Masters in Public Administration - MPA / This reseacrh report is about the current role of the government/state in the restructuring of the clothing and textile industry in South Africa / South Africa

published_or_final_version / Economics and Finance / Master / Master of Economics

This reseacrh report is about the current role of the government/state in the restructuring of the clothing and textile industry in South Africa

Magister Public Health - MPH / Background: Human Immune Deficiency Virus (HIV) is a public health challenge worldwide. Antiretroviral therapies (ART) are medications that treat HIV virus infection by suppressing the virus and stopping progression of HIV disease, and that improve quality of life. People initiated on ART need to adhere to their treatment for the rest of their lives. In 2016, there were 7,1 million people (age 15-49) in South Africa living with HIV, representing 19 % of the global HIV burden, with 56% of the adults on ART. Life expectancy of South Africans for both males and females improved between 2009 and 2011 because of ART treatment. People lost to follow up while on ART compromise their own health and the long term positive benefits of the ART regimen, and hence there is a growing emphasis to improve the retention of people who are already on treatment. Aim: This study was conducted examining HIV positive South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU) members who are currently on ART treatment and had previously been lost to follow up (LTFU) from ART care. The study aimed to explore factors associated with LTFU of clients on ART treatment and care among the South African Clothing and Textile Union members living with HIV and attending the SACTWU Worker Health Program Clinic.

Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Architecture (Professional) to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017 / The home dressmaker is a figure so constant in domestic history that one would be hard pressed to find, even today, somebody who cannot recall a woman from their family sewing at the dining room table. Within a highly industrialised world people rely more than ever on the industry of the machine and it’s endless whirring of fast consumption production. In the process, we have lost the respect for both the process and the product of the hand-made object. The fast-food, fast-living, immediate-access and instant-gratification of a post war America and Europe began an erosion of the morals-of-making which people have relied upon for centuries. Growing industries of cheaply produced clothes, shoes and fabrics from India and China have decimated these formerly strong South African industries. This dissertation aims to address the continued role of home sewing- historically undocumented- as an ‘invisible’ economy and define its position as a driving force for change through a ‘Skills Revolution’. Using the lens of a South African born, Johannesburg based and family run dressmaking and sewing teaching business, Italian Dressmaking School, this thesis aims at addressing the pressing social and economic needs of South African creative industries by providing a platform for personal and community skills development and learning. Italian Dressmaking School was founded in 1961 by my grandmother Irene Sansalvadore, and today continues to provide the tools for women to learn the craft of home sewing. This dissertation aims at providing both the space for women, in particular, to gain a skill in a craft that has historically been considered ‘women’s work’ alongside aligned crafts of weaving and textile dyeing within the historic fabric trading area of Fordsburg. South Africa no longer produces much in the way of textiles, bar traditional shweshwe, which is produced solely in the Eastern Cape and a handful of smaller mills scattered around the country. While pure cotton and linen is hard to come by, increasingly expensive and highly desirable, South Africa on a whole imports all of this fabric from China, Russia and India amongst others. The aim of this project is to build onto an existing nucleus already to be found in Johannesburg, providing South Africas’ residents with the skills to start their own micro businesses centered around the production of cloth, the dyeing/colouring and/or printmaking of produced fabrics and the final garment construction with its dual phases of patternmaking and sewing. This thesis does not aim to compete with industries like China but rather to re-establish a formerly successful craft based industry. The autonomy of people in establishing their own identity is arguably one of the most essential needs after the most basic; survival. This dissertation is not for the fashionista but rather for the woman who has used her hands, for time immemorial, making the cloth that shrouds us all. / XL2018

In the early decades of British industrialization, the ill-health of textile factory workers attracted considerable public interest and provoked discussion and debate among a growing number of medical men, operatives, manufacturers, and social and political commentators. Guided by previous studies of the “framing” of disease, this dissertation examines how such ill-health was conceived, designated and responded to in the period from 1784 to 1833. The dissertation reveals that workers themselves held a relatively constant view of their condition. In the early part of the nineteenth century, they drew attention to a variety of ailments and throughout the period they saw a clear link between their maladies and the conditions of their labour. By contrast, medical understanding shifted significantly, and as it traced a course more or less at odds with that of popular comprehension, the nature and causes of worker suffering were substantially redefined. In the 1780s and 1790s, doctors identified the illness of factory labourers as “low, nervous fever,” an acute contagious disorder generated by the crowding and confinement of human bodies. A generation later, in the period from 1815 to 1819, the ill-health of mill workers was conceptualized, by a portion of the medical community, as “debility,” a poorly-understood state of constitutional feebleness attributed to aspects of machine work. In the early 1830s, medical authorities regarded factory workers’ sickness primarily as “digestive disease” and located its source in habits and diet. The reconceptualization of worker ill-health yielded an ultimately optimistic assessment of the consequences of industrial growth, failing to offer strong support to demands for legislative restriction of factory operation. It also served to sanction changing social relations through providing evidence of the physical and moral distinctness of the manufacturing population. As medical theory altered, so, too, did practices of relief and assistance. While mill owners, and doctors, became increasingly unwilling to assume responsibility for the well-being of the industrial workforce, operatives engaged ever more extensively in practices of self-help. The expansion of the textile industry, however, ensured the continuation of their affliction and incapacity.

This research, which took the form of a case study in a large textile factory, is primarily concerned with finding out if there is a link between a particular educational level (i.e. ABET level 4 Communications/Language and Mathematics) used as a measure for the first stage of selecting prospective employees as machine operators, and a hard skill (i.e. actually operating a machine). After conducting interviews with nine people in the workplace; doing observations of three machine operators performing their jobs, and analysing various documents, such as the tool used for assessment, I found there to be an incongruence between the ‘requisite’ knowledge and skills and the actual knowledge and skills needed – the language and maths’ competencies needed in order to be deemed ‘competent’ in the assessment are of a higher ABET level than the language and maths needed ‘on-the-job’. But, this research is not simply about language and mathematics competencies. It is also about the ‘new workplace’ that has emerged with the advent and spread of globalisation. My study looks at the appropriateness of the ‘measure’ used as an entry requirement for a job, and by so doing it explores issues of inclusion and exclusion, and power relations. My study is, therefore, located within the critical social science paradigm and I raise questions around issues of morality, ethics and social justice. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

This reseacrh report is about the current role of the government/state in the restructuring of the clothing and textile industry in South Africa

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-210). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 204-210). Also available on the Internet.