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The research question is how home country corruption and nationalism may affect operations of BRIC multinational enterprises. BRIC composition permits a comparison of two authoritarian regimes and two constitutional democracies. Each BRIC features a different combination of corruption and nationalism. The chapter adds South Africa information for two limited reasons. First, from 2010 South Africa is a member of the BRIC summit process. South Africa is an important entry point to Africa, for BRIC multinationals and particularly for China. Second, concerning corruption and nationalism South Africa is analytically useful as a control context that helps illustrate but does not appear to change highly exploratory BRIC findings.

The chapter draws on limited literature and information concerning corruption and nationalism in BRICs to suggest tentative possibilities. Transparency International provides bribe payers index estimates for 28 large economies, with important multinational enterprises, and corruption perceptions index estimates including those 28 countries. These estimates include the four BRICs and South Africa. The available sources suggest some suggested findings about varying impacts of home country corruption and nationalism on operations of BRIC multinationals.

China and Russia are authoritarian regimes in transition from central planning-oriented communist regimes. They are global military powers, expanding influence in their respective regions. Brazil, India, and South Africa are constitutional democracies. India, a nuclear-armed military power, seeks a regional leadership role in South Asia. Brazil and South Africa are key countries economically in their regions. BRIC multinationals are positioned between home country and host country conditions. Chinese and Russian multinationals may reflect a stronger nationalistic tendency due to home country regimes and ownership structure.

The chapter is an original but highly exploratory inquiry into impacts of corruption and nationalism on BRIC multinationals. Extant BRIC literature tends to understudy effects of home country corruption and nationalism on managerial mindset and incentives in either commercial or state-owned enterprises.

The chapter on special education in South Africa initiates with a very comprehensive historical account of the origins of special education making reference to the inequalities linked to its colonial and racist past to a democratic society. This intriguing section ends with the most recent development in the new democracy form special needs education to inclusive education. Next, the chapter provides prevalence and incidence data followed by trends in legislation and litigation. Following these sections, detailed educational interventions are discussed in terms of policies, standards and research as well as working with families. Then information is provided on regular and special education teacher roles, expectations and training. Lastly, the chapter comprehensively discusses South Africa’s special education progress and challenges related to budgetary support, staff turnover, and a lack of prioritizing over the number of pressing education goals in the country’s provinces.

Satisfactory provision of basic education is a way through which social inclusion and economic growth can take place in post-apartheid South Africa. Although the country embraces the principles and guidelines for EFA declaration, making basic education available to the present school-age children, and to adults who were denied the opportunity during the apartheid era, has remained unrealized. The gap in basic education has persisted despite notable improvements in the educational sector in South Africa. To address this challenge, this chapter seeks to reconceptualize and expand the meaning of “basic education” within the context of South African society. It argues that the meaning and the practice of basic education in South Africa is inseparable from the historic experiences and the socio-economic dynamics that shape the present society. Besides, to realize the goal of improved quality, the role of non-state institutions in basic education provision needs to be redefined.

Post-apartheid Africa and post-Soviet Georgia implemented a variety of education reforms since the 1990s. Many of these reforms exhibit recognizable similarities despite the significant contextual differences between the two countries. This paper examined the school decentralization process framed by the world culture theory and compared how the enactment of reforms was influenced by country contexts. It focused on the development of regional administrative units and school governance in these two countries to illustrate how specific reforms may have structural similarities but be functionally different. The scope and depth of the functions of new educational structures also play an important role in understanding how they respond to local needs.

This chapter focuses on gender, sexuality and security in post-Apartheid South Africa.

The methodology includes secondary analysis of policy and research with the aim of highlighting and assessing the position of gender, sex and security in post-Apartheid South Africa. Feminist theory and intersectionality are used to discuss issues of sexuality, security, construction of gender relationships and experiences of being a woman in South Africa. The normalisation of violence against women is challenged.

The social implications of this research are that it challenges normalisation of gendered violence, questions gendercide and produces knowledge of a gendered social reality of living in South Africa. Women who consider assault a regular feature of their sexual relationships have been brought into a discourse which includes the liberalisation of sexual expression, claims to new sexual rights and aspirations to power and status through sexual relationships (Posel, 2005a).

Throughout the chapter the achievement of gender equality is problematised and questioned. However, gender and the relationship between power and sex remain at the centre of the inquiry, particularly with reference to the increasing culture of violence and men as the perpetrators of violence against women.

According to Posel ‘one of the most striking features of the post-apartheid era has been the politicization of sexuality’ (2005a, p. 125) and this chapter demonstrates that a response to the violation of the Women’s Charter of Effective Equality, passed in 2000, is a priority as women and families are disproportionately affected by violence in multiple ways.

This chapter focuses on a pathway for the creation of a just and equitable food system in South Africa that contributes to achieving the right to food and livelihoods for all. It is based on years of ongoing research on food systems in South Africa and Tanzania as well as a current research project on the impact of COVID-19 regulations on food systems in South Africa, Ghana and Tanzania. The chapter starts with looking at the challenges of the food system in South Africa, the problematic approaches to addressing these challenges and how the situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. Then it explores a different way of looking at and transforming the food system that moves away from the focus on corporate driven solutions and applies a different lens to analysing who the stakeholders are. The argument is for the advancement of economic actors identified by where they sit on the intersecting continuums from more marketised to more socially embedded, from more elite to the subaltern, and from larger to smaller scale. This lens makes it clear which type of enterprises and economic actors need to be supported and the alliances that need to be built to create a pathway to a better food future in the urbanising South African society and perhaps elsewhere as well.

The development of banking in Africa followed the demand of exchange networks from traditional indigenous economies to colonial exchange with the European world. The establishment of European banking institutions reflected the needs of the capitalist economy introduced by colonialism. The banking management of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century European banks adhered to the interests of shareholders. This chapter shows the emergence of well-managed banks in Africa, but after decolonization the political economy of African independence resulted in state capturing of financial institutions in most African countries. The South African banking system developed in close adherence to the British model. State-owned post-independence banks in Africa failed to deliver the development envisaged. The chapter shows the adverse impact of global economic developments on Africa, resulting in high debt levels. Structural adjustment of African economies and new market-oriented policies allowed the development of locally owned private banking institutions. The high-cost structure of the formal banking system from the dominant South African banks incentivised the mobile money innovation, an arena where African entrepreneurs lead global markets. Financial inclusion remains low in Africa.