Largest reported groups for the Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops aduncus) found in Algoa Bay, South Africa: trends and potential drivers
- Authors: Bouveroux, Thibaut N , Caputo, Michelle , Froneman, P William , Plön, Stephanie
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67913 , vital:29168 , https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.12471
- Description: Publisher version , This study investigates how group size of Indo‐Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) changes temporally, spatially, and/or with predominant behavior at two discreet sites along the Eastern Cape coastline of South Africa: Algoa Bay and the Wild Coast. The mean group size of bottlenose dolphins was large with an average of 52 animals. Significantly larger groups were observed in Algoa Bay ( = 60, range = 1–600) than off the Wild Coast ( = 32.9, range = 1–250). In Algoa Bay, the mean group size increased significantly over the study period, from an average 18 animals in 2008 to 76 animals in 2016. Additionally, the largest average and maximum group sizes ever reported both in South Africa and worldwide, were recorded in Algoa Bay (maximum group size = 600). Neither season nor behavior had a significant effect on mean group size at both sites. Similarly environmental variables such as the depth and substrate type also had no influence on group size. It remains unclear which ecological drivers, such as predation risk and food availability, are leading to the large groups observed in this area, and further research on abundance and distribution of both predators and prey is necessary.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2018
Changing practices, changing values?: a Bernsteinian analysis of knowledge production and knowledge exchange in two UK universities
- Authors: Little, Brenda , Abbas, Andrea , Singh, Mala
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66934 , vital:29002 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7369-0_8
- Description: publisher version , Bernstein’s concept of classification and framing links notions of knowledge, democracy and social justice, providing a perspective from which to address critical questions of what knowledge is produced, who has access to it, and how knowledge is distributed. Bernstein’s conceptual framework is used to inform an analysis of national policies steering knowledge production and knowledge transfer in the UK, and the changing practices and values associated with knowledge production and knowledge transfer in two UK institutional case study universities. The analysis reveals how reputational and financial consequences of the formal assessment of research quality interacts with the institutional and disciplinary contexts of research units to differently shape what knowledge is valued and produced, and with whom it is shared. Five discursive areas, each involving a complex set of classifications (power) and framings (control) are identified, namely: the national research assessment framework; the economic value of research; discourses of social and academic values; academic freedoms; and mixed-discipline research and the interdisciplinary nature of real world problems. Though competing and sometimes contradictory values seem to underlie academics’ knowledge work, it seems that the strong framing for knowledge production and knowledge exchange provided by national policies steers staff efforts towards economised codes of knowledge. The conclusion suggests that such a strong steer does not value social transformation in all its diverse non-economistic dimensions and limits universities’ potential to transform societies to further social justice.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2016
Ways of belonging: meanings of “Nature” among Xhosa-speaking township residents in South Africa
- Authors: Cocks, Michelle L , Alexander, Jamie K , Mogano, Lydia , Vetter, Susan M
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66021 , vital:28877 , https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-36.4.820
- Description: publisher version , The concept of biocultural diversity, originally used to describe indigenous people and their ways of using and managing natural resources, has more recently been applied within the urban context to understand the variability of interactions between humans and nature. Significant progress has been made internationally in acknowledging the need to preserve and maintain green spaces in urban environments. Current efforts to address the need for greening urban areas in South Africa primarily focus on the establishment and maintenance of botanical gardens and parks as well as various green belts within the urban landscape. South Africa's urban areas are overwhelmingly shaped by the historical segregation of space and stark disparities in wealth. The distribution, quality, and extent of urban green spaces reflect this. Many township dwellers do not have access to these amenities and their interactions with nature are thus usually constrained to access to municipal commonages. This article explores how areas of natural vegetation in municipal commonages on the outskirts of urban centers in South Africa continue to offer places of cultural, spiritual, and restorative importance to Xhosa-speaking township dwellers. A case study from Grahamstown, an urban center in the Eastern Cape with a population of around 80,000, illustrates how ability to access and move through such places contributes to people's well-being, identity formation, and shared heritage. A case is made for adopting a biocultural diversity approach to spatial planning and urban development within the South African context.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2016
Waiver of the right to judicial impartiality: comparative analysis of South African and Commonwealth jurisprudence
- Authors: Okpaluba, Chuks , Juma, Laurence
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127138 , vital:35960 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC153154
- Description: This paper investigates whether judicial independence and impartiality entrenched in written constitutions and recognised by the common law as fundamental requirements of fair administration of justice can be subjected to the private law principles of waiver, estoppel or acquiescence. In an attempt to answer this question, the paper suggests that the starting point should be the interrogation of whether the right alleged to be waived emanates from the constitution or administrative law. At common law, a right can be waived, insofar as the party involved had knowledge of the right and failed to assert it.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013
What are the best and worst times in the lives of South African township dwellers? A content analysis of the self-defined end-anchors for Bernheim’s ACSA scale of subjective well-being
- Authors: Moller, Valerie , Theuns, P
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67155 , vital:29042 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0073-1
- Description: publisher version , Bernheim’s ACSA, a less conventional measure of subjective well-being originally developed for use in a clinical setting, was applied to a sample of black South African township dwellers (n = 1,020) in the Eastern Cape Province. The Anamnestic Comparative Self Assessment is an experiential self-anchoring scale with concrete anchors (Bernheim in Psychologie médicale 15:1625–1626, 1983). Respondents described the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ periods experienced in their lives in their own words and rated their current life situation within these two extremes that served as the end-anchors of an 11-point rating scale, ACSA. The ACSA score was significantly positively correlated with conventional measures of subjective well-being. The study examined in detail the content of the ACSA anchors, the best and worst periods of respondents’ lives, classified by domain, to gain insights into reference comparisons applied in quality-of-life evaluation in a developing country setting. As was the case in earlier ACSA studies, most domains that served as reference standards were related to the self and family life. However, material living standards, represented by the domains of income, financial security and housing also featured prominently as personal anchors—a reflection of life goals in post-apartheid South Africa. Age, gender, education and self-reported health were associated with the choice of select anchors. The discussion provides pointers for future applications of ACSA in large sample surveys using a pre-coded multiple-choice format for anchor descriptions. It is concluded that the content of ACSA anchors corresponds closely to contemporary definitions of the good life among ordinary South Africans.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013
Mortgage bonds and the right of access to adequate housing in South Africa: Gundwana v Stoke Development and Others 2011 (3) SA 608 (CC)
- Authors: Juma, Laurence
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127479 , vital:36015 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC129329
- Description: This article offers a critique of Gundwana v Stoke Development and Others 2011 (3) SA 608 (CC), a case in which the Constitutional Court of South Africa found it to be unconstitutional for the registrar of a high court to declare immovable properties specially executable when ordering a default judgement, to the extent that such an order "permitted the sale and execution of a home of a person". The Court interpreted the property clause in section 25, access to right to housing in section 26 of the Constitution, as mandating "further judicial oversight" in all cases where execution is levied against residential property. The article raises some of the shortcomings of this interpretive scheme and suggests that constitutional values, when used to curtail or enlarge obligations of parties to a mortgage bond, must take into account the general rights and duties which the parties assumed at the signing of the agreement; the circumstances of each of the parties at the time of execution and ascertained through a careful evaluation based on a clearly articulated set of principles, and the nature of constitutional rights themselves. The article argues that, whereas there may be circumstances in which a debtor may need protection, rather than impose a blanket abrogation of procedures allowing for expedient disposal of uncontested claims, the court should instead have considered the establishment of further procedural safeguards.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2012
Petrology of the alkaline core of the Messum igneous complex, Namibia: evidence for the progressively decreasing effect of crustal contamination
- Authors: Harris, Chris , Marsh, Julian S , Milner, Simon C
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/149746 , vital:38880 , https://doi.org/10.1093/petroj/40.9.1377
- Description: The Messum complex of NW Namibia, a part of the Paraná–Etendeka volcanic province, consists of a dominantly felsic central core, surrounded by older gabbros. The igneous rocks of the core can be divided, in order of decreasing age, into (1) a sub-alkaline suite, (2) an outer quartz syenite suite, and (3) an inner silica-undersaturated suite dominated by nepheline syenite. Compositional differences within the quartz syenite suite can be explained by fractional crystallization, but Sr- and O-isotope data indicate that these rocks contain a significant crustal component.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 1999