The View Point

The South African public  had until the 25th of February to respond to the Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill, B1 – 2023, that intends to amend section 6 of the constitution in such a way that South African Sign Language (SASL) is added to the list of 11 existing official languages.

Prof Theadorus du Plessis of the University of the Free State says it is not necessary to make SASL an official language. He says this will merely grant symbolic recognition to the language, which will not necessarily grant more rights to persons with hearing impairment than they currently already enjoy. He fears that the obsession with the officialisation of SASL will end up being just another smokescreen for neglect of duty by the state.

Guest: Prof Theodorus du Plessis, Department of South African Sign Language and Deaf Studies, University of the Free State 

The South African Council for Social Service Professions (SACSSP) should advocate more for the profession, and supervisors must undergo a specific training course and be accredited with the Council. This is according to Dr Sandra Bredell, who believes that this is necessary in order for the council to be able to support social workers and help them with their work-life balance.

In an attempt to gain an understanding of how social workers perceive their work-life balance and their subjective wellbeing, Dr Bredell interviewed frontline social workers and managers. Her findings reveal that more than half of the social workers who participated in her study wanted to quit their job within the first five years because of deteriorating working conditions.

Social Work is an integral part of our lives and if the practitioners are not being supported, what effect will this have on the community and on families?

Guest: Dr Sandra Bredell 

The United Kingdom is gearing up to pass new laws that will ban trophy hunters from importing of the body parts of endangered animals into the country. The law has been highly contested as some believe that the law will undermine sustainable hunting and conservation

efforts in the form of anti-poaching unit. Others have raised questions surrounding trophy hunting being a colonial practice and that the UK is overstepping by dictating what African countries

should do when it comes to their hunting laws. Our next guest unpacks not only why trophy

hunting endangers wildlife but addresses how this practice reinforces a culture of guns,

violence, dispossession and indignity.  We are joined by…

Guest: Michele Pickover , Director of the EMS Foundation   

 It has been a hundred years since the existence of Langa township, in Cape Town, and mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has outlined the city’s plans to commemorate the 100th anniversary. A number of cites have been identified and they will be redeveloped and refurbished. But will this translate to job creation and sustainable development for the community? Will these projects indeed benefit the community for the next 100 years to come?

• What are the sentiments in Langa? Is the community happy about these planned upgrades and celebrations
• Langa Township - tell us more about it and its history?
• The relationship between the people and the mayor - are politics not going to stand in

the way of this development?

• When community projects of this nature come up, they seldom see the finish line - money goes missing, community members pull in different direction, what measures are put in place to ensure the success of this project?

 Guest: Alfred Magwaca, Member of the Langa Centenary steering Committee

Guest: Prof. Mike Brookes, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal | Co-founder of the UKZN Aerospace Systems Research Institute 

Our next guest is part of a team that has successfully competed a test launch of a 1-D hybrid rocket. The Phoenix 1-D was carrying experimental sensors and cameras as part of the mission. Sounding rockets are rocket-propelled launch vehicles that carry experimental payloads to the upper reaches of the atmosphere that play a crucial role in facilitating experiments in a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including biotechnology, astronomy, astrophysics, materials science and meteorology. Through their Space Propulsion Programme, young mechanical engineering students work on the rockets focusing on advancing their skills in advanced manufacturing, aerospace systems design, rocket launch operations and computational analysis. 

Guest:  Marcus Low, Editor of Spotlight NSP 

During the COVID-19 pandemic (2021), a survey into the prevalence of Tuberculosis was conducted. The first of its kind in country, it illustrated that thousands of ordinary citizens were not getting diagnosed for the disease and that patients presenting themselves at the clinic was not enough to reduce transmission of the disease. Two years after the initial study, a new set of guidelines have been implement using the test and treat approach. This approach follows upscaled testing by looking at multiple transmission points outside of the household and provides expanded treatment therapy upon of the outcome of the results. To help us understand what this means for communities, we are joined by…

Guest: Roland Harris , (former) MMC in the City of Joburg ]  

Guest: Athol Trollip, Chairperson of ActionSA in EC & former mayor of Nelson Mandela Metro]  

South Africa’s municipal government elections in 2021 produced a number of local government coalitions. There’s now a strong possibility that the next government that’s formed at national 

level may be a coalition too. This would be the first since the dawn of democracy in 1994.

Elections due in 2024 will test the extent of the declining dominance of the ANC, with some polls suggesting that the party could fail to secure the 50% of the vote required to form a government.  

With the chaos seen in local coalitions, can South Africans expect a national coalition to be 

stable? The turbulence in coalitions seen in 2021-2023 led to the disintegration and 

reconstitution of municipal coalitions. Political parties accused each other of all sorts of things, 

and the result is a lack of attention to actually governing cities, and providing municipal services.

Nic Spaull is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Stellenbosch University and part of the Research on Socioeconomic Policy (RESEP) group in the Department. Nic’s research centres on education policy in South Africa with a focus on inequality and early grade literacy and numeracy. Nic has held visiting fellowships at Stanford University in the US and the OECD in Paris and is currently a non-resident fellow at RISE as well as the Centre for Global Development (CGD).

Nic recently (2019) co-edited “South African Schooling: The Enigma of Inequality” with Jonathan

Jansen. In 2021 he was awarded the Royal Society’s Meiring Naude Medal as well as the National Research Foundation’s (NRF) P-Rating, the highest rating possible for researchers under 35. During the COVID-19 pandemic Nic initiated the National Income Dynamics Study Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey (NIDS-CRAM). Nic comments regularly in the media and advises numerous high-level policymakers and philanthropists in South Africa and abroad.

GUEST Nic Spaull Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Stellenbosch University and part of the Research on Socioeconomic Policy (RESEP) group 

Our next guest have filed a complaint at the North Gauteng High Court to have Judge Willie Seriti and Judge Hendrick Musi called before the Judicial Conduct Committee (JCC) to account for their failure to adequately investigate the Arms Deal. The organization wrote a letter to the JCC to investigate if the actions of the judges amounted to criminal misconduct and called for the NPA to intervene back in 2020. Nearly R142 billion was lost in the corrupt Arms Deal, much of it ending up in the hands of a small group of powerful European corporations, politicians and middlemen.

GUEST Michael Marchant  Head of Investigations at Open Secrets

Award-winning jazz musician, composer and songwriter Gloria Bosman has died. The Southern African Music Rights Organisation (Samro) confirmed the news and the cause of death has yet to be shared. The musician was recently appointed to Samro's board as a non-executive director. She boasts two South African Music Awards (Samas) and more than 11 nominations, as well as two Kora nominations. Bosman was born in Mofolo in the heart of Johannesburg and raised in Pimville, Soweto. She has toured the world and shared the stage with Sibongile Khumalo, Concord Nkabinde, Sipho Mabuse, Moses Molelekwa, Tananas, Vusi Mahlasela, Sipho Gumede, Oliver Mtukudzi and Hugh Masekela.

GUEST Roshnie Moonsamy  Festival Curator | Producer in Literature, Music and Performing Arts