A Socio-Historical Approach to Regional Organizational Relations? NGOs in Gender Security in the SADC Region
- Authors: Nedziwe, Cecilia L
- Date: 2024
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/445278 , vital:74370 , https://doi.org/10.22151/politikon.57.1
- Description: The extant academic literature in the field of regional International Relations has paid little attention to non-state actors’ organizational relations in building region-ness. Yet, the region offers sets of organizational relations outside, alongside, and as part of the formal regional state structures to do with gender, which offer insights into non-state regional relations and thus help to fill the lacunae in the field and facilitate understanding of the regional dynamic of international relations. This article examines how organizational relations of non-state actors in gender security play out in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. It highlights the shortcomings of the inter-governmental approach to international relations pursued by various scholars. Drawing on interviews with representatives of NGOs, governments, the SADC, and annual reports, as well as the academic literature, it argues for a socio-historical approach to understanding regional organization and transnationalism, which considers African agency in building region-ness.
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- Date Issued: 2024
Impact of relaxing flood policy interventions on fish production: lessons from earthen pond‑based farmers in Southwest Nigeria
- Authors: Adewale, Isaac Olutumise
- Date: 2023
- Language: English
- Type: text , Article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/11260/9169 , vital:73018
- Description: These days, aquatic (fish) welfare is a major issue and a significant component that affects fish output. Although numerous factors can be involved, climate-induced floods are one of the most critical limiting factors in the aquaculture and fisheries industry’s development. Understanding the extent of losses and damages caused by floods at the farm level will thereby exacerbate pre-emptive policy responses. Thus, the impact of floods on fish production by focusing on catfish earthen pond-based farmers in Southwest Nigeria is presented. A survey is conducted for 150 fish farms in the region. A marginal treatment effects (MTE) approach is employed to determine the heterogeneity across the households and the policy-relevant treatment effects (PRTE). The results show significant heterogeneity in the effects of floods on fish production, considering both observed and unobserved characteristics of the farmers. It is shown that flood significantly increases output loss. Furthermore, farmers with high propensity scores to flood tend to have a high likelihood of incurring output loss. The estimates of PRTE reveal that relaxing policy strategies, such as access to climate information and climate-related training and workshops, would significantly exacerbate output loss due to flood incidences. Thus, intensifying awareness and sensitization on climate change policies will address the flood menace and still increase food production.
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- Date Issued: 2023
Language, music, self-representation and claiming the space: artists from Limpopo Province in South Africa
- Authors: Aiseng, Kealeboga
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455271 , vital:75417 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-imbizo-v13-n2-a3
- Description: It is widely accepted that popular culture is a product of the masses, for the masses. But even then, popular culture is embedded with ideolo-gies of control, manipulation, power dynamics, exclusion and inclusion, empowerment, and disempowerment. For a long time, the South Afri-can mainstream music industry has been dominated by artists and groups from Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. These two prov-inces have produced many musical artists, film productions, television shows and many other artistic personnel. Language has always been a key factor in the South African mainstream music industry. IsiZulu, isiXhosa and instances of codeswitching have dominated the songs in the country. This has left other social groups and their languages out-side mainstream music. However, what happens when a culture of selfrepresentation emerges among a social group? What happens when a social group mobilises itself and claims the space? What about the power of languages in achieving self-representation? This study is influenced by these research questions to do qualitative, textual re-search on how a selected group of musical artists from Limpopo, South Africa is using music to achieve selfrepresentation.
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- Date Issued: 2022
Strengthening Environment and Sustainability Subject Knowledge Curriculum Challenges and Opportunities
- Authors: Schudel, Ingrid J , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
- Date: 2021
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435045 , vital:73126 , ISBN 9781928502241 , https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/64082
- Description: This chapter serves as a positioning paper for the chapters that follow in which different environment and sustainability knowledge foci will be explored in the South African Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS). As a series of interconnected and cross-cutting complexities, environment and sustainability content knowledge has relevance for, and is widely distributed across, different phases and subjects in the school curriculum (see discussion of environmental content knowledge in Schudel and Lotz-Sisitka, Chapter 1; Lotz-Sisitka et al., Chapter 6; Msezane, Chapter 7). Knowledge that makes its way into education curricula and teaching is produced within the wider scientific context. Bernstein (2000), in his theory of the pedagogical device, refers to this as the ‘Field of Production’. A significant knowledge-producing community for sustainability concerns is the global change research community (international and national)(South Africa DST 2010). Examining their research outputs and discourses can provide important insights for the development of knowledge in what Bernstein names ‘regions’, where singular disciplines such as Science (eg climate sciences/biodiversity sciences/water sciences/health sciences), come together with other singular disciplines such as education. Bernstein suggests that a first level of knowledge recontextualisation in the Field of Production occurs in these regions (eg where environmental educators or science educators recontextualise the knowledge of scientists).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2021
A STAT3 of addiction: adipose tissue, adipocytokine signalling and STAT3 as mediators of metabolic remodelling in the tumour microenvironment
- Authors: Kadye, Rose , Stoffels, Mihlali , Fanucci, Sidne , Mbanxa, Siso , Prinsloo, Earl
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/149395 , vital:38846 , https://doi.org/10.3390/cells9041043
- Description: Metabolic remodelling of the tumour microenvironment is a major mechanism by which cancer cells survive and resist treatment. The pro-oncogenic inflammatory cascade released by adipose tissue promotes oncogenic transformation, proliferation, angiogenesis, metastasis and evasion of apoptosis. STAT3 has emerged as an important mediator of metabolic remodelling. As a downstream effector of adipocytokines and cytokines, its canonical and non-canonical activities affect mitochondrial functioning and cancer metabolism. In this review, we examine the central role played by the crosstalk between the transcriptional and mitochondrial roles of STAT3 to promote survival and further oncogenesis within the tumour microenvironment with a particular focus on adipose-breast cancer interactions.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Habitat requirements affect genetic variation in three species of mayfly (Ephemeroptera, Baetidae) from South Africa:
- Authors: Taylor, Chantal L , Barker, Nigel P , Barber-James, Helen M , Villet, Martin H , Pereira-da-Conceicoa, Lyndall L
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/149314 , vital:38824 , https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.936.38587
- Description: This study investigates genetic diversity in three species of Ephemeroptera, one eurytopic and therefore widespread (Afroptilum sudafricanum) and two stenotopic and thus endemic (Demoreptus natalensis and Demoreptus capensis) species, all of which co-occur in the southern Great Escarpment, South Africa. Mitochondrial DNA was analysed to compare the genetic diversity between the habitat generalist and the two habitat specialists. Afroptilum sudafricanum showed no indication of population genetic structure due to geographic location, while both Demoreptus species revealed clear genetic differentiation between geographic localities and catchments, evident from phylogenetic analyses and high FST values from AMOVA.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Impact of early pandemic stage mutations on molecular dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro:
- Authors: Amamuddy, Olivier S , Verkhivker, Gennady M , Tastan Bishop, Özlem
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/162330 , vital:40835 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1021/acs.jcim.0c00634
- Description: A new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is a global threat to world health and economy. Its dimeric main protease (Mpro), which is required for the proteolytic cleavage of viral precursor proteins, is a good candidate for drug development owing to its conservation and the absence of a human homolog. Improving our understanding of Mpro behavior can accelerate the discovery of effective therapies to reduce mortality. All-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations (100 ns) of 50 mutant Mpro dimers obtained from filtered sequences from the GISAID database were analyzed using root-mean-square deviation, root-mean-square fluctuation, Rg, averaged betweenness centrality, and geometry calculations.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Ruthenium complexes with mono-or bis-heterocyclic chelates: DNA/BSA binding, Antioxidant and Anticancer studies
- Authors: Maikoo, Sanam , Chakraborty, Abir , Vukea, Nyeleti , Dingle, Laura M K , Samson, William J , de la Mare, Jo-Anne , Edkins, Adrienne L , Booysen, Irvin N
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/165463 , vital:41246 , DOI: 10.1080/07391102.2020.1775126
- Description: Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) binding interactions for a series of ruthenium heterocyclic complexes were monitored using ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometry, fluorescence emission spectroscopy and agarose gel electrophoresis. Investigations of the DNA interactions for the metal complexes revealed that they are groove-binders with intrinsic binding constants in the order of 104 – 107 M−1.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Urban nature and biocultural realities:
- Authors: Shackleton, Charlie M , Cocks, Michelle L
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/175709 , vital:42617 , ISBN 9781000215182
- Description: There is no longer any doubt that an important component of and contributor to human wellbeing is the natural environment in which people live, work and relax (Summers et al. 2012). Whilst initial ideas of human wellbeing, early in the second half of the 20th century, focussed on objective measures that could be quantified and contribute to humans’ basic needs, they have evolved a great deal since, despite the lack of consensus on a precise definition of human wellbeing (Summers et al. 2012). Over the last five decades the conceptions of human wellbeing have become more complex and inclusive of the more subjective and less tangible components of human existence, including the natural environment (King et al. 2014).
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- Date Issued: 2020
Cosmolocal orientations: trickster spatialization and the politics of cultural bargaining in Zambia
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/146044 , vital:38490 , DOI 10.1080/19301944.2018.1532379
- Description: The spatialization of Africa is fraught, and places within Africa tend to be stereotyped by geographies of morality and simplistic rural/urban divides. Focusing on the spatial, cultural, and political bargaining of contemporary chiefs and cultural festivals in 21st-century Zambia, this article delinks cosmopolitanism and Afropolitanism from the city and associated attitudes of urbanity. Positioning place as a trickster character, it argues for a nuanced understanding of time-space imaginaries that refuses to bind people and identities to closed-down notions of place. In this article I propose the term cosmolocal, suggesting that the cosmolocal is an outward-engaging orientation that understands place as a profoundly discursive and situational process and that has the potential to exist anywhere. Many contemporary chiefs in Zambia embrace cosmolocalism, enabling them to escape the limitations of being viewed merely as custodians of culture who are limited to the space of the village framed historically as the warehouse of culture.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Language policy and linguistic landscapes at schools in South Africa:
- Authors: Kaschula, Russell H , Kretzer, Michael M
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/174635 , vital:42496 , https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2019.1666849
- Description: Language policy and Linguistic Landscapes (LL) are a highly contested area in South Africa. Due to Apartheid, the education system constitutes the core of such contestation. In Post-Apartheid South Africa the new Constitution of 1996, the South African Schools Act (SASA) and recent political initiatives such as the Use of Official Languages Act of 2012 form the foundation of language policy at schools. The Constitution declares 11 official languages on a macro-level. Nevertheless, English dominates the LL in South Africa. African Languages are significantly underrepresented in the public sphere. The vast majority of research emphasises the urban or semi-urban areas. This research tries to close the existing research gap with a broad comparative study in three research provinces.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Specialization codes: Knowledge, knowers and student success
- Authors: Maton, Karl , Chen , Rainbow Tsai-Hung
- Date: 2019
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/445910 , vital:74441 , ISBN 9780429280726 , https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429280726-2/specialization-codes-karl-maton-rainbow-tsai-hung-chen
- Description: This chapter introduces concepts from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) that launched the productive cross-disciplinary dialogue with systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and which have become central to research using the two frameworks to explore education. The concepts are from the LCT dimension of Specialization, specifically ‘specialization codes’. The chapter illustrates these ideas through showing how the concepts allow research to explain why some students are more successful than others by exploring the dispositions students bring to education, the nature of the knowledge practices they encounter in their studies, and how these relate together to shape their experiences. The example explored draws on a major study of Chinese students who attended higher education in Australia. The chapter analyses the dispositions the students brought and the teaching practices of their educators, and show how these represented a ‘code clash’ between two different ways of measuring achievement. As a result, students struggled to successfully access academic discourse.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Wild edible fruits: A systematic review of an under-researched multifunctional NTFP (non-timber forest product)
- Authors: Sardeshpande, Mallika , Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/177752 , vital:42856 , https://doi.org/10.3390/f10060467
- Description: Wild edible fruits (WEFs) are among the most widely used non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and important sources of nutrition, medicine, and income for their users. In addition to their use as food, WEF species may also yield fiber, fuel, and a range of processed products. Besides forests, WEF species also thrive in diverse environments, such as agroforestry and urban landscapes, deserts, fallows, natural lands, and plantations. Given the multifunctional, ubiquitous nature of WEFs, we conducted a systematic review on the literature specific to WEFs and highlighted links between different domains of the wider knowledge on NTFPs.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Art topples monuments: artistic practice and colonial/postcolonial relations in the public space of Luanda
- Authors: Siegert, Nadine
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147014 , vital:38585
- Description: Even though there have been very few modern and contemporary artworks in the urban space of Luanda in the years after independence in 1975—and especially after the end of the civil war in 2002—there are two works by Angolan artists that are of particular interest: the sculpture Mitologias II (1984) by António Ole (b. 1951) and the photographic series Redefining the Power (2011) by Kiluanji Kia Henda (b. 1978). Both works address the possibility of using contemporary art as a symbolic form of the replacement of power, since both are built on pedestals that had previously supported monuments of Portuguese colonial power. They might, therefore, be read as a form of substitution for monuments that would commemorate and celebrate independence or the end of colonialism. This article also discusses whether these two artworks can also be regarded as counter-monuments and this contributes to the discourse on the visual and material culture of Lusophone Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2018
How Far, Where To?: regionalism, the Southern African Development Community and decision-making into the Millennium
- Authors: Bischoff, Paul, 1954-
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/161638 , vital:40649 , ISBN 9781138726093
- Description: This title was first published in 2002: The resurgence of the democratization movement in Africa in the post-Cold War era is gradually replacing authoritarianism with forms of democratic systems. These changes have put into question the traditional big man image of African states’ foreign policy and foreign policy-making. The first book of its kind to focus on the foreign policy-making process of Southern African countries in the era of globalization, these instructive and rewarding case studies contextualize the increasing involvement of other internal actors in African states foreign policy-making process. Foreign policy actors such as the Presidency, Ministries of Defence, Foreign Affairs, Trade, Finance and the Intelligence Community, among others, are examined in a comparative perspective.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Navigating Multiple Tensions for Engaged Praxis in a Complex Social-Ecological System
- Authors: Cockburn, Jessica J , Palmer, Carolyn G , Biggs, Harry , Rosenberg, Eureta
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127886 , vital:36052 , https://doi.org/10.3390/land7040129
- Description: Recently, the 33-year journey of the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE) was the subject of reflection during an Open Access Publishing week convened by Rhodes University Library Services. Two former and current editors-in-chief shared the SAJEE’s story of publishing ‘from the margins into the centre’. In the early 1990s, the Journal was mailed to the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA) membership from the foyer of the Rhodes Education Department (which had the floor space for stuffing and stacking A4 envelopes). In the first decade of this century, the Journal arrived at a symbolic ‘centre’ with digital distribution, first on the EEASA website and then from the Open Access platform provided by African Journals Online (AJOL). The digital move was vital for sustained and increased distribution in a time of shrinking budgets and growing costs. The results, shared with the EEASA Council earlier this year, were nothing short of spectacular: In March 2017, the SAJEE received more than 1 250 article downloads (www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee), and the number of downloads have stayed above 500 each month subsequently (Figure 1). Views and downloads are recorded around the world including,
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- Date Issued: 2018
Perspectives about the execution of police powers and functions in the republic of Zimbabwe
- Authors: Mugari, Ishmael , Obioha, Emeka, E
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/11260/4928 , vital:44304 , http://cjssp.uni-corvinus.hu/index.php/cjssp/article/view/220
- Description: This study was conducted to explore views about the execution of powers and functions of the police in the light of related challenges. This study made use of data from a total of 83 adult participants (a survey involving 73 individuals, and 10 in-depth interviews), including males and females of diverse occupational backgrounds from Bindura and Mount Darwin policing districts in Zimbabwe. A closed-ended, mostly Likert-scale-based questionnaire was used to collect data about the prevalent forms of police abuse of powers and functions, while an in-depth interview guide was provided to harvest information qualitatively. Findings reveal that police officers abuse their powers through unlawful arrests, arbitrary search and seizure, excessive use of force, unlawful methods of investigation, and ill treatment of detainees. Though not as prevalent as other forms of abuse, malicious criminal prosecution and partisan policing were also cited.K EYWOR DS: powers, abuse, function, police, Zimbabwe
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- Date Issued: 2018
Protection of rights of urban refugees in Kenya: revisiting Kituo Cha Sheria v The Attorney General
- Authors: Juma, Laurence
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/125174 , vital:35740 , DOI: 10.25159/2522-6800/3291
- Description: This article discusses the judgment in the landmark case of Kituo Cha Sheria and Others v Attorney General in the light of the emerging rights jurisprudence in the area of refugee rights. It also explores the impact the judgment could have on the articulation of the rights of urban refugees in Kenya. Based on the assumption that Kenya’s 2010 Constitution provides an opportunity for the robust enforcement of rights, the article analyses the key rights and protection imperatives that were at the centre of the dispute. These include the right to dignity, freedom of movement and to work, and also the principle of refoulement. These rights are at the core of the protection agenda for urban refugees.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Sub-volcanic intrusions and the link to global climatic and environmental changes:
- Authors: Svensen, Henrik H , Planke, Sverre , Neumann, Else-Ragnhild , Aarnes, Ingrid , Marsh, Julian S , Polteau, Stéphane , Harstad, Camilla H , Chevallier, Luc
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145166 , vital:38414 , ISBN 9783319140841 , https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/11157_2015_10
- Description: Most of the Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs) formed during the last 260 million years are associated with climatic changes, oceanic anoxia, or extinctions in marine and terrestrial environments. Current hypotheses involve (1) degassing of carbon from either oceans or shallow sea-bed reservoirs, (2) degassing from flood basalts, or from (3) sedimentary basins heavily intruded by LIP-related sills. These hypotheses are based on detailed geological and geochemical studies from LIPSs or relevant proxy data sequences. Here we present new data on gas generation and degassing from a LIP, based on the LA1/68 borehole north of the Ladybrand area in the Karoo Basin, South Africa.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Traversing ethical imperatives: Learning from stories from the field
- Authors: Treharne, Gareth J , Mnyaka, Phindezwa , Marx, Jacqueline , Macleod, Catriona I
- Date: 2018
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , book chapter
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434279 , vital:73044 , ISBN 978-3-319-74720-0 , https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-74721-7_28
- Description: In this chapter we integrate the lessons that are shared across this handbook through the rich, storied examples of ethics in critical research. We outline central themes to the handbook that cut across all of the sections. The notions of vulnerability and harm are pertinent in critical research not only as a duty to protect participants, but also as signifiers that are mobilised and can constrain what is achieved in critical research. The stories told in this handbook contribute to ongoing learning about ethics in critical research by drawing on ethically important moments in the unfolding research processes. We ask whether ethical critical research requires relational models of reciprocity between researchers and participants/co-researchers and appreciation of situated ethics in the bureaucratic review processes.
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- Date Issued: 2018