The King Report on Corporate Governance (1994) evoked unprecedented interest in corporate governance in South Africa. This does not mean that corporate governance was not an issue of concern before the release of this historical report. To the contrary, corporate governance in its broader sense has been at stake since the inception of the first publicly owned companies in South Africa. This article intends to give an overview of corporate governance in South Africa. It starts by making a distinction between (...) broad and narrow conceptions of corporate governance. Before applying this distinction to the practice of corporate governance in South Africa, a brief overview of the corporate landscape in South Africa is provided. Then the South African situation with regard to broad and narrow corporate governance respectively is analysed. The article ends with a discussion of the review of corporate governance that currently is in the making in South Africa. Throughout the article both the financial and ethical dimensions of corporate governance is attended to. (shrink)

In this article, Christi van der Westhuizen's sociopolitical contribution in her publication, Sitting Pretty: White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa, is reviewed. In light of the official end of apartheid in 1994, South Africans are attempting to define a new identity. Van der Westhuizen's publication focusses on how the identity of white Afrikaans women, as both the oppressor and the oppressed, influences and contributes to the endeavour of a search for new identity. In deconstructing and re-imagining new identity, Van (...) der Westhuizen deconstructs the 'supporting scaffolding' of Afrikaner identity and examines the impact of white patriarchal hegemony that silences the voice of women, sexual minorities and black consciousness. The review concludes with the emphasis on the transformative role of shame, that is, the willingness to expose the false sense of goodness that we had of ourselves, as pointed out by Van der Westhuizen. In this regard, the recognition of the intersectionality of people's experiences becomes a key aspect of the endeavour of a search for new identity. (shrink)

The paper takes up the objections raised in van der Auwera (1993) against the joint analysis of the German particles schon, noch and erst published in Löbner (1989). Central to my analysis is the claim that the particles are organized in duality groups of four to which essentially the same type of analysis applies. Van der Auwera (1993) claims that already/schon, in its basic use, is different from the other three particles in having a more complex meaning which results in (...) an opposition of the particle to finally/endlich. As to the narrow-focus temporal uses he argues that the duality approach is inadequate in including improper members on the one hand, and excluding relevant particles on the other.The criticism will be refuted. After a recollection of the duality analysis in Section 2, van der Auwera's arguments against the general design of my analysis are dealt with in Section 3. It will be argued that his own analysis of already/schon and its group, as far as it is supported by the data, does not really differ from my approach. In Section 4, I will deal with the claim that finally/endlich contradicts already/schon, which if correct would provide an indirect argument against the duality analysis of schon and noch. I will argue that endlich is set apart from the particles of the schon group by the presence of a non-descriptive, expressive, meaning component. For its descriptive meaning, endlich logically entails schon and belongs to a parallel duality group of its own together with noch immer. The apparent incompatibility of finally/endlich and already/schon can be explained as a conflict between what is foregrounded by each particle, respectively. In Section 5, I will argue that, contrary to van der Auwera's claims, the narrow focus uses of schon and its kin do form proper duality groups. The existence of such uses of noch, not treated in Löbner (1989), does not invalidate the duality analysis of schon and erst. Rather, noch in its relevant narrow-focus use belongs to yet another duality group together with its dual nur noch. (shrink)

A critical examination of the history of theories and uses of concepts such as 'primitive' and 'savage' in the academic study of religion in imperial, colonial and postcolonial contexts is particularly urgent in our time with its demands to decolonise Western models of knowledge production. In Savage Systems and Empire of Religion, David Chidester has contributed to this project by relating the invention and use of terms such as 'religion', 'primitive' and 'savage' by theorists of religion in European imperial metropoles (...) to South African colonial and indigenous contexts. This article intends to take Chidester's project further by relating Gerardus Van der Leeuw's phenomenological analysis of 'primitive mentality' to Chidester's analysis and postcolonial critique of imperial theories of religion. By taking animism and dreams in Chidester's and Van der Leeuw's works as example, it is argued that in spite of the latter's decontextualised use of ethnological material, a fundamental shift occurred in the judgement of 'primitive' religion from Tylor's evolutionary to Van der Leeuw's phenomenological analysis, which is contrary to claims according to which modern theories are unanimously denigratory of indigenous religions. (shrink)

This article discusses the design methodology of the Benedictine monk-architect Dom Hans van der Laan, famous for his manifesto De Architectonische Ruimte, in which he proposed his ideal elementary architecture. In the past, this ideal achitecture was linked to Van der Laan’s proportional system and to his general approach as an architect rather than to his Catholic background. Consequently, the changing conceptual landscape in which he developed his ideas on the relation between religion and design was neglected. Yet, as this (...) article will argue, it is only by carefully exploring the relation between Van der Laan’s attempts to define a fundamental architecture and his ambition to understand the religious traditions they may have sprung from that one can understand how his religion and design methodology influenced each other. Based on unedited primary sources, this article reveals forgotten interconnections between Van der Laan’s religious and architectural thinking. By analysing these motifs, it offers new insights on the interrelationships between religion and architecture that go beyond the traditionalist-modernist dichotomy. (shrink)

The BPR assumes that we already know how sentences are partitioned into focused and backgrounded material, and this is quite legitimate, given the literature on the topic , von Stechow ). If the BPR was true, no more would have to be said about the meaning of focus. The behavior of whatever inferences are generated by backgrounding could be taken care of by theories dealing with the projection of presuppositions of the familiar kind, the presuppositions of definite descriptions, clefts, or (...) factives, for example. This is a non-trivial and interesting claim. (shrink)