Water is an essential element of life. On average, 60 to 70 percent of a human body mass is water . In order to perform its functions properly, it is estimated that a human body needs about 2 to 3 litres of clean water per day2. For this reason, access to adequate, clean and safe water is indispensable to achieving human well-being, and securing human freedom and dignity. Given the important role water plays in sustaining human life, enhancing human dignity, freedom and development, it has been widely submitted that access to clean water should be recognised as an inalienable right. Ironically, although water is a basic requirement for life, access to water has not been adequately proclaimed and treated as a human right, especially in domestic law. Other than the international human rights instruments, there are very few countries which have explicitly protected access to water in the national constitutions and other major pieces of legislation. Arising from this is the question of whether explicit recognition of the right to water makes a difference for people living without access to safe sources of water. The main argument persued in this study is that although explicit recognition of the right to water can make a difference in the lives of millions of people who have no access to clean sources of water, mere recognition of the right to water does not constitute a 'magic bullet' for the challenges of access to clean water. Realizing the right to water requires moving beyond mere recognition to deeper levels of commitment which includes taking appropriate measures and implementing them. Moving beyond mere recognition, in turn, requires adequate and responsive institutions through which the rights can be asserted, contested and effectuated. In this context, civil society constitutes an important component of the institutional set up through which the right to water can be effectuated. The importance of civil society in realizing the right to water lies in the fact that human rights are not just given on a silver platter, they must be asserted, sufficiently contested for, and claimed. While the deployment of a rights-based approach to issues of access to water is in its infancy stages, it is apparent from the evidence gathered in this study that the rights-based approach is weak in unlocking and hooking into the real-politik, despite its rhetorical strength. This study explores the challenges faced in implementing the right to water. Focus in the study is on processes that produce situations where the right to water is, first of all, not well recognized as a human right; and secondly, processes that lead to the right to water not being fulfilled for millions of people. What the Zambian case has revealed is that failure to ensure that people have access to clean sources of water is not solely a question of lack of or inadequate resources as the situation is often made to appear in conventional political discourse. There are multiple factors involved, including inappropriate management of processes, systems and resources, which often is a consequence of lack of political will and commitment. Given the nature of the issues under investigation, a multi-method approach, which is a combination of different research methods and strategies, has been employed. Field work for the study was conducted in three different peri-urban communities in Zambia. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

While the debate on the indigenous culture of ubuntu/botho in South Africa (SA) goes far back into the history as signified by Ngubane' s (1963 and 1979) works on the role of the ubuntu values in the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle; in the last two decades or so, this debate has gathered even much greater momentum. This recent interest in ubuntu/botho culture could be attributed to the imminence of the collapse of apartheid in the late 1980s and the turn of the 1990s, and also the post-apartheid situation in which the SA society came to confront serious socio-economic and political challenges. Those challenges arose from the country's re-admission into the global world, which presented challenges associated with globalisation phenomenon such as the need to achieve economic competitiveness. They also were presented by the newly attained democratic dispensation along which dawned the urgent need to redress the apartheid-created injustices and to work earnestly towards the eradication of the past legacies such as racial inequalities and poverty while seeking to consolidate and jealously defend the still rather fragile democracy. Event much more recently, the debate came to form part of the current continent-wide sentiment that Africa should claim the twenty-first century and that all efforts should be channelled towards the renewal of Africa following the destructions and distortions caused by colonialism. Central to this debate in SA is the widely held belief and claim that the ubuntu/botho cultural values could be mobilised into developmental and transformative force. In particular, a strong claim is made that for SA to achieve competitive advantage in global markets, its development strategies should tap into the values of the ubuntu/botho culture. While few cases are cited as success stories indicative of ubuntu values positive influence on business management strategies in the workplace, often with the assistance of private consultants, these remain isolated and no any serious follow-up studies were conduced in order to assess the sustainability of such interventions. Thus, what is essentially missing in this debate, is a comprehensive indepth, empirically-based study aimed at not only assessing the validity of these widely held claims, but also at examining the objective conditions under which the ubuntu/botho cultural values can help in realising this role. Also critical and missing is the need to possibilities/opportunities and potential constraints to ubuntu/botho culture's ability to fulfil this role. Often these debates lack any serious theoretical basis or comparative references on which to justify their claims. Further, there is seldom any attempt to locate the debate on ubuntu/botho culture in the wider context of the debate and research in the African continent around questions of traditional cultures, thought systems and development and progress. While the present study approaches this debate in such a way that the gaps highlighted addressed through extensive review of literature, it however takes it even further by giving it an empirical content through an in-depth case study of one South African workplace as an illustrative example. This empirically-based approach, coupled with extensive and critical review of the relevant literature, helped to take the debate on ubuntu/botho culture beyond rhetoric which characterises the current dominant thinking within the debate. I argue, on the basis of my overall findings that while evidence gathered supports the case for the need to explore with the ubuntu/botho culture in the economic and business sphere, and in particular at the workplace level, some serious obstacles would and do stand in the way of realising the potentially transformative and developmental role of the culture's values. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

In most developing countries the characteristics of the poor go beyond the traditional definition of poverty. Whilst the latter broadly refers to lack of access to material resources, there are other factors that are linked to poverty. This thesis identifies one of these factors as social exclusion which is suggested as a barrier to poverty reduction efforts. Drawing from the experience on the concept of social exclusion as developed in the north, and extended to some countries in the south, the social exclusion framework is applied within the context of a country in the south, namely Botswana. The thesis investigates the operation of social exclusion within the Basarwa minority group in the country, by identifying the appropriate mechanisms that drive social exclusion, describing the processes of exclusion, and delineating its characteristics. This is done within the context oftesting the proposition that social exclusion is one of the factors linked to the persistence of poverty. Noting that persistence of poverty is conventionally attributed, among others things, to shortfall in education and skills, lack of opportunities and capital or land, the thesis investigates the root causes ofthese factors in as far as Basarwa are concerned. It is argued that such shortfalls and failure to obtain adequate resources are due to exclusionary processes operating at two levels. The major findings are that the concept is multidimensional and that the target group faces exclusion in political, socio-cultural, economic, spatial and legal terms. This exclusion operates at the national and local levels. Owing to this multiple exclusion, Basarwa generally face difficulties in escaping poverty, with the older generation being the most affected. Social exclusion is a barrier to poverty reduction because it makes it difficult for the Basarwa to obtain equal and satisfactory access to opportunities, assets, and resources available in political, economic and social fields of society. The thesis offers some policy suggestions about how to reduce social exclusion. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

The objective of this research is to reveal the implications of the choice of home- and community-based care as opposed to other policy choices and, using a gendered lens, to find a plausible way of assessing the social and economic effects of this care policy for households, families, and centrally for women. Women’s paid and unpaid work, the continuum of paid and unpaid health/care work, care work, the care economy and community care are reviewed, as well as household structure, unemployment and the provision of health and welfare services in South Africa. The costs of unpaid care provision, methods for and issues to do with measuring time-use, and approaches to valuing unpaid care work are also considered. Time-use and financial cost information obtained as part of the 2004 KwaZulu-Natal Income Dynamics Study qualitative study from 19 family caregivers of 17 terminally ill people in 16 households, is the central source of data. The qualitative study employed a modified extended case study method. The psychological, emotional, social and physical costs of unpaid care work are not counted. Instead, caregivers’ labour time spent in unpaid care work is counted and valued using four methods (average earnings, opportunity cost, generalist, specialist), and financial costs to households of unpaid care provision are also counted. In this way unpaid care work is assigned various costs, a necessary step if this work is to be included in policy making processes. The findings are not representative but make possible some speculation about home-based care in KwaZulu-Natal. Findings on financial costs suggest that the welfare grant to the poorest elderly is subsidising the health services. On average 10 hours are spent by household caregivers in unpaid care work per ill person per day, and women are accounting for the bulk of this time. Moreover, in terms of valuing, most appropriate to the poor in KwaZulu-Natal is the generalist method using the proportionate approach and median earnings rates. If family caregivers were paid for the time spent in unpaid care work and households were reimbursed for their financial costs, for 2004/5 using the low estimate it would cost approximately R585 per month per ill person for unpaid care provision that takes place seven days a week and 10 hours per day (R7,619 per month using the high estimate). When multiplied by the number of AIDS-sick people in KwaZulu-Natal, this spending on costed unpaid care provision exceeds the monthly health and welfare spending on home-based care in KwaZulu-Natal for 2004/5 of approximately R2 million by R104,025,512 million if the low estimate is used. These costs are compared to the costs of a selection of similar public and private interventions in South Africa. Without fail the costs of unpaid care provision do not exceed 26 percent of the costs of alternatives. The findings show that the home- and community-based care guidelines have inequality-creating effects: wealthier families may be able to buy in care if necessary, while poorer families have to provide this care themselves. Moreover, government is saving substantially on the health budget by limiting the provision of public inpatient care. Because of the high costs of operation of both high- and low-cost inpatient centres, as well as home-based care as delivered by NGOs/FBOs/CBOs, the potential for these interventions to deliver to all of those in need of such care, when compared with unpaid care provision, is not great from the perspective of a government seeking to cut costs. The findings show that home-based care is cost-effective for government but not for family caregivers who carry the bulk of care costs. Policy options such as payment for caregiving, the basic income grant and expansion of the expanded public works programme are presented. Since family caregivers are meeting a minimum standard of productive participation, it is argued that a citizen based model of social protection be adopted. Finally, what worked and did not work with regard to the study is used to inform recommendations for improved future research on unpaid care work in South Africa. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2010.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008. / Women globally, and especially in sub Saharan Africa, are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS. Factors driving the HIV and AIDS pandemics include the oppression of women and gender inequality. Despite an intensified focus on women and girls in an attempt to reduce vulnerability to HIV little real progress has been made. This is in part because the sophisticated analysis of risk, vulnerability and our understanding of the pandemics is not match by equally sophisticated responses to prevention, care, treatment and support. Power over / male domination, evident at every level of society, fuels the pandemics, and makes women vulnerable. Using feminist understandings of power and domination this thesis explores the notion of subverting power. Through a series of case studies the notion of negative and positive power is explored; positive power includes power with, power to and power within. Examples of women’s resistance individually and collectively using the different types of power are highlighted. The thesis demonstrates that that women are not powerless and can and do affect change in their lives in all sites of struggle, that is can increase bodily autonomy, improve intimate relationships and challenge inequality in the households and community. Based on the learnings from the case study a theoretical model that addressed power as problem and solution in the context of HIV and AIDS is presented.

This thesis is a case study investigation of the sustainability of private sector participation in water supply and sanitation in developing countries, with a particular emphasis on South Africa. It is essentially an empirical contribution, which adds to the body of literature pertaining to the privatisation of water supply and sanitation services in developing countries. South Africa, like many developing countries, faces a significant challenge in providing a sustainable water supply and sanitation service to its citizens. It has a vast water supply and sanitation infrastructure backlog, because of the previous apartheid) government's minimal attention to the basic service needs of the African, Indian and Coloured people. This lack of basic services has had a negative effect on people's health and their basic living conditions. The traditional delivery vehicles for water supply and sanitation delivery in South Africa have been its municipalities. After the demise of the apartheid government, the democratic national government restructured these municipalities under various. processes. They merged neighbouring towns and villages, which incorporated former rural areas to achieve economies-of-scale. The intention was to ensure service delivery to the previously disadvantaged, through a mechanism of cross-subsidisation from the affluent to the indigent. However, these newly-demarcated non-metropolitan municipalities, still do not have the finances to extend the water supply and sanitation infrastructure network to rural areas within their jurisdiction. They also lack the good credit ratings to borrow funds from banks to finance new water supply and sanitation infrastructure. The rural population also has low abilities-to-pay for water supply and sanitation services. With total basic infrastructure backlogs estimated to exceed R270 billion in South Africa, the challenge to all tiers of government is considerable. Just rural water supply and sanitation over the next ten years requires R13.5 billion for the financing of new and rehabilitation of old, infrastructure. Faced with this dilemma, national government has attempted to resolve it by following the route taken by other developing nations, that is, by seeking the assistance of the private sector, National,provincial, or access to it. and some local governments argue that it is only the private sector that has the financial resources to fund this infrastructure backlog. To facilitate this change in service delivery vehicles. national government developed legislation to create an enabling environment for the entry of the private sector in the arena of water supply and sanitation provision. This transition has occurred with significant controversy and opposition. Many opponents to any form of privatisation base their argument on privatisation's fundamental drivers not being aligned with the goals of a development state. In the South African situation, these opponents include some organised labour trade unions, researchers, and labour-based research organisations. With firm pressure from this antiprivatisation coalition, private sector participation in water supply and sanitation services has been significantly staggered or impeded. Whilst this study provides evidence that this case of privatisation is not sustainable in the long-term, which is in agreement with this anti-privatisation coalition, the reasons underpinning the conclusion of this study, differ significantly from those of this coalition. The arguments that underpin differences in the opposition's views and this thesis are analysed throughout the rubric of this study. Three elemental constructs underpin the theoretical framework of this study. These constructs are compartmentalised into the nature of public goods and their natural monopoly status, the efficiencies of privatisation and its relation to ethics. and globalisation issues specifically dealing with the roles oftransnational companies. The study will show that the transfer of water supply and sanitation service delivery to the private sector in South Africa has not been sustainable due to various factors. These factors are investigated through the medium of empirical and case study analyses at a national and global comparative scale. Factors investigated include the reasons behind the privatisation, its transition period and procurement of public and other stakeholder buy-in to the change in service delivery, the role that the state has played in providing the enabling environment for privatisation, and the effectiveness of the opposition in delaying or impeding the pace of privatisation. The study also reveals that pilot projects have a special status and access to greater institutional support, which might facilitate its success. This extra attention might not be realisable in successive projects. Factors underpinning a successful privatisation include issues of efficiency, regulation and financial issues. These are also investigated within the rubric of the empirical and case study analyses. The impact of globalisation and the role of transnational companies with apparently "new technologies" and foreign direct investment, which pervade water supply and sanitation privatisation in developing countries, are also discussed. The case study examinations also provide evidence that in the South African situation, these apparent foreign technological innovations have yet to be confirmed. For South Africa and the other developing nations, the foreign direct investment has also been minimal in comparison to the profits that leave these host countries from the water supply and sanitation sector. The primary case study that underpins this research is the pilot project test case for the South African national government, the Dolphin Coast concession in its Kwazulu-Natal province . A comprehensive investigation of this concession provides evidence of the project's commercial failure. However, the concession remains in the hands of a private sector operator, due to the municipality controversially renegotiating the terms of the contract to facilitate the concession's continuity. This "municipal intervention" trend is noticeable in some international case studies. The English privatisation case is also investigated to provide a contrast between privatisation in a developed nation and a developing one. It also provides an insight into the facilitative environment of the English privatisation case, as compared to that of developing nations. The English privatisation, although not without controversy, was a decision taken by the government on efficiency grounds, whilst developing nations have taken the privatisation step based on reasons of infrastructure deficiency and a lack of finance. Essentially, the former is a push factor, whilst the latter has been a pull factor. This thesis includes a case study investigation conducted at the World Bank in New Delhi, India, which provides evidence of the opposition from state bureaucrats to privatisation in India. This serves as a contrast to the organised worker opposition in South Africa, and highlights some of the differing impediments that face privatisation attempts in each respective country. It shows that the reasons underpinning the opposition to privatisation in developing nations facing similar crises are, in fact, dissimilar. The study also investigates the success that can be achieved through the economies-of scale of a public sector utility in South Africa, shown by the Umgeni Water case study. This is essentially a public agency that has corporatised5 along business principles and employed economies-of-scale to become a successful example of public sector water supply and sanitation provision in a developing country. Cumulatively, this study provides evidence that, in South Africa, the transfer of water supply and sanitation services to the private sector is not sustainable without some degree of state intervention. This is especially evident in cases where there are no economies-of-scale to be exploited, and a lack of affluent people to ensure a critical degree of payment of tariffs or cross-subsidisation to the indigent. In effect, by transferring these services to private hands, this would serve only to postpone the eventual lack of sustainability that these services are currently experiencing in public sector hands. The evidence reveals that the privatisation of water supply and sanitation services in South Africa is not a commercially viable option in the long-term, under the normal mechanisms of supply and demand of the market. Concomitantly, the South African national government and its municipalities are faced with a new dilemma. The private sector can provide immediate sources of financing for urgent water supply and sanitation infrastructure development that cannot be similarly procured from limited state funds or other sources. Considering the urgency to provide water supply and sanitation infrastructure, because of the health-related effects that no access creates, privatisation, with strong regulation, may be a more amicable alternative to the current financial restrictions on municipalities, until a more comprehensive and sustainable solution is found. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

This thesis investigates the challenges facing local government in South Africa by developing a means of exploring to what extent the problems of providing basic services currently experienced by municipalities are influenced by the political, administrative and financial configuration of the decentralized system of governance. It is argued here that the design of the intergovernmental governance system does not promote the constitutional objectives of decentralisation. The current system of governance does not empower local government to become more distinctive and autonomous. The problem in many cases is not what to decentralize or whether a basic service should be provided by national, provincial or local government, but rather how to align shared rule or concurrency of the particular service with the various levels of government. One of the key questions posed in this thesis is to what extent the system of decentralized governance in South Africa enables or hinders municipalities. abilities to provide basic services in an autonomous and sustainable manner. It focuses particularly on their authority to make and implement autonomous political, administrative and financial decisions pertaining to the provision of basic services. While this study cannot conclusively report on the impact of decentralisation on basic service delivery in South Africa, it does identify some of the systemic and structural aspects that impact on the manner or way in which local municipalities provide basic services. It raises concerns that the basic service delivery obligations of local municipalities are strenuous and financially challenging, and will continue to be as long as local municipalities rely on or are controlled by other spheres of government in meeting their constitutional mandate, especially with regard to the intergovernmental transfers of fiscal resources. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

This thesis analyses the policy of curative health service delivery in North Darfur State, Sudan. Several authors have analyzed health service delivery issues, mainly focusing on controlling the spread of common diseases. No work has been done that focuses on the health policy aspect and its contribution to improving curative health service delivery, especially in areas affected by conflict since 2003. This study contributes to the body of knowledge on the nature and the evolution of health service delivery systems management, as well as policy implementation, thereby widening the discussion about the further projections of this field of study. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate how to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of curative health service delivery systems management, as well as policy implementation, in fostering socio-economic development in North Darfur State. The study focuses on how the national health system and national health policy of Sudan have been managed and implemented in North Darfur State. This thesis identifies the different health sectors, public, private and international NGOs, that provide curative health services in North Darfur State, and the difficulties that have been facing the population in accessing these health facilities. Investigations showed that curative health services are not adequate in the public sector, and that they are very expensive in the private sector. The exception is the NGO sector but it is not guaranteed to be sustainable in providing curative health services to poor and conflict-affected people. This thesis also identifies the mechanisms of health system management and policy implementation, by means of co-ordination and collaboration between the various government sectors, federal, state and district, in a decentralized system working in concert with international NGOs. The results show that there is poor co-ordination between the three levels of government, especially at district level, as well as poor collaboration between government and international NGOs, caused by government‟s lack of human and financial capacity. The potential for improvement in curative health service delivery are explored, particularly at district level. This is essential so that quality curative health services can be delivered to the population, thereby contributing to socio-economic development in North Darfur State. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Dev.Studies)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

This paper exammes the spending behaviour of households with mobile phones in rural agricultural Uganda and whether such strategies such as substitutions have affected the well-being of these community members. According to the findings, rural households are willing to make sacrifices such as travel expenses and store-bought food budget in order to address the expenses of mobile phone services. While gender inequality through exacerbated asset control and mobile phone inexperience drive further digital divide in this village, the proliferation of small businesses development encourages phone ownership for women. Such strategies to afford a mobile phone or mobile phone services are undertaken to help facilitate longterm asset accumulation. For development studies, the analysis recommends a revised form of development thinking in a growing knowledge economy. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.