This study explores the effectiveness of the South African National Strategy for the development and promotion of small businesses in South Africa, where it first evaluates the effectiveness of the instructional framework created under the government’s National Strategy i.e. Centre for Small Business Promotion, Ntsika Enterprise Promotion Agency and Khula Enterprise Finance Limited for the attainment of the government’s National Strategy’s objectives of job creation, income generation and economic growth from an economic point of view. It also investigates the government’s National Strategy’s effectiveness with regard to services provision by both the financial service providers and non-financial service providers including the recipients of such services i.e. the SMMEs themselves from a business management perspective with regard to the success factors of functional areas of management. The study also evaluates some government departments which are not incorporated in the government’s National Strategy’s institutional framework and other business organizations all of which are engaged in small business development initiatives. The study further evaluates some parastatal organizations and provincial SMME desks in relation to the government’s National Strategy. Lastly the study evaluates the impact the government’s National Strategy has had on the small black economic empowerment mining companies as a sector, specifically if the government’s National Strategy has created an enabling environment for them to succeed in their small-scale mining operations. Job creation and growth of the small business sector will remain one of South Africa’s most urgent needs. Most severe social and economic ills result directly from inadequate progress in both these domains. Since the first democratic elections of 1994, an intensive process had been undertaken to address the urgent need for job creation and income generation, particularly among the majority black population. From these processes, policies were formulated, institutions created and funds allocated in the quest for these goals. While opinions may differ widely on the most effective measure to achieve steady progress, one factor has not been placed in doubt, namely that the richest source of job creation may come, not from the country’s big business sector, but from the small and medium enterprise sector. This reality is hardly unique to South Africa alone, but a proven fact in virtually every country developed and less developed alike. According to the study there seems to be a consensus that job creation ranks among the country’s most urgent priorities, along with AIDS, crime and education. High unemployment remains the obstacle to the country’s long-term social, economic and political stability. The government’s National Strategy was meant to address all these issues as it is a web that links many economic and social sectors of the country. Job creation in the all-important small business sector is not just an “industry” issue; it cuts across many different policy areas, from individual livelihoods, economic development, political empowerment, human resource development, market development and physical infrastructure. The government’s National Strategy, according to the study, is not perceived as a “strategy” as such, which would imply an integrated national plan linking all programmes at the national and regional level to achieve defined goals. It is however, seen as an array of independent, largely uncoordinated programmes, aimed at a common set of social and economic goals. A critical flaw in the government’s National Strategy, the study had also shown, is its failure to “segment its market”, namely to realistically differentiate its support among its two principal target groups - micro/survivalist enterprises and small/medium businesses - each with distinctly different needs. The government’s National Strategy also appears to have suffered from several internal contradictions especially with regard to the institutions created under its institutional framework. With regard to the implementation of the government’s National Strategy, the study has noted that the National Strategy seems to be leaderless and not effectively coordinated. The National Strategy also seems to have spawned an explosion of programmes and service providers, frequently duplicating other national and regional programmes. The Centre for Small Business Promotion within the DTI seems not to be playing the role it was intended to play while Ntsika’s centralised/standardised mode of operation makes adaptation of training to diverse local groups and needs very difficult and Khula’s programmes seem to have fallen short of their objectives, despite an effective and professional internal organization. Contrary to its design, provinces and municipalities do not play a major policy or operational role in the government’s National Strategy yet these are typically most informed and connected to local businesses and often have better understanding of the needs and success factors. With regard to the small black economic empowerment mining sector, the study has revealed that the government’s National Strategy has not been utilized effectively by this sector and because of this the government’s National Strategy has not played a pivotal role in creating an enabling environment for small-scale miners to fully succeed in their small-scale mining operations. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Marketing Management / PhD / Unrestricted

Protein-protein interactions (PPIs) are attractive targets because of their therapeutic potential. One approach to design small molecules that can disrupt the PPIs is to use structural information of proteins. With this approach, triazole-based peptidomimetics that mimic beta-turn hot-spot regions in neurotrophins were synthesized. The monovalent mimics were assembled into bivalent mimics via a combinatorial method. Three different bivalent mimics were prepared for different studies. Bivalent mimics with long-linkers bound to TrkA or TrkC receptor and showed partial antagonism for the receptors. Other mimics were conjugated with cytotoxic compounds and they were used for TrkC targeted drug delivery. The last group of bivalent mimics previously showed targeted delivery effects for pancreatic cancer cells. In this study, we synthesized Eu-chelated bivalent mimics to perform a competitive binding assay for pancreatic cancer cells. Previous research in our group focused on design of secondary structures' mimics on rigid scaffolds as "minimalist mimics." We sought to establish structural design criteria for the minimalist mimics, and we wanted to propose that sets of such compounds could mimic local pairs of amino acids in any secondary structures as "universal peptidomimetics." Thus, we designed five compounds, such as oxazoline-, pyrrole-, dyine- "kinked" and "linear" bistrizole-based peptidomimetics, and performed molecular modelings, DFT calculations, and QMD for them to validate our hypothesis. On the concepts of "minimalist mimics" and "universal peptidomimetics," we developed the C alpha ? C beta vector matching program to evaluate preferred orientations of C alpha - C beta coordinates for secondary structures. We applied the program to omegatides and pyrrolinone-pyrrolidine oligomers. The compounds matched better with strands than for helices. We expanded the C alpha ? C beta vector matching idea to a method that ranks preferred conformations of small molecules on any combination of three interface side-chains in all structurally characterized PPIs. We developed a PDB mining program (explores key orientation, EKO) to do this, and EKO applied to pyrrolinone-pyrrolidine oligomers to find targets. EKO found several interesting targets, such as AICAR Tfase, GAPDH, and HIV-1 protease. HIV-1 dimerization inhibition and Zhang-Poorman kinetic assays were performed to validate our hypothesis, and the results showed that pyrrolinone-pyrrolidine derivatives inhibited HIV-1 dimerization.