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Satisfied and dissatisfied South Africans: results from the General Household Survey in international comparison

- Moller, Valerie

Authors: Moller, Valerie
Date: 2007
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:7112 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1010744
Description: Who are the satisfied South Africans 10 years into democracy? How do material factors contribute to their life satisfaction? These are the questions addressed in this paper. Earlier South African research has consistently found a close positive relationship between life satisfaction and material standards of living in the apartheid and post-apartheid era. Recently, a new source of information has become available to shed further light on the association between material and subjective well-being. In 2002, Statistics South Africa, the country’s official source of statistical information, agreed to ask South Africans participating in the General Household Survey whether they were satisfied or dissatisfied with life. The 2002 General Household Survey (n26’000) used a measure developed for the Euromodule that allows for international comparison. The wide-ranging information contained in South Africa’s official household survey offers a unique opportunity to explore what makes for satisfied and dissatisfied South Africans in relation to their material living standards. Results indicate that the improved living standards afforded to many black South Africans under democracy are associated with increases in life satisfaction. Furthermore, habituation does not appear to have diluted the positive relationship between living standards and well-being. However, political factors continue to play an important role in shaping subjective well-being. In conclusion, it is argued that material gains might also have restored the pride and dignity denied to black South Africans in the past.
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Date Issued: 2007

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Changing energy profiles and consumption patterns following electrification in five rural villages, South Africa

- Madubansi, Mainza, Shackleton, Charlie M

Authors: Madubansi, Mainza , Shackleton, Charlie M
Date: 2006
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:6640 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006866
Description: Following the democratic transition in South Africa in the early 1990s the government has implemented a widespread electrification programme, as well as introduced a free basic electricity allowance as a means of poverty alleviation. Yet there are limited longitudinal studies on the impacts of the introduction of electricity on the patterns of household energy use, and even more so in the neglected rural sector. This study reports on the patterns of household energy use in five rural settlements in 1991 and again in 2002. Results indicate a changing pattern of energy use for lighting and powering entertainment appliances, more specifically from dry-cell batteries and paraffin to electricity. Yet for thermal needs, most notably cooking, fuelwood has remained the most widespread fuel, and the amount used per month has not changed, despite increasing scarcity of wood in the local environment. There has been an increase in the proportion of households purchasing fuelwood as opposed to collecting their own. Overall, the mean total number of fuel types used per household has increased, indicating that electricity is simply viewed as an additional energy, rather than an alternative. Yet, electricity accounted for approximately 60% of expenditure on energy sources in 2002, despite the government's policy of a free basic allowance of 5–6 kWh per month. This has implications for energy supply costing, as well as the poverty alleviation dimensions of the whole programme.
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Date Issued: 2006

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In search of optimal stocking regimes in semi-arid grazing lands : one size does not fit all

- Campbell, Bruce M, Gordon, Iain J, Luckert, Martin K, Petheram, Lisa, Vetter, Susan M

Authors: Campbell, Bruce M , Gordon, Iain J , Luckert, Martin K , Petheram, Lisa , Vetter, Susan M
Date: 2006
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:6507 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1005934
Description: We discuss the search for optimal stocking regimes in semi-arid grazing lands. We argue that ‘one size does not fit all’ and that different stocking regimes are appropriate under different conditions. This paper is an attempt to move beyond polarization of the current debate towards a more integrative and flexible approach to grazing management. We propose five different conditions as major influences on grazing regimes: environmental variability and predictability; degradation and thresholds; property right regimes; discount rates; and market stability and prices. We suggest a lack of connection between the micro-economics literature and natural science and social-anthropological literature. It is timely to achieve greater integration around some key questions and hypotheses, and recognize that policy prescriptions at national or even regional levels are likely to have limited value due to context specificity.
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Date Issued: 2006

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Where have all the fathers gone? Media(ted) representations of fatherhood.

- Prinsloo, Jeanne

Authors: Prinsloo, Jeanne
Date: 2006
Language: English
Type: Book review
Identifier: vital:530 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008483
Description: [From the introduction]: "It is in the mundane world that media operate most significantly. They filter and frame everyday realities, through their singular and multiple representations, providing touchstones, references, for the conduct of everyday life, for the production and maintenance of common-sense (Silverstone 1999, p.6). While it is broadly accepted that the media do not reflect society, they do provide us with a repertoire of roles and images which we encounter and with which we engage." As the opening quote suggests, the media play a vital role in the circulation and mediation of ideas, attitudes and actions and their significance is commented on frequently. It is noteworthy that such commentary in South Africa identifies that men are infrequently depicted in parental roles. This is in comparison to the other roles men inhabit and in contrast to the role of women as mother. It is also suggested that the macho masculine identities that the media offer serve as proxy father roles.
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Date Issued: 2006

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Learning science through two languages in South Africa

- Probyn, Margie J

Authors: Probyn, Margie J
Date: 2005
Language: English
Type: Conference paper
Identifier: vital:7015 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007208
Description: [From the introduction]: South Africa is a multilingual country with eleven national languages - nine indigenous languages and the two former colonial languages of English and Afrikaans1 - recognised as official languages in the Constitution of 1996 (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996). Despite these provisions, since the democratic elections of 1994 English has expanded its position as the language of access and power with the relative influence of Afrikaans shrinking, and African languages effectively confined to functions of ‘home and hearth’. McLean and McCormick (1996: 329 in Mazrui 2002: 269) suggest that the constitutional recognition of 11 official languages in South Africa is largely 'intended and perceived as a symbolic statement and that for instrumental purposes, English remains the dominant language in South Africa'.
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Date Issued: 2005

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Refining lecturers’ assessment practices through formal professional development at Rhodes University, Grahamstown

- Sayigh, Elizabeth

Authors: Sayigh, Elizabeth
Date: 2003
Language: English
Type: Conference paper
Identifier: vital:6080 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008584
Description: In recent years, the so-called Accreditation and Registration of Assessors has given rise to much debate in the Higher Education sector. The idea that anyone assessing student learning should be required to train in order to gain a formal qualification and register as an assessor originated with the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) and was soon challenged within the higher education community. The Study Team appointed to investigate the implementation of the NQF (National Qualifications Framework) in 2001 recommended that registration of assessors should not be required of individuals teaching in the higher education sector if employed by an accredited institution and this recommendation was later accepted by the Department of Education and the Department of Labour in their joint consultative document entitled ‘An Interdependent National Qualifications Framework System’ (Department of Education, Department of Labour 2003). The waiving of the requirement to register assessors has been welcomed within the public higher education sector. But despite this, the need to train and qualify assessors of students’ learning remains important due to the emphasis placed on assessment by the HEQC (Higher Education Quality Committee) in its ‘Criteria for Institutional Audits’ (2004). The central issue has become how higher education institutions are to successfully train lecturers as assessors in higher education.
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Date Issued: 2003

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Use of indigenous and indigenised medicines to enhance personal well-being: a South African case study

- Cocks, Michelle L, Moller, Valerie

Authors: Cocks, Michelle L , Moller, Valerie
Date: 2002
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:7106 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1010679
Description: An estimated 27 million South Africans use indigenous medicines (Mander, 1997, Medicinal plant marketing and strategies for sustaining the plant supply in the Bushbuckridge area and Mpumalanga Province. Institute for Natural Resources, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa). Although herbal remedies are freely available in amayeza stores, or Xhosa chemists, for self-medication, little is known about the motivations of consumers. According to African belief systems, good health is holistic and extends to the person's social environment. The paper makes a distinction between traditional medicines which are used to enhance personal well-being generally and for cultural purposes, on the one hand, and medicines used to treat physical conditions only, on the other. Drawing on an eight-month study of Xhosa chemists in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, in 1996, the paper identifies 90 medicines in stock which are used to enhance personal well-being. Just under one-third of all purchases were of medicines to enhance well-being. Remedies particularly popular included medicines believed to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck. The protection of infants with medicines which repel evil spirits is a common practice. Consumer behaviours indicate that the range of medicines available is increased by indigenisation of manufactured traditional medicines and cross-cultural borrowing. Case studies confirm that self- and infant medication with indigenous remedies augmented by indigenised medicines plays an important role in primary health care by allaying the fears and anxieties of everyday life within the Xhosa belief system, thereby promoting personal well-being.
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Date Issued: 2002

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Mentoring and prospects for teacher development - a South African perspective

- Probyn, Margie J, Van der Mescht, Hennie

Authors: Probyn, Margie J , Van der Mescht, Hennie
Date: 2001
Language: English
Type: Conference paper
Identifier: vital:6090 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1009744
Description: School-based mentoring has developed in response to a number of factors pertaining to the pre-service education of student teachers and the in-service professional development of experienced teachers. Traditionally teacher education has consisted of university-based theory with school-based practice, based on an understanding of professional learning as ‘theory into practice’. One of the problems with this model is that theory may come to seem too remote from practice, and that practice appears untheorised by remaining implicit and unproblematised. The one-year teachers’ diploma course offered by the Rhodes University Education Department incorporates a ten-week teaching practice slot. This protracted period has been useful in allowing frequent and consistent contact between university tutors and student teachers, and between mentor teachers and student teachers. Where the system has not been strong is in enabling meaningful collaboration among all three parties. A pilot school-based mentoring programme was thus implemented in 1999, involving English First and Second Language student teachers, the two university tutors and seven mentor teachers. Ongoing evaluative research revealed that the programme was welcomed by all, and that the student teachers in particular gained much in the way of learning to be critically reflexive in a non-threatening environment. However, the research also uncovered areas that need to be developed. Student teachers, for example, need guidance in terms of learning how to talk about teaching; mentor teachers need to develop the confidence and expertise required to open up their practice in a critically constructive context. On the strength of the programme’s success, the Education Department has extended school-based mentoring to all HDE students, and is exploring ways of setting up courses through which other educators (such as EDOs) may receive training in pre- and in-service teacher mentoring.
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Date Issued: 2001

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Petrology of the alkaline core of the Messum igneous complex, Namibia: evidence for the progressively decreasing effect of crustal contamination

- Harris, Chris, Marsh, Julian S, Milner, Simon C

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.
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Date Issued: 1999

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Eva's men : gender and power in the establishment of the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–74

- Wells, Julia C

Authors: Wells, Julia C
Date: 1998
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:6148 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006811 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0021853798007300
Description: This article offers a fresh interpretation of the life of Krotoa/Eva, the famous Khoena interpreter of Jan Van Riebeeck, whose gender gave her a unique position in relation to both Dutch and Khoena society. It appears that her own people sent her to work for the Dutch as a young girl, both to serve as a token of goodwill, to gain prestige as the protegee of the household of a powerful leader and to become familiar with Dutch ways. The Dutch received her comfortably as a servant, child minder and companion for Van Riebeeck's young nieces. When Eva learned Dutch expertly, she quickly became their most trusted interpreter. The evidence also hints at an especially close and sensitive, possibly sexual, relationship between her and Van Riebeeck. When military conflicts left Eva identified as a Dutch collaborator, she contacted her sister's husband, chief Oedasoa. Her direct mediation enabled the Dutch to open up a profitable new trading enterprise with Oedasoa, who in turn used Eva as his personal agent within the Dutch community. Her unique position attracted the attention of a bright young employee of the Company, Pieter Van Meerhoff, who became her lover soon after his arrival at the Cape in 1659. Pieter became actively involved in northern expeditions of exploration and prided himself on his sensitivity and capacity to get on well with various Khoena chiefs. Eva continued as an interpreter, intermediary with Oedasoa and the couple had two children together. Eva and Pieter married only after Van Riebeeck left the Cape. Their decision to conform to the norms of Dutch society disappointed Oedasoa who had offered them enough livestock to establish an independent lifestyle but brought both much higher levels of respect from the Dutch, including significant promotions for Pieter. When Pieter was killed in 1666, heading up a trading mission to Mauritius, Eva's life sharply deteriorated. She died in 1674, accused of having become a drunken pest and prostitute. Eva's story exemplifies how an African woman in an early colonial encounter could manipulate a variety of gender roles. Seen as a safe intermediary by both Africans and Europeans, she built herself a unique career and formed a durable liaison with a spirited young man. However, as the nature of contact between the races deteriorated, her role as intermediary diminished in importance. Ultimately, without Pieter, she could not sustain her pivotal place in Dutch society, dying a miserable death. Her life reflects the rapidly changing nature of early colonial contacts.
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Date Issued: 1998

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Research report

- NALEDI

Authors: NALEDI
Date: 1997
Subjects: NALEDI
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/151396 , vital:39063
Description: The intention of this paper is to highlight debates and issues regarding the use of guota systems in strengthening women’s leadership in the labour movement. The paper is aimed at broadening the debate from mere acceptance or rejection of the guota. Debates on the use of guotas tend to be heated and controversial and can lose sight of the central objective, which is the development of strategies for women’s empowerment. A large proportion of trade unions internationally have adopted forms of the quota system as a strong measure to deal with the ongoing under-representation of women in leadership. The quota system has also been introduced effectively in a number of parliaments all over the world, including South Africa. The countries with the highest representation of women in parliament have all had to use quotas to achieve this. The paper draws from a review of some of the international literature, as well as interviews undertaken with trade unionists and parliamentarians (see Appendix A for a list of interviewees). This paper will also highlight some examples where quota systems have been adopted, including three COSATU affiliates, namely CWIU, NEHAWU and SAMWU.
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Date Issued: 1997

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The Faire Queene who liked blacks

- Butler, Guy F

Authors: Butler, Guy F
Date: 1996
Subjects: To be catalogued
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/457753 , vital:75676 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/AJA1011582X_91
Description: Anne of Denmark (1574-1619), wife ofJames VI of Scotland and I of England, needs to be rescued from undeserved neglect. The literature about her husband, the Scottish Solomon, is extensive, I as is that about her younger son, King Charles 1; 2 her eldest son, the heroic Henry, who died young,(and with it, it seems, the English Renaissance) has been recently studied and psychoanalysed; 3 and her daughter Elizabeth, who married the Elector Palatine, has attracted much sympa-thetic biography as the Winter Queen or the Queen of Hearts 4 The on-ly recent biography of Anne, Ethel Carlton Williams's Anne of Denmark (1970), does little to modify the almost unanimous verdict that she was" a dumb blonde,"(Ashley 116) whose" innate frivolity"(Stephen 431) was in some respects proof against the influences of the fair education which her parents provided for their children. According to the Diction-ary of National Biography," in the midst of her mostly frivolous existence she would seem to have cherished a desire if not to have possessed a capacity for higher things"(Stephen 441). I find it difficult to reconcile this vacuous figure with the woman who endured an appalling marriage with her homosexual husband; who, though a Lutheran by upbringing, rebelled against the rigours of the Scots Kirk, and became a Catholic; who had the personal confidence, within three months of arriving in England, to star as Juno in a court masque 6 with her ladies in waiting; who on Twelfth Night, 1605, appeared with them, all blackface, in The Masque of Blackness 7-a revolutionary work which critics agree marks a new beginning in the history of the English theatre.
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Date Issued: 1996

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SADWU: Points to consider about the Labour relations bill

- South African Domestic Workers Union (SADWU)

Authors: South African Domestic Workers Union (SADWU)
Date: Aug 1995
Subjects: SADWU
Language: English
Type: text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/114842 , vital:34041
Description: Contrary to existing law, the LRB covers all workers, which means that domestic workers will in future be covered by the LRA. This will definitely be an improvement on the existing situation, as it extends the rights of SADWU workers. On investigating what this would actually mean to the union, some problematic factors come to light: The LRB deals with collective bargaining rights, which means it excludes all unorganised workers, and a large number of domestic workers are unorganised. They will therefore not be protected by the LRA unless they join the union. Although the LRB covers all workers, home workers (domestics) may be classified as independent contractors and therefore be excluded from the act. The bill has been left deliberately flexible, and it may be left up to the labour court to decide on this. Independent contractors are excluded from the bill, so if your work situation can legally be defined as falling under this definition, ie. if contract out your labour, you will be excluded from the bill. Many SADWU members are employed in what would be regarded as small business. The LRB proposes greater flexibility for small businesses, which could mean exemption from some of the regulations and/or collective agreements. This will not be to the advantage of the workers in these small businesses.
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Date Issued: Aug 1995

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Two articles focusing on participatory approaches

- Biggs, Stephen D

Authors: Biggs, Stephen D
Date: 1995
Subjects: Agricultural innovations , Rural development -- Evaluation , Agricultural extension work -- Research , Agriculture -- Technology transfer -- Evaluation , Agricultural extension work -- Evaluation
Language: English
Type: text , book
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/75076 , vital:30371 , 10250468
Description: In recent years there has been a growing literature that advocates various forms of participatory development. This is illustrated by the promotion of approaches/tools such as participatory rural appraisal (PRA), participatory technology development (PTD), and participatory process projects 1 These "new" approaches are fast taking on the form of a new generalised orthodoxy for solving development problems. It would seem from the perspective of some of the promoters of this orthodoxy that the problem of development is no longer one of not having the right approaches and methods, but one of getting recalcitrant policy makers, bureaucrats, academics to appreciate and adopt these new methods and techniques. My concerns with this new advocacy are that: i It does not relate to experience; ii It does not address issues of power structure and control over information and other resources in multiple and complex arenas of science and technology (S&T); iii By placing major emphasis on management approaches and tools, the new orthodoxy is cutting itself off from a critical reflective understanding of the deeper determinants of technical and social change. Unfortunately, I suspect that if this new orthodoxy does not develop a more critical reflective view of itself then, like previous dominant orthodoxies, it will soon have to develop a range of "escape hatches" to explain why these participatory approaches are not giving the results that their advocates promise. , AVOCADO series; v 06/95
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Date Issued: 1995

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