This thesis is a comparative analysis of the process of national identity formation in Eritrea and Lebanon, examining the different paths both societies took after the end of the European colonial/mandate regimes up until the early 1990s. Grounded in theories relating to the concepts of nationalism and national identity, a contrast-orient history approach is taken that seeks to unpack the international, regional, and domestic factors that impacted on the formation of national identity in both cases. The creation of both countries by their respective colonial and mandate power, Italy and France, took place under different circumstances and by different means. Yet in both cases different communities, half of which were Muslim and the other half Christian, were joined under a single administration. The fact that in both Eritrea and Lebanon one of the communities had nationalist aspirations linked to the larger neighbouring political entity of co-religionists hampered the transfer of allegiances to the newly created entity and the development of a cohesive national identity in the wake of being granted self-determination. This thesis argues that, despite their different treatment by the international community with regards to their right to self-determination, a form of syncretistic nationalism developed in the territorial entities created by the colonial/mandate powers in both Eritrea and Lebanon. While Lebanon was able to obtain independence from the French in 1943, Eritrea was not granted independence after the defeat of their colonial master, Italy. Instead, federation and finally annexation by Ethiopia resulted in thirty years of liberation struggle. Thus this thesis affirms the aptness of the concept of syncretistic nationalism for multicommunal societies while attesting to the difficulties of its development and realisation through the analysis of the process of national identity formation in Eritrea and Lebanon.

This nutritional study took place in the rural community centred on the village of Moshaneng in Southern District, Botswana. Arable and livestock agriculture are the traditional economic activities in this semi-arid environment in which highly seasonal and unreliable rainfall has a great impact upon settlement, economic activity and physical conditions. The primary objectives of fieldwork. were to assess nutritional status and to investigate the social, cultural, economic and physical environmental factors contributing to poor nutrition. As an ecological study, the main aim was to describe the multifactorial causes of malnutrition and the relationships between factors. Nutritional anthropometry was used to assess the nutritional status of children. Weight and height were the principal measurements. Subsequently, through three major questionnaire surveys, data were gathered on a) aspects of child care, maternal characteristics and perception, health status and dietary intake; b) household demographic structure, economic profile and economic status, food production, purchase and consumption, education and migration of household members; c) involvement in arable and livestock agriculture, constraints on food production, access to and quality of land, varieties of crops and production over.several seasons. Traditional beliefs and practices concerning diet, disease causation and treatment, and the social organisation of the community were also major areas of investigation. The majority of children were of poor nutritional status and mild to moderate protein-energy malnutrition (P.E.M.) affected approximately one third of the children assessed. At the individual level, poor weaning practices, inadequate supplementation of breast-fed children and inadequate qualitative and quantitative intake of food were identified as factors contributing to P.E.M.. Serious illness was widespread: respiratory infections, diarrhoea and skin infections were the major ailments. Illness and growth records show how recurrent and severe infections are interrelated with P.E.M. amongst children in this community. The vulnerability of children and their mothers is increased by high rates of illegitimacy and the lack of financial support from children's fathers. There were some misconceptions held about the appropriate foods for children but the main constraints to a better diet are economic and not educational. At the household and community levels several factors conspire to reinforce poverty, illhealth and an inadequate diet. Arable agricultural production is unable to meet the food needs of the local population who are forced to subsist on imported cereal staples of low quality: few households are self-sufficient in staple foods even in good years. Physical environmental factors, notably drought, poor soils and pests, reduce potential for arable agriculture but social and economic factors are the main constraints: inadequate and costly draught power and extensive, sub-optimal cropping systems. Highly maldistributed livestock ownership exacerbates the economic inequalities within the community and deprives many of access to milk, meat, draught power, and finance. Labour migration is a response to low returns from the traditional economiC sector but may increase the vulnerabilty of residual households.

This study is an attempt to analyse the process of proletarianisation in Swazi society with particular reference to the sugar industry in that country. We have also tried to explain why women's labour tends to be located in both subsistence and commodity agriculture, and what the implications of this are for the social, economic and political status of women in Swazi society. Through an analysis of the historical processes which led to colonisation and the consequent land alienation, labour migration, taxation and exploitation of the Swazi people, the study has tried to show the socio-economic and political consequences of capitalist development within Swaziland over the last century. We have also discussed the emergence and decline of white settler agriculture and shown how, together with the collaboration of the colonial state, white commodity agriculture laid the basis for the development of agribusiness in the economy, especially in relation to the sugar industry. Within the sugar industry itself, which has dominated the Swazi economy for the last thirty years in terms of land use, numbers of workers employed, and the size of national revenue generated, there is an ongoing struggle between labour and capital, which manifests itself in various forms, both overt and covert. The history of working class resistance in the industry vis-a-vis capital and the colonial and neo-colonial state, is discussed with a view to better understanding this section of the Swazi proletariat in anticipation of the revolutionary changes which are sweeping across the Southern African sub-continent.

This thesis examInes the strategic character of South Africa's regional and multilateral trade strategies. It looks at the interplays between the domestic, regional and multilateral levels during the period from 1994 to 2004. The regional focus is on Southern Africa, looking in particular at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Protocol on Trade; and the multilateral/global backdrop is the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations from Seattle to Doha 'Development' Round. The question at the core of this research is how regionalism is appropriated by state actors to respond both to domestic and global imperatives? The central question is framed around analysing the extent to which South Africa uses regional and multilateral trade strategies to address its domestic developmental concerns and to build capacity for effective articulation at the global level. These developmental concerns encompass both social equity objectives and strategic competitive needs of domestic capital. For South Africa, the region's importance is linked to its strategic response to domestic growth challenges and exigencies linked to external forces. Drawing on the New Regionalism Approach (NRA) and Competitive Strategic Regionalism Approach as analytic frameworks, this thesis argues that South Africa uses regionalism as a strategy to address its domestic growth challenges, extend political influence in the sub-region and project power at the global level. However, due to structural disarticulation between South Africa and the region, a crucial paradox in South Africa's overall regional and multilateral trade strategies is apparent. The thesis sets out to examine this paradox, concluding that it undermines the coherence of South Africa's post-apartheid regional and multilateral trade strategies.

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M. Tech. Business Administration / The aim of this research focuses on the relationship between organisational culture and quality programmes at an engineering consultancy firm, Parsons Brinckerhoff Africa. The company started its South African operations in 1984. It is a Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) subsidiary of the international Parsons Brinckerhoff group of companies. It provides consulting, engineering, project management and advisory services in the power industry and other infrastructure sectors.

Thesis (MScAgric (Agricultural Economics))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Regional food security is considered one of the major challenges for the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. SADC is one of the regions in the world currently facing widespread transitory and chronic food insecurity (malnutrition), as well as persistent threats of acute food insecurity (famine). The objective of this thesis, therefore, was to investigate and assess the prevailing causes of food insecurity in Southern Africa. The research revealed that transitory and chronic food insecurity (malnutrition) in the SADC region exists due to the problems experienced with both the supply and demand sides of the food security equation. However, though SADC has made limited attempts to tackle the problem of food insecurity in the region, the Community did not appear to learn from the 1991/92 food insecurity crisis when it recurred in 2001/02. This study consequently recommends that further investigations take place into the primary data available in an attempt to address various issues relating to the causes of food insecurity in Southern Africa in order to ensure long-term food security. Such issues include the following: mobilising agriculture to increase food production rapidly enough to meet the needs of the growing population of the region; bridging the prevailing gap between the public actors, on the one side, and the private and informal actors, on the other, in order to deliver effective food security services to the needy in the region; the designing of well-targeted food pricing policies as an interim compromise between the social concerns relating to high and volatile food prices and long-term economic growth and food security in the region; and the identification of the role of women as food producers and agents of food security in the region. On the supply side, the main food availability problems in the region lie on the agricultural level. Low productivity and frequent disasters have been of a cyclic nature in SADC, leading to additional difficulties with supplies. Such difficulties have been compounded by the inadequate political support of the sector; a lack of investment therein; the instability of the world market; and an increasingly unfair trade environment. Other major dimensions of the problem include: the imposition of trade barriers, such as tariff, non-tariff and technical barriers, particularly the complex and confusing tariff structure imposed by the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries against other non-SACU SADC countries; the high cost of transport, especially in landlocked countries, which has come about as a result of the weakening of the capacity and efficiency of the transport system in the region, due to a lack of investment in, as well as the poor performance of, the transport sector. A lack of a diversified production structure in the SADC region was cited as the main obstacle to the successful trade integration and economic development of the region. Looking at the demand side, the main food access problems in the region consisted of a lack of food entitlement (poverty) due to the weak economic growth resulting from unsuccessful macroeconomic policies; a poor balance of payments situation; highly skewed patterns of income and wealth distribution, resulting from maladministration due to short-sighted past colonial policies; high levels of unemployment and land tenure insecurity; the failure of governance, both as regards a lack of accountability and opposition to democratisation; and financial mismanagement. Rapid population growth in the region resulted in an escalation in the demand for agricultural products, in particular foodstuffs, and the reduced availability of arable land. The widespread preponderance of Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) infection was complicating the task of fighting hunger and undermining any attempts to strengthen the livelihoods of the poor by depleting the adult agricultural labour potential in Southern Africa. A lack of financial resources and institutional capacity (in the form of policy gaps) were the main constraints to the implementation of successful poverty and food insecurity alleviation programmes in the region, as comprehensive government intervention aimed at maintaining food security in the region for most Southern Africans was unfeasible in the near future. The research was conducted using the qualitative method of literature study, which proved a useful descriptive and analytical framework for revealing significant causes of food insecurity prevailing both in individual, households and at national levels in the SADC region. The study focused mainly on the availability, and the ability to acquire, food, in an attempt to see how balance could be achieved between the supply and demand sides of the food security equation by means of relevant investigations. Documentary data were consulted in investigating the problem, in the light of the fact that publications, such as books, academic journals and documents, illustrate the problem most clearly. In the planning of policy interventions, food insecurity in Southern Africa appears open to improvement in the long term only if the actual income of households is increased, so that they can afford to obtain enough food. Such improvement can take place in two ways: Firstly, by giving the people who face transitory and chronic food insecurity the opportunity to earn enough to ensure that they can maintain an adequate food supply through domestic production, by improving agricultural yield, and hence ensuring food security, at household level, and secondly, by means of the facilitation of trade (in the form of food imports), by eliminating tariff, non-tariff and technical barriers, and investing in the development of the transport infrastructure in the SADC region.

Thesis (MComm)—Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to investigate the organisational and institutional arrangements for sustainable consumer-oriented community-based aquaculture in Hamburg, in the Eastern Cape, and Camdeboo and Saldanha Bay, both in the Western Cape. Without these factors the development of aquaculture will be impossible or unsustainable. The investigation will help in revealing whether markets exist or can be created, the required skills and investment, and the appropriate institutional arrangements. Two major research strategies were used, namely qualitative methods and case studies. The results revealed that, in all three case studies, the products were not exported and had different target markets and marketing objectives. There was a potential market for some of the products overseas. Leading pioneering firms, such as those that have developed the technologies for aquaculture, control the value chain by setting, monitoring and enforcing the parameters under which other value chain members operate. The results further showed that, in all three case studies, the beneficiaries had some of form of schooling; some had matric, while others had lower levels of education. In some scenarios, Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) training was offered, which combines aquaculture and life skills. Furthermore, unlike with kob, farming of species such as mussel, oyster and catfish did not require such onerously high technical skills and monitoring of parameters. There is no real need for high levels of education in the farming of these three species and, in most cases, people with less than matric are trained in the various aspects of fish farming on the job. Aquaculture appears to be a very capital-intensive industry. Apart from the capital investments, operational expenses have to be incurred, even during the development phase. The absence of clear policy frameworks and legislation results in contradictory messages. Choosing the type of business ownership may depend on many factors such as financing, admin costs, tax implications, insolvency, business size and continuity. The implication of the results of this study for community-based aquaculture is that investment from the public sector and private sector is required, both in terms of capital infrastructure and operational costs. Communities should start with simpler forms of aquaculture, such as oyster and mussel farming. Kob farming, on the other hand, requires high technical skill. In all cases, the approaches initially require managerial, business and technical support and handholding for community empowerment groups. When the development is in its infancy, community-based aquaculture projects need to link and create distribution agencies that deal with marketing and distribution. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die doel van hierdie studie was om die organisatoriese en institusionele reëlings te ondersoek vir volhoubare verbruikersgerigte gemeenskapsgebaseerde akwakultuur in Hamburg, in die Oos-Kaap, en die Kamdeboo en Saldanhabaai, in die Wes-Kaap. Sonder hierdie faktore is die ontwikkeling van akwakultuur onmoontlik of nvolhoubaar. Die ondersoek sal help om te bepaal of markte bestaan of geskep kan word, en watter vaardighede, investering en institusionele reëlings vereis word. Twee groot navorsingstrategieë is gebruik, naamlik kwalitatiewe metodes en gevallestudies. Die resultate van al drie gevallestudies het getoon dat die produkte nie uitgevoer word nie en dat daar verskillende teikenmarkte en bemarkingsdoelwitte vir die produkte is. Vir van die produkte is daar ʼn potensiële oorsese mark. Toonaangewende maatskappye soos dié wat tegnologie vir akwakultuur ontwikkel het, beheer die waardeketting deur die opstel, monitering en handhawing van die parameters waarvolgens ander lede van die waardeketting funksioneer. Verder het die resultate getoon dat die begunstigdes in al drie gevallestudies een of ander vorm van skoolopleiding gehad het; sommige het matriek gehad terwyl ander laer vlakke van skoolopleiding voltooi het. In sommige gevalle is Adult Basic Education and Training(ABET)-opleiding aangebied, waar akwakultuur en lewensvaardighede gekombineer is. Verder, in teenstelling met die kabeljoubedryf, vereis die teelt van spesies soos mossels, oesters en babers nie sulke gespesialiseerde tegniese vaardighede en die noukeurige monitering van parameters nie. Daar is geen werklike behoefte vir hoë vlakke van onderwys vir boerdery met laasgenoemde drie spesies nie en in die meeste gevalle ondergaan mense met minder as matriek indiensopleiding in die verskillende aspekte van visboerdery. Verder blyk akwakultuur 'n kapitaalintensiewe bedryf te wees. Afgesien van die kapitale belegging moet operasionele uitgawes aangegaan word, selfs in die ontwikkelingsfase. Die afwesigheid van duidelike beleidsraamwerke en wetgewing gee aanleiding tot teenstrydige boodskappe. Die keuse van die soort onderneming kan afhang van baie faktore, wat finansiering, administratiewe koste, belastingimplikasies, insolvensie, ondernemingsgrootte en kontinuïteit insluit. Die implikasie van die resultate van hierdie studie vir gemeenskapsgebaseerde akwakultuur is dat hoë investering vereis word, beide in terme van kapitaalinfrastruktuur en bedryfskoste. Gemeenskappe moet eers met eenvoudiger vorme van akwakultuur, soos oester- en mosselboerdery, wegspring. Kabeljou, aan die ander kant, vereis hoë tegniese vaardigheid. In alle gevalle vereis die benaderings aanvanklike bestuurs-, besigheids- en tegniese ondersteuning en daadwerklike bystand vir gemeenskapsbemagtigingsgroepe. Terwyl die ontwikkeling in sy kinderskoene is, moet gemeenskapsgebaseerde akwakultuurprojekte verspreidingsagentskappe skep en met sulke agentskappe skakel om bemarking en verspreiding te hanteer.