The book reflects academically on important and relevant ethical fields from a multidimensional South African context. The book challenges conventional borders from different ethical, theological, philosophical, economic and cultural perspectives with insight and expertise and seeks to add academic-ethical value, locally and globally, with its different points of departure deeply embedded in justice. From a mainly qualitative methodological perspective, this scholarly book demonstrates that ethics requires analytical thinking and critical people who, in an existentially and emancipatory way, can help make the world a more just, decent and humane place in which to live. The authors, who represent different academic and cultural backgrounds, present in their respective chapters their research systematically, intersectionally and constructivistically, based on profound theoretical analysis and reasoning. This epistemology results in an act of knowing that actively gives meaning and order to the reality to which it is responding. By doing this, they point out that people are in an ongoing process of becoming more human – allowing ourselves and our fellow human beings to flourish and to reach fuller potential through justice-based ethical reflection and action.

The South African population is ageing in an interesting manner. The median age was 26 in 2015, but the proportionate share of older cohorts is increasing rapidly. The older cohorts face numerous challenges around economic participation. This article highlights the research findings of a statistical analysis of the population's demographic profile, a causal layered analysis to deepen the understanding of the problem, and the generation of a set of scenarios to imagine the plausible futures of economic participation by people aged 55 and older toward 2030. Findings indicate that planners who presently focus most of their efforts on the youth may be surprised by the exponential increase in the numbers of older people. The article further describes the use of the four causal layered analysis levels (litany, systems, worldviews and myths/metaphors) to give structure to and enable richer comparisons between the different scenarios in a set.

The end of the Cold War, new global circumstances, and the democratisation process in South Africa have resulted in a transformation of the way in which defence matters in this country are evaluated and approached. From 1960 to the end of the 1980s defence spending decisions in South Africa were largely influenced by non-economic considerations, such as the perceived need to protect national values from foreign aggression and internal threats to stability, the ideological inclination of the government of the day, and a sense of inertia and incrementalism in respect of defence budgets. However, since 1989 the greater unlikelihood of an imminent foreign act of conventional aggression against the country and the advent of multi-party democracy, have served to highlight the possible trade-off between defence and socio-economic welfare (the so-called 'guns versus butter' debate). Indeed, since the end of the 1980s real defence expenditure in South Africa has declined by almost 60 percent, while the defence burden (defence expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product) has fallen to below 2,0 percent.

This paper reviews the basic economic concepts relevant to international public goods production and applies them to the case of security and peace in southern Africa. To this end, it extracts from the literature a set of fundamental features that help determine the likelihood of success of any collective action and applies these features to the current southern African context.

This article examines the relationship between defence expenditure and economic performance in South Africa, both prior to and after that country's first fully democratic election in 1994. Prior to 1994 defence expenditure decisions were largely dominated by non-economic factors; since then defence spending has declined in reaction to, inter alia, the need to address a number of socio-economic inequities.After 1975 in particular, military industrialisation in South Africa placed a disproportionately high burden on the country's industrial resources and natural economic and technical capabilities. However, although this suggests that the opportunity cost of domestic arms production has been fairly high, the country's poor economic and development performance since the mid-1970s is a function of underlying structural deficiencies and institutional constraints rather than the consequence of inordinately high defence spending levels.

This paper provides a contribution to the growing corpus of knowledge and understanding of the interaction between economic growth, and defence spending in South Africa by specifying a Keynesian simultaneous equation model and estimating the system for the period 1961 to 1997. The model contains a growth equation, a savings equation, a trade balance equation and a military burden equation and when estimated by single equation and systems estimation methods is relatively well specified. There is evidence of an overall negative effect of military spending on the economy over this period, though the significance of individual coefficients is low. There is certainly no evidence of any positive impact, suggesting that cuts in military spending do present an opportunity for improved macroeconomic performance.

This article explores the channels through which defence can either promote or compromise economic development. It reviews the roles of the military as an agent for modernisation in developing societies and as an absorber of scarce resources. The article then examines how the military affected development in South Africa in the past and how it could do so in the future, given the decline in defence expenditure.

This paper attempts to compare the effect of a corporate tax holiday with that of a subsidy on the behaviour of the individual firm. Assuming the subsidy equals the amount of tax paid by a firm operating under the subsidy system, we find that the firm's net profit will be greater under the tax holiday than under the subsidy regime. Similarly, if the subsidy exceeds the tax by an amount that would equalize the profits made by the (“marginal”) firm under the two regimes, then it is found that firms with higher than “average” unit costs would opt for the subsidy system; conversely, firms with a low cost structure would maximize profits by selecting the tax holiday. Finally, a multiperiod analysis of the particular choice facing prospective manufacturers in Ciskei, shows that the firm would normally choose the subsidy system except if the current tax exceeded the subsidy at the output level representing maximum profit under the tax holiday.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the likely effect of the abolition of company tax on the Ciskeian economy. After considering the case for and against a corporate tax exemption, the issues involved are analysed on two levels. Using aggregate data, drawn from available census data, we find that most firms seem likely either to prefer the existing package of industrial concessions to the tax holiday, or to be indifferent to either option. Similarly, a recent survey of manufacturing enterprises in Ciskei indicated that the majority would prefer the incentive package. Firms that might be attracted by the tax‐free option are likely to be relatively profitable, subsidiaries of multinational companies, and enjoying a higher turnover per worker than firms opting for the incentive package.