OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Chaturvedi, Ruchi"

Browsing by Author "Chaturvedi, Ruchi"

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Open Access
Meaning of forgiveness: analysing political and sexual violence cases
(2022) Tukela, Anelitha; Chaturvedi, Ruchi
This study investigates the meaning of forgiveness in instances of political and sexual violence in contemporary South Africa. Truth Reconciliation Commission (TRC) proceedings about the well known St James church massacre, Brian Mitchell, and Thapelo Mbelo case guide my understanding of the role of forgiveness in instances of political violence. Memoirs and secondary literature revolving around four relatively little-known instances of rape in contemporary South Africa inform my analysis of the role of forgiveness in instances of sexual violence. The study explores what motivated the victims of violence to consider forgiveness and also investigates the role of forgiveness in criminal and social justice. Through comparative work, the research aims to develop a new understanding of the relationship between forgiveness and violence and help the reader understand the purpose of forgiveness in violence, the power it has, and how it helps the victims of violence. Using inspirations from the interpretive sociology, the study draws from the theological and sociological writings which were influenced by sociology of emotions, social psychology, social and political theory, and South African history.
Open Access
Mediating social entrepreneurship in South Africa and India: exploring the entanglements of neoliberal logics and social missions
(2022) Chopra, Vrinda; Daya, Shari; Chaturvedi, Ruchi
Entrepreneurial approaches advocated as pathways for addressing development goals of unemployment and inequality have been heavily criticised. Critical development scholarship argues that entrepreneurship for development contributes to the deepening hegemony of neoliberal logics (market and finance). I argue that there is scope to problematise the claims of the power and centrality of neoliberal economic logics by viewing these logics in relation with social ones such as trust, morality, reciprocity, exchange, justice (among others). Towards these ends, I focus on social entrepreneurship given the assertions of it being a hybrid field combining the logics of the private sector (markets, finance) with those of the state and civil society (socio-economic change) to deepen efficiency in addressing development goals. Specifically, I focus on a qualitative study based on ethnographic principles of thick description of the meso in-between scales (that is between macro-perspectives on social entrepreneurship and micro-realities of social enterprise practice) in postcolonial emerging economies of South Africa and India. The meso-scale is made up of intermediary organisations providing support services, networking spaces and knowledge to start and grow enterprises geared towards development goals. An analysis of these intermediaries enabled a view into three interlinked issues that I demonstrate in the thesis. One, applying and deploying entrepreneurial approaches like social entrepreneurship produces significant tensions as practitioners attempt to align with economic logics of market and finance, while dealing with complex development challenges. Two, the daily work of intermediaries is fraught with confusions as they attempt to balance out economic and social logics, often resulting in visible leanings towards measurable categories to manage the arising difficulties. Finally, as intermediaries navigate entangled economic and social logics, the ambivalent nature of their work emerges. It is precisely this inchoate and ambivalent nature of practice that problematises the centrality of neoliberal economic logics within development, leading to considerations that power between economic and social logics is negotiated relationally, in an on-going, uncertain manner.
Open Access
South African Indians in Natal: The question of belonging, lived histories, and portraits
(2023) Sadhai, Pushpaganthie; Chaturvedi, Ruchi
This thesis draws on the life histories of eight South African Indian individuals, (six of whom grew up in Natal during the 1960s/1970s and two of whom grew up in the 1930s/1940s), to understand how they lived through, navigated and resisted the apartheid social order. Based on interviews and oral accounts, I create vivid portraits of their lives to discuss survival strategies of materially deprived South African Indian families, and forms of reciprocity and mutuality they lived by in the age of apartheid. Apartheid, for many South African Indian working-class families brought deep deprivation but also petty benefits, and relatively greater opportunities to access education and obtain social mobility. Mindful of that history, I mobilize family and individual portraits to address the so-called “Indian question” and reflect on their sense of belonging in South Africa. As we know, the divide and rule legacy of the colonial state, the grave hardships faced by the majority of South Africans and populist politics of othering, continue to fuel racial tensions between Black South Africans and South African Indians. Against this background, I describe the everyday lives and constructive contributions of South African Indians, to chart a meaningful and ethical mode of living, in the only place they call home. I conclude that, notwithstanding the many contradictions that exist in our 28-year-old democracy, South Africa remains as per the freedom charter, our country (all races), and that we have the power to effect changes in our everyday lives, though small acts of compassion and care—through Ubuntu.
Open Access
“Speaking as one African to another”: friendship as politics in the letters of Robert Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund, 1960-1969
(2024) Daitz, Emma F; Chaturvedi, Ruchi; Grunebaum, Heidi
This dissertation draws on the correspondence exchanged between Robert Sobukwe, one of the founders of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), and Benjamin Pogrund, a journalist at the Rand Daily Mail and a member of the Liberal Party of South Africa, to argue that friendship constitutes a form of politics. Through a close examination of the Sobukwe-Pogrund letters, read against the historical context of their production, the dissertation charts the ways in which these two friends refused the racial essentialism of the apartheid state through gestures of care, reciprocity, and other-directedness. Though not speaking in the oppositional register of anti-colonial or anti-apartheid nationalist struggle, I argue that this refusal, and the many actions which brought it into being, constitutes a form of politics that demands attention and analysis in times of racial polarizations and antagonisms. The letters upon which my analysis is based were written between 1960 and 1969. 1960 was the year of the PACs anti-pass campaign to which the state responded by killing 69 people and seriously wounding 180 in the Sharpeville Massacre. The letters, written during Sobukwe's subsequent imprisonment, were donated by Benjamin Pogrund in the early 1990s to the Wits Historical Research Papers archive at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and were subsequently digitized and made available online. In addition to the letters, I also draw on a collection of public speeches made by Sobukwe in the late 1950s to 1960. My analysis draws on insights from the fields of postcolonial and African studies. Consulting Sobukwe's public speeches, I argue that his openness to Pogrund was not an idiosyncrasy but indeed embedded within his Pan-Africanist political commitments as evidenced by his open-ended theorisation of the category of the African in a post-apartheid future (that is yet to come) thereby establishing an anti-racist lineage for non-racialism. Throughout the dissertation, I attempt to hold a series of contradictions or paradoxes together as part of an ethical commitment to face the complexities of raced being and belonging in everyday life that both recognises and opposes racism and, at the same time, is alert and responsive to the fact that even in conditions of racist oppression forms of identity, relationality, and mutuality emerge between people which may facilitate life-affirming political and social possibilities.
Open Access
Sustaining Threat Narratives about Muslims and Arabs in Germany in The Post 9/11 Era: An Analysis of Showtime?s Homeland
(2023) Abass, Khadija; Chaturvedi, Ruchi
Twenty years after 9/11 and Islamophobia is still on the rise as evidenced by the increased securitisation of Muslims in the form of immigration laws, anti-terror legislation, and restrictions on religious freedoms. My hypothesis is that televisual texts play a major role in the cultural production of knowledge and that threat narratives about Muslims are particularly sustained through texts belonging to the Dark Americana genre which foregrounds emotional complexity, security challenges, and moral ambivalence regarding the state's use of violence and surveillance. Reception analysis requires insight into the televisual text, the sociocultural characteristics of the viewer, and the socio-political context of the time. Consequently, my research balances theoretical reflections on Homeland's ability to sustain threat narratives, according to Bordwell's Three Dimensions of Film (2008), with an empirical study on the show's reception by university students in Germany. My qualitative analysis paid special attention to the textual features of the show and interrogated how meaning arises from cinematic techniques. It found that close-up shots are particularly effective for constructing emotion in audiences and produces sympathy and relatability, potentially serving to justify characters' questionable behaviour in the eyes of the audience. I synthesised three methodologies for my reception analysis. I used online surveys to obtain data about participants' sociocultural characteristics and the Minutia Reception Method to measure participants' moment-by-moment engagement with the text. The ‘Grounded Theory Coding Approach' and follow-up emails then allowed me to systematically create categories based on repeated themes prevalent in the data sample. As a result, I have added four new sub-narratives to the Dark Americana genre, including the Reimagination of US Nationalism, the use of Moral Panic to create Moral Ambiguity around state violence, an ‘us versus them' dichotomy that ensures that the west's violence is considered Heroism while the violence of the ‘other' is considered Extremism, and imperial feminism which disguises western violence. While the Dark Americana genre, a concept developed by David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith, supposedly questions state violence, my analysis of Homeland season one found that it reinforces justifications for state violence and sustains threat narratives about Muslims and Arabs in the post 9/11 era through the distinct sub-narratives which I have introduced.
Open Access
The African art collection in the Iziko South African National Gallery: past, present and possible futures
(2024) Sanan, Sophia; Chaturvedi, Ruchi
The Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG) in Cape Town, which is South Africa's oldest 1 state art museum, began growing an African art collection (called the Permanent African Art Collection) in 1967. The collection today is cared for and owned by the Iziko Museums of South Africa Art Collections, or Iziko Art Collections. The very first artworks accessioned into the Permanent African Art Collection of the Iziko Museums of South Africa (from herewith the PAA collection), were a selection of West African figurative wooden sculptures purchased by assistant curator Bruce Arnott in 1967. The kinds of artworks subsequently placed in the PAA collection, hinged (mostly) on two implicit and contingent requirements: first that artworks were made by Africans but also that they expressed something about African ethnocentric traditions or histories. Hence, the PAA collection is ostensibly a historical collection, differentiated from contemporary and modern ‘African' artworks collected by the ISANG since 1964. The collection comprises largely of works by unknown artists, with many that have rough or vague attributions of time and place. By maintaining these implicit requirements, the collection points towards shifting notions of ‘tradition' and ‘history' regarding art from Africa, without expressly defining either of these terms. As such, this art collection, treated as a research site, presents a compelling starting point to unravel thorny questions around the historicisation of African art in a post-settler colonial context; the epistemic inheritances of art collections and the decolonial impulses that animate contemporary South African museum practice.
Open Access
The African art collection in the Iziko South African National Gallery: past, present and possible futures
(2024) Sanan, Sophia; Chaturvedi, Ruchi
The Iziko South African National Gallery (ISANG) in Cape Town, which is South Africa's oldest 1 state art museum, began growing an African art collection (called the Permanent African Art Collection) in 1967. The collection today is cared for and owned by the Iziko Museums of South Africa Art Collections, or Iziko Art Collections. The very first artworks accessioned into the Permanent African Art Collection of the Iziko Museums of South Africa (from herewith the PAA collection), were a selection of West African figurative wooden sculptures purchased by assistant curator Bruce Arnott in 1967. The kinds of artworks subsequently placed in the PAA collection, hinged (mostly) on two implicit and contingent requirements: first that artworks were made by Africans but also that they expressed something about African ethnocentric traditions or histories. Hence, the PAA collection is ostensibly a historical collection, differentiated from contemporary and modern ‘African' artworks collected by the ISANG since 1964. The collection comprises largely of works by unknown artists, with many that have rough or vague attributions of time and place. By maintaining these implicit requirements, the collection points towards shifting notions of ‘tradition' and ‘history' regarding art from Africa, without expressly defining either of these terms. As such, this art collection, treated as a research site, presents a compelling starting point to unravel thorny questions around the historicisation of African art in a post-settler colonial context; the epistemic inheritances of art collections and the decolonial impulses that animate contemporary South African museum practice.
Open Access
The Magic, the Mountain and the Muti: towards an interpretation of Marikana as marronage
(2022) Adams, Robyne; Chaturvedi, Ruchi
In the decade since the Marikana massacre, the many scholarly insights into the event tend towards abstracting these strikes into a universalist ‘working-class' discourse. This minor dissertation departs from this analysis, however, by paying attention to repertoires of resistance that connect Marikana with a longer history of collective resistance in South Africa. To do this, I read specific testimonies given during the Marikana commission inquiry and focus on subsets of acts, symbols, languages, phrases and words – all of which point to strong ontological continuities between Marikana and what I believe to be Marikana's pre-history - the 1850's Cattle-Killing Movement, the 1921 Bulhoek Massacre, the 1960s Mpondo Revolts and the 2000s Xolobeni protests. In light of this, I suggest that the Marikana striker's political praxis are indicative of a unique epistemology of resistance - an epistemology that points to a longer and yet, more invisible lineage of black radicalism. With this history of black resistance in mind, I re-read the forms of collective action that unfolded in Marikana - as akin to a specific, but highly overlooked form of flight from oppression - as sociogenic marronage. I argue that the concept of sociogenic marronage helps us plot a genealogy of black resistance and radicalism that is not captured in Eurocentric frames of understanding collective struggles.
Open Access
The Urban Poor, Civic Governmentality and the Problem of Participation
(2020) Tshabalala, Thandeka; Chaturvedi, Ruchi
This thesis examines practices of the Informal Settlements Network (ISN), part of the South African Slum Dwellers International (SA SDI) Alliance, as initiators of civic participation in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. The SA SDI Alliance is made up of four organisations namely the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC), Utshani Fund, the Informal Settlement Network (ISN) and the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP). Through the thesis, I aim to provide an understanding of the nature of civic participation and the formation of "responsible" citizens amongst the urban poor in Khayelitsha, South Africa (Brown, 2015, p. 133). Critical in developing this understanding are the tools of the SA SDI Alliance through which the urban poor of Khayelitsha, Cape Town are allowed to participate in civic affairs. Drawing on theories of neoliberal governmentality the study traces how civic participation facilitated by the SA SDI Alliance manifests nationally through policy and at the provincial and local government level. The ultimate objective of the thesis centres on how participation under neoliberalism affects the lives of people in urban settlements through the activities of self-help organisations such as ISN. Using semi-structured interviews and shadowing three community mediators, the study unpacks the life trajectories and lived experiences of community mediators who are members of ISN. Whilst, describing these community mediators' lived experiences, the thesis examines the tension points relating to how ISN members navigate personal, community and institutions of participations that we do not see in the public discourse. The closer examination of these tension points enhances our understanding of the theoretical discourse surrounding the challenges and contradictions that participants face under neoliberalism. These challenges include the interface with fluid community dynamics. Furthermore, the thesis provides insights into the mutability of roles assumed by the community mediators and how it practically manifests on the ground.

Browsing by Author "Chaturvedi, Ruchi"

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