The new Cooperatives Act 14 of 2005 was promulgated in August 2005 to promote the development of sustainable cooperatives in South Africa and their use as a vehicle to develop small enterprises. This paper uses the new institutional economics (NIE) to highlight problems created by the Act. Case...

This study aims to develop a robust methodology for measuring financial performance of equity-share schemes. Several studies have investigated various aspects of performance of these schemes but no single study has yet measured their performance using an objective set of criteria. Four...

Census surveys of land transactions show that 203,300 hectares of KwaZulu-Natal's commercial farmland transferred to previously disadvantaged South Africans over the period 1997-2003. This represents 3.8 per cent of the farmland originally available for redistribution in 1994. The annual rate of...

This paper extends a previous study in South Africa aimed at developing methodology for assessing the performance of equity-share schemes. The previous study proposed four broad criteria to measure performance: poverty alleviation; empowerment and participation; institutional arrangements and...

Regression analysis is used to delineate significant determinants associated with the use of Internet applications by commercial sugarcane farm businesses in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. Eighty-six percent of farm businesses surveyed had Internet connections and 83 percent used Internet...

The sugar industry is an important contributor to the South African (SA) economy, with average annual production estimated at 2.5 million tons of sugar. This study aims to quantify actual use of management instruments by a sample of commercial sugarcane farmers in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) that are...

This study identifies sources of risk that commercial sugarcane farmers in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa, presently perceive to pose the greatest threat to the viability of their businesses. Sugarcane contributes approximately 82% of the income from field crops in KZN, with...