Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis deploys deliberative democracy in order to explore interactions in polity dualism in Matebeleland South and Matebeleland North, in Zimbabwe. The thesis was premised on two major problems in the way the issue of traditional leadership is generally talked about and studied. First, there is a theoretical problem in terms of how we study and talk about traditional leaders and their contribution in a democracy. Secondly, the institution of traditional leadership is assessed based on assumptions as opposed to hard facts. Methodologically, the study is based on a qualitative case study research design using focus group discussions, key informant interviews and document analysis that enabled an analysis of perceptions, opinions, experiences, and attitudes of residents regarding Zimbabwe’s dual local government system.

Magister Administrationis - MAdmin / Local authorities, if well managed, are a key public sector institution indispensable for effective and efficient service delivery which in turn is critical towards meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at local level. In public sector administration since the 1990s, the Bretton Woods Institutions and allies encourage developing countries to adopt New Public Management (NPM) to improve public sector performance, including more effective service delivery. This thesis interrogates the adequacy of New Public Management (NPM) in service delivery using the Mutare City Council in Zimbabwe as a case analysis. The thesis answers the fundamental question of why internationally recommended NPM falls short in promoting good governance and effective service delivery in Zimbabwe in general, and the city of Mutare in specific. At the heart of this thesis is the crisis of service delivery in Mutare, and the practical failure of NPM as an antidote, against the background of a complex socio-political context and economic depression. This thesis is informed by the theory of governance, as augmented – and also contradicted – by NPM as implemented by Mutare City Council. To gather empirical data, this research employed the qualitative research methodology. A qualitative methodology entailed in-depth semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The researcher interviewed the mayor and ten councilors from Mutare City Council, two community opinion leaders, two public administration scholars, and leaders of three residents’ associations and two other civil society groups. The researcher also used participant observation by attending one full council meeting and a council budget consultation meeting organised by Mutare City Council. In essence, it emerged consistently in this research that Mutare City Council is marred by institutional, administrative and operational challenges which impede implementation of NPM. Implementation failures include corruption and meagre political will. There were also problems, however, in applying NPM in the Zimbabwe context, which especially in Mutare led to policy inconsistencies. There was a lack of sufficient monetary and human resources due to the economic crisis plaguing the country, and the council’s institutional capacity shortfalls. There was also an intrinsic disharmony between NPM and local socio-political processes, including the political contestation between the opposition-led local council and the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu PF)-led central government. The result was a fractional, patchy, piecemeal roll-out of NPM. The net effect of NPM’s failure, exacerbated by a dire socio-political and economic crisis has been a municipal service-delivery crisis characterised by irregular refuse collection, poor housing, poor sewer reticulation, erratic health provision, poor roads, acute shortage of street lighting and local traffic lights, acute shortage of burial spaces, acute shortage of recreational spaces, and an informal traders’ crisis. This thesis concludes that implementation of NPM would have to result from much stronger political will, in order to achieve more effective service delivery in Zimbabwe at large and Mutare specifically. There is a need to stimulate political will towards improved implementation of NPM, in its holistic sense, and not as a piecemeal process. This should be accompanied by dislodging the petty version of party politics that have debilitated the running of Mutare City Council. There should be platforms for meaningful citizen engagement and participation in local governance processes. In addition, NPM should be buttressed with a comprehensive policy and legislative framework that adds to its authenticity and legitimacy. There should be adequate financing. All these could reinforce Mutare City Council’s holistic implementation of NPM reforms. Such measures will nurture and inculcate a culture of transparency, accountability, rule of law, and efficiency in service delivery as well as public administration and urban governance at large.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Introduced in 2010, the Dispensation Zimbabwe Program (DZP) regularised undocumented Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa. When DZP was closed, the Zimbabwe Special Permit was introduced, which was also replaced by the Zimbabwe Exemption Permit. This thesis examines the lived experiences of Zimbabwean migrants from the time they arrived in South Africa without papers, visas, or permits. It then examines the processes of acquiring DZP papers, processes of replacing it, and how conditions on the permits reinforce a particular notion of belonging for Zimbabwean immigrants. I draw on work inspired by the anthropologist Victor Turner’s (1967) concept of liminality to show that Zimbabwean migrants had been going through various phases of uncertain legal statuses which are all liminal.

This thesis sought to explore the lifeways of second-millennium AD inhabitants of Great Zimbabwe through the analyses of material objects housed in museums. Great Zimbabwe comprises walled stone enclosures and non-walled settlements covering approximately 720ha. A number of data acquisition techniques, such as desktop survey, analyses of museum collections, supplementary field survey and excavations, were employed to collect relevant datasets to address the research questions. The sampling strategy adapted for this research enabled the study of material objects from different components making up Great Zimbabwe. The main conclusions drawn from this study are as follows: (i) Within varying temporal scales, the nature and distribution of local and imported objects are largely similar across the site; (ii) chronologically and typologically speaking, there is evidence that different parts of the site were occupied and abandoned at different times; and (iii) based on the similarities in material objects and associated production debris and infrastructure, it is likely that different components were self-sufficient units. This study has underscored the significance of existing collections in developing new interpretations of Great Zimbabwe's past lifeways, thereby motivating for the need for similar work to understand the hundreds of similar settlements scattered across southern Africa.

The airline industry has grown rapidly over the past few decades, recording a ten-fold rise in passenger numbers and a fourteen-fold increase in cargo volumes. This growth has created overwhelming value to airline passengers, employees, suppliers and the broader economy. Unfortunately, this industry has been affected by terrorism attacks, wars, revolutions, pandemic fears, earthquakes, volcanoes, failing economies and skyrocketing fuel prices all of which have negatively impacted on profitability and resulted in intense competition. Consequently, airlines have spent the last decade in survival mode having to adapt to harsh changes. Air Zimbabwe, a state-run organisation which operates in this highly regulated and turbulent industry, is faced with numerous micro and macro environmental challenges and has been purposively selected for this study. According to company statistics, the airline’s annual passenger uplifts have declined from a peak of over 1 million in the 1990s to less than 200 000 in 2011, with revenue generation declining in correlation. Whilst Air Zimbabwe has experienced depressed demand for its services, competitor airlines are recording brisk business. The aim of this study was to investigate how a struggling organisation, which operates in a turbulent environment, can improve its competitiveness and profitability by better understanding the impact of industry role players and adapting organisational strategies to industry variations. This study examined, from the point of view of the industry players themselves, the extent to which customers, suppliers, competitors, regulatory authorities, substitute products and new entrants have impacted on the competitiveness and profitability of the airline. Major findings reveal that an organisation cannot operate in isolation and be competitive or profitable, but constantly needs to analyse the industry environment in which it operates in and to amicably interact with other industry role players. The research outlines the need for competition in certain areas and cooperation in others. / Business Management / M. Com. (Business Management)

This study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of guidance and counselling services offered in Zimbabwean universities. A mixed-methods design consisting of quantitative and qualitative approaches was adopted for the study and data were collected through questionnaires and unstructured interviews. The population for this study comprised all the 18 universities in Zimbabwe with approximately 75 000 students and 200 counsellors. The participants in the study comprised eighty (80) students (40 males and 40 females) in their second year of study and upwards and nineteen (19) guidance counsellors (11 females and 8 males). The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 20 was used to analyse quantitative data derived from closed-ended questionnaire items. Frequencies and percentages were then derived from the quantitative data. Thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data from open-ended questionnaire items and interviews. The study revealed that although both students and guidance counsellors expressed positive perceptions of guidance and counselling services offered in their universities, in terms of their potential benefits to students, the majority of students regarded personal-social, career, placement, consultation, assessment, referral and evaluation services ineffective. The majority of guidance counsellors also regarded assessment, follow-up and evaluation services offered in their universities ineffective. The study also showed that the majority of guidance counsellors (63.2%) were not professionally trained. It also emerged from the study that internal evaluation of guidance and counselling services offered in the universities was never taken seriously. The study also showed that Zimbabwean universities were not adequately resourced in terms of guidance and counselling personnel and materials. The study revealed that generally guidance and counselling services offered in Zimbabwean universities were not effective. The study recommended that if Zimbabwean universities and their stakeholders collaborated and instituted a clear guidance and counselling policy which, among other important things, stipulates how guidance and counselling programmes would be run in universities, the effectiveness of guidance and counselling services offered in universities would most likely be enhanced. It was also recommended that if universities employed adequate fulltime professionally qualified guidance counsellors; periodically run training and in-service training workshops for the guidance counsellors and peer guidance counsellors; build proper infrastructure for all guidance and counselling activities; and secure proper assessment tests, the quality of guidance and counselling services offered in universities may be enhanced. The study also recommended that if guidance and counselling personnel were supervised regularly, and guidance and counselling services offered to students evaluated periodically and objectively, the guidance and counselling services offered in universities would be enhanced. This study may be significant to university counsellors, students, stakeholders and researchers in that it shares knowledge about the importance of effective guidance and counselling services offered to students and what constitutes effective guidance and counselling services. / Psychology of Education / Ph. D. (Psychology of Education)

This study assessed whether civil society organizations in Zimbabwe that have previously been suppressed by the state, currently experience any change in their relations with the state under the Mnangagwa Presidency. I adopted a case study approach to comparatively assess the experiences of two civil society organizations relations with the state over a two- year period. The two case studies are of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ). Selected media sources, including the organizations' social media (i.e., Facebook, websites, and Twitter) and non-state news media, were used to obtain mainly qualitative data and basic numerical information. Gramsci's theory of hegemony and Foucault's concept of ‘panoptic surveillance' informed my analytical framework. The findings show that state suppression is at the core of the relations between state and civil society organizations that are critical of the state in Zimbabwe. The recurring forms of suppression include arrests, detention, assaults, abduction, torture, raids, theft, surveillance, judicial harassment, cyber-attacks/smear campaigns, travel bans, salary cessation and abuse. The findings suggest that ongoing state suppression is worse than during the latter part of Mugabe's Presidency. Selective suppression of targeted civil society organizations that are critical of the state also reflects diminishing democracy in Zimbabwe. This appears to be a general pattern in the region and one possible reason why bodies such as African Union and the Southern African Development Community are reluctant to discipline member states, including Zimbabwe, for human rights violations or state repression of critics.

Understanding how species respond to variations in weather patterns will be crucial to improve our predictions about how species will cope with climate change. The Verreaux's Eagle (Aquila verreauxii) and its primary prey species the Rock Hyrax (Procavia capensis) and Yellow-spotted Hyrax (Heterohyrax brucei) have been monitored by a long-term citizen science project in the Matobo Hills, Zimbabwe. A previous study associated rainfall patterns with the establishment, breeding density and productivity of Verreaux's Eagles. Fluctuations in hyrax populations have been attributed to fluctuations in rainfall and drought. However, these studies have been limited by the use of total annual rainfall instead of targeted rainfall periods of when biological outcomes are most sensitive to weather phenomena. This study explored critical climate sensitivity windows influencing the Verreaux's Eagle's reading performance and the abundance of its main prey species. We used observations of 109 nests over 37 years (1984-2019) and counts from 20 hyrax den sites for 13 years (1993-2005), together with remotely sensed rainfall data. The probability of attempting to breeding and the probability of producing a fledgling was negatively associated with rainfall. For breeding attempt, the rainfall during June and July, 11-10 months before laying was the most relevant, whereas, for productivity, the rainfall during December to March, nine-five months before fledging was the most relevant. However, the relationship between the rainfall signal and breeding productivity was not significant. Hyrax abundance had a negative quadratic relationship with mean rainfall against their respective climate windows, whereby the abundance of adult and sub-adult hyrax increased with rainfall during July–September but declined thereafter at greater rainfall levels. The abundance of hyrax did not have a significant relationship with the breeding outcomes of the Verreaux's Eagles. This study shows the complexity of the causal relationships between climate and biological outcomes and also the value of long-term data to understanding the impacts of variations in weather patterns to better understand predator-prey dynamics.

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As global solid waste management systems evolve to include wider elements of sustainability, developing countries are struggling with how best to work with a growing informal sector. This research seeks to investigate how developing country mainstream solid waste management systems can harness the opportunities presented through the informal recycling sector. This research explores the dialogue around „formalisation of the informal‟ and „integration of informal recycling sector into mainstream solid waste management systems‟, approaching this from an informal sector perspective. The research endeavours to offer insights to this discourse from an inclusive, social innovation approach. The research looks at what business models the informal recycling sector use as they adopt or adapt industrialised practices and how these harness inclusion and social innovation. The research area is Bulawayo, Zimbabwe with the informal recycling sector as case study. The main research question is “How can we harness inclusion and social innovation as the informal sector transitions into mainstream economic spaces?” The research employs an inductive qualitative approach through a rapid ethnography, focus group discussions and semi-structured key informant interviews. Key concepts explored in this research include „circumstantial social entrepreneurship‟, „generational informality‟, „value chain alliances‟, „public, private, community and informal sector partnerships (PPCIPs)‟ and „inclusive development as a pre-requisite to formalisation‟. By unpacking the business models employed by the informal recycling sector and how inclusive, social innovation opportunities inherent in these can be harnessed during the transition from shadow to mainstream economy spaces, this research intends to offer progressive approaches on how to unlock shared value during the graduation of the informal recycling sector from shadow to mainstream socio-economic spaces. Additionally, the outputs of this research aim to contribute to context-specific knowledge on types of non traditional social entrepreneurial activity within informal spaces and how these push boundaries of inclusive, social innovation.