There has been a dramatic shift worldwide from welfare municipalism - where the state both subsidized and provided essential municipal services - to a neoliberal vision of balanced budgets, fiscal restraint and privatization. Cost recovery is at the heart of this new municipal vision with far reaching implications for access to services, affordability and privatization. This book brings together a theoretical and empirical review of the impact of cost recovery on basic municipal services such as water, refuse collection and electricity, with particular reference to South Africa. It describes the theory and practice of cost recovery and presents six case studies drawing on participatory and ethnographic research. The final chapter examines alternative future possibilities, reformist or equity-oriented.

**A Library Journal Best Book of 2015 ** **A Christian Science Monitor Top Ten Book of September** In a world dominated by people and rapid climate change, species large and small are increasingly vulnerable to extinction. In Resurrection Science, journalist M. R. O'Connor explores the extreme measures scientists are taking to try and save them, from captive breeding and genetic management to de-extinction. Paradoxically, the more we intervene to save species, the less wild they often become. In stories of sixteenth-century galleon excavations, panther-tracking in Florida swamps, ancient African rainforests, Neanderthal tool-making, and cryogenic DNA banks, O'Connor investigates the philosophical questions of an age in which we "play god" with earth's biodiversity. Each chapter in this beautifully written book focuses on a unique species--from the charismatic northern white rhinoceros to the infamous passenger pigeon--and the people entwined in the animals' fates. Incorporating natural history and evolutionary biology with conversations with eminent ethicists, O'Connor's narrative goes to the heart of the human enterprise: What should we preserve of wilderness as we hurtle toward a future in which technology is present in nearly every aspect of our lives? How can we co-exist with species when our existence and their survival appear to be pitted against one another?

What do the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) stand for? How do they propose to nationalize mines, banks, and land? Is Julius Malema, the founder of the EFF, equipped to legislate or to lead? These tough questions are asked in The Coming Revolution: Julius Malema and the Fight for Economic Freedom. Malema is tackled on his tax woes and on the "tenderpreneur" label by Janet Smith, an executive editor of the Star. Smith asks Malema to explain, contextualize, and motivate his political agenda and the genesis of the new party. Hard-hitting and informative, The Coming Revolution disrupts the dominant South African political narrative.

A probing examination of Western conservation efforts in Africa, where our feel-good stories belie a troubling reality The stunningly beautiful Gorongosa National Park, once the crown jewel of Mozambique, was nearly destroyed by decades of civil war. It looked like a perfect place for Western philanthropy: revive the park and tourists would return, a win-win outcome for the environment and the impoverished villagers living in the area. So why did some researchers find the local communities actually getting hungrier, sicker, and poorer as the project went on? And why did efforts to bring back wildlife become far more difficult than expected? In pursuit of answers, Stephanie Hanes takes readers on a vivid safari across southern Africa, from the shark-filled waters off Cape Agulhas to a reserve trying to save endangered wild dogs. She traces the tangled history of Western missionaries, explorers, and do-gooders in Africa, from Stanley and Livingstone to Teddy Roosevelt, from Bono and the Live Aid festivals to Greg Carr, the American benefactor of Gorongosa. And she examines the larger problems that arise when Westerners try to “fix” complex, messy situations in the developing world, acting with best intentions yet potentially overlooking the wishes of the people who live there. Beneath the uplifting stories we tell ourselves about helping Africans, she shows, often lies a dramatic misunderstanding of what the locals actually need and want. A gripping narrative of environmentalists and insurgents, poachers and tycoons, elephants and angry spirits, White Man’s Game profoundly challenges the way we think about philanthropy and conservation.

"[The book] skilfully meshes together the written history of the city and its build environment with that which is less certain, less defined: the invisible and visible seams and ridges that hold the city together. ... We are presented with an array of books, documents, fictional accounts, personal memories, photographs (both original and archival), newspapers, pamphlets, obscure city council publications, surveys, plans, court proceedings and architectural objects. Using these materials, Kreutsfeldt and Malcomess ... take us on a visual and textual journey through the arrangements and specificities of Johannesburg over time and trace the cointours of the places and no-places that constitute the city as both concrete and imaginary."--Back cover.

This monograph explores the scope for greater private sector participation in the provision of criminal justice services through outsourcing schemes. This includes an analysis of the concept of outsourcing, its risks and benefits, and a discussion of the South African government's outsourcing policy.