Piet van Zyl

Piet van Zyl may refer to:

South Africa

South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost sovereign state in Africa. It is bounded on the south by 2,798 kilometers of coastline of southern Africa stretching along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, on the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, and on the east by Mozambique and Swaziland, and surrounding the kingdom of Lesotho. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area, and with close to 53 million people, is the world's 24th-most populous nation. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere.

South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a wide variety of cultures, languages, and religions. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the constitution's recognition of 11 official languages, which is among the highest number of any country in the world. Two of these languages are of European origin: Afrikaans developed from Dutch and serves as the first language of most white and coloured South Africans; English reflects the legacy of British colonialism, and is commonly used in public and commercial life, though it is fourth-ranked as a spoken first language.

Julius Malema

Julius Sello Malema (born 3 March 1981) is the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a South African political party, which he founded in July 2013. He previously served as President of the African National Congress Youth League from 2008 to 2012. Malema was a member of the ANC until his expulsion from the party in April 2012. He occupies a notably controversial position in South African public and political life, having risen to prominence with his support for African National Congress president, and later President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma. He has been described by both Zuma and the Premier of Limpopo Province as the "future leader" of South Africa. Less favourable portraits paint him as a "reckless populist" with the potential to destabilise South Africa and to spark racial conflict.

Malema was convicted of hate speech in March 2010 and again in September 2011. In November 2011 he was found guilty of sowing divisions within the ANC and, in conjunction with his two-year suspended sentence in May 2010, was suspended from the party for five years. In 2011, he was also convicted of hate speech after singing "Dubula iBunu" ("Shoot the Boer"). On 4 February 2012 the appeal committee of the African National Congress announced that it found no reason to "vary" a decision of the disciplinary committee taken in 2011, but did find evidence in aggravation of circumstances, leading them to impose the harsher sentence of expulsion from the ANC.

Institute for Security Studies

The Institute for Security Studies, also known as ISS or ISS Africa (to distinguish itself from other similarly named institutes in other parts of the world), described itself as follows: "an African organisation which aims to enhance human security on the continent. It does independent and authoritative research, provides expert policy analysis and advice, and delivers practical training and technical assistance." It is headquartered in Pretoria, South Africa.

The institute was recognized as the third best African NGO in Sub-Saharan Africa by the Global Go To Think Tanks Report 2011.

History

The Institute for Security Studies was originally established as the Institute for Defence Policy in 1991. ISS began with a focus in civil-military relations and democratic reform in the waning years of apartheid South Africa, but has since evolved to encompass a wide range of issue areas of human security across Africa, including: human rights, arms control, corruption and governance, climate change, and crime and criminal justice, among others. Since its inception, the Institute for Security Studies has grown into a pan-African research institution, partnering with the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, and a host of governments, institutions, and organizations throughout the world.

Security studies

Security studies, also known as International security studies, which advanced rapidly during the Cold War and is traditionally held to be an academic sub-field of the wider discipline of international relations. However, the term is also often extended to include the academic study of Homeland Security.

At its core, international security studies, as an area of inquiry, takes organized violence as its focus, and the steps individuals and aggregations of individuals can take to both employ organized violence effectively and, much more importantly, to protect themselves from organized violence (accumulation of knowledge in the former being essential for the accumulation of knowledge in the latter). Thus subjects can range from the micro—weapons types, effectiveness, tactics, human-weapons interfaces, individual and group motivations—to the macro; including the causes of war, nuclear strategy, military doctrine, defense spending, and conventional and unconventional strategy.