South Africa's transition since 1994 has required an extensive overhaul of its institutions and laws. The last 10 years have been characterized by a flurry of new policies and legislation in the criminal justice sector. After 1994, one of the government's priorities was the National Crime Prevention Strategy (NCPS). The NCPS recognized the social and developmental causes of crime, as well as the need to involve a range of government departments and civil society partnerships. The strategy has, however, lost momentum as a result of public and political pressure to deliver decisive, short-term solutions. Since 1999, the government's focus has been on tough law enforcement interventions and on passing new laws aimed at improving criminal justice functioning. This article argues that South Africa's criminal justice system has performed well considering the challenges it has faced since 1994. The task now is to deal with increasingly negative public perceptions of safety and renew efforts to prevent crime by tackling the social and developmental factors that are beyond the scope of the police and courts.
Here we provide the first phylogenetic analysis that include Afrogecko ansorgii and a detailed morphological comparison with other species of leaf-toed geckos. For this purpose, we used two mitochondrial (16S, ND2) and four nuclear (RAG1, RAG2, CMOS, PDC) genes to produce a robust phylogenetic reconstruction. This allowed us to show that A. ansorgii is not related as previously believed to circum-Indian Ocean leaf-toed geckos and is rather more closely related to other Malagasy leaf-toed geckos. Additionally, we explore and compare osteological variation in A. ansorgii skulls through High Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography with previously published material. This allowed us to describe herein a new genus, Bauerius gen. nov., and additionally provide a detailed redescription of the species (including the first description of male material), supplementing the limited original description and type series, which consisted of only two females.
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