Gauteng Doctoral School

Given the proliferation of challenges facing teachers in the current South African educational dispensation, this mixed methods study investigated the support needs of, and intervened in, the challenges being faced by teachers in the North West Department of Education and Sport Development (NWPDoE). In many respects, teachers painted a bleak picture with reference to poor infrastructure provisioning, largescale learner indiscipline, disengaged parents and a general lack of proper functioning of their schools.

The thesis, A Critical Analysis of the Oversight Role and Function of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) in Promoting Accountability in South Africa’s Public Sector, looks at the underlying problem of financial mismanagement in the public sector in relation to public accountability in South Africa. This problem has manifested in growing wasteful, irregular and fruitless expenditure in a post-apartheid era confronted by a multitude of social-economic challenges.

This thesis critically analyzes the phenomena of Issa-Afar violence in Ethiopian in the post-1991 period. It interrogated the explanation for the self-perpetuating nature of the violence militating against successive peace-making efforts and the way forward towards its constructive transformation. Previous studies on the topic have either focused on the nature of the Issa-Afar conflict, in general, or conceived the violence as war violence per se. However, given the long history, multiple and overlapping contexts and types of violence involved, the reason for the continuity of the violence and how to transform the violent relations constructively have not been analyzed. Because the nature, utility and dynamic of the violence, on the one hand, the explanation behind its self-perpetuating nature, on the other was not analyzed. 

By posing a provocative question, “What is a Woman?” this thesis intended to deconstruct normative conceptions of womanhood which are essentialised to marriage. To achieve these ends, I located the key questions of this thesis within intersecting theoretical premises of decolonial, African and Black feminisms.