Browsing by Title
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Lehmann, Uta; Van Damme, Wim; Barten, Francoise; Sanders, David (BioMed Central, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: Ever since the 2006 World Health Report advocated increased community participation and the systematic delegation of tasks to less-specialized cadres, there has been a great deal of debate about the expediency, efficacy and modalities of task shifting. The delegation of tasks from one cadre to another, previously often called substitution, is not a new concept. It has been used in many countries and for many decades, either as a response to emergency needs or as a method to provide adequate care at primary and secondary levels, especially in understaffed rural facilities, to enhance quality and reduce costs. However, rapidly increasing care needs generated by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and accelerating human resource crises in many African countries have given the concept and practice of task shifting new prominence and urgency. Furthermore, the question arises as to whether task shifting and increased community participation can be more than a short-term solution to address the HIV/AIDS crisis and can contribute to a revival of the primary health care approach as an answer to health systems crises. In this commentary we argue that, while task shifting holds great promise, any long-term success of task shifting hinges on serious political and financial commitments. We reason that it requires a comprehensive and integrated reconfiguration of health teams, changed scopes of practice and regulatory frameworks and enhanced training infrastructure, as well as availability of reliable medium- to long-term funding, with time frames of 20 to 30 years instead of three to five years. The concept and practice of community participation needs to be revisited. Most importantly, task shifting strategies require leadership from national governments to ensure an enabling regulatory framework; drive the implementation of relevant policies; guide and support training institutions and ensure adequate resources; and harness the support of the multiple stakeholders. With such leadership and a willingness to learn from those with relevant experience (for example, Brazil, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia), task shifting can indeed make a vital contribution to building sustainable, cost-effective and equitable health care systems. Without it, task shifting runs the risk of being yet another unsuccessful health sector reform initiative. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/316 Files in this item: 1
LehmannTaskShifting2009.pdf (219.6Kb) -
Pretorius, Joelien (Sage, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: The article proceeds from the argument that war is a social institution and not a historical inevitability of human interaction, that is, war can be “unlearned.” This process involves deconstructing/dismantling war as an institution in society. An important step in this process is to understand the philosophical and cultural bases on which technology is employed as “tools” of war. The article focuses on such questions as, Is technology just viewed as instruments in the hand of its human masters in war? Does technology take on an autonomous role in war? How should we assess the impact of context (political, economic, and cultural) of technology when employed in war? By exploring these points, the article hopes to provide input into the discussion on the control of war technologies and ultimately the dismantling of war as an institution in society. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/453 Files in this item: 1
PretoriusTechnologicalWar2008.pdf (176.5Kb) -
Glaser, Meryl; Tucker, William D. (2004)[more][less]
Abstract: This paper presents a description of telecommunications for Deaf people in South Africa by contrasting the situation in the developed world. We explain the main motivations for providing a locally appropriate solution. Research activity began with a community-based field trial of TTYs. The recommendations of the trial motivated an innovative approach to provide synchronous and accessible relay services. Drawing from international technological developments, we designed a software solution called the SoftBridge. We employ iterative Action Research cycles to drive technological modifications to the SoftBridge and to encourage adoption by the end-user community. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/593 Files in this item: 1
GlaserTucker-CVHI2004.pdf (162.9Kb) -
Chetty, Marshini; Tucker, William D.; Blake, Edwin H. (Telkom, 2004)[more][less]
Abstract: Rural areas in South Africa have unique conditions such as remoteness and scarcity of reliable public facilities. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) introduced into these areas must be suitable for these conditions. Using a user-centred design approach based on Participatory Design and Action Research, we have developed a telemedicine application for a rural village in the Eastern Cape. This paper describes how we determined the requirements and design for the application and why we chose Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) combined with a store and forward approach to achieve our telemedicine goals. We present an overview of the methodology we are using, describe the software application we have developed and mention several challenges we have faced to date. Finally we conclude that VoIP and store and forward technologies are appropriate to the South African rural situation. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/621 Files in this item: 1
ChettyTuckerBlake-SATNAC2004.pdf (287.0Kb) -
Penton, Jason; Tucker, William D.; Glaser, Meryl (Telkom, 2002)[more][less]
Abstract: We have developed a prototype bridge that relays text and speech between Teldem, a text telephone for the Deaf, and a standard telephone or H.323 endpoint. Telgo323 uses modified H.323 media gateways and open source Text to Speech and Speech to Text software. The approach allows for easy integration of new tools as the technologies mature. This paper presents the design of the implementation prototype, discusses Teldem tone decoding, and suggests directions for future work. The Telgo323 provides evidence that an automated relay bridge is imminently viable for the Deaf Community, and further demonstrates an attractive approach for building bridges over the Digital Divide. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/612 Files in this item: 1
PentonTuckerGlaser-SATNAC2002.pdf (99.60Kb) -
McMillan, Wendy (Routledge, 2007)[more][less]
Abstract: Background: Current literature calls for the explicit teaching to health-science educators of the skills, knowledge and dispositions that are required for successful teaching in higher education. Aims: This paper draws on evidence from an Oral Hygiene department at a South African university in order to illustrate these teaching-competency needs. Insights from the evidence are synthesised with current literature regarding best teaching practice, in support of an appropriate framework for the development of teaching competencies to health-science educators. Description: A qualitative approach, using a case study, was adopted. The cohort comprised fifteen students in the first-year Oral Hygiene cohort class and the ten educators who taught their programme. Data was collected through semistructured interviews and open-ended questionnaires. The topics that emerged from the combined analysis of the interviews and the questionnaires were organised into a grid so that common themes could be identified. Current literature regarding teaching and learning was used as a framework for interpreting the empirical evidence, from which three categories emerged. The first category included suggestions from students regarding what to do to teach better. A review of the literature indicates that these competencies can be effectively learnt from self-help guides. The second category included requests for skills development. Literature review suggests that these might effectively be learnt from single-event workshops facilitated by more able peers. Responses in the final category highlighted the need for an underpinning theory of teaching and learning, and signalled the need for a more theoretically grounded and detailed approach to teacher development. Conclusion: The framework developed from the empirical study and current literature makes it possible for individual clinical teachers, and staff developers, to construct teaching-competency development plans that are pertinent to individual teachers’ needs, relevant and practical, educationally sound, and cost-effective in terms of time and effort. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/84 Files in this item: 1
McMillan_Guidelines2007-1.pdf (399.7Kb) -
Krog, Antjie (Philosophical Society of Southern Africa, 2008)[more][less]
Abstract: Regular reference is made, within the discourse around the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to the fact that ubuntu, an indigenous world view, played a role in the process. This paper tries to show that despite these references, important analysts of the TRC (as well as many South Africans) had insufficiently accounted for this worldview in their critical readings of the Commission’s work and therefore found aspects of the process incoherent and/or morally and legally confused. I am not arguing that the TRC was not a deeply flawed process, but want to establish how powerfully this indigenous world view brought a coherency that not only enabled the TRC to do its work without incidences of revenge, but imbued politically and legally trapped concepts with new possibilities. The pervasiveness of this world view within eg. the second round of TRC testimonies is noticeable and show how often the critique on the TRC fails to take this dominant role into account and how many, seemingly contradictory or confusing, positions become coherent when regarded within this worldview. This view of interconnectedness, consistently expressed throughout the life of the commission, has wide implications for the interpretation of healing, the asking of amnesty, the rehabilitation of perpetrators, the interdependence of forgiveness and reconciliation in the process of achieving full personhood within a healed society. In the footsteps of Richard Bell, this paper locates this world view within a particular framework formulated as ubuntu by Desmond Tutu, as communitarianism by Kwame Gyekye, as ethnophilosophy by Paulin Hountondji etc. The paper also tries to understand how this interconnected moral self is formed and who the community could or should be that influences this moral self. URI: http://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/187 Files in this item: 1
KrogReconciliation2008.pdf (93.7Kb) -
Piper, Laurence; Deacon, Roger (Routledge, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: Will participatory local government structures help deepen democracy in South Africa? That is the proclaimed purpose of the ward committee system, the centre- piece of post-apartheid local government reform, intended to facilitate deliberative democratic decision making. Drawing on a case study of the Msunduzi municipality, it is argued here that ward committees, as yet barely functional seven years since first being established, have from the outset been caught up in relations of dependency with ward councillors, political parties and the municipality itself, and that these relations threaten to undermine the democratic dividends that the committees are expected to yield. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/483 Files in this item: 1
PiperWardCommittees2009.pdf (237.2Kb) -
Conradie, Ernst (University of Kwazulu-Natal School of Theology, 2005)[more][less]
Abstract: This essay defends the significance of the Christian doctrine of sin with reference to the many contemporary manifestations of evil, including the problems of environmental devastation, environmental injustuce and rampant consmerism. It offers a survey of various attempts towards an ecological reformulation of the doctrine of sin. It argues that theological circumspection is required in order not to confuse and conflate the problems of natural suffering and human finitude with the human roots of evil. It argues that theological attention on the relationship between nature and grace should not inhibit a primary theological focus on the tension between sin and grace. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/408 Files in this item: 1
ConradieEcologicalReformulation2005.pdf (1.701Mb) -
Brierley, Andrew S.; Boyer, David C.; Axelson, Bjorn Erik; Lynam, Christopher P.; Sparks, Conrad A.J.; Boyer, Helen; Gibbons, Mark J. (Inter-Research, 2005)[more][less]
Abstract: Acoustic target strengths (TSs) of the 2 most common large medusae, Chrysaora hysoscella and Aequorea aequorea, in the northern Benguela (off Namibia) have previously been estimated (at 18, 38 and 120 kHz) from acoustic data collected in conjunction with trawl samples, using the ‘comparison method’. These TS values may have been biased because the method took no account of acoustic backscatter from mesozooplankton. Here we report our efforts to improve upon these estimates, and to determine TS additionally at 200 kHz, by conducting additional sampling for mesozooplankton and fish larvae, and accounting for their likely contribution to the total backscatter. Published sound scattering models were used to predict the acoustic backscatter due to the observed numerical densities of mesozooplankton and fish larvae (solving the forward problem). Mean volume backscattering due to jellyfish alone was then inferred by subtracting the model-predicted values from the observed water-column total associated with jellyfish net samples. Zooplankton-corrected echo intensity/jellyfish density data pairs were in close agreement with linear relationships determined previously from uncorrected data. Small sample sizes precluded recalculation of TS, but nonparametric pair-wise tests failed to detect any significant differences between echo intensities for jellyfish densities observed in the present study and echo intensities predicted for those densities by density–intensity relationships arising from the previous study. Previous linear density–intensity relationships had y-axis intercepts greater than zero. On the assumption that the positive intercepts were due to backscatter from unsampled mesozooplankton, new TS relationships were calculated from downward-adjusted density–intensity relationships. New values agreed closely with TS estimates determined elsewhere using single-target echo detection techniques. Given that estimates of jellyfish TS appear robust, it should now be feasible to identify jellyfish acoustically at sea and to assess their abundance, even in the presence of mixed mesozooplankton assemblages. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/247 Files in this item: 1
BrierleyAcoustic2005.pdf (103.7Kb) -
Combrinck, Helene; Wakefield, Lorenzo (Community Law Centre, University of the Western Cape, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: The inadequate or inappropriate police responses to domestic violence often result from a lack of knowledge of the Domestic Violence Act (DVA) and the National Instruction or from a misinterpretation of the DVA’s provisions. In the interviews undertaken, the central question asked was: ‘Do current training programmes provide SAPS members with the knowledge and skills required to apply the DVA and National Instruction in practice?’ It appeared from the interviews that the majority of the research participants had a basic awareness of the DVA and the National Instruction. However, when it came to the practical application of knowledge in a ‘problem-solving’ scenario, it was notable that the majority of interviewees experienced difficulties when multi-faceted variables were included. It was recommended that more members need training on the DVA, and more frequent and/or more in-depth courses should be offered. Furthermore it was recommended that special attention be devoted to training on domestic violence during the basic six months’ training for new students. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/209 Files in this item: 1
CombrinckDVA2009.pdf (1.059Mb) -
Puoane, Thandi; Sanders, David; Ashworth, Ann; Ngumbela, Modesta (Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa, 2006)[more][less]
Abstract: A qualitative study with a pre- and post-intervention component was undertaken among 66 professional nurses at 11 hospitals in the Eastern Cape to assess their perceptions and attitudes towards severely malnourished children and their mothers/caregivers. Nurses’ attitudes were compared before and after attending a 5-day training course to improve the management of malnutrition along with implementing World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Severe malnutrition is a major cause of death among paediatric patients in many hospitals in South Africa. A qualitative study with a pre- and post-intervention component was undertaken among 66 professional nurses at 11 hospitals in the Eastern Cape to assess their perceptions and attitudes towards severely malnourished children and their mothers/caregivers. Nurses’ attitudes were compared before and after attending a 5-day training course to improve the management of malnutrition along with implementing World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Focus group discussions were conducted in isiXhosa following a semi-structured discussion guide. Three themes emerged from these discussions, i.e. blame was placed on the mothers for not giving adequate care, malnourished children were valued less than those with other conditions, and resentment that nurses felt towards caregivers. underlying reasons for negative attitudes towards severely malnourished children and their caregivers were misunderstandings of the causes of severe malnutrition, misinterpretation of clinical signs,especially poor appetite and and high mortality during treatment.However, successful application of the treatment guidelines altered these perceptions and helped nurses to have a better understanding of the causes of the presenting clinical signs. These nurses have begun advocating for raised awareness and the need to include the WHO Ten Steps of treatment in the nursing curricula and in-service training. A cadre of volunteer nurse-trainers has been formed in Eastern Cape. Experience in this province has shown that in-service training changes attitudes to malnutrition and treatment practices, as well as saving lives. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/297 Files in this item: 1
PuoaneTrainingNurses2006.pdf (666.8Kb) -
Whande, Webster (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2007)[more][less]
Abstract: The end of apartheid rule in South Africa, together with the termination of the civil war in Mozambique and the occupation of Namibia by South Africa in the early 1990s, seemed to herald profound changes in international relations within the southern African region. These changes saw not only the end of frontline states’ hostility towards the apartheid regime but also new approaches to co-operation, witnessed by increased focus on regional development issues through regional bodies such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Conservation emerged as one area that could foster co-operation between countries of the region. By the mid-1990s, trans-boundary natural resources management, trans-frontier conservation, trans-boundary protected areas and ‘peace parks’ had taken root as vehicles for regional economic integration, peaceful resolution of conflict and conservation of biodiversity. This report examines the impacts of local historical experiences with conservation and current livelihood complexities on efforts to implement the Great Limpopo Trans-frontier Park (GLTP) and the Great Limpopo Trans-frontier Conservation Area (GLTFCA). It stresses the contested nature of land and natural resource rights by exploring local conflicts over land use, authority and territorial boundaries, as well as the peripheral attention accorded to these issues in planning and implementing trans-boundary approaches to conservation. Using the example of the GLTFCA, specifically the experience of some of the villages along the Madimbo corridor in South Africa, the report highlights the complexities involved in attempting trans-frontier conservation in an area with a history of dispossession and where livelihoods are perceived to be threatened by outside interventions. The report concludes by proposing a human and environmental security approach towards implementing TFCAs. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/73 Files in this item: 1
Whande_Transboundary2007.pdf (2.963Mb) -
Goggin, Kathy; Puoane, Thandi (University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: This study reports on the cultural and language translation of measures for use with Zulu speakers in South Africa. The translation process was purposefully used to integrate our diverse 14 person study team by employing Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) strategies. Measures included: the Medical Outcomes Study HIV Health Survey (MOS-HIV), Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). The translation was made complex by the variation in Zulu dialects across regions and even between two cities only forty-five minutes apart. Carefully conceived translations can simultaneously produce good translations and deepen team members’ understanding of each other. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/270 Files in this item: 1
13 Goggin FIN.pdf (125.1Kb) -
White, Richard (PLAAS, University of the Western Cape, 2009)[more][less]
Abstract: Decentralising the administration of communally-owned land to a local system in Botswana was a sound objective and could be pursued elsewhere in the region. Yet, despite Botswana having grappled relatively successfully with many of the land challenges, evidence suggests that tribal land administration is not free of problems. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/88 Files in this item: 1
White_Tribal2009.pdf (283.5Kb) -
Hart, Genevieve (Walter de Gruyter, 2011)[more][less]
Abstract: The article describes an interpretive case study of a group of six dual use school community libraries in one remote region of South Africa. Its focus is rather more on the libraries as school libraries than public libraries. The recent government sponsored LIS Transformation Charter has placed a spotlight on the backlogs in school and public library provision. The case study, conducted in April 2009, investigates if dual or joint use libraries might help fill gaps and, if so, under what conditions. The article describes background, research questions, methodology, site and some of the findings. The study highlights the relationships among role-players, the realities of dual use functioning and the complex issue of librarian identity. The study concludes that, although many of the international criteria for dual use libraries are not met, the six libraries do provide a crucial service for their schools and other schools in the surrounding areas. And they offer a tantalising picture of the possibilities of dual use for rural information services. The article suggests that with more dynamic leadership these possibilities could be fulfilled. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/442 Files in this item: 1
HartCommunityLibraries2011.pdf (315.5Kb) -
Gibbons, Mark J.; Stuart, V; Verheye, H M (NISC and Taylor & Francis, 1992)[more][less]
Abstract: Carnivorous zooplankton in the Benguela system have tended to be ignored by all but early taxonomists and a handful of recent researchers. An attempt is made here to address the importance of carnivores in this system but, because the database is poor, it was necessary to apply material from outside the region. The taxa covered include ctenophores, cnidarians (Scyphozoa and Hydrozoa, including Siphonophora), chaetognaths and hyperiid amphipods as well as such minor groups as pelagic gastropods and decapods. Most groups of carnivores within the Benguela are represented by only one or two "common" species. These tend to be epiplanktonic and generally concentrated inshore of the shelf-break, where their distributions are influenced by changes in local hydrography. Their densities frequently exceed those of herbivores. The dominant carnivores share a number of attributes: wide-ranging diets, high assimilation and growth efficiencies and mostly a Type I functional response to food concentration. They fall into two categories. The first is the gelatinous species, which have short lifespans and exhibit rapid growth and often massive reproductive response to high concentrations of food. They are patchily distributed and some appear to have behavioural traits that enable them to stay within localized patches of prey on which they may be dependent because of high metabolic costs. In the second category are crustacean predators and chaetognaths which have slower response times to the food environment but may have longer lifespans, lower daily maintenance needs and an ability to store lipids. They are less dependent on high densities of food organisms and can survive throughout winter, when gelatinous predators are rare. The effect of predation on abundance of copepods is estimated on the basis of both published and unpublished data. Should swarms of predators coincide with a critical gateway of zooplankton or larvae, then there may be total depletion. This applies especially to the nearshore zone of the West Coast and to semi-enclosed bays. The role of carnivorous zooplankton in the diets of commercially important fish species is stressed, but their importance in the regeneration of nutrients may be insignificant. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/305 Files in this item: 1
GibbonsTrophicEcology1992.pdf (1.199Mb) -
du Toit, Francois (Oxford University Press, 2013)[more][less]
Abstract: In this article, I assess the constitutive status accorded to trust deeds in Potgieter v Potgieter and Pascoal v Wurdeman, two recent South African judgments on trust variation. In particular, I analyse judicial condemnation of invoking reasonableness or fairness as free-standing norms to refashion the terms of trust deeds outside established common law or statutory norms; and I illustrate the place and role that equitable considerations play in South Africa as components of existing aggregated legal rules on trust variation. I also test the judicial approach taken to the foundational nature of trust deeds in the aforementioned judgments against the status accorded to trust instruments and documents by the Trust Property Control Act—a statute that regulates aspects of trust law in South Africa. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/624 Files in this item: 2
DutoitTrustdeeds2013.pdf (148.0Kb)DutoitTrustdeedsPublished2013.pdf (81.19Kb) -
Wangenge-Ouma, Gerald (Springer Verlag, 2012)[more][less]
Abstract: The funding of higher education in South Africa has in the recent past been a subject of animated debate. This debate has ranged from the adequacy of government funding of higher education, the suitability of the funding framework, to protestations against frequent tuition fee increases. At present, the debate is mainly about “free” higher education. Unlike most African countries, South Africa has an established history of cost sharing. But, for a while now, students, especially Black students, have been demanding tuition free higher education even though the country has a student financial aid scheme to support talented but poor students. The demands for tuition free higher education suggest, among others, the possible existence of financial barriers to higher educational opportunities. This paper is a sequel to the debate on free higher education in South Africa. It seeks, in the main, to understand and examine the rationale and drivers for the students’ demand for “free” higher education. What are the financial barriers to higher educational opportunities that the current funding architecture has failed to address? Secondly, why are students demanding free higher education when there is a scheme to support talented but poor students? Is cost sharing inconsistent with the country’s post-apartheid transformation policy in higher education? Finally, is “free” higher education the panacea to the access and participation challenges facing Black students? URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/310 Files in this item: 2
OumaTuitionFees2012.pdf (807.2Kb)Wangenge-Ouma2012.pdf (276.9Kb) -
Gibbons, Mark J.; Hendricks, Martin G. J. (Magnolia Press, 2010)[more][less]
Abstract: Perepsilonema benguelae sp. nov. and Leptepsilonema saldanhae sp. nov. are described and illustrated from coarse sand sediments in Saldanha Bay, along the west coast of South Africa. Perepsilonema benguelae sp. nov. is characterised by a large swollen body in the genital region, the annuli are not clearly orientated into anteriorly and posteriorly directed margins and copulatory thorns are restricted to three pairs in the precloacal region. In Leptepsilonema saldanhae sp. nov. the somatic setae in the pharyngeal region are very long and the first ambulatory setae of the external subventral row are short. Other distinguishing features include the shape of the amphidial fovea and the copulatory apparatus, and the presence of six ventro-lateral copulatory thorns around the cloaca. These descriptions are the first for the family Epsilonematidae from the west coast of South Africa. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10566/244 Files in this item: 1
HendricksGibbons2010.pdf (245.4Kb)