Editor’s note
As 2025 concludes, the December edition of the HSRC Review reflects a year shaped by global uncertainty and local resilience, highlighting research that informs South Africa’s social, political and economic landscape.
The opening article examines public preferences for including immigrants in social welfare programmes, using data from the 2020 South African Social Attitudes Survey to explore how ideology, trust and attitudes towards immigrants influence support for inclusion.
Themes of equity continue with coverage of the Women20 Summit, hosted in Johannesburg under South Africa’s G20 presidency. The resulting W20 Communiqué calls on global leaders to accelerate gender-equality commitments, noting that closing employment and entrepreneurship gaps could boost global GDP by over 20%.
Another contribution analyses the tensions within the African Continental Free Trade Area, where national sovereignty concerns and inward-looking economic strategies continue to limit regional integration.
A feature on publishing ethics warns of predatory journals and paper mills that undermine scholarly credibility, underscoring the importance of rigorous peer review. New HSRC spatial analysis of 9.6 million birth records maps registration hotspots and recommends targeted outreach to improve timely registration.
Additional pieces examine health messaging, hospital detention, spatial petrol-station regulation, digital governance, AI’s labour implications, and two new HSRC Press books.
Please feel free to contact our researchers at the email addresses provided below each article.
Warm regards,
The HSRC Review team
Featured articles from the Review
The HSRC is committed to the dissemination of research-based information. One of the vehicles for this activity is its quarterly magazine, the HSRC Review, which contains accessible articles of recent research outputs, expert opinion and success stories of collaborative projects.
The HSRC Review assists the organisation in adhering to its mandate to serve the public purpose. It informs the making and monitoring of effective policy, helps to evaluate its implementation, and sparks public debate by disseminating research results.
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