This paper presents the findings of baseline assessments on psychoactive substance use that were conducted in selected sites in South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia between December 2000 and September 2001. The assessments focused on the status of substance use and prevention resources. They showed that a wide range of substances were used—especially alcohol, tobacco and painkillers—and included substances taken by injection. Usage was particularly widespread in settings where trade in substances offered a means of survival. Institutional resources for prevention of substance use were limited. The social circles within which young people lived set an example and directly encouraged substance use, particularly the use of alcohol, tobacco, and, to a lesser extent, cannabis. These findings suggest the need for policy and programs that give balanced weight to demand and supply reduction, target young people, improve young people's living conditions, and ensure youths' participation in prevention activities.
Introduction: People’s confidence in the health system's capability in managing the COVID-19 pandemic can determine public support, risk perceptions, and compliance to the required behaviors during the pandemic. Therefore, this paper investigated people’s perception of health system capability to manage the COVID-19 pandemic in different spatial areas across the country using data from an online survey. Methods: Multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine factors associated with people’s perception of the health system capability to manage the COVID-19 pandemic at the national and provincial levels. Spatial comparative analysis was conducted to contrast spatial density indicators of the number of hospitals, hospital beds, and ICU beds per given population across various provinces. Results: Findings showed that South Africans had low confidence in the health system capability, with only two in five (40.7%) reporting that they thought that the country’s health system was able to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Sex and knowledge on COVID-19 were significantly associated with the people’s perception of the health system capability to manage the pandemic at the national level and in four of the nine provinces. Conclusion: Overall, the findings of this study clearly highlight challenges facing the country’s health system, both perceived or real, that needed to be addressed as part of the preparation for the COVID-19 pandemic. Timeous implementation of a countrywide National Health Insurance (NHI) system is now more critical than ever in improving healthcare outcomes of the South African population beyond the existence of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Since its introduction, affirmative action has become an increasingly controversial policy to address labour market inequalities in South Africa. Yet, in spite of this public debate, nationally representative, empirical research on patterns of opposition to and support for the redress policy remains relatively circumscribed. In this article, attitudinal data collected over the past decade is employed to examine the factors that influence these perceptions, and the extent to which they have been changing. The results reveal that attitudes to race- and gender-based affirmative action in employment have been favourable on aggregate over the last decade. The specified beneficiary of affirmative action appears to matter, with more positive evaluations evident when the policies target women and disabled persons than when racial disadvantage is targeted. Furthermore, while there is a broad-based, resolute belief in racial equality in principle, there is less agreement on the implementation of particular redress policies. Affirmative action for instance enjoys less support than compensatory policies or those focused on addressing class-based disadvantage. An element of self-interest appears to be informing evaluations among designated beneficiary groups, with black respondents more inclined than other population groups to support race-based affirmative action and women more partial to gender-based affirmative action than men. While the beneficiaries of affirmative action have typically been the better educated and skilled among the designated groups, highest support for this policy is reported by the more marginalized and vulnerable who are least likely to have personally benefitted from affirmative action implementation to date. This support may reflect a sense of collective self-interest or possibly an expectation that this redress policy will bring benefits in the future. Finally, views on whether affirmative action is producing a more skilled workforce and socially cohesive society are again broadly positive, though the profile of those believing in such outcomes deviates somewhat from those supporting affirmative action generally. In this instance, those least likely to have gained from affirmative action in practice are those least confident in the policy’s outcomes, possibly due to a gap between perceived performance of affirmative action policy and expected benefits.
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