MENVSC / Department of Ecology and Resource Management / The main objective of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of municipal solid waste management system, its potential implication in Vhembe District Municipality, South Africa and to recommend strategies for effective management of municipal solid waste in the district. To achieve this, structured questionnaires, interviews, field observations and focus group discussions were used to collect primary data within the district. The study focused on the four local municipalities: Makhado, Thulamela, Musina and Collins Chabane. Desktop study was also undertaken to gather secondary data by reviewing journals, technical reports, books and articles. The study adopted a mixed method approach comprising of triangulation of qualitative and quantitative design. The target groups of the study were selected through purposive sampling. The respondents in the study were 21 officials from local municipalities including directors, waste managers, superintendents, landfill supervisor and interns. Data was collected using focus group interviews and questionnaires and analysed using descriptive statistics which involve the presentation of numerical facts, or data, in either tables or graphs form. Municipalities in the district are producing a considerable amount of solid waste. Municipalities do not adhere to the existing guidelines on waste minimization at source, for example; they do not have zero waste strategy (3R) reduce, reuse and recycle, which is the highest priority of the National Waste Management Policy. Lack of the application of existing waste management policy leads to large amount of solid waste eventually ending up in landfill sites. The study recommends to municipalities to develop operational and monitoring waste management plans which will create continuous improvement on waste management. In the district, it was observed that the bulk of waste generated per month within municipalities is general waste comprising 64%, as compared to garden waste and building rubbles. There are no equipment and programs in place by municipalities to encourage waste separation at source, for example, municipalities do not have household‟s recyclable receptacles to encourage separation at source. Municipalities do not have weighbridge to quantify waste entering the site. It was observed that Thulamela and Collins Chabane Local municipalities create compost from garden waste received at the landfill sites, whereas Musina and Makhado Local Municipalities do not create compost from garden waste. Garden waste is dumped and compacted with other waste materials in the landfills. All municipalities should create compost from garden waste received at the landfill sites as it helps to extend the life span of the landfills because it v reduces the amount of waste to the landfill. There is lack of prioritization within municipalities, for example, in Makhado Local Municipality, when the new financial start, budget is allocated to other proposed projects by councilors as they consider waste management projects not a priority. It was observed that within the district, there is high level of illegal dumping in catchment areas and open spaces especially at Musina Local Municipality. Musina Local Municipality is using a quarry as disposal site which was not lined and it has led to contamination of underground water by leachate, whereas Thulamela, Collins Chabane and Makhado Local Municipalities are using lined landfill sites to avoid contamination of underground water. The available vehicles within the municipalities are not enough to meet the demand and some of them are too old, for example, tractors and trucks used by Makhado Local Municipality are 20 years old and they often breakdown, whereas Thulamela, Collins Chabane and Musina Local Municipalities are not using old vehicles as they auctioned old vehicles and bought new ones. Vhembe District Municipality should manage waste in accordance to the new approach of source separation, waste reduction, reuse and recycling by developing environmental awareness programmes supported by the placement of the recyclable receptacles at strategic points to collect recyclable materials which will reduce large amount of waste which eventually ends up in landfills. The study recommends that municipalities should have law enforcement structure which will create and enforce the laws/policies as it helps municipalities to implement effective waste management system and monitoring structure to monitor prioritization and budget allocation to avoid any wastage. Municipalities should have landfill monitoring committees to facilitate the compliance on the development and operation of the landfills to avoid the use of quarry as landfill sites. / NRF

Policy makers adopt irrigated agriculture for food security, since irrigation doubles crop production. Therefore, the development of large irrigation systems has a long history in many places worldwide. Although large-scale irrigation schemes play an important role in improving food security, many schemes, especially in Africa, do not yield the expected outcomes. This is related to poor water management, which is generally due to a lack of effective evaluation and monitoring. The objective of this study, therefore, is to propose a new methodology to assess, evaluate and monitor large-scale irrigation systems. Information on irrigation indicators is needed to enable the evaluation of irrigation performance. The evaluation is the first and the most significant step in providing information about how it is performing. After reviewing extensive literature, a list of indicators related to the performance of irrigation, rainwater supply and productivity is suggested. The irrigation efficiency indicators Relative Irrigation Supply (RIS) and Relative Water Supply (RWS) are selected. Potential rainwater supply to crops can be tested based on the Moisture Availability Index (MAI) and the Ratio of Moisture Availability (RMA). Water productivity can be assessed by Crop Yield (Y) and Water Use Efficiency (WUE). However, the central problem facing large-scale irrigation schemes is always the lack of data, which calls for the development of a new method of data acquisition that allows evaluation and monitoring. Remote Sensing (RS) technology makes it possible to retrieve data across large areas. Two different approaches via RS, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa), can be utilized for monitoring. The well-known Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), derived from the NDVI, is modified (MVCI) to allow a qualitative spatio-temporal assessment of irrigation efficiency. MVCI takes into account crop response to water availability, while ETa indicates whether water is used as intended. Furthermore, the assessment of the possible hydrological impact of the irrigation system should be considered in the evaluation and monitoring process. The Sudanese Gezira Scheme of 8,000 square kilometers in the Nile Basin, where performance evaluation and monitoring are absent or poorly conducted, is no exception. This research takes the large-scale irrigation of the Gezira Scheme as a case study, as it is the largest scheme, not only in the Nile Basin but also in the world, under single management. The first long-term historical evaluation of the scheme is conducted for the period 1961–2012 rather than only on a short-time scale as is the common practice. An increase in RIS and RWS values from 1.40 and 1.70 to 2.23 and 2.60, respectively, since the 1993/94 season shows decreasing irrigation efficiency. MAI and RMA for summer crops indicate a promising rainfall contribution to irrigation in July and August. The Gezira Scheme achieves low yield and WUE in comparison to many irrigation schemes of the globe. Low productivity is mainly due to poor distribution and irrigation mismanagement. This is indicated by the 15-year MVCI spatio-temporal analysis, which shows that the northern part of the scheme experiences characteristic drought during the summer crop season. Although MVCI can be considered a monitoring tool, the index does not deduct the soil water content, and water could be wasted and available in other ways (e.g. water depressions). Spatio-temporal information for ETa is required to better quantify water depletion and establish links between land use and water allocation. However, several RS models have been developed for estimating ETa. Thus, improving the understanding of performance of such models in arid climates, as well as large-scale irrigation schemes, is taken into account in this study. Four different models based on the energy balance method, the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL), Mapping EvapoTranspiration at High Resolution with Internalized Calibration (METRIC™), Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEB) and MOD16 ET are applied in order to determine the optimal approach for obtaining ETa. Outputs from these models are compared to actual water balance (WB) estimates during the 2004/05 season at field scale. Several statistical measures are evaluated, and a score is given for each model in order to select the best-performing model. Based on ranking criteria, SSEB gives the best performance and is seen as a suitable operational ETa model for the scheme. SSEB subsequently is applied for summer and winter crop seasons for the period 2000–2014. Unfortunately, one of the limitations faced in the current research is the absence of validation data on a regional scale. Therefore, the assessment focuses on spatial distribution and trends rather than absolute values. As with the MVCI distribution, the seasonal ETa for the Gezira Scheme is higher in the southern and central parts than in the northern part. This confirms the robustness of the developed MVCI. To avoid using absolute values of ETa, the ratio of ETa from agricultural areas (ETagr) to the total evapotranspiration (ET) from the scheme (ETsum) is calculated. The ETagr/ETsum ratio shows a descending trend over recent years, indicating that the water is available but not being utilized for agricultural production. This study shows that SSEB is also useful for identifying the location of water losses on a daily basis. Around 80 channels are identified as having leakage problems for the 2013/14 crop season. Such information is very useful for reducing losses at the scheme. In addition, Rainwater Harvesting (WH) is addressed and found to be applicable as an alternative solution for accounting for rainfall in irrigation. It is seen that these management scenarios could save water and increase the overall efficiency of the scheme. It is possible to save 68 million cubic meters of water per year when the overall irrigation efficiency of the scheme is improved by only 1%. A level of efficiency of 75% is predicted from the proposed management scenarios, which could save about 2.6 billion cubic meters of water per year. In conclusion, the present study has developed an innovative method of identifying the problems of large-scale schemes as well as proposing management scenarios to enhance irrigation water management practice. Improved agricultural water management in terms of crop, water and land management can increase food production, thereby alleviating poverty and hunger in an environmentally sustainable manner.

Violence against women continues to be an issue that severely impacts women worldwide. Since the global spread of the #MeToo movement in 2017, debates regarding this issue significantly increased. Yet the precise ways in which women are impacted by violence, heavily influenced by their unique and diverse aspects of identity, are often disregarded. By focusing on two of these aspects of identity, namely gender and nationality, and comparing the circumstances of sexual violence against women in Germany, Nigeria, and South Korea, this thesis aims to showcase the diverse experiences of ‘being a woman’ and what this implies regarding the issue of sexual violence against women. With an additional analysis of four important international conventions aimed at ameliorating women’s lives (UDHR, CEDAW, DEVAW, and BPfA) regarding their acknowledgement of this diversity and guided by three theories, namely Multi-Ethnic Feminism, Feminist Postcolonialism, and Intersectionality, this thesis highlights the necessity of including everyone and their unique experiences with all kinds of discrimination to adequately tackle an issue such as sexual violence against women.

The interconnectedness of global supply chains, combined with disruptive events like the Covid-19 pandemic, has emphasized the significance of enhancing supply chain resilience (SCRes). Thus, this study aims to investigate how businesses employ SCRes recovery strategies to address extreme supply chain disruptions (SCD). To contribute empirical evidence on reactive SCRes strategies, qualitative methodology was employed, with a specific emphasis on the construction department at Northvolt. The construction industry serves as an apt context for assessing and offers valuable insights. Unstructured and semi-structured interviews were conducted with supply chain executives within the company to collect the data. The findings reveal specific challenges faced by the construction department at Northvolt in the face of global supply chain disruptions, shedding light on their responsive strategies. This study not only emphasizes the necessity of cultivating all SCRes capabilities but also contributes valuable empirical evidence to the field. The implications of these findings extend beyond Northvolt, providing actionable insights for businesses in the construction industry and offering recommendations for enhancing overall supply chain resilience. / Den ökande globala kopplingen mellan leverantörskedjor, tillsammans med störande händelser som Covid-19-pandemin, har understrukit betydelsen av att förbättra leverantörskedjors motståndskraft (SCRes). Denna studie syftar därför till att undersöka hur företag använder sig av SCRes-återhämtningsstrategier för att hantera extrema störningar i leverantörskedjan (SCD). För att bidra med empiriska bevis om reaktiva SCRes-strategier användes kvalitativ metodik, med särskild tonvikt på byggavdelningen på Northvolt. Byggbranschen fungerar som en lämplig kontext för bedömning och erbjuder värdefulla insikter. Ostrukturerade och halvstrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med företagets leverantörskedjechefer för att samla in data. Resultaten avslöjar specifika utmaningar som byggavdelningen på Northvolt står inför i ljuset av globala störningar i leverantörskedjan och belyser deras responsstrategier. Denna studie betonar inte bara nödvändigheten av att odla alla SCRes-förmågor utan bidrar också med värdefulla empiriska bevis till området. Resultatens implikationer sträcker sig bortom Northvolt och ger handlingsbara insikter för företag inom byggbranschen, samt erbjuder rekommendationer för att förbättra övergripande motståndskraft i leverantörskedjan.

This thesis concerns itself with a phenomenon found in film music that can be described as audible diegetic transitions. In short, an audible diegetic transition occurs when film music shifts from one implied musical placement to another by changing its pre­sented sound quality. This occurs predominantly through the employment of music that is pre-existing in relation to the release of the film where the music is utilised. These audible diegetic transitions are categorised as aural displacements and transaural dis­placements which are both anchored in previous re­search concerning stable musical place­ments. In order to answer the research questions regarding technical aspects and narra­tological implications, the thesis is centred around a film music analysis. The de­marcation of said analysis uses pre-existing songs from the film Joker (Philips, 2019) as its main focus. In order to provide a colourful and meaningful discussion the selected material also contains a variety of examples from other films. The analysis shows that the selected audible diegetic transitions can provide narra­tological implications both for a film as a whole and for a specific scene or se­quence in any film. In Joker specifically, the audible diegetic transitions arguably contain the narra­to­logi­cal im­plication of adding to the retrospective and unreliable narration, which is im­port­ant for the story of the film. The thesis also argues that the technical aspects of the ana­lysed audible diegetic transitions can be condensed into being either diegetic to comm­en­tary, or vice versa. Diegetic music is, in this context, defined as music that is im­­­­plied as being heard in the acoustic space of the story-world, whereas commen­tary music is an um­brella term defined as music that is not implied being heard in the acous­tic space of the story-world. The analysis shows that these transitions can transpire either instantly or gra­­­dually with the change of sound quality from being either narrow or wide. These tech­nical aspects contribute in under­standing the narratological im­plications of said au­dible diegetic transition by categorising them as either emotive or groun­ding. Both of these narratological implications can be concluded and described as swift enforcers of the relationship be­tween the one consuming the film and the char­acters, or lo­cations, of the film they are con­­­­suming. Audible diegetic transitions figura­tively breach the fourth wall that is the screen.

This thesis explores the role of interaction design in elevating the solitary experiences of music listening by infusing them with the joy and connection typically found in the communal music setting of parties. Drawing upon historical and cultural contexts, the research investigates how music acts as a medium for social interaction and emotional expression, from its political implications in Berlin's techno scene to its power to unite people in clubs and concerts. The project began with a focus on enhancing DJ-audience interactions and evolved into exploring how these dynamic communal experiences could inform the design of solitary listening experiences on digital platforms like Spotify. The research employs a mixed methodology combining auto-ethnography, in-depth interviews, and testing to develop and refine six interfaces that embody the joy of communal music experiences. These interfaces aim to recreate the sense of togetherness and emotional engagement often lost in solitary music consumption. The findings highlight that joy is a deeply personal and context-dependent phenomenon, influenced by the nuances of social interactions and individual emotional states. This insight guides the design of interfaces that adapt to and enhance the listener's emotional landscape. The project contributes to interaction design by challenging conventional design approaches that prioritise functionality over emotional resonance, aiming to serve as inspiration for designs that value emotions as central to the interaction experience. It also proposes future research directions focusing on the ethical implications of emotionally driven design and the potential for these interfaces to foster deeper connections in an increasingly digital world.

Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

Ce travail est une étude expérimentale de la durée vocalique. Il s'articule sur les aspects phonétiques et phonologiques de la durée vocalique en civili, une langue africaine parlée au Gabon et dans quelques pays voisins. Cette étude apporte un nouvel aperçu au sujet du phénomène d'allongement vocalique et évalue les implications de cet aperçu pour la standardisation de l'orthographe de la langue étudiée. L'étude est construite sur six chapitres. Le chapitre premier présente les objectifs spécifiques de l'étude, leur argumentation et la délimitation de la problématique de recherche. L'impact potentiel de l'étude, l'approche méthodologique adoptée ainsi que la situation socio-linguistique du civili font aussi l'objet d'un traitement adéquat dans le chapitre premier. Le chapitre 2 aborde les questions entourant la durée vocalique en civili en vue d'une circonscription nette de la problématique. Celle-ci est énoncée dans sa nature comme se posant tout autant sur le plan descriptif que sur le plan orthographique. Dans le chapitre 2 également, les données et les analyses des études précédentes liées au phénomène d'allongement vocalique sont évaluées. Le chapitre montre ensuite l'importance de l'utilisation aussi bien des données acoustiques que des données perceptuelles dans l'étude de la durée vocalique en civili. Le chapitre 3 se focalise sur la nature physique de la durée de la voyelle en civili. Il fait un rapport sur les analyses acoustiques et les mesures de durée vocalique effectuées sur des mots sélectionnés à partir d'un corpus spécifique. Le chapitre vise à montrer que la durée naturelle est l'une des caractéristiques acoustiques liées aux voyelles et que celle-ci devrait être aussi prise en compte dans les diverses analyses phonologiques. Le chapitre 4 est consacré à la nature auditive de la durée vocalique en civili. Il présente une expérience perceptuelle conduite sur des locuteurs natifs de la langue. Le but de cette expérience était de déterminer la durée perçue des voyelles. Ce chapitre contient des données expérimentales obtenues et leur analyse qui s'en est suivie. Le chapitre 5 présente l'apport des données expérimentales dans la description phonologique de la durée vocalique du civili. Ce chapitre re-explore aussi les analyses phonologiques des études précédentes ainsi que celle de la présente étude qui intègre données (expérimentales) phonétiques et analyses phonologiques. Le chapitre 6 tire la conclusion générale de cette étude sur la durée vocalique en civili en transcrivant les conclusions acoustiques, perceptuelles que phonologiques. Ce chapitre établit aussi des recommandations pour la standardisation de l'orthographe du civili en ce qui concerne son système vocalique. Puis, il met en relief les implications de cette étude pour la théorie phonologique et les technologies du langage humain. Enfin, ce chapitre fournit des suggestions pour des recherches futures, y compris la recherche sur d'autres langues gabonaises.

Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

No description available.