While diversity and equity in public education systems have been widely acknowledged to bolster the quality of learning, initiatives for their implementation have often been more effective on paper than in practice. In South Africa, studies have revealed that despite a plethora of diversity and equity transformational legislation, regulations and policies, there is a persistence of practices, attitudes and behaviour that are in stark contrast to the initiatives for fostering diversity and equity in the workplace.

Medical education has seen the increase of previously marginalised groups (Black, female, disabled) in undergraduate training. However, this shift is not as noticeable at postgraduate level. This has led to a number of calls for the transformation of medical education. Recent student protests in South Africa have illuminated issues of access and citizenship in higher education and have led to urgent calls for decolonised curricula and the transformation of higher education institutions.

A number of theoretical and empirically proven studies have shown that the media exert varying degree of influence on audience members. The South African media framing and coverage of foreign nationals is a good example of this. Media critics and scholars hold that the way and manner foreign nationals are represented in South African media landscape contributes to the endemic xenophobic outbreaks in the country.