Focus

In their extraordinary tribute to the bourgeoisie in the Communist Manifesto – and whatever else that tract may be, it is also a tribute to the bourgeoisie – Marx and Engels pointed out that the bourgeoisie had rescued a “considerable amount of the population from the idiocy of their rural life”.1 For Marx and Engels the city became the locus of all that was modern and progressive, but also alienating. These twin themes of progress and alienation still characterize our thinking on cities. While those who have the means may opt – like Marie Antoinette in the 18th century – to have quasi rural retreats in such idyllic places as Greyton, McGregor, Polokwane or Parys, the majority of South Africans are confined to urban settings; and it is these urban settings that are the subject of this edition of Focus.

Welcome to the first 2013 issue of Focus, devoted to education and organised along the themes of Overcoming and Innovation. This issue of Focus is an attempt to broaden and deepen the education debate, moving beyond our stagnant litany of educational woes. It includes personal perspectives, as well as expert opinions, because education should be understood as much through the lived experience of learners and families as through policies and theories. There is an emphasis on the Arts, an increasingly neglected weapon in our armoury against both ignorance and exclusion.

This edition of Focus is devoted to exploring some of the issues which confront state and society in South Africa. It self-consciously looks forward to the State of the Nation Address by the President which will be delivered in February 2013. It also seeks to remind readers of Focus of the wider social context in which the drama of South African politics is played out.

“According to the European Commission, the importance of ICT lies less in the technology itself than in its ability to create greater access to information and communication in underserved populations. Many countries around the world have established organisations for the promotion of ICTs, because it is feared that unless less technologically advanced areas have a chance to catch up, the increasing technological advances in developed nations will only serve to exacerbate the already-existing economic gap between technological “have” and “have not” areas.” This is the crux of why the Helen Suzman Foundation has chosen to look at the subject.

This edition of Focus is devoted to exploring some of the challenges, both social and political, which have confronted South African liberalism as it seeks to deepen the notion of liberty in our daily life. Balancing the demands of economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty is, as Keynes so neatly pointed out nearly a century ago, the central political problem.

This edition of Focus reviews the electrification of South Africa, but goes beyond straightforward supply side issues and considers alternative energy sources, sustainability, and the social impact of the energy sector.

This edition of Focus is dedicated to the broad topic of Sustainability, and is immediately concerned with COP 17 or, to give it its full title, the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Durban in November and December of this year.

This edition of Focus is dedicated to exploring some of the relationships between religious belief and society. In a modern and supposedly secular age, religious belief and practice have a curious and intriguing persistence – the assumption being that religion has no real place in a modern or modernising world: when it occurs, it is, no doubt, a legacy of some sort of archaic sensibility.