The limits of transnational solidarity : the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the Swaziland and Zimbabwean crises

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), the main union federation in South Africa, was instrumental in ending apartheid. This paper evaluates COSATU's post-apartheid role in working for democracy elsewhere in Southern Africa through deepening transnational solidarity, focusing on its role in Zimbabwe and Swaziland. Although the federation successfully mobilised trade union members to oppose the contravention of human and labor rights, its ability to affect lasting change was limited by contradictory messages and actions by the South African government, the dualistic nature of institutional formation in these countries, strategic miscalculations and structural limitations on union power

Industrial relations in Namibia since independence: between neo-liberalism and neo-corporatism?

The paper seeks to examine the changes and continuities in industrial relations in post-independence Namibia. In particular, it aims to explore some of the key elements in the process through which the distribution of the costs and rewards of economic and industrial restructuring is institutionalised. The paper concentrates, through in-depth interviews with key role players, on how the attempts at sustaining a durable and redistributive trade-off between economic efficiency and social equality led to a contradictory fusion of neo-liberal and neo-corporatist forms of labour market regulation. The research reveals that changes in the regulation of the labour market since independence have created opportunities for advancement and participation by groups of more skilled and organised employees, while weaker and less skilled groups have generally experienced a decline in employment conditions and the absence of collective representation. These developments reflect and reproduce patterns of racial and gender discrimination, industrial structure, trade union membership and collective bargaining across the various sectors and occupations. The paper shows that a system of low-skill, low-wage and low-trust relations - with an emphasis on cost reduction and employment "flexibility" - is fast becoming embedded in industrial relations in Namibia. Given the prevailing economic policies, industrial strategies and labour market structures, Namibia's integration into the global economy will most likely involve the increasing dislocation and exclusion of vulnerable and "peripheral" workers from the formal economy. The paper highlights the ways in which the transformation of industrial relations in Namibia is shaped by the legacy of apartheid-colonialism and the pressures of globalisation. Specifically, the conjunction of increasingly deregulated product markets and increasingly regulated labour markets has driven a wedge between the pursuit of short-term objectives and the attainment of long-term transformational goals

Fractured solidarities: labour regulation, workplace restructuring, and employment 'flexibility' in Namibia

A central concern of this thesis is the expansion, distribution and control of 'non-standard' employment in Namibia since independence. The employment relationship has assumed various historical forms under capitalism, each of which corresponds to a specific mode of regulation with distinct structural dynamics. An attempt is made to extend the regulation approach 'downwards' to account for the problem of order in the workplace and to place the employment relationship within its own regulatory framework. The point of departure in this study of the dynamics of labour regulation is the contradictory nature of labour's incorporation, allocation, control and reproduction within the labour market. The employment relationship is never only an economic exchange, but is also mediated through an institutional framework that connects the processes of production and social reproduction, and regulates conflicting interests inside and outside the workplace. This relationship, as critical realists have pointed out, is a product of the indeterminate intersection of several generative structures. The roots of these generative structures can be traced to three sets of social processes: the processes of production and the structuring of labour demand; the processes of social reproduction and the structuring of labour supply; and the forces of regulation. Non-standard employment is viewed as a particular social and spatio-temporal 'fix' for the various regulatory dilemmas generated by the standard employment relationship. This conception underscores the fact that a national system of labour regulation decisively shapes the conditions under which employers are able to casualise a part of their workforce. The differential experience across national boundaries suggests that analytical space needs to be provided for systems of labour market regulation which may either accentuate or moderate pressures for casualisation. Segmentation on the demand side of the labour market is explored through an analysis of the types of non-standard jobs created in different economic sectors. The various forms of employment 'flexibility' tend to vary in importance according to the specific manner in which a firm chooses to compete. Consequently, non-standard employees are distributed in a complex and uneven manner across industrial sectors and the occupational hierarchy, and face a diverse range of possibilities and liabilities that shape their levels and forms of participation in the labour market. By counteracting the homogenisation effects of labour law and collective bargaining, the mobilisation of cheap and disposable labour through non-standard employment contracts allows employers much greater discretion in constructing the wage-effort bargain. With non-standard employment, social and statutory regulation is weak or underdeveloped and hence managerial control is autocratic, with a significant contractual component. Although the changing social composition of the workforce associated with employment 'flexibility' poses serious challenges to the modes of organisation that have long served the labour movement, trade unions in Namibia and elsewhere have been slow to respond to the threats of casualisation. Of concern here, is the extent to which attempts to promote the security of existing union members is compatible with attempts to organise non-standard employees. This thesis shows that the unions have developed a complex amalgam of strategies in their efforts to regulate non-standard employment relationships

Museet for samtidskunsts første videoinnkjøp i et museologisk perspektiv

ââ¬ÂDere har vist en påfallende liten interesse for foto/video. Etter min mening er det uholdbart da noen av de mest interessante kunstnere internasjonalt arbeider innenfor disse media. Hvorfor, hvorfor?!!! kjøper dere ikke?ââ¬Â spurte Laila Haugan Karin Hellandsjø, daværende sjefkonservator ved Museet for samtidskunst (Billedíkunstneren 9/1992:10). Med bakgrunn i dette utsagnet vil jeg undersøke Museet for samtidskunsts videoinnkjøp. Utgangsípunktet er én hendelse, innkjøpet av verket Riss (1991) av Kjell Bjørgeengen i 1991. Dette var museets første innkjøp av video. I 1984 blir Kjell Bjørgeengen (f. 1951) betegnet som ââ¬ÂNorges eneste etablerte videokunstnerââ¬Â av Gøril Wiker i en artikkel i Dagbladet (10.8.1984). Sentralt i analysen er de mediespesifikke kvalitetene ved dette verket, men artikkelen stiller også spørsmålet om hvorfor video ikke ble kjøpt inn tidligere? Med andre ord, hva kan innkjøpet fortelle om norsk videos inntreden i institusjonen? Sentralt i kunstmuseenes innísamlingsíarbeid er innkjøpskomiteene og deres sammensetning. Hvilken betydning hadde de da for et nytt kunstfelt som video? Dette tydeliggjøres ved å se nærmere på innkjøpskomiteene både i Nasjonalígalleriet og Museet for samtidskunst (i dag begge Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design)

Simplifying the system or deepening poverty? The new Remote Rent Framework in the Northern Territory

In early 2022, the Northern Territory published a new Remote Rent Framework, to come into effect from 5 September 2022. This radical new policy abolishes income-based rent setting in public housing in remote Aboriginal communities and Town Camps in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek. Urban public housing remains subject to a rental rebate. The new rent setting framework seeks to simplify the rent setting system while increasing the rental revenue received from remote public housing tenants. If the new rent setting framework is successful in increasing rent revenues accruing to the public housing authority, it will do so at the cost of further impoverishing remote public housing tenants. Redistributing funds from impoverished remote community residents to the housing authority is an unjustifiable austerity measure that transfers the cost of supplying housing away from the fiscally-constrained Northern Territory Government and onto impoverished Aboriginal citizens. Coming at a time when the Commonwealth Government is removing a swathe of programs that discriminate against Indigenous residents of remote communities, the removal of rental rebates from remote public housing alone is arguably a form of indirect racial discrimination. We urge the Northern Territory government to halt its implementation of the new remote rent framework until it can be properly scrutinised and understood by remote public housing tenants and Aboriginal representative bodies

Herderlijke regel of inburgeringscursus? Een bijdrage aan het onderzoek naar de ethische richtlijnen in 1 Timoteüs & Titus

Within the debate about Paul’s authorship, Klinker concentrates on one specific point of debate: the question whether the Pastoral Epistles are intended as “pastoral instruction” of Paul to his collaborators Timothy and Titus, or as documents arising at a later time that promote a kind of “assimilated” lifestyle for Christians. “Because of the delay of Christ’s return, the need arose for a more permanent place for Christians in society—that is the currently reigning opinion. The Pastoral Epistles are then a collection of advice to believers so that they, among other things, assimilate respectably into the social conventions prevailing in that time—a kind of ‘lesson about integration.’ Until the nineteenth century people assumed that the Pastoral Epistles were a ‘pastoral rule’ and it was general accepted that Paul was the author. Subsequently the notion of the ‘lesson about integration’ gained ground and it was accepted that later Christians had Paul’s name affixed to their letters in order to lend authority to those documents.” In contemporary discussions, the “ancient” view hardly counts any longer. Nevertheless, according to Klinker, precisely this view contains much that helps explain the differences between the “conventional” advice in the Pastoral Epistles, and the advice we find in the undisputed letters of Paul. She attempts to demonstrate this by comparing the prescriptions about the man-woman relationship in 1 Timothy and Titus with those in 1 Corinthians

Defective CD4(+)CD25(+ )regulatory T cell functioning in collagen-induced arthritis: an important factor in pathogenesis, counter-regulated by endogenous IFN-γ

Mice with a deficiency in IFN-γ or IFN-γ receptor (IFN-γR) are more susceptible to collagen-induced arthritis (CIA), an experimental autoimmune disease that relies on the use of complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA). Here we report that the heightened susceptibility of IFN-γR knock-out (KO) mice is associated with a functional impairment of CD4(+)CD25(+ )T(reg )cells. Treatment of wild-type mice with depleting anti-CD25 antibody after CFA-assisted immunisation with collagen type II (CII) significantly accelerated the onset of arthritis and increased the severity of CIA. This is an indication of a role of T(reg )cells in the effector phase of CIA. IFN-γR deficiency did not affect the number of CD4(+)CD25(+ )T cells in the central and peripheral lymphoid tissues. In addition, CD4(+)CD25(+ )T cells isolated from naive IFN-γR KO mice had a normal potential to suppress T cell proliferation in vitro. However, after immunisation with CII in CFA, the suppressive activity of CD4(+)CD25(+ )T cells became significantly more impaired in IFN-γR-deficient mice. Moreover, expression of the mRNA for Foxp3, a highly specific marker for T(reg )cells, was lower. We further demonstrated that the effect of endogenous IFN-γ, which accounts for more suppressive activity in wild-type mice, concerns both T(reg )cells and accessory cells. Our results demonstrate that the decrease in T(reg )cell activity in CIA is counter-regulated by endogenous IFN-γ