Persons, Care Needs, and Social Grants. 

Older persons in South Africa are aided by government-funded non-contributory pensions. The seminar will draw on a recent report that tells the story of the financial lives of older person grant beneficiaries and raises questions for reviewing ageing policy and better meeting the needs of older persons. A lot of the research on the Older Persons Grant focuses on the poverty-alleviating aspects of the grant, especially at a household level. There has been little attention paid to the outcomes for older persons at an individual level, particularly in relation to their needs such as their care needs, access to health, nutrition, assistive devices etc. Policy makes the assumptions that older persons get the grant, therefore they don’t invest more on funding services, even though it is widely known that the grant is used for households not older persons alone. The report therefore examines how the older persons’ needs are being met especially in relation to the actual outcomes that are possible given the amount of money that is available. For a more detailed understanding of state financing of elder care, please read the Funding Elder Care in South Africa report alongside this report. 

About the speaker:
Professor Elena Moore is with the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town. She is author of Generation, Gender and Negotiating Custom in South Africa (Routledge, 2022), Divorce, Families and Emotion Work (Palgrave, 2017) and (with Chuma Himonga) Reform of Customary Marriage, Divorce and Succession in South Africa (Juta & Co. 2015), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is also a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award 2021, University of Cape Town. Moore obtained a Wellcome Career Award, 2023-2028 to develop and grow a research programme in Family Caregiving of Older Persons In Southern Africa (www.familycaregiving.org.za) 

Add event to calendar

Intersectionality and Grantmaking: Transforming Global Development Research

SCIS invites you to the Intersectional Development Research Learning Session titled Towards Intersectional Grantmaking, on 27 June 2024, 2:00 -3:30 pm SAST

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies warmly invites you to the second Intersectional Learning Session - Intersectionality and Grantmaking: Transforming Global Development Research. The webinar is the second in a three-part Intersectional Development Research Learning Series. The Learning Series provides an opportunity to learn and share knowledge about the opportunities and challenges of integrating intersectionality in development research to address persistent inequalities around the world.

This second Intersectional Learning Session will explore:

• The developments in development research that have led to increased interest in intersectionality
• The role of intersectionality in grantmaking 
• Best practices 
• Considerations for applying intersectional approaches at the programmatic level 
• Challenges and potential opportunities for addressing inequality and persistent power asymmetries in the global development architecture

Background
In 2023, SCIS in collaboration with Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), undertook research to understand intersectionality and its relevance in global South contexts. The project resulted in eight case study reports that illustrated the diverse application of intersectional approaches in multiple countries across the global South.

Promoting Intersectional Development Research Learning Series is an opportunity to learn and share knowledge about the opportunities and challenges of integrating intersectionality in development research to address persistent inequalities around the world. 

Add event to calendar

Sweetening the Deal: The Political Economy of Land Redistribution in South Africa’s Sugar Sector

SCIS invites you to a seminar by Alex Dyzenhaus titled Sweetening the Deal: The Political Economy of Land Redistribution in South Africa’s Sugar Sector

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a seminar presented by Alex Dyzenhaus titled Sweetening the Deal: The Political Economy of Land Redistribution in South Africa’s Sugar Sector on 26 July 2024, 13:00 - 14:30 (SAST).  

Abstract:
Under what conditions do land transfers occur under land reform? Theories of land redistribution focus on demand-side explanations for land transfers where the state allocates land in exchange for support from voters or rural elites. In this article, I argue that land transfers under market land redistribution are driven by supply-side characteristics of landholders. Using the case of South Africa’s sugar sector, I show that landholders chose to sell their land via redistribution when they had the economic incentive to preserve existing state-support frameworks and had collective capacity from centralized institutions. To understand when and why land redistribution occurs, one must pay attention to the landholders’ relationship to the state and their internal sectoral organization. In some cases, landholders may have an incentive to redistribute their land.

About the speaker:
Alex Dyzenhaus is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science at the University of Toronto and a Fellow in Democracy and Development at the Mandela School at the University of Cape Town. His research focuses on the political economy of land reform in South Africa and Kenya. His current project looks at how market forces interact with political imperatives to redistribute land and how existing institutions and firms that govern agriculture set parameters that dictate how and when land redistribution occurs. 

Add event to calendar

SCIS Annual Inequality Lecture | The Political Economy of Global Inequality: A Drama in Three Parts

SCIS invites you to the Inequality Lecture to be presented by Prof Sanjay G. Reddy titled The Political Economy of Global Inequality: A Drama in Three Parts

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to its Annual Inequality Lecture. Professor Sanjay G. Reddy will present the 2024 lecture titled The Political Economy of Global Inequality: A Drama in Three Parts, on 15 August 2024, 16:30 - 18:00 (SAST).

The first part of the drama involves the deep history of global inequality, including factors such as markets, institutions, technology, and force. Although the role of different factors is debated, we should view this history in terms of political economy and not just economics – in other words, political factors are essential to understanding how we got here. The second part is that which we have been experiencing in recent decades. This period was shaped by the creation of a global institutional legal order through which trade and capital flows could greatly expand, a growing role for finance, economies of scale generated by technology and globalization, and entrenchment of private property rights in new forms. While some of these developments were inequality decreasing many were inequality increasing contrary to the predictions of many mainstream economists. The third part of the drama has yet to be written. We are the actors in this drama and can choose our lines.  

About the speaker:
Sanjay G. Reddy is a Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research in New York. His work has been centrally concerned with inequality within and between countries -- studying unequal outcomes, how they are produced in the interaction of economic, political, and social forces, and how they might be addressed.  

Programme

Add event to calendar

The Problem of Climate Change and The Analogy of Development

SCIS invites you to a seminar with Benjamin H. Bradlow titled The Problem of Climate Change and the Analogy of Development on 30 July 2024, 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST)

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a seminar with Benjamin H. Bradlow titled The Problem of Climate Change and the Analogy of Development on 30 July 2024, 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST).  

Abstract:
A comparative sociological approach to the problem of mitigating climate change requires reaching for historical analogy of comparison cases that highlight the social basis for switching points in large scale development trajectories. I argue that late industrializing developmental “catch-up” is such an analogy that can help illustrate the sociological foundations of when and why these switching points yield dramatic shifts in developmental outcomes. I proceed to analyze what carbon-based economic growth in the authoritarian East Asian “tigers” (South Korea, Taiwan, Japan) and democratic cases in Brazil and India over the past half century tell us about the possibilities for a transition away from carbon-based economic growth. In doing so, I present tentative findings from ongoing field-based research in the automotive sector in Brazil and South Africa, and each country’s efforts to transition from gas-powered to electric battery-powered vehicles.

About the speaker:
Benjamin H. Bradlow is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Princeton University, jointly appointed in the School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Sociology. He is a CIFAR Global Azrieli Scholar (2024-2026), in the research program on "Humanity's Urban Future." Bradlow's research makes connections between climate change, urbanization, industrial change, and the political challenges to democracy that confront societies across the globe.

His first book, Urban Power: Democracy and Inequality in São Paulo and Johannesburg, will be published in October 2024 with Princeton University Press (Princeton Studies in Global and Comparative Sociology). Bradlow compares the divergent politics of distributing urban public goods — housing, sanitation, and transportation — in two mega-cities after transitions to democracy: São Paulo, Brazil, and Johannesburg, South Africa. He is currently researching a new comparative book project that examines industrial transitions from carbon in the Global South. This work explores how middle-income countries with export-oriented, internal combustion engine automobile manufacturing sectors are navigating a rich world transition to electric vehicles.

Add event to calendar

The Great Reshuffling

SCIS invites you to a seminar with Prof. David Hughes titled The Great Reshuffling on 2 August 2024, 09:00 - 10:30 (SAST).

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to a hybrid seminar with Professor David McDermott Hughes titled The Great Reshuffling on 2 August 2024, 09:00 - 10:30 (SAST).

Abstract:
The Global North should brace for a demographic and cartographic reshuffling. The current trajectory of climate and fossil fuels may render much of the Global South uninhabitable. Heat waves, combined with political collapse and economic inequality, are already driving people across the sea and desert. Migrants are also crossing borders – with a high death toll. What would it take to remove those international boundaries and the entire system of exclusion and xenophobia underwriting them? The very question seems quixotic. But what is necessary must be possible, at least to imagine. David Hughes imagines a right of free passage independent of territory – and against the grain of nationalism, sovereignty, and indigenous entitlements. He will draw upon ethnography conducted on the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border (in the 1990s) and on the Spain-Morocco border (in the 2010s). In both places, hosts incorporated migrants with care and at the bottom of social hierarchies. There is no utopia here: the great reshuffling will revive archaic forms of domination and servitude from local to planetary scales. Even so, reshuffling beats is surely preferable to suffering in place. 

About the speaker:
David Hughes is a Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. He has worked as an activist scholar of race, inequality, and natural resources since the late 1980s. In southern Africa, he worked for a variety of NGOs and wrote ethnographies of settler colonialism and land reform: From Enslavement to Environmentalism (2007) and Whiteness in Zimbabwe (2010).  Then, in Trinidad and Tobago, he carried out ethnography on petroleum geologists, publishing Energy without Conscience (2017).  His fourth book, Who Owns the Wind?, proposes a post-oil energy transition more just than the current one (not) taking place. Hughes has served as president and chief negotiator of Rutgers AAUP-AFT, his faculty labour union.  He currently serves on the Climate Justice Task Force of the American Federation of Teachers.

Add event to calendar

Mining Global Decarbonisation for Development in Africa? Regional Geopolitics and the Question of SA

SCIS invites you to a seminar with Michael Smith titled Mining Global Decarbonisation for Development in Africa? Regional Geopolitics and the Question of SA

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a seminar with Michael Smith titled  Mining Global Decarbonisation for Development in Africa? Regional Geopolitics and the question of South Africa in Africa, on 23 August 2024, 09:00 - 10:30 (SAST). 

Abstract:
Research into the geopolitics of ‘critical’ mineral mining is expanding, with a predominant focus on conflicts related to access and control of renewable energy supply chains among global powers. However, there remains a notable dearth of analysis concerned with addressing how the geopolitics of global decarbonisation relates to regional relations and configurations of power. This absence is concerning given the relatively widespread acceptance that regional development strategies should be embraced by economies seeking to leverage their ‘green’ transition mineral endowment for industrialisation and development. This paper revisits the debate on character and role of the South African state in Africa, from the vantage point of the mineral intensity of global decarbonisation and the competitive dynamics of the contemporary global political economy. By examining South Africa's role in contemporary Zambia in the context of increasing international competition for access and control of Zambia's 'green' mineral reserves, the paper highlights the ambiguity of South African state action and the evolving and dynamic relations it forges with domestic and international class and state forces.  

About the speaker:
Michael Smith is a Lecturer in Economic Development at the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town. He is also a PhD Candidate in Sociology, York University Canada. Michael's research interests include the geopolitics of the green transition, critical mineral mining and South Africa's evolving economic and political role in Africa. 

Add event to calendar

Film screening of Survey City

SCIS invites you to a seminar with Professor Sanjay titled Film Screening of Survey City

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a seminar with Professor Sanjay Srivastava titled Film Screening of Survey City on 30 August 2024, 09:00 - 10:30 (SAST). 

ABSTRACT:

Ayesha and her family live in a Delhi Basti (informal settlement). She is desperate to obtain legal title of her tiny house at the precarious edges of the city. There are frequent rumours of demolitions as the land is classified as ‘illegally occupied’. Ayesha and her neighbours are always trying to find ways of becoming permanent residents of the city where they were born and have lived.

For Basti residents access to legal title to land depends on inclusion in multiple government surveys that promise these. The promises most frequently arrive at election time. The film focuses on crucial survey-related documents intended to provide security of tenure but declared ‘lost’. Between the lost documents and their eventual discovery in a government office, lies the story of a locality, its people, their anxieties and the mysterious relationships between government records and citizens. This is the story of Delhi’s Border Basti.

Add event to calendar

Towards a gender just transition: Principles and perspectives from the global South

SCIS invites you to the launch of a Working Paper titled Towards a gender just transition: Principles and perspectives from the global South on Aug 30th

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS)' Climate and Inequality Project invites you to the launch of its Working Paper titled Towards a gender just transition: Principles and perspectives from the global South. The webinar will take place on 30 August 2024, 12:00 -14:00 (SAST).

The Climate and Inequality team's Professor Imraan Valodia, who is SCIS Director and Wits University Pro VC for Climate, Sustainability, and Inequality, and researcher, Julia Taylor, will take us through the findings of the working paper during a conversation with the Presidential Climate Commission's Lebogang Mulaisi and Economics Emeritus Professor Maria S. Floro from the American University in Washington DC, and Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution. 

Abstract:
This paper argues that ensuring a transition that delivers gender justice is both critical and urgent. Without explicit attention to, and clear prioritisation of gender justice across transition policies, climate change ‘solutions’ risk replicating or reinforcing structural gender inequalities. Examples of such risk include women’s continued limited access to economic opportunities, employment and social protection; their over-representation in precarious work; and women’s primary responsibility for social reproduction and care.

Add event to calendar

Effects of Public Investment in the Green & Care Economies & Public Infrastructure in South Africa

SCIS invites you to the launch of a Working Paper titled The Effects of Public Investment in the Green and Care Economies and Public Infrastructure in SA

The Public Economy Project (PEP) at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to the launch of their Working Paper titled The Effects of Public Investment in the Green and Care Economies and Public Infrastructure in South Africa. The webinar will take place on 5 September 2024, 13:30 - 15:00.  Join our speakers Professor Ozlem Onaran and Dr. Cem Oyvat, Adam Aboobaker, and Kate Phillip in what promises to be an insightful session. 

Abstract:
This paper argues that a comprehensive combination of policy tools is required to trigger the necessary and urgent level of public investment needed to confront the complex crises of growth, inequality, care, and climate change in South Africa. South Africa confronts considerable macroeconomic policy challenges, most notably the need to attain sustainable and inclusive economic growth. According to the National Treasury, South Africa's growth averaged a mere 1.75% per annum between 2010 and 2019, a figure that drops further if the COVID-19 impacted years of 2020 and 2021 are taken into account. The South African National Treasury asserts that fiscal policy encompasses decisions involving the level and composition of government spending, tax revenue generation, and government borrowing, if any. Since 2013, a strategy of fiscal consolidation has been pursued with the aim of slowing the rate of growth in public spending while also enhancing tax revenues. However, the self-defeating consequences of actual reductions in public spending have resulted in a decline in public expenditure on public services, primarily due to the rapid growth in spending on debt service costs. Conversely, this paper contends that increasing, rather than cutting, public expenditure on the care economy, green economy, and public infrastructure would enhance South Africa's GDP and employment levels and result in changes in public debt/GDP ratios. This study advocates for the adoption of expansionary fiscal policy choices in conjunction with clearly defined development targets and coordinated fiscal, monetary, industrial, labour, and social policies. 

To read the Working Paper: Click here 

Add event to calendar

Re-enforcing Inequalities: The Political and Social Consequences of Internal Migration

SCIS invites you to a seminar with Professor Gabriele Spilker titled Re-enforcing Inequalities: The Political and Social Consequences of Internal Migration

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) warmly invites you to a seminar with Professor Gabriele Spilker titled Re-enforcing inequalities: The political and social consequences of internal migration.  This hybrid session takes place on 13 September 2024, 09:00-10:30 (SAST). 

Abstract: 
Many countries in the Global South experience large flows of internal, rural-to-urban migration with oftentimes ambivalent consequences. While urbanization can drive economic growth and improve public services, it also presents economic, social, and political challenges, often intensifying inequalities between locals and migrants This paper explores when migrants perceive discrimination and how this varies based on their reasons for migrating. Using original survey data from Kenya and Vietnam, we find that migrants who relocate for economic opportunities or to escape environmental hardships report fewer inequalities than locals or social migrants. A possible explanation is that these migrants have lower expectations of their new living conditions, leaving less room for disappointment.

About the speaker:
Gabriele Spilker is a Professor of International Politics – Global Inequality at the Department of Politics and Public Administration and co-speaker of the Excellence Cluster "The Politics of Inequality".  Spilker completed her PhD at ETH Zurich as part of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) “Challenges to Democracy” in 2009. Before joining the University of Konstanz, she was a Fritz Thyssen Fellow at the Weatherhead Center of International Affairs at Harvard University (2011-2012), a postdoctoral researcher in the “International Political Economy” group at the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS) at ETH Zurich (2012-2013) as well as Assistant/Associate Professor of International Politics (2014-2020) and Professor for Empirical Research Methods at the Department of Political Science and Sociology of the University of Salzburg (2020-2021). Her main research interest concerns the societal-level consequences of climate change, for instance, in terms of migration and protest.

Add event to calendar

Enough! A Modest Political Ecology for an Uncertain Future

SCIS invites you to a seminar titled Enough! A Modest Political Ecology for an Uncertain Future, which will be presented by Professor Mary Lawhon on 20 Sep 2024

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a hybrid seminar with Professor Mary Lawhon titled Enough! A Modest Political Ecology for an Uncertain Future on 20 Sep 2024 on 20 September 2024, 09:00 - 10:30 (SAST).

Abstract:
There is enough for all! But how do ‘we’ make this happen? This talk, drawn from a recently published book, argues creating such a future is not about producing more or living with less. Instead, it starts with rethinking our politics, economics and approach to livelihoods. We will briefly chart the key contours of development and environmental studies (modernist and arcadian) before advancing the idea of a ‘modest imaginary’. The talk tacks between conceptual contours, concrete examples, proposed inventions, and personal narrative, and shows how the book is deeply rooted in Mary’s work in and beyond South Africa. Enough! proposes delinking livelihoods from work through a redistributive basic income, which enables enough without overreliance on modern states. It also enables us to prevent conflicts over jobs, reduce some types of production, and deploy resources towards building postcapitalist worlds.

About the speaker:
Mary Lawhon is a Professor of Political Ecology in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests are in urban political ecology and theorizing from cities in the global south.  She has a PhD in Geography (Clark University), an MEnvDev from the UKZN, and a BSc in Environmental Studies (University of Kansas). Lawhon has published more than fifty articles and book chapters on topics such as urban infrastructure in African cities (particularly waste and sanitation), environmental politics in South Africa, and the politics of work and distribution. She has written two books (Making Urban Theory: Learning and Unlearning through Southern Cities and Enough! A Modest Political Ecology for an Uncertain Future), and is wrapping up a third (Environmental Solutions for the Anthropocene).

She is currently working with Professor Cathy Sutherland and colleagues at UKZN on the politics of off-grid sanitation in eThekwini. 

Add event to calendar

Book talk of Professor Vivek Chibber's The Class Matrix

SCIS invites you to Prof Vivek Chibber's book talk on The Class Matrix on 9 October 2024. This event will be moderated by Prof Daryl Glaser.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a talk on Professor Vikek Chibber's book titled The Class Matrix on 9 October 2024. The hybrid event will be moderated by Professor Daryl Glaser. It will occur online and in person at North Lodge, SCIS Seminar Room, Parktown Management Campus, Parktown, 2193. 

About the author
Vivek Chibber is Professor of Sociology at New York University and the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital and Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India. He is a contributor to the Socialist Register, American Journal of Sociology, Boston Review, New Left Review and the editor of Catalyst Journal.

About the moderator
Daryl Glaser is a Professor of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the author of Politics and Society in South Africa (Sage 2001) and the editor of Mbeki and After (Wits University Press 2010) and Twentieth-Century Marxism (Routledge 2007). Glaser has published widely in
international journals including Political Studies, Politics and Society and Review of International Studies, and in African and Southern African area studies journals including, for example, Journal of Southern African Studies and African Affairs.

Add event to calendar

Using data-driven advocacy to effect change for marginalised and vulnerable populations in SA

SCIS invites you to a seminar on Using data-driven advocacy to effect change for marginalised and vulnerable populations in South Africa on 13 Feb '25

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to a hybrid seminar titled Using Data-driven Advocacy to effect change for marginalised and vulnerable populations in South Africa by Ngqabutho Nceko Mpofu on 13 February 2025, 12:30 - 14:00.  

Abstract:
The deprioritisation of the public healthcare system in South Africa in the past decade runs counter to the promise contained in Section 27 of the Constitution. It has resulted in significant disparities in health outcomes in a country with clinics in crisis and the largest global burden of HIV and TB. There has been a growing recognition of the pivotal role communities play in responding to the most pertinent issues of the day, with directly impacted communities leading efforts to hold duty bearers to account through community-led monitoring (CLM). Through this burgeoning field of inquiry, key data has been collected, analysed and used to improve health outcomes through advocacy initiatives.

This session will highlight key gains and setbacks made in the HIV response through an analysis of longitudinal data collected by and about the most marginalised communities, highlighting the continued dangers posed to South Africa reaching its 95-95-95 targets. It will also set key recommendations necessary to achieve this important goal of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.

About the speaker:
Ngqabutho Nceku Mpofu is the Policy, Communications, and Research Manager at the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African membership-based, patient-led social justice organization. The organization has almost 10,000 fully paid members from 8 of South Africa’s 9 provinces. It operates in 36 of South Africa’s 52 districts. Ngqabutho was a Cameron Schrier Fellow at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) in 2024.

To attend: Register here

Add event to calendar

Workshop on Promoting Intersectional Development Research

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies in partnership with Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) host a workshop.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies in partnership with Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is proud to host a workshop on Promoting Intersectional Development Research, marking the conclusion of the 2023 project. This two-day event will bring together funders, researchers, and organisations from the Global South to explore how intersectionality can be leveraged to address inequalities worldwide.

Participants will engage in dynamic discussions about the opportunities and challenges that intersectionality presents, as well as share insights on developing practical and actionable recommendations for integrating intersectionality in development research.

Register here!

Add event to calendar

Housing discrimination in India from a socio-legal perspective

SCIS invites you to a hybrid seminar titled Housing discrimination in India from a socio-legal perspective on 25 October 2024.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a hybrid seminar titled Housing discrimination in India from a socio-legal perspective on 25 October 2024. Rowena Robinson, who is a Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay, will present this seminar.

Abstract: 
Housing discrimination may well be regarded as one of the great unmentioned crises that looms large over urban India. In contrast to those postcolonial countries where racial or ethnic discrimination is generally recognized in academic writing, here in the first decades after Independence there was little scholarly acknowledgment of socio-economic disadvantage across ethnic and religious communities, or interest in mapping it. This paper focuses on housing discrimination against Muslims in urban areas against the background of marginalization, conflict, and violence. Apart from manifest inequality, it has implications for the idea of fraternity, the crucial third in modern democracy’s triptych. How does the Indian legal system, and particularly, its constitutional structure frame this issue? It is placed here within the context of a sociological understanding of the cumulative disadvantageous effects of what are legally considered ‘private acts’ and, thus, brings a distinct perspective to the examination of vertical versus horizontal rights. While South Africa for instance seems to apply constitutional law directly to such domains, in other countries public policy in the form of equal opportunities legislation has been the chosen instrument for tackling similar forms of discrimination. The paper argues that public activism could be significant in embedding values socially and making durable the legislation arising therefrom. At the same time, it calls on the notion of ‘demosprudence’ to contend that in the context of deep-rooted structured inequalities a primary judicial step triggered by the mechanism of social action litigation may be necessary.

About the speaker:
Rowena Robinson is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Bombay and has taught earlier at Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru Universities. Her current areas of research include minority studies, structural inequality and ethnic conflict, constitutional law, civil society and public policy. Among other publications, she is author of Boundaries of Religion (OUP, 2013) and Tremors of violence (Sage, 2005) and editor of Minority Studies (OUP, 2012). She is co-editor of Margins of Faith: Dalit and tribal Christianity in India (Sage, 2010) and of Religious conversion in India: modes, motivations and meanings (OUP, 2003) and has also published widely on the above research themes in academic journals.

Register:  Meeting Registration - Zoom

Add event to calendar

Algorithmic management practices in regular workplaces: Case studies in the South African Healthcare

SCIS invites you to a hybrid seminar on Algorithmic management practices in regular workplaces: Case studies in the South African Healthcare sector

The Southern Centre for Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a hybrid seminar titled Algorithmic management practices in regular workplaces: Case studies in the South African Healthcare sector, on October 18th, 2024.  Join Nirvana Pillay and Dr Nancy Coulson who will be taking us through case studies from the healthcare sector in South Africa to examine how digital and algorithmic management practices have been used.

Abstract:
The use of digital technologies in healthcare is more established in high-income countries but is still emergent in the global south. Drawing on a report prepared for the ILO in 2023, we present case studies from the healthcare sector in South Africa to examine how digital and algorithmic management practices have been used. We found that despite obstacles to technology adoption including digital literacy and poor infrastructure, substantial strides have been made. Digital innovations were introduced to drive health worker performance, improve efficiencies and contain costs. Medical doctors and health service managers dominated digital innovation, and nurses were especially vulnerable to changed work processes.

Speakers:
Nirvana Pillay is a senior researcher at the Wits School of Public Health (Health and Society)  and an independent consultant and researcher at The Sarraounia Public Health Trust. She has worked in public health and development consultancy in projects that require interfacing closely with community, government and civil society. Nirvana has experience in research, prevention and capacity development. Her research interests focus on understanding the social and structural drivers of health inequality across diverse contexts amongst diverse groups. She is currently working on a Wellcome Trust Award titled “Future-making: Youth, hope and aspirations in urban South Africa.”

Nancy Coulson is an independent consultant and researcher at The Sarraounia Public Health Trust and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Wits Mining Institute. She has 25 years of health promotion, capacity development and research practice in Southern Africa working with government, civil society, the private sector, as well as, local and international development partners. Her research interests at the Wits Mining Institute are focused around worker representation and tripartite engagement in the practice and regulation of occupational health and safety and the interface between communities and mines. She is currently based in the UK.

Register here.

Add event to calendar

Political Economy and Critical Engagement in South Africa: Essays in Honour of Vishnu Padayachee

You are warmly invited to the book launch of Political Economy and Critical Engagement in South Africa: Essays in Honour of Vishnu Padayachee on 28 Nov 2024

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), the School of Economics and Finance (SEF), and the Wits School of Governance (WSG) warmly invite you to the book launch of Political Economy and Critical Engagement in South Africa: Essays in Honour of Vishnu Padayachee.

This book examines contemporary understandings of social change and political economy in a democratic South Africa through the lens of the intellectual, social, and political life of Vishnu Padayachee. 

Join guest speaker Professor Adam Habib, who will be in conversation with the editors, Professors Rajend Mesthrie, Robert van Niekerk, and Imraan Valodia.

In-person registration

Online registration 

Add event to calendar

After the rainbow: South Africa's interregnum through Brazil's lens

SCIS warmly invites you to a seminar

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) warmly invites you to a talk by Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos, "After the Rainbow: South Africa´s Interregnum Through Brazil´s Lens," on 22 November 2024. 

Abstract
This talk discusses contemporary politics in Brazil and South Africa. The comparison is framed by the hypothesis that both countries face an hegemonic crisis and therefore, an interregnum. These legitimation crises stem from frustrated expectations of social integration and nation building. Neo-developmentalism under Lula envisaged making Brazil a global player while black economic empowerment would open a path to redress historical economic inequalities. Although different, both ended up mired in corruption, which I read as a symptom of the narrow possibilities of expanded capital accumulation and class building in 21st century capitalism. The ensuing political dispute is framed as a politics of crisis containment (embodied by Lula and Ramaphosa) as opposed to the acceleration of the hegemonic crisis (embodied by Bolsonaro and Zuma). Finally, challenges to ANC dominance posed by Zuma´s MKP and Malema´s EFF are discussed, having in the background the rise of Bolsonarismo in Brazil. If containment fails, the face of acceleration remains to be seen, in South Africa and Brazil. 

About the speaker
Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos is professor of Latin American Studies at Unifesp and Prolam-USP. He is the author of Power and Impotence: A history of South America under progressivism (Haymarket: 2020) and co-editor of “Radical Right: politics of hate on the margins of global capital” (Brill: 2022), among other books that have been translated to English, French and Spanish. He is a visiting researcher hosted by SWOP at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Register HERE

Add event to calendar

Advanced Technology Use in South African Agriculture: Insights from Selected Sub-sectors

SCIS invites you to a seminar titled Advanced Technology Use in South African Agriculture: Insights from Selected Sub-sectors on 27 Feb '25.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies warmly invites you to a seminar by Dr Phumzile Ncube on Advanced Technology Use in South African Agriculture: Insights from Selected Sub-sectors., on 27 February 2025, 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST).  

Abstract:
The use of advanced technologies in South African commercial agriculture has a long history. Digital technologies have been acknowledged as a potentially revolutionary way to boost the efficiency and sustainability of agricultural production systems. The South African agricultural sector is a significant contributor to the country’s export earnings, food security, and employment. In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and other digital technologies, the South African agricultural sector could benefit from more intensive digitalisation, such as precision agriculture and climate-smart agri-food systems that balance the shifts in demand preferences and sustainable supply. We use the ‘technology-organisation-environment’ and the ‘technology acceptance model’ to analyse the implications of advanced technology adoption and diffusion for productivity, skills, and labour needs in selected agricultural sub-sectors, with a specific emphasis on the citrus production sub-sector. We find that factors such as perceived usefulness, economies of scale, complementary technological infrastructure, and access to finance play an important role in enabling precision agriculture technologies. Small-scale
farmers face challenges related to economies of scale and technology adoption, underscoring the importance of coordinated policy and the role of affordable complementary infrastructure in fostering inclusive technology diffusion.

About the speaker:
Dr Phumzile Ncube is a Senior Researcher at the DSI/NRF South African Research Chair in Industrial Development (SARChI-ID). She is also the co-ordinator of the Young Scholars Conference, which is co-hosted by SARChI-ID and the Young Scholars Initiative. She obtained her PhD at the University of Johannesburg in 2021. Her research interests include agroindustrialisation, regional value chains, structural transformation, and industrial development in Africa, with a specific focus on southern Africa.

To attend: register here. 

Add event to calendar

Black Sounds, Black Spaces: Black Sonic Geographies and Biking in Post-apartheid Johannesburg

SCIS invites you to a seminar by Kristen L. Miller titled Black Sounds, Black Spaces: Black Sonic Geographies and Biking in Post-apartheid Johannesburg.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a seminar presented by Kristen L. Miller on Black Sounds, Black Spaces: Black Sonic Geographies and Biking in Post-apartheid Johannesburg. The hybrid session will take place on March 6th, 2025, online from 12:30 to 14:00 (SAST). You can also join us in person in the SCIS Seminar Room, North Lodge Building, Parktown Management Campus.

Abstract:
Shaped by the enduring legacies of apartheid, Johannesburg remains one of the most unequal and racially segregated cities in the world. While formal segregation is no longer the law, economic barriers and infrastructural mechanisms–ranging from high walls and private security to exclusionary zoning and “boomed-off” streets–continue to limit Black people’s ability to move through and access the city. In this presentation, I examine how Black cyclists use sound to navigate and contest these spatial restrictions. Drawing on a year and a half of ethnographic immersion within two Black bicycling groups–The Banditz Bicycle Club and Street Friends– I explore how through the blasting of a range of Black music genres–from Jazz to Gqom and Amapiano bikers generate new modes of relation to the city that destabilize the the spatial workings of the city’s enduring apartheid geography. These groups’ weekly rides bring together ten to fifty bikers—often on bikes they build themselves—to perform tricks, blast music, and move through areas that, during apartheid, they could not freely enter. Through the collective playing of music, spontaneous group singing, and conversations that the songs ignite, I show how bikers create a Black sonic geography–through which they reconfigure the city and assert their presence within it. 

Bio:
Kristen L. Miller is a PhD candidate in sociology at the City University of New York (CUNY), Graduate Center. Her research focuses on Black subjectivity, culture, Black geographies, social movements, performance, emotions and embodiment. Her dissertation, Rideout: Freedom and Collective Movement in Black Biking Subcultures, is a multi-site ethnography examining the social world of Black biking communities in New York City and Johannesburg. Miller’s research has been supported by the Fulbright Research Award, The American Sociological Association, and CUNY’s Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Initiative. As a Fulbirght Fellow, Kristen conducted fieldwork in Johannesburg and was a visiting researcher at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies. 

Add event to calendar

The labour market effects of the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant

SCIS invites you to a hybrid seminar presented by Tim Köhler on the labour market effects of the SRD grant on 13 March 2025.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a timely seminar presented by Tim Köhler on the labour market effects of the SRD grant. This hybrid session will take place on 13 March 2025, 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST). You can also join us in person in the SCIS Seminar Room, North Lodge Building, Parktown Management Campus.

Abstract:
This paper considers the labour market effects of an unconditional cash transfer targeted at the unemployed in a context of extreme unemployment. Using staggered, heterogeneity-robust difference-in-differences designs applied to panel labour force survey data, we provide the first estimates of the causal effects of receipt of a new transfer introduced in South Africa in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant, the first labour market-linked transfer in the country’s history. As an extension, we leverage variation induced by a change in eligibility criteria which resulted in a significant reduction in coverage to estimate the effects of grant loss (conditional on prior receipt). Focusing on three outcomes – job search, trying to start a business, and employment – we estimate direct effects on recipients and indirect effects on co-resident household members. We estimate both average and dynamic effects during the pandemic and post-pandemic periods, and additionally explore effect heterogeneity by employment type and sectoral formality. The results aim to inform policy discussions surrounding the appropriate form of social support for the working-age unemployed in high-unemployment lower-income contexts.

Bio:
Tim is an applied development micro-economist focused on labour markets, social protection, and policy evaluation in lower-income countries. He’s currently a Junior Research Fellow at the Development Policy Research Unit based at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and a research affiliate with the Research on
Socio-Economic Policy unit at Stellenbosch University. Tim regularly conducts economic advisory work for several multilateral organisations and South African government departments, and his research has been published in World Development and Energy Economics, among other outlets. He earned his PhD
from UCT in 2024, and will be a Visiting Scholar at UNU-WIDER in Helsinki, Finland in 2025. More information on Tim’s work can be found on his website.

To attend register here.

Add event to calendar

Rethinking activism: Protecting peace, people and the planet - The challenges facing (civil)society

SCIS invites you to a hybrid seminar by Mark Heywood on Rethinking Activism: Protecting peace, people and the planet - The challenges facing (civil) society

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a hybrid seminar presented by Mark Heywood on Rethinking Activism: Protecting peace, people, and the planet—The challenges facing (civil) society on April 3rd, 2025, from 12:30 to 14:00 (SAST).  

Abstract:
Mark’s presentation will be both a celebration and a critique of social justice activism in Africa. It recognises the sacrifices and achievements of activists, but also raises questions about why activism is failing to halt socio-economic and gender inequality. It raises an alarm about the deepening social, economic and political crisis in Africa and the world, a crisis that makes today’s activism even more difficult and dangerous. It debates building power and what activists need to do to rethink, retool,
and revitalise both our methods and the way we understand power in the world.

Speaker Bio:
Mark Heywood is a social justice activist and writer, currently involved in a variety of campaigns on issues such as access to sufficient food and health care services. He has co-founded and led a number of successful NGOs and social movements, including the TAC, SECTION27, Corruption Watch. He recently founded a new organisation, the Justice and Activism Hub. He also works as a senior researcher at the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at UCT.

To attend, register here 

Add event to calendar

Colonial Corruption and Caste: A Study of Late Nineteenth Century India

SCIS invites you to a seminar by Dr Anubha Anushree titled Colonial Corruption and Caste: A Study of Late Nineteenth Century India on 27 March 2025.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to a hybrid seminar by Dr Anubha Anushree who will discuss Colonial Corruption and Caste: A Study of Late Nineteenth Century India on 27 March 2025, at 12:30 to 14:00 (SAST). 

Abstract:
This presentation considers a particularly flagrant example of corruption in 1888 colonial Bombay, involving a powerful English officer Arthur Crawford and several of his subordinates (Mamlatdars). The principal argument is to demonstrate how the so-called British professional culture ironically expanded opportunities for corruption. Unlike the regulation of corruption in the early half of the nineteenth century in colonial India, which was directed at controlling corruption in instances of colonial contact with the natives, this chapter locates corruption within the colonial rational administrative structure. It argues that corruption was not just a matter of professional lapse but also a reflection of the homoerotic intimacies such administrative structures engendered. 

The paper argues that the colonial treatment of Crawford-Mamlatdar corruption was informed by the anxieties to produce imperial distinction and supremacy. At the same time, the Indian challenge to the dismissal of officials signaled the selective emergence of upper caste and bourgeois notions of public virtue, which essentially acknowledged the colonial state as an apparatus of moral and affective control. Premised on a fantastical moral high ground, both these views failed to recognize the complex moral agency and subjectivities of the Mamlatdars themselves.

About the speaker:
Dr. Anubha Anushree teaches at the Department of English, Rajdhani College, University of Delhi. She is also the Editor (Asia) of the journal Review of Democracy. Before joining Delhi University, she was a lecturer in the COLLEGE Program at Stanford University, where she also earned a PhD in History. Her
dissertation, “The Moral Republic: Corruption in Colonial and Postcolonial India,” examines issues of political trust and public mobilisation in colonial and independent India. 

To attend - register here.

Add event to calendar

Gendering structural change and green transition in Africa: Implications of Transformative policies

SCIS invites you to a seminar by Dr Elvis Korku Avenyo on Gendering structural change and green transition in Africa: Implications of Transformative Policies.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a seminar by Dr Elvis Korku Avenyo on Gendering structural change and green transition in Africa: Implications of Transformative policies. The hybrid session will take place on 8 May 2025 at 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST).   

Abstract:
This paper investigates the gender-based employment implications of structural transformation in Africa. We consider two distinct patterns of structural transformation. First, we consider structural transformation
through the lens of economy-wide shifts in sectoral structures on a sample comprising 48 African countries from 1992-2019. Second, we explore structural transformation through the lens of green energy systems and transition technologies (GETT).

Our findings suggest that shifts in sectoral structures have generally worsened gender-based employment gaps across African countries. However, countries implementing policies to enhance women’s economic opportunities and social status have successfully mitigated this trend. While GETT presents opportunities for achieving gender-balanced employment, entrenched gendered social inequalities pose a significant challenge. Based on the findings and using Ghana and South Africa as case studies, we propose a Gendered-Transformative (G-TRIP) framework to guide policy shifts necessary for achieving gender-inclusive structural transformation.

About the speaker:
Elvis Korku Avenyo is an Associate Professor at the DSI/NRF South African Research Chair in Industrial Development (SARChI-Industrial Development), at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He researches broadly on development economics with interests in industrial development, innovation, critical minerals and green transition, labour markets, firm behaviour, with a specific focus on developing countries. He has published in reputable academic journals and has worked and co-authored background papers for
several international organisations. Elvis obtained his PhD in Economics from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Click here to read more about Dr Elvis Korku Avenyo.

Add event to calendar

Intersection between childcare, eldercare & climate change impacts on unpaid child care in Limpopo

SCIS invites you to a seminar by Dr Jamela Basani Hoveni on 22 May 2025

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to a seminar by Dr Jamela Basani Hoveni titled the intersection between childcare and eldercare and climate change impacts on unpaid child care in a rural village in Limpopo. The hybrid session will take place on 22 May 2025, at 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST). 

Abstract:
This paper examines how childcare intersects with the wellbeing of grandmothers, mainly poor elderly women dependent on social grants charged to look after their grandchildren in Mafarana village, Limpopo, South Africa. Like many rural villages in the South African countryside, Mafarana has been ravaged by climate change, leading to droughts, loss in biodiversity, and intensifying the care burden. The paper draws upon ethnographic original field research conducted in Mafarana. The paper finds that there are various reasons why grandchildren find themselves under the care of their grandmothers instead of their mothers and fathers. These include, among others, death of parents, inadequate wages to support the children, single/divorced mothers’ financial constraints, and more. There is a reciprocal dynamic to these caring relations in that both the grandmothers and grandchildren benefit from each other’s companionship – grandmothers in dealing with their loneliness, and grandchildren receiving parental guidance. The paper argues that despite the benefits of childcare provided by grandmothers, in rural areas as co-residents, this form of care which is dependent on grandmothers’ social grants, subsidises and enables the low-wage regime offered by the state and private employers in South Africa. This reinforces race, gender, and labour market inequalities.

About the speaker:
Dr Jamela Basani Hoveni, as a Senior Researcher, leads the Feminist Economics project at the IEJ. Holding a PhD in Economics and an MCom in Financial Markets from Rhodes University, Jamela brings a wealth of experience to the organisation. Prior to joining the IEJ, she spent nine years in academia as both a Lecturer and Researcher, specialising in gender analysis in economics, trade, macroeconomics, and finance. Her corporate background includes roles as a Financial Analyst and Economist. Jamela is a self-published feminist creative writer, authoring the anthology, “Random Walk: Modern African Stories.” She is a spoken word poet who focusing on empowering African women and challenging gender stereotypes. Jamela’s passion for reading and writing shapes both her personal and professional pursuits.

Click here to register.

Add event to calendar

Accumulation, extractivism and dispossession in contemporary Zimbabwe

SCIS invites you to a seminar titled Accumulation, extractivism and dispossession in contemporary Zimbabwe by Dr Mbuso Moyo on 29 May '25, 2:30 - 14:00 (SAST)

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to a hybrid seminar by Dr Mbuso Moyo titled Accumulation, extractivism and dispossession in contemporary Zimbabwe. The session will take place on 29 May 2025, 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST). 

Abstract:
Extractivism is often a violent process. Majority of the times it is marked by unfair labour practices, environmental degradation due to crude open cast mining methods, desecration of graves, and a general disinterest towards social justice and corporate social investment. The present intervention focuses on
extractivism in contemporary Zimbabwe. The article focuses on the questions: How, and why, does Chinese extractivism in Zimbabwe embody the continuation of, ‘accumulation by dispossession’ and ‘extractivist imperialism’? How does extractivism configure rural livelihoods and with what implications for broad based resource ownership? Evidence from rural Zimbabwe reveals that, in collusion with Zimbabwe’s ruling elite, Chinese mining capital is currently the preeminent land dispossessor in Dinde, a coal mining host community in Hwange district, Matabeleland North province of Zimbabwe. Land-dependent modes of production by the local Tonga and Nambya people are sharply curtailed. In addition, this accentuates the burgeoning of the reserve army and the immiseration of the labour class. By and large, such processes demonstrate how capital has regained its foothold in contemporary Zimbabwe four decades after independence.

About the speaker:
Dr Mbuso Moyo is a post-doctoral fellow in the Climate and Inequality programme at SCIS. He holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Johannesburg, on youth unemployment, aspirations, and development in the Royal Bafokeng Nation, a ‘traditional community’ that has carved for itself
a lofty position as a ‘successful’ platinum mining community in South Africa’s North West province. His work interrogates the political economy of mining, extractivist accumulation and the various modes of popular resistance it has engendered in coal, copper, platinum, and lithium mining host communities
in the global South in general and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Moyo’s work amplifies the point that mining operations undermine rural communities’ access to, and rights over, land resulting in land enclosures

Register here

Add event to calendar

Working Paper Launch: Care-Climate Nexus Conceptual Framework

SCIS invites you to the online launch of the Care-Climate Nexus Conceptual Framework Working Paper

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to the launch of the Care-Climate Nexus Conceptual Framework Working Paper, with speakers from the Human Sciences Research Council, the Presidential Climate Commission, and the International Development Research Centre. This online event will take place on 12 June 2025, 16:00 - 17:30 (SAST).  

Abstract: 
This paper outlines the conceptual linkages between climate change and care work. As is widely evidenced, climate change threatens food security and sovereignty; water availability, accessibility, and quality; health and livelihoods. Where women bear the primary responsibility of unpaid care work, such as food provision, water collection, and care for the young, sick, and elderly, climate change disproportionately disadvantages them. This applies to the work of care and, more broadly, to social reproduction. Climate change, therefore, contributes to an ongoing crisis of care, exacerbating the injustices associated with women carrying a disproportionate share of unpaid care work. As such, fostering a value for care could be a means through which social and environmental inequalities are equally addressed in an ecological transition. 

Register today!

Add event to calendar

Large-Scale Irrigation and Water Use Inequality in South Africa

SCIS invites you to a hybrid seminar on Large-Scale Irrigation and Water Use Inequality in South Africa by Tereza Varejkova

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) invites you to a hybrid seminar titled Large-Scale Irrigation and Water Use Inequality in South Africa by Tereza Varejkova on 12 June 2025, 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST). 

Abstract:
Large-scale surface irrigation is essential in keeping agriculture viable in regions prone to drought, but it has the potential to exacerbate inequality due to the uneven distribution of its benefits and costs. The paper investigates this issue in the context of South Africa by estimating heterogeneous effects of irrigation canals on crop productivity and agricultural land expansion by type of farmer. To estimate these
effects, the paper uses remote sensing measures of crop yields and a novel land cover classification dataset in a spatial regression discontinuity framework with relative elevation to the nearest canal as the running variable. Areas below the canals serve as the treated group, while areas above serve as the control. The findings show that commercial farmers below canals benefit in terms of higher maize and wheat yields and expand their area under production. Census data further reveal that these expanding
commercial farms create employment opportunities for the rural poor. In contrast, subsistence farmers below canals experience lower yields relative to those above and do not expand their cultivated area.
Despite the unequal distribution of benefits, a cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that large-scale irrigation infrastructure remains a cost-effective investment.

Register now!

Add event to calendar

Green hydrogen and the political economy of decarbonization and extractivism in Southern Africa

SCIS invites you to a seminar by Sam Ashman on Green hydrogen and the political economy of decarbonization and extractivism in Southern Africa.

The Southern Centre for Inequality Studies invites you to a seminar by Sam Ashman titled Green hydrogen and the political economy of decarbonization and extractivism in Southern Africa. This hybrid session will take place on 26 June 2025, at 12:30 - 14:00 (SAST).  

Abstract:
International climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies are producing new levels of demand for the metals and minerals necessary for the transition, as well as for land and water resources necessary for new energy frontiers like green hydrogen. Many fear that the push for green energy will not foster prosperity and a new relationship between extractivism and development but rather reproduce or even deepen inequalities within and between countries.

This seminar presents a paper that explores these issues in relation to the green hydrogen economy emerging in southern Africa which is producing hype, hope, and skepticism in equal measure. There are dangers that Global South countries meet Global North strategic priorities, and possibly generate yield for portfolio investors, but in the process do little to address domestic energy poverty or broader development, whilst reinforcing external debt vulnerabilities and technological dependency. The paper draws on research work undertaken in Namibia and South Africa.

Speaker bio:
Sam Ashman is an associate professor of economics at the University of Johannesburg and a research associate at the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She has 15+ years’ experience in political economy, development economics, and economic policy in the Global South. She has published on the impact of (uneven) globalization, neo-liberalization, and financialization. Her research interests include postapartheid economic development in South Africa; financialization; industrial development and industrial policy; the state and economic development; and the political economy of combined and uneven development. She is currently working on issues around (un)just energy transitions and sustainable development.

Register here

Add event to calendar

Informality, caste, and postcolonial capitalist development in India

Informality, caste, and postcolonial capitalist development in India

Add event to calendar

Political Economy and Critical Engagement in South Africa | Essays in Honour of Vishnu Padayachee

Political Economy and Critical Engagement in South Africa

Political Economy and Critical Engagement in South Africa

Essays in Honour of Vishnu Padayachee

Edited by Rajend Mesthrie, Robert van Niekerk and Imraan Valodia

This book examines contemporary understandings of social change and political economy in a democratic South Africa through the lens of the intellectual, social and political life of Vishnu Padayachee. Padayachee was one of the foremost South African progressive intellectuals who worked on themes of macroeconomics, economic history, development and policy- making, as well as academic leadership, sport and social history. The edited volume critically reflects and engages with these themes in relation to the evolution of emancipatory thought, as well as social change and its challenges in a democratic South Africa.

The contributors are drawn from a diverse community of progressive scholars – considered among the most eminent in their field – who were associated with Padayachee over a period of 50 years in South Africa and globally. Chapters cover the importance of place in relation to Umkomaas and Durban; transformation in the university and its difficulties; trade unionism and the world of resistance politics; the unfolding of macro- economic policies during South Africa’s transition to democracy; and regional and international trends in economic development and policy. The book also attests to Padayachee’s enormous contribution to the world of culture, books and sport in tributes that bring the book to a close.

ISBN: 978 1 86914 574 3

e-ISBN: 978 1 86914 575 0

Price: R400

Format: 230 x 150mm,

432pp. Softcover

Interest: South African

history, social change, political economy, politics development studies

Rights: World

Pub Date: 1 January 2025

Ordering: UKZN Press ramthew@ukzn.ac.za / mbambos@ukzn.ac.za

Rajend Mesthrie is Emeritus Professor and former National Research Foundation Research Chair in Language, Migration & Social Change, based at the University of Cape Town.

Robert van Niekerk is the Professor and Chair of Public Governance at Wits School of Governance.

Imraan Valodia is Professor of Economics, Pro Vice Chancellor (Climate, Sustainability and Inequality) and Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Add event to calendar

Towards a better understanding of the ‘lithium assemblage’ in Zimbabwe

Towards a better understanding of the ‘lithium assemblage’ in Zimbabwe

Add event to calendar

Paper Launch: The Political Economy of Social Ownership in South Africa.

The Political Economy of Social Ownership in South Africa.

In this webinar, we will be launching a recently published paper titled: The Political Economy of Social Ownership in South Africa: Opportunities to Address Inequality in Transition. Commissioned by Agence Française de Développement and in collaboration with the Presidential Climate Commission, this paper contributes to the growing discourse on social ownership in South Africa. Drawing on the social ownership literature, expert interviews, and case studies of different social ownership models across various sectors, the research provides a definition of social ownership, highlights key features of successful social ownership models, and unpacks the ways in which they contribute to reducing inequality.

Add event to calendar

Film screening of a short film called "Mathonga Elizwe – Spirit of the Land"

Mathonga Elizwe – Spirit of the Land

Mnqobi Ngubane is a senior lecturer at Nelson Mandela University. His research is on land and agrarian reform in Southern Africa, with wider Global South, and Eastern Europe interests on current reversals of land redistribution progress. He is the executive producer of a film, Mathonga Elizwe – Spirits of the Land, set in South Africa. He is currently working on, and fundraising for, the next film, Sechaba Sa Basotho, the Lesotho Land Question.

This seminar is a film screening of a short film called Mathonga Elizwe – Spirit of the Land. It is a true story of latter-day land struggle in South Africa. The film lays bare the struggles of ordinary South Africans in obtaining land through the democratic land tenure reform process. Protagonists tell their stories of struggle and constant frustrations on white-owned land. Antagonists unapologetically undermine the land reform process and stunt its progress. Beyond odds the future seems bright for the land claimants manifested in their well calculated struggle through the Land Claims Court of South Africa.

The link to the trailer is: https://vimeo.com/1004046679/679f89eeb2

Add event to calendar

Social reproduction and just transition

Social reproduction and just transition

Social reproduction and just transition

Add event to calendar

A Crisis of Multilateralism: Inequality, Sustainable Development, and Climate Change

Title: A Crisis of Multilateralism: Inequality, Sustainable Development, and Climate Change

About the event

South Africa’s G20 presidency highlights the global “polycrisis” under the theme of solidarity, equality, and sustainability. Shifting geopolitical dynamics such as the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, reduced aid commitments, and Europe’s own energy challenges, pose urgent questions for the future of international cooperation. This event brings together leading voices to debate the role of multilateralism in addressing inequality, enabling just transitions, and shaping responses to climate change amidst these competing global pressures.

Add event to calendar

Seminar: Double Borderland Identities: A Case study of Musina Local Municipality

Double Borderland Identities: A Case study of Musina Local Municipality

Add event to calendar

Seminar: Pastoral Narratives and Food Systems Transformations

Pastoral Narratives and Food Systems Transformations

Add event to calendar

Seminar: Splinternet Ahead? Africa’s Digital Policy in a World of Regions

Splinternet Ahead? Africa’s Digital Policy in a World of Regions

This seminar will present the eruption of digital technologies initially made the world more interconnected than before, allowing people to interact or make purchases through e-commerce platforms or marketplaces globally. Recent differences in digital laws and regulations across regions have raised concerns that this may be creating a ‘splinternet’, which could lead to regions where interregional interoperability is hindered by contradictory digital laws and obstructs global digital trade. The European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), as well as the African Union’s (AU) efforts, are progressing in establishing regional digital policies to facilitate digital trade. Regional leadership has played a decisive role in the creation, adoption, and implementation of region-specific digital policies. However, there is a splinternet among existing digital policies in the EU, USMCA and ASEAN. Therefore, it is interesting to assess whether the AU will jump on the bandwagon or take a posture that seeks to enhance harmonisation, Nigeria and South Africa in this regard.

Read the paper: Paper_Scis

Add event to calendar