Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Master of Technology: Marketing, Durban University of Technology, 2012. / Online banking in the financial sector has revolutionised the banking industry. This study aims to determine the perception of electronic banking, from the consumer`s perspective among Congolese consumers using South African banks in the Greater Durban area. Banks are competing on the basis of technology and service offering to win a sizeable share of the online market. Congolese consumer is a good target market, however, very little is known about the factors influencing Congolese consumer behaviour in the online banking sector in Durban. An understanding of the demographic profile, factors prompting the use of electronic banking and motivators influence the adoption of electronic banking. Analyses of Congolese customers adopting electronic banking will facilitate the formulation of marketing strategies to foreign nationals in South Africa. The empirical section of the study involved data collection through the use of self-completion questionnaires administrated by the researcher. A survey was conducted in the greater Durban area using convenience sampling methodology and 288 completed questionnaires were collected by the researcher. The key findings revealed that the demographic profile (gender, area of residence, marital status, and income categories) influences the adoption of electronic banking as a segmentation basis. It was interesting to note that most of respondents were married and reside in Central Durban and South Durban. Furthermore, psychological factors (motivators, attitudes, perceptions and perceived risk) were found to influence the adoption of electronic banking to a large extend. Interestingly, cultural factors (social class, age and education level)play a significant role in the adoption of electronic banking by Congolese customers of South African banks. The findings also revealed that the driving force for the adoption of electronic banking was that respondents have a job which requires them to have a bank account. Most of the banks in South Africa offer free internet banking to their clients. Since convenience sampling method was used, the findings of this study may not be generalised. Based on the findings of this study it is apparent that the customer analysis of banking clients should be examined on a regular basis. A customised strategy for foreign national customers residing in South Africa should be developed on a regular basis.

French text / La Mission Évangélique de la Délivrance (M.E.D) est dans une ville où le VIH/SIDA fait rage. Ceci crée un problème social dû à la transmission par manque d’information sur cette maladie meurtrière. L’échantillon utilisé confirme l’idée selon laquelle la M.E.D contribue à la prévention de la transmission du VIH/SIDA et même cette lutte avec ses paroisses à travers les activités organisées concernant cette pandémie. Cependant, le besoin est d’étendre cette lutte dans les églises des autres communautés proches et lointaines dans la ville de Kinshasa. La MED intensifie son action pour convaincre les gens ayant une conception archaïque sur la pandémie. Elle veut bannir les mythes qui l’entourent et donner les conseils précis sur la pratique sexuelle responsable. La MED amène les gens à se faire examiner pour connaître leur état sérologique. Elle encourage les atteints à vivre positivement et à collaborer sans gêne. / The Mission Evangélique de la Délivrance is in a city where the HIV/AIDS makes rage. It creates a social problem due to the transmission for lack of information on this murderous illness. The used sample confirms the idea according to which the MED contributes to the prevention of the transmission of HIV/AIDS and even this struggle with her parishes through activities organized concerning this pandemic. However, the need is to spread this struggle in other near and far away community churches in Kinshasa. The MED intensifies her action to convince people having an archaic conception on the pandemic. She wants to outlaw myths that surround it and to give the precise advices on the responsible sexual practice. The MED brings people to make examine themselves to know their serological state. She encourages those who are reached by the illness to live positively and to collaborate without hindrance. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

This thesis explores the Mbuti Pygmies, a sub-group of the Pygmy peoples, one of the main ethnic groups of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The Mbuti Pygmies are settled mostly in the Ituri rainforest, and are, with regard to Christian mission, still unreached and unchurched. The oversight of the churches vis-à-vis these people is highlighted, through this thesis, as a challenge to Christian mission. This challenge is a result of the way Christian mission is understood and undertaken in DRC, namely in the selective and exclusive way of missioning, according to which some peoples are targeted and others forsaken. Churches in the DRC shy away from the Mbuti Pygmies probably because, on the one hand, these forest dwellers belong to the group of Pygmies whose existence as full human beings is enigmatic and very controversial. Because of the uniqueness of the Pygmy peoples in terms of physical features, culture, and way of life, on the other hand, the non-Pygmy peoples, including Christians, suffer from a kind of complex of superiority that creates in them a spirit of discrimination against the Mbuti Pygmies. As the Mbuti Pygmies are discriminated against even by Christians, it is very difficult for them to be taken into account within the mission agendas of the churches. This challenge to Christian mission is highlighted by two facts. Firstly, Christian mission is designed for all the nations to which the Mbuti Pygmies belong. Secondly, the churches, with their missional mandate to all the nations, shy away from the Mbuti Pygmies as if these people were outside the scope of Christian mission and, thus, unworthy of God’s grace and love.To remedy this challenge, with the aim of implementing Christian mission in the DRC, this study suggests a missional encounter as a way forward to addressing the Mbuti Pygmies. In practice, this may be implemented through the missionary conversion, the right perception of the Mbuti Pygmies as being fully made in the “image of God” and fully part of the “all nations”, promoting formal education among the Mbuti Pygmies, and sustaining the churches by an integrated theological education. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This research analyses the role of multi-stakeholder partnerships in enhancing governance to promote sustainable peace and security. It uses a case study of coltan exploitation and armed conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the two wars between 1996 and 2003 and the ongoing conflict have led to the ‘world’s worst humanitarian crisis’. The current body of knowledge on conflict analyses, particularly ‘resource curse’ theory, emphasises the natural resource endowment and weak governance as the main factors contributing to the DRC conflict, and has been influential in policy formulation. The case study is supported by the collection and analysis of qualitative data from multiple sources using different methods including literature reviews, interviews and observations. In so doing, the research seeks to examine how multi-stakeholder partnerships can help to enhance governance and promote sustainable peace and security, with a focus on the role of the multi-stakeholder partnerships in curtailing revenues for the belligerents from coltan production and trade in the eastern DRC. The analysis of the conflicts and coltan exploitation revealed the intricate multi-layered nature of the conflicts in the DRC and their complex causalities. The examination of the multi-stakeholder partnerships relevant to coltan exploitation in the DRC identified a number of constraints for their implementation and concerns about adverse effects from the implementation, largely owing to the externally driven agenda of the partnerships, which neglects the local perspectives. Through the arguments presented in this thesis, the research contributes to knowledge in three broad areas: it contributes to ongoing academic discussions on conflict analyses, in particular the resource curse hypothesis and the economic agendas of civil war; it provides empirical analysis and data on the coltan industry and partnership initiatives in relation to armed conflicts in the eastern DRC; and it highlights the need to re-assess the concept of participatory governance as one of the key approaches to improving governance.

This study investigated integrated learning at a Christian university, the Christian Bilingual University of the Congo (UCBC) with the view to improving higher education practice in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) which is tasked with addressing social problems. Higher education in the DRC is shaped by its colonial legacy and a teacher-centred approach focused on theory, typical of a banking-type learning and a lack of integration. These factors stifle critical thinking and initiative in students and prevent them from developing into service-oriented agents for change in their communities. The advent of Christian universities has heralded a quest for holistic training to foster character and produce civic-minded and service-oriented citizens. A qualitative study using a phenomenology as methodology investigated the lived experiences in integrated learning and service in the community of twelve purposefully selected UCBC alumni. Data was obtained through semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Findings indicated that integrated learning is holistic education which engages mind, heart, soul and body; it combines practice and theory in training and prepares students to contribute to national welfare. It occurs in a multiple component and dimensional context and is characterized by learner-centeredness, active learning and constant interaction among the school community members. It is focused on the building of the inner person of the learner. Further, participants understood transformation as part of personal development, a lifelong process that moves a person to act differently in community after his personal assumptions have been deeply revised through his encounter with integrated learning. Its impact is character development as foundation for bold action in the community, the rediscovery of one’s identity, the development of servant leadership, team work and social networking and dependence on God. Findings revealed that transformed learners initiated a change of mentality and experienced culture conversion in their communities through confronting problems and modelling servanthood. It also established the enactment of integrated learning as a contributor to personal and community transformation as a result of students’ ‘echoed words’ and actions as learning-teachers. Based on the findings recommendations were made for the strengthening of integrated learning in Christian universities. / Educational Foundations / D. Ed. (Philosophy of Education)

As a result of the continued violence and poverty in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), artisanal mining serves as an opportunity for livelihood construction for the population in the Eastern DRC. Though the dominant discourse of “conflict minerals” has deemed natural resources as the cause or consequence of violence in the Eastern DRC, minerals in fact only serve as a funding tool for various foreign and local armed groups in the region. This thesis consequently explores the ways in which artisanal miners can reap the benefits of the minerals they work tirelessly to extract, using and adapting policies from two relatively successful case studies, Tanzania and Sierra Leone. In addition, this thesis proposes distinct top-down and bottom-up approaches the DRC should adopt to combat its equity issues, and finds that bottom-up methods have been the most ignored, yet successful in avoiding conflict and favoring miners’ livelihoods.

This thesis focuses on liberal peace building in the DRC. The thesis takes a critical approach which emphasises local agencies and their engagements with liberal peace building. However, it seeks to bring this critique back to the institutions with which liberal peace building is preoccupied, by focusing on the hidden local that operates within these institutions. This approach seeks to give new meaning to processes of institution building without rendering institutions irrelevant as a top-down approach. Focusing on the first legislature of the Congolese Third Republic (2006-2011) this thesis provides a case study of how local agencies consume liberal democracy within the National Assembly, and make it their own. It discusses current liberal peace building practices as a process of mutual disengagement, in which both the local and liberal intervention seek to disengage from each other. Although this results in a lack of legitimacy of the peace building project both locally as well as with liberal interventions, it also creates hybrid space in which local agencies consume liberal democracy. The thesis conceptualises these local agencies as being convivial, in other words, they are enabled by people's relations. The thesis therefore focuses on MPs relations with their electorate, as well as with the executive and other MPs in their party or ruling coalition. In through these interactions local agencies consume liberal democracy – it is accepted, rejected, diverted, substituted, etc. The thesis concludes that through these practices of consumption local agencies negotiate liberal democracy. The liberal democratic framework is kept intact, but it is not enabled to function as foreseen, because local agencies are responsive to a moral matrix of the father-family. However, the liberal democratic framework itself provides new tools through which local agencies also renegotiate the unwritten rules of the moral matrix of the father-family.

Micro-finance institutions are leading a revolution in the financial sector, particularly in banking. This provides a renewed focus on the way financial credit is provided to the marginalised society of the developing countries. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, small and medium enterprises constitute almost 80% of the entrepreneurial population. There is therefore, considerable urgency to advance the performance and competitiveness of these small and medium enterprises. The aim of this study is to establish the effect of micro-finance institutions, on the performance of small and medium enterprises in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Literature reviewed for this study provided insights into the effects of micro-finance institutions on the performance of small and medium enterprises that accessed micro-loans. This study comprises of 77 small and medium entrepreneurs that participated in the empirical research. The performance of small and medium enterprises was assessed through the use of a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of statements on socio-demographics, the functioning of micro-finance institutions and the performance of small and medium enterprises. The study revealed that the largest group of respondents were male entrepreneurs, married, in the age group category of 30 to 50 years, have a household size of 1 to 5 people and have 1 to 5 years of experience in business. Entrepreneurs mostly utilized financial services such as saving accounts, money transfers and training and technology. Furthermore consulting services in the areas of leadership finance and operations were mainly received from micro-finance institutions. The study revealed that micro-finance institutions principally play the role of facilitator of growth, tool for social change, provider of banking systems and instrument for empowerment to SMEs. The two sources of financing utilized mostly by small and medium enterprises were loans from micro-finance institutions and from commercial banks. The borrowed finance was used principally to start a new business, expand an existing business and for working capital. The amounts of money borrowed from micro- loans were as follow: 5 000,00 (US $) or less, between 6 000 and 10 000,00 (US $) and 11 000,00 to 15 000, 00 (US $) The interest rates paid were from 11% to 20%, 21% to 30% and 51% and above. The collateral provided was in the form of physical assets such as a car or a house. The results of the mean score factor indicated that on average, responses for questions 14 to 19 were above 2.5 on the scale of 1 to 4. The mean score above 2.5 was the indication that respondents agreed to a larger extend to these statements. This leads to the conclusion that overall, the effect of micro-finance institutions on the performance small and medium enterprises in the Democratic Republic of Congo was positive, as proved by the mean score factor. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

This study compares German memory of life in the German Democratic Republic with Russian memory of life in the Soviet Union, as represented and created within fictional and autobiographical narratives of childhood, published since the collapse of each regime. The chosen texts are, to varying degrees, fictionalized and/or autobiographical. A comparison between German and Russian narratives is particularly interesting because the socialist past is remembered very differently in each country’s public discourse and culture. An examination of narratives about childhood allows for a complex relationship between the post-socialist present and the socialist past to emerge. I study the texts and their reception, in conjunction with an analysis of the dominant ways of remembering the socialist past circulating within German and Russian society and culture. This allows the analysis to go beyond a straightforward comparison between the representations of the socialist past in the two groups of texts, to also explore how those representations are interpreted and received. It also demonstrates how the surrounding memory cultures appear to be producing quite different approaches to representing memories of broadly similar socialist childhood experiences. Chapter 1 explores the role of literary texts in revealing and shaping both individual and collective memory with a review of relevant research in the field of memory studies. Chapter 2 draws on existing scholarship on post-socialist memory in German and Russian society and culture in order to identify dominant trends in the way the socialist past has been remembered and represented in the two countries since 1990/1. The analysis in Chapters 3 and 4 reveals a more detailed picture of the complexities and ambiguities inherent in looking back at childhood under socialist rule through the example of the chosen texts, and in the ways they are received by critics and by readers (in reviews posted online). I demonstrate that, in line with the surrounding memory cultures, questions of how the socialist past should be remembered are a more central concern in the German texts and their reception than in the Russian texts and reception. I show, however, that the nature of the Soviet past is often portrayed indirectly in the Russian texts and I explore how critics and readers respond to these portrayals.

The inhabitants of Kinshasa, who call themselves Kinois, deal with insecurity and violence on a daily basis. Cheating and thefts are commonplace, and pillaging by street gangs and robberies by armed thieves are everyday occurrences. The state infrastructure is so poorly regulated that deaths by accident or medical negligence are also common. This, and much more, contributes to a challenging social milieu within which the Kinois’ best hope is simply to ‘make do’. This thesis, based on extensive fieldwork in Kinshasa, analyses different forms of violence which affect the Kinois on a daily basis. I argue that the Kinois’ concept of violence, mobulu, differs from Western definitions, which define violence as an intrinsically negative and destructive force. Mobulu is for the Kinois a potentially constructive phenomenon, which allows them to build relationships, coping strategies and new social phenomena. Violence is perceived as a transformative force, through which people build meaningful lives in the face of the hardship of everyday life. Broadly speaking, this thesis contributes to the Anthropology of violence which has too often focused on how violence is imposed upon a population, often from a structural level of a state and its institutions. Such an approach fails to account for the nuances of alternate perspectives of what ‘violence’ is, as evidenced in this thesis through the prism of the Kinois term mobulu. The concept of mobulu highlights the creativity of those forced to ‘make do’ on the streets of Kinshasa, to negotiate not only every day physical needs, for food and shelter, but also to navigate the mystical violence of witchcraft. By exploring the coping mechanisms across all sections of society, I analyse how the Kinois not only have built their lives in the wake of the violence of the state, but they have also found means of empowerment within it, using mobulu as a springboard for the development of some social phenomena. Whereas the anthropology of violence has focused mainly on physical and material violence, this thesis also argues that mobulu in Kinshasa is a total social fact that combines state violence with everyday violence, and physical violence with the invisible violence of witchcraft. This thesis seeks to enrich discussions on witchcraft in Kinshasa and in the African context in general, by analysing in depth how the cosmology of Kinshasa has differentiated itself as a result of the politico-economic events of recent decades. As witchcraft and material insecurity go hand in hand, a detailed analysis of the mechanisms of witchcraft is necessary, if we are to grasp the complexity of the concept of mobulu and how material and invisible violence inform each other.