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Vulamasango Singene: sociological analysis of a rural social movement
Get PDFThis dissertation tests the claim made by a large membership-based organisation that it is a social movement. The organisation, Vulamasango Singene (VS) operates across the rural areas of large parts of the Eastern Cape Province. It has, for twenty years, advocated for the re-opening of land restitution claims for a specific category of forced removal known as “betterment”. This study provides an analysis of an organisation that has yet to achieve its objective in spite of sufficient financial resources, logistical and strategic support, numeric strength and the legal clarity of its demand. The research is situated within the framework of social movement theory. The study examined the origins, institutional infrastructure, demographic make-up, activities and culture of VS. These were analysed against four components that are identified in the literature as key characteristics of a social movement. These are: (i) informal networks (as opposed to structured and managed engagements); (ii) a plurality of actors (as opposed to a homogenous grouping); (iii) mobilising around issues of conflict; and (iv) sharing common beliefs and demonstrating solidarity. Data were gathered through an archival study and field research. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with a sample of VS’s leadership, and staff of the non-governmental organisation in which VS originated, as well as expert informants in the land reform arena. The findings with respect to each of the criteria were: (i) VS’s structure was rigid and internal communication was largely formal. (ii) There was almost no demographic or political diversity within VS. (iii) VS had, in the past, mobilised around issues of conflict, but there had been no mobilisation for ten years. (iv) While there was some evidence of sharing common beliefs and demonstrating solidarity, this was limited. The conclusion reached was that VS is not a social movement. This does not imply that VS is not an important democratic or representative organisation. It does, however, provide a theoretical position from which VS, and other organisations, can direct further action. The study touched on the relationship between northern donors, local professional NGOs and grassroots organisations in South Africa. Interactions among these institutions impact on the way that organisations and social movements develop. Comparisons with other similar organisations were made and similarities and differences were highlighted. It was suggested that, because of the importance of the issue, further research in this regard is necessary.Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Sociology, 202
The mental health effects of social media on young adult South Africans in the COVID-19 pandemic: a thematic analysis of social media posts by Rhodes University students
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa has been mainly discussed in terms of its socioeconomic effects and loss of life. While these are important, its mental health effects are given attention in this dissertation. In particular, this is explored through social media platforms, which saw increased usage as a result of regulations on movement to slow the Virus’ spread. This is explored during the hard lockdown (or ‘Alert Level 5’) and further, focuses on young adults, key users of social media platforms. Max Weber’s ‘social action theory’ and Michel de Certeau’s ‘theory of everyday life’ are drawn on, which help to analyse social relations from an individual level; and are used to explore the kinds of expressions made on a social media platform, and what can be said in mental health terms. These theoretical frameworks are applied to a university “Confessions” page, used mostly by young adults, where submissions were made anonymously. Findings indicate a great deal of trauma associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, but also evidence of the emergence of collective responsibility. They show the immense sacrifices made by participants for the opportunity of an education, and provide a window into the kinds of subjectivities experienced by South African young adults. Further, they show the importance of having more substantive mental health discussions in South Africa, a country familiar with traumatic experiences.Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Sociology, 202
Identification of novel therapeutic agents targeting Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) lytic replication
No full textAccess restricted. Expected release date 2025.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Science, Biochemistry and Microbiology, 202
Information extraction model from Ge’ez texts
Get PDFNowadays, voluminous and unstructured textual data is found on the Internet that could provide varied valuable information for different institutions such as health care, business-related, training, religion, culture, and history, among others. A such alarming growth of unstructured data fosters the need for various methods and techniques to extract valuable information from unstructured data. However, exploring helpful information to satisfy the needs of the stakeholders becomes a problem due to information overload via the internet. This paper, therefore, presents an effective model for extracting named entities from Ge'ez text using deep learning algorithms. A data set with a total of 5,270 sentences were used for training and testing purposes. Two experimental setups, i.e., long short-term memory (LSTM) and bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) were used to make an empirical evaluation with training and a testing split ratio of 80% to 20%, respectively. Experimental results showed that the proposed model could be a practical solution for building information extraction (IE) systems using Bi-LSTM, reaching a training, validation, and testing accuracy as high as 98.59%, 97.96%, and 96.21%, respectively. The performance evaluation results reflect a promising performance of the model compared with resource-rich languages such as English
Exploring strategies that enhance a safety culture in mitigating the number of safety incidents at Eskom.
Get PDFEver since its emergence during the 1980’s, safety culture has become a topical subject in high-risk industries such as electricity generation, construction, mining, and many others. Eskom in particular has paid a considerable amount of attention on the issue of safety in general. Although the company has made safety one of its focal points through its SHEQ Policy and various interventions in an endeavour to promote safety culture in the organisation, its safety statistics are showing that safety incidents are continuing to happen. To commence the inquiry, a literature review was conducted on secondary sources which highlighted various causes of employee injury-related incidents at Eskom which range from fall on same level, motor vehicle accidents, struck by, and others. In an endeavour to assist the company to enhance a safety culture so that it can achieve its value of ‘Zero Harm’, this study focuses on different modalities that can be developed to improve the status quo. It examines ways that can be followed towards improving the safety relationship between management and employees which in turn will result in an improved overall safety culture of the organisation. In so doing, managements’ perceptions regarding the safety culture that is currently in place as well as the employee’s attitudes towards safety standards were used to gain insights into the organisation’s safety climate on safety behaviour while examining the existing safety culture. To realise the empirical objectives of the study, a pragmatic research paradigm was adopted. This approach involved the use of both a qualitative research method, namely, a focus group, and a quantitative research method, namely, a questionnaire. Quantitative data was analysed using SPSS version 26. Meanwhile, data collected during interviews was analysed using a thematic analysis. Key findings from this study point mainly to the level of mistrust between employees and the safety leadership, which, if left unattended will have a knock-on-effect not only to the safety culture but to the entire organisational culture. Based on the meaningful results uncovered by this study, various recommendations that are aimed at enhancing a safety culture in the organisation were made. Among these recommendations, it was suggested that coaching and mentorship programmes be introduced and allow employees to champion some of the safety programmes to enhance morale and safety accountability.Thesis (Ma) -- Faculty of Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences, 202
The role of optimism bias in susceptibility to phishing attacks in a financial services organisation
Get PDFResearchers looking for ways to change the insecure behaviour that results in successful phishing have considered multiple possible reasons for such behaviour. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the role of optimism bias (OB – defined as a cognitive bias), which characterises overly optimistic or unrealistic individuals, in order to ensure secure behaviour. Research is considered that has focused on issues such as personality traits, trust, attitude and information security awareness training (ISAT). We used a mixed methods design to investigate OB behaviour, building on a recontextualised version of the theory of planned behaviour to evaluate the influence that OB has on phishing susceptibility. To model the data, an analysis was performed on 226 survey responses (systematic random sampling method) from the employees of a financial services organisation using partial least squares (PLS) path modelling. To evaluate OB behaviour, we conducted an experiment consisting of three ISAT sessions and three simulated phishing attacks. After each phishing experiment, we conducted interviews to gain a better understanding of why people succumbed to the attacks. It was subsequently found that overly optimistic individuals are inclined to behave insecurely, while factors such as attitude and trust significantly influence the intention to behave securely. Our contribution to practice is to enhance the effectiveness of ISAT by identifying and addressing the OB weakness to deliver a more successful training outcome. Our contribution to theory enriches the Information Systems literature by evaluating the effect of a cognitive bias on phishing susceptibility and, through research, offering a contextual explanation of the resultant behaviour.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Commerce, Information Systems, 2023Navorsers op soek na ‘n antwoord om onveilige gedrag te verander wat lei na uitvissing het verskeie moontlike redes oorweeg vir sulke gedrag. Daarom is die doel van hierdie verhandeling om die rol van optimistiese vooroordeel (OB - gedefinieer as 'n kognitiewe vooroordeel) te verstaan, wat te optimistiese of onrealistiese individue kenmerk om veilige gedrag te verseker. Navorsing was oorweeg wat gefokus het op kwessies soos persoonlikheidseienskappe, vertroue, gesindheid en inligtingsekuriteitsbewustheidsopleiding (ISAT). Die navorser het gemengde metodes gebruik om OB-gedrag te ondersoek. Daar was voortgebou op 'n gerekontekstualiseerde weergawe van die theory of planned behaviour om die invloed wat OB op uitvissing-vatbaarheid het, te evalueer. Om die data te modelleer, is 'n analise gedoen waar 226 opname antwoorde verkry is van 'n finansiële dienste organisasie en is partial least squares (PLS) path modelling gebruik. Om OB-gedrag te evalueer, het ons 'n eksperiment uitgevoer wat bestaan uit drie ISAT-sessies en drie gesimuleerde uitvissing-aanvalle. Na elke uitvissing-eksperiment het ons onderhoude gevoer om 'n beter begrip te kry waarom mense aan die aanvalle geswig het. Te optimistiese individue is geneig om onveilig op te tree, terwyl faktore soos gesindheid en vertroue die voorneme om veilig op te tree, aansienlik beïnvloed het. Die studie se bydrae tot die praktyk is om die doeltreffendheid van ISAT te verbeter deur die OBswakheid te identifiseer en aan te spreek om 'n meer suksesvolle opleidingsuitkoms te lewer. Verder verryk die studie die Inligtingstelsels-literatuur deur die effek van 'n kognitiewe vooroordeel op uitvissing-vatbaarheid te evalueer en deur navorsing bied dit 'n kontekstuele verduideliking van die gevolglike gedrag
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi associated with maize in South Africa, under conventional and conservation agricultural cultivation
Get PDFAccess restricted. Expected release date in 2025.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Science, Biochemistry and Microbiology, 202
TPACK Development: technology integration with teacher educators in foundation phase teacher training programme
Get PDFAccess restricted. Expected release date in 2025Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Secondary and Post-School Education, 202
Exploring the interplay between foundation phase learners’ home and school literacy practices
Get PDFThe thesis looked at Foundation Phase children’s early home literacy practices and examined how these literacy practices are adopted at school in Libode, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, a rural area. The purpose of the study was to determine how early literacy practices at home are adopted in classrooms. The study aimed to determine the relationship between home and school literacy. To understand the literacy practices used at home and school by four Foundation Phase children and four Foundation Phase teachers, an interpretive ethnographic study design was used. Participants who spoke isiXhosa as their first language participated in data collection using structured observations, video and audio recordings, field notes, and unstructured interviews. The study’s framework, the Cultural Historical Activity Theory, was used as a tool to collect, examine, and interpret data through its various components. Themes were identified, arranged, and categorized. The findings revealed children from low socioeconomic backgrounds have rich literacy practices. Teachers do not acknowledge or recognize the contributions that these children’s cultural backgrounds make. The study recommends that schools start acknowledging the advantages that children’s environments have for them. It also suggests that teachers build on the knowledge that children bring from home, as this will have an impact on how they behave in class because students bring their family’s literacy habits, which serve as the foundation for their academic literacy habits, to school.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Education, Institute for the Study of Englishes in Africa, 202
Silica supported sulfuric acid-catalysed one-pot processes for the synthesis of n-heterocycles
No full textAccess restricted. Expected release in 2025.Thesis (PhD) -- Faculty of Science, Chemistry, 202