Participatory Grant Making: A Success Story from Southern Africa

The Other Foundation (tOF) is an African trust dedicated to advancing human rights in southern Africa, with a particular focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. Our primary purpose is to expand resources available to defend and advance the rights and wellbeing of LGBTI people in the southern African region. We do this by working both as a grant-maker and a fundraiser.The founding board of tOF was first convened in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August 2013. At that initial meeting concern was expressed about the need for the membership of the board to better reflect the diversity of the southern Africa region. However, it was also noted that the funding for the establishment of the Foundation was a generous challenge grant from Atlantic Philanthropies, that set very specific fund raising targets within specified time-frames. It was therefore agreed that the founding board would set a limited number of tasks to fulfill, leading to the establishment of a board more appropriately reflective of the community it was established to serve. The three tasks were: (a) appoint the founding CEO; (b) undertake a pilot grant making initiative; and (c) work with the incoming CEO on a strategic plan.This report outlines the work that was involved in the development and implementation of the pilot grant making initiative, as well as reporting on the first grants that were allocated by the foundation. tOF received 114 applications for funding, from seven different countries, through an open call to support work that 'advances the rights and well-being of LGBTI people in Southern Africa'. 12 peer reviewers from six different countries in southern Africa, were selected through an open call for nominations to work with the board to select the proposals to be funded. The peer reviewers worked in four teams of 3 reviewers each, facilitated by a board member, to come to a consensus about which projects to recommend for funding. The process began by each reviewer individually assessing a number of applications, and then coming together in teams to share their findings.32 proposals were recommended for funding to the Board. About R3.1 million rand was awarded in grants ranging in size from R 10,000 to R 500,000. Grants were allocated in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi. Work that tOF will be supporting includes: investigating how midwives deal with inter-sex babies in Botswana; a holiday camp for children of LGBT people in South Africa; research into gender non-conformity in Swaziland; a book on Queer African Theology; mainstreaming issues related to sexual orientation in religious curricula in a university in Zimbabwe; as well as supporting anchor institutions in the region that are responsible for doing ground breaking work around the region through the Out in Africa film festival, the gay and lesbian archives, and trans and gender identity based advocacy work

Authority and development: leadership, development and democracy in African urban areas

Paper presented at the Wits History Workshop: Democracy, Popular Precedents, Practice and Culture, 13-15 July, 1994

Jabavu's journey

This research report is in two sections. The first section comprises a reflexive and theoretical essay that provides the background and introduction to the biographical chapters. The significance and nature of this biography is given. Methods used to collect data are given, problems encountered are explained. Gaps in the biographical sections, results of yet inaccessible data, are noted. The second section is in the creative non-fiction biography genre. It focuses on three distinct periods of Helen Nontando (Noni) Jabavu’s life: 1961 - 1962 while she was an editor at The New Strand magazine in England; 1977 while she was a weekly columnist for the Daily Dispatch newspaper in South Africa; and the current period starting from her return in May 2002. Each chapter tells the story of her life, providing texture, colour and depth. The first two biographical chapters also delve into Noni’s writings, attempting to understand her from these

An investigation into the basic safety and security status of schools' physical environments

Safety at schools is beginning to receive attention in South Africa as articulated in various media reports. Schools as sites of teaching and learning can deliver their educational mandate only in safe and secure conditions, free from injuries, crime, and violence. Basic school safety and security features are therefore essential at schools. I argue for the safety and security of the school's physical environment as a sine qua non and a starting point for overall school safety. Because reported incidents of injuries, crime, and violence seem most prevalent in township schools, I investigated the safety status of their physical environments. This was done through the phenomenological observation of their physical environments. It was found that school environments displayed some measure of basic safety, though there was a need to focus more on features like ensuring proper maintenance and surveillance systems, as well as on functional safety and security systems and procedures. An important finding related to the lack of conscious efforts aimed at creating safe and secure environments. It is recommended that schools focus on the basic safety and security of their physical environments, inter alia, purposefully planned school-based maintenance, surveillance and collaboration with stakeholders, including outside agencies like law-enforcement.South African Journal of Education Vol. 26 (4) 2006: pp. 565-58

The Dangers of Liberalism: A Short Reflection on the African National Congress in South Africa

People of colour all over the world exist and have to rebuild their humanity deep within the ruins of colonial imperialism and white supremacist heteropatriarchal neoliberal capitalism. For many of us, our sense of orientation is lost between essentialist longing for “pre-colonial Africa” and the violent colonial interpretation of our histories. Can you imagine? Trying to build your humanity amongst the ruins of an all-encompassing, unrelenting, and continuously re-inventing system? It is a big task. This is what any requests to engage with the oppressor must be measured against. Do we have time to engage the oppressor? When we take into consideration the energy and resilience required for us to survive the system (which seeks to kill us at every turn) and reimagine a decolonial anti-system humanity, the answer is clear. It is unequivocally no

Noni Jabavu: A peripatetic writer ahead of her times

When Noni Jabavu died in June last year, I had just talked about her biography a few days earlier at the Cape Town International Book Fair. I was the only person on that four-person panel whose biography was still ‘work-in-progress’. Her death brought that progress to a pause. It numbed me to inaction in ways I had not expected. I realized then that my emotional connection to her was much stronger than I had acknowledged to myself. Although I had spoken to her only once, for no longer than 5 minutes in 2005, I had carried the story of her life with me for much too long. As I continue to unearth and piece it together I grow in my belief that she was a woman who lived way ahead of her times

The effects of corporate rebranding on employee engagement: evidence from the professional services industry of South Africa

Thesis (M.M. (Strategic Marketing))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2015.Corporate rebranding has been a topic of study for many years, as exemplified in the work of scholars such as Rosenthal (2003), Simms and Trott (2007), Abratt and Kleyn (2012), and Muzellec and Lambkin (2006). Despite the high level of academic interest in researching corporate rebranding, there has been an overwhelming bias towards its effects on consumers within developed markets. Although the fact that many prior studies have been conducted on corporate rebranding and employee engagement, there is scant research on emerging markets, such as in South Africa. These previous studies did not adopt the Saks (2006) employee engagement model in an emerging market context to investigate the effects corporate rebranding can have on employee engagement in an emerging market context. The chosen case studies are a talent measurement company that underwent a corporate rebranding process in 2011, as well as an advisory company that also went through rebranding in 2013. The two companies fall within the same industry, thus the choice of a single embedded case study. Since the research aims to explore “the how and why”, a qualitative research method was found most fitting. The analysis was based on data collected during 26 in-depth interviews with senior managers, consultants, supportive staff, and marketing professionals. Data from the interviews were analysed using an open-code method in which eight key themes were identified. The researcher triangulated the data collected from the primary interviews, as well as secondary sources such as staff internal drafts, eComms, Q&A sheets, brochures, flyers, and media reviews. The results of Company A (SHL), revealed that not all employees understood the reason for corporate rebranding. Senior levels of management and consultants seemed to understand that the reason for the rebranding was to reposition SHL and combine two companies following a merger with PreVisor. In Company B (EY), the results revealed a similar level of understanding behind the reasons for corporate rebranding. Managers understood the reasons for corporate rebranding as an opportunity to gain new markets and reposition EY. ii According to the cross-case analysis compared to the Saks model of engagement, the corporate rebranding exercise had a positive impact on organisational commitment and organisational citizen behaviour. In terms of intention to quit, a corporate rebranding exercise is more likely to reduce intentions to quit. It was also established that there was no direct impact on job satisfaction due to the SHL and EY corporate rebranding. An unexpected outcome of the research was that during uncertain times of change, such as corporate rebranding, employees with strong loyalty to the brand are more inclined to stay with the brand and see the change through. This loyalty is rooted deeper than the current state of employee job satisfaction and engagement levels and more inclined to the company’s brand. The other interesting outcome was that a corporate rebranding exercise can ignite employees’ spirits and create a positive organisational culture, which is more likely to increase work efficiency and productivity. Even though the research could not link corporate rebranding to job satisfaction, the other contracts of the Saks model, which includes organisational commitment, intention to quit and organisational citizenship behaviour, could be directly linked. Therefore, the outcome of the research identified the reasons for the companies to go through corporate rebranding exercises; namely to reposition the companies and gain new markets. In light of the second research question, which referred to the effects of corporate rebranding on employee engagement, the research revealed that in line with the Saks model of engagement, certain aspects of engagement are enhanced by corporate rebranding and others, just as job satisfaction, have no impact at all. At the end of the study, research implications, limitations, and areas for future research are suggested.DM201

Governors or watchdogs? The role of educators in school governing bodies

The perceptions of educators in school governing bodies (SGBs) about their roles were investigated. The study derived its motivation mainly from a previous study on the subject and the subsequent reflection on own experiences of the situation in South African schools as an ex-official in the Department of Education. The study therefore drew largely from this previous research report. Findings revealed a great tendency for educator governors in SGBs to act as \"watchdogs\" for their teaching colleagues. This study pointed to composition of SGBs and attainment of membership as reasons why educator-governors perceive their role as that of watchdogs for their colleagues. The study however recognised that educator-governors also profess to have the interests of the school and therefore the learner at heart. The balancing act is therefore a challenge to them and makes their task as governors even more exigent. South African Journal of Education Vol.24(4) 2004: 313-31

A qualitative application of Amartya Sen’s ‘development as freedom’ theory to an understanding of social grants in South Africa

Amartya Sen argued that poverty is the “deprivation” of a person’s capability to lead a “good life”, therefore ending poverty means meeting basic physical and social needs, and enabling meaningful economic and political choices. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether and how social grants enable “choices” in Sen’s sense. In-depth interviews conducted with social grants recipients’ in this study provided evidence that social grants reduce poverty, both in terms of helping grants recipients to meet basic needs, and enabling them to make more choices, such as buying food, accessing education and health care, as well as facilitating job searches and starting small businesses. However, there was also evidence that showed that grants are inadequate to entirely remove the “unfreedoms” facing the poor because the grants are too small to adequately cover basic needs in the context of large family sizes, a serious and long-term lack of resources, persistent unemployment, and high indebtedness. Further, these grants could enable only a limited expansion of “choices”. This paper argues that social grants in South Africa do enable recipients some “choices” although access to these “choices” is limited. It is envisaged that this paper will help academics to think more about the extent of the developmental impact of social grants in South Africa.Keywords: Amartya Sen, poverty, social grants, choices, development as freedo

Managing teacher turnover

Concerns about educator turnover and attrition are reported widely as a global phenomenon. Turnover translates, amongst other things, into shortages in educator supply, costs in recruitment, training and mentoring, poor learner performance due to disruption of planning programmes and continuity, as well as overcrowded classes. This poses a challenge to the education system to manage turnover and retain teachers. This is critical to the future of quality education delivery, especially in the light of changes in the system generally and the demands placed on it to deliver education in line with the country's socio-economic expectations. A teacher turnover and retention strategy that addresses the sources thereof is therefore essential. This article draws attention to the phenomenon of teacher turnover, makes recommendations for the management thereof by education departments in the country, and is a first step towards comprehensive research into teacher turnover in South Africa. South African Journal of Education Vol.23(4) 2003: 287-29