Faculty of Humanities (Research Outputs)
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Item Understanding character naming in Khaketla’s Mosali a Nkhola: a literary onomastic analysis(Routledge, 2023) Chaphole, Sol; Thetso, MadiraThis article aims to understand Khaketla’s intent in naming the characters in Mosali a Nkhola. As one of its key features, a novel has characters whose main purpose is to carry readers through the journey the author proposes for them. Characters, like people in real life, bear names that not only help identify them, but also play a vital role in the development of the theme in a literary text. The author makes assumptions about certain things and relies on them when selecting names for the characters. Through character naming, the author blends reality and artistic features to attain credibility. This, therefore, indicates that in literature, as in real-life contexts, names are not just tags, but they carry particular meanings. Using literary onomastics as an analytical tool, the article explores the names of the characters in Mosali a Nkhola to find out their meanings and significance in the development of the theme of the novel. The findings reveal Khaketla’s creative skill in naming in that the names are symbolic of Basotho history, culture and tradition. They also represent the traditional and modern philosophies, bringing out the concept of cultural dynamism in the text.Item E-learning assessment framework for the public service sector(Public Service Sector Education and Training Authority (PSETA), 2021) Centre for Researching Education & Labour (REAL); University of the Witwatersrand, JohannesburgThe purpose of this research project was to develop an understanding of the change drivers and difficulties linked to implementing e-learning in the South African Public Service Sector in line with policy imperatives and global trends. The project aimed to investigate specific challenges and contextual variables that need to be addressed to strengthen skills development within the public sector. It also aimed to explore how to enhance ways in which the public sector utilises e-learning to upskill and re-skill its workforce. The research was undertaken over a 12-month period, from September 2020 to September 2021, and involved five main phases. Phase One comprised the inception and orientation of the project. The second phase involved a literature review on e-learning including an analysis of relevant public sector documents, reports, and policies on e-learning practices within the public and private sector. This contextual profile describes e-learning practices in the sector and enabled us to structure the public e-learning system as an activity system. The third phase consisted of the development of mediating tools including a comprehensive evaluation tool to offer a potential way forward to enhance strategic planning implementation for e-learning. This will assist with addressing the challenges faced by the public sector in terms of training and the processes of change involved in transitioning the conceptualisation of e-learning to contextualised capacity building. The e-learning criteria framework provides basic guidelines for designing an optimum e-learning experience in the public sector. The elearning review tool (Appendix A) supports and complements the criteria as a tool for analysis of the e-learning programme. The e-learning criteria and tool were sent to ten e-learning experts in the same field of research for comments on further development and improvement. Phase Four consisted of data analysis. Insights from stakeholder engagement and framework development processes were assessed and key emergent themes to inform the e-learning needs of the public sector were identified. In the final phase the findings were reviewed and recommendations proposed and the final report presented here is based on reviewer feedback.Item Digestible memories in South Africa’s recent past: processing the Slave Lodge Museum and the memorial to the enslaved(Taylor and Francis Group, 2021-07) Cloete, NicolaGiven the recent oppressive histories of apartheid and colonialism, the legacies of slavery in South Africa are often overlooked in thinking about aspects of post-apartheid democracy’s discursive formulation of race, nation, and reconciliation. This paper analyses how two examples in Cape Town – the permanent exhibition Representing Slavery at the Slave Lodge Museum and the Memorial to the Enslaved in Church Square – represent the historic event of slavery in South Africa. The paper argues that the museum exhibition and the memorial site are instances of memorialisation and simultaneously function as political processes that offer insight into discourses of race and reconciliation in South Africa during the early stages of democracy.Item Distrust, accountability and capacity in South Africa's fragmented eduction system(Taylor & Francis Group, 2020) Chilenga-Butao, Thokozani; Pakade, Nomancotsho; Ehren, Melanie; Baxter, JacquelineSouth Africa's current basic education system is a product of the apartheid education bureaucracy that was fractured along racial lines, and later significant efforts to amalgamate this fragmented system into a single, inclusive and equal system. This chapter demonstrates how negative apartheid legacies of distrust and a lack of both accountability and capacity took root in apartheid's oppressive and unequal system, as well as efforts by the Department of Basic Education to overturn these legacies in the democratic era. The central argument of this chapter is that, despite formal bureaucratic procedures, expressed through regulations, which should produce more capacity and accountability in the education system, there are also codified practices of governance at the provincial and district levels that produce different outcomes from the intended goal of improved education. This argument is illustrated through a case study of the Schools Rationalisation Project in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa.Item Decentralisation and recentralisation in South Africa's local government: case studies of two municipalities in Limpopo(Published by Transformation, 2020) Chilenga-Butao, ThokozaniDemocratic decentralisation was introduced in South Africa during the transition to democracy (1990-1994). It followed a long trajectory of centralisation and decentralisation processes that took place during apartheid. This paper argues that in order to more adequately understand the prospects for decentralisation to achieve its intended outcomes in South African local government, one has to understand some of the complexities and political dynamics present in this sphere of government. In so doing, it shows that the intended outcomes of decentralisation are far from the realities of local government on the ground, specifically municipalities. Case studies of two Limpopo mining town municipalities, Lephalale and Mogalakwena, are used to demonstrate some of these complexities and political dynamics. The Mogalakwena case study will show that, despite the codification of recentralisation in the South African constitution, regional and political party elites misuse the policy to politically interfere in municipalities. The effects of this are that service delivery slows down and local government is subjected to localised national and provincial political battles. The Lephalale case study shows how the layers of decentralisation between apartheid and democracy have led to this municipality being dependent on private and parastatal mining companies for the provision of and access to public goods and services.Item Designing the future: youth innovation, informality and transformed VET(Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA), 2023-10) Monk, David; Adrupio, Scovia; Muhangi, Sidney; Akite, IrineThis article argues that Vocational Education and Training (VET) can be a valuable space to develop the innovation required to deal with the wicked problems of the world; however, radical and rapid transformation in approaches to VET is needed. While we use a case study from Gulu, Uganda, the findings can be applied more broadly. A new approach cannot be taken in isolation from other social circumstances, and desperately needs to include epistemic contributions both in relation to content and approach so that it bolsters and supports the initiatives, designs and dreams of the intended participants, especially women. We argue that epistemic injustice is a major limiting factor for environmental learning and innovation. We share potential opportunities from our research to shift towards a climate and socially conscious social skills ecosystem capable of designing a positive future.Item Dynamic capabilities: axiomatic formation of firms’ competitive competencies(Elsevier, 2023) Mushangai, DandiraThe capabilities concept is critical in understanding the competitive competencies of firms. Capabilities allow firms to sense, seize and reconfigure their resources in response to opportunities and threats within their environments. This systematic review reviewed a total of 37 Scopus database-selected peer-reviewed articles on capabilities, technology, innovation, and capability frameworks. The purpose was to identify and discuss firms’ capabilities and formation processes and effects on competitive advantages to generate an encompassing framework that overcomes the limited and fragmented nature of current capability frameworks. The study employed thematic content analysis and author-anchored keywords analysis which enabled the identification of several themes regarding capabilities and formation processes. The findings of the study were discussed under the following themes: technological capabilities; supply chain capabilities; networking, collaboration, interactive, coordinating, and alignment capabilities; organisational capabilities; and lastly systems capabilities. The study contributes to enlightening a body of firms’ capabilities theories and generated an encompassing interactive capabilities framework to guide researchers in understanding firms’ capabilities formation processes. The value of the study to the research community lies in emphasising the multi-level approach (macro; mezzo; firm level) and the virtues of combining tenets from different frameworks for a nuanced understanding of firms’ capabilities development. The study will be critical in guiding firms in building their capabilities, particularly the importance of open innovation networks and collaboration in reducing innovation risks and costs. The paper is important to policy makers regarding the institutions facilitating the interaction of international, national and firms level dynamics in propping and propelling firms’ capabilities development.Item Beyond ‘supply and demand’: moving from skills ‘planning’ to seeing skills as endogenous to the economy(2022-11) Allais, Stephanie MatselengThis article questions the notion of supply and demand of skills, and, accordingly, the rules and tools that have been developed for skills anticipation in South Africa. I argue that there is nowhere ‘outside’ of the economy where skills are produced. Rather, a society and an economy need to be seen as an organism, where skill formation is a complex set of moving parts. The concept of supply and demand is unhelpful to think about skill formation because it directs our attention towards specific moving parts in isolation from the broader factors that shape them. This explains why, despite the existence of extensive tools and institutions for skills anticipation, and numerous institutions for social dialogue and stakeholder engagement, researchers and policy-makers argue that South Africa has an inadequate supply of the skills that are needed in the workplace and concomitant skills mismatches. The article also presents more specific problems with the rules and tools, particularly in the way the systems and institutions for understanding labour market demand interact with the systems and tools for the supply of skills – especially those tools that govern and shape skills provision. It argues further that, whereas there are real problems with these rules and tools, and while they can certainly be improved, the broad goals that they are intended to achieve will not be attained even with better tools, but that different conceptual lenses are required instead.Item Why there is no technological revolution, let alone a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’(Academy of Science of South Africa, 2023-03) Moll, IanWe are told by the powerful that we live in, or are about to live in, a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Seemingly, this revolution is about deep-seated, rapid, digitally powered techno-scientific change. It is the age of smart machines; it is a new information technology (IT) revolution. However, in this article I suggest that examination of the history of technologies that are often held up to be proof of the 4IR, in fact shows that there is no contemporary technological revolution. The research methodology that I employ here is conceptual analysis and a focused review of literature on the history of particular technologies. An industrial revolution, as its three historical instances have demonstrated, is the fundamental transformation of every aspect of industrial society, including its geopolitical, cultural, macro-social, micro-social, economic and technological strata. It certainly entails a technological revolution, but it is more than just that. In this article, I am not concerned with the broader ensemble of socio-economic changes – it seems increasingly clear that the ‘brave new world’ of the 4IR is not really happening – but simply ask the question: is there currently a technological revolution? The answer seems to be that there is not.Item Scientific revolution, industrial revolution, technological revolution or revolutionary technology? a rejoinder to Marwala and Ntlatlapa(Academy of Science of South Africa, 2023-03) Moll, IanNo abstract available.