The role and influence of Foreign Policy Epistemic Communities on Post-Apartheid South Africa's Foreign Policy Decision-Making

Foreign policy decision-making and state behaviour have long been analysed and explained through systemic theories such as realism, liberalism, and constructivism, as well as through Graham Allison’s rational actor, organisational processes, and governmental politics models.

We are currently in the midst of a memoir boom characterised by an increase in the production and promotion of memoirs by public figures. For example, in 2023, Britney Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me sold 1,1 million copies in the first week of its release. A few months before that, Spare, a memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, set a Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling non-fiction book (1.43 million copies on the first day). The proliferation of memoirs and/or autobiography has led to renewed interest in its study.

Full-time shop stewards (FTSSs) are elected trade union shop stewards paid by the employer to do full-time union work. This is a peculiar arrangement in the South African industrial landscape which draws from the German model of workers’ councils. These FTSSs were first negotiated in the early 1980s at Ford and Volkswagen (VW) in South Africa. The main reason for these FTSSs was, as noted by Gomomo (1985), to deal with production pressures and disruptions caused by ordinary shop stewards, who, from time to time, would be pulled from the production line to attend to trade union business.

Discussions surrounding decolonisation in academic spaces in South Africa took a turn in 2015 when student protests forced the academy or academic landscape to revisit its relationship with Eurocentrism. This had far reaching consequences, as institutions of higher learning began to interrogate different aspects of academic culture including knowledge production. My thesis looks at decolonisation from an epistemic lens by principally interrogating the use of epistemic intuitions and their relevance to the decolonisation project.

This study sought to understand how changes to the scope and autonomy of the oral hygiene occupation in South Africa have influenced relations among dental occupations. Over the past two decades, legislative advances in South Africa have sanctioned new possibilities for mid-level dental occupations such as oral hygienists, allowing them greater independence and additional procedures. The division of labour within the dental profession is that oral hygienists and dental therapists supplement the work that dentists do by offering some of the basic dental services.

The Sharpeville Massacre was a key turning point in modern South African history. The massacre ended the non-violent civil rights-style political activism and flickered three decades of armed confrontation with the colonial apartheid regime. Most importantly, it became the catalyst for the declaration of apartheid as a crime against humanity by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1966. However, most of the studies on the massacre focus mainly on documenting the events of that day, and very little has been written about the historical re-presentations of the shooting beyond this.

Nakuba uMthethosisekelo waseNingizimu Afrika ubalula ukuthi abafundi banelungelo lokufunda ngezilimi ezisemthethweni kuleli lizwe abazikhethela zona ezikoleni (kusukela emabangeni aphansi kuya emabangeni aphezulu), iningi labafundi abamnyama lisazithola lifunda ngolimi lwesiNgisi, ulimi elingazikhethelenga lona. Ezikoleni lapho abafundi befunda ngolimi lwesiNgisi, okuwulimi abazithola bephoqelelwa ukufunda ngalo, othisha basebenzisa izindlela ezehlukene zokufundisa, okubalwa kuzo ukuxuba izilimi.

Studies on food security focusing on households began attracting considerable attention in the mid-1970s following a surge in the cost of food production and food prices. The surge in prices led to increasing percentage of food insecure households throughout the world. To address the growing number of people affected by hunger, countries sought to develop new technological techniques to produce food in large quantities particularly in the developing world. The thrust of the approach was to ensure the availability of food first.