Thesis (Ph.D. (Administration)) -- University of Limpopo, 2015 / The thesis of this study is that food production systems for self-provisioning have
historically constituted the backbone for survival and life-support in rural South Africa.
Colonialism and apartheid capitalism bore harsh effects on the food production life support
systems. However, these effects pale into insignificance compared to the present
devastation of the food production systems associated with climate change. The
contribution of rural South Africa towards climate change is at all scale negligible because
poor people hold limited capacity to produce the deleterious gas emissions that allegedly
causes global warming. However, the poor are disproportionately exposed to the
adversarial effects of climate change and their food production systems have
demonstrated beyond doubt that they cannot cope with stressors occasioned by climate
change. Government policy and measures continue to be inadequate and inaccessible
for rural households that produce for self-provisioning.
The thesis further demonstrate that scientifically–based intervention measures adopted
among rural poor in developing countries are viewed as alien and therefore not
wholeheartedly adhered to by the users. The thesis points to this discrepancy to illustrate
that the value systems among the rural population in South Africa describe changes in
their food production in terms of climatic conditions that are, according to their belief
systems, avoidable consequences of people’s conduct of life outside tradition, religion
and so on. It engages a nascent argument relating to the failure of private and public
scientifically-generated intervention measures within developing countries’ rurality, which
is ironically exacerbated by the apparent inappropriateness and, often, destructiveness
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of the Green Revolution Technologies. As such interventions fail, the thesis points, they
create skeletons of evidence, that appear to corroborate the traditionalist belief systems
about the locus of causes of change in climatic conditions being extra-terrestrial as a
consequence of people’s misconduct of life.
The study investigates the effects of climate change on household food production
systems in rural Makhado Local Municipality. 30 villages are used for this study in both
households questionnaire survey, interview of the key informants and observation of
different patterns of production process, geo-spatial features and current settlements
patterns. The data analysis results reflect that different households within the municipality
experiences variety of effects of climate change. Furthermore, the climatic conditions
which consisted of enough reliable precipitation during food production stages have
declined; rather in the post-1990 period, the area have been experiencing continuous
heatwaves and drought which destroyed household’s crops and livestock. Using the
normative and historical research designs the study found that the situation within villages
has changed drastically because of climate change when comparing the conditions preand
post-1990. The deliberate adoption of the historical design was crucial given that the
thesis mission was to highlight the discrepancies in the so-called modern systems versus
the traditionalist philosophies that continue to dominate the thinking and action rural
populations in most developing countries. Equally, the historical design provides
unquestionable possibility of applying appropriate research techniques to contextualize
the research problem under investigation. Indeed, this manoeuvre has always been an
important part and parcel of the research design and methodology because the thesis
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had to adopt a longitudinal research orientation through an appropriately designed data
collection tool, specifically the questionnaire and interview schedule. From a
philosophical perspective, the thesis demystifies the thinking that the so-called
scientifically-generated interventions against climate change could resolve the attendant
challenges, inclusive of food production. That is, it insinuates that appropriate research is
needed for developing countries rurality in order to find intervention measures that are a
product of the evolution of traditionalist value systems. Tacitly, the thesis challenges the
statist and private sector habits of always parachuting the so-called scientifically generated
solutions to climate change. / University of Limpopo Research Administration Department.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ul/oai:ulspace.ul.ac.za:10386/1548 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Madzivhandila, Thanyani Selby |
| Contributors | Tsheola, J. P., Nkuna, N. W. |
| Publisher | University of Limpopo |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | xix, 275 leaves |
| Relation |
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