KovsieJournals - University of the Free State (UFS)
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Understanding peri-urban growth in Greater Cairo: A thematic literature synthesis (1990-2025)
Full text linkPeri-urban areas in the Global South are expanding rapidly under the pressure of demographic change, sociopolitical dynamics, and economic development. Yet, in Greater Cairo, where peri-urbanisation has accelerated since the 1990s, hardly any systematic research has examined its dynamics, leaving planners and policymakers with insufficient evidence to address emerging challenges. This study addresses the limited understanding of peri-urban typologies, by exploring their drivers, challenges, prospects, and transformations through a structured literature review, thematic synthesis, and content analysis of 39 publications (1990-2025). The analysis identifies three peri-urban typologies shaped by location, core-periphery relations, and rural-urban transitions. Expansion was driven by factors such as population growth, flat topography prone to encroachment, road accessibility, unequal job distribution, limited low-income housing, and weak land management. Consequences included agricultural land loss, deteriorating air quality, poverty, unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, severe health risks, and informal land tenure. At the same time, peri-urban areas also hold potential for food production, ecosystem services, economic diversification, and social cohesion. By highlighting these interlinked dynamics, the study provides a framework for understanding peri-urban change in Greater Cairo and calls for future research on resilience capacities to guide more adaptive planning and policy responses
A communication framework for community-based organisations to facilitate mutually beneficial long-term relationships with supporting stakeholders
Full text linkCommunity-based organisations (CBOs) often rely on supporting stakeholders (providing financial support, resources, and collaboration) for survival. Therefore, CBOs must build and maintain mutually beneficial, positive, long-term relationships with these stakeholders to ensure organisational sustainability. However, CBOs often experience challenges in this regard, leading us to ask the question: How can a small CBO with limited time and resources communicate with its supporting stakeholders to facilitate mutually beneficial, long-term, positive relationships towards organisational sustainability? The two-way symmetrical model, stakeholder relationship management theory, and stewardship theory provide relevant constructs to inform communication between CBOs and their supporting stakeholders to facilitate such relationships. However, the unique context of CBOs often puts them in a position where extensive relationship-building following the normative theory is impossible, necessitating adaptation of the theory. To adapt the normative theory, we conducted semi-structured interviews with two management members and seven supporting stakeholders of one South African CBO to determine their perceptions, needs, expectations, and realities in terms of communication. We integrated the empirical findings with the theoretical constructs to conceptualise a communication framework for CBOs to facilitate long-term relationships with supporting stakeholders. This framework should enable CBOs to tailor their communication with stakeholders to build sound relationships based on their unique contexts
From mourning mothers to revolutionary mothering
Full text linkIn this article, I critically engage with the literature on Black feminism to follow a notion of public motherhood that exceeds biological reproductive mothering in favour of looking at a conception of motherhood in cultural and linguistic terms, as a political symbol and a framework for thinking about women\u27s power. I oppose a strategic vision of motherhood to privilege the role mothers play at grassroots level. I go beyond the portrayal of Black mothers as victims and irrational subjects to discuss specifically how grief unleashes an activism to change unjust social relations. I foreground the futural dimension of motherhood, using Heidegger\u27s temporality based on care, Sorge. Revolutionary mothering is an act of care but also a political re-imagining that overcomes loss and pain by overhauling existing political and social configurations. I discuss mourning as a performative act, following James Baldwin\u27s call to remember the dead and contemplate loss in a public way
The foundations of transformative private law in South Africa
Full text linkThis article problematises a shallow understanding of "transformative private law" as being a simple merger of constitutional rights and private law. Instead, feeding into international discourse on transformative private law, it is argued that a South African iteration of the concept ought to be rooted in "transformative constitutionalism". Exploring the jurisprudential foundations of transformative constitutionalism, it becomes clear that we are not dealing with classical liberal constitutionalism. Instead, we are dealing with a type of constitutionalism committed to the legal traditions of natural law and critical legal studies that envisages a politicisation of law. Against that backdrop, it is argued that "private law" as an area traditionally thought of as being apolitical is ripe for transformative analysis and critique. However, the complicated effect of the coming together of transformative constitutionalism and private law is that the "private" in private law is weathered away. Is transformative private law then capable of existing? And if so, how
Neo-pentecostal mission healthcare and poverty reduction in Ghana
Full text linkThis article explores the relationship between mission healthcare and poverty reduction, by investigating the role that Ghana’s neo-Pentecostal mission healthcare plays in the latter. Currently, in Ghana, the role of missions in health and well-being has become more diverse and impactful. Through a qualitative interpretive method, data on the role of mission healthcare in poverty reduction were gathered from leading neo-Pentecostal mission health centres in Ghana. The article reveals, among others, that neo-Pentecostal movements are into healthcare, due to the biblical basis of health which teaches them the belief that the health of others is their responsibility. The analysis reveals that the significance of the contributions of neo-Pentecostals to poverty-reducing healthcare services lies in the current concerns of not only the global agenda for sustainable development, but also the neo-Pentecostals’ sense of public responsibility towards health and well-being, which many churches identify as a fundamental prerequisite nowadays
Tutoring for success: Tutors’ experiences of a tutoring programme in a health sciences faculty
Full text linkStudent success in South African higher education institutions (HEIs) is poor and universities have not been successful in implementing strategies to improve students’ learning experiences. Tutoring has been identified as an effective strategy to improve student success but is often used inconsistently and without pedagogical justification. The present study formed part of a larger effort to review tutoring practices in a South African university’s health sciences faculty. In this article we illuminate tutors’ in-depth experiences as a component of pursuing student success and improving tutoring practice. A qualitative approach with an explorative research design was utilised and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. This data was analysed thematically, using Braun and Clarke’s six phase process. Four primary themes emerged in the study: (a) disciplinary content-driven engagements, (b) a theory-practice dilemma, (c) time and time-urgent behaviours, and (d) understandings of mentoring and tutoring. We found that tutors’ conceptions of tutoring were varied and that these perspectives impacted how they understood, operationalised their roles in the faculty and demonstrated the need for integrating disciplinary, practical learning with pedagogically guided approaches. Moreover, we identified a promising model of tutoring which seems to best address the challenges faced by the health sciences faculty with regard to tutoring practice. Our research provides support for valuing tutors as key role players in student academic success within the higher education (HE) context.  
Of exiles and hosts: inbound student surges in South Africa, Chile and Romania in the 2020s, and the contrasting case of Mauritius
Full text linkThis article aims to complement and contribute to the discussion of increasingly acute pressures facing Southern Africa’s education systems due to migration trends, by placing such pressures within the broader context of instability across Africa and comparing this with other global conflict- and scarcity-driven migration patterns. Historically, during the Cold War —spanning from the end of World War II to the early 1990s— certain states, such as apartheid-era South Africa, Chile under political polarisation culminating in the 1973-1990 dictatorship, and communist Romania, witnessed repressive regimes forcing citizens into exile. In the wake of subsequent and ongoing conflicts elsewhere, these countries have now evolved into becoming recipients of exiles, a role informed by national reconciliation processes. While they share a common thread of exile and migration, their transitions to educational hosting reveal unique challenges rooted in historical legacies, economic conditions, and policy responses. Meanwhile, Mauritius provides a point of comparison, as what has historically been a place of exile increasingly loses educated people
Trends, obstacles, and opportunities for smart cities in urban space: A systematic literature review
Full text linkUrbanisation and digitalisation are two significant trends in social development nowadays. The ‘smart city’ has been introduced to address the conflict between citizens’ needs and urban services. However, while much attention has been directed towards the technological aspects, fewer studies have explored their urban impacts. This article presents a systematic review of the existing empirical literature on smart cities in urban space, aiming to investigate the trends of the research, and emphasise obstacles and potential opportunities for smart cities in urban space. The review covers 53 articles obtained from the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases and followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) statement. The findings reveal three main trends (smart city as a technique, as a tool, and as a way), five major obstacles (technological hegemony; surveillance and privacy; data integration difficulties; marginalisation and regional inequality; technocracy and discrimination), and four potential opportunities (interdisciplinary collaboration; platform integrations; inclusive citizen engagement; localised adaptive approaches) related to the objectives. Furthermore, the article highlights several recommendations related to context-based responsive planning strategies for local needs; a comprehensive examination of user perception frameworks; the integration of participatory approaches for more inclusive cities, and standardised measurement protocols for information exchange. This review contributes to policymakers and urban planners in their practices, provides valuable guidance to academics in various fields, and delivers implications for applying smart city concepts in the Global South and other developing countries
Equivalent terminology in the late Chagatai Turkish (Eastern Turki) translation of the Gospel of Luke
Full text linkMany texts written in Eastern Turki, the short-lived successor to Chagatai (ISO 639-3 code CHG) used in East Turkistan from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, have survived thanks to Western, particularly Swedish, missionaries. The Swedish Mission, active in Kashgar, Yarkent, and Altishahr played a major role in producing and preserving these texts. Their 50-year effort to translate the Bible into Eastern Turki culminated in the 1922 Gospel of Luke(Lucas Evangelium),prepared by David Gustafsson and Oskar Hermansson in Kashgar. This article analyses the equivalence of religious terminology in this translation and compares it with the Greek and Hebrew originals. Particular attention is paid to the translators’ use of Islamic or “Muslim-friendly” terminology – an issue that remains highly relevant to modern Bible translation debates. The findings show that adopting culturally familiar expressions enhanced both the comprehensibility and acceptability of the text among East Turkistani readers