A political economy of transformation in Nelson Mandela University Bay: a critical analysis of the construction sector 2005
- Authors: Mtimka, Ongama
- Date: 2022-12
- Subjects: Transformation -- Port Elizabeth -- Nelson Mandela Bay , Construction industry -- South Africa –Port Elizabeth , Politics -- Nelson Mandela Bay
- Language: English
- Type: Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/59392 , vital:62077
- Description: In democracies and purportedly free market economies, questions of “who gets what, when, and how” ought to be resolved mainly through free competition, where those with the competitive advantage on merit are guaranteed to succeed. If it is political parties, they only have to compete well and fairly to win elections. If it is businesses, they ought to have the best value and price and they win customers. However, there are institutions which regulate this competition and political economic behaviour. Interest groups such as business chambers, industry and professional associations, as well as various structures of representation engage in the political economic space to sway the distribution outcomes from these “institutions” in the favour of their members. To do so, at times they use methods that affirm the principles and spirit of free competition and at other times, they do not. This thesis reviews the political economy of transformation within the construction sector in Nelson Mandela Bay to further advance knowledge within the subfield of political economy in South Africa. By looking at a specific economic sector, the study adds an important element to the sub-discipline, a nuance to the debates about the role of the state in the economy or macroeconomic policy and the much studied mining-energy complex. The study focuses on the role of small business forums created mostly by newcomers within the construction sector in the city and the methods they used to increase the share of their members in construction sector revenues. Their methods were unconventional and earned them the unfavourable term of ‘the construction mafia’. Through a grounded theoretical research process, this study details the story of the rise and fall of forums and dissects it in line with ongoing debates within political economy and related disciplines, particularly about the nexus between politics and business as well as the role of interest groups in pluralist political systems. Among other things, the study finds that the forums did not see the construction industry as a free market and did not take principles of competition in the sector as a given. As such, they sought to make and remake institutions of the sector in ways that could increase their share of revenues. In similar fashion to the roles of iinjoli nosokhaya in traditional isiXhosa ceremonies, they accorded to themselves the right to distribute benefits to their members contrary to legal and general market prescripts. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Government and Social sciences, 2022
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- Date Issued: 2022-12
Disentangling the role of prokaryotes in regulating export flux via suspended and sinking organic matter in the southern ocean
- Authors: Dithugoe, Choaro David
- Date: 2022-10-14
- Subjects: Microbial ecology , Bioinformatics , Biochemistry , Oceanography , Metagenomics , Carbon cycle (Biogeochemistry) , Prokaryotes
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Doctoral theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/365745 , vital:65782 , DOI https://doi.org/10.21504/10962/365745
- Description: The role of phytoplankton in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide in the marine environment has been the subject of extensive research. We lack, however, comparative insights regarding the functional contributions of bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses (the microbiota) to organic matter export especially in understudied polar marine environments such as the Southern Ocean. This knowledge deficit is in part due to the high levels of microbial diversity which obscures efforts to study the relationship between diversity and ecosystem functions including their roles in the sequestration of carbon and nitrogen. Elucidating their precise contributions to organic matter export may be central to potential ecosystems feedbacks to global climate change. We examined several factors which may influence organic matter export to depth including net primary production, phytoplankton biomass, temperature, and prokaryotic functional capacity in the Southern Ocean. A Marine Snow Catcher was used to collect suspended and sinking material 10 metres below mixed layer depth at Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) in autumn (March-April) and in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean in winter (July-August) and spring (October-November) 2019. The suspended and sinking material was used to determine the particulate organic carbon and nitrogen concentrations which were then used to calculate fluxes and export ratio ((e-ratio) - particulate organic carbon flux divided by net primary production). Additionally, genomic DNA was extracted from the suspended and sinking material and sequenced to obtain Shotgun metagenomic data which was employed to reconstruct metagenome assembled genome (MAGs) and their functional capacity using bioinformatic tools such as DRAM. Data from the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean, demonstrate that net primary production and temperature were inversely related to the e-ratio which is consistent with previous findings from the northern region of the Southern Ocean. Genomic functional capacity from SOTS suggested that r-strategist (organisms adapted to live in unstable environments) bacteria (e.g., Gammaproteobacteria) were prominent in the suspended pool. By contrast, the sinking particle-pool appeared to be dominated by K- strategists (organisms adapted to stable environment). The opposite was true for the archaea. This finding (i.e., bacteria) differs from a previous study in the northern region of the Southern Ocean, showing that microbes with K-strategists were more abundant in the suspended fraction. K-strategists typically degrade sinking organic matter into suspended organic matter or dissolved organic matter reducing the organic carbon export efficiency. Furthermore, Data from the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean revealed that seasonal temperature changes might dictate the rate of regional prokaryotic degradation across the zones. Resulting in rapid degradation at the northerly warmer regions and slow degradation further south. The data further provide evidence of chemolithoautotrophic mechanisms, with prokaryotes harbouring key pathways, required to transform dissolved inorganic carbon into complex organic forms, including recalcitrant dissolved organic carbon. Collectively, the SOTS and Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean data suggest that shifts in prokaryotic community structure and functional capacity may regulate (either degradation or synthesis of organic matter) carbon export to depth. , Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Science, Zoology and Entomology, 2022
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- Date Issued: 2022-10-14