Contributors

18th July 2018: “EQUALITY, COFFEE AND THE MINIMUM WAGE by EBRAHIM-KHALIL HASSEN”

EBRAHIM-KHALIL HASSEN

Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen is an independent public policy analyst. His recent work includes transversal analysis of government spending on small business and options for public service collective bargaining. He currently serves on the board of the South African Labour Bulletin. He previously worked at the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (NALEDI) leading the People’s Budget Campaign and the public sector transformation project. His online experiments include an online marketplace for knowledge workers, a blog on inequality and using website to advocate for small business and a little app to help him to write more quickly, which is called Write Invisible.

31st of January 2017: “A DAY NOT SEIZED? : CITIZEN ACTIVISM AND THE NEW POLITICAL REALITY”

STEVEN FRIEDMAN

Steven Friedman is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg. He is a political scientist who has specialized in the study of democracy. During the 1980s, he produced a series of studies of reform apartheid and its implications for a democratic future. Friedman has researched and wrote widely on the South African transition to democracy both before and after the elections of 1994 and has, over the past decade, largely written on the relationship between democracy on the one hand, social inequality and economic growth on the other. In particular, he has stressed the role of citizen voice in strengthening democracy and promoting equality.

26th of October 2016: “AN ALTERNATIVE TO DEMOCRATIC EXCLUSION? THE CASE FOR PARTICIPATORY LOCAL BUDGETING IN SOUTH AFRICA”

CAROLYN BASSETT

Carolyn Bassett is Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Director, International Development Studies Program at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada. She has researched South African politics for more than 25 years, focusing on policy processes and the role of civil society, especially trade unions. Her work has been published in Review of African Political Economy, Third World Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary African Studies and other journals, and she is currently working on a book on COSATU and the policy process in South Africa.

20th of October 2016: “SOUTH AFRICA: PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN POLICY-MAKING – A PRACTICAL
EXAMINATION”

IMRAAN BUCCUS

Imraan Buccus is a Senior Research Associate at ASRI. He is also the academic director of a university study abroad program on political transformation and concurrently a Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at UKZN, and the editor of Al Qalam. Buccus is the former editor of Critical Dialogue, a journal of Public Participation in review, he co-authored the National Framework on Public Participation for the South African government. During his time at the Centre for Public Participation, he led an initiative to bring policy making spaces closer to ordinary people and also led a project to assess the state of participatory democracy in Namibia. He has wide ranging experience working with various donor agencies including the Ford Foundation, NiZA, EU, Kellogg Foundation and the Open Society Foundation. In the early 2000’s Buccus worked as academic coordinator of the Workers College, a progressive experiential education college for workers from the trade union movement, where he developed a passion for experiential education and its personal and academic developmental potential. Imraan is also widely published, in academic journals and book chapters, in the area of participatory democracy, poverty and civil society.

28th of September 2016: “THE ‘STATE’ OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM IN THE TECHNOLOGY AGE AND
HOW THAT TRANSLATES INTO EMPLOYMENT”

JILL YOUNG

Jill Young is the Co-owner and founder of EvenMe, an innovative online portal and App that provides access to youth career and development support. Jill is also the founder and director of corporate fundamentals (Pty) Ltd and the owner of Unique Soles. She previously worked as an employee communications developer for Nokia (2012); as the head of Internal Communications Middle East and Africa for Nokia (2010); and the Marketing Manager: Brand Sponsorship and Events (Activation Manager) for Nokia (2007) She was the Project manager at Makwetla and Associates; formerly the CEO of the National Delphic Council.

17th of August 2016: “CREATE ENTREPENEURS INSTEAD OF TENDERPRENEURS”

ERICA PENFOLD

Erica Penfold is currently a freelance researcher and a PhD candidate in the Politics Department at Stellenbosch University. She was previously employed as a research fellow with the South African Institute of International Affairs. She has worked for non-profit organisations and civil society, including Global Integrity, Management Sciences for Health and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. She has been involved in a number of research projects across Africa, with particular focus on global health governance. Her research interests are regionalism, Southern Africa’s international relations, access to health care and medicines, democratic reform and development.

20th of July 2016: “OBSTACLES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP
A CO-ORDINATED APPROACH CRITICAL TO PROMOTE YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP”

JACQUELINE KEW

Jacqui Kew is an Associate Professor at the College of Accounting (UCT) and teaches on various Executive Short Courses at UCT’s Graduate School of Business. She is the Principal author of Financial Accounting: An Introduction and is Project Director of http://www.learnaccounting.uct.ac.za, a free multi-lingual College of Accounting initiative offering short concept videos on accounting-based topics. She is also involved in entrepreneurial research and regularly co-authors the South African Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

29th of June 2016: “THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AND ITS ENDURING LEGACY FOR YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT”

VOLKER SCHÖER

Volker Schöer is a lecturer in economics at the University of the Witwatersrand. He holds a MA in economics from the University of Cape Town. Volker’s research investigates worker and firm dynamics with particular focus on job matching, and education. He is also the director of the African Micro-Economic Research Unit (AMERU) at the University of the Witwatersrand. The AMERU focuses on micro-econometric analysis of South African labour force and firm level data. Some of the latest projects of the AMERU include impact evaluation studies of a youth wage subsidy and various education interventions.

GARETH ROBERTS

Gareth is a lecturer at the School of Economics and Business Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand and has been a researcher at AMERU since 2008. His primary interest is in youth unemployment and he was most recently part of a team that implemented an evaluation of a targeted youth wage-subsidy voucher for the National Treasury of South Africa. Gareth also has extensive experience managing data collection and is currently the Impact Evaluation coordinator in South Africa for the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation Initiative (DIME).

DEBRA SHEPHERD

Having completed her undergraduate studies at Stellenbosch in 2005, Debra passed her Bcomm Honours and Mcomm degree Cum Laude in 2007 and 2009 respectively. Debra was employed as a junior lecturer and researcher in the Economics Department at Stellenbosch from 2008 to 2011, she was also a researcher at the African Micro Economics Research Unit based at the University of the Witwatersrand. Currently she works as an economics lecturer at Stellenbosch University. She was also a VU-NRF Desmond Tutu Doctoral Scholarship candidate, where she completed her PhD in Development Economics through Vrijie Universiteit Amsterdam and Stellenbosch University. Her thesis focused on the Analysis efficiently and effectiveness within the South African education system.

NEIL RANKIN

Neil Rankin is an Associate Professor in Economics at Stellenbosch University. He holds a MA in Economics from the Simon Fraser University and completed his PhD in Economics at the University of Oxford in 2006. Neil is an applied micro-economist working in the areas of labour markets, firms, pricing, trade and impact evaluation. As part of his research he has managed and administered firm and labour market surveys in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Rwanda and Tanzania.

22nd of June 2016: “THE STATE OF YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA”

MORNE OOSTHUIZEN

Morné Oosthuizen is Deputy Director of the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU) located within the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town. He joined the DPRU as a researcher in 2002 and holds an M.Comm. degree in Economics from the University of Stellenbosch. His research interests include intergenerational transfers, poverty, inequality, and labour economics. Morné is currently completing his PhD at the University of Cape Town on the topic of intergenerational transfers and National Transfer Accounts in South Africa.

AALIA CASSIM

Aalia Cassim obtained an Honours degree from the University of Witwatersrand and a MSc in Development Economics from the School of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of London. Her expertise includes Competition and Regulatory Economic Consulting, Sustainable Education and Social Entrepreneurship.Prior to joining the Development Policy Research Unit (DPRU) at the University of Cape Town as a senior researcher in July 2013, Aalia worked in the Competition and Regulatory Practice at Genesis Analytics. Aalia left the DPRU to join the National Treasury in December 2015. At the DPRU Aalia worked in a number of areas including higher education, industrial policy, temporary employment services, minimum wages, youth unemployment, the informal sector and social welfare. She also undertook an exercise profiling labour markets in Tanzania and Zambia.

4th of May 2016: “THE ILLUSION OF EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA”

DR MOEKETSI LETSEKA

Dr Moeketsi Letseka is Acting Director of UNISA Press, on secondment from the Department of Educational Foundations, College of Education.
He holds a Doctor of Education in Philosophy of Education obtained from the University of South Africa (UNISA).
Dr Letseka was Senior Research Specialist in Higher Education at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) during 2002-2008 where he led multi-year; multi-institutional and external donor-funded research projects.
Among external donor funders that supported his research are the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations. Dr Letseka serves on the Advisory/Editorial Boards of the scholarly journals; is Editor-in-Chief of Africa Education Review; Associate Editor of Mevlana International Journal of Education; Member of the Editorial Advisory Board, International Journal of Education; and Consultant Editor: South African Journal of Higher Education.

26th of April 2016: “PUTTING MATHS EDUCATION BACK ON TOP”

ANDREW EINHORN

Andrew grew up in Johannesburg, completed a degree in Physics at Harvard, and returned to South Africa in 2007 to work as an investment analyst at Allan Gray. In 2011, he founded Numeric, a non-profit company whose mission is to help young South Africans excel in mathematics and to train high quality maths teachers. Today Numeric runs afterschool programs for children in 45 partners schools across Soweto, Khayelitsha, Mfuleni and Mitchells Plain. They have also launched a small teaching academy that aims to recruit talented young South Africans into the teaching profession and provide them with the training they need to become world-class maths teachers.

20th of April 2016: “ACCESS TO FEMININE HYGIENE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS. WHY EDUCATION POLICY HAS FAILED OUR WOMEN AND GIRLS?”

SAMUEL SHAPIRO

Samuel Shapiro is currently the senior researcher at Equal Education. Previously, he was the national organiser at Equal Education, where he organised training and development of young members around the country, and supported these members in organising communities and campaign for quality in education. Shapiro was also a community organiser at Equal Education between 2012 and 2013, a sports coach at St Andrews Prep School between 2008 and 2012, and the previous chairperson of the African Drum Society in 2010.

13th of April 2016: “EXCLUSION AND ACCESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION POLICIES”

DR. KIRTI MENON

Dr Menon is the Director of Academic Planning at the University of Johannesburg and a Research Associate in the Faculty of Education. In 2013, she resigned from her position as Registrar of the University of the Witwatersrand to complete her PhD. Prior to this she was the Acting Deputy Director General in the Department of Higher Education and Training, and a Chief Director: Higher Education Planning and Management at the Department of Education. She worked for the Council on Higher Education between 1999 and 2008, and has also served on several national task teams. Dr Menon continues to enjoy writing on higher education in South Africa.

31st of March 2016: “Becoming a 21st Century Non-Racialist in South Africa”

Neeshan Balton

Neeshan Balton is the executive director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation. He has been a community and political activist for the past 35 years with involvement ranging from teacher unionism, civic organising, youth activism and formal and underground ANC activism. He was an activist in the Transvaal Indian Congress and United Democratic Front. Neeshan chairs the boards of SANCA/Nishtara Lenasia and Eastwave Community Radio in Lenasia. He also serves on the Board of the Gauteng growth and development agency. He holds a MSC in Public Finance and Administration (University of London) and a BA and BED ( Wits).

23rd of March 2016: “Dr Abu Baker ‘Hurley’ Asvat”

12th of May 2016: “The Life of Steve Bantu Biko”

South African History Online

This article was published on South African History Online
South African History online (SAHO) is a non-partisan people’s history institution. It was established in June 2000 as a non-profit Section 21 organisation, to address the biased way in which South Africa’s history and heritage, as well as the history and heritage of Africa is represented in educational and cultural institutions.

16th of March 2016: “The Thunder Before the Storm: Identity Constructions of Black South African Female Students”

Bonolo Moposho

Bonolo Mophosho is an HPCSA registered counselling psychologist qualified through the University of the Witwatersrand’s (Wits) Masters in Community-based Counselling psychology. Bonolo’s research interests are in South African youth identities and relationships. Her MA research was in the identity constructions of South African black female students.
Bonolo completed her internship at Wits’ Counselling and Careers Development Unit (CCDU) working with students and members of the public, offering counselling and career services (career counselling and career assessments), and facilitating workshops on a variety of issues. Bonolo went on to work in a high school, assisting adolescents through various challenges through individual therapy, conducting psycho-educational assessments as well as facilitating workshops. Bonolo then went on to provide psychotherapy and group and individual trauma debriefing through EAP services for corporates.
Bonolo currently works in private practice with individuals; children, adolescents and adults, to assist with various life challenges.

Professor Garth Stevens

Prof Garth Stevens is a clinical psychologist by training, he holds the position of Assistant Dean for Research in the Faculty of Humanities, as well as Professor in the Department of Psychology. From 2010-2012 he held the position of Co-Assistant Dean for Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is currently a B-rated researcher by the National Research Foundation (NRF), interested in psychosocial understandings of human development, and applying psychosocial thinking to our personal and social worlds where appropriate.
The thrust of his research is however in critical and community psychology. His primary social research interests include foci on race, racism and related social asymmetries; racism and knowledge production; ideology, power and discourse; violence and its prevention; historical/collective trauma and memory; and masculinity, gender and violence.

9th of March 2016: “The Radical Refusal of the Colonial Gaze: A Reading of Post-Apartheid Social Reality Through the Recent Student Protests”

Safiyya Goga

Safiyya Goga is a Senior Researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in Pretoria. She completed her Master of Arts degree in Political Studies at Rhodes University with her thesis titled, The Silencing of Race at Rhodes: Ritual and Anti-Politics on a Post-Apartheid Campus.

Safiyya is currently pursuing her doctorate in Sociology through University of Stellenbosch. She has participated in a range of research projects including: A policy framework for the Department of Basic Education on gender equity in the South African schooling system, Learner absenteeism in schools; Backlogs in municipal foster care grant systems; A Rhodes University critical study in Sexualities and Reproduction (CSSR) analyzing how high school students, teachers, and principals across the Eastern Cape deal with issues of gender violence, teenage pregnancy, sex, love and HIV/AIDS through the curriculum; a Department of Justice project looking at the impact of landmark Constitutional Court Judgments on socioeconomic rights in the twenty years since democracy; and an IDRC-funded Agricultural Research Council project exploring the ‘meanings and materiality’ of livestock keeping in rural smallholder communities and the tensions produced in their engagement by the state in its attempts to foster rural development. She is also currently involved in a project exploring the controversies around colonial and apartheid-era statues. Safiyya’s research interests are aimed at making sense of the post-apartheid condition.

2nd of March 2016: “Neutrality Entrenches Racial Inequality”

Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh

Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh attained his MPhil with distinction at Oxford University, and is currently undertaking his PhD in International Relations at Oxford; he is also a founding member of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign. Previously, Walsh completed his Honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Cape Town, where he was elected president of the student’s representative council and was awarded an internship at the United States House of Representatives. At the age of 18 , Walsh, co-founded Grow2Lead, a youth leadership programme which had opened the door to another venture, InkuluFreeHeid, a social movement that unites politics and civil society. Walsh was also previously a speaker of the Johannesburg Junior City Council and was nominated for an All Africa Music award for a hip hop album.

24th of February 2016: “Opinion | Race Trouble in Post-Apartheid South Africa”

Professor Kevin Whitehead

Kevin Whitehead is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His research employs an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to examine ways in which racial and other social categories are used, reproduced and resisted in talk-in-interaction. His publications have appeared in journals including Social Psychology Quarterly, British Journal of Social Psychology, Research on Language and Social Interaction, Discourse & Society, Ethnic and Racial Studies and Journal of Language and Social Psychology.

Professor Kevin Durrheim

Kevin Durrheim is Professor of Psychology at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He writes on topics related to racism, segregation and social change. His publications include Race Trouble (Durrheim, Mtose & Brown, 2011, Lexington Press), Racial Encounter (Durrheim & Dixon, 2005, Routledge), and Research in Practice (Terreblanche, Durrheim, Painter, 1999, 2006, UCT Press)

17th of February 2016: “The Nation in the Post-apartheid Era: A Black Consciousness Perspective”

Doctor Kenneth Tafira

Dr Kenneth Tafira was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He attained his B.Sc (Honours) Sociology degree from the University of Zimbabwe, an MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand. He is the author of Black Nationalist Thought in South Africa: The Persistence of an Idea of Liberation which is to be published by Palgrave Macmillan. He is currently a researcher at Archie Mafeje Research Institute, University of South Africa. His research interests are inspired by historical and contemporary manifestations of inequality, discriminations, injustice, exploitation and oppression. He conjoins forms of radical hermeneutics and knowledge production that supports social transformation. He is also a lyrical poet.