South Africa remains challenged by persistent poverty and inequality, the ramifications of which are felt across the higher education (HE) sector. Many students enter universities already hindered by socio-economic inequalities as well as discriminatory and oppressive cultural practices which continue to impact on their studies.

Unemployment is a long-standing and pressing socio-economic phenomenon that affects, markedly, both developed and developing countries. Although, in one way or another, many people are affected by unemployment, the reviewed literature concurs that youth unemployment is a critical component of the overall unemployment challenge.

Use of Official Languages Act (No. 12 of 2012) applies to all national departments and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and stipulates that they should promote multilingualism when interacting with members of the public and/or customers.

This thesis explores how diverse ways of knowing and being with the Kuils River, located in Cape Town, South Africa, are shaped and in turn shape the river. The management of water (in pipes and rivers) and the development of water infrastructure are deeply rooted in societal development agendas that, over time, have been embedded in discourses of empire, economic growth, state formation, sustainability and technological efficiency.

This thesis is a journey of critical interrogation of power relations that underpin practices, techniques and rationalities of contemporary forms of governance represented by the governing strategy of the AU-NEPAD.

In South Africa, the provision of social grants, such as the Child Support Grant (CSG), has the aim of addressing high poverty and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. The CSG in particular has had positive impacts on the educational, nutritional and health outcomes of children.

This thesis and cartography form part of an artistic research project that seeks to disrupt representationalism in South African contemporary dance praxis. The study argues that discursive methodologies risk recrafting colonial scripts and tether contemporary dance practices within a framework that perceives such practices as responses to the aesthetics and practices of Western theatre dance.

As a cultural practitioner, my work has often entailed choral practices within ensembles and beyond. My interest in the migration of ideas, especially those of a musical nature, has presented the use of Euro-American hymns in South Africa as a viable site for investigation.

The study reported in this thesis examined the vulnerability and agency of a group of adolescent orphans in the context of sexual violence in and around a township secondary school. This qualitative study was located within a transformative paradigm and employed a participatory visual methodology in its objective to pursue the notion of research as an intervention.

The high dropout rate of undergraduate students in institutions of higher learning continues to be a concern for the higher education sector globally. Although university dropout has been studied over the years, little attention has been paid to the psychosocial factors that predict university dropout.