Human exploitation of intertidal organisms in South Africa is an ancient activity based principally on mussels. We studied mussel populations and patterns of exploitation along a 160-km stretch of the south coast. Photographs (100 per site) were taken of the intertidal rocks at each of 14 sites, covering a range of exploitation intensities. Percentage cover was negatively correlated with number of mussel patches and positively correlated with mean shell width. PCA analysis identified groups of sites: a) accessible and unprotected sites: low cover, small mussels, patchy distribution; b) inaccessible sites and sites next to, or within, nature reserves: high percentage cover, large animals, less patchy distributions. Affluent coastal settlements also seem to confer protection against harvesting. Harvester distribution was examined by aerial surveys and combined with information on distance to the nearest beach access point and number of households within 7 km for each site. Sites within reserves and inaccessible sites had low densities of collectors, whereas sites near urban areas and in the Ciskei had the highest densities. All correlations between indicators of human exploitation and condition of mussel populations were non-significant. However, number of collectors showed positive trends with number of patches and negative trends for the two other variables. The results indicate much lower levels of exploitation than in the neighouring Transkei region, and suggest a high degree of background variability in mussel population structure.

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Intertidal size-frequency distributions and densities for Haliotis midae and Turbo sarmaticus were examined at 10 sites experiencing varying pressure of human exploitation along the southern section of the Eastern Cape coast, South Africa. Target species' densities and maximum sizes were related both to the numbers of collectors on the shore and to indirect indicators of exploitation such as number of households in the vicinity and distance to the nearest beach access point. For both species, there was variation in density (P < 0.05) and size (P < 0.05) among sites, with densities ranging between 0.03-2.23 m^(-2) and 0.07-4.93 m^(-2) for H. midae and T. sarmaticus, respectively. Maximum sizes ranged between 49.4-153.5 mm (H. midae) and 28.3-104.4 mm (T. sarmaticus) shell length. Population parameters such as mean maximum size and total density were significantly negatively related to exploitation indicators for both species. In addition, densities of sexually mature and legal-size individuals of T. sarmaticus were significantly negatively related to the number of households. However, only for H. midae were densities of subadults significantly negatively related to the number of collectors, suggesting that reproduction of abalone may be suppressed at the most exploited sites. Exploitation of T. sarmaticus tends to be localized near population centres, whereas H. midae is collected over a larger range of sites. Overall, T. sarmaticus is less affected by exploitation than H. midae.

The research team presents the findings of a comprehensive investigation into the status and role of Geography as an academic discipline in South Africa. The paper begins by placing the discipline in historical and epistemological context. Extensive and intensive interviews were conducted with geographers at all South African universities and, on a smaller scale, in the workplace. Information was also gleaned from an array of documents. Comments on the characteristics of university departments, general school education, the geography research environment the geographer in the workplace are given. Emerging trends, many of which relate to recent socio-political change, show that contemporary emphasis is on applied geography, specific fields of specialisation, the accommodation of Environmental Science and Environmental Management, skills training and on curriculum development with a marked vocational orientation. As geographers continue addressing national and international environmental and social issues in their professional endeavours, they are alerted to critical concerns voiced with conviction by practising geographers. In the final analysis a positive conclusion is reached and the academic merit and status of the discipline is confirmed.

The Geography of African Development module is part of a year-long Third Year level geography course on Africa that has been offered at Rhodes University since 2002. The course is an exception to the dominant trend, both locally and internationally, which has witnessed a major decline in the teaching of regional geography and area studies. This paper examines how adopting a constructivist approach to the module's curriculum enabled learners to develop geographical skills at the same time as Africanising the curriculum.

The Fast Track Land Reform Programme is the defining instrument for Zimbabwe’s future development prospects. In the three year period from 2000 to 2002 300,000 families were resettled on 11 million hectares thus witnessing the end of the colonial division of land which had seen 15.5 million hectares still in European hands in 1980, the start of the post-colonial period. The process which displaced the commercial farm workers and farm owners was chaotic, violent and disorderly and so has been called jambanja. Subsequent legislation and government agricultural initiatives have attempted to impose, retroactively, technocratic order to the sweeping changes that have taken place. Our study shows that the dire macro-economic situation coupled with trends of HIV/AIDS prevalence means that developing sustainable land use practices is going to be a very difficult proposition. At the local scale, our case studies show that there have been multiple outcomes with low investment, very limited government support and resource extraction leading to land degradation and unsustainable farming practices. In some instances, however, individual households have benefitted in the short term from the process but this has only occurred where climatic and soil conditions have been particularly favourable.

The paper analyses selected aspects of the codeswitching behaviour in a spoken corpus of the English of 326 people, all of them mother-tongue speakers of Xhosa (a local African language in South Africa), and all of whom would see themselves as Xhosa/English bilinguals. The corpus comprises approximately 550,000 transcribed words of spontaneous, relaxed, oral discourse in English between pairs of Xhosaspeaking interlocutors, discussing a wide range of topics. While the usual pattern in bilingual speech is to use the L1 as matrix language and the L2 as embedded language, in this corpus the opposite is the case, as interlocutors were interviewed in English (the L2). The corpus therefore offers a ‘mirror image’, in a sense, of normal codeswitching behaviour. Using Wordsmith (a concordancer programme), all incidences of codeswitching into Xhosa during these conversations were identified and analysed in an effort to reveal underlying patterns. Examination of the amount and nature of codeswitching in the corpus promised to throw some light on the extent to which participants are genuinely bilingual, in terms of their ability to converse comfortably in English.

We define a stratified L-uniform convergence structure on the set of all continuous mappings from a stratified L-limit space to a stratified L-uniform convergence space. This structure induces L-continuous convergence. This shows that the category of all L-limit-uniformizable spaces is cartesian closed.

Land degradation is the result of the intersection of a complex set of biophysical and socio-economic factors. The capacity of an individual or community to address land degradation is likewise constrained. While it is quite possible for professionals and learners to grasp the main issues around land degradation from a theoretical perspective, internalizing the reality of what it means to be the resource degrader is more difficult. We have developed two active learning methods that aim to address this problem. The first is the African Catchment Game, a role-playing game based on Graham Chapman’s Green Revolution Game, adapted for the southern Africa context and incorporating a land degradation component. In this game participants play out the complex dynamics of rural-urban-global linkages against a background of environmental hazards. The second is based on Save the Children Fund’s RiskMap computer simulation that models risk in terms of rural livelihoods for different income groups. Ethiopia is used as the example. This paper evaluates the two active learning techniques as tools for exploring the relationships between land degradation and poverty through an evaluation of participants’ experiences.

Models used to predict species’ potential distributions have been described as either correlative or mechanistic. We attempted to determine whether correlative models could perform as well as mechanistic models for predicting species potential distributions, using a case study. We compared potential distribution predictions made for a coastal dune plant (Scaevola plumieri) along the coast of South Africa, using a mechanistic model based on summer water balance (SWB), and two correlative models (a profile and a group discrimination technique). The profile technique was based on principal components analysis (PCA) and the group-discrimination technique was based on multiple logistic regression (LR). Kappa (κ) statistics were used to objectively assess model performance and model agreement. Model performance was calculated by measuring the levels of agreement (using κ) between a set of testing localities (distribution records not used for model building) and each of the model predictions. Using published interpretive guidelines for the kappa statistic, model performance was “excellent” for the SWB model (κ=0.852), perfect for the LR model (κ=1.000), and “very good” for the PCA model (κ=0.721). Model agreement was calculated by measuring the level of agreement between the mechanistic model and the two correlative models. There was “good” model agreement between the SWB and PCA models (κ=0.679) and “very good” agreement between the SWB and LR models (κ=0.786). The results suggest that correlative models can perform as well as or better than simple mechanistic models. The predictions generated from these three modelling designs are likely to generate different insights into the potential distribution and biology of the target organism and may be appropriate in different situations. The choice of model is likely to be influenced by the aims of the study, the biology of the target organism, the level of knowledge the target organism’s biology, and data quality.