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Governance and leadership are recognized as central to health system development in low- and middle-income countries, yet few existing studies consider the influence of multilevel governance systems. South Africa is one of the many (quasi-)federal states. Provincial governments have responsibility for managing health care delivery within national policy frameworks and norms. The early post-apartheid period saw country-wide efforts to address the apartheid legacy of health system inequity and inefficiency, but health system transformation subsequently stalled in many provinces. In contrast, the Western Cape provincial health department sustained service delivery reform and strengthened management processes over the period 1994–2016. This department can be considered a 'pocket of relative bureaucratic effectiveness': an organizational entity that, compared to others, is relatively effective in carrying out its functions in pursuit of the public good. This paper considers what factors enabled the development of the Western Cape health system in the period 1994–2016. Two phases of data collection entailed document review, participatory workshops, 43 in-depth interviews with purposively selected key informants from inside and outside the Western Cape and a structured survey testing initial insights (response rate 42%). Analysis included triangulation across data sets, comparison between the Western Cape and other provincial experience and deeper reflection on these experiences drawing on POE theory and public administration literature. The analysis highlights the Western Cape experience of stable and astute sub-national governance and leadership and the deepening of administrative and technical capacity over time—within a specific provincial historical and political economy context that sustained the separation of political and administrative powers. Multilevel governance systems can create the space for sub-national POEs to emerge in their mediation of wider political economy forces, generating spaces for skilled reform leaders to act in the public interest, support the emergence of distributed leadership and develop robust management processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South African Basic Education System does little to provide skills, needed to survive outside the schooling system, for those who do not wish to pursue post-secondary school education. The education system produces secondary school graduates who are poised, as content carriers and an un-employable labour force. A research question grappled with in this paper is whether this secondary school curriculum design inherited from the colonial formal education system is beneficial for South African learners? The paper argues that the continuation of the provision of this curriculum is tantamount to contributing very little to the national educational strategic goals of creating a skilled workforce needed to run the South African economy. Additionally, this also contributes to the exacerbation of the unemployment in South Africa. From a decolonial point of view, the paper provides a comprehensive overview of the basic education curriculum from the colonial period until the contemporary period and shows how it has contributed to huge numbers of jobseekers visa-versa employees and subservient of the curriculum design and schooling system. Methodologically, this paper is informed by a qualitative research approach in the form of document review. The research revealed four major important elements in decolonization of the school curriculum namely; history lesson, social justice and self-determination, formulation and execution of the protection of indigenous knowledge systems and promoting the significance of indigenous languages and use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The awarding of the 2010 FIFA World Cup to South Africa was an historic moment for all of Africa as football's biggest event travelled to the continent for the first time. This study, set five years on, seeks to identify the legacies left by the construction of two new stadiums in Durban and Cape Town. As part of the EU-funded CARNiVAL project, which seeks to investigate the legacies and impacts of hosting such events, interviews were conducted with key stakeholders involved in the planning of legacies in the two cities. Using Chappelet and Junod's (2006) framework to analyse the legacies, this study found that Durban and Cape Town have used different strategies to leverage the legacies with differing results. Yet, both stadiums have suffered from the same issue; a seeming lack of need for two stadiums with capacities over 54,000, for domestic sport leagues which average fewer than 10,000 spectators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about the State IT Agency (Sita) of South Africa. According to the article, Sita has clinched a contract to provide highly secure global network for the Algerian Foreign Affairs Ministry's 45 embassies around the world, as well as its 18 consulates in France. It is said that winning the contract has won Sita a major boost of confidence. The government of Algeria is expecting to save about $3 million over five years by switching from a legacy network to an Internet protocol-based network.