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These essays give a multidimensional perspective on South Africa's democracy as it turns twenty, and will be of interest to general readers while being particularly useful to students and researchers.

The death of Nelson Mandela on 5 December 2013 was in a sense a wake-up call for South Africans, and a time to reflect on what has been achieved since ‘those magnificent days in late April 1994’ (as the editors of this volume put it) ‘when South Africans of all colours voted for the first time in a democratic election’. In a time of recall and reflection it is important to take account, not only of the dramatic events that grip the headlines, but also of other signposts that indicate the shape and characteristics of a society. The New South African Review looks, every year, at some of these signposts, and the essays in this fourth volume of the series again examine and analyse a broad spectrum of issues affecting the country. They tackle topics as diverse as the state of organised labour; food retailing; electricity generation; access to information; civil courage; the school system; and – looking outside the country to its place in the world – South Africa’s relationships with north-east Asia, with Israel and with its neighbours in the southern African region. Taken together, these essays give a multidimensional perspective on South Africa’s democracy as it turns twenty, and will be of interest to general readers while being particularly useful to students and researchers.

Purpose - To encourage the ongoing transformation of the UN system by conceptualising leadership challenges within a cybernetics systems paradigm.Design methodology approach - A grounded theory methodology was used to explore the \"paradox of plenty\" within the UN system in Southern Africa - how the system can more effectively metabolise the considerable latent creative synergic potential within it, to respond to the challenges of HIV AIDS in Africa.Findings - Statements from UN leaders call for a new paradigm of humanitarian assistance if the challenges of HIV and AIDS are to be met. However, conversations with a wide range of people both within the UN system and closely connected to it suggest a disconnect between what the system does and what the system espouses - a bias toward \"doing things right\" rather than \"doing the right thing\". Drawing on the writings of Berry (eco-spirituality), Beer (VSM), Argyris and Schon (double loop learning), Hock (chaordic organisation) and Ackoff (corporate planning) the sub-optimal organisational performance is interpreted as an \"autistic\" condition, whereby organisations become \"so locked up inside themselves that nothing and no one can get in\". Interactive dialogue with primary health care workers in Swaziland generated five interconnected principles for developing a systemic response to HIV and AIDS. These are proposed as \"antidotes\" to counteract autistic tendencies within the UN system.Research limitations implications - The principles are offered for discussion and refinement through further research by cyberneticians and systems thinkers.Originality value - If internalised by UN leadership the perplexing challenges that HIV AIDS is posing could be met with renewed confidence and hope.