The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of co-operative societies on poverty alleviation among the urban poor in Zimbabwe with particular reference to consumer co-operative societies in areas of agriculture, housing and micro- finance. The co-operative sector plays an important role in poverty alleviation since many unemployed people have turned to co-operative activities as a way of earning a lawful and decent living during a period in which Zimbabwe generally suffered immense impoverishment in the midst of the national economic meltdown that was characterised by hyper-inflation, de-industrialisation and mass unemployment. The period of study was as from January 2008 to August 2010. This period is significant in that many co-operative societies were formed with the following broad objectives: (a) economic power and through this power; (b) control of socio-economic institution, to eliminate exploitation of man by man to make the people of Zimbabwe self reliant; (c) skills management, goods and services and establish in themselves a sense of confidence, initiative and high development aspirations; (d) to provide an opportunity to develop the community; and a (e) collective way of living that provides a sound base for socialism and national solidarity ix In this study, two hundred and seventy four respondents were used as research subjects. This consisted of one hundred and sixty respondents from housing, twenty four from micro- finance, and eighty eight from agricultural co-operative societies which covered dairy, poultry and fishing co-operative societies. This also included the Registrar of Co-operatives and the Harare City Council Co-operative officer. The research instruments that were used for the purpose of this research study were questionnaires, field visits, interviews and observations. Use was also made of secondary data that was obtained from the offices of Registrar of Co-operatives and the Town clerk of the Harare City Council as well as from the various co-operative societies that constitute the research study’s sample. The key factors that account for the failure of co-operative societies included the lack of adequate funding, lack of relevant knowledge and experience about co-operative activities, conflict among co-operative society members, failure to follow co-operative principles, mixing politics with co-operative activities and lack of education and training. The study also found out that the key to the success of any co-operative venture includes some of the following factors: Proper application of co-operative principles, the provision of co-operative education to both the membership and management of co-operative societies and proper keeping of institutional records. Most important of which include membership, financial and asset registers. x The study recommends that the government should give adequate administrative and financial support to co-operative societies since they have a potential of alleviating poverty if properly managed. It is also further recommended that research be done in order to enhance the strategic management of co-operative societies since empirical evidence tends to suggest that they are a viable tool for broad –based participatory and democratic sustainable livelihoods development. The study also recommended further studies to be carried out on the applicability of cooperative principles in all environments since some co-operative societies that have followed these principles especially in the developed countries have proved to be suitable instruments for poverty alleviation.

Thesis (MTech (Public Management))--Peninsula Technikon, Cape Town, 2004 / In South Africa, an estimated 15 million people - 38% of our population - do not have adequate sanitation. Every citizen has a constitutional right of access to basic services, which local government has the responsibility to provide. In reality such provision to people living in poverty is a daunting development challenge, exacerbated by growing unemployment and the spread of unplanned informal settlements. On the other hand, increased government investment in accelerating provision is a significant opportunity to link sanitation delivery to local economic development, as suggested in the recently revised Water Services Strategy document (DWAF, 2003). There is evidence that these two aspects of national policy can be brought together fruitfully. Community involvement, described as "a commitment to building on people's energy and creativity" (WSSCC, 2001) is consistently advocated by international, national and local government (DPLG, 2001) as essential to sanitation provision. There is broad agreement that a community-based approach is the cornerstone of sustainable service provision. This research focused on the context of urban poverty in informal settlements, taking community responses to sanitation delivery by local authorities into account. Prevailing approaches have had limited success in preventing health hazards, which relies on community-level actions to deal with poor use, inadequate maintenance and dysfunction of such sanitation services as are provided. Implicit in the principles underlying the involvement of communities are substantial community-based roles and functions that the research seeks to make explicit. Diverse local level capacities emerge as quite distinct opportunities for residents to become more actively involved in improving and sustaining their sanitation services.

M.A. (Social Work) / Poverty is perceived by various authors to bea challenge in African countries, including South Africa. O’Brien and Mazibuko (1998, p. 140) state that poverty “is characterised by a host of factors, including under-nutrition, unemployment, illiteracy, and unequal and poor access to health, housing, education and decision-making resources”. The above-mentioned authors state that these factors both result from and perpetuate poverty. According to Rogerson (1996), the effects of poverty are seen more among the black communities, and there is more poverty in the informal settlements compared to other residential areas. After 1994, one of the South African government’s key priorities was to eradicate poverty and the focus was on the improvement of the standard of living and quality of life for all South Africans. Various strategies and policies were then introduced in order to alleviate poverty, one of them beingthe introduction of social assistance (Ellis, 2011, pp. 63-72). According to Triegaardt and Patel (2005), social security in the developing countries, including South Africa, is very important for poverty reduction and ensuring a basic minimum standard of living for the people. The above-mentioned authors also emphasise that there is a need for ongoing monitoring and evaluation of social assistance as this will help to ascertainif the programme is making any contribution to the lives of the people and to help keep up with the changing environment. This study focused on the contribution of social grants to alleviating poverty in an informal settlement. The research study aimed to assess the beneficiaries’ perspectives on the contribution of social grants to alleviating poverty in an informal settlement. Some of the objectives of the study were to explore the perspectives of social grant beneficiaries in Angelo informal settlement on the role of social grants in their lives and to describe how social grant beneficiaries in Angelo informal settlement understand the impact of social grants on their poverty-stricken conditions. This qualitative study was exploratory and descriptive in nature. Ten individual semistructured interviews were conducted in the Angelo informal settlement using an interview schedule. Themes were used to categorise and analyse data. The findings indicated that social grants play a great role in alleviating poverty in an informal...

Magister Public Health - MPH / Promoting positive and healthy decision-making practices and encouraging the utilization of health care facilities amongst adolescents is an important public health priority given that the period of adolescence is characterized by experimentation and risk taking behaviour. In the Tafelsig area of Mitchell‟s Plain, a poor socio-economic community within the Cape Town metropole, adolescents are exposed to a range of social problems (such as alcohol and substance abuse) that can potentially be harmful to their health. Given this context there was some concern raised by the sub-district health management team that adolescents are not making sufficient use of the local health facilities. The purpose of this study was to gain a greater understanding of the factors that contribute to, or hinder, the utilization by adolescents of the public health facilities in the Tafelsig area and in turn provide the Department of Health with information on adolescents‟ preferences concerning access to and use of the local primary-level health services in Mitchells Plain.An exploratory descriptive study was conducted to explore the topic using qualitative research methods. Permission to conduct the research was obtained from the Higher Degrees Committee of the University of the Western Cape and the School Principal. In-depth interviews were conducted with eight Grade 9 and seven Grade 10 male and female learners from the local secondary school - all of whom were randomly selected from a list of learners who indicated their willingness to participate in the study and who had obtained the written consent from their parents or guardian to do so. Interviews with the learners explored the positive and negative experiences, perceptions and opinions they have of using – or contemplating the use of – the local health facilities. The data from these interviews were analyzed using thematic content analysis.The study demonstrated that even when public health services are available, adolescents are often not in a position themselves to choose for themselves: their parents or guardians invariably make the choice for them. At times they are also reluctant to use public health facilities for fear of being judged by health personnel for being sexually active. The idea of waiting for long periods of time to see a health professional, or being observed at the health facility by other members of their community, are also considered to be disincentives.Many of the learners interviewed expressed a need for more information about sexual and reproductive health issues and matters that affect their health. The findings of this study also suggest that there is an urgent need for youth-friendly health services to be made available in the Mitchells Plain community. It is thus recommended that the Department of Health strategically assess whether an existing public health facility can be re-orientated to cater for the specific health needs of adolescents in Mitchells Plain.

The past decade has witnessed both steep reductions in federal housing assistance and an intensification of local housing problems including homelessness. In light of these trends, this study explores alternative means available to municipalities of meeting the housing needs of low-income households. The methods chosen to accomplish this were two-fold: a literature review and a case study. The literature review revealed that in response to the Reagan administration's 1981 cutbacks to housing programs a new low-income housing delivery system, based largely on public-private partnerships, has emerged from the grass roots level in communities across the United States. In the new production system efforts have focused on preservation rather than new construction, and large for-profit developers have been replaced by nonprofit community-based development corporations and local public agencies. With the assurance of federal subsidies gone, local governments and nonprofit developers have sought to increase the effectiveness of current resources, direct more general revenue to housing activities and have raised new resources. Today, financing packages for low-income projects are usually built upon customized and creative financial packages that are difficult to replicate, and as a result, no definitive solutions have yet been found. Despite the hard work and creativity that has gone into developing low-income housing in the U.S. over the past decade local programs have been able to meet only a fraction of the country's housing needs. The case study method was chosen to focus on the City of Seattle, Washington's specific housing initiatives. The City's response has closely followed the national experience. A new delivery system has emerged which depends largely on the efforts of the City's municipal government, through its Department of Community Development, and the community's growing nonprofit sector. As a matter of policy Seattle has chosen to spend most of its low-income housing dollars on preserving the downtown's remaining 7,311 low-income units. The City does not. build housing itself, but instead, acts as a "bank" loaning money generated, for the most part, by off-budget strategies to nonprofit housing developers to rehabilitate existing low-income units to meet housing code standards. Seattle's housing programs have had mixed results. Despite their efforts, due to downtown's expansion, the City has continued to lose low-income units in the downtown to demolition and rent increases, no gain has been made on the City's overall housing need, and while the City has replaced the lost federal subsidies, it has not created significant ongoing revenue streams for future housing development. Results of this study indicate that, only the long term commitment of federal funds to a national housing strategy can stem the growing tide of homelessness across the U.S. and avert, a deepening of the country's housing crisis. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

No description available.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Masters of Technology: Quality, Durban University of Technology, 2012. / There were several problems facing Reconstruction and Development Programmes (RDP) housing projects caused by contractors using unskilled labour, misuse of funds, fraudulent claims, contractors asking for additional money or having left site. The overall scope of projects had no plan and no clear definition, poor project management and there was a lack of strategies to improve the quality of projects. This study recommends that it is imperative that project team members involved in the management of RDP housing projects have the necessary skills and level of education to execute their duties. Moreover, the Department of Housing and Local Government (DHLG) should draft a policy on Quality Management Systems (QMS)/good practices in respect of its project scope of works so that all stakeholders conform to the set standards. The people who are due to benefit from this housing are left in a state of despair, confusion and loss of hope from Government promises, with a subsequent increase in informal settlements. The aim of the study was to investigate factors influencing the success rate of RDP housing in the Eastern Cape. This case study employed a quantitative approach to collect data. Questionnaires were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics, namely, correlation t-test and Anova. The purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 50 respondents from the Department of Housing and Local Government (DHLG) in the Eastern Cape Province. The advantage of this sampling technique is to reduce data to an intelligible and interpretable form so that the relationship between research problems can be studied and tested and conclusions drawn. The DHLG could significantly improve the quality management of low-cost homes if it adopts the Project Alignment Model. / National Research Foundation

In this thesis ethnographical interviews with women in Buenos Aires are analyzed with discourse theory in order to examine how discourses of safe/unsafe and urban poor construct places and bodies. A central element of discourse is argued to be the partially fixed inscription of danger in territories and bodies of the urban poor. Neoliberalism´s impact on urban space has meant a transformation of public space and  impacts on constructing reality. This transformation of meaning is connected to the neoliberal transformation of the labor market, once invested with rights and security, now deregulated and precarious. Urban poor are visible in every interviewed woman´s everyday life, but the way of constructing them as subjects varies with level of closeness and identification. The Argentine historic construction of Europeaness, modernity and civilization as opposed to Latin Americaness, backwardness and barbarism can be found in many of the women´s constructions of urban poor. So is the othering of them in relationship to motherhood and citizenship. The constructions of the urban poor are also analyzed with the Foucaultian concept of biopower.

Persistent poverty, social and economic inequalities are some of the challenges in the process of national development efforts targeted in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Yet in South Africa, poverty, hunger, social and economic inequalities are still on the increase especially among poor rural to urban migrants. Because of severe poverty in rural areas, large populations of rural poor migrate to urban areas in search of better life. However, the growing energy needs in the urban areas where these people settle and their use of inefficient energy technologies negatively impact on the balance of environmental resources on which their socio-economic development depends. Efficient, affordable and environmental friendly technologies are therefore vital for improving the livelihood conditions and protecting the much needed environmental resources of the country. On the contrary, current practices presently dominating energy provision issues in South Africa are insufficient to solve the problems of socio-economic inequalities, especially for the increasing urban poor population. In addition, they are also failing to protect the environment and natural resources. Electrification of poor urban and peri-urban areas by both grid and off-grid systems through the top-down development practice is doing very little to change the socio-economic conditions of the poor section of the population in the country. Likewise, the provision of modern energy through public sector agencies such as Eskom is inadequate and inappropriate for the rapidly expanding urban and peri-urban poor areas in the country. One major reason that hinders provision of such services to the overcrowded consumer population in these areas is the massive capital investment required and inability to pay electricity bills by urban poor households. Against the above background, this study examined the use of improved wood stoves in two peri-urban areas (Umsilinga and Isnathing) in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa as an alternative modern energy technology on how they would socio-economically benefit the peri-urban poor. It looked at the following: The efficiency of four improved wood stoves (Yamampera, Simunye, Household Rocket and Vesto) in comparison with the three stone open fire, The impact of the efficient burning of the four improved stoves, Factors influencing consumers in choosing a specific energy technology to use, The effectiveness of the improved wood stoves placed in 24 peri-urban households and observed for the specified period, and Additional potentials of such stoves to other prospective users. The key finding of this research is that the use of these improved wood stoves could play a pivital role in household economic growth and improving livelihoods. Participants ranked smokeless burning, low selling price, fuelwood saving and light weight of the stoves as priority preferences for using these stoves. Speed of cooking and less constant attention to the fire were also ranked as important preferences. From women participants view point, the low selling price of the stoves and their considerable fuel saving would reduce strain on the household investment capital, household indoor pollution and tedious work of women’s fuelwood collection. Low investment costs in acquiring the stoves would encourage women’s participation as entrepreneurs in modern energy technologies. However, results from focused group discussions and observations of usage of stoves that were placed in 24 homes showed that the incorporation of consumer preferences in the design of improved wood stoves would be key. This would enable stoves to adequately meet the energy needs of targeted users and be used frequently as an alternative energy solution by both urban and peri-urban poor who are currently lacking electricity and suffering from energy poverty. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermarizburg, 2009.

Informal settlement areas (often referred to as squatter settlements or squatter camps) exist in all provinces of South Africa. These areas are characterized by rapid and unplanned development. The result of these is that property boundaries in most of these areas are not surveyed. Since the plots do not have boundary beacons, the land parcel is not properly defined and therefore, the property cannot be registered in the user or owner's name. Consequently, ownership is not guaranteed. Thus there are no legal documents to prove the relationship between an individual and the property. This paper discusses the problems in the land reform process that can be attributed to the existence of informal settlements. The paper is based on a research carried out to assess the effect of informal settlements on the success of the land reform programme in South Africa. A review of literature on the land reform programme and its implementation plan was carried out. The research also included a literature review on informal settlements in relation to property ownership, cadastral surveying and land registration. Three informal settlements in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa were identified for study. These included Cato Manor and Umlazi section CC in Durban and Peace Valley 2 in Pietermaritzburg. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.