Browsing by Subject "Private sector"

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    ‘Exploring the potential of the law of delict in South Africa to address climate harms caused by private actors'
    (2025) Naicker, Terysha Tiara; Murcott, Melanie Jean
    This dissertation explores whether South Africa's law of delict, which allows individuals to claim damages for harm caused by the wrongful and culpable conduct of another, can evolve to address climate harms caused by private actors in the country. It does so in response to carbon-emitting companies (polluters) being identified, through advancing climate science, as primary contributors to climate change due to their sizable historic and cumulative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, meanwhile, marginalized and vulnerable communities with negligible emissions, particularly in the Global South, are disproportionately affected, suffering widespread climate harm that infringes many mutually reinforcing human rights and compounds existing systemic socio-economic inequalities. In South Africa, this reality threatens the Constitution's transformative goals to achieve social justice. The Constitution mandates that common law evolve in line with its transformative objectives, values, and the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. In light of this constitutional directive and the grave social injustices worsened by climate harm, this research explores whether delict, and its elements (damage, conduct, fault, causation, wrongfulness), can evolve to enable those most affected by climate harm to pursue claims for damages against polluters responsible for substantial historical and ongoing emissions. The research incorporates novel insights from notable foreign strategic private climate litigation concerning polluters' accountability for climate harm, including cases such as Re Greenpeace Southeast Asia, Lliuya v. RWE, Smith v Fonterra and Milieudefensie v. Royal Dutch Shell, and is framed by Murcott's theory of transformative environmental constitutionalism (TEC). Murcott explains that the transformative project's aspiration of social justice cannot be realised without implementing environmentalism, because well-functioning socio-ecological systems (dependent on a stable climate) is a pre-condition for human flourishing. Thus, TEC urges courts to embrace a socio-ecological systems perspective and justice-oriented framing of disputes concerning converging socio-ecological crises, considering how these disputes reflect intersecting social, environmental, and climate injustices to ensure that the adjudication process is responsive to the realities faced by particularly vulnerable groups and environments in the Anthropocene. Therefore, the research, adopting this framing, investigates the potential of delict to evolve along transformative constitutional lines, incorporating environmentalism through TEC, to adequately address climate harm and its underlying systemic causes and impacts, including interlocking social, environmental, and climate injustices.
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    Open Access
    'Going private': a qualitative comparison of medical specialists' job satisfaction in the public and private sectors of South Africa
    (BioMed Central Ltd, 2013) Ashmore, John
    BACKGROUND: There is a highly inequitable distribution of health workers between public and private sectors in South Africa, partly due to within-country migration trends. This article elaborates what South African medical specialists find satisfying about working in the public and private sectors, at present, and how to better incentivize retention in the public sector. METHODS: Seventy-four qualitative interviews were conducted - among specialists and key informants - based in one public and one private urban hospital in South Africa. Interviews were coded to determine common job satisfaction factors, both financial and non-financial in nature. This served as background to a broader study on the impacts of specialist 'dual practice', that is, moonlighting. All qualitative specialist respondents were engaged in dual practice, generally working in both public and private sectors. Respondents were thus able to compare what was satisfying about these sectors, having experience of both. RESULTS: Results demonstrate that although there are strong financial incentives for specialists to migrate from the public to the private sector, public work can be attractive in some ways. For example, the public hospital sector generally provides more of a team environment, more academic opportunities, and greater opportunities to feel 'needed' and 'relevant'. However, public specialists suffer under poor resource availability, lack of trust for the Department of Health, and poor perceived career opportunities. These non-financial issues of public sector dissatisfaction appeared just as important, if not more important, than wage disparities. CONCLUSIONS: The results are useful for understanding both what brings specialists to migrate to the private sector, and what keeps some working in the public sector. Policy recommendations center around boosting public sector resources and building trust of the public sector through including health workers more in decision-making, inter alia. These interventions may be more cost-effective for retention than wage increases, and imply that it is not necessarily just a matter of putting more money into the public sector to increase retention.