Food security, urban governance and multilevel government in Africa

Realising the right to food requires more than an increase in food production. Increasing access to food is equally important, so this contribution adopts a “food systems approach”. Against the backdrop of a growing number of countries on the continent that are decentralising powers to cities and regions, this chapter assesses the role of local governments in South Africa with respect to food security. It argues that food security is not just a national and/or provincial government concern, but that the Constitution demands of municipalities to contribute to realising the right to food. Against the backdrop of a general introduction into the division of responsibilities between national, provincial and local government, it deploys two arguments to make this assertion. The first is located in the jurisprudence of the South African Constitutional Court on socio-economic rights. The second is located in the division of powers between national, provincial and local government. This contribution explores various linkages between a municipality’s constitutional powers and food security. Specific emphasis is placed on the municipality’s responsibility to regulate trade and markets as well as its responsibility to conduct spatial planning and land-use management. The argument made in this chapter is also relevant in other countries on the continent that combine socio-economic rights with multilevel government arrangements

Temperature Evolution of Sodium Nitrite Structure in a Restricted Geometry

The NaNO$_{2}$ nanocomposite ferroelectric material in porous glass was studied by neutron diffraction. For the first time the details of the crystal structure including positions and anisotropic thermal parameters were determined for the solid material, embedded in a porous matrix, in ferro- and paraelectric phases. It is demonstrated that in the ferroelectric phase the structure is consistent with bulk data but above transition temperature the giant growth of amplitudes of thermal vibrations is observed, resulting in the formation of a "premelted state". Such a conclusion is in a good agreement with the results of dielectric measurements published earlier.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Differences in antiretroviral scale up in three South African provinces: the role of implementation management

BACKGROUND: South Africa's antiretroviral programme is governed by defined national plans, establishing treatment targets and providing funding through ring-fenced conditional grants. However, in terms of the country's quasi-federal constitution, provincial governments bear the main responsibility for provision of health care, and have a certain amount of autonomy and therefore choice in the way their HIV/AIDS programmes are implemented. METHODS: The paper is a comparative case study of the early management of ART scale up in three South African provincial governments--Western Cape, Gauteng and Free State--focusing on both operational and strategic dimensions. Drawing on surveys of models of ART care and analyses of the policy process conducted in the three provinces between 2005 and 2007, as well as a considerable body of grey and indexed literature on ART scale up in South Africa, it draws links between implementation processes and variations in provincial ART coverage (low, medium and high) achieved in the three provinces. RESULTS: While they adopted similar chronic disease care approaches, the provinces differed with respect to political and managerial leadership of the programme, programme design, the balance between central standardisation and local flexibility, the effectiveness of monitoring and evaluation systems, and the nature and extent of external support and programme partnerships. CONCLUSIONS: This case study points to the importance of sub-national programme processes and the influence of factors other than financing or human resource capacity, in understanding intervention scale up

Overseeing the overseers: assessing compliance with municipal intervention rules in South Africa

Section 139 of the Constitution of South Africa empowers provinces to intervene into municipalities, an instrument to correct serious failures in local government. This article discusses the policy and legal framework for interventions and assesses whether the constitutional provisions that circumscribe it, are being adhered to. The starting point is that decentralisation, of which this instrument is part, is rules-based and that adherence to the rule of law is critical for its success. By its very nature, intervention represents an intrusion into the institutional integrity of the affected municipality and adherence to the constitutional safeguards surrounding the intervention is therefore critical. The article sets out the constitutional framework for interventions into municipalities which includes oversight roles for the Minister responsible for local government, the National Council of Provinces and the provincial legislature. It combines this with an assessment of 39 interventions that took place between 2008 and 2014. It presents a provincial breakdown and a breakdown of the legal basis of these 39 interventions. It concludes that provinces don’t use the interventions envisaged in Section 139(4) and (5) but instead almost always intervene in terms of Section 139(1) of the Constitution. The interventions are assessed for compliance with constitutional prescripts, such as the need to establish a failure to fulfil an executive obligation, the timely submission of the intervention to the Minister and the NCOP and their timely approval. The article concludes that a significant number of interventions did not comply with the pro- visions pertaining to the timely submission and approval by the Minister and the NCOP. Furthermore, there is a need to accelerate the adoption of the legislation envisaged by Section 139(8) of the Constitution to further regulate interventions

Neutron reflection study of the adsorption of the phosphate surfactant NaDEHP onto alumina from water.

The adsorption of a phosphorus analogue of the surfactant AOT, sodium bis(2-ethylhexyl) phosphate (NaDEHP), at the water/alumina interface is described. The material is found to adsorb as an essentially water-free bilayer from neutron reflection measurements. This is similar to the behavior of AOT under comparable conditions, although AOT forms a thicker, more hydrated layer. The NaDEHP shows rather little variation with added salt, but a small thickening of the layer on increasing the pH, in contrast to the behavior of AOT.We thank BP plc and EPSRC for financial support for this work as well as the ISIS and ILL staff and scientists for the allocation of beam time and technical assistance with NR measurements. We also appreciate Chris Sporikou at Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, for help with the surfactant synthesis.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared at http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/la504837

Experimental evidence of the ferroelectric phase transition near the λ−\lambda-point in liquid water

We studied dielectric properties of nano-sized liquid water samples confined in polymerized silicates MCM-41 characterized by the porous sizes \sim 3-10nm. We report the direct measurements of the dielectric constant by the dielectric spectroscopy method at frequencies 25Hz-1MHz and demonstrate clear signatures of the second-order phase transition of ferroelectric nature at temperatures next to the \lambda- point in the bulk supercooled water. The presented results support the previously developed polar liquid phenomenology and hence establish its applicability to model actual phenomena in liquid water.Comment: 4 pages, single figur