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The auditing and accounting profession must provide appropriate disclosure of the going concern status of an entity, especially when that status is threatened. Auditors have an obligation to consider the wider legal environment of an entity, including all relevant case law, when they perform any such audit. Despite this obligation, the auditing profession appears to violate important legal principles. The auditor’s approach to the going concern status of an entity is contained in the South African Auditing Standard, SAAS 570 “Going Concern”. The South African legal framework’s approach to this issue emerges from the Supreme Court case Philotex (Pty) Ltd v Snyman. This article explores the fundamental disagreement between the auditor’s approach to the going concern problem and that adopted in terms of the wider South African legal framework.

Scholars researching entrepreneurship argue that the distinct characteristics of social entrepreneurs, together with the particular category of opportunities they pursue, invite us to further understand social entrepreneurship (SE) as a distinct field of investigation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate opportunity recognition behaviour of social entrepreneurs and closely related unique attributes of empathy, moral judgement (MRJ) and self-efficacy, in an emerging market African context.

A survey was administered to social entrepreneurs across two of the largest provinces in South Africa, namely Cape Town and Gauteng. Hypotheses were statistically tested using correlational analysis and hierarchical regression with mediation effects.

Results reveal that social entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) plays a significant mediating effect in the relationship between MRJ and social opportunity recognition. Moreover, perceived MRJ and social ESE act as important determinants of increased social opportunity recognition.

This study has brought to attention the relevance of opportunity recognition to social entrepreneurs, while recognising their distinctive features in terms of empathy and MRJ. While self-efficacy and opportunity recognition are relatively well established in the traditional entrepreneurship literature, this study extends the reach of these variables into the SE domain.

This paper aims to focus on the use of unexplained wealth orders (UWOs) in South Africa as a civil method to act upon lifestyle audit results that have indicated wealth from unknown, possibly unlawful, sources.

This paper applied a comparative methodology. Legislation and the application of UWOs in Ireland, the UK and Australia were compared with the situation in South Africa.

It is proposed that South Africa includes UWO legislation within its Prevention of Organised Crime Act or be established as a separate piece of legislation. Also, South Africa should follow both the civil and criminal route to target the proceeds of crime.

Corruption in South Africa is rampant and, without the necessary legislation, impossible to fight. For these purposes, this paper proposes measures to be used from a civil forfeiture perspective.

This paper aims to assess how entrepreneurship affects knowledge economy (KE) in Africa.

Entrepreneurship is measured by indicators of starting, doing and ending business. The four dimensions of the World Bank’s index of KE are used. Instrumental variable panel-fixed effects are applied on a sample of 53 African countries for the period of 1996-2010.

The following are some of the findings. First, creating an enabling environment for starting business can substantially boost most dimensions of KE. Second, doing business through mechanisms of trade globalization has positive effects from sectors that are not information and communication technology (ICT) and high-tech oriented. Third, the time required to end business has negative effects on KE.

The findings confirm the narrative that the technology in African countries at the moment may be more imitative and adaptive for reverse engineering in ICTs and high-tech products. Given the massive consumption of ICT and high-tech commodities in Africa, the continent has to start thinking of how to participate in the global value chain of producing what it consumes.

This paper has a twofold motivation. First, given the ambitions of African countries of moving towards knowledge-based economies, the line of inquiry is timely. Second, investigating the nexus may have substantial poverty mitigation and sustainable development implications. These entail, inter alia, the development of technology with value-added services; enhancement of existing agricultural practices; promotion of conditions that are essential for competitiveness; and adjustment to globalization challenges.

The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between different dimensions of organizational learning capabilities (OLC) and levels of social innovation in social enterprises.

The empirical strategy adopted is a cross-sectional study based on primary survey data. Following a survey of social enterprises in South Africa, statistically analysis is conducted using regression analyses to test the study hypotheses.

The findings show that the OLC dimensions of knowledge conversion, risk management, organizational dialogue and participative decision-making all have a significant and positive relationship with social innovation.

In many emerging economies, the notion of organizational learning appears to have considerable potential relevance, particularly as African countries are moving toward knowledge-based economies. By focusing on OLC, it is anticipated that social enterprises can configure and leverage the different factors in ways that enable them to overcome the constraints of the complex and unpredictable environments and increase their levels of social innovation.

The paper provides a pioneering empirical investigation into the impact that OLC has on levels of social innovation, in an under-researched emerging market context.

The unit trust industry is one of the fastest growing areas in the financial sector. This dramatic growth has raised concern about the level of investors’ knowledge, or lack thereof, relating to the factors associated with investment decisions. This study investigates the factors and dynamics behind cash flows into and from General Equity unit trusts from September 1996 to September 2001, and the extent to which market factors and unit trust characteristics explain the variation in cash flows. The analysis shows a significant positive relationship between cash flows and contemporaneous returns of the General Equity unit trusts and the equity market, while being negatively related to one‐month lagged returns and cash flows. Several of the determinants, including interest rates, fee structures, risk and fund size, are found to be insignificant at a 5% level. The results indicate that investors exhibit an element of profit maximisation, driven by performances and irrationality, in that they give less consideration to fee structures, risk and fund size.

Education as a weapon in the fight against conflict and violence remains widely debated in policy and academic circles. Against the background of growing political instability in Africa and the central role of the knowledge economy in twenty-first century development, this paper provides three contributions to existing literature. The purpose of this paper is to assess how political stability/non-violence is linked to the incremental, synergy and lifelong learning effects of education.

The authors define lifelong learning as the combined knowledge acquired during primary, secondary and tertiary education. Principal component analysis is used to reduce the dimensions of educational and political indicators. An endogeneity robust dynamic system Generalized Methods of Moments is used for the estimations.

The authors establish three main findings. First, education is a useful weapon in the fight against political instability. Second, there is an incremental effect of education in the transition from secondary to tertiary schools. Third, lifelong learning also has positive and synergy effects. This means that the impact of lifelong learning is higher than the combined independent effects of various educational levels. The empirical evidence is based on 53 African countries for the period 1996-2010.

A plethora of policy implications are discussed, inter alia: how the drive towards increasing the knowledge economy through lifelong learning can be an effective tool in the fight against violence and political insurgency in Africa.

As the continent is nursing knowledge economy ambitions, the paper is original in investigating the determinants of political stability/non-violence from three dimensions of education attainment: the incremental, the lifelong learning and a synergy effect.

The lockdown and physical distancing precautions to curtail the increase of COVID-19 in Africa nearly shut down economies across the continent, caused slow trade, and triggered mass poverty. Hence, the need for Africa to be interconnected with the world economy by reforming its legal systems for swift post-COVID-19 economic recovery, to utilise the legal system in addressing socio-economic shocks. The weaknesses in Africa's legal systems in response to socio-economic shocks uncovered a critical threat to humanity, despite efforts, limited resources and strategies put in place. This research adopts a library-based doctrinal legal research technique with a critical review and conceptual approach by relying on the existing literature. The aim is to explore the potency of the existing legal frameworks, such as the African Continental Free Trade Agreement and the Economic Community of West African States Protocol, to combat socio-economic shocks in Africa's Economy. The study carries out a comparative appraisal of the legal system in Ghana, Angola, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria for useful insights in suggesting conversion of the pandemic to blessings by reforming their legal systems to embrace technologies to guarantee speedy economic recovery strategies. The study proposes a model for speedy economic recovery via legal instruments to support commercial activities. It ends with recommendations such as the reformation of the legal system to mitigate jobs losses and embrace technologies. Adopting alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, strict implementation of African Continental Free Trade Agreement for economic resilience against future economic shocks.

The purpose of the paper was to conduct a legal-realist assessment of the South African prison system response to COVID-19. Severely congested and ill-resourced prison systems in Africa face unprecedented challenges amplified by COVID-19. South Africa has recorded the highest COVID-19 positivity rate in Africa and, on March 15th 2020, declared a national state of disaster. The first prison system case was notified on April 6th 2020.

A legal-realist assessment of the South African prison system response to COVID-19 in the 12 months following initial case notification focused on the minimum State obligations to comply with human rights norms, and the extent to which human, health and occupational health rights of prisoners and staff were upheld during disaster measures.

A legal-realist account was developed, which revealed the indeterminate nature of application of South African COVID-19 government directives, ill-resourced COVID-19 mitigation measures, alarming occupational health and prison conditions and inadequate standards of health care in prisons when evaluated against the rule of law during State declaration of disaster.

This legal-realist assessment is original by virtue of its unique evaluation of the South African prison system approach to tackling COVID-19. It acknowledged State efforts, policymaking processes and outcomes and how these operated within the prison system itself. By moving beyond the deleterious impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the already precarious South African prison system, the authors argue for rights assurance for those who live and work in its prisons, improved infrastructure and greater substantive equality of all deprived of their liberty in South Africa.