M.Com. (South African and International Taxation) / Tax policy is important on many levels. It directly affects all members of society. The gender impact of these polices is often overlooked. The study was motivated by the potential existence of unintended gender discrimination within various indirect taxes. Tax policy has real repercussions on household budgeting and spending. The impact is likely to differ between the genders and this should be taken into account when setting tax policy in order to maintain fairness. Value Added Tax and the national lottery are all regressive taxes and affect the poor more than the wealthy. In light of the feminisation of poverty, as well as different household responsibilities and spending patterns between men and women, the gendered effect of this regressive tax is significant. This study considers whether South Africa’s indirect tax legislation and policies result in gender discrimination and what the potential solutions are. A largely qualitative approach was undertaken in executing the research. This entailed detailed reading on the topic to support any inferences and conclusions. This study finds that indirect gender discrimination exists in South Africa’s indirect taxation system and policy. The discrimination arises mostly due to the regressive nature of indirect taxes. These taxes have far larger ramifications for the poor. Women make up most of the poorest people both in South Africa and around the world. Men and women also spend differently and their spending and decision making directly affects household disposable income. The result of these gendered spending patterns could be said to put woman at a disadvantage in certain cases. The introduction of additional zero-ratings on children’s clothing and personal hygiene products could go far in addressing discrimination without a huge impact to the fiscus.

No description available.

A t~esis submitted to the Fa~~~ln:of Arts~ Universit~,of t\c W,itwat~rsrana; !n partial fulfilt..nent oof the requn;ements fi,or a, Master' of Arts degree In . , ..... " Developnlental Sociology. I:, (I NOVEMBER 1996 / No abstract.

While the transition to democracy in South Africa extended civil and political rights and freedoms to all South Africans, there has been disagreement over the preferred nature and scope of social rights within post-apartheid society, reflecting debates over the trajectory of economic policy. Appreciable developmental gains have been made by the state over the last quarter-century, yet the challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality persist, coupled with mounting popular discontent with the pace of transformation and political accountability. This has led to fundamental questions about social justice, restitution, and the kind of society we wish to promote. Appeals for a more inclusive, transformative social policy have also emerged, arguing that a wider vision of society is required involving multiple government responsibilities and informed by an ethic of equality and social solidarity. Against this background, in this thesis I study the views of the South African public towards economic inequality, general preferences for government-led redistribution, as well as support for social policies intended to promote racial and economic transformation. The research has been guided by several overarching questions: To what extent do South Africans share common general beliefs about material inequality? Does the public exhibit a preference for government redistribution in principle? And how unified or polarised are South Africans in their support for specific redress policies in the country? Responding to these questions has been achieved by drawing on unique, nationally representative data from the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), which has enabled me to chart social attitudes over a period of almost fifteen years between late 2003 and early 2017. Use has also been made of social citizenship as a guiding conceptual framework to understanding social policy predispositions and analysing attitudinal change. The results demonstrate that the public is united in its awareness of and deep concern about economic inequality. Since the early 2000s, a significant majority has consistently expressed the view that the income gap in the country is too large, articulated a strong preference for a more equitable social structure, and acknowledged the class and social tensions that economic inequality has produced. There is also a preference for a narrowing of earnings disparities, a more generous minimum wage, and regulatory limits on executive pay. While this suggests a desire for fair and legitimate remuneration, the analysis also reveals that South Africans are willing to tolerate fairly high levels of inequality. Nonetheless, these beliefs are generally interpreted as a desire for a more equitable and fair society. This preference for change is reflected in a fairly strong belief that government should assume responsibility for reducing material disparities. One’s social position, mobility history, awareness of inequality, political leaning and racial attitudes all have a bearing on how weak and strong this predisposition is, but the normative demand for political redistribution remains fairly widely shared irrespective of these individual traits. Greater polarisation is however evident with respect to redistributive social policy, especially measures designed to overcome historical racial injustice (affirmative action, sports quotas, and land reform). These intergroup differences converge considerably when referring to class-based policy measures. One surprising finding is the evidence that South Africa’s youngest generation, the so-called ‘Born Frees’, tend to adopt a similar predisposition to redress policy as older generations, thus confounding expectations of a post-apartheid value change. I conclude by arguing that there seems to be a firmer basis for a social compact about preferences for interventions designed to produce a more just society than is typically assumed. Intractably high levels of economic inequality during the country’s first quarter-century of democracy is resulting in a growing recognition of the need for a stronger policy emphasis on economic inequality in South Africa over coming decades if the vision enshrined in the Freedom Charter and the Constitution is to be realised. South Africans may not be able to fully agree about the specific elements that constitute a socially just response to economic inequality. Yet, the common identification of and concern with redressable injustice, coupled with a broad-based commitment to government redistribution and classbased social policies, could serve as a foundation on which to rekindle the solidaristic spirit of 1994 and forge progress towards a more equitable society.

In South Africa, it is evident that women are uniformed of their essential human rights, especially their inheritance and succession rights, including protection of such rights. Human rights are international norms that protect individuals everywhere from the states’ political, legal and social abuse. Human rights are entitlements which human beings have in order to enhance their human condition. They are the fundamental entitlements or minimum standards to be met for individual so that they live with dignity. This study focused on discrimination of women under customary law in South Africa with reference to inheritance and succession. The study validated the findings of other researchers on the impact of cultural practices on women’s rights to inheritance and succession. In addition the findings revealed that efforts t eliminate traditional practices, should foremost come from men and from communities that hold such destructive attitudes towards women. The outcomes and recommendations of this study would assist the government and other institutions to adopt effective measures to empower women and especially educate them so that they can assert and defend their human rights

Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the MAGISTER EDUCATIONIS in the Faculty of Education at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2014 / The apartheid system caused severe pain, injustice and financial loss to the majority of South African people. To redress the aftereffects of racial discrimination in the workplace, the Employment Equity Act (EEA) of 1998 was established. While there is some research on the challenges of implementing the EEA legislation in universities, there is a paucity of research on the difficulties faced by Further Education and Training (FET) Colleges. The purpose of this research project was to investigate the extent to which the EEA has been implemented in public FET Colleges located in the Western Cape Province, with the specific objective of identifying possible barriers to the implementation of the EEA in these Colleges. The research question was: What types of challenges1, or barriers (if any), exist in the implementation of the EEA in public FET Colleges in the Western Cape? This study is informed by critical social theory. The design of research in this study is both qualitative and quantitative. Data were collected from Deputy Chief Executive Officers (Corporate Services), Human Resources Managers and Campus Heads from each of the four Colleges. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews and documentary analysis were used. Data were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. Four of the six FET Colleges in the Western Cape Province were selected on the basis of their geographical location and the diversity of their personnel. Results revealed that in public FET Colleges in the Western Cape, white males and coloured females dominate top management positions. Data further showed that the Indian group is the least represented at both top and bottom levels of these FET Colleges. Although white females are fewer than their coloured female counterparts in top positions, they are nonetheless more than double the number of their black female counterparts. These results have serious implications for implementation of EEA legislation in general, and in the Western Cape specifically.

This research is situated within the context of the post-apartheid era in South Africa, which includes the dominant ideologies and policies that have shaped the urban landscape of the past and present. It investigates the extent and patterns of integration that exist twenty years after the country’s political transition and it uses Grahamstown, a small education and cultural centre in the Eastern Cape Province, as its case study. The investigation incorporates the traditional geographical focus of residential and educational integration, using conventional means of investigation such as segregation indices, dissimilarity indices, percentages and maps. However, in identifying the broader nature of ‘segregation’ and ‘integration’, the study moves beyond these foci and approaches. It adopts the timegeographical framework to reveal the dynamic use of urban space that reflects the lived space of selected individuals from the community of Grahamstown: the extent and patterns of their behavioural integration or spatial linkages. Together, these approaches reveal that Grahamstown is still a city divided by race and, now, class. Schools and residential areas remain tied to the apartheid divisions of race and the white community exists almost entirely within the bounds of apartheid’s blueprint of urban space. Rhodes University, which is located within Grahamstown, has experienced admirable levels of integration within the student body and within the staff as a whole, but not within the staff’s different levels. In essence, where integration has occurred it has been unidirectional with the black community moving into the spaces and institutions formerly reserved for whites. The limited behavioural integration or spatial linkages are shown to be tied to city structure and, within the white group, to perceptions of ‘otherness’ held by the individuals interviewed. While the study shows limited differences in the time-spatial movements between members of different races who are resident in the former white group area, it highlights the differences between those more permanently resident in the city and the temporary educational migrants or students. The study argues that the slow pace of change is related to the nature of South Africa’s democratic transition and its attending political and economic policies.

In recent years, there has been increasing concern that gender bias has prevented women from advancing as rapidly and as frequently as men into management positions. Although the number of women managers has increased, they may experience difficulty moving into upper management positions. The purpose of our research was to study employee gender perception of key variables of women and the positions held in high technology companies. In this research, phenomenological research method was chosen, because the aim of it is to determine what the experience means for the people who have experienced it. Based on the collected data, answers and experiences, structural analysis was done in order to find out the major phenomena of gender perceptions. A number of variables uncover the perception of aspects of policy and gender and barriers that may affect female employees' opportunities for advancement. Using a sample of 30 full-time employees from Company A, the results indicated that position held was significantly different for male and female employees. The results also indicated that neither male nor female employees appeared to notice the apparent perceptions apparently as a glass ceiling within their company and the Implications discussed and recommendations provided. With reference to the Empirical research, this paper increases the knowledge about women’s career development and provides recommendations how to deal with it. It is also expected that this thesis will be helpful to all women who are in the labour market for their career development and advancement.

Different forms of racial segregation have been practiced in different countries the world over. However, the nature of South Africa‟s apartheid system, as it was practiced from 1948 until the dawn of the democratic dispensation in 1994, has been a subject of debate in South Africa and even beyond. Apartheid was a policy that was designed by the then ruling Nationalist Party for purposes of dividing and stratifying South Africa along racial lines - whites, blacks, coloureds and Asians. It thus promoted racial segregation and/or unequal stratification of society. In South Africa‟s hierarchy of apartheid, blacks, who constituted the majority of the population, were ironically the most destitute and segregated. Some historians believe that South Africa‟s racial policy was designed against the backdrop of Jim Crow, a similar system of racial discrimination which was instituted in the American South late in the 1890s through the 20th century. Jim Crow and apartheid are, in this study, considered as sides of the same coin; hence for the sake of convenience, the word apartheid is used to subsume Jim Crow. Although South Africa‟s apartheid system was influenced by different ideologies, for example German missiology as applied by the Dutch Reformed Church, historian Hermann Giliomee (2003: 373) insists that „the segregationist practice of the American South was particularly influential.‟ Given the ideological relationship between apartheid and Jim Crow, the present study investigates the interplay of compatibility between apartheid/Jim Crow and crime and violence as reflected in selected works of Richard Wright (African American novelist) and Athol Fugard (South African playwright). The aim of the study is firstly, to examine the works in order to analyse them as responses to apartheid and by extension colonial domination and secondly to investigate crime and violence. The three criminological theories selected for this study are strain theory (by Robert Merton), subculture theory (Edwin Sutherland) and labelling theory (Howard Becker). While criminological theory provides an empirical dimension to the study, postcolonial theory situates the study within a specified space, which is the postcolonial context. The postcolonial is, however understood, not as a demarcated historical space, but as a continuum, from the dawn of colonization to the unforeseeable future. Three postcolonial theorists have been identified for the purposes of this study. These are: Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha and Bill Ashcroft. Fanon‟s psychoanalysis of the colonized, Homi Bhabha‟s Third Space and hybridity as well as Ashcroft‟s postcolonial transformation are key concepts in understanding the different ways in which the colonized deal with the consequences of colonization. It has been suggested particularly in Edward Said‟s Orientalism (1978) that the discourse of orientalism creates the Oriental, as if Orientals were a passive object of the colonial adventure. This study uses Bhabha‟s and Ashcroft‟s theory of colonial discourse to argue that the colonized are not only objects of the colonial enterprise but also active participants in the process of opening survival spaces for self-realization. The various criminal activities that the colonized engage in (as represented in the selected works of Richard Wright and Athol Fugard) are in this study viewed as ways of inscribing their subjectivity within an exclusive colonial system.

The aim of the study was to investigate the implications of the intersectionality of gender, race and class on the career progress of women in corporate South Africa and Zimbabwe in order to create a theoretical framework of the factors that can influence women career experiences. The research problem statement was derived from the continued underrepresentation of women in leadership positions shown in global annual reports despite undisputed research on the necessity for gender diversity in management teams. The key study objective was to investigate how the intersections of gender, race and class have contributed to career experiences of women in senior and executive leadership positions in corporate South Africa and Zimbabwe. The detailed objectives included: (i) Exploring the impact of authorisation processes and dynamics on the career journeys of women (i.e., study participants), (ii) Understanding the internal influences (meaning the woman herself, her confidence, self-esteem, interpersonal skills etc.) and their impact on the career journeys of women, (iii) Exploring the systemic influences and their impact on or contribution to the career journeys of women and, (iv) Creating a holistic theoretical framework that explores the career “twists and turns” that women have to navigate and proposes how they can do so, thus enabling the creation of retention strategies for women in corporates. The research questions formulated to unpack the research problem and study objectives were as follows: (i) How do gender, race and class simultaneously impact the experiences and career progression of women? (ii) How do organisations authorise or fail to authorise women in leadership positions? (iii) How do personal and internal factors influence the career journeys of women leaders? and lastly (iv) How do systemic and/or organisational factors impact the career experiences of women leaders? Methodology: Qualitative data was gathered through semi-structured interviews from a total of 18 participants (i.e., 12 South African and 6 Zimbabwean women in positions ranging from junior manager to chief executive officer) selected using a combination of purposeful and snowballing sampling techniques. The main study findings showed that gender, race and class intersect on the career starting points of the working class African, Coloured and Indian women, and that race plays the bigger role in career progression in South Africa, while in Zimbabwe, gender is the bigger challenge. The study outcomes resulted in the development of a theoretical framework that women could use as a reference to navigate the workplace. The study limitations are that it focused only on three primary identities. The study will significantly contribute to a better understanding of the experiences of African women in management and could potentially advance the debate on race and gender transformation premised on lived experiences of women. It also confronts the issues of sexual harassment and intergenerational dynamics in the workplace. In addition, several recommendations are made for future research. / Business Management / D.B.L.