The University of Zambia Journals
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NGOs, CIVIC EDUCATION AND THE NURTURING OF DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL ORDER:
Get PDFIn the post-Cold War World Order, democracy has emerged as a political system sans frontières. In this milieu, NGOs have, in turn, emerged as the mid-wives of transition politics, promoting the political change of countries from authoritarian rule to various forms of democratic governance. This article uses secondary data to document the civic education programmes, campaigns and activities that three indigenous Zambian NGOs have undertaken in support of democratisation in Zambia. The evidence collected seems to indicate that the three NGOs are, indeed, not NGO-pretenders but rather genuine vehicles for nurturing democracy and good governance in the country
The Significance of Land in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
Get PDFThis article is concerned with the significance of land in Chinua Achebe’s seminal work ‘Things Fall Apart’. It focuses on questions of how the land is distributed and utilised and the attitudes and beliefs surrounding it. In handling the question, the article analyses various situations and contexts in which issues of land and its use arise. The main tool of analysis is ecocriticism complemented by the social constructionist theory. The article argues that the Igbo culture as presented in Things Fall Apart is a nature-culture characterised by land as a culture-scape. The beliefs of the Igbo determine how they relate to and use the land. Further the article argues that land is very central to the life and lifestyle of the Igbo people as it helps define their religion and customary practices
Prospects for the Domestication of Aloe mzimbana in Zambia
Get PDFZambia, located on the Luombe River, which forms part of the Bangweulu Basin drainage system. The geomorphological nature of Chishimba Falls is such that it consists of two waterfalls called the Mutumuna and Chishimba and the Kaela Rapids. The Chishimba Falls Heritage Site covers an area of 777 hectares. It is surrounded by human settlements and residences for staff of the Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation and the Zambia National Service. Out of a total of 314 plant species recorded at this site, 138 species of flowering plants are of ethnobotanical value. Vegetation studies conducted at this heritage site generated an idea on the prospects to domesticate species of Aloe, particularly Aloe mzimbana, as a source of pharmaceutical compounds
Machine Accidents and Project Delivery In KwaZulu-Natal Construction Industry
Get PDFThis article identified machine accidents, the number of days lost, cost impact, and related accidents in the Construction Industry in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. Accidents in the construction industry cause severe challenges to the business. The critical parameters for assessing project deliveries are health and safety, cost, time, and project quality. The events of accidents on construction premises sabotage these critical parameters of delivery. The main focus of this article was to determine the significance of lost days and the number of accidents on the cost per accident, using the accident data of KwaZulu-Natal from the year 2000 to 2020. Statistical tests were conducted to determine the significance of the lost days and the number of accidents (independent variables) on the cost per accident (dependent variable). Five statistical tests were used in the analysis of the data and tests were grouped into three classes: regression, correlation and paired sample tests. Regression is subdivided into ANOVA, correlation and model summary test. All five tests display the significance of testing variables. The results revealed that there was a significant relationship between the dependent and the independent variables. There was also a positive relationship between lost days and the average cost per accident. At the same time, there was a negative relationship between the number of accidents and the average cost per accident. The positive B value of lost days mean that it directly influenced the average cost per accident. This means that for every increase in days lost to accidents on the site, the costs increased and vice versa. The negative B of the number of days indicated that accidents did not directly influence the average cost per accident. Further, the machine accidents that most caused fatalities were: motorised equipment, truck, lorries, dumpers, building structures, roof work, scaffoldings and staging and wall projections. It is recommended that workers pay more attention to the sources of accidents while working on si
Role of Physiotherapy in Respiratory Rehabilitation and Managing COVID-19 Patients in All Stages of the Disease
Get PDFBackground: Physiotherapists play a crucial role in the management of corona virus disease (COVID-19) patients in all stages for better health (physical and social) outcomes. This document outlines and summarizes the updated official guidelines on roles and recommendations for physiotherapists in the management of all COVID-19 stages in acute hospital settings issued by World Confederation for physical therapy, World Health Organization and Associations of Physical Therapy in various countries.
Methods: An introductory literature search was conducted by using keywords including “COVID-19”, “respiratory rehabilitation”, “physical therapy”, and others in the database of the Associations of Physical Therapy.
Results: Using coronavirus disease-2019 rehabilitation-related articles data was summarized on various guidelines and recommendations involving respiratory rehabilitation and general physiotherapy evaluation; treatment; indications; contraindications; and termination indicators for patients in different stages (acute, stable and recovery) of (COVID-19)
Conclusion: Respiratory and physical therapy (PT) for patients with coronavirus disease should be conducted according to the stage of the disease and condition of the patient. This article is intended for use by physiotherapy personnel and other relevant health personnel in the acute care setting caring for patients with confirmed COVID-19 highlighting their roles regarding patient assessment, management strategies, indications, contraindications and termination of physical therapy
POWER IN MALAWIAN POLITICAL PARTIES
Get PDFThis article employs Steven Lukes’ Three Dimensions of Power to analyse how power disparities between men and women shape the institutionalisation of engendered exclusionary mechanisms in Malawian political parties. The article derives from a qualitative study that was conducted in Mangochi and Phalombe districts of Southern Malawi during the 2014 General Elections. The key argument is that Malawian political parties behave like a political market where there is a strong positive correlation between one’s possession of power and their level of political participation. The article identifies exploitation, opportunity hoarding, emulation and adaptation as key mechanisms perpetuating women’s exclusion from meaningful political participation
Editorial Comment
Get PDFIn his famous novel Things Fall Apart, the legend of African literature, Chinua Achebe writes that ‘A man who calls his kinsmen to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village grounds, it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so’. This is especially true for ZANGO, where we invite all scholars who love to share their contemporary issues from Zambia and around the world to come together and share the experiences of different issues that provoke debate and academic discussions. The University of Zambia is proud to have been providing ZANGO, the Journal of Contemporary Issues, as one of the mediums through which scholarly discourses are shared
Culture-Specific Items in the Chichewa Translation of Achebe's Things Fall Apart
Get PDFThe article analyses 'Chipasupasu' a Chichewa translation of Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart' to determine the strategies adopted in translating culture-specific items (CSIs) into Chichewa. Specifically, it seeks to address the following questions: what treatment – foreignisation or domestication – is given to individual CSIs in the translation?; which translation strategy is dominant in the translated text? and what is the nature of the meanings that resulted from the translation process, following the use of the dominating strategy? Data comprised extracts from the two novels and these were tabulated and analysed to identify translation strategies used in the translation of each CSI. The analysis was carried out considering Venuti's (1995) domestication and foreignisation model, which states that the former is target-culture oriented and seeks to achieve a natural translation in the target language while the latter is source-culture oriented and ensures that a translated text is literal and faithful to the original text. As the findings show, the translator used foreignisation as his main tool for handling CSIs, in some cases he had no other option, while in other cases he did it deliberately; this tendency made foreignisation a dominant strategy in the translation, as its occurrence is 75 per cent as compared with that of domestication; as a result of this dominance, some of the results are plausible, while others are confusing and fail to communicate. Indeed, the preference of one strategy over the other depends on the translator and the ultimate function of the translation. This article however concludes that this translation would remain source-culture oriented for the translator and easy to understand for the target reader if the choice of foreignisation was accompanied by another tool, such as, the use of explanations in form of footnotes
Modelling the Societal Burden of Anthrax in Cattle in Western Province of Zambia using a Modification of Disability Adjusted Life Years
No full textAbstract
Background: Anthrax which is a naturally occurring zoonotic disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis has been endemic in Western Zambia. This paper estimated the societal burden of anthrax on cattle using Productivity Adjusted Life Years (PALYs) among cattle farmers in the Western province of Zambia.
Methods: A quantitative cross-sectional study design was used to collect data from cattle farmers in Mongu, Nalolo and Limulunga districts of Western Zambia. The Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY) model for human populations was modified and adapted to the animal population model, PALYs, to estimate the societal burden of animal diseases. The integral calculator was used to estimate the societal disease burden of anthrax using PALY equations in three categories: PALYs without discounting and age weighting, PALYs with only discounting, and PALYs with discounting and age weighting.
Results: The results showed that anthrax affected the quality of life years lived by animals significantly due to years lost due to disability (YLD) and Years lost due to premature death (YLL). A cow, bull and ox lost about 34%, 39% and 37% of productivity years of its life span due to anthrax. Anthrax further caused a total loss of 459,280.90 PALYs in the three districts. The quality of life is improved, and productivity losses are reduced to almost 0% for all three types of animals by introducing effective anthrax control measures in the absence of other adverse health conditions.
Conclusion: Anthrax negatively affected livestock production due to significant loss of healthy years of life and loss of quality of life. Therefore, it is important to minimize the loss of cattle productivity through morbidity and mortality. Different intervention programs for the same disease can be compared in cost-effective analysis using PALYs as one of the tools. Therefore, societal burden of diseases should also be applied on top of other existing methods used to assess the impact of diseases on animals to enable policymakers to have a complete and comprehensive picture of the impact
A Cross-Sectional Study on Socio-Ecological and Socio-Anthropological Determinants of COVID-19 in Lusaka Province of Zambia
Get PDFThe COVID-19 disease constitutes a pandemic that has created an international public health emergency. Besides the significant health challenges, the impact of the COVID-19 disease has been the restriction of movements that have heavily affected the global economy. The first case of COVID-19 in Zambia was identified on March 18th, 2020. By the end of November 2020, the number of districts reporting COVID-19 infections had increased from 68 to 96, with reports of the highest transmission in the capital city, Lusaka, the Copperbelt, and Ndola districts. As COVID-19 spread across the nation of Zambia, several factors are responsible for the spread of the virus. Despite the extensive collection of research done on determinants of COVID-19 disease, the spatial distribution of the disease along socio-demographical and socio-ecological domains remains speculative and infectious diseases have been less looked into in the areas of anthropological dynamics.
This study used a cross-sectional design to investigate the ecological and anthropological determinants of COVID-19 disease in four compounds in the Lusaka district of Zambia. A guided questionnaire was used to collect data from 301 participants. A descriptive analysis of all independent variables was done. Analysis for associations of dependent and independent variables and multivariate analysis of the independent variables significant at the bi-variate level was conducted to investigate the association between the dependent variable (Knowledge of anyone infected with COVID-19 virus) and the independent variables.
The bi-variate analysis results showed that 14 independent variables with odds ratios greater than one were significantly associated with the spread of COVID-19. Two variables were found to be highly significant in the multivariable logistic regression analysis model. These included beliefs about COVID-19 (odds = 3.0; p = 0.003; CI 1.2-3.3), and participants area of residence (odds = 2.6; p = 0.003; CI = 1.2-5.5). Other significant multivariate variables were ecological variable; climate and anthropological variables; hand hygienic practices.
The current research provides further insight into the potential role ecology and anthropology contribute to the spread of communicable diseases. The study recommends awareness of the population to enhance preparedness and response to reduce the spread of COVID-19