During the 1960s, in a country divided by racial strife, the music of Berry Gordy Jr.’s Motown Records helped bring people together.

Motown was noted for star performers like Mary Wells, The Miracles, The Supremes, The Temptations, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. But, behind the scenes, a talented group of lesser known women were driving the hits in Hitsville U.S.A.

I’m a scholar of popular culture and author of the biography “It’s No Wonder: The Life and Times of Motown’s Legendary Songwriter Sylvia Moy.” Researching my book inspired me to find other women who contributed to the Detroit label’s era of chart dominance and helped change the music industry, despite going largely unrecognized for their efforts.

I listened to Motown growing up, but it wasn’t until 2021, while sitting at home during the pandemic, that I discovered Moy’s history as the lyricist for Stevie Wonder and how she helped revive his early career.

Because Moy died in 2017, I wasn’t able to speak with her for the book. Instead I researched her life by reading countless interviews she gave, along with talking to her former colleagues at Motown, family and ethnomusicologists, who are scholars that study music through the lens of culture.

Architect of the early sound

When Gordy was organizing his company, Janie Bradford was one of the original five founding members who arrived in 1958. She was the label’s first secretary and its first female songwriter after co-writing, with Gordy, the song “Money (That’s What I Want).” That song was released on Tamla Records in 1959 and performed by Barrett Strong. When Motown was incorporated the following year, the song became the label’s first hit record on the R&B chart and Billboard Hot 100.

Later, Bradford co-wrote “Contract on Love” for Wonder and “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby,” first recorded by The Temptations and later, Marvin Gaye. Bradford, who later became Motown’s director of writer’s relations, teamed up with pianist Richard “Popcorn” Wylie in the early 1960s to form Janard, a small production company.

Bradford’s collection of poetry is what captured Gordy’s attention, so he encouraged her to be a songwriter. Her witty lyrics told stories about situations that most anyone could relate to – namely, money and love – blended with up-tempo, thumping beats.

Laying the foundation as a producer

Another key figure who paved the way with the Motown sound was Raynoma Gordy Singleton, who was married to Berry Gordy Jr. from 1960 to 1964. She organized Motown during its beginnings by completing the necessary paperwork to incorporate the business. Known as “Miss Ray” to some and “Mother Motown” to others, she located the legendary house at 2648 West Grand Boulevard that became the Motown headquarters and, decades later, the Motown Museum.

In her role as the label’s first executive vice president, she established a tape library. A piano virtuoso and singer, the Cass Technical High School graduate wrote that she was able to play all string and wind instruments. As a result, she became the company’s first female arranger and producer by putting together its first backup vocal group, the Rayber Voices, in 1958.

“Producing records was where the action was controlled – and where the money was to be made,” she wrote in her memoir, “The Untold Story: Berry, Me, and Motown,” which aimed to reclaim her place in the Motown echelon.

During the 1960s, women weren’t considered producers because of broader biases and norms in the male-dominated music industry. Even so, Miss Ray got credit for producing Jimmy Ruffin’s song “Don’t Feel Sorry for Me” in 1961.

Earning a producer’s credit was a sign of legitimacy. Most producers received a songwriting credit and determined who received credit in the liner notes for their contribution to the recording.

While women mostly worked in administrative roles at Motown, there still weren’t any female full-time, in-house songwriters and producers. Like the rest of the music industry back then, Motown’s internal structure was patriarchal with those positions.

The first certified female songwriter and producer

Yet this imbalanced gender dynamic at Motown didn’t stop Sylvia Moy.

There hadn’t been any women producers behind significant, popular songs at Motown until Moy arrived, according to interviews I conducted for her biography.

Motown was at its peak in 1964. Demand for new songs was intense. When the label’s executives realized how skillfully the two audition songs Moy performed were composed, they decided that her future was in songwriting instead of singing.

Discovered by William “Mickey” Stevenson and Marvin Gaye, Moy was hired as the first female in-house songwriter, competing with eminent colleagues like Smokey Robinson, Norman Whitfield and the songwriting trio Holland-Dozier-Holland who wrote 10 of the Supremes’ chart-topping singles. Moy made more history in 1965 after co-writing and co-producing Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright).”

While she received the songwriting credit and helped revive the teenaged Wonder’s career, Moy wasn’t given the producer’s credit, unlike her two male counterparts, Stevenson and Henry “Hank” Cosby.

A lack of recognition stymied Moy’s career opportunities. If a songwriter or producer wasn’t credited, their value could not be validated or established, which made it harder for them to find work at other record labels.

According to my research, Moy revealed that she never got producer credit for any of her work while at Motown. This is why her legacy was buried for so long.

Other tunes she wrote for Wonder were “I Was Made to Love Her,” “My Cherie Amour” and “With A Child’s Heart,” co-written with Vicki Basemore. Moy also wrote Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston’s “It Takes Two” and The Isley Brothers’ “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak For You).” Though songwriter Eddie Holland told me he gave her a co-writing credit for “This Old Heart of Mine,” Moy’s name was not listed on the record, only Holland-Dozier-Holland.

Interviews I conducted with Moy’s family members and research from an ethnomusicologist suggest she was even an uncredited co-writer for Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” his first song as a solo producer, and The Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”

However, Holland denied this claim in an interview with me, though he also admitted that the song’s late co-writer and producer, Norman Whitfield, presented him with the lyrics, and he wasn’t sure where they came from.

Full credit along with creative control

In 1968, Valerie Simpson became Motown’s first female songwriter to also receive a producer credit. This possibly happened because her songwriting partner was her husband, Nickolas Ashford.

Other famous female songwriters like Carole King, Ellie Greenwich and Cynthia Weil also had a prominent husband in the music industry. Sylvia Moy did not, which made what she did unprecedented.

Simpson told Billboard in 2023 that the credit was difficult to attain because so few women were producers back then. It finally happened with the Tammi Terrell and Marvin Gaye song “Ain’t Nothing Like The Real Thing,” with Simpson getting credit for co-writing, co-producing and performing background vocals along with Ashford.

This was their third hit tune by Terrell and Gaye, who also recorded “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Your Precious Love,” in 1967. The following year, they had another hit with “You’re All I Need to Get By,” which Ashford and Simpson also co-wrote, co-produced and did background vocals on.

Simpson became the first Black woman to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. Moy became the second in 2006.

Though female songwriters and producers continue the fight for inclusion in the recording studio, the doors were opened by the tenacious women of Motown. It is because of them that future generations of female creatives know what is possible.

Margena A. Christian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Many parts of the federal government’s budget have been hotly debated in recent weeks.

But budgets are dense documents. There are always important measures that receive very little attention. One of these is planned changes to Australia’s child support system. The government has allocated $182 million over the next four years to make the system “safer and more effective”.

Almost one million children nationally are registered to receive child support every year. The amendments would change the way many parents experience the system and provide for their families.

What are the proposed changes?

The proposed changes would encourage child support to be collected directly from wages more often. About half of child support payment arrangements are made privately, which can be hard to enforce.

The government is also planning to release an online tool to help parents select the most suitable collection method.

The proposed laws would also be more flexible, allowing either parent to switch from private to government collection to recover child support debts.

There’s also funding to crack down on people who repeatedly don’t lodge tax returns to reduce the amount of child support they owe.

A primary aim of these reforms is to address unfair outcomes linked to Family Tax Benefit Part A, a government payment that helps mainly lower-income families (including many single parents) with the cost of raising children.

When child support is unpaid, delayed, or underpaid, payees (mostly mothers) can lose access to higher government payments or face unexpected debts because government payments are linked to expected child support. Single mothers with young children almost always carry the greatest financial burden of non-payment because they are less likely to be employed than other mothers.

Tackling financial abuse

Under the changes, late or unpaid child support is increasingly being framed as financial abuse. According to a government media release:

some parents deliberately choose to weaponise the scheme, including by deliberately minimising or under-reporting income to minimise their child support obligations or by underpaying, not paying or threatening to stop paying their child support.

The government’s budget statement draws on the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s 2025 report The Weaponisation of Child Support. The ombudsman’s media release refers to “widespread manipulation and weaponisation” of child support.

The ombudsman’s report relies heavily on complaints and evidence based on samples recruited through advocacy networks. Given the lack of representative data, claims that the weaponisation of child support is widespread remain difficult to substantiate.

That’s not to say that economic abuse isn’t a serious problem. It certainly is, and it demands urgent action. Women should never be abused or controlled through child support payments.

However, abuse is just one of many problems plaguing the child support system, and one of many reasons why men fail to meet their financial obligations. Framing it all as deliberate abuse risks oversimplifying a complex problem.

Why don’t people pay up?

“Can’t pay” is different from “won’t pay”. It’s not always easy to tell which is going on.

For some separated fathers, rising housing and living costs can make it harder to meet child support obligations consistently.

Of course, these broader financial pressures affect many Australian families, especially single-mother families and children.

Although reliable Australian evidence on the reasons for non-compliance is currently lacking, evidence from the United States shows key reasons for non-payment stem from payers having difficulty finding work or insufficient income despite employment.

These are not reasons for people to avoid paying what they owe, but they do explain that there isn’t always ill intent.

What else needs attention?

There are more fundamental structural challenges facing the child support system that are missed with a narrow focus on financial abuse.

The formula for how child support is calculated is complex, and difficult for many parents to understand. Parental disputes often arise over reported income and parenting arrangements where one extra night of care can significantly change payments.

Child support debt nationally continues to rise. It was $1.6 billion in 2021 but has now reached $2 billion.

Rising debt does not automatically mean rising non-compliance. Old debts can linger for years, and can arise for many reasons besides deliberate non-payment. The Australian National Audit Office is investigating Services Australia’s use of its powers to recover child support debt. Stronger enforcement might follow.

Evidence also shows separated parents often see the child support system as difficult to navigate, administratively heavy and unfair.

While tackling non-compliance and family violence is important, attention is also needed on updating the actual costs of raising children, ensuring the formula remains fair and income support payments are adequate, recognising that many young adults need financial support beyond age 18 and the need for better data to monitor the system.

The current framing of the child support reforms risks alienating fathers, which won’t help compliance. What will help is confronting the identified structural problems facing the child support system and acknowledging the broader economic challenges facing families.

Until these fundamental issues are addressed, and emotionally charged terms such as “weaponisation” don’t dominate the debate, the child support system’s ability to support children and earn public trust remains limited.

Bruce M Smyth receives funding from La Trobe University, and the University of Canberra as an external Chair of its Human Research Ethics Committee. He has received funding from the Australian Government Department of Social Services, and was a member of the Expert Panel on Child Support (2024-2025). The views expressed here are the author's own.

When famous soccer players come to mind, it is usually revered pioneers such as Pelé, Bobby Charlton and Diego Maradona.

Later came Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Samantha Kerr.

But who has heard of Jean-Marc Bosman?

A man who changed soccer forever

Anyone interested in association football (soccer) or sport in general should know about Bosman.

He is responsible for the European Court of Justice’s landmark December 1995 Bosman Ruling (often just called Bosman) that enabled players in Europe to move freely between clubs.

This rather obscure Belgian soccer player, who never represented his country at senior level, is arguably as or more important to the world game and some other sports such as basketball than much more gifted athletes.

Elements of the Bosman story echo the late-19th-century feudalism of the Netflix series The English Game. Akin to peasants unable to switch lords and ladies of the manor, professional soccer players in the late 20th century were still forcibly attached to clubs.

Soccer goes to court

In 1990, Bosman was at the end of his contract with Belgian club RFC Liège and wanted to move to French club Dunkerque.

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Sports can change dramatically in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, these moments create immediate shockwaves. Other times, it’s not until much later that their impact become obvious. This is the second story in a rolling series that explores key (and sometimes long forgotten) moments in sports history.

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Read more: Game changers: how one team’s dominance transformed rugby league forever

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But the clubs could not agree on the mandatory transfer fee and he remained at Liège, outside the first team on reduced wages.

He appealed to the European Court of Justice, which ruled in his favour. It determined preventing athletes from moving freely within the European Union was an unreasonable restraint of trade.

This decision dramatically shifted the balance of power between players, their agents and the associations and clubs.

Within the powerhouse Union of European Football Associations confederation (UEFA), recruiting, retaining and remunerating players became much more complicated.

Bosman did not create today’s overheated transfer market and hyper-commercialised football, but he certainly fuelled it.

One effect was to exacerbate the enormous financial losses of clubs chasing the best players for inflated sums.

This bubble expanded as US private equity firms and Middle Eastern investment funds infused vast amounts of capital into soccer, creating multi-millionaire athletes and loss-making clubs.

UEFA was forced to intervene with financial fair play regulations and, later, financial sustainability rules in an effort to stop clubs haemorrhaging cash.

Mobile players, static fans

Players soon had to pay a physical and psychological price for their newfound riches as leagues and clubs sought to generate more revenue in a globalised sport market.

To the consternation of their “union” – Fédération Internationale des Associations de Footballeurs Professionnels (FIFPRO) – they were soon required to play more games in more competitions and travel on intercontinental promotional tours.

Although centred on Europe, Bosman had a ripple effect across the globe, including in Australia.

While Australian players such as Craig Johnston had long made their fortunes in Europe, the post-Bosman honeypot was especially attractive to the likes of Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka, Mark Schwarzer and others.

Finding long-lost relatives in the European Union sometimes helped with immigration authorities.

One of Bosman’s greatest beneficiaries was the English Premier League (EPL), which was formed in the early 1990s with money from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

The EPL became by far the richest league in Europe after luring the world’s best (and most mobile) athletes. The combined transfer value (the estimated cost of buying their entire squads) of Chelsea’s and Manchester City’s 101 players is around A$5.5 billion.

Ironically, the UK’s Brexit threatened to curtail the sport’s labour supply. But the Bosman mobility template has largely survived.

Bosman also had deeper social and cultural ramifications for the relationships between players and fans. The former transitioned from proto-employee to small businessperson selling athletic services to the highest bidder.

This was good for the bank balances of professionals with short, precarious careers.

But hometown fans, unlike most athletes, are static rather than mobile in their loyalties. They tend to regard some players as money-grubbing mercenaries, while perhaps hypocritically welcoming big-money recruits from other clubs.

Bosman helped widen the gap between the celebrity player and everyday fan, exposing professional soccer’s corporate-capitalist underbelly and disenchanting many romantics.

Soccer culture has changed substantially as a result, dramatically exacerbating the inequalities between apex predator and tiddler clubs.

Those same inequalities are reproduced among players. The still-developing women’s game has seen professionalisation and Bosman-inspired mobility enable some players to prosper in relative terms, while many more still need to supplement their incomes outside the game.

What happened to Bosman?

What became of the man whose legal victory was so important to these developments?

Now in his 60s, Bosman benefited little from the ruling, ending up bankrupt and divorced, an alcoholic with a conviction for assaulting his partner.

His life is a far cry from those of the many fabulously rich footballers for whom he paved the way.

But his impact on soccer is still being felt today. Thirty years after the Bosman Ruling, the Justice for Players foundation served notice of a class action against FIFA, football’s governing body, and several European football associations.

Involving more than 100,000 players, the action seeks compensation for lost income since 2002 attributed to FIFA’s restrictions on player transfers.

The similarity does not end there.

French player Lassana Diarra sparked the dispute after he was obstructed from moving between Russian and Belgian clubs in 2016. His lawyer, Jean-Louis Dupont, represented Bosman in his case and is advising the new class action.

This latest development demonstrates the 2020 documentary Bosman: The Player Who Changed Football was not exaggerating – the shock of the Bosman Ruling continues to reverberate around the world game and beyond.

David Rowe has received several Australian Research Council grants underpinned by sociology and related interdisciplinary domains, with the place of the sport-media nexus in contemporary cultural citizenship a consistent area of analytical concern.

Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson has thrown himself into fighting the reduction of the capital gains tax discount in Labor’s budget, as well as the abolition of negative gearing on existing properties. But as treasurer Jim Chalmers recently pointed out in parliament, quoting from Wilson’s 2020 book The New Social Contract, these are changes he has advocated for himself.

“Capital gains from appreciation of having and holding assets are taxed at half the applied rate, effectively entrenching the benefit of having and holding assets that can only exist if you are established,” the book reads. “There is no intergenerational justice in such preferential arrangements.”

While the capital gains and negative gearing changes passed in the lower house last week, they are still to face the Senate.

When Wilson was appointed shadow treasurer earlier this year, Chalmers criticised his counterpart’s “dangerous ideology”. (Encapsulated in his lack of support for “Medicare, penalty rates, superannuation, work from home”.)

In drawing on Wilson’s book, Chalmers was defending the very modest attempts in the budget to shift the balance between taxing labour and capital, and to create a more level playing field, in which income from different sources is taxed differently.

He could also have quoted this:

Favourable treatment should not be extended to income derived from the holding or investment of capital that is principally beneficial to established interests. Indeed such income should be treated consistently with the income derived from labour and the application of skills.

In other words, tax paid on income from labour should be aligned with tax paid on income from investments. Which would seem to support the budget’s proposed changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing.

Intergenerational injustice

In fact, Wilson’s book argues for a far more radical overhaul of our taxation system than the budget advocates. This includes an increase in the GST and a rethink of the preferential treatment of the family home and of superannuation.

Referring to age-related benefits and tax-free superannuation, he writes:

There is a lack of intergenerational justice when those who have had the opportunity to hold (and do hold) the wealth of the nation are paying lower tax rates while having the most redistributed to them by the tax payer.

He points out the direct transfer of wealth from younger people who are “having a go” to older ones, who have “had their go”.

He also worries that more Australians are relying on their parents for help in buying their first property, entrenching privilege. This, he argues, breaches Australian liberalism’s promise of equal opportunity to get ahead, through hard work and individual enterprise.

He stops short, however, of recommending the obvious conclusion to this argument: an estate or inheritance tax, to weaken the effects of inherited privilege.

What is the New Social Contract?

Wilson’s book argues that small-l liberals need to offer Australians a social contract that places the interests of the individual at the core of government, concentrating on decentralising power and increasing home ownership.

Liberals, he says, need to restore the balance between freedom and justice, after neoliberalism – with its focus on free markets above everything else – tilted it too far in favour of freedom. “We need to rediscover the place of justice within a liberal world view […] that leaves neoliberalism behind,” he writes.

Wilson analyses justice in terms of equality of opportunity and intergenerational equality. And he invokes British philosopher Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between negative liberty (the absence of constraint) and positive liberty – which provides the conditions for people to be free to live their best life.

Wilson is to be commended for his effort to think hard about what liberalism means in today’s society. But his book has one glaring fault.

Labor shares many liberal values

Wilson is right that liberalism is Australia’s foundational political philosophy. He makes good use of politics professor (and former Howard government minister) David Kemp’s five-volume history of Australian liberalism. But he writes as if the Liberal Party were its only vehicle. It is not.

There is little explicit discussion of the Labor Party. Wilson’s book argues that socialism and centralised planning are the opposites of liberalism, but its unspoken assumption is that Labor supports both these things. However, the Labor Party shares many liberal values with its opponent – and it always has.

Apart from a few prewar radical socialists and communists, both sides of Australian politics have always supported civil liberties, private property and a mixed economy.

Where they have differed, and still do, is over the balance between private and public provision, between the role of the market and the role of government (or the state) in the distribution of resources.

Labor for more, Liberals for less: but neither for all, or none.

Overwhelming resentment damages societies

There is plenty of scope here for fruitful debates about policy. For example, Wilson puts forward plausible arguments against compulsory superannuation for people who can’t afford a house.

But the Liberal Party needs to respond to the Labor Party as it is. It should stop its lazy demonising of Albanese’s Labor as socialist and the worst government Australia has ever had. Governing is hard; it is better when oppositions are constructive.

Wilson approvingly quotes 18th-century philosopher and economist Adam Smith:

While individuals can disagree, if they have a continuing interest in the way their interests are advanced by the existing order, then the disagreement will never escalate to risk the legitimacy of the existing order […] Society struggles when resentment becomes so great that differing parties no longer share a common interest.

On paper, Wilson is thoughtful. In parliament and on the hustings, his performative outrage overwhelms his thinking – and his capacity to contribute to the development of good policy.

Judith Brett was taught by David Kemp in 1967.

Threats and deadly conflict over migration are spreading fast in South Africa. This is hugely worrying and could result in widespread injury and killings, as it has in the past.

The region’s investment prospects could be dimmed too, due to perceptions of political instability.

The need for effective responses is real and urgent. The death toll, while disputed, is rising, and reports of marches, threats, sacking of dwellings and violence are widespread across South Africa.

Anti-foreigner hysteria is being driven by online campaigns which appear to be highly organised. They include the use of faked information and graphics.

It is also being driven by campaign leaders and by politicians who support campaigns to root out foreigners, either actively or simply by justifying the arguments used by the more dangerous activists. The UN secretary general, Amnesty International and several foreign governments, including those of Mozambique, Nigeria and Ghana, have berated South Africa for not responding appropriately to anti-migrant mobilisation.

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Read more: South Africans are far less tolerant of migrants than before – hotspots, drivers and solutions

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In a televised address on Sunday 7 May 2026, the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, outlined various initiatives to lessen the conflicts over migration. But was this a coherent response, or a missed opportunity to make real progress?

The core of the response was the five-point plan agreed to by a special cabinet committee meeting last week. The points included a law enforcement crackdown (including intensifying deportations), establishing dedicated immigration courts, rooting out employment of undocumented workers, securing borders, and tackling corruption (including a reform of identity systems.)

Ramaphosa admitted that economic conditions and the poor state of many public services explained why people were desperate and that grievances, including grievances about the influx of undocumented migrants, were “real”. Some have interpreted his stance as justifying the association of foreigners with the grievances that poor South Africans have.

Based on my work as a political economist in migration governance over the past decade, I know that virtually all the specific actions mentioned in the five parts of the plan had already been announced by the South African government, though not as a concerted platform to address the current crisis. Yet implementation has been painfully slow.

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Read more: South Africa’s new immigration policy takes a digital direction – will it succeed?

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Clearly, there needs to be urgent and visible follow-through on these commitments. This should include the promise to clamp down on anti-foreigner agitators and those who have wounded or killed people they believed to be foreign. To my knowledge, very few agitators and attackers have been arrested, let alone charged. None of the leaders inciting dangerous actions have been arrested, or even called out by political leaders.

To help reduce the violence and the perception of risk, a number of additional steps need to be taken. Firstly, the forging of a collective political front of parties in the country against anti-foreigner activities. Secondly, the mobilisation of civic and religious institutions to fight against irresponsible politicking. Third, a renegotiation of colonial-era bilateral labour agreements with South Africa’s five neighbouring countries. And finally, addressing the country’s acute unemployment crisis.

Four steps that could make a difference

Firstly, the head of state – or the head of his political party – should bring together the leaders of all the significant political parties in a forum which commits to agreeing not to incite anti-foreigner sentiment, and also, as a group, condemns such behaviour.

Secondly, leaders of civic and religious institution could be encouraged to do the same – to warn against irresponsible politicking. Further than that, religious and community groupings could be encouraged and even assisted by government to drive programmes to include foreigners into the mainstream of South African society in a constructive way.

There are examples of how to do this in other parts of the world in developed and developing countries. These include South America and other African countries.

National, provincial and local governments could also drive initiatives to include foreigners into the national community. These could be standalone programmes or in cooperation with civil society institutions.

Thirdly, there should be a renegotiation of bilateral labour agreements with five neighbouring countries. In a white paper released in 2025 the government committed to establishing employment quotas for South Africans in various sectors of industry. It also committed to the renegotiation of the bilateral deals. The existing agreements are colonial in origin and form. They withhold virtually all labour and social rights from migrant labourers. And they don’t accommodate long-term labour migration contracts, now common in other parts of the world.

Such reforms could create more manageable as well as fair and equitable systems of migrant labour. South Africa could address its labour needs in a workable way. And the temptation to bypass the system should be lower, with fewer undocumented migrant workers.

It’s not realistic yet to do away with regional labour migration, but it could be far better managed.

Finally, Ramaphosa said he’d be sending out envoys “to seek to find sustainable solutions to these challenges”. But this has already been done, more than 20 years ago. South Africa and some of its neighbours agreed to a protocol on the facilitation of the movement of persons in the southern African region. This initiative was negotiated in the Southern African Development Community.

But since the protocol was signed by several heads of state in the region in 2005, there has been no progress. South Africa, its partners and the Southern African Development Community itself are guilty of negligence and should accept that they could have and can do more to avoid crises such as the present one.

Poorer South Africans are vulnerable to anti-foreigner mobilisation because of their dire economic circumstances: 32.7% unemployment; 37.8% of people classified as very poor. And public services are often very bad.

More growth and more jobs must dampen the powder-keg that is so easily sparked.

But even before that is achieved, there is a great deal that could be done to eliminate the spark itself – tensions over migration.

Alan Hirsch receives research funding from the New South Institute.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed what could become the most significant housing legislation in decades. But even supporters say it doesn’t do enough to ease America’s housing affordability crunch.

On May 20, 2026, the House passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act by a lopsided, bipartisan vote of 396 to 13. The vote took place 10 weeks after the Senate overwhelmingly approved a somewhat different version of the bill.

If the two chambers can reconcile their differences, the legislation would be one of the few substantive bills approved by Congress in recent years.

Many of the 56 provisions in the wide-ranging bill are regulatory in nature, such as streamlining environmental impact reviews and reducing the frequency of inspections for homes with tenants receiving federal rental assistance. Others seek to make it easier for homebuyers to acquire financing.

These elements and more could help move the needle on the nation’s housing morass.

But as housing policy scholars, we believe the improvements will be only marginal. That’s because the reforms do not address the main source of the nation’s housing problem: that millions of renters and homeowners lack the income necessary to cover their housing costs.

Promising changes

The bill does include several important reforms.

The provision that has received the most attention would limit the ability of private equity firms and other institutional investors to acquire and operate single-family homes as rental properties.

Although institutional investors account for about 2% of all single-family rentals nationally, they have a bigger presence in certain housing markets, mostly in the South. These firms will typically purchase homes in cash, disadvantaging individual homebuyers who need to take out a mortgage. They’ve also been known to more aggressively raise rents and initiate eviction proceedings than other landlords.

The legislation also includes several measures aimed at reducing home prices and increasing housing supply.

One would reduce the cost of manufactured housing – often known as mobile homes – by eliminating the requirement to include a steel chassis that can be attached to wheels. This would reduce building costs by around US$5,000 to $10,000, or about 4% to 8% of the average cost of a new unit.

Other cost-saving elements include streamlining environmental reviews for proposed housing developments and encouraging new designs for midsize apartment buildings that would allow for just one stairway. Fire safety regulations have long required multifamily buildings to contain two or more staircases so that residents can exit their homes safely if one staircase is impassable because of smoke or other reasons. However, improvements in fire safety have largely eliminated the need for the second staircase in midsize buildings. By eliminating the two-stairway requirement, developers can reduce their construction costs and have more flexibility in their architectural designs.

Another component would require the Department of Housing and Urban Development to issue guidelines and “best-practice frameworks” for zoning and land-use policies, presumably to nudge cities and towns to allow developers to build smaller homes on smaller lots.

To further facilitate housing construction, the bill would require local governments that receive federal funding for community development to publish a “searchable online database of undeveloped land parcels,” which would make it easier to identify potential low-cost development sites.

Finally, the Federal Housing Administration and other lenders would be encouraged to issue “small dollar mortgages” of less than $100,000. Currently, when low-priced homes are available, it can be difficult for interested homebuyers to obtain financing because it is more profitable for lenders to underwrite larger mortgages.

While most of the legislation focuses on homeowner housing, a couple of provisions would address important challenges for subsidized rental housing. One seeks to encourage landlord participation in the Housing Choice Voucher Program by making it easier for landlords to satisfy the federal government’s housing inspection requirements.

Another provision would help protect low-income rural renters from losing their homes when the federally funded mortgages on their buildings expire. Currently, these rent subsidies, which are provided by the Department of Agriculture, can only be used in the buildings it finances. Many of these mortgages are due to expire over the next few years, putting residents with rental assistance at risk of eviction. The legislation would enable these households to remain in place or move to other buildings without federally funded mortgages.

Americans are still being crushed by costs

Yet as sweeping as the bill is, its impact is likely to be modest.

Nearly all of the legislation involves regulatory changes. The bill does not increase subsidies available to low-income renters and homeowners, or to potential homebuyers.

The majority of all renters are cost burdened, meaning they currently spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Over a quarter of all homeowners are cost burdened, too. The legislation almost certainly will not diminish this affordability crisis.

Several measures aim to reduce the cost of new housing. But with few exceptions, they are contingent on the support and participation of states, cities and suburbs.

For example, nothing in the bill would require localities to change their zoning and building codes to allow more apartment buildings or smaller single-family homes to be built at higher densities. Homeowners are usually strongly opposed to development if they fear it will change the character of their community or lower the value of their property. Existing homeowners do not want – and almost certainly will not allow – a wholesale erosion of their home equity. They will continue to fight to preserve the valuations of their homes.

Nor does the House’s passage of the bill mean that Congress has become more supportive of low-income housing. On the same day that the housing bill passed, the House Appropriations Committee released its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. It included cuts to public housing, Community Development Block Grants, the Home Investment Partnership Program and the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

If the Senate and House come to an agreement on the final version of the bill and President Donald Trump signs it into law, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act will hopefully accelerate reform efforts. But on its own, it’s less a speedway that will supercharge housing supply and provide immediate relief for the most cost-burdened Americans, and more a modest on-ramp that reflects the limits of what’s politically feasible in a divided and polarized Congress.

Kirk McClure received funding in the past from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Alex Schwartz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The weekend exchange of strikes between Iran and Israel has put US President Donald Trump under even more domestic and international pressure to end the unpopular war he launched with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more than three months ago.

The Israeli leader favours the continuation of the war until Iran is reduced to a feeble state. This would enable him to win the Israeli general elections later this year and further his goal of expanding Israel’s borders and regional domination in pursuit of a so-called “Greater Israel”.

Netanyahu is against any US–Iran deal that doesn’t meet his objectives. Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon to repel the Iran-backed Hezbollah group is part of his strategy, which has been boldly countered by Iran.

Tehran, meanwhile, has shown a steely resilience to ensure the war is settled in its favour as a formidable regional actor.

As a result of all this, Trump faces the difficult task of reaching an acceptable deal with Iran and restraining an unruly Netanyahu.

Why the standoff has gone on so long

At this point in the war, what would constitute a “victory” for Trump?

He wants an outcome that can vindicate his decision for starting the war, which has proved to be very costly, generating a worldwide energy crisis and a great deal of economic pain. The war could cause Trump political problems in the midterm elections later this year, too.

He also wants an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program that he could claim is better than the 2015 deal Tehran struck with the Obama administration and its international partners, called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018.

But Iran’s Islamic government has so far not been willing to bend to Trump’s demands.

Relying on a mix of ideological devotion to Shia Islam, a strong sense of historical nationalism, and an effective military capability, the regime has not only survived, but made strategic gains.

It has destroyed or damaged many US bases in the Persian Gulf, hit Israel hard with missile and drone strikes, and above all gained control of the Strait of Hormuz. The strait – a critical oil and fertiliser chokepoint – has now become Iran’s most potent lever of resistance and punishment.

The conflict has also given renewed life to the Islamic government and its instruments of power. Many citizens who were opposed to the regime have rallied around the flag in the face of the external threats and for the love of their country.

Further, the war has propelled the government’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is designated by the US and many of its allies as a terrorist organisation, to new heights. It has been able to prove its worth as the key actor defending Iran and its Islamic system.

Meanwhile, Tehran is not as isolated as the Trump administration believes, either. It has the support of both Russia and China. And Iran’s geographical location has worked to its advantage, enabling it to access markets by road through its neighbours and via the Caspian Sea to the north.

The US and Israel still have the advantage when it comes to military power and they can inflict heavy damage on Iran. But Tehran’s strategic gains have placed it in a stronger bargaining position in the peacemaking process.

No matter the level of US military and economic pressure, Tehran is unlikely to succumb to US and Israeli demands to dismantle its nuclear program or relinquish control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The regime was designed to be resilient. It has built a system based on defiance, resistance and pragmatic decision making when faced with serious threats from both inside and outside Iran.

As such, it has the patience and endurance to outlast Trump – and for that matter, Netanyahu.

Echoes of 1979

The regime also has a history of outlasting the United States.

For instance, there are some parallels that can be drawn between the way the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, dealt with the hostage crisis of 1979–81 – when a militant group of his supporters ransacked the US embassy and took 66 Americans hostage – and the manner in which his successors are now managing negotiations with the US.

Khomeini let that episode drag on for 444 days to both consolidate his power and humiliate the US for having backed the pro-Western monarchy of his predecessor, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

His approach played a key role in then-President Jimmy Carter’s defeat to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 US presidential election. The regime released the remaining 52 hostages just minutes after Reagan was inaugurated in January 1981.

The current standoff with Iran is only 100 days old, and it appears the regime is now prepared to use a similar strategy to punish Trump and Netanyahu for attacking Iran.

Iran’s leaders are seemingly determined to turn the tables on their adversaries and humiliate them. Whether they succeed will depend on what Trump does next – and what he’s willing to compromise on to bring Iran to the table for a lasting, mutually acceptable agreement.

Amin Saikal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The creation of an “Anti-Weaponization Fund” at the Department of Justice may have shocked a lot of people, but not Paul Figley, a legal scholar and former DOJ staffer who has spent years warning that taxpayer money could be used by an administration for political ends in just this way.

The fund, the result of a settlement of legal claims by Donald Trump and his family against the IRS, aims to compensate those who “suffered weaponization and lawfare” at the hands of the federal government. It has already been called a “slush fund” by the New York Times editorial board, which noted – as many have – that it’s likely to pay much of its US$1.8 billion funding to Trump allies who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The money comes from what’s called the Judgment Fund, set up in the Department of Treasury by Congress in the 1950s to pay legal judgments and settlements involving the federal government. In doing so, Congress gave away a portion of its foundational, constitutional role: The power to control government spending. Figley, who worked at the Department of Justice and is also an emeritus professor of legal rhetoric at American University Washington College of Law, has warned Congress and others that by putting decisions about such huge payouts in the hands of the executive branch, the fund would inevitably be hijacked for political purposes. Naomi Schalit, The Conversation’s politics and legal affairs editor, spoke with Figley.

What is the Judgment Fund, and why was it created?

The Judgment Fund is a permanent, indefinite appropriation that Congress established to pay most judgments and settlements against the federal government. Prior to 1956, whenever a judgment or settlement was agreed upon or finalized, Congress would have to appropriate money to pay it. That meant the administration and Congress would have to go through kind of a karaoke: “Here’s a new settlement, here’s why it should be approved.” “OK, we approve it.” And it took up a lot of time and didn’t produce much good effect.

So the old General Accounting Office recommended that Congress set up a system that would pay some claims automatically, and in 1956, Congress established the Judgment Fund. It allows payment of settlements and judgments if those payments were final and not authorized or provided for by some other legally available appropriation.

Congress essentially handed over responsibility for paying for settlements and judgments, which was taking up a lot of time, to the executive branch?

Yes, the Department of Justice would do the paperwork and say this is final, or this is an appropriate settlement, send that to Treasury, Treasury then certifies that it was properly documented, and then orders the payment.

From the constitutional perspective, it appears that Congress was getting rid of an annoying thing that it had to do, but wasn’t it also giving away its power of the purse?

Yes, but only in a limited way to begin with. When the Judgment Fund was first established, any settlement or judgment that could go through the process had to be less than US$100,000. That worked so well that Congress increased the amount a couple of times, and then ultimately in 1977 said there’s no cap. It’s a permanent indefinite appropriation, and once it was established, nobody ever has to go back to Congress to ask that it be updated or refilled. It works automatically.

You’ve written and given testimony about concerns you have with the Judgment Fund, over quite a few years and spanning several administrations. What are those concerns?

The concern is that under our system, Congress should be responsible for – and is responsible for – appropriating money.

Are you worried that this fund can be abused?

It has been. For many, many years, it wasn’t abused very often. Occasionally, it was used for political purposes in the foreign policy context. President George H. W. Bush used it in 1991 to settle a claim with Iran for arms that had not been delivered. The Clinton administration used it to settle a similar claim with Pakistan in 1998. The Obama administration secretly paid Iran $1.7 billion for arms that the U.S. had not delivered, and $1.3 billion of that came from the Judgment Fund. Those all had a political context, and while they were arguably good decisions, they were decisions that, absent the Judgment Fund, would have had to go through Congress and have money appropriated after, perhaps, debate and discussion.

The Obama administration also went much further in litigation involving claims of civil rights violations by the Department of Agriculture.

The Obama administration’s use of the Judgment Fund in class action suits for discrimination in Department of Agriculture civil loan programs struck me as really bad policy. After class action suits by Hispanic and female farmers had largely failed, the Obama administration announced that it had created a new program, the Hispanic or women farmers and ranchers claims process. This new program was funded with $1.3 billion from the Judgment Fund and open to people who had not been involved in the litigation. It was unilaterally created without congressional input or an appropriation. It wasn’t illegal, but it was using the Judgment Fund in a way that Congress had certainly never anticipated.

When that happened, my antenna went up, because for many years I was at the Department of Justice defending cases involving the Judgment Fund in cases alleging wrongful acts or omissions by federal employees. I defended suits brought against the government for auto accidents, medical malpractice, flood cases, wild animals, a wide range of things. Seeing the potential for abuse, I started suggesting that Congress amend the Judgment Fund to cap any settlement at $500 million. Above that cap, you’d have to go to Congress.

That hasn’t happened.

What did you think when you first heard about the establishment of this $1.776 billion pot, using the Judgment Fund, to compensate the so-called victims of lawfare?

I was surprised. I always expected someone would do this kind of a thing again, but I had not foreseen this one coming. And then I thought I was right: We should have amended the Judgment Fund.

The Obama administration had manipulated the fund to create the Women and Hispanic Farmers and Ranchers Claims Process without congressional input or approval. Having seen that blueprint, the Trump administration has similarly manipulated the fund to create the Anti-Weaponization Fund without congressional input or approval.

In each case, the administration believes that the people that are being compensated are worthy and should get compensation, even though they would have a lot more difficulty getting it without the creation of such a thing.

Now that it’s been used twice, unless Congress steps in, I have no doubt this scheme will be used again by another administration. It’s bad government; it’s not how our system was set up. Congress has the power of the purse. Congress, rather than the executive, has the authority to create and fund programs. The executive branch should not have it own source of funds. The Judgment Fund should not be used as an executive branch piggy bank.

Has it occurred to you to say I told you so?

Yes. I called my daughter – she appreciates certain gallows humor – and I told her that just what I’d predicted had happened. She said, “Well, aren’t you happy about that?” and I said, “Well, I’m not happy that it happened, but I’m happy that I saw it and have been out preaching about it – with remarkable lack of success.”

Paul Figley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.