Thesis (M.A. (Political Science)) -- University of Limpopo, 2014 / The study was about the South African Communist Party (SACP) and its entry into SA politics after 1990. The main question is whether it should contest elections independently of its Tripartite alliance partners led by ANC in democratic SA. As a democratic country it allows any party to participate in the elections. Given that space SACP can contest and triumph electorally thus assume the reins of government. For SA to become socialist, SACP has to campaign and triumph electorally for this to happen. The study followed a qualitative research paradigm. Purposeful sampling was used to collect data through in-depth interviews with information-rich respondents who have specialist knowledge about the study. Interviews and document analysis were used for data collection. For this reason, open-ended questions in the form of an interview guide were used to solicit information, perceptions and attitudes towards and about SACP. A tape recorder was used to capture information from these interviews. The recorded data was transcribed and coded into themes one by one which in turn formed part of the research portfolio. From the study findings contemporary SACP is a product of the revisionism that has come to characterise the post-Cold War. It is not surprising why the party then is not ready to contest election alone.

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The overall subject of this thesis is the massive parallel application of the extreme value analysis (EVA) on climatological time series. In this branch of statistics one strives to learn about the tails of a distribution and its upper quantiles, like the so-called 50 year return level, an event realized on average only once during its return period of 50 years. Since most studies just focus on average statistics and it's the extreme events that have the biggest impact on our life, such an analysis is key for a proper understanding of the climate change. In there a time series gets separated into blocks, whose maxima can be described using the generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution for sufficiently large block sizes. But, unfortunately, the estimation of its parameters won't be possible on a massive parallel scale with any available software package since they are all affected by onceptional problems in the maximum likelihood fit. Both the logarithms in the negative log-likelihood of the GEV distribution and the theoretical limitations on one of its parameters give rise to regions in the parameter space inaccessible to the optimization routines, causing them to produce numerical artifacts. I resolved this issue by incorporating all constraints into the optimization using the augmented Lagrangian method. With my implementation in the open source package **climex** it is now possible to analyze large climatological data sets. In this thesis I used temperature and precipitation data from measurement stations provided by the German weather service (DWD) and the ERA-Interim reanalysis data set and analyzed them using both a qualitative method based on time windows and a more quantitative one relying on the class of vector generalized linear models (VGLM). Due to the climate change a general shift of the temperature towards higher values and thus more hot and less cold extremes would be expect. Indeed, I could find the cation parameters of the GEV distributions, which can be thought of as the mean event size at a return period of approximately the block size of one year, to increase for both the aily maximum and minimum temperatures. But the overall changes are far more complex and dependent on the geographical location as well as the considered return period, hich is quite unexpected. E.g. for the 100 year return levels of the daily maximum temperatures a decrease was found in the east and the center of Germany for both the raw series and their anomalies, as well as a quite strong reduction for the raw series in the very south of Germany. The VGLM-based non-stationary EVA resulted in significant trends in the GEV parameters for the daily maximum temperatures of almost all stations and for about half of them in case of the daily minima. So, there is statistically sound evidence for a change in the extreme temperatures and, surprisingly, it is not exclusively towards higher values. The analysis yielded several significant trends featuring a negative slope in the 10 year return levels. The analysis of the temperature data of the ERA-Interim reanalysis data set yielded quite surprising results too. While in some parts of the globe, especially on land, the 10 year return levels were found to increase, they do in general decrease in most parts of the earth and almost entirely over the sea. But since we found a huge discrepancy between the results of the analysis using the station data within Germany and the results obtained for the corresponding grid points of the reanalysis data set, we can not be sure whether the patterns in the return levels of the ERA-Interim data are trustworthy. / Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die massiv parallele Anwendung der Extremwertanalyse (EVA) auf klimatologischen Zeitreihen. Dieser Bereich der Statistik beschäftigt sich mit den Schwänzen von Wahrscheinlichkeitsverteilungen und deren großen Quantilen, wie z.B. dem sogenannten 50-jährigen Return Level. Dies ist ein Ereignis, welches im Mittel nur einmal innerhalb seiner Return Periode von 50 Jahren realisiert wird. Da sich aber die Mehrheit der wissenschaftlichen Studien auf die Analyse gemittelter statistischer Größen stützen, aber es gerade die extremen Ereignisse sind, welche unser Leben maßgeblich beeinflussen, ist eine solche EVA entscheidend für ein umfassendes Verständnis des Klimawandels. In der Extremwertanalyse wird eine Zeitreihe in einzelne Blöcke geteilt, deren Maxima sich bei hinreichend großer Blocklänge mittels der generalisierten Extremwertverteilung (GEV) beschreiben lassen. Die Schätzung ihrer Parameter ist auf solch massiv parallelen Skalen jedoch mit keinem der verfügbaren Softwarepakete möglich, da sie alle vom selben konzeptionellen Problem der Maximum Likelihood Methode betroffen sind. Sowohl die Logarithmen in der negativen log-Likelihood der GEV Verteilung, als auch die theoretischen Beschränkungen im Wertebereich eines ihrer Parameter machen Teile des Parameterraumes für den Optimierungsalgorithmus unzugänglich und führen zur Erzeugung numerischer Artefakte durch die Routine. Dieses Problem konnte ich lösen, indem ich die Beschränkungen mittels der augmented Lagrangian Methode in die Optimierung integrierte. Mittels dem verbesserten Fit, den ich in dem Open Source Paket **climex** zur Verfügung stellte, ist es nun möglich beliebig viele Zeitreihen in einer parallelen Analyse zu behandeln. In dieser Arbeit verwende ich Temperatur- und Niederschlagszeitreihen des deutschen Wetterdienstes (DWD) und den ERA-Interim Reanalyse Datensatz in Kombination mit sowohl einer qualitativen Analyse basierend auf Zeitfenstern, als auch einer quantitativen, welche auf der Modellklasse der Vektor-generalisierten linearen Modellen (VGLM) beruht. Aufgrund des Klimawandels ist intuitiv eine Verschiebung der Temperaturverteilung zu höheren Werten und damit mehr heiße und weniger kalte Temperaturextreme zu erwarten. Tatsächlich konnte ich für die täglichen Maximal- und Minimaltemperaturen einen Anstieg des Location Parameters finden, dem man sich als mittlere Ereignisgröße für eine Return Periode gleich der verwendeten Blocklänge von einem Jahr versinnbildlichen kann. Im Großen und Ganzen sind die Änderungen jedoch deutlich komplexer und hängen sowohl vom Ort, als auch von der Return Periode ab. Z.B. verringern sich die 100 jährigen Return Level der täglichen Maximaltemperaturen im Osten und im Zentrum Deutschlands für sowohl die unprozessierten Zeitreihen, als auch für deren Anomalien, und weisen eine besonders starke Reduktion im Süden des Landes für die prozessierten auf. Durch die VGLM-basierte, nicht-stationäre EVA konnte ich zeigen, dass nahezu alle Stationen für die täglichen Maximaltemperaturen, sowie rund die Hälfte aller Stationen für die täglichen Minimaltemperaturen, signifikante Trends in den Parameters der GEV Verteilung aufweisen. Somit war es mir möglich statistisch fundierte Beweise für Veränderungen in den extremen Temperaturen finden, die jedoch nicht ausschließlich in einer Verschiebung zu höheren Werten bestanden. Einige Stationen wiesen eine negativen Trend in ihren 10 jährigen Return Leveln auf. Die Analyse der Temperaturzeitreihen des ERA-Interim Reanalyse Datensatzes ergab ebenfalls überraschende Resultate. Während in einigen Teilen der Welt, hauptsächlich an Land, die 10 jährigen Return Level steigen, sinkt ihr Wert für den Großteil der Zeitreihen und fast über den gesamten Ozeanen. Da jedoch eine große Diskrepanz zwischen den Ergebnissen der Stationsdaten des DWD und den dazugehörigen Rasterpunkten im ERA-Interim Datensatz besteht, konnte nicht abschließend geklärt werden in wieweit die Resultate der Rasteranalyse der Natur entsprechen.

Thesis (M. A. (Communication Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2022 / South Africa experiences a high rate of absent fathers and this makes single-mother households a prominent family structure in the country. There are many framings and discourses of single mother households in the media, ranging from the critical to the negative and occasional positive ones. But in these discourses, do the resilience, strength, and hard work of single mothers form part of the framing of single mothers in South Africa? The destruction of the Black family structure is one of the disastrous legacies of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa. The discoveries of gold and diamonds brought a rapid social and economic transformation in the country, and Black families bore the brunt of this transformation which changed the Black family structure to date. The implementation of colonial and apartheid policies such as the migrant labour system was set to grow the White economy and achieve this goal by getting cheap labour from Black males in the homelands. The migrant labour system forced Black men to work in the mines leaving their families behind as the men were placed in single-sex hostels. This system, therefore, resulted in many households being fatherless and women or mothers wielding the household responsibilities while their husbands were in the cities. This historical context is important in studying current absent fatherhood and single mother households in South Africa. The study used a historical approach to understand the Black family structure prior colonial era, and how it transitioned during colonialism, and apartheid up and in the current post-apartheid era. This study is built on the theories of post-coloniality, the intersectional burden of femininity, media framing, and it engages critical theoretical scholars such as Homi Bhabha, Arlie Hochschild, Simone de Beauvoir, Bell hooks, and Kimberle Crenshaw amongst others. Through these theoretical lenses, I examined the influence of colonialism and apartheid on the contemporary father absence and female-headed households. The theoretical lenses were further used to examine how the past influence the future and how women's issues are addressed. I also examined the role of media in the (re)presentation of female-headed households. The study tackled three objectives: to examine the media discourse of single motherhood in South Africa; to analyze if women’s resilience in matrifocal families forms part of the media discourse of single motherhood, and lastly to explore the effects of colonialism and apartheid on Black family structure and their consequences in South Africa today. Data were collected through an analysis of a documentary film titled “Last Grave at Dimbaza”. This was an apartheid-era documentary that captured the lives of both Black and White families during apartheid. I examined this film to locate data that capture the media discourse about absent fatherhood during apartheid–which directly reflects the South African colonial-apartheid influence on this phenomenon. Data were also collected from online newspaper publications such as IOL, TimesLive, and News24 on stories about single-motherhood within a period of three years from January 2018 to December 2020 to address the media construction of single-motherhood in the post-apartheid era. The results of the study show that media discourse tends to perpetuate a normative negative and global trend of stereotyping mothers who receive social grants. Single mothers are portrayed as a group that misappropriates state resources, who pocket state money to meet their personal needs. They are thus stereotyped as social burdens on the state finances and contribute to the country's economic risks. Women are portrayed as victims of apartheid without any agency in the absence of their men. The study revealed that women had to find ways to survive or feed their families while waiting for their husbands to send money. However, what is missing in this portrayal is how women in the Bantustans survived under the migrant labour and apartheid laws and policies. Thus, this study found that coloniality seems to continue to shape the Black family structure and that the father's absence in the black society persists and this pattern is transmitted from one generation to another. It was also revealed in this study that when the father is absent, he leaves a trait of absence that his son becomes likely to inherit. Black families are still built from the bourgeois colonialist environment, absent fatherhood and female-headed households are the legacies of colonialism as it is inherited from the colonial background and compounded by socio-economic challenges. Single mothers who are confronted with multiple burdens in raising their children should have their agency, resilience, and challenging work acknowledged. They should be celebrated, not scorned. / National Research Foundation (NRF)

Building on Penelope Summerfield’s argument that the end of the Victorian music hall in the early twentieth century signaled not “death” but a class-conscious evolution of the genre prompted by a “process of deliberate selection later made to look natural and inevitable,” this project examines the acts of censorship and resistance which characterised the final years of the Victorian music hall. Selecting the 1912 Royal Variety or Royal Command Performance as the “end” point of the genre, and limiting my focus to London music halls, this project examines competing aims of working, middle, and upper class participants: it suggests that the upper-class aspirations of the managers of London’s music halls, paired with middle-class moral desire for social control over the working-classes, eventually enforced by the London County Council in the mid-late nineteenth century, saw the rise of “respectability” in the genre while severing its ties to London’s working classes. Juxtaposing ephemeral evidence produced by or focused on London music halls in the late nineteenth century (leading up to and including the 1912 Royal Command Performance) with contemporary research on the classed nature of social control and censorship practices, this thesis intends to make the classed-struggle for power and ownership over the identity of London’s music halls evident. In doing so, the thesis alludes to the potential success of a third wave of music hall or the neo-music hall, to replace out-dated reflections of the music hall revival sparked by “The Good Old Days” and nostalgia post World War II. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / This thesis pairs an analysis of meeting minutes, newspaper articles, song-sheets, and theatrical programmes from London’s Victorian music halls with contemporary music hall scholarship and studies of censorship to add to the discussion of the genre’s “end” or “death.” Using the work of Judith Butler, this thesis is divided into a study of how censorship transformed the music hall’s landscape, content, and culminating performance from its onset. As a result, this thesis argues that the controlling factors which shaped the genre led to what other music hall scholars have considered its end. By identifying the styles and modes of censorship used in the evolution of the English music hall genre, and in in-period methods of resistance to social control, this project suggests the radical potential of the music hall form as a contemporary style of theatre.

This study investigates the underlying factors of paternalism and dependency in the mission work of the Reformed Churches in South Africa by focusing on the KOSH region. The study will examine, as a case study, the missionary work done by the white Reformed Churches among the black communities and the Reformed Churches in the Klerksdorp, Orkney, Stilfontein, Hartbeesfontein (KOSH) region. Such a case study aims to lay bare the main causes of the black Reformed churches’ dependency on their white Reformed counterparts. It will examine the issues of attitude, cultural and world view prevalent among the Reformed church members in the KOSH region that may cause paternalism and dependency in missions. The possible influence of apartheid developments on mission methodology and the strategy of the GKSA churches will be examined closely. As a proposal to overcome the residue of paternalism and dependency in the black church community, this study will expound the biblical principle of partnership in missions. Thereafter the focus will fall on the biblical point of departure of a partnership model in missions. Some practical guidelines as recommendations will also be suggested in terms of which such a holistic transformational model of missions could help to overcome tendencies of paternalism and dependency in the missionary situation. Chapter 1 focuses on the formulation of the research. It states the background, problem statement, research limitation, main research question, aim and objectives as well as central argument and method of research. To conclude, the chapter division is presented. Chapter 2 studies and outlines definitions, historical development and missiological reflection on paternalism and dependency. Chapter 3 studies and outlines key biblical perspectives on mission, paternalism and dependency from the missio-Dei point of departure. Chapter 4 investigates and analyzes the attitude, cultural and worldview issues prevalent among the Reformed church members in the KOSH region that may cause paternalism and dependency in missions. Chapter 5 investigates the field work on mission, paternalism and dependency in the case of the Reformed Churches in South Africa, focusing on the KOSH region. Chapter 6 investigates key biblical and missiological perspectives on partnership and interdependency in missions by which to overcome paternalism and dependency. Chapter 7 investigates the relevant principles and possible pitfalls regarding the motives of partnership and interdependency with the aim of establishing a holistic transformational model of missions in the post-apartheid dispensation in South Africa. Chapter 8 consists of the conclusions and summary of this study. The partnership model is proposed and practical guidelines as recommendations are made finally on the transformation of mission within the Reformed Churches in South Africa in the KOSH region in post-apartheid South Africa. / PhD (Missiology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

This study investigates the underlying factors of paternalism and dependency in the mission work of the Reformed Churches in South Africa by focusing on the KOSH region. The study will examine, as a case study, the missionary work done by the white Reformed Churches among the black communities and the Reformed Churches in the Klerksdorp, Orkney, Stilfontein, Hartbeesfontein (KOSH) region. Such a case study aims to lay bare the main causes of the black Reformed churches’ dependency on their white Reformed counterparts. It will examine the issues of attitude, cultural and world view prevalent among the Reformed church members in the KOSH region that may cause paternalism and dependency in missions. The possible influence of apartheid developments on mission methodology and the strategy of the GKSA churches will be examined closely. As a proposal to overcome the residue of paternalism and dependency in the black church community, this study will expound the biblical principle of partnership in missions. Thereafter the focus will fall on the biblical point of departure of a partnership model in missions. Some practical guidelines as recommendations will also be suggested in terms of which such a holistic transformational model of missions could help to overcome tendencies of paternalism and dependency in the missionary situation. Chapter 1 focuses on the formulation of the research. It states the background, problem statement, research limitation, main research question, aim and objectives as well as central argument and method of research. To conclude, the chapter division is presented. Chapter 2 studies and outlines definitions, historical development and missiological reflection on paternalism and dependency. Chapter 3 studies and outlines key biblical perspectives on mission, paternalism and dependency from the missio-Dei point of departure. Chapter 4 investigates and analyzes the attitude, cultural and worldview issues prevalent among the Reformed church members in the KOSH region that may cause paternalism and dependency in missions. Chapter 5 investigates the field work on mission, paternalism and dependency in the case of the Reformed Churches in South Africa, focusing on the KOSH region. Chapter 6 investigates key biblical and missiological perspectives on partnership and interdependency in missions by which to overcome paternalism and dependency. Chapter 7 investigates the relevant principles and possible pitfalls regarding the motives of partnership and interdependency with the aim of establishing a holistic transformational model of missions in the post-apartheid dispensation in South Africa. Chapter 8 consists of the conclusions and summary of this study. The partnership model is proposed and practical guidelines as recommendations are made finally on the transformation of mission within the Reformed Churches in South Africa in the KOSH region in post-apartheid South Africa. / PhD (Missiology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

This study examines the ancient Greeks’ attitudes to children during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The investigation is limited to literary sources in selected pre-Christian texts. Problems which might bias interpretation have been noted. Parent-child relationships, as revealed in literary examples of parental love and concern, are of particular interest. Hazards affecting survival in early childhood, and factors which influenced attitudes regarding the fetus, abortion, exposure and infanticide are considered. Legal, political and socio-economic factors are amongst motivating forces. Childhood experiences such as education, sport, pederasty, step-families, slaves and slavery, preparation for marriage, and deprivation due to war and environmental factors are also examined. Ancient attitudes to children are compared with modern attitudes to children in similar situations prevailing in Western culture in the 21st century. The findings reveal that basic human behaviour has changed little over the millennia; however, factors influencing attitudes have undergone some change as society evolved.

Thesis (MA (Political Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The global city discourse posits a new role for cities in light of increased economic integration and the rise of a global economy. Firms are increasingly investing capital in locations where profits are anticipated to be highest, creating a geographic dispersal of economic activity. As a result, the central command functions of firms – management, coordination, servicing, and financing of vast networks of operations – have become more complex and strategic. Firms thus outsource a portion of their central command functions to specialised service firms. Specialised service firms tend towards high levels of agglomeration and concentrate in a small number of locations, giving rise to command and control centres of the global economy or global cities. Cities of the South are increasingly fulfilling global city functions, yet are generally approached through a developmentalist framework. The global city discourse places salience on specialised services and exhibits a Western bias. This study develops an alternative analytical framework that recognises an array of activities and processes, across three spheres of globalisation – markets, mafias, and movements – that contribute to the global connectivity of cities. In this way the role of cities of the South in the global economy is better understood. This study focuses on Mexico City and Johannesburg as global cities of the South. What the research uncovers is that these cities fulfil many global city functions and are amongst the best connected cities in their respective regions in terms of their ability to service global capital through growing specialised service sectors. In this way Mexico City and Johannesburg emerge as global cities of the South that integrate large geographical areas, populations, and sub-global economies with the global economy. This study also illustrates that the way in which global cities are conceptualised limits the extent to which the concept can be applied in Southern context. Global cities of the South service far less global capital because of the nature of core/semi-periphery/periphery relations and underdevelopment, the role they fulfil in the global economy is, however, no less critical than that of global cities of the core. This study therefore proposes thinking of global cities as constituent units of a global urban network, garnering certain power by occupying a particular niche constitutive of the whole network.

"Employers, Unite!" argues that the anti-union campaign of Progressive-Era organized employers molded in crucial ways the shape of labor relations in the United States, and that to understand the development of ideas about work, business, and labor unions, we need to understand how these employers gained and wielded political and societal power.The study concentrates on the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which spearheaded what it termed the "open-shop'' campaign. Focusing attention on the unions' demand for the closed or union shop, the NAM shifted the debate over labor relations from workplace conditions to the legitimacy of unions as representatives of workers, identifying not employers but union leaders as the source of injustices.At the heart of the study is an analysis of over 100 active members of the NAM, organized through a relational database constructed with the help of recently digitized materials like local histories and biographical compendia. Besides basic information like company size or demographics, the database maps information about NAM members' social and political contacts. Substantial archival materials further ground the study's analysis of the NAM's structure and influence.Research on the membership has allowed me to uncover information that focusing on the leadership would not have revealed. For example, I have found that a high percentage of active NAM members were party activists and officials, mostly in the Republican party; their positions in the party hierarchy gave them influence over political nominations and Congressional committee appointments. Active NAM members also regularly had personal contacts to politicians ranging from governors to Senators; these contacts further bolstered the Association's power, enabling it to torpedo much of labor's legislative project.The study also compares the NAM to other business organizations, especially the National Civic Federation (NCF). The NCF promoted cooperation with moderate unions, a position which the NAM frequently and vehemently criticized. Rhetorical differences, however, masked an underlying agreement among businessmen regarding the undesirability of unions. The rhetorical disjuncture between the organizations served to constrain debate on labor relations: the NAM's stridency made the NCF appear genuinely progressive and thereby undercut other, more far-reaching critiques of existing workplace relations.