“In this issue, our focus returns to South Africa and, our own ongoing challenges in transition, it comes in the aftermath of the killings at Marikana, amid a protracted series of strikes in other mines and different sectors, and in the frenzied build-up to the ANC’s national conference at Mangaung in December. Also focusing on a definitive issue at this moment in South African politics, Zwelethu Jolobe looks at a history of internal divisions and factionalism within the ANC, a recurrent ‘circulation of elites’ in party leadership and contenders, in what he views
as a ‘three-horse race’ for the top job that will play out at Mangaung. This issue also features an interview by Giulio Brandi with Professor Jeremy Sarkin, longstanding member of the executive committee of the IJR Board, who discusses his recent work as Chair-Rapporteur for the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and his contributions to the constitution drafting process underway in Zimbabwe. Then, in an article based on a paper presented at a conference on ‘Economic
Justice for the Next Generation’ co-hosted by the IJR and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation
in Johannesburg in August, Doron Isaacs of Equal Education discusses the profound consequences of inequalities in schools, particularly for learners in underresourced
schools that lack textbooks, libraries and skilled teachers.”
