Buildings In South Africa Research Articles

Health promotion capacity building in South Africa

Health promotion in South Africa is in its early stages and while there is some institutional development and capacity building for managers, there has been relative disregard and lack of attention of the wider health promotion workforce who carry out community-based health promotion activities. This article describes one regional education and training programme for health promoters as well as the limited available evidence on the impact of the project on learners and organizations. Marked differences before and after the implementation of the training activities were reported in relation to behaviour change communication and project planning, in addition to self-reported positive change in knowledge, confidence and a high level of participant satisfaction. Investment in individual skills development needs to be accompanied by wider workforce development with organizational/institutional development and recognised competencies frameworks.

2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup: an opportunity to raise awareness of challenges to social transformation and peace building in South Africa – a coordinated approach

As there are only eighteen months before the world's biggest soccer event will be staged on African soil, it is pertinent to address the many expectations and challenges in the field of social transformation for Africa and South Africa's civil society in particular. This article sees the forthcoming FIFA Soccer World Cup to be hosted by South Africa as an opportunity to raise awareness concerning the current challenges to social transformation, peace building and development work experienced by South African non-governmental organisations, governmental and tertiary institutions. It stresses the use of sport as a vehicle for peace building and development in a coordinated approach as exemplified by the Western Cape Network for Community Peace and Development and its Kicking for Peace Programme. The paper recommends the need to strengthen both social transformation and peace building initiatives and those organisations engaged in it by forming or supporting similar active networks as well as by adopting a holistic and coordinated approach involving unconventional methods such as sport. The paper further sugegsts the need to actively use the soccer world cup as a nation-building event which can spread the joy and enthusiasm about soccer before and after 2010 to all communities in South Africa and Africa as a whole.

Non-violent conflict resolution and peace building in South Africa

In this article I use two recent media events to consider the history of and prospects for peaceful transformation in South Africa. First, I use the cricket World Cup to dramatise the post-colonial global context within which modern-day South African subjectivities have come into being. I argue that while South Africans, and in particular black South Africans, are constrained by discourses of exoticism, they also make positive use of the double consciousness which is thus foisted on them to forge new forms of personal and national identity. Second, I use local opposition to the war against Iraq as emblematic of the role played by civil society and peaceful protest in bringing about South Africa's political transformation. However, I argue that the social capital built up before, during and immediately after the apartheid years is now being eclipsed by the global predominance of private capital.

Sharing Power to Settle Civil Wars

Crafting Peace: Power-Sharing Institutions and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars. By Caroline A. Hartzell, Matthew Hoddie. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 208 pp., $55.00 (ISBN-13: 978-0-2710-3207-8). In Crafting Peace , Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie intend to show that enduring settlements to civil wars can be created through the careful crafting of agreements that institutionalize comprehensive power-sharing arrangements among former combatants. In some regards this is well-trodden territory; the book represents a refinement and expansion of arguments and analyses the authors previously published in an edited volume (Hoddie and Hartzell 2005). Further, more than a decade ago Sisk (1996) argued that power sharing agreements represent the likeliest path to a lasting settlement of ethnic conflicts, a topic which he and a coauthor revisit in a more recent case study of peace building in South Africa (Sisk and Stefes 2005). Where Crafting Peace makes its contribution is in going beyond the single case of ethnic conflict to examine more broadly whether power-sharing deals represent a general solution to the challenge of establishing a lasting peace to civil wars of all stripes, not just ethnic ones. Crafting Peace also goes beyond prior work by rooting its conclusions in a series of cross-national statistical analyses that make up the heart of the book. But while those tests make this a novel and potentially important study, they also represent the weakest elements of what is an overall compelling argument. Noting that in the 1990s, the most common manner of settling civil wars was through negotiated agreements, the authors set out to resolve a fundamental question: What makes those settlements stick? The answer, they contend, lies in the details of the settlement itself: “…the most extensively institutionalized …

Public participation on dam building in South Africa: a case study of the Berg Water Project

This paper examines the participatory processes which led to the building of the Berg River Dam in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The government-led formal participatory processes stand in contrast to the mobilisation of environmental activists against the building of the dam. In this case, the creation of formal participatory forums both subverted and neutralised resistance of the environmental movement and civil society against the building of the dam, largely through the mobilisation of policy discourses on water ‘scarcity’.

Symbolic Reparation, Heritage and Political Transition in South Africa’s Eastern Cape

This article first examines the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendation of symbolic reparation for apartheid, and its effect on South African heritage. Second, it considers the relationship between public history and civic nation building in South Africa, as well as problems in trying to develop an inclusive public history through museums. Case studies drawn from Grahamstown and Mthatha in the Eastern Cape are explored as examples of the redevelopment of the old and establishment of the new public history as part of the negotiated transition.

Conceptual framework for assessment of client needs and satisfaction in the building development process

A conceptual framework is developed for assessment of client needs, and the measurement and monitoring of client satisfaction levels in the building development process. Data were obtained from qualitative and quantitative surveys of a target population of clients of commercial buildings in South Africa. Satisfaction levels based on multi‐attribute measures were compared with those based on single evaluative responses, using Wilcoxon's matched‐pair test. Results showed no significant differences in pairwise comparisons. A strong positive correlation also existed between both equivalent measures of client satisfaction levels. These results validate the conceptual framework. Results of evaluation of client satisfaction levels showed that clients perceived average levels of satisfaction in the building development process. Areas for improvement in the services of contractors and consultants were identified through ‘Criticality Index’ analyses. Empirical models were developed for proactive measurements of client satisfaction levels at distinct stages of the development process. A dynamic approach to satisfaction measurement is recommended. This contrasts with post‐purchase and static views adopted in the consumer services segment and enables consultants to monitor and improve satisfaction levels proactively, as the development process evolves.

0XYRANE AIMS HIGH IN BIOTECHNOLOGY

EARLY THIS YEAR SAW THE FORMAtion of a new company, Johannesburg-based Oxyrane, to commercialize research into epoxide hydrolase biocatalysis. The technology was developed by a team led by Adri Botes within a partnership between the University of the Free State and CSIR, an industrial research institute. Oxyrane is a privately funded spin-off from these institutions. Now the company is working hard on two fronts. Backed by several patents, it is commercializing the resulting technology as a cost-effective green route for the production of chiral epoxides. It is also building in South Africa a technology-based company that is strong enough to compete on the world stage. From dipping a toe in the water at the June ChemSpec specialty chemical exhibition in Dusseldorf, Michael Campbell, chief executive officer, and Robin Mitra, process operations director, will spearhead the company's debut at the CPhI pharmaceutical ingredients show in Madrid next month. They will be presenting a market-ready technology ...

An investigation into the uniformity and non-uniformity of online/offline retail brand building in South Africa

Brand equity or -value is the result of the design and implementation of brand building, – measurement and – management programs. Brand building focuses on three interdependent tiers: selecting brand elements, choosing certain marketing activities and programs, and linking the brand to secondary brand associations. A brand holder’s first instinct may be, when it decides to evolve to the Internet, to maintain the status quo of its offline brand equity or value, by building a uniform online/offline brand. However, from the literature it is evident that authors are not united in their support of building uniform online/offline brands. Although building a uniform online/offline brand present certain tangible advantages, uniformity or non-uniformity proves not to be a binary decision, but dependant on the strategic imperative of the three tiered online/offline brand building initiative. To research three tiered online/offline brand building from a South African perspective, the uniformity and non-uniformity of brand name selection within the South African online/offline retail environment is firstly investigated. The advantages of building uniform online/offline brands are secondly elucidated as presented by the marketing programs – and activities of selected South African retail brands. Secondary brand associations, as part of the three tiered brand building phase or as separate strategic imperative, and the role it plays in non-uniform online/offline brand building, is thirdly examined. Findings are summarised, conclusions are drawn that elucidate the uniform and non-uniform brand building strategies of South African online/offline retailers and recommendations are made for future research.

Nation Building and the Construction of Identity: Xenophobia in South Africa

This article examines the process of nation building in South Africa and its effect on the rise of xenophobia. It explores the ways in which South Africa’s efforts, since the elections of 1994, to construct a non-racial national identity have led to the exclusion of and the denial of rights to non-citizens. Looking at the history of immigration policy in South Africa, it argues that increased levels of xenophobia among South Africans represent an ever-widening gap between the country’s attempts to restructure itself constitutionally (by altering its laws) and culturally (by changing the people’s perception of what it means to be South African).

Benchmarking, Tracking and Evaluation of Energy Cost and Emission Savings

ABSTRACT Since 1991, Megawatt Park Maintenance, with the support of the Commercial Demand Side Management Group, has introduced various measures to reduce the annual energy consumption and cost of Megawatt Park, Eskom's headquarters. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the energy and cost saving measures implemented. This article gives a short overview of the process followed for the project, which options were implemented, and finally a financial analysis of the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of the whole process. Based on the simulations and analysis by the staff of Energy Cybernetics, the Commercial Demand Side Management Group of Eskom was able to convince the financial decision-makers to perform the recommended lighting and variable speed drive retrofits in Megawatt Park. This resulted in the largest energy-efficiency lighting retrofit ever performed for a commercial building in South Africa. The variable speed drive retrofit was also the largest energy-efficiency...

Sport en nasiebou in Suid-Afrika: die betekenis van die 1995 Rugby Wěreldbeker

In this article on ‘Sport and nation building in South Africa: the signification of the 1995 Rugby World Cup’, the authors state that rugby in South Africa has traditionally had a particular set of associations. South African journalist Drew Forest has pointed out that while rugby was ironically a bequest of imperial Britain, ‘the sport has always been an Afrikaner nationalist project, a form of collective self-assertion against a hostile and uncomprehending world’. However, the 1995 Rugby World Cup Series, held in South Africa just one year after the country's first non-racial elections, was used by different interest groups to promote the Mandela government's nation-building project. In this article the authors examine the ways in which the meanings of the game were re-articulated to offer a momentary salve - for some - in a country still deeply divided by class, race and gender.

Employment equity, human resource development and institution building in South Africa

The process of economic and social reconstruction in South Africa (SA) has harnessed capital, organized labour and state agencies in emergent tripartite macro-policy forums; in particular, the National Economic Development and Labour Commission. Public policy on human resource development, affirmative action and diversity issues is increasingly an outcome of negotiations in these structures. However, although significant legislative developments on these issues are envisaged in the near future, institutional adaptation has not been adequately researched. The apartheid state was constructed on the ideological basis of ethnic fragmentation rationalized by ethnic and cultural diversity. At the same time, diversity is a social reality in building common national and organizational goals, symbols and identity. This paper discusses structural and labour market factors associated with the process of employment equity and diversity management in South African organizations. A research project, the Breakwater Moni...

Institution-building issues in South Africa

This article discusses structural and labour-market factors associated with institution building in South Africa. It pays particular attention to the role of management development in institution building in the public sector. Two case studies that address the question of organizational restructuring following moves towards commercialization of some public sector organizations are discussed.

The cost-effectiveness of heat pumps in specific buildings in South Africa

Water heating heat pumps are extremely energy efficient and large savings can be realized when they are compared to direct electrical resistance heaters. In spite of the energy efficiency of heat pumps, a large number of residential buildings in South Africa still use electrical heaters to heat water. The reason for this is that heat pumps are considerably more expensive than electrical heaters. Building owners tend to choose the system with the smallest initial cost and do not compare the two systems on the basis of life-cycle cost. It is also difficult to calculate the life-cycle cost of a heat pump because it depends on many factors like climatological conditions and water temperature. In this paper a methodology is developed to calculate the life-cycle cost of a heat pump hot water installation. The model is used to investigate the effect of daily runtime, electricity tariff, hot water consumption and geographical location on the cost-effectiveness of heat pumps. The cost-effectiveness of heat pumps increases with daily run time, water consumption and electricity tariff. Heat pumps are more cost-effective near the coast than in the interior. If sized correctly, heat pumps are more cost-effective than electrical heaters for all major cities in South Africa. The cost-effectiveness of heat pumps for two specific buildings, one a university student hostel in Potchefstroom and the other a hotel in Durban, is also investigated. For both cases it was found that heat pumps are more cost-effective than direct electrical resistance heaters.

Norms to establish the most elementary environmental control system which ensures summer thermal comfort in office buildings

Various types of environmental control systems (ECS) such as natural ventilation, mechanical ventilation, evaporative cooling and full air-conditioning can be used to cool buildings in hot climates. It is not always clear which of these would be the most elementary ECS that would still ensure thermal comfort in a thermally efficient building for a specific climate. No method to establish norms describing a minimum acceptable ECS was found. This paper proposes a method and gives the norms for South African buildings. The norms are based on existing thermally efficient reference buildings. The minimum ECS to provide comfort in the reference building for a specific summer climate is established by means of a novel and easy to use thermal simulation procedure. The designer must then ensure thermal comfort in new designs by utilizing this minimum ECS. Although only norms for buildings in South Africa are given the method can easily be applied to other climates. The method is very comprehensive but requires only a few hours to apply. Savings in building capital and running costs should more than compensate for the extra effort spent on the design.

Built in South Africa Victorian Buildings in South Africa, including Edwardian and Transvaal Republican Styles, 1850–1910. By Désirée Picton-Seymour. Cape Town and Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1977. Pp. xii + 412. Hfl. 105; US $52.50; £20.

Built in South Africa Victorian Buildings in South Africa, including Edwardian and Transvaal Republican Styles, 1850–1910. By Désirée Picton-Seymour. Cape Town and Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1977. Pp. xii + 412. Hfl. 105; US $52.50; £20.