M.Comm. / The Taxi Recapitalisation Programme (TRP) was first announced by the Government in 1999. It was originally recommended by the National Taxi Task Team (NTTT) as a strategy to transform and regulate the South African Combi-Taxi Industry (SACTI) into a “new” taxi industry. Its aims were to improve the quality of combi-taxi transport in South Africa by taking a number of steps, including institutionalising the industry, changing the licencing system, regulating the industry and replacing old vehicles with new ones. Since that time, however the TRP has been plagued by controversy and its implementation has fallen behind schedule. The study‟s key research aim has been to investigate and assess perceptions of taxi associations (taxi owners) with regard to the TRP. The study took place in Temba, near Hammanskraal, approximately 55 kilometres north of Pretoria. Temba is taken as a “microcosm” of SACTI in that it can be regarded as typical of many other areas in the country. A background is provided to the regulatory legislation of the public transport system of the apartheid Government and the general historical and economic development of the SACTI prior to 1994. It deals with the periods from 1930-1976, 1977-1985 and 1986-1993, and then explores the legislative and policy framework of the public transport system of the post-1994 democratic government up to 2008. It introduces the NTTT and its recommendations before analysing the economic effects likely to be felt by taxi associations following implementation of the TRP. The study then presents the results of a brief demographic profile of a sample of taxi owners and operators in the Temba area and identifies a number of factors that influence their attitudes towards the industry in general and their perceptions of the TRP in particular. It assesses the progress made with the implementation of the TRP since its inception and identifies critical issues that have delayed the project. Having been scheduled to span the five years from 2001 to 2005, the date of completion of the TRP was later extended to 2007. By 2010 the project was still only partially complete. Due to repeated delays, the project appeared to be running aground and was perceived by many as a fruitless and wasteful exercise. Indeed, these delays have undermined the goals of transport regulation which, inter alia, were intended to promote the welfare of the public (safety, security, satisfaction, health and protection of property) and to improve the quality of public transport generally. By linking the demographic profile of the taxi owners with the various perceptions, the study has been able to draw conclusions and make findings intended to contribute towards the successful implementation of the TRP and thereby assist SACTI to play a more effective role in the overall transport situation in South Africa. The study concludes that taxi associations in Temba have perceived the TRP to be a good proposal but difficult to implement. It therefore makes a number of recommendations that will hopefully assist in the transformational process of changing SACTI “old” taxi industry into a “new” taxi industry, and so enhance the economic strength of taxi owners and operators, as well as improve the welfare of the users of taxi transport services, not only in Temba but throughout the country.

M.A. (Industrial Psychology) / The South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) project is an attempt to develop an indigenous personality measure that can be applied within the South African context. Such a measure is important as test developers and users are required to meet the requirements stipulated in South African legislation. The Extraversion cluster is one of the nine factors that make up the SAPI measure. The main aim of this study was to validate the Extraversion cluster for use within South Africa which included testing for equivalence and bias amongst the Germani, Nguni and Sotho language groups. A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was used within the current study. Data was gathered from working South Africans (N= 891) within the Gauteng province. The preliminary Extraversion scale consists of 31 items that yielded a three factor structure, namely Sociability, Talkativeness and Positive Emotionality. The Talkativeness factor was not found to be reliable although the overall Extraversion scale was identified as reliable. It was also found that Extraversion, as the higher order factor, was valid and reliable and had greater explanatory power than that of the individual factors. The results of the study also indicated that some of the language groups viewed the factors differently and that bias did occur for several of the items across the groups.

M.Comm. (Industrial Psychology) / The objective of this study is to examine the construct validity of the Openness scale in the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI). The SAPI project aims to develop a personality questionnaire that is applicable in the multicultural South African context. A total of 891 students and working adults, of different race groups (White, Black, Indian and Coloured), with a minimum of Grade 12 or equivalent and speaking eleven different languages participated in the study. A cross sectional design was used to collect data using paper and pencil questionnaires administered in English. The Openness scale consisted of 23 items. A hierarchical Schmid-Leiman factor solution was used to investigate if a strong general Openness factor could be retrieved from participants’ responses. Tucker’s phi coefficient was used to determine factor congruence across language groups. The results suggest that more work is needed to improve validity and reliability of the current SAPI Openness scale, as it failed to produce a general Openness factor. Results show that it is difficult to attach meaningful psychological interpretations to scores on the Openness scale can be made.

M.Comm. (Industrial Psychology) / The purpose of the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) project is to develop a personality measure that can be used within the South African context and that can account for the diversity that exists within the South Africa. This study is intended at validating the Conscientiousness scale of the SAPI as well as considering how well the measure replicated across language groups (Germanic, Nguni and Sotho) in South Africa. The data utilised in this study was collected from working individuals from a number of different organisations in South Africa (N = 890). The Conscientiousness scale consists of 36 items that yielded a five factor structure namely, Dedication, Discipline, Commitment, Orderliness, Organised. It was found that the Conscientiousness scale is a valid and reliable measure of the personality trait Conscientiousness scale. The results indicated that the general factor, Conscientiousness replicated well across the different language groups in South Africa, but the five factor solution did not yield conclusive results. Furthermore, the results of the Differential Test Functioning (DTF) analysis revealed that the scale had a significant effect size and upon further investigation it was shown that two of the items that had significant Differential Item Functioning (DIF) effect sizes could be removed in order to obtain a non-bias measure of Conscientiousness on the SAPI.

Magister Public Health - MPH / The Essential Drugs Programme (EDP) is one of the tools developed to achieve the objectives of the South African National Drug Policy. Occupational health (OH) services are largely in the private sector and usually provide an element of Primary Health Care in addition to Occupational Hygiene, Medicine and Nursing. The aim of this study was to determine the challenges of implementing the Essential Drugs Programme into Occupatinal Health settings in the Port Elizabeth and East London areas. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out. Respondents cited the evidence-based approach to management of clients as a motivating factor for adopting the EDP in Occupational Health clinics. / South Africa

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / In the natural decay series of 238U an inert radioactive gas, 222Rn (radon) is formed in the decay of 226Ra. Because radon is relatively soluble in water, it migrates from places of its generation in rocks and soils to other places either by soil air, or travels with underground water. Therefore, there is a growing interest among hydrogeologists in using radon as a natural tracer for investigating and managing fresh water reservoirs. This work is aimed at investigating and developing radon-in-water measuring techniques applicable to aquifers and rivers. A gamma-ray spectrometry method using a hyper-pure germanium (HPGe) detector, based at iThemba LABS, Cape Town and Marinelli beakers, has been optimized to measure radon in borehole water via the g-rays associated with the decay of radon daughters 214Pb and 214Bi (in secular equilibrium with their parent). An accuracy better than 5% was achieved. Moreover, long-term measurements of radon in water from an iThemba LABS borehole have been carried out to investigate the role of radon for characterizing aquifers. These investigations led to the development of a simplified physical model that reproduces the time-evolution of radon concentration with borehole pumping and may be used to estimate the time for representative sampling of the aquifer. A novel method is also proposed in this thesis to measure radon-in-water in the field after grab sampling - a so-called quasi in-situ method. The quasi in-situ method involves inserting a y-ray detector in a container of large volume filled with water of interest. The g-ray spectra are analyzed using an approach involving energy intervals on the high-energy part of the spectrum (1.3 – 3.0 MeV). Each energy interval corresponds to contributions from one of the major g-ray sources: 40K and the decay series of 238U and 232Th, and cosmic rays. It is assumed that the U interval will be dominated by g-rays emitted from the radon daughters (214Pb and 214Bi). Minor contributions to an interval with major radionuclide are corrected using an MCNPX simulated standard spectra. The two methods in this thesis make a significant contribution to measuring and modelling of radon in aquifers and surface waters. It forms a basis for further development in an interactive mode with hydrological applications. / South Africa

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Hand motion provides a natural way of interaction that allows humans to interact not only with the environment, but also with each other. The effectiveness and accuracy of hand-tracking is fundamental to the recognition of sign language. Any inconsistencies in hand-tracking result in a breakdown in sign language communication. Hands are articulated objects, which complicates the tracking thereof. In sign language communication the tracking of hands is often challenged by the occlusion of the other hand, other body parts and the environment in which they are being tracked. The thesis investigates whether a single framework can be developed to track the hands independently of an individual from a single 2D camera in constrained and unconstrained environments without the need for any special device. The framework consists of a three-phase strategy, namely, detection, tracking and learning phases. The detection phase validates whether the object being tracked is a hand, using extended local binary patterns and random forests. The tracking phase tracks the hands independently by extending a novel data-association technique. The learning phase exploits contextual features, using the scale-invariant features transform (SIFT) algorithm and the fast library for approximate nearest neighbours (FLANN) algorithm to assist tracking and the recovering of hands from any form of tracking failure. The framework was evaluated on South African sign language phrases that use a single hand, both hands without occlusion, and both hands with occlusion. These phrases were performed by 20 individuals in constrained and unconstrained environments. The experiments revealed that integrating all three phases to form a single framework is suitable for tracking hands in both constrained and unconstrained environments, where a high average accuracy of 82,08% and 79,83% was achieved respectively.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis is a multimodal discourse analysis of the media representations of Zimbabwean immigrants in the South African media. The aim of the investigation is to illustrate how Zimbabwean immigration and Zimbabwean immigrants are portrayed in the print media in South Africa. For the theoretical and analytical framework, the study mainly combines critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough, 1992, 1995, Van Dijk, 1988, 1991, 1993, Wodak, 1999) and multimodal analysis approaches (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 2006). These approaches are augmented by insights from the cognitive theory of metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) and from sociologists such as Stanley Cohen (1972) who have researched on moral panic. The study analyses the coverage of Zimbabwean immigrant stories in the South African print media from the year 2000 to date. A total of five hundred and seventy five articles were randomly selected from the SA Media Database. The SA Media Database is a comprehensive collection of all newspapers published in South Africa. These data are supplemented by articles from newspaper cuttings collected during the course of the study. The focus of the analysis is on how the arrival of Zimbabwean immigrants is ‘problematized’ and transformed into a discursive crisis through the construction of anti-immigrant metaphors and generation of a moral panic. The data are grouped into emerging themes, and data analysis is guided by a multimodal critical discourse analysis approach in which the verbal and visuals are read as text. Although the findings of this study generally support earlier studies which argue that the media representation of Zimbabwean immigrants is negative, the multimodal analysis suggests a more balanced and positive image. Thus, although this study supports studies that show that media discourses represent Zimbabwean immigrants as ‘others,’ and often as criminals, the multimodal analysis of the images of Zimbabwean immigrants suggests that media discourse is much more complex. In the media, the Zimbabwean immigrants are presented as either victims or abusers of the system in South Africa. This reflects a broader discourse on migration which constructs Zimbabweans as ‘aggressors and victims.’ Through discourses of moral panic, the analysis of metaphors, the representation of female immigrants, and the multimodal analysis of language and visual data, this thesis shows an extensive deployment of discursive strategies used for the representation of us and them, characteristic of media discourse on migration. On the other hand, the South African media, through visual images, portrays a sympathetic view toward Zimbabwean immigrants and their difficulties. Thus, while the study supports Woods and King (2001), who note that media discourses represent immigrants as ‘others’ and often as criminals, the multimodal analysis of the images of Zimbabwean immigrants tend to be multivocal, in that they tend to also depict migrants as victims of circumstances beyond their control. Therefore, one conclusion that can be made is that the verbal and visual texts in the South African media do not always tell the same story. In some cases, two or more stories are being told at the same time. The study also concludes that multimodality offers the tools through which the different voices, some of which are contradictory, can be read and heard. Images evoke readers’ schemas and frames of experiences, for instance, of pain and human suffering. In fact, visual images are presented as authentic and objective pieces of evidence, not as representations of reality, but, in a sense, as reality itself (Dauber, 2001).Thirdly, the images of Zimbabwean immigrants convey additional information, beyond the journalist’s intention. With images, readers can quickly elicit a strong emotional response. This is different from a textual description. Therefore, images are not only excellent communicators, but also quickly affect us mentally and emotionally. In this study, for instance, images of Zimbabwean immigrants in long queues at the immigration department enduring cold weather, or bloodied victims of attack, or an image of a helpless Zimbabwean child eating from an empty platter seemingly abandoned and alone, by design or default, draw sympathy from the readers. Because multimodal images tend to tell more than one story, such images can also elicit anger and resentment from the readers.Lastly, this study contributes to our understanding of Zimbabwean immigration to South Africa by focusing on how the media multimodally constructs representations of Zimbabwean immigrants in the South African media. Thus, this study also fills a gap that exists in the study of the interplay between verbal texts and immigration images in the media in African contexts; and specifically contributes to the understudied representations of immigrants in South Africa. Another significant contribution is that this is the only study that has combined cognitive theory of metaphor, the sociological notion of moral panic, critical discourse analysis and current theorization on multimodality to comprehensively account for media representations of immigrants. This study points to the need for a multi-semiotic approach to the analysis of the verbal texts and images of immigration in the South African media for a comprehensive appreciation of the relationship between the verbal and visual texts.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This study explores the different ways that South African novels have represented fatherhood across historical periods, from the dawn of apartheid to the post-transitional moment. It is argued that there is a link between narrative power and the father, especially in the way that the father figure is given authority and is central to dominant narratives which support pervasive ideologies. The study introduces the concept of paternal narratives, which are narratives that support the power of the father within patriarchal systems and societies, and which the father is usually given control of. This lens will be applied to prominent South African literature in English, including early texts such as Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, Nadine Gordimer’s Burger’s Daughter and J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, where the father’s authority is strongly emphasised, and where resisting the paternal narratives often leads to identity struggles for sons and daughters. Later texts, published during the transition from apartheid, often deconstruct the narrative power of fathers more overtly, namely Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples, Zakes Mda’s Ways of Dying and K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams. More recent novels, published in “post-transitional” South Africa, are radical in their approach to father figures: fathers are often shown to be spectral and dying, and their control of narratives is almost completely lost, such as in Lisa Fugard’s Skinner’s Drift, Mark Behr’s Kings of the Water, Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light and Zukiswa Wanner’s Men of the South. Exploring these shifting representations is a useful way to unearth how ideological and social shifts in South Africa affect the types of representations produced, and how fatherhoods are being reimagined.

Please read the abstract in 00front part of this document / Dissertation (MA (Cultural History))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Historical and Heritage Studies / unrestricted