Class consciousness and migrant workers : dock workers of Durban

Despite the enormous apparatus of control at the disposal of employers and the state in South Africa, working class activity has not been eliminated nor organization erased. African migrant workers, such as those employed in the Durban docks, have held a leading position within the African working class for decades, absorbing the lessons of past struggles and putting forward demands which have led strike movements. These struggles demonstrate the uncompromising hostility of African workers to their class and national oppres- sion. With the growth of capital in South Africa an increase in class exploitation has been accompanied by intensified national oppression; the rule over African workers being enforced through vagrant, master and servant, and pass laws wh ich reproduce a cheap migrant labour force. Dock workers, for more than a century migrant workers, have shown a capacity for resistance in the city equal or higher than the level of class action by 'settled' urban workers. Their resilience is explained by their concentra- tion and commanding position in the labour process of the docks. During strikes the workers have laid claim to work and residence in towns in opposition to the employer and state strategy of expell ing strikers from th e urban centres. Decasualization has been introduced as a 'repressive reform' to reassert the control of the employers over an increasingly active workforce. Ironically, it has b~en accompanied by increasing priority to the development of contract labour in the docks and has also not eliminated the high turnover of workers nor the insecurity of employment. The consciousness of the dock workers has been shaped by the harsh discipline of capitalist production, national oppression, and the daily experience of international communications. These factors, combined with a long tradition of resistance, have encouraged the formation of a class con- scious section of the African proletariat

Community development and engagement with local governance in South Africa

The issue of public participation is receiving increasing attention in South Africa, from both government and civil society sectors. We are witnessing acknowledgement from a wide range of public institutions that insufficient consideration has been paid to public participation, and that existing policy frameworks, institutional mechanisms and programme interventions are failing to comply with government's constitutional and statutory obligations in this regard. This article examines actual practice in one key invited space: the policy and legislative framework for public participation in municipal processes. The article also highlights community experiences of attempting to engage with municipalities in development planning and policy processes, and their aspirations and expectations in this regard. We conclude with a set of recommendations on how participatory development at the local level can be transformed to ensure that municipal planning and programme implementation processes are truly accessible, participatory and empowering for local communities

The Citizen Voice Project: An Intervention in Water Services in Rural South Africa

Despite a legal framework for participation in South Africa, poor citizens have not to date been able to access the public services they need, leading some to talk of a ‘second democracy’, the political system as experienced by the poor. This action?research study involved local government, non?governmental organisations (NGOs), community leaders and community mobilisation to develop Water Services Scorecards, in rural Mbizana in the Eastern Cape. Water services had been grossly inadequate and were worsening. Communities were facilitated to analyse their own water?related problems; to establish standards and to measure services against indicators adapted from national policy frameworks. The case study documents the process, and reflects on its outcomes. It notes disappointment that service improvements had not been immediate. A crucial constraint, it concludes, was weak inter?level local government coordination; these are higher?order problems that local civil society action of the Citizen Voice Project type is not well positioned to tackle

Behavioural adjustments of a large carnivore to access secondary prey in a human-dominated landscape

1. Conflict between people and large carnivores is an urgent conservation issue world-wide. Understanding the underlying ecological drivers of livestock depredation by large carnivores is greatly needed. 2. We studied the spatial, foraging and behavioural ecology of African lions Panthera leo in the Botswana Makgadikgadi ecosystem. This ecosystem comprises a protected area, characterized by high seasonal fluctuation in wild prey abundance, and adjacent lands, which are used for livestock grazing and characterized by stable livestock abundance, but also a risk of anthropogenic mortality. 3. Makgadikgadi lions preferentially preyed upon migratory wild herbivores when they were present; however, data from GPS (Global Positioning System) radiocollared lions revealed that the majority of the study lions did not follow the migratory herds but remained resident at one or other border of the park and switched to livestock (abundant and readily available), and to a lesser extent resident wild herbivores (relatively scarce), in periods of migratory wild herbivore scarcity. 4. Resident lions’ use of space differed between periods of wild prey abundance and scarcity. These changes were likely to increase the frequency of encounter with their primary prey in periods of primary prey abundance and with livestock in periods of primary prey scarcity. 5. The risk of conflict with humans was a major driver of lion ecology in the human-dominated landscape surrounding the protected area. Resident lions generally avoided the close vicinity of cattle- posts.When they used such areas, they avoided temporal overlap with periods that humans were most active and travelled at high speed reducing the time spent in these areas. 6. Synthesis and applications. This study suggests that lions balance the benefits of accessing livestock with the costs associated with livestock raiding. Hence, reduction in livestock availability through effective livestock husbandry in periods of wild prey scarcity should lead to reduced conflict.http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1365-2664ab201

Culling-Induced Changes in Badger (Meles meles) Behaviour, Social Organisation and the Epidemiology of Bovine Tuberculosis

In the UK, attempts since the 1970s to control the incidence of bovine tuberculosis (bTB) in cattle by culling a wildlife host, the European badger (Meles meles), have produced equivocal results. Culling-induced social perturbation of badger populations may lead to unexpected outcomes. We test predictions from the ‘perturbation hypothesis’, determining the impact of culling operations on badger populations, movement of surviving individuals and the influence on the epidemiology of bTB in badgers using data dervied from two study areas within the UK Government's Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT). Culling operations did not remove all individuals from setts, with between 34–43% of badgers removed from targeted social groups. After culling, bTB prevalence increased in badger social groups neighbouring removals, particularly amongst cubs. Seventy individual adult badgers were fitted with radio-collars, yielding 8,311 locational fixes from both sites between November 2001 and December 2003. Home range areas of animals surviving within removed groups increased by 43.5% in response to culling. Overlap between summer ranges of individuals from Neighbouring social groups in the treatment population increased by 73.3% in response to culling. The movement rate of individuals between social groups was low, but increased after culling, in Removed and Neighbouring social groups. Increased bTB prevalence in Neighbouring groups was associated with badger movements both into and out of these groups, although none of the moving individuals themselves tested positive for bTB. Significant increases in both the frequency of individual badger movements between groups and the emergence of bTB were observed in response to culling. However, no direct evidence was found to link the two phenomena. We hypothesise that the social disruption caused by culling may not only increase direct contact and thus disease transmission between surviving badgers, but may also increase social stress within the surviving population, causing immunosuppression and enhancing the expression of disease

The Evolutionary Dynamics of the Lion Panthera leo Revealed by Host and Viral Population Genomics

The lion Panthera leo is one of the world's most charismatic carnivores and is one of Africa's key predators. Here, we used a large dataset from 357 lions comprehending 1.13 megabases of sequence data and genotypes from 22 microsatellite loci to characterize its recent evolutionary history. Patterns of molecular genetic variation in multiple maternal (mtDNA), paternal (Y-chromosome), and biparental nuclear (nDNA) genetic markers were compared with patterns of sequence and subtype variation of the lion feline immunodeficiency virus (FIVPle), a lentivirus analogous to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In spite of the ability of lions to disperse long distances, patterns of lion genetic diversity suggest substantial population subdivision (mtDNA ΦST = 0.92; nDNA FST = 0.18), and reduced gene flow, which, along with large differences in sero-prevalence of six distinct FIVPle subtypes among lion populations, refute the hypothesis that African lions consist of a single panmictic population. Our results suggest that extant lion populations derive from several Pleistocene refugia in East and Southern Africa (∼324,000–169,000 years ago), which expanded during the Late Pleistocene (∼100,000 years ago) into Central and North Africa and into Asia. During the Pleistocene/Holocene transition (∼14,000–7,000 years), another expansion occurred from southern refugia northwards towards East Africa, causing population interbreeding. In particular, lion and FIVPle variation affirms that the large, well-studied lion population occupying the greater Serengeti Ecosystem is derived from three distinct populations that admixed recently