4. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - Faculties submissions

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    The factors affecting the performance of South African Airways and its impact on economic growth
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Wana, Zamuxolo; Horvey, Sylvester Senyo
    The study sought to understand the factors that affect the performance of SAA and the impact it has on the economic growth of South Africa. This enterprise services thousands of South Africans every year; importantly, it also supports the national development agenda set out by government. However, SAA is a company in financial distress and has been kept afloat by continuous financial bailout from government. For instance, SAA last recorded a profit in 2011 and has been in continuous decline over the years due to factors like corruption and poor management. The South African government have been providing the much needed financial assistance with the intention to rescue SAA. In 2020, government committed a R10.5 Billion business rescue fund to help the entity in its operational management. This study employed a quantitative methodology where a correlational design was used to describe the linear relationship between the variables of this study. Data was collected from various archives documents, dating from 2001 to 2019. This included annual reports on finances, government reports, publications and budgets on SAA. Content analysis and time series analysis were used to measure and analyse publicly available archives on SAA. The results indicated that almost all the variables are normally distributed. This was further confirmed by the skewedness and kurtosis test for normality, showing consistency in the results. The results for return on equity and taxation showed non-normality based on their significant value, and this was corrected by taking their log transformation. Equity and employee benefits also disclosed a significant positive relationship with the two performance indicators. The findings suggest that the issue of shares to the general public attracts more financial resources to SAA, which ensures stability and higher performance.
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    Accelerating socio-economic justice through inclusive economic-and-employment growth
    (University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Isaacs, Nandipha; Pillay, Pundy
    This paper posits that the labour market, through paying jobs, is an important lever for moving people out of poverty to address the social and economic consequences of apartheid in South Africa. The paper explores different parameters related to employment growth, namely the relationship between economic growth and employment growth, which types of business (small versus large) contribute most to employment growth, which sectors contribute most to employment growth, the barriers to employment growth experienced by entrepreneurs, and interventions required to ensure employment growth is inclusive. This research applied the ARDL model to understand the relationship between employment growth and economic growth on an aggregate level, at a sector level and a business size level, using StatsSA and SARB data for the period 2009 - 2019. This was supplemented by interviews with entrepreneurs and subject matter advisors who provided additional insights into the dynamics of employment growth. The findings of the report highlight that there is a positive relationship between economic growth and employment growth in South Africa, confirming that economic growth has contributed positively to the labour market, despite high and rising unemployment. Key sectors also show a positive relationship with economic growth. The findings revealed as well that small business employment has a negative relationship with economic growth. This paper also highlights that indicators that are affected by apartheid are still used in recruitment and promotion decisions, pointing to the need for company practices and policies to be re-looked to ensure Black Africans are not locked out of the economy.
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    Responsible mining and sustainability in Nigeria: the case of Bitumen
    (2020) Akinyosoye, Oluwole Olafusi; Wafer, Alex
    The last few decades have been marked by a sense of urgency regarding the sustainable use of the earth’s natural resources. During this period, the mining and minerals industries have received particular attention in relation to their perceived destructive impact on the environment. Within this context, the discourse of responsible mining has relatively recently emerged as a possible route towards more sustainable mineral exploitation that could be the basis for sustainable development in the future. For some commentators the idea of responsible mining is an oxymoron: mineral exploitation is always environmentally too costly. For other commentators, effective management of mineral resources provides a realistic path to sustainable development for resource rich but economically poor nations. One of the key components of responsible mining is "good governance": i.e. the presence of a broadly legitimate and democratic form of governing society, which includes a balance of power in the administration of a country between the effective institutions of state and civil society. However, the past decades have suggested that there is an inherent crisis of poor governance in many developing countries, which has been identified as one of the drivers of change to initiate sustainable development. This research report offers an exploration of these two intersecting concepts of responsible mining and governance in Nigeria, in the context of the proposed economic diversification strategy through non-oil and solid minerals development. The study focusses on what might be termed the paradox of sustainable futures in Nigeria: with the proposed exploitation of bitumen reserves in a country that has a poor social and environmental reputation for oil mining. What are the prospects that bitumen could provide resources for sustainable growth in Nigeria? Despite relatively high rates of growth in the Nigerian economy in the past few years, the Nigerian economy has traditionally been overly dependent on oil and gas extraction, and the gradual decline over the past two decades has seen an overall decline in development in the country. As a result, the government has identified other resource potentials, in this context, to exploit the vast bitumen reserves in Nigeria. Whilst the idea to mine bitumen spawns the rhetoric of development in the area and huge revenues to the government for national development purposes, there is a need to explore the paradox of development from this form of mining. More importantly is the impending impact on the indigenous people, which is influenced by certain factors, especially the network of governance, to address the challenges of minerals development in Nigeria. In this context, this study is an attempt to explore the possibilities of and anxieties regarding sustainable futures in the context of the impending bitumen exploitation. The study involved 3 months of field research in Agbabu in Ondo State, Nigeria, one of the areas that will be most affected by the proposed bitumen mining. The area is largely rural, with traditional forms of land ownership and farming practices that are integral to the economic opportunities within the community. Thus, to obtain detailed knowledge of the dynamics of exploiting bitumen, this study applied a qualitative research design to conduct a case-study research on Agbabu in Ondo state, Nigeria. The review of relevant literature, focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, and key informant interviews were relevant tools that provided the data for the study. With these tools, the study gathered data from a range of respondents which included the local population, government officials and professionals who hold esteemed positions in this study concerning their experiences and opinions’ on the proposed bitumen project. The study found that despite the welcome idea of bitumen development, local mining communities still struggle with issues of being marginalised and excluded from decision-making processes in matters related to their indigenous space.
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    The relationship between government debt and economic growth: a multi country study through a Credit Rating Agency perspective (1998-2018)
    (2020) Luthuli, Sanda Siphosakhe
    This study investigates if there is fiscal space in emerging and developing market economies. We use an IS growth equation which is augmented with a non-linear debt term to estimate the turning point below which debt is positively related to growth and above which debt is negatively related to growth. We find that this turning point is on average 62.2% of sovereign debt to GDP. The implication of this is that policy makers should use such a turning point in assessing the fiscal financial sustainability of their economies. This turning point methodology should be used by policy makers to complement other existing methodologies in their fiscal sustainability assessment.