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Electrochemical Detection of Nitrite on Electrodes Modified by Click Chemistry Using Asymmetrical Co (II) and Mn (III) Phthalocyanines Containing Push-Pull Substituents

- Nkhahle, Reitumetse, Nyokong, Tebello

  • Authors: Nkhahle, Reitumetse , Nyokong, Tebello
  • Date: 2021
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/231425 , vital:49886 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1149/1945-7111/ac377f"
  • Description: The more conventional route to synthesizing asymmetric push-pull phthalocyanines (Pcs) involves pairing electron-donating substituents with electron-withdrawing groups in either an A3B or AB3 manner. In this work, a push-pull system fashioned from a substituent bearing different functional groups was created. Symmetric and asymmetric cobalt and manganese Pcs in which acetaminophen was the dominant substituent were synthesized where the asymmetric analogues bore an alkyne-terminated substituent. These complexes were applied as sensors towards the electro-oxidation of nitrite. In addition to comparing the asymmetric Pcs to the symmetric counterparts, an assessment on the different central metals as well as the method of electrode modification was made. From the studies performed, the results showed that the manganese complexes are generally better suited (more so when clicked on to the electrode) in the electrocatalysis of nitrite with a limit of detection and a catalytic rate values of 2.15 μM and 6.91 × 106 s−1 M−1 being recorded for the asymmetric MnPc.
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  • Date Issued: 2021

Secrets, lies and redemption:

- Boshoff, Priscilla A, Prinsloo, Jeanne

  • Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A , Prinsloo, Jeanne
  • Date: 2017
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143381 , vital:38241 , DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2017.1285671
  • Description: Confession is a central disciplining technology deployed in the second series of Intersexions, a popular South African TV series that seeks to change sexual and social behaviours that contribute to the risk of HIV infection. The article considers the ‘edu’ part of this edutainment programme, specifically with the nature of the lessons and with the form of ‘disciplining’ the narratives presuppose for gendered and sexual subjects. Central to this critical and constructivist exploration of the gender relationships that are validated and expurgated are Foucault’s notions of discourse and confession as a technology of self. We argue that the series presents a range of different gendered and sexual subjectivities but implicitly endorses a modern subjectivity and transformation at the level of the individual.
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  • Date Issued: 2017

Analysis of non-peptidic compounds as potential malarial inhibitors against plasmodial cysteine proteases via integrated virtual screening workflow

- Musyoka, Thommas M, Kanzi, Aquillah M, Lobb, Kevin A, Tastan Bishop, Özlem

  • Authors: Musyoka, Thommas M , Kanzi, Aquillah M , Lobb, Kevin A , Tastan Bishop, Özlem
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/123074 , vital:35403 , https://doi.10.1080/07391102.2015.1108231
  • Description: Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a diverse group of erythrocytic protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium. It remains an exigent public health problem in the tropical areas of Africa, South America and parts of Asia and continues to take its toll in morbidity and mortality with half of the world’s population under a permanent risk of infection leading to more than half a million deaths annually (WHO, 2013). Five Plasmodium species, namely P. falciparum (Pf ), P. vivax (Pv), P. ovale (Po), P. malariae (Pm) and P. knowlesi (Pk), are known to infect humans with Pf responsible for more than 90% of the malarial fatalities reported in sub-Saharan Africa. The predominance of Pf is attributed to its adaptability (Ashley, McGready, Proux, & Nosten, 2006; Prugnolle et al., 2011). Although the high occurrence of the Duffy negative trait among African populations lowers the threat posed by Pv, it is the most frequent and widely causative agent of benign tertian malaria in other parts of the world (Mendis, Sina, Marchesini, & Carter, 2001). In addition to the listed human malarial parasite forms, several other Plasmodium species, which infect non-human laboratory models, have been identified and are of significant importance in understanding the parasite biology, the host–parasite interactions and in the drug development process (Langhorne et al., 2011).
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Are people responsive to a more sustainable, decentralized, and user-driven management of urban metabolism?:

- Chelleri, Lorenzo, Kua, Harn W, Rodriguez Sanchez, Juan P, Nahiduzzaman, Kh M, Thondhlana, Gladman

  • Authors: Chelleri, Lorenzo , Kua, Harn W , Rodriguez Sanchez, Juan P , Nahiduzzaman, Kh M , Thondhlana, Gladman
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144299 , vital:38329 , https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8253-0264
  • Description: Smart, green, and resilient city paradigms have been mainly promoted through top-down and technocratic approaches. However, based on the notion to return to “the right to the city”, emerging community-driven initiatives are providing self-managed infrastructures contributing to urban sustainability transitions. This paper explores the relevance of the behavioral aspects of people-centered approaches in dealing with two different facets of urban metabolism: physical infrastructure (involvement with the management of decentralized infrastructures) and consumption patterns (involvement in proactive reduction of resources used). In the first case we assessed community perceptions about the roles, benefits, and willingness to proactively engage in the management of decentralized green infrastructures in Bogotá City, Colombia. For the second facet, we measured the effectiveness of change agents in re-shaping energy consumption decisions within urban social networks in South Africa and Saudi Arabia. This paper’s results show that pre-determined and standardized strategies do not guarantee positive, nor homogeneous, results in terms of meeting sustainability targets, or promoting community involvement. Hence, a better integration of people-centered and top-down approaches is needed through context-dependent policies, for enhancing both users’ appreciation of and commitment to urban metabolism participative management.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Assessment of water quality based on diatom indices in a small temperate river system, Kowie River, South Africa

- Dalu, Tatenda, Bere, Taurai, Froneman, P William

  • Authors: Dalu, Tatenda , Bere, Taurai , Froneman, P William
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/123896 , vital:35514 , http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/wsa.v42i2.02
  • Description: This study aimed to assess the impact of land use patterns on water quality and benthic diatom community structure and to test the applicability of diatom indices developed in other regions of the world to a small temperate southern African river system. Sampling was conducted at eight study sites along the length of the river on four separate occasions. Multivariate data analyses were performed on the diatom community dataset to specify the main gradients of floristic variation and to detect and visualize similarities in diatom samples in relation to land-use patterns within the catchment. One hundred and twelve (112) diatom species belonging to 36 genera were recorded during the study. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) demonstrated that variations in the benthic diatom community structure were best explained by ammonium, nitrate, conductivity, pH, temperature, resistivity and water flow. OMNIDIA was used for calculation of selected diatom water quality indices. A number of the indices, e.g., the trophic diatom index (TDI), eutrophication/pollution index and biological index of water quality (BIWQ), either under- or over-estimated the water quality of the system. With few exceptions, there were no significant correlations (p> 0.05) between the diatom indices’ values and the nutrient variables. The absence of any significant correlations between the diatom indices’ values and selected physico-chemical variables suggests that indices developed in other regions of the world may not be suitable for temperate southern African rivers.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Back to the future: revival, relevance and route of an anarchist/syndicalist approach for twenty-first-century left, labour and national liberation movements

- van der Walt, Lucien

  • Authors: van der Walt, Lucien
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/144812 , vital:38381 , DOI: 10.1080/02589001.2016.1235365
  • Description: The failings of classical Marxism, social democracy and anti-imperialist nationalism point to the need for a radical left politics at a distance from the state. This paper examines the impact, revival and promise of the anarchist/syndicalist tradition, a rich, continuous praxis in labour, left, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and egalitarian movements, worldwide, since the 1860s. Outlining its core ideas – anti-hierarchy, anti-capitalism, anti-statism, opposition to social and economic inequality, internationalist class-based mobilisation – and critique of mainstream Marxism and nationalism, it highlights the arguments there is a basic incompatibility between state rule, and bottom-up, egalitarian, democratic, socialist relationships. The anarchist/syndicalist project cannot be reduced to an organising style, protest politics or spontaneism: for it, transition to a just, self-managed society requires organised popular capacity for a revolutionary rupture, developed through prefigurative, class-based, democratic organs of counter-power, including syndicalist unions aiming at collectivised property, and revolutionary counter-culture. Success needs formal organisation, unified strategy and anarchist / syndicalist political organisations.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

From global to regional and back again: common climate stressors of marine ecosystems relevant for adaptation across five ocean warming hotspots

- Popova, Ekaterina, Yool, Andrew, Byfield, Valborg, Cochrane, Kevern, Coward, Andrew C, Salim, Shyam S, Gasalla, Maria A, Henson, S.A, Hobday, Alistair J, Pecl, Gretta T, Sauer, Warwick H H, Roberts, Michael J

  • Authors: Popova, Ekaterina , Yool, Andrew , Byfield, Valborg , Cochrane, Kevern , Coward, Andrew C , Salim, Shyam S , Gasalla, Maria A , Henson, S.A , Hobday, Alistair J , Pecl, Gretta T , Sauer, Warwick H H , Roberts, Michael J
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124514 , vital:35623 , https://doi.10.1111/gcb.13247
  • Description: Ocean warming ‘hotspots’ are regions characterized by above-average temperature increases over recent years, for which there are significant consequences for both living marine resources and the societies that depend on them. As such, they represent early warning systems for understanding the impacts of marine climate change, and test-beds for developing adaptation options for coping with those impacts. Here, we examine five hotspots off the coasts of eastern Australia, South Africa, Madagascar, India and Brazil. These particular hotspots have underpinned a large international partnership that is working towards improving community adaptation by characterizing, assessing and projecting the likely future of coastal-marine food resources through the provision and sharing of knowledge. To inform this effort, we employ a high-resolution global ocean model forced by Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 and simulated to year 2099. In addition to the sea surface temperature, we analyse projected stratification, nutrient supply, primary production, anthropogenic CO2-driven ocean acidification, deoxygenation and ocean circulation. Our simulation finds that the temperature-defined hotspots studied here will continue to experience warming but, with the exception of eastern Australia, may not remain the fastest warming ocean areas over the next century as the strongest warming is projected to occur in the subpolar and polar areas of the Northern Hemisphere. Additionally, we find that recent rapid change in SST is not necessarily an indicator that these areas are also hotspots of the other climatic stressors examined. However, a consistent facet of the hotspots studied here is that they are all strongly influenced by ocean circulation, which has already shown changes in the recent past and is projected to undergo further strong change into the future. In addition to the fast warming, change in local ocean circulation represents a distinct feature of present and future climate change impacting marine ecosystems in these areas.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Hsp40 Co-chaperones as drug targets: towards the development of specific inhibitors

- Pesce, Eva-Rachele, Blatch, Gregory L, Edkins, Adrienne L

  • Authors: Pesce, Eva-Rachele , Blatch, Gregory L , Edkins, Adrienne L
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66335 , vital:28937 , https://doi.org/10.1007/7355_2015_92
  • Description: publisher version , The heat shock protein 40 (Hsp40/DNAJ) family of co-chaperones modulates the activity of the major molecular chaperone heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) protein group. Hsp40 stimulates the basal ATPase activity of Hsp70 and hence regulates the affinity of Hsp70 for substrate proteins. The number of Hsp40 genes in most organisms is substantially greater than the number of Hsp70 genes. Therefore, different Hsp40 family members may regulate different activities of the same Hsp70. This fact, along with increasing knowledge of the function of Hsp40 in diseases, has led to certain Hsp40 isoforms being considered promising drug targets. Here we review the role of Hsp40 in human disease and recent developments towards the creation of Hsp40-specific inhibitors.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

LCT in mixed-methods research: evolving an instrument for quantitative data

- Maton, Karl, Howard, Sarah Katherine

  • Authors: Maton, Karl , Howard, Sarah Katherine
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66479 , vital:28954
  • Description: publisher version , A mantra of social science declares a fundamental divide between the quantitative and the qualitative that involves more than methods. According to this depiction, the two methodologies are intrinsically associated with a range of ontological, epistemological, political and moral stances. Each of these constellations of stances is strongly integrated, such that choice of method is held to involve a series of associated choices. Each constellation is also strongly opposed to the other, along axes labelled positivism/constructivism, scientism/humanism, conservative/critical, old/new, among others. These ‘binary constellations’ (Maton 2014b: 148-70) offer a forced choice between two tightly-knit sets of practices that are portrayed as jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. So widespread is this methodological binarism that many scholars ‘are left with the impression that they have to pledge allegiance to one research school of thought or the other’ (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004: 14). A competing mantra disclaims this divide. Distinctions underpinning the picture of binary constellations have been regularly dissolved. Arguments that one deals with numbers, the other with words, one studies behaviour, the other reveals meanings, one is hypothetico-deductive, the other inductive, one enables generalization, the other explores singular depth, among others, have been repeatedly undermined (e.g. Hammersley 1992). Indeed, the death of the divide is frequently declared. Calls for ‘transcending’ (Salomon 1991) or ‘getting over’ (Howe 1992) the quantitative-qualitative debate and arguments for mixed-methods research (Brannen 2005; Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004) are recurrent. These calls highlight how the methodologies offer complementary insights for research and demonstrate that eschewing either methodology on principle is unnecessarily renouncing potential explanatory power. However, the call to mixed-methods research remains more breached than honoured. Methodological monotheism remains dominant – studies of education and society typically adopt either quantitative or qualitative methods. As we shall discuss, the former is typically associated with the influence of psychology and the latter is often claimed as emblematic of sociology. Studies utilizing the sociological frameworks on which Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) builds have echoed this pattern by overwhelmingly adopting qualitative methods. Accordingly, Part I of this volume begins by exploring how LCT concepts can be enacted in qualitative research (Chapter 2). However, LCT is not limited to one methodology and a growing body of mixed-methods research is engaging with both qualitative and quantitative data. In this chapter we illustrate how this research works and the gains it offers. For resolutely qualitative researchers, the prospect of reading anything quantitative, even in mixed-methods research, may be unenticing. However, it would be a mistake to pass over this chapter, for several reasons. First, we offer insights into research practice that might surprise such scholars. As Bourdieu argued, ‘methodological indictments are too often no more than a disguised way of making a virtue out of necessity, of feigning to dismiss, to ignore in an active way, what one is ignorant of in fact’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 226). Our aim is to contribute towards removing this reason for one-sidedness. We show, for example, how quantitative methods confound their common portrayal as neat, straightforward and procedural; they are complex and involved and require craft work and judgement. Our focus is, therefore, more practical than metaphysical. We shall not enter seemingly endless debates over whether the ‘quantitative-qualitative divide’ refers to paradigms, epistemologies or methods and whether these are complementary or incommensurable. Rather, we discuss the development of an instrument for enacting LCT concepts in quantitative methods and ground this account in real examples of mixed-methods research. Specifically, we trace the evolution of an instrument for embedding specialization codes within questionnaires through its creation for research into school music and then its development within studies of educational technology. Given that mathematics can be off-putting to the noviciate, we minimize discussion of statistics and explain measures in lay terms. Second, this is much more than a story of quantitative methods. The evolution of the instrument both shaped qualitative methods and was shaped by the data they generated, offering insights into how qualitative research can more fully engage with LCT. Its development also involved intimate dialogue with theory that shed fresh light on LCT itself, making explicit the ‘gaze’ embodied by the framework (Chapter 1, this volume). We shall highlight wider lessons learned about the craft of enacting LCT in research, lessons of direct relevance for studies using any methods. Third, we shall illustrate the explanatory power offered by using quantitative and qualitative methods together, such as providing a robust basis for detailed findings, identifying wider-scale trends typically inaccessible to qualitative methods that provide a context for their data, and facilitating knowledge-building through greater replicability across contexts and over time. For example, the technology studies built directly on the music studies to cumulatively develop the instrument and generated probably the largest data set in code sociology: 97,386 responses (83,937 student and 13,449 staff surveys) on the organizing principles of academic subjects, alongside 20 in-depth qualitative case studies of secondary schools. This offers a foundation of substantial breadth and depth for making claims about knowledge practices across the disciplinary map and a firm basis on which future research into disciplinary differences can build. Moreover, the quantitative instrument itself can be adopted or adapted in new studies, further enabling cumulative knowledge-building. Given these substantive, methodological and theoretical gains, it is perhaps surprising there exists any temptation to skip past discussion of mixed-methods research. This reflects the methodological character of the fields in which LCT emerged. We thus begin by briefly illustrating how the sociological frameworks on which the theory builds have become distanced from quantitative methods.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Learning style of Chinese event management students

- Louw, Mattheus J, Louw, Lynette, Li, Yanxia

  • Authors: Louw, Mattheus J , Louw, Lynette , Li, Yanxia
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69167 , vital:29438 , https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110366778-028
  • Description: There is a demand for social development in China by establishing, inter alia, a framework focusing on the employability of university graduates and developing self-directed learners. The key to achieving this would be to gain a better understanding of how learning styles, as one of the cognitive factors, contribute towards academic performance in order to provide meaningful learning experiences.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Planning adaptation to climate change in fast-warming marine regions with seafood-dependent coastal communities

- Hobday, Alistair J, Cochrane, Kevern L, Howard, James, Aswani, Shankar, Byfield, Val, Duggan, Greg, Duna, Elethu, Dutra, Leo X C, Frusher, Stewart D, Fulton, Elizabeth A, Gammage, Louise, Gasalla, Maria A, Griffiths, Chevon, Guissamulo, Almeida, Haward, Marcus, Jarre, Astrid, Jennings, Sarah M, Jordan, Tia, Joyner, Jessica, Ramani, Narayana K, Shanmugasundaram, Swathi L P, Malherbe, Willem, Ortega-Cisneros, Kelly, Paytan, Adina, Pecl, Gretta T, Plagányi, Éva E, Popova, Ekaterina E, Razafindrainibe, Haja, Roberts, Michael J, Rohit, Prathiba, Sainulabdeen, Shyam S, Sauer, Warwick H H, Valappil, Sathianandan T, Zacharia, Paryiappanal U, Van Putten, E Ingrid

Reflections on Teaching Africa in South Africa:

- Matthews, Sally

  • Authors: Matthews, Sally
  • Date: 2016
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142235 , vital:38061 , DOI: 10.1111/1467-9256.12107
  • Description: This article draws on the author’s experience of teaching African Studies to undergraduate South African students in order to reflect on some of the key challenges facing teachers of African Studies, both in South Africa and beyond. In particular, it discusses challenges relating to teaching a field as contested as African Studies, looking at whether teaching African alternatives to mainstream African politics is helpful and at whether and how one can teach Africa in a way that encourages and develops critical thinking. The article also explores how the racial politics of the context in which one teaches African Studies inevitably affects the way in which students engage with the content of the course. While the article discusses these issues in relation to the South African higher education context in particular, implications for other contexts are also highlighted.
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  • Date Issued: 2016

Lipophilic M(α,α′-OC5H11)8phthalocyanines (M = H2 and Ni(II)): synthesis, electronic structure, and their utility for highly efficient carbonyl reductions

- Jiang, Yu, Li, Minzhi, Liang, Xu, Mack, John, Wildervanck, Martijn, Nyokong, Tebello, Qin, Mingfeng, Zhu, Weihua

  • Authors: Jiang, Yu , Li, Minzhi , Liang, Xu , Mack, John , Wildervanck, Martijn , Nyokong, Tebello , Qin, Mingfeng , Zhu, Weihua
  • Date: 2015-10-07
  • Subjects: Dalton Transactions (2015), 44, 18237-18246, doi:10.1039/c5dt03256c
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: vital:7282 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020322
  • Description: A lipophilic and electron-rich phthalocyanine (α,α′-n-OC5H11)8-H2Pc and its nickel(II) complex (α,α′-n-OC5H11)8-Ni(II)Pc have been synthesized and characterized. Detailed analyses of the electronic structure were carried out by spectroscopy, electrochemistry, spectroelectrochemistry, and TD-DFT calculations. A series of experiments demonstrate that the (α,α′-n-OC5H11)8-Ni(II)Pc complex can be used as a catalyst for highly efficient carbonyl reductions. , Original publication is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5DT03256C
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Corrole–BODIPY conjugates: enhancing the fluorescence and phosphorescence of the corrole complex via efficient through bond energy transfer

- Chen, Wei, Zhang, Jianfeng, Mack, John, Kubheka, Gugu Patience, Nyokong, Tebello, Shen, Zhen, Wei Chen

  • Authors: Chen, Wei , Zhang, Jianfeng , Mack, John , Kubheka, Gugu Patience , Nyokong, Tebello , Shen, Zhen , Wei Chen
  • Date: 2015-06-08
  • Subjects: RSC Advances (2015), 5, 50962-50967, doi:10.1039/C5RA07250F
  • Language: English
  • Type: Article
  • Identifier: vital:7268 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020277
  • Description: New corrole–BODIPY conjugates have been synthesized in high yield under mild conditions. Upon excitation at the absorption maximum of the BODIPY antenna chromophore, the fluorescence intensity of the free base corrole–BODIPY conjugate increases by ca. 300%, and significant phosphorescence intensity is observed for the iridium(III) complex of the conjugate, while almost no phosphorescence is observed for the parent iridium(III) corrole, due to through-bond energy transfer from the BODIPY antenna-chromophore to the corrole core. , Original publication is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c5ra07250f , Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher 9.1.510/W Unicode , Acrobat Distiller 8.1.0 (Windows); modified using iText� 5.3.3 �2000-2012 1T3XT BVBA (AGPL-version)
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"Blade is blunt"

- Thomas, Cornelius

  • Authors: Thomas, Cornelius
  • Date: 2015
  • Language: English
  • Type: still image
  • Identifier: vital:7963 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020436
  • Description: On Wednesday, 21 October 2015, Rhodes University closed in solidarity with the higher education sector as students and staff embarked on nationwide protest action against the shortage of funding in the South African higher education sector. #FeesMustFall is a national student led protest movement that began in mid-October 2015 in response to proposed increases in fees at South African universities. These images depict the peaceful march and illustrate the extent of solidarity among staff, students and community members who joined in support of the protest.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

"I want to kill myself!": identity documents and mental health in the South African Daily Sun tabloid

- Boshoff, Priscilla A

  • Authors: Boshoff, Priscilla A
  • Date: 2015
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143549 , vital:38256 , ISBN , https://ischp.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/ischp_2015_abstract_booklet.pdf
  • Description: An Identity Document (ID) is needed by South Africans to study, apply for a pension or get married. However, Home Affairs, the state department responsible for issuing them, is poorly managed. The popular Daily Sun tabloid newspaper mediates for its five million working class readers the frustration caused by this incompetency in its “Horror Affairs” column. Readers tell their stories about (not) getting their IDs, stories often of suicide, depression and “giving up” on life. Using a Lacanian frame, and through a close reading of “Horror Affairs” texts, I argue that this tabloid plays a therapeutic role for its socially marginalised readers by mediating the “invisibility” engendered by the modernising state and its administrative technologies. Given the concern about high rates of mental health illness in South Africa, the research also demonstrates how popular culture forms can alert health care practitioners to issues which may otherwise go unnoticed.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

"I've always known this place, familiar as a room in our house" : engaging with memory, loss and nostalgia through sculpture

- Reed, Kesayne

  • Authors: Reed, Kesayne
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: Memory in art , Loss (Psychology) in art , Nostalgia in art , Sculpture -- Themes, motives , Art therapy , Sculpture -- Exhibitions
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MFA
  • Identifier: vital:2513 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1020022
  • Description: My exhibition draws on Andreas Huyssen's notion of memory sculpture to articulate my own sense of loss and trauma, due to the divorce of my parents. Within my work I explore the effects that divorce had on me and how it has disturbed my normative understanding of home and family. I have created scenarios alluding to the family home that I have manipulated in order to convey a sense of nostalgia and loss. By growing salt crystals over found objects and/or cladding them in salt, I attempt to suggest the dual motifs of preservation (a nostalgic clinging to the past) and destruction (due to the salt’s corrosive properties). In this way, the salt-crusted objects serve as a metaphor for a memory that has become stagnant, and is both destructive and regressive. The objects encapsulate the mind’s coping methods to loss. In my mini thesis, I discuss characteristics of memory sculpture as a response to trauma, drawing on Sigmund Freud's differentiation between mourning and melancholia. I also unpack how objects and traces (such as photographs) may act as nostalgic triggers, inducing a state of melancholic attachment to an idealised past. I address these concerns in relation to selected works by Doris Salcedo and Bridget Baker, and also situate them in relation to my own art practice.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

"Soap operas as a platform for disseminating health information regarding ART and the use of 'reel' versus 'real' role models"

- Deiner, Catherine Anne

  • Authors: Deiner, Catherine Anne
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: Isidingo (Television program) , Television soap operas -- South Africa , Health in mass media , Mass media in health education -- South Africa , Antiretroviral agents -- South Africa , Public health -- Moral and ethical aspects , HIV-positive women -- South Africa -- Grahamstown
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:3542 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017783
  • Description: The media, through development communication and edutainment, plays a critical role in the transformation of societies. In line with this, this thesis discusses the extent to which commercially driven prosocial soap operas can provide a platform for public health messaging, in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa, for antiretroviral treatment (ART) and for encouraging ART adherence to foster national development. Furthermore, this thesis examined the potential of celebrities as HIV/AIDS ambassadors and the potential of both fictional characters and ‘real-life’ celebrities to disseminate these health messages. Although the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa is stabilising, this is not the time to relax the communication around the disease, particularly regarding adherence to ARVs, considering that South Africa has the largest ARV rollout in the world. The qualitative methodological approach taken for this thesis is a three-step approach examining the intended message, the text and the appropriated message by viewers. Firstly, a thematic content analysis of an episode of Isidingo, that illustrated Nandipha as HIV-positive and the side-effects that came with her ART adherence, and the 3Talk interview with Lesego Motsepe, where she announced that she was weaning herself off ART, was done in order to understand the intended health messaging in the soap opera and the health message disseminated by an HIV-positive actress with regards to ART. Thereafter interview responses by the production team as well as by HIV-positive viewers, using ARVs, were thematised. In addition media texts which provided commentary on the use of a celebrity as a HIV-positive role model were examined. In doing this, this thesis has offered up the meanings of how HIV-positive women taking ARVs and living in Makana experience and understand the media, particularly health messaging relating to ARVs. The findings of this study suggest that commercial soap operas are the perfect platform to address HIV/AIDS and that prosocial health messaging regarding ARV adherence is still necessary in this country. Soap operas have the potential to have an educational angle. Although, HIV-positive individuals serve as better role models as they are authentic; given human nature, fictional characters, such as Nandipha Matabane in Isidingo, may be more sustainable role models as their message can be scientifically-based and well-researched. Realistic characters serve as role models whose behaviour is to be emulated. Soap operas appeal to a wide audience and so storylines can be tailor-made according to the times and the needs in terms of health issues and messaging. Thus, soap operas are not a single platform but rather one which can be exploited to maximum advantage for public health messaging.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

"Soliloquy: the untold story of Sleeping Beauty's dreams"; a re-vision of Charles Perrault's "The sleeping beauty in the woods."

- Ledwick, Lisa-Mari

  • Authors: Ledwick, Lisa-Mari
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: Perrault, Charles, 1628-1703 , Symbolism in fairy tales , Sleeping Beauty (Tale) in literature
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MTech
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/3155 , vital:20405
  • Description: Taken as a whole, the purpose of the practical and theoretical components of this research aims to contextualise and present a contemporary fairy tale heroine who recuperates and re-values traditional aspects of femininity within a feminist context.
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  • Date Issued: 2015

"Why Persephone?" investigating the unique position of Persephone as a dying god(dess) offering hope for the afterlife

- Goodwin, Grant

  • Authors: Goodwin, Grant
  • Date: 2015
  • Subjects: Mythology, Greek , Gods, Greek , Future life , Greece -- Religious life and customs , Persephone -- (Greek deity)
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:3655 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1017896
  • Description: Persephone’s myth is unique, as it was the central narrative of one of the most prominent ancient mystery religions, and remains one of the few (certainly the most prominent) ancient Greek myths to focus on the relationship of a mother and her daughter. This unique focus must have offered her worshippers something important that they perhaps could not find elsewhere, especially as a complex and elaborate cult grew around it, transforming the divine allegory of the changing seasons or the storage of the grain beneath the earth, into a narrative offering hope for a better place in the afterlife. To understand the appeal of this myth, two aspects of her worship and mythic significance require study: the expectations of her worshippers for their own lives, to which the goddess may have been seen as a forerunner; and the mythic frameworks operating which would characterise the goddess for her worshippers. The myth, as described in The Hymn to Demeter, is initially interpreted for its literary meaning, and then set within its cultural milieu to uncover what meaning it may have had for Persephone’s worshippers, particularly in terms of marriage and death, which form the initial motivating action of the myth. From this socio-anthropological study we turn to the mythic patterns and motifs the story offers, particularly the figure of the goddess of the Underworld (primarily in the influential Mesopotamian literature), and the Dying-Rising God figure (similarly derived from the Near East). These figures, when compared to the Greek goddess, may both reveal her unique appeal, and highlight the common attractions that lie in the figures generally. By this two-part investigation, on the particular culture’s expectations and the general mythic framework she exists in, Persephone’s meaning in her native land may be uncovered and understood.
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  • Date Issued: 2015
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