2. Academic Wits University Research Outputs (All submissions)
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Item The Role of Social Sciences in Advancing a Public Health Approach to Violence(Handbook of Social Sciences and Global Public Health, 2023-03-02) Brodie, Nechama; Bowman, Brett; Ncube, Vuyolwethu; Day, SarahThe public health approach maintains that violence is shaped by a range of risk factors that can be altered, mitigated, or even eliminated. onceptualizing violence as a type of “preventable disease” has provided important insights and interventions but also introduces limitations that may not be sufficiently acknowledged or understood within this perspective, particularly in the Global South. This chapter briefly outlines the history of the public health approach to violence in South Africa before describing its yields and limits. It then draws on recent studies, which suggest that the integration of interdisciplinary approaches emerging from a strong social science tradition can mitigate many of the conceptual limitations of the public health approach. The chapter concludes by demonstrating how approaches to violence grounded in these sorts of frameworks promise to deliver context-rich explanations of violence alongside the socio-ecological accounts for violence favored by a public health approach.Item Genetic data and radiocarbon dating question Plovers Lake as a Middle Stone Age hominin-bearing site(Elsevier, 2019) Lombard, Marlize; Malmstrom, Helena; Schlebusch, Carina Maria; Svensson, Emma M.; Gunther, Torsten; Coutinho, Alexandra; Edlund, Hanna; Zipfel, Bernhard; Jakobsson, MattiasWe have sampled five out of the eleven previously identified human specimens and some faunal remains from the Plovers Lake site in the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa, for ancient DNA. We were successful in obtaining positive results for three of the human individuals and three ‘buffalo’ teeth. Based on ages obtained for flowstone and one bovid tooth, the site was interpreted previously as a hominin-bearing Middle Stone Age site of more than 60 000 years old. Our work, however, revealed that not all the material accumulated during the Pleistocene. Instead, the sampled humans and bovids most likely represent a Bantu-speaking Iron Age population (mtDNA haplogroup L3d) and their Nguni cattle. Newly obtained radiocarbon dates confirmed that these remains are probably no older than the last 500 years bp. This study demonstrates the usefulness of inter-disciplinary investigation into the human past, and the depositional and stratigraphic complexities that researchers in the Cradle of Humankind need to contend with before interpreting their assemblages.Item Mediating primary mathematics: Theory, concepts, and a framework for studying practice(2018-01) Venkatakrishnan, H; Askew, MIn this paper, we present and discuss a framework for considering the quality of primary teachers’ mediating of primary mathematics within instruction. The “mediating primary mathematics” framework is located in a sociocultural view of instruction as mediational, with mathematical goals focused on structure and generality. It focuses on tasks and example spaces, artifacts, inscriptions, and talk as the key mediators of instruction. Across these mediating strands, we note trajectories from error and a lack of coherence, via coherence localized in particular examples or example spaces, towards building a more generalized coherence beyond the specific example space being worked with. Considering primary mathematics teaching in this way foregrounds the nature of the mathematics that is made available to learn, and we explore the affordances of attending to both coherence and structure/generality. Differences in ways of using the framework when either considering the quality of instruction or working to develop the quality of instruction are taken up in our discussion.Item Subjective well-being impact of old age pension in South Africa: A difference in difference analysis across the gender divide(AOSIS (pty) Ltd, 2019-12-06) Kollamparambil, Umakrishnan; Etinzock, Mfongeh, NBackground: South Africa provides old age pension (OAP), a non-contributory means-tested income transfer to persons aged 60 and above. More than two-thirds of the elderly population report receiving the OAP. Women have historically had a lower pension eligibility age of 60, while the eligibility of men decreased from 65 to 60 between 2008 and 2010. Aim: This study analyses the impact of the OAP on the subjective well-being of the elderly in South Africa. The study aims at understanding the differential impact on the subjective wellbeing of male and female recipients. Methods: The study adopts the difference in difference (DiD) impact evaluation framework to establish the impact of OAP using a sub-sample of data for elderly persons aged between 55 and 64, collected from the first four waves of the National Income Dynamics study. Linear and non-linear DiD models are estimated as robustness checks given the ordinal nature of the dependent variable. Results: The OAP variable consistently produced positive and significant estimates for the sample as a whole. Further, anticipatory effect of OAP was not found to exist. A gender specific analysis indicates that female recipients have a positive and significant change in well-being as a result of OAP, while male recipients did not. Conclusion: The difference in the well-being impact of OAP between male and female recipients can be attributed to the gender difference in the use and meaning of pensions. Our findings question the uniform criteria introduced for male and female recipients for OAP in South Africa.Item An exploratory perspective of student performance and access to resources(Mediterranean Center of Social and Educational Research, 2014-11-01) Papageorgiou, E; Callaghan, C.WThis research investigated the relationships between potential constraints to students’ access to technological resources and student academic performance. Longitudinal data from 2010 (n=228), 2011 (n=340) and 2012 (n=347) from South African accounting students was used to test the relationships between technological resources access and student academic performance using correlation analysis, multiple linear regression analysis and factor analysis. Access to the latest software was found to be associated with student academic performance; a ‘digital divide’ between students may influence their academic performance. This research specifically identifies certain constraints potentially associated with a ‘digital divide’ that may influence student performance.Item A metagenomic viral discovery approach identifies potential zoonotic and novel mammalian viruses in Neoromicia bats within South Africa(Public Library of Science, 2018-03) Geldenhuys, M.; Mortlock, M.; Weyer, J.; Bezuidt, O.; Seamark, E.C.J.; Kearney, T.Species within the Neoromicia bat genus are abundant and widely distributed in Africa. It is common for these insectivorous bats to roost in anthropogenic structures in urban regions. Additionally, Neoromicia capensis have previously been identified as potential hosts for Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-related coronaviruses. This study aimed to ascertain the gastrointestinal virome of these bats, as viruses excreted in fecal material or which may be replicating in rectal or intestinal tissues have the greatest opportunities of coming into contact with other hosts. Samples were collected in five regions of South Africa over eight years. Initial virome composition was determined by viral metagenomic sequencing by pooling samples and enriching for viral particles. Libraries were sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq and NextSeq500 platforms, producing a combined 37 million reads. Bioinformatics analysis of the high throughput sequencing data detected the full genome of a novel species of the Circoviridae family, and also identified sequence data from the Adenoviridae, Coronaviridae, Herpesviridae, Parvoviridae, Papillomaviridae, Phenuiviridae, and Picornaviridae families. Metagenomic sequencing data was insufficient to determine the viral diversity of certain families due to the fragmented coverage of genomes and lack of suitable sequencing depth, as some viruses were detected from the analysis of reads-data only. Follow up conventional PCR assays targeting conserved gene regions for the Adenoviridae, Coronaviridae, and Herpesviridae families were used to confirm metagenomic data and generate additional sequences to determine genetic diversity. The complete coding genome of a MERS-related coronavirus was recovered with additional amplicon sequencing on the MiSeq platform. The new genome shared 97.2% overall nucleotide identity to a previous Neoromicia-associated MERS-related virus, also from South Africa. Conventional PCR analysis detected diverse adenovirus and herpesvirus sequences that were widespread throughout Neoromicia populations in South Africa. Furthermore, similar adenovirus sequences were detected within these populations throughout several years. With the exception of the coronaviruses, the study represents the first report of sequence data from several viral families within a Southern African insectivorous bat genus; highlighting the need for continued investigations in this regard.Item Chiefs in a Democracy: A Case Study of the 'New' Systems of Regulating Firewood Harvesting in Post-Apartheid South Africa(MDPI, 2018-03) Findlay, S.J.; Twine, W.C.Much of the international commons literature reveals a decreased functioning of local traditional institutions that regulate natural resource harvesting. In South Africa, it is believed that the creation of new democratic structures at the end of Apartheid has contributed significantly to the deterioration in traditional resource regulation and this in turn has led to the extensive resource degradation seen in parts of the country. Many of these assertions, though, remain anecdotal in nature. Given the high reliance by rural households on natural resources, and the serious negative implications that over-use has on livelihood security, understanding how well or poorly such commons are regulated is key to ensuring the sustainability of such resource-dependent populations. The aim of this study was therefore to examine systems of resource governance, focusing specifically on firewood, and to determine the roles of traditional and democratically elected community leaders in six rural villages spanning two chieftaincies in Bushbuckridge, South Africa. In each study village, five local leaders were interviewed and five community focus groups were conducted. Results indicate that most parties still regard the Chief as the ultimate authority for regulating firewood harvesting. However, overall firewood management appears weak, at best, across the region. Although some authors attribute this to community confusion over the roles of local leaders in a new democracy, we provide evidence that other socio-political factors, including political expediency, may be driving the increasingly relaxed implementation of these firewood management systems. With resource dependence remaining a vital contributor to livelihood security across the developing world and with many rural communities facing increasing strain under local resource depletion, these findings shed new light on the complex social dynamics underlying the widely reported weakening of traditional institutions in South Africa. In so doing, it offers insights into local firewood governance that can be used to combat these challenges and thereby reduce regional social and ecological vulnerability being experienced in communal landscapes across the region.Item South African Business in the transition to democracy(Routledge, 2019-01) Michie, J; Padayachee, VThe transition to democracy in South Africa represents one of the most celebrated political moments of the late 20th C. While much has been said about the narrowly political and constitutional aspects of this period in South African and world history, little has been said about economic policy choices made in the transition years, or about the role of business in the transition or indeed about how business of all kinds responded to the changes. This collection of essays written by some of the leading scholars of South African business represents one of the first attempts to cover this lacunae in the literature. In the Introductory essay we review the context for these changes in politics and business relations, and summarise the findings of the papers that follow.Item Variation by Geographic Scale in the Migration-Environment Association: Evidence from Rural South Africa(Federal Institute for Population Research, 2017) Hunter, L.M.; Leyk, S.; Maclaurin, G.J.; Nawrotzki, R.; Twine, W.; Erasmus, B.F.N.; Collinson, M.Scholarly understanding of human migration’s environmental dimensions has greatly advanced in the past several years, motivated in large part by public and policy dialogue around “climate migrants”. The research presented here advances current demographic scholarship both through its substantive interpretations and conclusions, as well as its methodological approach. We examine temporary rural South African outmigration as related to household-level availability of proximate natural resources. Such “natural capital” is central to livelihoods in the region, both for sustenance and as materials for market-bound products. The results demonstrate that the association between local environmental resource availability and outmigration is, in general, positive: households with higher levels of proximate natural capital are more likely to engage in temporary migration. In this way, the general findings support the “environmental surplus” hypothesis that resource security provides a foundation from which households can invest in migration as a livelihood strategy. Such insight stands in contrast to popular dialogue, which tends to view migration as a last resort undertaken only by the most vulnerable households. As another important insight, our findings demonstrate important spatial variation, complicating attempts to generalize migration-environment findings across spatial scales. In our rural South African study site, the positive association between migration and proximate resources is actually highly localized, varying from strongly positive in some villages to strongly negative in others. We explore the socio-demographic factors underlying this “operational scale sensitivity”. The cross-scale methodologies applied here offer nuance unavailable within more commonly used global regression models, although also introducing complexity that complicates story-telling and inhibits generalizability.Item The sixth World Flora Online Council meeting held in South Africa(AOSIS (pty) Ltd, 2017) le Roux, M.; Klopper, R.; Jackson, P.S.W.; Loizeau, P.; Victor, J.E.; Sebola, J.R.Biannual Council meetings are held with the aim of developing a World Flora Online (WFO) in response to Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (2011-2020). Objectives: To report on the sixth WFO Council meeting held in Pretoria, South Africa, on November 2016. Method: A WFO Council meeting (preceded by Taxonomic and Technical Working Group meetings) was hosted by the South African National Biodiversity Institute in Pretoria. Results: Significant progress with the development of the WFO portal was made. Conclusion: The WFO portal will be launched at the International Botanical Congress in China in 2017.