OpenUCT :: Browsing by Author "Solomon, Nikiwe"

Browsing by Author "Solomon, Nikiwe"

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Open Access
An Inquiry Into the Diverse Modes of Caring in Khayelitsha Wetlands Parks World of Many Worlds
(2023) Sibango, Asemahle; Solomon, Nikiwe; Abrams, Amber
The management and governance of wetlands in Cape Town is largely informed by economic, techno-scientific, and engineering approaches which are deeply rooted in discourses of “Earth mastery”. Earth mastery aims to command, predict, and control the Earth's natural processes to access ecosystem services to benefit humans. When wetland management is solely informed by logics of domination and extraction for humans, then other ways of knowing, being, being with, and caring for spaces such as the Khayelitsha Wetlands Park (KWP) are often overlooked and overshadowed. Using Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's (2011:90) work on ‘Matters of Care in Technoscience' where the notion of care is viewed as “an affective state, a material vital doing, and an ethico-political obligation”, this thesis draws attention to meanings, practices, and enactment of care through thinking with people and the more-than-human worlds in the KWP. Based on eight months of research in the KWP which involved looking at this space's associated landscapes and multispecies communities, this thesis explores ways of living with and relating to the KWP in Cape Town, South Africa, which do not subscribe to logics of domination. This is done by highlighting the often overshadowed and taken for granted forms of care and reciprocity that do not fall into the realm of the “advanced”, “technical”, and “objective” approaches in techno-scientific and engineering practices. In this thesis, I argue that people who live with urban wetlands practise their more-than-techno-scientific approaches and versions of care in these spaces. The evidence basis for these more-than-techno-scientific and more-than-engineering approaches of care are drawn from firstly, people's stories and experiences of relating to and living with the KWP and secondly, an analysis of care, coexistence, and co-becoming among more-than-human species in KWP. This thesis then suggests the importance of deconstructing and queering the understandings of care practices in wetland spaces by arguing that the government and institutions responsible for wetlands could draw on decolonial approaches in managing and practising care in these spaces, shifting from logics of control and domination to relational and historicised interactions with wetlands to address environmental injustices of the past and of the present. Queer theory is often associated with gender and sexuality where it means diverging from what is normalised, for instance, understanding that there are other ways of being outside heteronormative binaries. For this thesis I conceive queering beyond the context of gender and sexuality, for instance, I suggest the importance of being aware that KWP and wetlands in general host multiple worlds. Thus, governmental approaches of managing and caring for these waterbodies should not only conform to the techno-scientific and engineering notions of care. I suggest that these governmental approaches should be democratized and open a space to be informed by citizen science as well. They should understand that their approaches should not be a “one size fits all” as modes of being and of living differ from space to space. This thesis therefore uses the concept of queering as a way to suggest that techno-scientific governmental approaches of caring for wetlands must recognize the efforts of care that are practised by people and multispecies who live with these waterbodies and to start co-existing with them instead of overlooking and overshadowing them. This thesis, drew from the environmental humanities, environmental anthropology, and queer conceptual and theoretical schools of thought to achieve its purpose. 
Open Access
Ebbs and flows: more-than-human encounters with the Cape Flats Aquifer in a context of climate change
(2021) Polic, Deanna; Solomon, Nikiwe; Green, Lesley
This dissertation advocates inclusive and integrated more-than-human relations as humans, technoscience, and nature become increasingly entangled in contexts of climate change and socio-ecological crisis. Researching in the environmental humanities between 2017 and 2020, I situate my study in Cape Town, South Africa, where the fluctuations between water's abundance and absence—as evidenced by the 2018 drought—have necessitated new approaches to ontology and epistemology that critically disrupt dominant systems of thought. Using the Cape Flats Aquifer and its aboveground area, the Philippi Horticultural Area, as my primary field sites, I focused on the legal battle that has surfaced between various human actors over land and water use, to explore how different human-nature relationships emerge, and to evaluate the social and environmental implications thereof. The overall inquiry guiding my research is how the Cape Flats Aquifer can make the case for multispecies relations by examining how it flows, or is brought into, existence. First, I present the different kinds of evidence that make the aquifer and its aboveground area un/seen; second, I assess whether alternative ways of evidencing the aquifer exist with a focus on farming practices in the Philippi Horticultural Area; third, I question what ought to be part of the aquifer evidentiary if sustainable, adaptive, and resilient human-nature relations are to be achieved? I argue that humans, multispecies, and earthly bodies such as the aquifer ought to be understood as relational, multiple, and intimately implicated in each other in the face of unpredictable climatic conditions.
Open Access
Hippopotami in a liminal space: a multi-species ethnography of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura
(2022) Maksudi, Bakenga; Solomon, Nikiwe; Matose, Frank
This thesis explores how human encroachment has significantly altered Lake Tanganyika's freshwater ecosystem and riparian zone in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi, which affects the daily life and interactions between humans and hippopotami (hippo). Societal development agendas have favoured economic growth and infrastructural development with little regard for the well-being of multi-species communities. The study contrasts the ideas that drive economy-based approaches to development and environmental management with the many engagements with the lake, and how this in turn affects human-hippo relations on Lake Tanganyika's riparian zone. Environmental protection and management discourses are frequently portrayed as a unified, single, objectivist practice, however, their contextual enactment differs from discipline to discipline and across municipal interventions and service delivery. The study investigates how the current settlement developments affect human-hippo relations. Specific research questions include, what are the intersecting human-hippo interactions that exist in Bujumbura's lakeshore neighbourhoods? What impacts do these interactions have on people and hippos? What interventions can help restore the degraded environment and foster kinship? I respond to these questions by engaging with current debates in environmental humanities, cultural, and environmental anthropology on human-multi-species entanglements. Both grounded theory and multi-species ethnography approaches were used as data collection and analytic tools in this study. I trace nutrient and energy flows to foreground the interdependencies between the “human world” and “natural world”, a separation that is no longer viable in the time of the Anthropocene. Triangulated data sets are used to narrate stories and critically discuss the current environmental challenges using ecocentric, and actor-network theory as the conceptual frameworks. Although population growth is considered a key factor in environmental degradation, I argue that the deterioration of the environment, particularly the coastal landscape, may be attributed to improper and unclear land-water management. The findings of this study indicate that land acquisition on the riparian zone for settlement development in the Gisyo and Kibenga is associated with power and affluence by some members of society. Potential land-water insights and spatial planning approaches for a human-and-hippo-friendly riparian zone are proposed.
Open Access
“It is what it is”: an ethnography of women's experience of drought in Madziva, Zimbabwe
(2020) Kanengoni, Mistancia; Solomon, Nikiwe
Bad weather conditions such as drought have had detrimental effects on the agrarian life of the people in Madziva rural area, Zimbabwe. Due to the unfavorable weather conditions in this area, poverty and unemployment, most men migrated and continue to migrate to the urban areas in search of greener pastures. This research focuses on how these more frequent extreme weather conditions in Madziva, resulting in less predictable seasons, have increased incidences of precarity. This is important as it portrays how the climate has changed, its effect and the anxiety and expectations around it. Furthermore, providing perception of the nature of climate change in the village is important in order to assess the evidence of nature and level of climate change (manifesting through drought). As a result of the uncertainty caused by drought, the migration of men had been rampant in Madziva, and thus the village is characterized by a significant number of female-led households. To understand the social, political and economic dynamics of what it means to survive in a time of drought for ‘fragmented' families, an ethnographic research was conducted in Madziva over two months (14 June 2017 to 15 July 2017) and (10 December 2017 to 11 January 2018) during one of the worst droughts in Zimbabwe. This research follows the everyday lives of eight women and the interactions with 15 more women through focus group interviews in order to understand the strategies used to achieve survival. In this thesis, the results of an ethnography of women's experience of drought particularly in Madziva rural area in Zimbabwe between June 2017 and mid-January to mid-February 2018 are presented. It further explores, the locals' understandings of extreme weather conditions particularly in Madziva rural area and how practices, particularly those linked to gender, are shaped or reinforced. This research found out that the people of Madziva rural area, particularly women are severely affected by drought as compared to men. This is because of the expectations of managing the household and caring for children which requires them to be heavily reliant on natural resources. The reliance on natural resources has been due to the very poor and non-performing Zimbabwean economy, however, these are the resources which become scarce in a time of drought, which exacerbates precarity. Additionally, women in rural areas such as Madziva have less access to critical information on shifts in cropping patterns and weather alerts, and this can be linked to the gendered structure of the village, where men are seen as the principle holders of knowledge of the land. Furthermore, women also have very little power in decision making and access to resources because of the land ownership titles often given to the men of the household. However, with iv the high migration to urban centers, there is a gap that the women of Madziva must navigate and this thesis aims to explore how this occurs. For instance, during the fieldwork, it became evident that irrespective of all these challenges that are caused by drought, women are always expected to make a plan to provide for their families although there is a stiff competition for the remaining natural resources. Women in Madziva negotiated relationships of marginality, responsibility, togetherness and belonging through the ways they experienced the challenges ushered by drought.
Open Access
Living with the Zeekoevlei: an ethnography on historicizing relationships with/to plastic, wastewater and solid waste pollution
(2023) Abrahams, Naailah; Solomon, Nikiwe
This thesis explores the complexities of plastic and solid waste pollution within and surrounding the Zeekoevlei, located in Cape Town, South Africa. This research focuses on waste pollution being a remnant of an unjust past that still manifests in the present and will seep into the future. The current practices of dealing with waste by the City of Cape Town's waste management and natural resource managers as well as many residents in the city, is to see plastic and other forms of pollution as a 'now' problem, leading to reactive rather than proactive responses. When waste management logics are limited to the 'now', they fail to acknowledge how the current waste crisis in Cape Town is deeply intertwined with unequal settlement histories where indigenous and people of colour were settled in what Lerner (2010) refers to as 'sacrifice zones' and the implications of waste seeping into deep futures. It argues that a paradigm shift in all spheres of society is crucial in changing how we engage, manage, think about, and interact with wastes. The aim of this research is to show that the waste crisis is not new but rather located within histories of injustice, displacement, oppression, inequality, and violence. While a discussion of the futures of waste is also important the objective of this thesis is to trace how these geographies of waste and geographies of violence came to be in the Zeekoevlei. Based on roughly five months of fieldwork in the Zeekoevlei area with The Friends of Zeekoevlei and Rondevlei, what became increasingly significant was the ways in which history had manifested itself in this landscape and how notions of care are emerging in civil societies as a response to the waste crisis. Fieldwork primarily took form through clean- ups of the Zeekoevlei and surrounding areas. Working with FOZR provided a greater sense of the socio-economic issues that are contributing to the waste pollution in the area. Specific research questions include: What relationships and meanings are embedded within plastic and solid wastes? What does this 'say' about our histories with solid wastes? How are people relating to solid wastes in the Zeekoevlei and surrounding landscapes? And what notions of care, kindness and reciprocity are emerging in civil societies? I respond to these questions by drawing from past and current debates in the environmental humanities, urban studies, law, geographical and historical sciences, environmental, cultural, and social anthropology. The evidence basis for this study includes experiences and relationships related by Zeekoevlei residents, archival and anthropological data, contributing to environmental humanities scholarship at the intersection of social and environmental anthropology
Open Access
Living with water: An Ethnographic Study Relating to Water and Infrastructure Entanglements, in the Hout Bay Suburb of Cape Town, for a Water Sensitive Designed "Liveable" Neighbourhood
(2021) Gara, Faith; Solomon, Nikiwe
Inclusive water management implies considering the diverse relationships different people have with water, other values that people assign to water, and the ecological impacts of employed strategies. Faced with increasing water scarcity and environmental degradation, it has become critical that we look for alternative ways of managing essential natural resources, including using different approaches to resource management. Water management is mainly dominated by technical and natural scientists, with designs motivated by water supply costs and benefits. This neglects to consider other dimensions associated with water use and access, such as social, cultural and histories that inform how people are situated at different resource allocation intervals. Moreover, how we relate to water affects our environment, from soils, plants and other non-human species, and this, in turn, affects our wellbeing as all the processes that are entangled with life making. For these reasons, social scientists must take part in all water management processes to bring forth other neglected aspects of people's relationship with water and ecologies that are usually overlooked by hard sciences. My research forms part of the Liveable Neighbourhood project, which seeks to redesign the existing neighbourhood of Hangberg in Hout Bay using a Water Sensitive Design. Thus, my study's role is to provide ethnographic data to a field dominated by bureaucratic structures, engineers; urban planners; urban designers and architects; to add the ways of knowing and understand better the diverse relations various communities in Hout Bay have with water. This is essential to enable the formulation of Water Sensitive Designs (WSDs) that include residents' inputs in what they consider 'liveable'. Most interventions that do not consider context-specific needs and dynamics often fail to have relevance and end up unsustainable.
Open Access
On Stories of Liveliness: following the Arts of Living on a Damaged Karoo Veld
(2019) Köster, Terena; Solomon, Nikiwe
This thesis is concerned with the conditions of generating a livable Karoo landscape and the arts of living on a damaged Karoo veld. It takes place in a context where the anthropogenic influences on land degradation, desertification and biodiversity loss continues to haunt the Karoo in the present. The Karoo is a semi-arid region that spans the interior of South Africa. It is also region that has been subject to ongoing and widespread concern of the impact of overgrazing, threatening the livability of the Karoo landscape. This is a result of human/nonhuman relations that have been grounded in a colonial mastery of the land, whereby the advent of private property regimes, modernist technologies and capitalist extraction has allowed for the land to be cheapened, exhausted and severely degraded in a process of colonial dispossession. This research is a qualitative ethnography interacting with farmers and nonhumans on rangelands in the Great Karoo. This thesis shows how the earlier degradation of the Karoo has demanded farmersto pay attention to the relationalities between ecology and economy, since their economic/ecological survival depends entirely on the ongoing multispecies assemblages of which humans form a part. Infrastructures and technologies have become grounds for new ontological practices of regenerating the Karoo veld. Infrastructures (namely fencing) and sheep are used in ways that mimic the earlier migration of large herds of antelope. Here, the bodies of sheep are curated and moved in order to perform a particular ordering of a Karoo ‘nature’. This movement is believed to instigate multispecies liveliness. Sheep, who were once destroyers of the veld, are now enrolled in practices that are believed to bring back the ‘natural’ vegetation of the Karoo. The thesis problematises the ongoing Western ways of knowing that separate the world into binaries of ‘nature’/’culture’, ‘human’/’non-human’, ‘subject’/object’, ‘domestic’/‘wild’, ’economy’/‘ecology’, ‘life’/‘death’. Rather, it argues that a concern with ontological plurality is a process of paying attention to the mutual ecologies and multiple species that gather in human/nonhuman worlding projects on rangelands in the Karoo.
Open Access
The Kuils River multiple: versions of an urban river on the edge of Cape Town, South Africa
(2022) Solomon, Nikiwe; Green, Lesley
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. When river management is informed by different agendas, the practice of management then differs across different levels of governance, research and communities, and multiple meanings of different forms of human-water relationships emerge. This study examines how the resulting tangle of meanings impacts river management practices in Cape Town, and in turn shape the well-being of people and more-than-human communities living in and with the river. Specific research questions include: What are the diverse ways of knowing and relating to the Kuils River? How are these diverse ways of knowing and relating enacted? How does this shape river and capital flows, governance and the well-being of multispecies communities? Based on roughly three years of transdisciplinary methods of ethnographic fieldwork, archival research and water testing in the Kuils River catchment area, this thesis explores how lives, politics, technology and environment are impacted by river management practices in Cape Town and how these produce different versions of the river, which in turn shape the everyday of the Kuils and how it is managed. In focusing on the multiple interactions with the Kuils River and its associated water bodies and on the flow of the river itself at community and governance levels, this thesis foregrounds differing meanings of ‘environment' and their management and how these versions limit the achievement of urban and peri-urban wellbeing. This thesis highlights the divergent experiences of the managed Kuils River (including those of people and of the water body) to demonstrate that particular logics have geological effects that will be experienced far into the future.

Browsing by Author "Solomon, Nikiwe"

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