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Indigenous forests level of deforestation, forest dependency and factors determining willingness to participate in indigenous forest conservation: evidence from resettled farmers of Shamva, Zimbabwe

  • Authors: Chivheya, Renias V
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: Forest conservation -- Zimbabwe Forests and forestry -- Economic aspects -- Zimbabwe Deforestation -- Zimbabwe
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10353/2370 , vital:27786
  • Description: This study first explored the rate of forest deforestation in Shamva resettlement areas. It then identified and estimated the extent to which these resettled farmers depend on forest for their livelihoods. Evaluation of farmer perceptions on management issues and willingness to participate in indigenous forest conservation and the socio-economic and institutional factors which affect their willingness to participate were also done. Finally the study sought to identify incentives for forests conservation. The study was conducted in Shamva district in Mashonaland Central province. And the respondents were stratified into three groups: A1, A2 and Old resettlement models. The three models differ on how they were implemented and supported which might render them to have different deforestation rates, livelihood strategies and forest dependency. A total of 247 respondents were surveyed, consisting of 98 A1 farmers, 50 A2 farmers and 99 Old resettled farmers. The data was collected using GIS and remote sensing, structured questionnaire interviews and direct observation. The data was analysed using descriptive analysis, KAP analytic framework and binary logistic regression analysis. The land cover/changes results revealed that both deforestation and afforestation are taking place in Shamva resettlement. Woodland and bushland were decreasing, croplands were also decreasing. However woodland dense and grasslands were increasing. Deforestation was found to be as a result of the resettled farmers’ livelihood strategies which were found to be diverse and agriculture being dominant in all models. All the farmers depended on the forest but at varying levels of 19 percent for Old and 14 percent forA1 and 0.02 percent for A2 resettle farmers. 84 percent of the interviewed farmers however, indicated that they are willing to conserve forest with A1 farmers being the highest followed by A2 86 percent and lastly Old resettled farmers at 76.8 percent. Results of the binary regression model revealed that the significant factors which explain willingness to participate in indigenous forest conservation are age, marital status, education, gender, institution, culture and belief, employment and household size. The highest preferred incentive was the provision of free seedlings and the lowest was out grower scheme. The study recommends that GIS and remote sensing should be used to monitor deforestation, off farm projects be encouraged, exotic and indigenous trees be promoted and forest conservation education be promoted in resettlement areas.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Sarqaquinoic acid and related synthetic naphthoquinones inhibit the function of Hsp90

  • Authors: Chiwakata, M , de la Mare, Jo-Anne , Edkins, Adrienne L , Beukes, Denzil R
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66324 , vital:28933 , https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0036-1596751
  • Description: publisher version , Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) is of critical importance in the proper folding of numerous proteins, including those involved in cancer. Consequently, there is significant interest in the discovery and development of Hsp90 inhibitors as anticancer drugs. In this study, we investigated the ability of sargaquinoic acid (SQA) and selected naphthoquinone derivatives to inhibit Hsp90 function. SQA was isolated and purified from Sargassum incisifolium while the naphthoquinones were synthesised via a straightforward sequence incorporating a Diels-Alder reaction between benzoquinone derivatives and myrcene followed by coupling with substituted alkyl or arylamines. Hsp90 inhibition was assessed by a client protein degradation assay. At a concentration of 1µM, SQA showed almost complete inhibition of Hsp90 but only moderate antiproliferative effects (IC50 658µM) against a Hs578T breast cancer carcinoma cell line. Interestingly, the most potent synthetic aminonaphthoquinone inhibited Hsp90 function by 50% at a concentration of 1µM but showed much improved activity against the Hs578T cell line (IC50 0.32µM). Furthermore, unlike geldanamycin, none of the compounds tested upregulates Hsp70 suggesting that these compounds may bind to the C-terminal end of Hsp90.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

A narrative-discursive analysis of abortion decision-making in Zimbabwe

  • Authors: Chiweshe, Malvern Tatenda
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/496 , vital:19964
  • Description: Most research on abortion decision-making has looked at the factors or influences that are seen to affect abortion decision-making and thus take a health determinants approach. However, this approach is rarely able to account for the complex, multi-faceted nature of abortion decision-making, and it is often not located within a framework that can unpick the complex array of power relations that underpins the process of abortion decision-making. Research on abortion decision-making has rarely examined how women who undergo a termination of pregnancy (TOP) construct micro-narratives of the decision to terminate the pregnancy and also how these women are positioned by the service providers who interact with them. Using a Foucauldian postcolonial feminist approach and narrative-discursive analysis, this study explores abortion decision-making narratives in a Zimbabwean context where abortion laws are restrictive. In this study I elicited the narratives of women who had undergone an abortion about how they came to make the decision and proceeded to terminate the pregnancy. I highlight the discourses employed in constructing these narratives and how women position themselves in these narratives and discourses. These are then compared to the subject positions enabled in health service providers’ narratives on the same topic. These narratives are then linked to the social discourses and power relations that work to enable or constrain reproductive justice. The data were collected from three sites in Harare, Zimbabwe. The three sites were Harare Hospital, Epworth and Mufakose. An adapted version of Wengraf’s (2001) narrative interview was used to elicit narratives from 18 women who had terminated pregnancies (six at each site). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six service providers (two nurses at Harare Hospital, two village health workers in Epworth and two nurses in Mufakose). All the service providers interviewed have experience working with women who have terminated pregnancies. In narrating their stories about their abortions, the women employed discursive resources around shame, stigma, religion, health and culture. These discursive resources were drawn upon in the construction of the women’s micro-narratives. The women spoke in a socially sanctioned manner where stories were enabled and constrained by particular religious, cultural and gendered discursive resources. In these stories, cultural constructions, gendered understandings of motherhood and femininity constrained reproductive justice for women who have terminated pregnancies. Comparisons of the way women positioned themselves and how they were positioned by health service providers point to the existence of social discourses and power relations that work to constrain reproductive justice. While the women saw themselves as having ‘unsupportable pregnancies’, the service providers positioned them as being evil, selfish and irresponsible. The negative positions deployed by the service providers point to the vilification and blaming of women who have undergone a termination of pregnancy. In these positions, the woman is at fault and there is silence on the role of men in abortion decision-making. In the women’s narratives and the health service providers positioning of the women a ‘reproductive rights’ discourse was absent. This was significant as much of the activism around abortion has centred on the woman’s rights to her body. Where rights were mentioned, it was in reference to foetal rights (using cultural, moralistic religious understandings of abortion as killing). The missing ‘reproductive rights’ discourse points to a need to move from a reproductive rights framework to a reproductive justice framework that can be applied through local understandings of hunhu/ubuntu. By doing this, abortion is not seen as a ‘choice’ that a woman makes but rather as involving broader social and environmental circumstances that make a pregnancy ‘unsupportable’.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Energy management system for the diagnosis and control of an automatic guided vehicle

  • Authors: Church, Stuart Michael
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: Automated guided vehicle systems , Mechatronics
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MEng
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/4798 , vital:20681
  • Description: With the increase in electronic equipment implemented in various systems, as well as the increase in calculating power that these devices offer, designers are being empowered to make use of this power in real-time systems to diagnose and protect the systems themselves. This reasoning is too compounded by the focus on efficiency and safety in the design of complex systems, as well as the increasing expense and sensitivity of the electronic components themselves. With this in mind, this dissertation aims at developing a comprehensive measurement, control and reaction system for the electrical diagnosis and ultimately optimisation of complex electrical and electronic systems. This system will serve as a real-time diagnosis tool, which will enable the real-time diagnosis of various components in an electro-mechanical system, which can then be interpreted to determine the working state of the various components. Another sphere of this project will involve the accurate monitoring of the battery status as well as actively balancing the series connected batteries. The focus on the batteries will seek to prolong the life of the batteries, while being able to squeeze as much capacity out of them. The initial design and testing will be based on an AGV system implemented at VWSA, however a main goal throughout the design process will be modularity, i.e. the ease of implementation of this system in other systems. The key technologies used in the development of this system will still comprise of the components used in the original AGV, however new prototype components sourced from Microcare are used for the battery management system, while current sensors directly connected to the PLC’s analog input ports will be used for the active monitoring of currents distributed through the AGV.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

An investigation of green marketing opportunities at BOS Ice Tea

  • Authors: Ciesielski, Adrian Adam
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MBA
  • Identifier: vital:864 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021246
  • Description: The research addresses the marketing activities of BOS Ice Tea, a South African company, and whether they are reflective and grounded within their marketing activities. By analysing public data and interviewing the founding partners, Richard Bowsher and Grant Rushmere, the findings where compared against the marketing paradigms of Ottoman (1999) and the green marketing practices of Gittell et al. (2012). It was determined that the company engages in green activities, but does not communicate them clearly. Further, where the company did promote organic rooibos and sustainability, their actions were not reflective of these behaviours from an academic point of view. Thus, there was the potential for green washing. The research concludes with suggestions for a 4P’s green marketing framework, and comments on areas that need clarity.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Composing affect: reflection on configurations of body, sound and technology in contemporary South African performance

  • Authors: Cilliers, Ilana
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/3377 , vital:20478
  • Description: This thesis engages with experiential performance modes through the lenses of phenomenology and affect theory. Because experiential performance relies per definition on personal, subjective ‘experience’, specific responses cannot be anticipated. However, by attempting to compose ‘affect’, a performance has the potential to ‘move’ an attendant towards response. Deleuze and Guattari define ‘affect’ as “an ability to affect and be affected….a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act” (1987: xvi). One current strategy for manifesting affect in performance seems to be the ways in which different configurations of body, sound and technology are employed. The body is the means through which sound is received or ‘experienced’ in the phenomenological sense, but it can also act as a source for sonic material. The body is furthermore the means by which sonic technology is manipulated. It is the complex, reverberating relationships between body, sound and technology, and their potential for eliciting affective transformation, which is the focus of my enquiry. In the first chapter I unpack the roles of the natural phenomena, body and sound, and their complex relationships to affect. The chapter serves as philosophical basis for the rest of the investigation, and draws largely on works by philosophers Susan Kozel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Brian Massumi, Gille Deleuze and Félix Guatarri and sound theorists Don Ihde, Marshall McLuhan, Brandon LaBelle and Frances Dyson.In the remaining three chapters I discuss current South African theatre works that employ the strategy of placing emphasis on sound, sonic technology, and its relationship to the human body. These works are my own piece herTz (2014), Jaco Bouwer’s pieces Samsa-masjien (2014) and Na-aap (2013), and First Physical Theatre Company’s Everyday Falling (2010). While they range from being plays to physical theatre performances to performative experiments, they all place specific emphasis on sonic devices, drawing attention to sound by revealing microphones, speakers, midi boards, etc. to the attendants, and including the generation and manipulation of sound in the action of the performance.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Hearing things

  • Authors: Claassen, José
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:6019 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1021243
  • Description: William Carlos Williams wrote: "It isn't what the poet says that counts as a work of art, it's what he makes, with such intensity of purpose that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity." I would like to think that my poems only borrow life from my pen, taking on an identity and music of their own with the help of some ‘making’ on my part. My poems embrace a continuum of human experience from the intrapersonal to the societal. Using imagistic and cinematic forms, they preserve the vitality of their sources, from the music of cityscapes, to the texture of emotions, to the narratives of particular characters.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Reimagining curriculum through a Bernsteinian lens: rethinking the canon in Political Science

  • Authors: Clarence, Sherran
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , conference publication
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66961 , vital:29006
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Knowledge and knowers in teaching and learning: an enhanced approach to curriculum alignment

  • Authors: Clarence, Sherran
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59823 , vital:27655 , http://www.legitimationcodetheory.com/pdf/2016Clarence-c.pdf
  • Description: John Biggs’ well-known curriculum design approach, constructive alignment, is widely used in higher education in the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa. Developed with one dominant account of learning through curriculum, this approach has a gap in terms of accounting for other kinds of knowledge building, and associated knower development. This paper proposes a complementary approach that accounts for different kinds of knowledge and knower building. Using Legitimation Code Theory’s concept of Specialisation, the paper argues that accounting for what makes a discipline ‘special’ in terms of its basis for legitimate achievement can enable curriculum writers to align curricula more effectively with that basis in different disciplines. Using a case study approach, this paper shows how this tool can provide lecturers and academic development practitioners with a useful mode of analysing curriculum alignment to more ably account for differential development of disciplinary knowledges and knowers.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Knowledge-building: educational studies in Legitimation Code Theory

  • Authors: Clarence, Sherran
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: book review , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61300 , vital:28013 , http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2016.1231751
  • Description: A challenge facing higher education researchers, especially those new to the craft of research, is that of moving between theory and data effectively in order to mediate research findings clearly to readers. For postgraduate students and academics publishing their research, working with data and designing effective and fit-for-purpose methodologies can be a challenge. Moreover, this is not necessarily an easy area for supervisors and research mentors to assist with. In addition to researchers, practitioners working in academic development also need ways of using research – either empirical or conceptual – to augment their work with lecturers to improve teaching and learning. There are many handbooks that detail the differences between qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods research. There are many theoretical texts to choose from. But there are few texts that offer researchers and those mentoring researchers insight into how methodology and theory connect in research studies, as well as practical tools to navigate the chaos of research, bringing theory and data into conversation in relevant and problem-oriented ways that can influence practice effectively. Karl Maton, in his introduction to this edited collection, argues that in spite of many claims within educational and social research for the need to connect research with theory more effectively, ‘the two frequently remain divorced or, at best, not on speaking terms’ (p. 1). The central premise of the book flows from this: we need to move beyond calls for more theory-informed research into education and society towards generating ways of demonstrating enactments of research that bring theory and research together meaningfully. The need for the research we publish to make clear its theoretical and methodological underpinning and enactments is crucial for effecting sustainable and meaningful change in practice within the field. This text, located within the growing field of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) research, within the broader field of sociology of education, takes a generous step in that direction. Building on Maton’s 2014 text, Knowledge and knowers. Towards a realist sociology of education, this text delves into how LCT concepts – particularly in the dimensions of Specialisation and Semantics – can be enacted within educational research and practice.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Transforming the use of tutorials through academic staff development

Peer tutors as learning and teaching partners: a cumulative approach to building peer tutoring capacity in higher education

  • Authors: Clarence, Sherran
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61335 , vital:28016 , http://cristal.epubs.ac.za/index.php/cristal/article/view/69
  • Description: Peer tutors in higher education are frequently given vital teaching and learning work to do, but the training or professional development and support opportunities they are offered vary, and more often than not peer tutors are under-supported. In order to create and sustain teaching and learning environments that are better able to facilitate students’ engagement with knowledge and learning, the role of peer tutors needs to be recognised differently, as that of learning and teaching partners to both lecturers and students. Tutors then need to be offered opportunities for more in-depth professional academic development in order to fully realise this role. This paper explores a tutor development programme within a South African writing centre that aimed at offering tutors such ongoing and cumulative opportunities for learning and growth using a balanced approach, which included scholarly research and practice-based training. Using narrative data tutors provided in reflective written reports, the paper explores the kinds of development in tutors’ thinking and action that are possible when training and development is theoretically informed, coherent, and oriented towards improving practice.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Surfing the waves of learning: enacting a Semantics analysis of teaching in a first-year Law course

  • Authors: Clarence, Sherran
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59816 , vital:27654 , https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2016.1263831
  • Description: Students’ ability to build knowledge, and transfer it within and between contexts is crucial to cumulative learning and to academic success. This has long been a concern of higher education research and practice. A central part of this concern for educators is creating the conditions that enable their students' deep learning, as this is an area of significant struggle for many students. Legitimation Code Theory, in particular the dimension of Semantics, is proving useful in examining the kinds of conditions that may be necessary for students to build disciplinary knowledge cumulatively over time. Using illustrative data from one case study, this paper suggests that the conceptual tools offered by Semantics can provide academic lecturers and academic development staff with a set of conceptual and analytical tools which can enable them to ‘see’ and understand the ways in which knowledge can be cumulatively acquired and used, as well as the possible gaps between what they are teaching and what their students may be learning. The hope is that these new insights will provide new directions for change in teaching and learning where these may be needed.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Seeing yourself in a new light: crossing the threshold to “researcher"

  • Authors: Clarence, Sherran
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: book chapter , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61390 , vital:28021 , http://www.africansunmedia.co.za/Sun-e-Shop/tabid/78/ProductId/385/Default.aspx , http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6WW52
  • Description: Writing, and the thinking, reading and analytical process that writers engage with to make writing possible, is transformative, and doctoral students in the social sciences especially tend to write themselves into their new identities as ‘doctors’ and recognised researchers. Much has been written in recent years about doctoral writing, including many advice books on how to write a ‘big-book’ or similar doctoral thesis into being. While some of the journal articles and books are helpful, and provide useful accounts of the complex challenges of writing a doctoral thesis, many of the advice books in particular focus more on the text itself, with the writer oddly under-accounted for. Recent research on, for example, doctoral writing groups and doctoral identity speaks into this gap helpfully, but much of it is written in contexts other than South Africa, and much of it is written for rather than by students going through or having recently completed a PhD process. This chapter contributes to a growing body of research and reflection on the role of writing itself in the process of becoming a ‘doctor’. Building on relevant blog posts and critical reflection through a research journal on my own transformative doctoral writing process at a South African university, this chapter will reflect on how challenging yet also potentially thrilling the writing process can be during a PhD. Readers will hopefully find in this chapter useful insights into their own process of becoming a doctor, and ideas for making their own ‘writing and becoming’ process more engaging and rewarding.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Exploring the nature of disciplinary teaching and learning using Legitimation Code Theory Semantics

  • Authors: Clarence, Sherran
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: article , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61314 , vital:28014 , https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1115972
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  • Date Issued: 2016

An insight into the profile characteristics and technical batting skill of adolescent cricket players

  • Authors: Clark, Matthew Edward
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MSc
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/2838 , vital:20331
  • Description: Background: Current traditional cricket practices incorporate the use of a netted-off pitch to provide cricket players the opportunity to hone their skills with bat and ball. The lack of ecological validity of these training environments results in the absence of important task and environmental constraints which influences the manner in which the sport is played. Objectives: The purpose of the current research was two-fold: firstly, it aimed to establish a profile database of adolescent cricket players in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa; and secondly, it aimed to investigate the efficacy of a constraints-led training intervention on skill development in adolescent cricket batsmen. Methods: Study I required 90 participants (u13: n = 40; u15: n = 50) to perform measures pertaining to anthropometric, morphological, flexibility and physical performance characteristics. This included stature, mass, body composition, limb length, flexibility, agility, and power measures. Study II was a case-control study (u15: n = 24), whereby the experimental group (n = 12) was exposed to a constraints-led batting protocol during the course of the cricket season. The objective of the protocol was to encourage the manipulation of the ball around the playing field. Pre- and post-intervention measures were performed using a batting skills test, which assessed batsmen’s capability to manipulate the ball to various areas of the playing field. Results: Study I revealed significant differences (p <0.0001) in stature, mass, limb length and power variables when comparing the u15 age group with the u13 age group. No differences were recorded for agility. The u13 age group had greater linear correlations for the variables of interest compared to the u15 age group. Study II revealed no differences in technical skill between the experimental group and the control (p <0.315).. The tests also revealed that adolescent batsmen favoured hitting deliveries through the extra-cover scoring zone. The third-man and fine-leg scoring zones were least preferred to hit deliveries through. A number of limitations to the study design resulted in the inability to determine the efficacy of a constraints-led batting protocol on skill development in an adolescent batting cohort. Conclusion: The results of study I indicated that the onset of puberty played an important role in the measures and performances between the u13 and u15 age groups. The results of study II indicated that adolescent batsmen are not adept at manipulating the ball around the field. Recommendations are provided for both studies.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

The GULLS project: a comparison of vulnerabilities across selected ocean hotspots and implications for adaptation to global change

  • Authors: Cochrane, Kevern L , Hobday, Alistair J , Aswani, Shankar , Byfield, Val , Dutra, Leo X , Gasalla, Maria A , Haward, Marcus , Paytan, Adina , Pecl, Gretta T , Popova, Katya , Sainulabdeen, Shyam S , Savage, Candida , Sauer, Warwick H H , van Putten, Ingrid E , Visser, Natascha , TG Team
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/422037 , vital:71906
  • Description: The GULLS project, `Global learning for local solutions: Reducing vulnerability of marine-dependent coastal communities' has been underway since October 2014. The project has been investigating six regional `hotspots': marine areas experiencing rapid warming. These are south-east Australia, Brazil, India, Solomon Islands, South Africa, and the Mozambique Channel and Madagascar. Rapid warming could be expected to have social, cultural and economic impacts that could affect these countries in different ways and may already be doing so. GULLS has focused on contributing to assessing and reducing the vulnerability of coastal communities and other stakeholders dependent on marine resources and to facilitate adaptation to climate change and variability through an integrated and trans-disciplinary approach. It includes participants from Australia, Brazil, India, Madagascar, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The research programme has been divided into six inter-linked components: ocean models, biological and ecological sensitivity analyses, system models, social vulnerability, policy mapping, and communication and education. This presentation will provide a brief overview of each of these components and describe the benefits that have resulted from the collaborative and transdisciplinary approach of GULLS. Following the standard vulnerability elements of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, the vulnerabilities of coastal communities and other stakeholders dependent on marine resources in the five hotspots will be compared using a set of indicators derived and populated from results of the research programme. The implications of similarities and differences between the hotspots for adaptation planning and options will be described.
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  • 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.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

A maturity grid-based method for assessing communication in business-IT alignment

  • Authors: Coertze, Jacques Jacobus
  • Date: 2016
  • Subjects: Business communication , Management information systems
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Doctoral , DPhil
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/6740 , vital:21139
  • Description: This thesis reports on the research undertaken to develop a method for organisations to assess human communication between their business and IT personnel as part of business–IT alignment. The research described in this thesis involves (i) a literature review in business–IT alignment and related fields, such as management studies and communication science; (ii) a Delphi study conducted among industry members, practitioners, and academics operating in the IT advisory, auditing and communication disciplines; and (iii) a case study of a public sector organisation in South Africa. By adopting a system-theoretic perspective on communication, this thesis proposes that communication in business–IT alignment can be seen as coordinating behaviour and a series of learning and reflection events, consequently culminating in increased mutual understanding. Various conceptualisations of communication are explored and, together with several industry elicited factors that influence communication in business–IT alignment, are incorporated into a conceptual model informing the assessment method. This research developed, applied, and tested a method whereby organisations can assess the quality of the human communication between their business and IT personnel as part of the business–IT alignment endeavour. The aim of this method is to trigger reflection on communication by considering communication philosophy and practices in business–IT alignment. The method, termed the ‘Business-IT Communication Alignment Maturity Improvement Communication Alignment Maturity Improvement (CAMI) method’, is based on a maturity grid-based approach, which stems originally from process improvement in software development and quality management. This thesis is most closely aligned with the research performed by Maier, Eckert, and Clarkson (2004, 2006), who successfully applied the maturity grid-based approach to investigate, audit and assess communication within the engineering design process. The question addressed in this thesis is whether this approach can be successfully extrapolated to the business–IT alignment context and whether it would yield similar benefits. Furthermore, the issue of whether it would offer a practical method for use in organisations is also addressed. Having applied the CAMI method at a public sector organisation, this thesis proposes that the maturity grid-based approach can indeed be extrapolated to iv the business–IT alignment context, consequently offering a viable and practical method for assessing communication in organisations. In particular, the CAMI method allows organisations to capture both their current and their desired communication situations and to expose discrepancies between the perceptions held by their business and IT personnel. These results form a basis for action planning, strategizing, and, ultimately, interventions for improvement. In conclusion, the thesis discusses further application and extension possibilities for the assessment method.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Boetie is verlore: the reproduction of militarized white masculinities through the lens of Boetie gaan border toe! (1984)

  • Authors: Coetzee, Joseph
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/4245 , vital:20638
  • Description: My father fought for the South African Defence Force (SADF) from 1983 to 1985. At that time the apartheid regime was involved in extensive military operations in what is now Namibia and Angola. This conflict was aimed at quelling the liberation movements in those countries and, as Gary Baines has noted, supported the United States of America’s Cold War interests (Baines 2007:1). When I was fourteen I found a piece written by my father in which he remembers the first person that he had killed in the aforementioned conflict. This was a child soldier who he compared to me as I was a similar age at the time of his writing. The idea of my father as a killer haunted me. He has carried the trauma of his experiences on the border with him; he has told me how the dead visit him in dreams. On the one hand, these memories, not my own, have been constructed through my interpretation of the events in my father’s stories. On the other hand, homologies may be drawn between his actual experiences and a fantasy representation of the conflict I have encountered, the film Boetie gaan border toe! or Brother goes to the border! (1984). This apartheid propaganda film presents an idealised representation of the conflict from the point of view of the apartheid state. The protagonist of the film, Boetie, is an example of the aspirational and dominant image of militarised masculinity the apartheid state wished young white men to emulate. The racist sexist, patriarchal and materialistic reality created within the film is one I am familiar with. The toys I grew up playing with, television shows, films, advertising and popular culture I consumed, alongside the boys’ school I attended and the University I currently attend are all rooted in and continue to reproduce this reality. I have encountered many similar archetypes to the Boetie character. With this in mind I wish through my art practice to create a work which draws upon my father’s writing and imagery from Boetie gaan border toe! (1984). I have placed these alongside windows into my contemporary context in order to emphasise the continual reproduction of these ideas. In reference to the Boetie film I have decided to create my own film entitled Boetie is verlore or Brother is lost. This is a magic realist documentary film that I have constructed through various interviews and fantasy dream sequences in order to paint a picture of the continual incubation and reproduction of realities similar to that of Boetie. Boetie is a rich white man who is characterised through his material possessions and his compulsive heterosexuality. White women are interchangeable to him whilst blackness in the film is made completely invisible. In South Africa such representations are strongly linked to the question of land and naturalising the white male coloniser’s dominance and privilege.
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  • Date Issued: 2016
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