Browsing by Author "Zondi, Lungile Prudence."

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Decentralized spaces for change : a case study of the Lunerburg war room at eDumbe Local Municipality.
(2014) Zondi, Lungile Prudence.; Rieker, Mark Ivan.
This research paper looked at a war room as a decentralized space for change through which public participation is to be enhanced and service delivery accelerated at a ward level. The Lunerburg community demarcated as ward one under eDumbe Local Municipality was used as a case study. The eDumbe Local Municipality falls under Zululand District Municipality located in the northern part of KwaZulu-Natal. Since the take-off of democracy in South Africa, national government has put programmes in place to fight the acceleration of poverty and attend to the backlogs of service delivery. Provincial government are always mandated to implement national programmes or improvised according to the needs of their provinces. In the province of KwaZulu-Natal, the former Premier Zweli Mkhize launched war rooms as a provincial strategy derived from the national war on poverty campaign (announced by former president Thabo Mbeki during the State of the Nation Address, 2008) in the attempt to create decentralized spaces for change through which public participation is to be enhanced to achieve accelerated service delivery at a ward level. The other significance of the strategy is that it takes provincial government to local municipality wards in a collaborative manner. It is also important to note that the use of war rooms in the attempt to enhance public participation and service delivery is not understood and accepted by many people. Currently there are discussions held by the KZN office of the Premier in collaboration with sector departments as well civil societies in the attempt to give war rooms a relevant name. Literature on public participation, decentralization as well as on good governance supported by various diagrams and tables was used to argue in support that citizen’s voices should be integrated in development plans that affect them directly. The study was empirical, employed qualitative methodologies and used triangulated means to collect the data. Content analysis was used to analyse the collected data. The focus of the research was to investigate the extent through which, war rooms as decentralized spaces for change, serve as a unique mechanism to achieve public participation at a ward level in respect to currently existing strategies at a ward level. The study intended to also highlight mechanisms that are used by the war room as well to diagnose the support that the war room is receiving from other government departments. Study findings revealed that the Lunerburg war room executive committee members still lack proper training in relation to their roles and responsibilities within the war room. Members of the Lunerburg community didn’t know where the war room is located and what it does at a ward level. It was also discovered that the Lunerburg war room is not resourced to enhance public participation and accelerate service delivery on its own. Operations of the Lunerburg war room enable community members as beneficiaries of the war room to remain passive participants rather than active participants in the decisions that affect them directly.
The life and experiences of young women (19-35 years) living on the streets of Pietermaritzburg CBD and surroundings.
(2018) Zondi, Lungile Prudence.; Ojong, Vivian Besem.
Little was known about the life and experiences of young women (19-35 years) living on the streets of the Pietermaritzburg CBD and surroundings in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa prior to this study. In order to investigate this subject, a combination of qualitative research (by means of the life history method through the use of in-depth interviews, focus group discussion and direct observations as data collection methods) and four theoretical frameworks (being the African Feminist theory, the Vulnerability Model, the Social Identity theory and the Social Network theory) were used. Collected narratives relating to streetism which were anthropologically recorded contribute to this study and overall, to the existing body of knowledge. This thesis contributes to the existing literature that a myriad of factors such as ancestral calling, food poisoning, whoonga/nyaope addiction (side effects comes with not having a monthly menstrual cycle as well as stomach pains called roosta), self-defence, forced/arranged/early-marriages, food distribution and corporal punishment, grandmother and big brother headed families, family connections on the street as well as hereditary recurrences are push and pull factors that has led the twenty (20) young women to the street. These push and pull factors validate that street-related reasons are homogenous and they need to be contextually studied. The study also finds that these women possess obscured and misconstrued identities that comes with living on the street and they actively use fending strategies for survival. Fending strategies include, hourly prostitution, standing on the road intersections and working as car-guards during the day and night. I argue that their vulnerability context includes being treated less of human being, smuggling whoonga/nyaope, unpaid prostitution, being beaten up by law enforcers and the death of their friends while sleeping. Despite such, the study finds that they are sceptical about being reunited to their families. Street groups/networks are influenced by prison life as they appear on the streets as either the 26’s or the 28’s and that such groups shape their identity as well as the language that they speak on the streets. Research recommendations as well as responsive interventions that policy custodians can embark on based on other African countries are part of the content of this thesis.