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Now showing 1 - 5 of 13

Recent Submissions

Development, manufacture and characterisation of a sublingual thermosetting salbutamol sulphate gel for the management of acute paediatric asthma
(Rhodes University, 2026-03-26) Sibanda, Anele Makhanjana; Walker, Roderick B (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2781-4154); Khamanga, Sandile (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2374-8460)
Embargo applied. Embargo period to expire in March of 2027.
Using protection motivation theory to evaluate the impact of cybersecurity practices on user experience with e-commerce platforms among internet café users in Gqeberha
(Rhodes University, 2026-03-26) Obisesan, Segun Musa (https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9819-8794); Moyo, Moses (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8707-6179)
Online shopping has become deeply embedded in modern society, despite the growth of cybersecurity concerns linked with e-commerce platforms, particularly among users accessing public internet café through unsecured connections. Limited research has examined how cybersecurity practices affect e-commerce platform users ‘experiences in insecure public internet cafés. This study used the Protection Motivation Theory (PMT)to assess the impact of cybersecurity practices on the experiences of online shoppers with e-commerce platforms in Gqeberha. The study population consists of e-commerce platform users mainly online shoppers from the internet cafés, with purposive sampling used to select three busy internet cafés located at the centre of Gqeberha city. The study utilised explanatory sequential mixed-methods, using probability sampling to administer100 questionnaires and purposive sampling to select7 participants for in-depth interviews for both quantative and qualitative phases. Quantitative data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 29with descriptive and inferential statistics, while qualitative data were thematically analysed using ATLAS.ti 25 following Braun and Clarke’s six-phase. The findings reveal high perceived severity and vulnerability regarding cybersecurity risks, such as phishing, smishing, and One-Time Password (OTP) attacks, which cause financial losses among e-commerce platform users in public internet cafés. Users' disregard for security practices led to negative experiences. E-commerce platform users with cybersecurity knowledge and shopping experiences demonstrated high self-efficacy and response efficacy in adopting cybersecurity practices, such astwo-factor authentication, password managers, verification processes, and virtual card payment, to prevent fraud while shopping in internet cafés. Security measures’ visibility on the e-commerce platforms improves user trust and self-efficacy. The study further concluded that a lack of cybersecurity knowledge led to low self-efficacy and response efficacy to follow security practices, making users vulnerable to online attacks and causing dissatisfaction. The study concluded that a lack of instructions and high perceived response costs, like inconvenience or time delay, were key challenges, affecting cybersecurity practices. The study recommended educating users on implementing security best practices such as using password managers, virtual cards and site verification. E-commerce platforms supported education is necessary to keep users informed about security measures, and biometric verification should be implemented on e-commerce platforms. This study was restricted by the sample size for both qualitative and quantitative phases, and the sites where it was conducted in Gqeberha. Further studies could explore PMT constructs and cybersecurity practices across other cities of the Eastern Cape and other South African provinces, expanding the geographical coverage.
Engineering graduates’ experiences of career progression after participating in graduate development programmes
(Rhodes University, 2026-03-26) Magwagwa, Sibongile; Pearse, Noel (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7583-9845)
This multiple case study critically investigates the career progression of engineering graduates following their participation in Graduate Development Programmes (GDPs) within the unique context of South Africa. It draws on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) as its guiding conceptual framework, facilitating a structured understanding of how self-efficacy beliefs, outcome expectations, personal goals, and contextual influences shape early-career development within engineering contexts. To establish a robust theoretical foundation for the study, a systematised review was conducted. This review systematically evaluated the applicability of SCCT within the context of both GDPs and subsequent post-GDP career experiences. Findings from this review highlighted how GDPs serve as an institutionalised mechanism for fostering self-efficacy, enabling goal setting, and shaping career outcome expectations, all central to SCCT’s explanatory framework. Critically, the review also identified significant gaps in existing literature, including limited research on the long-term influence of SCCT in the post-GDP phase, its underexplored intersection with socio-demographic variables like race and gender, and its role in the development of essential soft skills. Building upon these insights, the study developed a specific conceptual framework that explicitly integrates key influencing factors. This framework maps the interplay between personal characteristics (such as race, gender, age, economic background, and language), organisational influences (including culture, leadership practices, and mentoring structures), and external disruptions (such as the COVID-19 pandemic and broader economic instability). It posits how these dynamic factors collectively shape individuals' self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and personal goals, which in turn drive targeted career actions and ultimately influence diverse career progression pathways. The empirical basis of this research lies in in-depth qualitative interviews conducted with a diverse cohort of 25 early-career engineers in South Africa who successfully completed GDPs and are now navigating the complexities of professional integration. A deductive thematic analysis, rigorously anchored in SCCT constructs, was employed to examine how participants made meaning of their GDP and subsequent workplace experiences, and how these influenced their skills development, career clarity, and strategic career behaviours. The findings highlight the pivotal role of post-GDP learning experiences, including challenging projects, mentorship, formal training, feedback, and coaching, in facilitating mastery experiences and significantly enhancing professional self-efficacy among early-career engineers. These experiences also positively shaped career outcome expectations, leading participants to anticipate greater success in their professional endeavours and actively influencing their goal setting. The research confirms that engineers with higher self-efficacy are more likely to set ambitious and well-structured goals, which then drive proactive career actions such as pursuing promotions, seeking leadership roles, and acquiring advanced skills. Furthermore, mentorship, organisational support, and access to continuous learning opportunities consistently emerged as critical enablers of career advancement, fostering a crucial sense of purpose and direction. Crucially, the study also illuminates how race, gender, institutional dynamics, and socio-economic context profoundly intersect with and often constrain career development processes in post-GDP transitions within the South African engineering sector. Participants frequently recounted facing identity-based barriers that hindered their progression, emphasising that career development is not purely self-determined but is significantly mediated by deeply ingrained systemic inequalities. The COVID-19 pandemic, acting as a significant career shock, forced many engineers to re-evaluate their aspirations and adapt to new, often precarious, labour market realities.By providing theoretically grounded and contextually detailed insights, this research makes several significant contributions. Theoretically, it extends SCCT’s applicability to the underexplored post-GDP career phase, incorporating the influence of socio-cultural, organisational, and structural dynamics into understanding early-career development, challenging assumptions of linear progression, and addressing the theory's underdeveloped engagement with systemic inequality. Empirically, it offers a richly textured, locally grounded account of the post-GDP phase in South Africa, documenting how macro-level disruptions and social identity profoundly shape engineers’ trajectories. Finally, the study offers actionable implications and recommendations for the refinement of GDPs and for various stakeholders, including employers, HR practitioners, professional bodies, higher education institutions, and government departments, aiming to foster more equitable, structured, and supportive early-career pathways for engineering graduates in a transforming society.
Movement and migration of flathead mullet Mugil Cephalus in a warm temperate South African estuary
(Rhodes University, 2026-03-27) Mukhari, Dinah Lorraine (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7558-4360); Childs, Amber-Robyn (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4717-2646)
The global decline of estuary-associated fish species is largely attributed to anthropogenic impacts, including overexploitation, habitat modification and altered flow, and thermal regimes driven by climate change. The flathead mullet Mugil cephalus is an estuary-associated cosmopolitan species of high fisheries value, and plays a crucial role in aquatic estuarine food webs. Despite this, little is known about their movement patterns in estuaries, particularly on the African continent, and how these movements may be affected by a changing climate, which in turn will impact fisheries and the presence of predators who feed on them. As such, we used acoustic telemetry, thermal tolerance laboratory experiments and otolith microchemistry to gain a better understanding of movements and habitat connectivity of M. cephalus linked to changes in temperature. Acoustic telemetry was used to monitor the fine-scale habitat use of M. cephalus for a period of one year between March 2023 and April 2024 in the warm temperate permanently open Kowie Estuary, South Africa. Results revealed extensive estuary use, with significant individual variation in movement patterns, ranging from high residency to the estuary exhibited by half of population to high levels of connectivity between the estuary and adjacent marine environment by the other half. Movement patterns also changed seasonally, with fish exhibiting high levels of activity and utilising the entire length of the estuary during austral summer, and being absent in the upper reaches of the estuary during austral winter. Linear Mixed-effects Models (LMM) showed that river flow and both sea and river water temperature significantly affected the daily average position of fish in the estuary. Periods of increased freshwater flow and decreased river temperatures led to downstream movements by most individuals from the upper reaches to the lower-middle reaches; however, despite the downstream movement, fish did not move into the mouth region and marina, which could be attributed to the cooler sea water, particularly during summer. Thermal tolerance experiments aligned with the movements observed in the wild. Despite the revealed broad upper and lower critical thermal limits (CTmin = 3.2 °C; CTmax = 37.7 °C), thermal stress (identified by breakpoints in ventilation rates) was experienced at temperatures above and below critical limits (13.5 and 29.3 °C). Water temperatures in the upper reaches of the Kowie Estuary during austral winter dropped below the lower critical limit, suggesting that thermal constraints play a significant role in shaping habitat use and seasonal distribution of M. cephalus in warm temperate estuaries. Using Random Forest machine learning, otolith microchemistry results (Sr:Ca, Ba:Ca, Mg:Ca, Rb:Ca and Mn;Ca) showed that the spatial and temporal movement patterns and seasonal drivers of this species into and out of the Kowie Estuary are consistent throughout their lifetime, from larval estuarine recruitment to moving to the marine environments during winter season. Furthermore, the combined acoustic telemetry and otolith microchemistry results revealed substantial individual variation in movement behaviour and responses to environmental conditions, thus supporting a condition-dependent framework for partial migration, whereby inter-individual differences in thermal tolerance, such as greater tolerance to warmer or cooler waters may directly influence the likelihood of an individual becoming migratory or resident. Framed within the movement ecology paradigm, these findings underscore the role of internal state (e.g., physiological thresholds) interacting with external drivers (e.g., temperature, flow) in shaping movement decisions and connectivity patterns of estuary-associated species such as M. cephalus. Both intra-and inter-seascape connectivity of the Kowie Estuary and the adjacent marine environment is crucial for the persistence of M. cephalus especially under the growing human and climate pressures which are expected to intensify and alter estuarine ecosystems. The results of this study underscores the importance of a multimethod approach, combining fine scale and lifetime habitat connectivity data with environmental drivers to understand the mechanisms underlying fish movement across dynamic estuarine and marine environments.
Representing the unrepresentable: an exploration of gendered experiences of mental disorder
(Rhodes University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Fine Art, 2017) Futcher, Charis Catheryn; de Jager, Maureen; Nsele, Zamansele
Inspired by personal lived experiences of mental disorder; this thesis attempts to explore the representation of these complex conditions as they are deeply embedded in trauma, guilt, and stigma. The accompanying exhibition, The Inheritance, figures my own tendencies to contain and conceal my disorder, through the assembling of sculptural containers and their disordered contents. The work, presented as something surreal, comments on the complexities of being a woman with a disorder, as well as on the disease I experience in relation to a history of patriarchal ideologies and psychiatric containment that has informed understandings of 'female madness'. Grounded in my interests in abjection and containment, the artistic processes of trying to express deeply personal experiences of distress allow for the resurfacing of underlying trauma, in regards to the memory of my mother's struggle with Bipolar disorder and her subsequent estrangement. Instead of catharsis, the exhibition represents an inevitable failure to represent the unrepresentable, an experience inextricably bound to the history of gendered oppression and the repression of subjectivity by dominant powers of belief and control. Through my practice as research, I have ultimately grappled with my reluctance to represent my experience, precisely because the topic of mental disorder, though pervasive, is lived and felt by varying groups of people in different ways. As such, my intention is to avoid a reductive and narrow framing of what mental disorder entails. Similarly, I aim to avoid restrictive and presumptuous definitions of gender "“ recognizing that, historically, femininity is a contested category that has silenced many individuals who are not white, heterosexual or gender conforming. My literary research has been limited by these norms and silences, in that most texts detailing the historical visual treatment of disordered subjects fail to recognise the possibility of gender categories that transcend the binary masculinity and femininity. With these limitations in mind, my practice has allowed me to reflect upon the distress of generations of people who have been pathologised based on gender.