Country profile
Where to find it ...?
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost sovereign state in Africa. It is bounded on the south by 2,798 kilometers of coastline of Southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, on the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, and on the east by Mozambique and Swaziland, and surrounding the kingdom of Lesotho. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area, and with close to 53 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere.
South Africa is a multi-ethnic society encompassing a wide variety of cultures, languages, and religions. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the constitution's recognition of 11 official languages, which is among the highest number of any country in the world. Two of these languages are of European origin: Afrikaans developed from Dutch and serves as the first language of most white and coloured South Africans; English reflects the legacy of British colonialism, and is commonly used in public and commercial life, though it is fourth-ranked as a spoken first language. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup d'état, and regular elections have been held for almost a century. |
How to get there ....?
|
South Africa & I
The place I was born and bred. Africa is in my veins. Like Kiki Gulman I can say: "I have a farm in Africa".... although not with a Danish accent. I grew up during the Apartheid years in a cocoon of bliss....not knowing much of what went on around me. I went through the whole cycle of the "South African dream". Go through schooling, do military service, get your degree and in your final year of university get engaged and marry someone, etc. Except in my case I did not get married....instead I started working and traveling abroad. What an eye opener it was. In my final year at university my Criminal law lecturer asked the class what their plans were. Half said they are going to law school, the other half said they were going to complete their articles. She asked if anybody was going to do something differently. Shyly I offered that I was going to work on a kibbutz in Israel....and the whole class burst out in laughter. They stayed behind and built careers. I came back seven times over the last 20 years to try as a White Afrikaans male in an Affirmative Action environment to build a career, only to spread my wings once again when failing to achieve the success my qualifications and experiences warranted. I did however manage to be involved with projects in South Africa.
|
Education in South Africa
Voted the worst education system in the world, the need for improvement is critical. The economics of Education furthermore does not make any sense. Approximately 20% of the annual budget is allocated towards education, of which 65% towards classroom teaching. Yet we have one of the poorest performance rates in the world. Only 10% of all grade 1's that enroll gets a sufficient matric to progress towards doing skilled labor and/or qualifying for higher education. This poor output does not justify the huge financial inputs and investments government is making. The curriculum policy of OBE (Outcomes-Based Education) was followed for nearly 2 decades after the new government was warned that it was not appropriate for school education. The Unions which borrowed the policy for adult training pressurized government to make it applicable to school education in addition to training. OBE failed miserably and now there is a generation whom lacks the basic numeracy and literacy skills crucial to effective job execution. South Africa thus made huge investments financially, but due to borrowed curriculum policies, not relevant to the school and/or local context, it has an incompetent workforce that cannot be optimally productive and therefore not internationally competitive.
|
South African projects
Click on the buttons below to view the relevant experience and/or projects
|
|
|