African Journal of Public Affairs

Although there is awareness of the nature of civil wars and their consequences on human lives in Africa, conflicts triggered by water scarcity have not been explored. The article aims to determine to what extent are watersheds constituting threats to international peace and security. The likelihood of water conflicts is increasing as populations continue to grow and climate change continues to manifest. Water has become a strategic tool and an instrument of ethnic and religious conflicts leading to intrastate and interstate conflicts in Africa and beyond. It led to bloody skirmishes in Tana River, a coastal region of Kenya, in Darfur in the northern region of Sudan and in the Amu Darya basin between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and Israel. The need to enhance mediation and diplomatic negotiation skills, water governance skills, and to deal with impacts of climate change, global warming and the preservation of the environment is significant. The article adopted a qualitative research design in terms of an analytical and exploratory approach.

Public sector recruitment in South Africa has continued to be a topic of much interest, by virtue of being the country’s largest employer, public sector recruitment processes thus attract significant scrutiny. Moreover, graduate employment in the public sector through learnerships, internships and graduate programmes focusing on the youth in particular is regarded as one of the most important initiatives to deal with skills development and youth unemployment which is also alarmingly high. However, concerns on corruption and maladministration in the public sector has affected trust in key public institutions. Subsequently, data from various research institutions such as Afrobarometer and the Human Sciences Research Council indicates that there has been an increase in corruption concerns from South African citizens across the board. Therefore, it is against this backdrop that through a quantitative research methodology this article seeks to explore what effect, if any, does public corruption perceptions have on young graduates’ attitudes towards public sector recruitment processes, trust in public institutions and their desires towards working in the public sector upon graduating.

This study investigates ways in which South Africa could attract, recruit, retain and integrate critical skilled immigrants into different sectors of the economy to meet its acute shortage of skills needed for growth and development. This study focusses on Gauteng province using a primary qualitative survey. The study finds that South Africa attracts critical skills due to its advanced tertiary level education infrastructure, proximity to the home countries of African skilled migrants, relatively better institutional quality, as well as somewhat better economic outlook and better career prospects at a higher level of skills. On the contrary, high crime levels, social unrest and general anti-foreigner sentiments are factors that make South Africa unattractive to critical skilled migrants. South Africa also needs to transition from a reactive to a proactive policy stance in its immigration policy management for critical skills, improve service delivery and design programmes to properly integrate migrants into South African society. South Africa’s global competitiveness in the hunt for the best and brightest will be greatly enhanced if its attractive attributes are properly leveraged and deterrent characteristics comprehensively addressed.