Editor’s note

One month into South Africa’s spring season, we near the end of a brutal year. The war in Iran sent fuel prices spiking, tariffs disrupted trade, and floods in Nepal and Tibet – triggered by a glacier collapse – wiped out entire valley communities.

Those events sharpen a question running through this edition of the HSRC Review: how do the structures we create – markets, policy, institutions, language and technology – shape our ability to live, work, participate and thrive? And how do forces beyond our control, such as climate change, reshape how we live?

Our opening article argues that small-scale food actors – street vendors, distributors and urban farmers – are central to household food security and poverty alleviation, and should be supported, not criminalised. A related piece examines food loss and waste, where edible food is discarded while millions go hungry.

One study asks whether industrial development can create jobs in remote rural districts; another traces the education–employment mismatch that leaves young people neither earning nor learning. We ask what happens when poverty, violence, climate shocks and disrupted schooling accumulate, eroding a young person’s belief in any future.

Further articles cover language and science communication, modern versus traditional views of science, community engagement on environmental challenges, the COVID-19 tobacco ban, and how health chatbots could improve access.

Marking Heritage Month, we feature an HSRC study of women who have undergone initiation and the meanings they attach to it – a cultural institution too often described from the outside.

We also examine social integration and neighbourhood relations between South Africans and African immigrants.

See also our HSRC Press page, featuring two recent publications.

The HSRC Review team

review@hsrc.ac.za