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The mediating role of strategic innovation on the relationship between strategic thinking, strategic planning and performance of women-owned small businesses
No full textIn recent years the number of SMMEs in general has been on the rise; moreover, what is remarkable about this rise is that the number of women entrepreneurs has also risen at the same time. Over the past decade’s women entrepreneurs have attracted the attention of many scholars because of the significant impact they have been having on economic growth, economic development and job creation, among many other benefits. Entrepreneurship and the participation of women in the formation of SMMEs has been recognised as a new strategy for women to be part of the ever-growing entrepreneurship population. Although there has been a rise in the number of womenowned SMMEs, there is however, a general under-performance of women-owned businesses versus their male counterparts. As such it is crucial to understand what impacts the performance of women-owned SMMEs and amongst the key factors is strategy which encompasses strategic thinking, strategic planning and strategic innovation. The purpose of this study was to investigate these factors, specifically the mediating role of strategic innovation, on the relationship between strategic thinking, strategic planning and performance of women-owned SMMEs. To achieve the purpose of this study, the study adopted a positivist paradigm because of its objective nature which is also supported by the quantitative research approach; in addition the study adopted the descriptive research design. An electronic questionnaire (online-administered) system was administered to the women in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality (BCMM) which yielded 200 responses. Participants were selected through the convenience sampling technique across small businesses in the BCMM in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software and Smart PLS software were used for data analysis to test the hypotheses. Tests such as multiple linear regression, factor analysis, correlations, ANOVA and t-tests were used to test the hypotheses. The findings of the study showed that strategic thinking, strategic planning and strategic innovation have a significant influence on the performance of women-owned SMMEs. The study also found that strategic innovation does not mediate the relationship between strategic thinking, strategic planning and the performance of women-owned SMMEs. Instead, it is strategic planning that was found to have this mediating effect. As such, amongst other recommendations, it is recommended that women should take time to educate themselves on the concepts of strategy, strategic thinking, planning and innovation so that they can improve their performance and achieve competitive advantage within their respective industries. The study also recommended that the government and metropolitan municipality should encourage and develop support structures that will help women entrepreneurs to enhance and develop their strategic thinking, strategic planning and strategic innovation skills.Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Management and Commerce, 202
The Role of the courts in the interpretation and implementation of the Right to Basic Education in Section 29(1)(a) of the South African Constitution
Get PDFThe right to education in section 29(1)(a) of the Constitution was meant to signal a break between an education system divided along racial lines, and a new democratic education system based on equity, equality, and opportunity for all learners. In reality, the South African education system still remains deeply divided along racial lines, with poor, mostly black learners, being under-resourced by the state, while their richer, mostly white, counterparts are being taught in schools that have access to all the resources necessary to realise the right to basic education. As a result, the right to education in section 29(1)(a) of the Constitution has been heavily debated, and between 2010 and 2022, the South African courts have often been called on to interpret the right. In the process, a rich jurisprudence has developed on the core content of the right to basic education, with findings by the courts that the right includes an entitlement to a number of educational resources. These include access to school infrastructure, learner-teacher support materials, desks and chairs, scholar transport, teaching and non-teaching staff, and nutrition. This study examines the way South African courts, between 2010 and 2022, have interpreted and implemented the right to basic education to give effect to section 29(1)(a) of the Constitution. While South African courts have historically shied away from interpreting socio-economic rights to contain a minimum core content and have rather opted for a reasonableness approach, the same is not entirely true for section 29(1)(a). As stated above, courts have been willing to find that the right entails a minimum basket of goods and services without which the right cannot be realised. By examining some of the most important education rights cases during this period, the study proposes that there are five factors that have guided the courts’ interpretation of the right and has assisted in the courts finding that the right contains a minimum core content. These factors are the historical context of the right to basic education; the textual formulation of the right to basic education in section 29(1)(a) of the Constitution; the interrelatedness of the right to basic education and other rights within the Bill of Rights; subsidiary education policies, legislation, and regulations, and lastly, the role of international law. This study seeks to consider the extent to which each of these factors have played a role in courts’ interpretation of section 29(1)(a). The study also considers the implementation of these judgments and the role that the courts have played in realising the right to education for learners on ground-level.Thesis (LLM) -- Faculty of Law, Law, 202
Revisionist narratives: locating six Black artist-teachers onto the map of twentieth-century modern art in Zimbabwe
Get PDFJob Kekana (1916-1995) was a South African sculptor and teacher who moved to Zimbabwe in 1944, where he founded the Kekana School of Art and Craft in the early 1960s. There were also a few Black Zimbabwean artist-teachers, namely, Sam Songo (1929-1977), Cornelius Manguma (b. 1935), Lazarus Khumalo (1930-2015), Joram Mariga (1927-2000) John Hlatywayo (b. 1928), who were either working with missionaries Canon Edward Paterson (1895-1974) and Father John Groeber (1903-1973) at the Cyrene and Serima workshops respectively and later on at the Mzilikazi Arts and Crafts Centre, or with Frank McEwen (1907- 1994) at the National Gallery school. This thesis examines the relative invisibility of Kekana and the selected Black artist-teachers in the dominant discourse of the history and development of modern art in Zimbabwe. Employing the biographical approach as a methodology, and modernism as an analytical tool and foregrounding African thinkers like Chika Okeke-Agulu Elizabeth Georgis, Emma Wolukau- Wanambwa and Salah Hassan, this research exposes the possible reasons for their exclusion from the canon, which are rooted in a gatekeeping culture shown by actors in the local art scene, including art historians and scholars, as well as cultural workers in institutions like the National Gallery of Zimbabwe who have not sufficiently questioned and possibly shaken the enshrined legacies of Paterson, Groeber and McEwen. Canons mostly tend to tell a story that privileges and excludes others from the art narrative of a nation. With the arrival of Frank McEwen on the scene in the late 1950s the stone sculpture tradition rose to prominence in such a way that it overshadowed other forms of art produced in the two mission schools or workshops at Serima and Cyrene. In the process, Kekana and his students at the Kekana School of Art and Craft were relegated to the peripheries of the canon as they carved in wood and tended to work in a more representational style. While there is literature acknowledging the role of the missionaries in laying the foundation of modern art in Zimbabwe, local artists-cum-teachers working with them are only recognised as a footnote on the nation’s map of modern art. Recognising that canons are always evolving and shifting, and without discrediting the work of the three mentioned expatriates – and to an extent that of Tom Blomefield of the Tengenenge Workshop – this thesis attempts to expand the canon by arguing for the inclusion of the critiqued overlooked six. Citing the efforts of researchers, scholars and curators in multicultural South Africa to bring the previously marginalised generation of Black modernists into the mainstream, this thesis demonstrates that it is possible to spotlight the narratives of the Black artists and teachers who continue to occupy peripheral space in the history of Zimbabwe. This comparative analysis is done bearing in mind the temptation of falling into the trap of glorifying ‘South African exceptionalism’. In analysing the Black artist-teachers’ contributions as a counter-narrative, this research proposes a more heterogeneous modernism and revisionist art history.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Fine Art, 202
Factors influencing the number of non-timber forest product species used at the individual, household and village levels in Vhembe, Limpopo Province, South Africa
Get PDFNon-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) are wild biological resources obtained from natural landscapes, agricultural systems, and rural and urban regions for a variety of uses. NTFPs contribute significantly to livelihoods and living standards by offering a variety of socioeconomic benefits such as food, health, income generation, and safety nets. These multiple benefits are provided by a wide diversity of plant, animal and fungal species in different settings. However, the precise number of NTFP species used depends on the scale of assessment, namely use by individuals, by households and by villages. Consequently, it is difficult to compare numbers of species used between studies because of the differing scales. As a result, the objective of this study was to determine the number of NTFP species used at three different scales and how each is correlated with appropriate scale-dependent contextual variables. This objective was met by sampling individuals and whole households in five villages in the Vhembe District in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Twenty households were randomly selected in each village, providing a total sample of 100 households and 179 individuals in those households. In each household, every adult member was interviewed individually about the NTFPs that they used or knew. The major questions covered the NTFP species used, the respondents' socioeconomic level, the NTFP species used previously, and if the number of NTFP species are changing in the landscape. Data were reported per individual as well as per household and per village. The household level was derived by adding the responses of all the adults in each household but excluding duplicates. The same approach was used at the village scale, namely, the data across the 20 households were pooled, and duplicates were omitted. Patterns of NTFP use were examined by type of NTFP, and analysis using standard statistical tests, along with a Principal Components Analysis and a multivariate Detrended Correspondence Analysis of the NTFP species composition across villages. A total of 275 species of NTFPs were mentioned across the entire sample, including 81 species of firewood, 48 species of edible insects, 43 species of wild vegetables, 40 species of edible fruits, 38 species of wood utensils, 28 species of medicinal plants, 23 species of thatch grass, 19 species of poles, 19 species of wood for carvings, nine species of reeds, eight species of mushroom, and eight species of fodder. Of these species, some species had more than one use. Approximately 90% of the species used by the respondents were native species. Wild vegetables (e.g., Corchorus olitorius, Amaranthus capensis, Bidens pilosa), firewood (e.g., Colophospermum mopane, Parinari curatellifolia, Combretum hereroense), wild fruit (e.g., Landolphia kirkii, Vangueria infausta), and edible insects (e.g., Imbrasia belina, Macrotermes michaelseni, Encosternum delegorguei) were the most often used NTFPs by communities in the Vhembe area. Most of the households relied on NTFPs for subsistence. At the scale of an individual, the mean number of NTFP species used was 26.8±12.6 across the five villages. When considering a household, the mean number was 36.1±10.7 species. When aggregated across the 20 households per village, the mean number per village was 105.2±34.1 species. The species accumulation curve showed that 20 households per village were reasonably representative for four of the five villages. The results from the principal component analysis (PCA) and correlation analysis revealed that age, education, and employment status were significantly associated with the number of species used by individuals, whereas gender showed no clear correlation. At the household scale, household size was positively related with the number of species used, but income level and income source were not. At the village scale, attributes such as proximity to a town, settlement type, vegetation type, and distance to a nearby savanna all had some influence on the number of NTFP species listed. Most of the respondents felt that the number of species used had increased over the last 10–15 years, although some stated the opposite. Increases were attributed by traditional councils bans, the establishment of protected areas, and restoration. Activities eroding the number of NTFP species were identified as clear felling for farming, climate change, and over-harvesting. This study suggests that communities must be made more aware of the overharvesting of NTFP species in the savanna to avoid biodiversity loss.Thesis (MSc) -- Faculty of Science, Environmental Science, 202
Implementing a sexual and reproductive citizenship intervention refinement instrument for youth sexuality education: a formative evaluation
Get PDFWhile Out of School sexuality education (SE) programmes in South Africa have attempted to bridge the gap in the number of young people who receive SE, there is still a large number of youth between the age groups of 15 to 24 years who lack adequate sexual knowledge. The manner in which sex education is taught and its accessibility is accompanied by challenges, in particular in relation to empowerment. To better understand the effectiveness of sexual education programmes, evaluations of their content is needed. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether and how an Out of school SE programme run by Partners in Sexual Health (PSH) promotes understandings of sexual and reproductive citizenship. A formative evaluation of their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) facilitator’s manual was conducted (owing to COVID the actual programme was not run in the year data for this thesis were collected). To help perform the formative evaluation, the feminist sexual and reproductive citizenship (SRC) framework as conceptualized by Macleod and Vincent (2014) was used. The SRC framework consists of five key principles that, it is suggested, need to be adopted for SE programmes to be inclusive, namely, citizenship as status and practice, differentiated citizenship, private and public interstice, and politics of recognition, redistribution and reparation. An additional principle of inclusive and process-based educational practices was added into the five key principles. To analyse data, template analysis was used which enabled the researcher to create a priori of themes using the Masizixhobise toolkit which is informed by the SRC framework. Findings from this study reveal the interconnectedness between the different citizenship principles. Moreover, while the PSH SRHR programme promotes principles of the SRC framework, there are aspects of the SRC that are lacking from the programme. Therefore, the SRHR manual needs to take into account a spectrum of issues which include but are not limited to the incorporation of sexually diverse differently-abled individuals' sexual experiences and challenges when it comes to accessing SE. This means for SE programmes to achieve inclusivity and to be empowering, they need to encourage individuals to be agentic beings, engage in informed decision-making and encourage young people to take up their rights.Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Psychology, 202
Analysis of South African Media Coverage of the 2022 KZN Floods
Get PDFLiterature exists that studies media coverage of natural disasters. The media has the potential to influence how governments react to disasters, how emergency services handle disasters, and how people receive and react to the news of disasters. However, the media sometimes sensationalizes the news about the disasters and focus on other manifestations such as panic, looting, shock, emerging heroes and villains, human conflict, and suffering. This study aims to analyze the media coverage of the 2022 floods in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in South Africa. In particular, the study seeks to evaluate if there was media coverage of the floods and what the contents of the coverage were. The study used content analysis to examine the presence of KZN floods from three selected online newspapers, focusing on whether the floods were covered, and which issues or themes dominated the reporting of the floods. The aim here was to examine the role that the media played during this disaster in South Africa. Content analysis was used to note the number of stories covered during the KZN floods in the media, the key themes that dominated the coverage of the floods and factors that influenced the media coverage of the floods. The selected online newspapers are News24, Independent Online (IOL) and TimesLive. These newspapers were purposively selected because of their wider national readership, the ideology of the newspaper, strong online presence, and type/style of reporting. Based on the above-presented data, we argue that there was sufficient coverage of the KZN floods in South African media. The study also discovered that the following issues or stories dominated the reporting/coverage of floods: disaster management, casualties, relief measures, the role of the government, business interests, the role of opposition parties, destruction of infrastructure, and effects on social life
A framework to assess apomediation in social networking sites: a case of individuals with autoimmune disease
Get PDFOver the past couple of years there has been a major change in the health-related information available to patients. The modern patient typically researches online before consulting a doctor, leading to more independence for patients regarding their medical care. Doctors continue to play a pivotal role in the medical profession due to their medical education and experience, however, patients are progressively turning to online information to understand their condition. They also check online, following consultation with their doctor, to confirm that the information provided is correct; and frequently ask for advice from people with the same condition. Clearly, patients are changing their normal health seeking behaviour by supplementing what they hear from healthcare professionals through searches for additional sources of information. Unfortunately, online health-related information is not always factual. The misinformation could cause potential problems in the doctor-patient relationship because the doctor has all the information about the patient’s condition, therefore any indication that the patient is trying to undermine the authority of the doctor could be devastating. There is a need for people, or tools, that can support the patient to direct them to high quality information regarding their condition. This concept, known as apomediation, was discussed in detail in this research, as well as the effect on patients. Unfortunately, there is a lack of understanding of the extent to which these tools or people support the apomediation process for patients. This research focused on social networking sites, which is the tool to be used, while the patients were individuals with an autoimmune disease. The purpose of this research is to construct a framework to understand the extent to which social networking sites support apomediation for individuals with autoimmune disease. Research was conducted on existing models and theories that supports apomediation, as well as investigating which social networking sites are available that best support apomediation based on the core features of these sites. The research then focused on the requirements of individuals with autoimmune disease in respect of apomediation. These building blocks led to the construction of a framework artefact 6 that can guide patients on how to determine the extent to which social networking sites support apomediation. An assessment tool was also developed, based on the framework artefact, to evaluate the framework’s effectiveness in executing its designed intention.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Technology, 202
Arterial stiffness in pregnant women with preeclampsia and HIV infection at Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital
Get PDFThesis (Masters) -- Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, 202
Click consonants in contact: a comparative sociohistorical analysis with special reference to Nama-Afrikaans contact
Get PDFDespite their ubiquity across southern Africa, click consonants are among the world’s most poorly understood speech sounds. Details of their phonological behaviour during language contact remain unclear, in large part because of the under-documentation of contact events of marginalised languages in rural contexts. Working within a sociohistorical linguistic framework with reference to material socioeconomic theories of language contact, this thesis compares and contrasts the diachronic phonological outcomes of various click loan events. The primary event under investigation is the donation of loanwords from an endangered click language, Nama, via substrate interference with the lexicon of a socially dominant clickless language, Afrikaans, in the Namaqualand region of the Northern Cape. The phonological adaptations employed to integrate donated lexical material into a host grammar ought ordinarily to be fairly regular, but the cross-linguistic rarity of click consonants complicates this process. The twenty click consonants expected of Nama undergo phonemic neutralisation when realised in Namaqualand Afrikaans, such that contrast embedded in click ‘type’ and click ‘accompaniment’ is collapsed. Speakers of Namaqualand Afrikaans employ any click type when uttering any click word, and may even use different click types in different tokens of the same lexical item. This unpredictability neutralises contrast. Nonetheless, there is some evidence of a diachronic trend from the unpredictable use of multiple click types and accompaniments toward the stable use of only the linguopulmonic dental click. When these novel data are set against the phonological outcomes of other contact events between a click language and a clickless languages across southern Africa, the normal outcome of click loan under is shown to be the collapse of ‘type’ contrasts. An important outlier is the large ‘type’-contrasting click inventory still shared by isiXhosa and isiZulu long after the extinction of donor click languages in the Khoekhoe branch, suggesting that this contact event must historically have entailed sustained community-wide bilingualism. These comparative observations are used to develop a cross-linguistic typology of click loan events that aims to improve our understanding of the precolonial linguistic landscape of southern Africa. The improved documentation of click consonants in rural language varieties is urgently recommended.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 202
Mentoring candidate quantity surveyors in South Africa
Get PDFAbstract.Thesis (MSc) -- Faculty of Engineering, the Built Environment and Information Technology, School of Built Environment Environmental, 202