MA, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 1993

The field of psychological assessment in South African schools faces many challenges at present. To be able to meaningfully respond to these challenges, it was important to gain an understanding of how psychological assessment is being perceived by educators, whether as being necessary (or not), in their workplace. The study aimed to gather information and generate knowledge in order to provide some pointers about the educators’ perceived use of psychological assessment measures. Thereafter, analyse their perceptions in terms of these assessments. It was a mixed study using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The proposed sample was seventy-five (n = 75) educators from former model-c and township schools. Data was collected through the use of a self-response questionnaire (quantitative) and then used to identify themes. The identified themes were then used for discussion in focus group interviews (qualitative). Descriptive and thematic content analysis were used for the interpretation of the research data and triangulation thereof.

Student Number : 0310100X - MSc dissertation - Faculty of Health Sciences / Eating patterns change over time. Studies have been conducted in industrialized countries stating that it is important to study the longitudinal development of dietary intake itself and to determine the stability of this intake, but monitoring longitudinal dietary habits of the same children over a period of time, in particular with regard to individual food items, is severely limited in developing countries such as South Africa. South Africa, a country with diverse cultures, is undergoing massive socio-economic and political changes, and an increasing social integration following the abolishment of the previous apartheid legislation. Obviously diet too must have been affected. The country is in a state of nutritional transition, and if the nutritional status of South African children is to improve in the 21st century, basic knowledge is required of the actual food items the children have been and are consuming, and the change in consumption of these individual food items during this transition. The Birth-to-Twenty (Bt-20) study is the continuation of Birth-to-Ten (BTT) study, which started in 1990 and plans to continue to 2010. It is the largest running cohort study on children’s development in Africa and also the first and only longitudinal study on the nutrient and individual food item intake of South African children, living in the Johannesburg/Soweto area of the Gauteng Province. This research will thus provide valuable, unique information on the individual food items consumed and change in consumption of these foods by South African children from the Bt20 study over an eight-year period (1995–2003). The overall objective of this study was to determine the variety and change in consumption of individual food items consumed by a true longitudinal group of urban black South African children from the Bt20 study in 1995; ’97, ’99, 2000 and 2003 when they were 5, 7, 9, 10 and 13 years of age, respectively. with the following sub-objectives: • To determine the number of times each food item was recorded by the longitudinal group of children. • To determine the percentage of children consuming the individual food items. • To determine the mean weekly frequency of consumption of the individual food items for all the children, as well as for only those children consuming the items. The study sample size comprised a true longitudinal group of urban black South African children (n = 143), from the Bt20 study that had nutrition information at all 5 interceptions (1995, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2003). Data were collected at each interception using the same semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Parents/guardians or the children themselves were asked by trained multi-lingual interviewers to indicate how frequently the listed food items were consumed. The food items were coded onto computer coding sheets using the South African Medical Research Council’s Food Composition Tables and Codes. Recorded or standard portions sizes were used based on the use of the National Research Institute for Nutritional Diseases(NRIND) Food Quantities Manual. The coded data were put on disk by a data capturing company and SAS was used for statistical analysis. Specific computer programmes were written to systematically re-arrange and merge the data by subject ID number. The final longitudinal sample with nutrition information at 5 interceptions was extracted by ID number as each child kept the same ID number for all interceptions. Frequencies were calculated for: 1. The number of times each food item was recorded per week, firstly for all five interceptions combined and secondly for each interception separately. The total number times each food item was recorded for all five interceptions combined was divided by the total number of times all food items at all five interceptions combined (23840) were recorded and expressed as a percentage. The total number of times each food item was recorded at each interception separately was divided by the total number of children in the group [n=143] and expressed as a percentage. 2. The total weekly frequency of consumption for each food item. The mean weekly frequency of consumption for each food item was calculated for all the children in the group [n=143] for each interception separately (total weekly frequency of consumption of each food item/total number of children [n=143] and then only for those in the group consuming the food items (total weekly frequency of consumption of each food item/number of times each food item was recorded for each interception. The food items were ranked in descending order according to: • their percentage contribution of the total number of times all food items at all five interceptions combined were recorded • the average number of times recorded for all five interceptions combined • the mean weekly frequency of consumption for all five interceptions combined. The ranked food items were then arranged within the 8 food groups listed in the questionnaire (chapters 3, 4, 5). Forty-one food items made up 1% or more of the total number of times all food items were recorded for all five interceptions combined. This was used as a cut-off point as all the other food items were recorded too infrequently to include. For this reason only these forty-one items will be discussed in chapter 3, 4 and 5 of this thesis. A total of 546 different food items were recorded 23840 times between 1995-2003. The highest number of food items recorded was in 1999 (124) and 2003 (123) both almost 23% of the total number of food items recorded when the children were nine and thirteen years old, respectively. Of this, 41 items contributed 1% or more of the total number of recordings. There was a decrease in the number of recordings from the grain and cereal group, fruits and vegetables and milk and milk products. However, among the meat and meat substitutes, the number of recordings for chicken and cheese increased over this time as did the number of recordings for margarine and ice-cream among the fats and oils. Among the miscellaneous group sugar, sweets, tea and carbonated beverages remained fairly stable over the 5 interceptions, but there was an increase in the number of recordings for crisps and chocolates from 2000 to 2003. Ninety percent or more of the children consumed rice, stiff maize-meal porridge, chicken, sugar, sweets and tea over the five interceptions. Fourteen food items were consumed by 75% or more of the children and 33% of these 41 items were consumed by 50% or more. All the top 41 food items were consumed by more than 33% of the children. Among grain/cereal group/breakfast cereal/porridges and other starches, the most frequently consumed food items were brown bread, stiff and soft maize-meal porridge, all being consumed between 4-6x/week for all the children as well as for only those consuming these items. Peanut butter, eggs and chicken were the most frequently consumed items among the meat and meat substitutes, 3-5x/week for all the children and for only children consuming these items. In the group of fruits and vegetables, fruit juice and mashed potato were consumed most frequently, but not everyday of the week either for all the children or for those consuming these items. Within fats and oils food group, cooking oil and butter were consumed most frequently (3-4x/week) for all the children and 5x/week for only those children who consumed these items. Full cream milk was the most frequently consumed food item (5-6x/week) among the group of milk and milk products for all the children as well as for only those consuming this item. Among the miscellaneous food items sugar (5-6x/week), sweets and tea (4-5x/week) were the most frequently consumed for all the children and between 5-7x/week for only those consuming these items. The dietary patterns of this longitudinal group of urban black South African children was far from the recommended South African Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs), which was developed with the aim of making evidence-based nutrition and lifestyle messages to the public accessible, understandable, generalizable, acceptable in a cross-cultural context and feasible. Thus, this study has provided useful insights to guide the governmental parastatals, nutrition scientists and other interested cooperate bodies in promoting successful nutrition intervention strategies that will lead to healthy dietary habits among children and adolescents.

Abstract My dissertation interrogates the ways in which Zakes Mda has made women central to his novels. I argue that the women characters in Mda's novels are key to the idea of the rebirth of Africa (and the simultaneous birth of a (South) African identity) a rebirth made necessary by years of dispossession through colonialism and apartheid. I will explore how on one level Mda, through magical realism, represents women as symbols of both destruction and construction; and how on another level he represents them as complex characters existing as agents of history. Mda’s novels: Ways of Dying (1995), She Plays With the Darkness (1995), The Heart of Redness (2000) and The Madonna of Excelsior (2002) critique the topdown approach of the postapartheid, postcolonial discourse of African Renaissance a discourse which aims to reverse the damage done to the lives of Africans who have been brutalised by history. Mda writes an African renaissance (with a lower case “r”), which acknowledges and explores the ways in which people on the margins of power, recreate and transform their lives, without necessarily waiting for politicians to come up with policies and solutions. The renaissance of ordinary people privileges the spirit of ubuntu, whereby the individual strives to work with the collective to achieve a more humane world. Mda’s female characters are central to the debate on renaissance and reconstruction in that he questions existing gender roles by ii highlighting strongly the rights still denied African women his challenge to the discourse is whether a renaissance is possible if the humanity of women (and others marginalised by class, age, location, ethnicity, and other categories) continues to be denied. I ask the question whether Mda, goes further, and envisions women participating as leaders in traditionally male spaces.

Faculty of Humanities School of Human and Community Development 0316309j / This study sought to explore the process of disclosure among a group black South African homosexuals. Specifically, the study investigated the factors that inhibit and/or facilitate disclosure, how obstacles to disclosure are dealt with, as well as consequences of disclosure. Snowballing sampling method was used to select appropriate participants. A sample was drawn from ACTIVATE; a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Club from University of the Witwatersrand. The sample comprised of six male participants, between the ages of eighteen (18) and twenty-five (25), who are living openly, either partially or fully, as homosexuals. Data was gathered using a semi-structured interview schedule. The face-to-face individual interviews were audio taped. The interviews were transcribed and data was analysed using the thematic content analysis method. The results of the study indicated that disclosure is a significant process that most homosexuals are bound to face or at least consider. Among the factors identified as playing a role in facilitating disclosure are self-acceptance and identification of self with the homosexual identity. Acceptance by family and society also proved to be important in facilitating the process of disclosure. Inability to acceptance one’s sexual orientation and lack of social support are among the factors that tend to hamper the process of disclosure. Difficulties faced with during the process of disclosure include rejection by family and society which is accompanied by discrimination based on sexual orientation. As much as disclosure brings about a sense of relief and the freedom to express one’s sexuality, it can also bring about feelings of ambivalence. An individual has to now reject the heterosexual orientation which is considered “normal” to pursue a homosexual identity that corresponds with one’s feelings but is considered “immoral”. Disclosure is a difficult process and individuals who wish to disclose often anticipate negative responses from their next of kin and society. Subsequently, it becomes undesirable to disclose under such circumstances. If society were more accepting towards homosexuality, homosexuals would be encouraged to disclose their sexual orientation without the fear of being rejected and discriminated against.

This thesis examines the trope of the child in South African literature from the early years of apartheid to the contemporary moment. The chapters focus on some of the most established and prolific authors in South African literary history and roughly follow a chronological sequence: autobiographies by the exiled Drum writers (Es'kia Mphahlele and Bloke Modisane) in the early 1960s; Nadine Gordimer's writing during the apartheid era; confessional novels by Afrikaans-speaking authors (Mark Behr and Michiel Heyns) in the transitional decade; and J. M. Coetzee's late and post apartheid works. I argue that, while writing from diverse historical and political positions in relation to South Africa's literary culture, these authors are all in one way or another able to articulate their subjectivities-with their underlying ambiguities, contradictions, and negations-by imagining themselves as the child or/and through childhood. My analyses of the works under discussion attend to the subversive and transformative potential of, and the critical energies embedded in the trope of the child, by investigating narrative reconfigurations of temporality and space. Firstly, I will be looking at the ways in which the images, structures, and aesthetics making up the imaginings of the child disrupt a linear temporality and serve as critique of a teleological historiography of political emancipation and the liberation struggle. Secondly, I will pay attention to the spatial relations with which representations of the child are bound up: between the country and the city, black townships and white suburbs, the home and the street. By attending to specific transgressions and reorderings of these spatial relations, my reading also explores the ways in which spatial underpinnings and ideological boundaries of national identities are contested, negotiated, and restructured by forces of the transnational, the diasporic, and the global around the figure of the child.

<p> In the South African federal elections in May 2014, over one million born-frees failed to register to vote. This lack of political participation was surprising because this was the first election in which this new generation of voters, who had never lived under the oppressive apartheid regime, was eligible to vote. It was hypothesized that social trust and corruption, as it undermines political trust, were contributing factors to the low rates of youth voter turnout. A pilot study was developed and implemented with a small group of South Africans who were participating in a youth development program at a nongovernmental organization in the Western Cape. Focus group and interview data suggested that corruption, crime rates, and access to adequate services were of large concern in this sample. A survey developed through adaptation of items from the 2012 South African Reconciliation Barometer and the World Bank&rsquo;s Integrated Questionnaire for the Measurement of Social Capital showed a potential relationship between levels of political and social trust and voting behaviour. Due to these results, and the finding that participants were highly engaged with social media, recommendations to increase youth political participation included social media campaigns, using Facebook to create social capital, and promotion of education as a tool to develop interpersonal trust and political participation through enhanced access, quality, and scholarships. One novel finding within this research was that respondents expected the government to be the provider of tangible goods and services whereas the onus of completing education and securing employment was on the individual. This group seems to have a sense of personal agency that, if capitalized upon, could create a generation of politically active young people. Despite methodological concerns and limitations associated with sample size, this pilot study is an important contribution to the political participation literature and opens the door for large-scale quantitative studies to examine more closely the impacts of corruption, political trust, and social trust on voting behaviours in the born-free generation.</p><p>

Thesis (M.A. (Cultural History))--University of Pretoria, 2000. / Text in Afrikaans. Summary in English and Afrikaans. Includes bibliographical references.

<p>Under the United Nations Charter, the Security Council may decide what measures, not involving the use of armed force, are to be employed to give effect to its decisions and may call upon member States to apply such measures in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.2 One of the measures that can be decided on is sanctions. Sanctions have, to a large extent, been imposed to defend human rights. Economic sanctions were commonly believed to be a mechanism that was a humane alternative to war. During the last decade, the Security Council has applied economic sanctions in several cases that, in turn, have drawn the attention of different United Nations human rights bodies and mechanisms to their possible impact on the enjoyment of human rights.3 Fundamentally, any economic sanctions programme&rsquo / s main objective is to induce dysfunction in the trade and financial systems of the target State.</p>

Thesis (diploma in librarianship)--University of the Witwatersrand.