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This research paper by the Public Affairs Research Institute (PARI) evaluates the local government fiscal framework in South Africa, arguing that the structural assumptions made in the 1998 White Paper on Local Government are fundamentally unsound and have led to widespread municipal financial distress and the erosion of the social wage.

This report examines the flight, reception, and long-term integration of Mozambican refugees in South Africa following the Mozambican civil war (1979–1992). It details the role of ethnic solidarity in the Gazankulu homeland, the creation of a precarious underclass in the agricultural labour markets of the lowveld, and the failures of the UNHCR repatriation programme. The author argues that despite various amnesties and a 2004 Constitutional Court ruling granting access to social grants, many former refugees remain de facto undocumented and socially marginalized due to structural economic dependence on cheap labour and deep-seated xenophobia.