Constitution Of South Africa Research Articles

The Interplay between Hereditary Traditional Leaders, Democratically Elected Leaders and Succession: A Case Study from Makapanstad, North West Province, South Africa

AbstractThis article examines the interplay between traditional leaders, democratically elected leaders and succession in Makapanstad Village, North West Province, South Africa. The article stems from community-based participatory action research conducted in Makapanstad in 2018. The article uses research data, in the form of community dialogue, together with desktop literature on the same subject. The article analyses the significance and role of traditional leadership in a democratic South Africa. It considers traditional leadership and democratically elected leadership in conjunction with succession and the demarcation of roles and responsibilities. The article analyses participants’ views to explore the form of leadership preferred by the residents of Makapanstad. It argues that, despite the recognition of traditional leadership in South Africa's Constitution, the roles and responsibilities of traditional leaders in local and provincial arms of government are limited, in contrast to those of democratically elected leaders.

Medicine and the Law.

The case involving Dr Tim De Maayer in Gauteng Province, South Africa (SA), raises the question whether there is a legal and ethical duty on public sector doctors whose complaints to hospital administrators have been ignored, to inform the public about harm to child patients due to intentional maladministration, negligence or indifference by the local and provincial authorities. An analysis of the SA Constitution, the National Health Act No. 61 of 2003, the Children's Act No. 38 of 2005, the Health Professions Act No. 56 of 1974 and the Rules and Guidelines of the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) established in terms of the Health Professions Act indicates that Dr De Maayer acted both legally and ethically to protect the child patients at Rahima Moosa Hospital. As the complaints of harm caused to the patients because of conditions in the hospital were raised three times with the official functionaries concerned, and ignored by them, he was fully justified to try other measures to protect the patients. It seems that he hoped that by bringing the conditions at the hospital to the attention of the media, the public reaction would be such as to pressurise the administrators to redress the situation. The irony is that the officials who sought to discipline him were themselves guilty of violating the Constitution, the National Health Act and the Children's Act, and should be disciplined. Furthermore, if they are registered with the HPCSA, they should be reported and disciplined for violating the HPCSA's Ethical Rules of Conduct and its Ethical Guidelines on good practice.

Concurrent national and provincial legislative competence: Rethinking the relationship between nature reserves and national parks

The teleology of concurrent national and provincial legislative competence in South Africa's Constitution has not been adequately investigated, particularly from the perspective of nature conservation and the establishment of protected areas. It is, therefore, questioned whether the concurrent nature conservation competence awarded to the national sphere of government should be equivalent to that awarded to the provinces, or if it precludes the national government from having a greater status than the provinces. It is further questioned whether the provisions of the National Environmental Management: Protected Areas Act (NEMPAA) accurately reflect the constitutional weighting, if any, granted to these two spheres of government by this provision. It is concluded that the concurrent national and provincial legislative competence in respect of nature conservation is most likely to be, at least, equally balanced between the two spheres of government. Contrary to this finding, it is noted that the NEMPAA grants national parks a significantly higher conservation status than nature reserves by diminishing the status and scope the provinces had prior to the promulgation of the Act. It is further concluded that, in this instance, provisions of the NEMPAA are most likely to be unconstitutional. It is recommended that these two kinds of protected areas be consolidated into one category or critically evaluated to correct potentially incorrect categorisation. It is also recommended that the NEMPAA be substantially revised to correct a number of anomalies and illogical provisions.

After the Death Penalty

After the Death Penalty Mark Sanders (bio) LITERATURE AND THE REMAINS OF THE DEATH PENALTY BY PEGGY KAMUF New York: Fordham University Press, 2019 In 1995, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional. The judgment and concurring opinions in State v. Makwanyane relied, along with other precedents, on Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court case that, following a moratorium, brought about an end to executions in the United States, until Gregg v. Georgia opened the way four years later for their resumption under more restricted conditions. The South African justices find noteworthy Justice William Brennan's affirmation, in Furman, of human dignity as a value guiding his concurring opinion. A right to dignity is enshrined in South Africa's constitution (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 57–58). In the judgment in Makwanyane, as well as in several of its concurring opinions, human dignity is connected to ubuntu—the idea that a person is a person through other people—an African ethics of reciprocity invoked in the epilogue of the 1993 interim South African constitution (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 130–31, 223–27, 237–63, 307–13). This reference to ubuntu leads to an appeal to recognize "African law and legal thinking as a source of legal ideas, values and practice." It is then noted that, prior to the imposition of colonial law, although people suspected of witchcraft were sometimes summarily killed, and killings took place in the context of military discipline, this is not how murderers were punished: meaning that the equivalent of judicial killing was not practiced in precolonial southern Africa (State v. Makwanyane, ¶¶ 365–83). [End Page 177] Peggy Kamuf's Literature and the Remains of the Death Penalty comes out of the post-Gregg era, taking as its point of departure Jacques Derrida's 1999–2000 lectures on the death penalty, which it takes to be similarly situated (Kamuf, 1–2). As the translator of these lectures, the first of two series of lectures by Derrida on the subject, and as an editor of the English-language edition of Derrida's seminars (publication of which began in 2009), Kamuf brings a clear sense of the status of the text, which is based on Derrida's typescript but also incorporates his handwritten annotations and verbal additions preserved in recordings. Having translated this and many other works by Derrida, and having authored several studies on his thought, Kamuf is well placed to undertake the analysis proposed in her book. Although a special issue of the Southern Journal of Philosophy addressed Derrida's seminars on the death penalty in 2012, and a book on the seminars edited by Kelly Oliver and Stephanie Straub appeared in 2018 (both of which volumes Kamuf contributed to), Literature and the Remains of the Death Penalty is the first book-length study of them. Concentrating on remarks made in the lectures by Derrida about literature, which she sets out with great clarity, Kamuf proceeds to an analysis of works by various authors, with George Orwell, Robert Coover, Norman Mailer, and Charles Baudelaire as her principal foci. Derrida furnishes Kamuf with three main ideas. First, as Derrida hypothesizes in his first lecture, the "history of the institution named literature in Europe over the last three or four centuries is contemporary with and indissociable from a contestation of the death penalty." This "abolitionist struggle … tend[s] toward the worldwide as conjoined history, once again, of literature and rights, and of the right to literature" (Derrida 2014, 30; quoted in Kamuf, 19). As Kamuf shows, elsewhere Derrida defines this right as "its right to say everything. Literature thus ties its destiny to a certain noncensure, to the space of democratic freedom (freedom of the press, freedom of speech, etc.)" (Derrida 1995, 28; quoted in Kamuf, 19–20). Second, as Kamuf explains, for Derrida, "this right to say everything … is also the right to say nothing, or rather the right and even the obligation not to respond to a demand to know, to divulge the hidden or unapparent, to make public what is secret…. Literary fictions … figure a space of nonresponse to the demand to know and therefore a reserve...

Involuntary admission and treatment of mentally ill patients – the role and accountability of mental health review boards

The involuntary admission or treatment of a mentally ill individual is highly controversial, as it may be argued that such intervention infringes on individual autonomy and the right to choose a particular treatment. However, this argument must be balanced with the need to provide immediate healthcare services to a vulnerable person who cannot or will not make a choice in his or her own best interests at a particular time. A study carried out in Gauteng Province, South Africa (SA), highlighted the fact that the annual rate of involuntary admissions increased by almost double from 2007 to 2008. This could indicate that healthcare providers are not treating patients without their consent only when this is absolutely necessary. Alternatively, it could indicate that healthcare professionals are more aware of the provisions of the Mental Health Care Act and relevant national policy guidelines. Or it could suggest that more patients are presenting with mental illnesses or disorders that require their involuntary admission. It remains for strategies to be developed that change negative perceptions and inequities for individuals with mental illness. Above all, the strategies should be underpinned by inalienable respect for mentally ill individuals – a concept that was blatantly disregarded in the Life Esidimeni case. In this article, we highlight the functions of mental health review boards and their accountability where involuntary admissions are concerned, while emphasising the protections for mentally ill persons as a vulnerable population group, as set out in the SA Constitution.

Human reproduction: Right, duty or privilege? South African perspective

There is a great need for responsible parenthood in a country such as South Africa (SA), where the vast majority of pregnancies are unplanned and unwanted, and a large proportion of children experience abject poverty. Human reproduction is a complex issue, and there are numerous reasons why humans want and need children. These can be placed into two broad categories: reproduction is the result of our preintellectual ‘nature’ (instinct); and secondly, it satisfies social and personal needs. Reproductive choice is a human right that our membership of the human race inalienably entitles us to – indirectly guaranteed in the SA Constitution. At a social level, it may be argued, though not very convincingly, to be a duty, while the contra-duty not to procreate is more compelling, when having more children may overburden already large and needy families and lead to child neglect. In contemporary society, reproduction should be argued as a privilege. This opens the door to responsible parenthood. In a country such as ours, there is a particular need to balance reproductive rights, social needs and responsibility.

Reflections on the Role of Ubuntu as an Antidote to Afro-Phobia

AbstractThis article argues that xenophobic acts towards black foreigners remain a human rights challenge in South Africa. Foreign nationals, mostly black Africans, continue to experience physical attacks, discrimination and looting of businesses, as well as targeted crime. Prevalent xenophobic attitudes continue to trouble the conscience of all well-meaning South Africans. There is ample evidence that xenophobia has morphed into afro-phobia, the hatred of black foreigners. Xenophobia continues to evolve and attackers are increasingly linking the presence of foreign nationals to socio-economic challenges facing the country. This article argues that, even though South Africa's Constitution does not expressly identify Ubuntu as a national value, it does recognize customary law and many of its provisions are anchored in Ubuntu philosophy. This article proposes Ubuntu, or African “humanness” whose “natural home” should be located in South Africa, as a pragmatic social intervention and a morally sustainable solution to address xenophobia that would be acceptable to both South Africans and foreign nationals.

White Supremacy, “Colored-ness,” and Queerness in Oliver Hermanus's <em>Skoonheid</em> / <em>Beauty</em>

In 2011, Oliver Hermanus's Skoonheid / Beauty became the first Afrikaans film to screen at Cannes. Depicting a white Afrikaner patriarch whose life is thrown into disorder when he becomes infatuated with the son of an old friend from the army, the film links the racial and cultural essentialism that informs some versions of South African whiteness with coercive heteronormativity and homophobia. My analysis begins with a scene in which the protagonist rejects a "colored" man on the grounds that he is gay; I argue that this rejection stems from a desire to evade and exclude the black, colored, and queer identity formations that trouble his self-definition with their heterogeneity and their claims to shared concerns and a shared history. Beauty challenges and deconstructs the linked racial and sexual identities that are the legacy of apartheid, but also affirms the authority of colored people to speak to the social and political significance of public queer life in South Africa. I locate the film's critique of homophobic ethno-nationalism in relation to three themes: the ideological construction of "colored-ness" in relation to whiteness and Afrikaans-ness; intergenerational conflict around the expression of cultural and sexual freedoms; and the racially divided history of the struggle for LGBTQI rights in South Africa. I argue that Hermanus reads whiteness back to itself, but also empowers his characters of color to "animate the equality provisions" of South Africa's constitution, drawing attention to the "cultural labor" of LGBTQI communities of color during and after apartheid.

Queering the history of South African psychology: From apartheid to LGBTI+ affirmative practices.

This article constructs a brief history of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) issues have intersected with South African psychology at key sociopolitical moments, filling a gap in current histories. Organized psychology-a primary focus of this analysis-since its first formations in 1948, mostly colluded with apartheid governments by othering queerness as psychopathology or social deviance. The National Party, both homophobic and racist, ruled the country from 1948 until the first democratic elections in 1994. The acceleration of antiapartheid struggles in the 1980s saw progressive psychologists develop more critical forms of theory and practice. However, LGBTI+ issues remained overshadowed by the primary struggle for racial equality and democracy. Psychology's chameleon-like adaptation to evolving eras resulted in a unified organization when apartheid ended: the Psychological Society of South Africa (PsySSA). Democratic South Africa's Constitution took the bold step of protecting sexuality as a fundamental human right, galvanizing a fresh wave of LGBTI+ scholarship post-1994. However, LGBTI+ people still suffered prejudice, discrimination, and violence. Additionally, psychology training continued to ignore sexual orientation and gender-affirmative health care in curricula. PsySSA therefore joined the International Psychology Network for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Issues (IPsyNet) in 2007, catalyzing the PsySSA African LGBTI+ Human Rights Project in 2012 and two pioneering publications: a position statement on affirmative practice in 2013, and practice guidelines for psychology professionals working with sexually and gender-diverse people in 2017. This article traces a neglected history of South African psychology, examining the political, social, and institutional factors that eventually enabled the development of LGBTI+ affirmative psychologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Building capacity for co-operative governance as a basis for integrated water resource managing in the Inkomati and Mvoti catchments, South Africa

South Africa's National Water Act and National Water Resource Strategy set out an ambitious vision for Integrated Water Resources Management including a strong focus on the redistribution of water resources towards the poor and on empowering historically disadvantaged communities. To achieve this vision the Department of Water Affairs & Forestry (DWAF) has been pursuing a programme for devolving powers to 19 stakeholder-led catchment management agencies (CMAs) and more locally, transforming irrigation boards into more inclusive water user associations (WUAs), as well as creating new associations. Co-operative governance is a core principle of this programme. As well as being enshrined in South Africa's constitution, this principle is seen as key to enabling CMAs to implement their core functions, which include co-ordinating the activities of water users and water management institutions within their water management area. For WUAs also, the principle of co-operative governance is key to building engagement between White commercial farmers and emerging Black farmers, as well as (in some cases) engaging with a wider set of stakeholder interests including local government and environmental interests. Despite a commitment to the principle of co-operative governance, individual and institutional capacity for facilitating co-operative development processes is in relatively short supply within the South African water sector. This paper describes work-in-progress to build capacity in this area, working with: •� DWAF'snationalInstitutionalGovernanceteam •� TheInkomatiCMA�(ICMA),�thefirstofSouthAfrica'snewcatchmentmanagementagencies •� Two��irrigationboardsandanumberofotherstakeholdersintheMvoticatchment�-�withaviewtothedevelopmentofan� appropriate institutional arrangement (WUA or otherwise) for the co-operative governance of this catchment. This paper focuses on the development of an interactive approach to capacity building in each of these three sites, drawing from a broad portfolio of approaches variously described as social learning, social appraisal, or whole system development. In the Inkomati we have worked primarily with the whole system approach known as Future Search, whereas in the Mvoti we have used the U-process and social appraisal as guiding metaphors and design principles. � Thispaperdescribessomeofourachievements,�challengesandreflectionstodate,�andarguesthattheinteractive� approaches we have been taking are better suited to the implementation of DWAF's institutional reform processes than the more established, top-down approaches, which involve issuing guidance, supported by training programmes. The paper con- cludes with a discussion of the implications for scaling up these types of approaches across the South African water system as a whole, and for the practice of integrated water resource management.

Gender, sexuality and the right to a non-projected future: a reply to Camminga

This reply considers themovement of words as discussed in Camminga's article with reference to South Africa's Constitution and its Refugee Act. It explores the value and limitations of performing subjectivities like ‘transgender’ in contexts where these words have been introduced and, in some cases, imposed. This discussion considers the ‘Stigma of Western Words’, as articulated by Camminga, in light of the broader politics of international development and aid conditionality linked to LGBT rights. These politics are contrasted with some of the dynamics underpinning an international development programme that sought to advance LGBT rights and livelihoods, as discussed in the accompanying article on gender, sexuality and the limits of the law.

Rediscovering the origins and inclusion of the public trust doctrine in South African environmental law: A speculative analysis

The public trust doctrine was deliberately included in South African environmental legislation; in the best interests of citizens and future generations, it empowers citizens to ensure that the government safeguards the country's natural and cultural environment. This article examines South Africa's environmental law in order to derive an understanding of the origins and potential application of the doctrine. While the prima facie origin of the doctrine is the Bill of Rights right in South Africa's 1996 Constitution, multilateral environmental agreements in Africa appear to have had a significant influence on how the doctrine was conceptualized and embraced. This observation dispels the notion that the doctrine was a hermetic import into South Africa's environmental law from the United States. Furthermore, the analysis finds that the environmental right in South Africa's Constitution parallels the health and wellbeing right granted to its citizens.

The evolution of research participant protections in South Africa.

South Africa (SA) has played a leading role in health research internationally. Ethical guidelines for the protection of research participants have been published by the Medical Research Council (MRC) as early as 1979. Ironically, the guidelines gave substantial prominence to the oppressive laws of the time. In its 4th edition of the guidelines, the MRC placed emphasis on SA needs, and incorporated the principles of the Bill of Rights of the SA Constitution 1996 into its guidelines. The most significant milestone in the history of participant protections in SA was the inclusion of research and experimentation in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution and the statutory legislation of protections in the National Health Act No. 61 of 2003.

Black, Queer, and Precarious Visibilities: Simon Nkoli's Activist Image in South Africa's Exit Newspaper

Black, Queer, and Precarious VisibilitiesSimon Nkoli's Activist Image in South Africa's Exit Newspaper Z'étoile Imma (bio) We must be visible if we are going to be liberated. —Simon Nkoli In November 2015, Exit, South Africa's longest running monthly LGBT newspaper, published its 300th issue. As critic and activist Donna Smith asserts, in the context of pervasive uncertain and inconsistent publication of lesbian and gay print media in South Africa, founded in 1985, and still available in clubs and bookstores throughout the country, Exit has uniquely stood the test of time (189). Not surprisingly, Exit editors marked the milestone with a celebratory and confident tone. The issue's cover photo featuring a smiling, young, muscular, seemingly able-bodied white man, standing poolside with a dainty glass of beer raised outlines the aesthetic, embodied, and affective contours of Exit's brand of gay triumphalism. Along with the luxury, pleasure, and leisure harkened by the cover image, in an essay published in Exit's November print edition and subsequently posted on the newspaper's Facebook page, cultural critic, literary scholar, and contributing writer for the periodical, Tim Trengove-Jones, notes that for Exit "to survive in South Africa for 300 editions is close to miraculous" (8). In his guest column entitled "Long Life to Exit" Trengove-Jones goes on to offer a brief history contextualizing the great achievement of Exit's continued run in the face of apartheid-era Christian nationalism, the AIDS crisis, and Pride politics, upheavals, and fractures. As he charts the importance of Exit as "not a voice. THE voice" of the LGBT community in South Africa, Trengove-Jones highlights key moments in Exit's thirty-three-year trajectory. He asserts that Exit "was there" when "Pride really mattered," when debates regarding performance artist Steve Cohen's now infamous antics emerged, when (openly gay and HIV-positive) Justice Edwin Cameron defended Cohen's right to free speech, when the now defunct "Out in Africa" film festival was launched, when LGBT rights were constitutionalized, when "a group of disaffected lesbians lay down in Jan Smuts Avenue in protest against what they believed was the depoliticization of Pride," and when the queer community mourned the passing of well-known drag performer and Exit contributor Dainti Delischia (8). In the making of his tightly abbreviated queer timeline, Trengove-Jones pinpoints key moments of victory, visibility, and contestation in South Africa's LGBT recent history. While much and many must be left out of such a brief and largely informal construction, the glaring absence of how race, racism, and racialized queer subjects have shaped LGBT politics in South Africa ironically affirms long-standing critiques of Exit as white supremacist and white masculinist centric. [End Page 61] In choosing to construct a memory project in which three white South Africans—Steve Cohen, Justice Cameron, and Dainti Delischia (Charles Wiley)—uniquely serve as central figures in their country's LGBT history, Trengove-Jones misses an opportunity to center the names and flag the stories of important Black and of color queer activists and figures such as Bev Ditsie, Zackie Achmat, Phumi Mthethwa, Wendy Isaack, Caster Semenya, and Simon Nkoli. In Trengove-Jones's commentary, South Africa's Black queer notables are at best coded and minoritized as disaffected bodies or at worst relegated to the impermeable background of LGBT history. As a central force behind the first Pride march in South Africa, the politicizing of AIDS treatment for gay men, and the successful campaign to include legal protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation in South Africa's constitution, it remains that Simon Nkoli haunts the silences and blank spaces of Exit's most recent (re)fashioning of LGBT history and memory. Yet Nkoli was, and is, more than a specter to the white-centered representational practices systematized in Exit. Simon Nkoli was an early, consistent, yet dynamic figure in the newspaper, even after his death in 1998; he was memorialized three times in the pages of Exit that following year. As such, failure to make explicit mention of his contributions, if not his controversies, in celebrating the periodical's history, however passingly, is especially egregious. Indeed Nkoli was there in...

Industrial development zone and South African environmental legal initiatives post-1994: a quest for sustainable industrial development

Many developing countries are currently undergoing increased industrialization, which has accelerated environmental degradation. This study aims to examine South Africa's industrial development path as a socio-economic strategy pursued along the rill-lines of sustainable industrial development (SID) in view of the post-1994 environmental legislative initiatives. An exploratory review guided the study analysis. As industrial development zones (IDZs), environmental sustainability research is virtually non-existent, leading to the poor understanding of this programme's role in SID. This study reveals that the government political commitment, 1996 South Africa's Constitution and National Environmental Act (No. 107 of 1998) are key pillars reconciling the environment and industrial development in diffusing apartheid legacies. Non-compliances re-occur in industries outside the IDZs due to shortage of environmental monitoring inspectors and government priorities changes. Therefore, there is need to ‘green’ IDZ stakeholders for proper environmental legislation implementation. Finally, the study highlights new potential directions for research into SID zoning.

Justice for All? Accountable Translations of Texts on Indigenous Law

ABSTRACTThis article addresses challenges arising from the guarantee in South Africa's Constitution (1996) of continued use of indigenous law. This law has been handed down in oral form, but increasingly, written sources are needed when cases relating to indigenous law are heard in South Africa's higher courts. Although access to this kind of information is vital to empowerment and justice in Africa, wider access is hampered by different literacy levels and language differences. This article examines accountable translation into English of legal anthropological texts, referring to a case study on law practised among the Nkuna of Ritavi to demonstrate some of the complexities. The article considers the Anglo-American translation tradition's preference for idiomatic translation (paraphrasis) rather than word-for-word faithfulness (metaphrasis). It advocates focusing on the Skopos (purpose) of texts negotiated with the author. It also proposes foregrounding the hermeneutic engagement of translators as readers. For the text in the case study, it suggests two translations, for two audiences: one into an academic register (for academics, legal experts, and educated members of the Nkuna community), and one into Plain English (mainly for members of the Nkuna community for whom English is a second language). To address political dimensions of responsible translation, metatextual strategies espoused by feminist translators to increase translators’ visibility and accountability can be used, and postcolonial translation theory should be considered.

How Bioethics is Complementing Human Rights in Realizing Health Access for Clinical Trial Participants: The Case of Formative PrEP Access in South Africa

Following the demise of apartheid, human rights in South Africa are now constitutionally enshrined.The right to health in South Africa's Constitution has been credited with transforming the lives of millions of people by triggering programmatic reforms in HIV treatment and the prevention of mother to child transmission (MTCT) of HIV.However, a constitutionally enshrined right to health offers no guarantee that clinical trial participants will enjoy post-trial access to beneficial interventions. Using access to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in South Africa as an example, this paper argues that adherence to bioethics norms could realize the right to health for trial participants following the end of a clinical trial.

Agents of the Regime? Traditional Leaders and Electoral Clientelism in South Africa

Traditional leaders are often given sub-national territorial authority in developing democracies. Though ubiquitous, the political consequences of their power has received little rigorous attention. We argue that such traditional leaders, whose power depends on the state, may be incentivized to strategically support political parties who can guarantee their survival and provide them with rents. We study this quid pro quo in the Apartheid-era Bantustans of South Africa. We show that an alignment between the state party and the chiefs maps to increased political support for the party. Further, we provide quantitative evidence consistent with chiefs acting as clientelistic brokers. Our results suggest that chiefs boost African National Congress (ANC) vote-share by 8.2 percentage points in the Bantustans. This translates into roughly 4.5% of the ANC's total vote-share, and a distortion in the national vote of 2.5 percentage points. This distortion is pivotal in determining whether the ANC is able to alter South Africa's constitution.

‘Keeping things straight’: the representation of sexualities in life orientation textbooks

Heterosexism and heteronormativity are pervasive in the South African society, but to what degree are they present in Life Orientation (LO) textbooks? This question, explored through a content analysis of widely used Grade 10 LO textbooks, was framed by queer theory. The paper quantitatively examines the coverage of sexualities, and qualitatively examines how sexualities are constructed and projected in the texts. The quantitative analysis reveals a low percentage of statements devoted to sexuality overall and the normalisation of heterosexuality mainly through the exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) sexualities but also through techniques of differentiation, hierarchisation and homogenisation. The qualitative analysis reveals inadequate information about sexualities and in its place a simplistic, moralistic ideological approach. Furthermore, discussions of the family, dating, safe sex and marriage assume heterosexuality as the norm. Nineteen years after the democratisation of South Africa and 17 years after the ratification of South Africa's constitution which explicitly forbids discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, LGBT sexualities are largely invisible in school LO curricula. Since this is a subject that is compulsory for all learners and its express aim is to prepare young South Africans for participation as citizens in a just and democratic society, the absence of LGBT issues and identities helps perpetuate prejudice and violence towards LGBT communities.

The Illusion of Education in South Africa

South Africa's constitution is hailed as ‘liberal and egalitarian’ because ‘it values human dignity and frames human rights at its heart’ But the country's public education is ‘a national disaster’ that is ‘essentially dysfunctional’. In this paper I sketch this ‘essential dysfuctionality’. I appeal to the notions of ‘redesigning’ and ‘reengineering’. Employed sensibly ‘redesigning’ and ‘reengineering’ can generate dramatic improvements in critical performance measures such as cost, quality, service and speed. I argue that ‘redesigning’ and ‘reengineering’ can enable South Africa's public education to efficiently deliver ‘education for all’ to the majority blacks who were previously disadvantaged by apartheid policies.