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Path-breaking transformative change is needed in human-environment relations to move towards more sustainable development trajectories at local, national and global scales. Crises may trigger transformative change and learning in the short and in the long term. However, in particular, a short-term response to crises may also be reactive, strengthening established unsustainable practices and further perpetuating vulnerability and inequality rather than supporting transformative change towards a more sustainable path. To understand the nature and response to a crisis in the context of sustainability transformations, this paper elaborates on the following aspects of a crisis: What are the characteristics of a crisis? What and who shapes the narrative(s) of a crisis? What and who shapes the nature of the response to a crisis? Do responses to crises trigger higher levels of learning? Conceptual synthesis is complemented with an exploratory comparative analysis of the Cape Town water crisis and of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa. To this end the paper analyzes the interplay between mobilizing individual, collective and relational agency and navigating and transforming power relations to challenge and profit from already weakened unsustainable structures. This approach proves to be promising to understand the role of crises in catalysing and supporting transformative learning to eventually replace unsustainable structures. ● During and immediately after crises, it is important to identify opportunities for policy change to address persistent governance failures. ● To support transformative change towards sustainability, governments typically should adopt a network governance style and act more as a convenor for deliberative processes in the later phase of the response to a crisis. ● Formation of innovation platforms bringing together actors from different levels and different roles (e.g. pioneering innovators, investors, scientists, policymakers, regulators) could support the scaling up of local initiatives and innovative approaches that have been developed during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of learning losses and altered schooling patterns in South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021). Five major trends emerge from a review of the evidence. These include significant learning losses (38–118% of a year of learning), widened learning inequality, lowered grade repetition rates, increased secondary school enrolments and an unprecedented rise in candidates writing and passing the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination. School completion significantly increased in 2021 and 2022, spurred by COVID-19 adjusted assessment and promotion practices in Grades 10 and 11. Larger numbers of youth also achieved a NSC pass or Bachelor's pass enabling access to university. With twin pandemic shocks of learning losses and secondary school enrolment increases, remediating losses and realigning progression rules to effective assessment practices should be prioritised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the brutal tactics used by security forces in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa. Key questions raised relate to the philosophical (dis)connectedness of their actions. The paper posits that the way in which some police and soldiers conducted themselves in black communities is reminiscent of colonial-apartheid hermeneutics. Their conduct, devoid of Ubuntu, relegates the culprits to "mere symbols with no substance," in a deeply conditioned state of mental subjugation. Though black, the culprits remain largely unAfrikan in thought. The paper concludes that training for security forces needs to inculcate philosophies of Afrikanism. Furthermore, the paper highlights key lessons to be embraced. Recommendations made include the professionalisation of the security forces, enabling public dialogue, and bringing the culprits to book faster to restore the image of the country, the government, and the security agencies. This paper used a qualitative desktop design that applied inductive analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explored how vulnerable, immunocompromised groups and caregivers of the elderly experienced and perceived the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa. Semi-structured interviews were conducted remotely between the 5th andthe 18th of April 2020 in the three South African provinces hardest hit by Covid-19, namely Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. In total, 60 qualitative key informant interviews and one focus group discussion were conducted. Study participants expressed concerns for elderly people and people with underlying health conditions because of their increased vulnerability to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). People living with HIV expressed an increased fear of infection following the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa. The sidelining of healthcare services and stock-outs of medication proved to be an added concern in particular for vulnerable and immunocompromised groups. Overall, the data suggest that the fear of infection is ubiquitous for people who live in unstable environments such as overcrowded townships and informal settlements. Given the increased fears of infection brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the mental health of vulnerable communities and those caring for them becomes an added burden for people living in unstable environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In democratic South Africa, many Black African women are still subjugated by being employed as domestic workers. Increasing evidence emerged amid the COVID-19 pandemic revealing unmistakable signs of modern-day slavery among South African Black domestic workers. This paper proposes a clinical model which examines how gender, class, and race intersections affect the ways in which specifically identified change agents offer new, transforming interventions via clinical intervention. Adopting a clinical approach augments identification of a specific social problem from a scientifically systematic applied approach built on applied theory. We report on the conditions facing vulnerable Black African women using a bricolage research approach. The resulting model explicitly identifies systemic inequalities and indicates how to reduce exploitation and protect workers. The bricolage approach aided the secondary qualitative analysis of complex bonded-labour intersections. The problem of Black African women living as bonded domestic labour is augmented by the girl children's primary socialisation, Western patriarchal re-socialisation which sustains apartheid, and race, class, occupational, and gender inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa is one of the countries in Africa that has a high COVID-19 virus infection rate. The government of South Africa introduced the COVID Alert SA App, a contact tracing mobile application (App), to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. This paper reports on the challenges users experienced when using the COVID Alert SA App. Using the design-reality gap model, the study analyzed online user reviews of the App and government reports. The qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis to highlight insights on the challenges of using the COVID Alert SA App. The findings indicate that public awareness was a major limitation of the App, amongst others, including a lack of trust relating to privacy and security when using the App, and a lack of technical support. The insights can be useful for developers, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders to improve the adoption and use of the contact tracing App to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergenerational support is a common cultural expectation and obligation in most African families. It is a form of reciprocal solidarity wherein a generation uses its privileges to assist a generation in need. This is typical of care and support relationships between parents and their children. As parents care and provide for their children, the unspoken expectation is that they are investing as their children will be obliged to take care of them in the future. In Zimbabwe, the obligations of this social contract have led many to migrate to other countries in search of economic opportunities. However, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant economic hardships, these reciprocal relationships have been negatively impacted. This paper assesses the impact of COVID-19 and the economic difficulties faced by migrants in South Africa, drawing from the life histories of dyads of five parents and five adult children. It explores how the governance systems implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic and the precarity of transnational migrants in South Africa affected intergenerational material support within transnational families. Findings reveal that the pandemic significantly affected intergenerational support within transnational families. The restrictive measures crafted to curb the spread of the pandemic led to notable adaptations in the provision of parental support by migrant children in South Africa. Parental support went beyond reciprocity and altruism, exhibiting a profound moral value embedded in the moral economy perspective, where children remain committed to providing support to their parents despite the economic struggles presented by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is substantial evidence in the global literature that women have been disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 crisis and associated lockdowns. In this paper, we use five waves of the National Income Dynamics Study - Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM) to track the gendered effects of the pandemic in South Africa during the first year of the crisis. We focus here on the impact in the labour market and on unpaid care work in the home. We find that, relative to men, women were more severely affected in both spheres, yet they benefited less from the government income support provided to unemployed and furloughed workers. The evidence from the NIDS-CRAM survey from the first year of the pandemic therefore suggests that gender inequality in South Africa has risen, undoing some of the gains of the last two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conducts an analysis of employment uncertainty in South Africa during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, using NIDS-CRAM and five waves of Statistics SA's Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS: 2020-Q1 to 2021-Q1). We find that much of the differences in estimates of labour force states including employment, unemployment and not economically active, are due to different initial conditions and different reference periods between the two surveys, as well as the way that uncertain job attachment is measured in the questionnaires. This leads to higher estimates of employment in NIDS-CRAM compared to the QLFS for both a pre-pandemic baseline and over the entire period investigated (February 2020 to March 2021). This implies the two data sources are not strictly comparable, but rather complementary when analysing different aspects of the labour force. We discuss the implications for labour market research based on these data sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use data from waves 1–5 of NIDS-CRAM to investigate labour market outcomes in 2020/1 for four age groups: youth (aged 18–24), prime-age adults (aged 25–39), middle-age adults (aged 40–54) and older adults (aged 55–64). We contrast outcomes just before and just after the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown (February and April 2020) with outcomes one year later (March 2021), and study transitions between the periods. We find that although the NIDS-CRAM employment-to-population ratio was near identical in February 2020 and March 2021 (56.4% versus 56.6%), there had been extensive churning between the two periods. By March 2021, 23% of the February 2020 employed had lost work and 30% of the non-employed had found work. Amidst these changes, youth experienced the largest employment-to-population ratio increase, while older adults suffered the largest decrease in employment and a decline in participation rates (changes not statistically significant). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a longitudinal telephonic survey of adults, this paper provides empirical evidence from South Africa on early childhood care and education (ECCE) attendance trends just before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. About 39% of adult respondents living with children aged 0–6 indicated that at least one child had attended an ECCE programme in February 2020. After a period of ECCE programme closures and lockdowns, estimates fell to as low as 7% in July/August 2020, partially recovered to 28% in November/December 2020, dropped again to 7% in early February 2021 but then recovered significantly to 36% by April/May 2021. A decomposition analysis suggests that a large part of the recovery in ECCE attendance in 2021 was attributed to higher reported perceived ability to be able to afford ECCE programme fees. This could relate to lower fee ECCE programmes resuming operations in anticipation of government relief payments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic is intensifying existing problems of economic asymmetry, and other injustices, between and within countries and regions around the world. It is thus imperative that sociological studies of education document its socio-cultural implications in different locations and on different scales. It is equally imperative that such studies have a historical perspective that asks what pre-existing social problems have been intensified and how such intensification is happening. This paper responds to these imperatives through the deployment of conjunctural analysis and related crisis and articulation theory. We discuss the global Covid-19 conjuncture as it emerged in the first seven months of 2020 and show how it articulated with the preceding conjuncture. Subsequently, we focus on the issues associated with closing and reopening schools and show how they were intertwined with reconfigurations of the school/home/work nexus. We consider these reconfigurations in two very different locations, Australia and South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domestic labour or care work creates the conditions through which other labour can occur, however, the value that this work provides is scarcely recognised when lawmakers consider its remuneration and regulation. This paper investigates legal discrimination against providers of domestic labour in South Africa, especially at home involving women in relationships and domestic workers. This is done by considering how labour law and gender equity law as well as the Constitution produce inequitable outcomes for women providing care services and contrasting the realities of care workers with legal protections. It also considers the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the reality of care. Lastly, it outlines the ways in which the law can enable more equitable dispensations of labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 pandemic has affected one and all in unison. Different sectors, including the educational sector, have been disproportionately affected in developing and the least developed nations. Against this backdrop, this paper, while considering the impact that the pandemic has had on the education sector in developing nations viz. – India, South Africa, and Bangladesh, aims to bring to light the importance of teaching global mindset as there are several unique implications, challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for these nations. Using qualitative methodology, this research adopts an exploratory approach to understand how, among other things, the education sector can catalyze the development and teaching of a global mindset in the selected three countries and can be responsive even beyond. Ten semi-structured interviews have been conducted with "institutional heads/directors" across higher educational institutions in the nations under study to answer the research question that brings out three themes: global and local problem solving, resources, and international experiential learning and exposure toward developing a global mindset. Finally, while corroborating the findings of the research, the article also proposes a new definition of a "global mindset". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has rapidly spread throughout the globe, and recovering from the pandemic will be a massive test on economic systems. The pandemic has severely affected the accommodation sector as global travel has come to an almost complete standstill as of April 2020. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of the economic impacts of the pandemic on guesthouses in South Africa and the response measures adopted by this sector. Through online surveys, the empirical results show that guesthouse operations were severely disrupted by the pandemic, leading to a critical decline in revenue and a pronounced threat to job security. Despite implementing various response measures and strategies, guesthouses were somewhat concerned about the future of their businesses due to the uncertainty of the pandemic. This research can assist in developing intervention measures to support guesthouses in addressing the economic challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]