OpenUCT :: Browsing by Department "African Studies"

Browsing by Department "African Studies"

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Open Access
African solutions to African problems: An assessment of the African Union (AU)'s policy implementation for peace and security in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 2004
(2023) Yuksel, Aysegul; Bam-Hutchison, June
Despite the historical significance of states in Africa gaining political independence since the 1950s, the continent has struggled with the challenges of sustaining security and peace. African leaders, who set out with the ideals of the iconic Nkrumah's ‘Pan-Africanism' of the 1950s, as committed to in the launching of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, sought permanent solutions to problems rooted in this decolonial ideal when they founded the subsequent African Union (AU) in 2002. The stated aim of the AU was to create peace, security, and stability in Africa. Accordingly, the slogan ‘African solutions to African problems' is closely linked to Pan-Africanism as a decolonial philosophy and driving force that became a policy objective. The African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), implemented in 2002 at the founding of the AU, was established as a mechanism to obtain this objective. The AU has undertaken to take a leading role and responsibility in addressing violent conflicts in Africa as the root issue lies in the historical context that African problems are neither caused nor continued by sovereign African agencies; the point is historically, politically, and economically more complex. Hence, the stated ideal of the aphorism ‘African solutions to African problems' can only be meaningfully attained if the mechanisms to achieve peace and security are situated within sovereign African agencies and cultural political philosophies – the complexities of the global and post-colonial political and economic context notwithstanding. This mini-thesis critically engages the stated Africa-centred decolonial aspiration and approach for sovereignty and asks, therefore, to what extent the AU has succeeded in applying its sovereign agency in achieving ‘African solutions' designed for peace in the case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 2004.
Open Access
"Ah, what an age it is, when to speak of trees is almost a crime" : national landscapes and identities in the fiction of Nadine Gordimer
(2016) Middleton, Jemima; Garuba, Harry
In this study, I will explore the ways in which Nadine Gordimer engages with the natural world in three of her novels: The Conservationist (1974), July's People (1981), and No Time Like the Present (2012). I argue for the importance of the relationship in her work, between the natural landscapes of South Africa and the responsibility of the author in 'meaning-making:' this is a literary study that brings elements of postcolonial ecocriticism into play. In particular, I will explore how and why she chooses to "speak of trees" at all. Gordimer demonstrates that there is a definitive agency in the non!human world that presses against the reductive binary of 'human' versus 'natural' environments. Her fiction highlights the fact that flattening the natural world into a series of symbols is overly simplistic and does not engage sufficiently with the political: a responsibility that she takes upon herself. In this study I will be arguing that Gordimer achieves a profound political meditation by creating meaning from a variety of natural landscapes, making use of images rather than symbols. I am particularly intrigued by the ways in which Gordimer imagines the landscape as a series of sign systems, whose various shifts and changes reflect and illustrate wider systemic shifts in South Africa. In the novels that I will examine, Gordimer demonstrates, by way of physical, visceral engagement with various landscapes, that historical and contemporary systemic shifts must be taken into account in order truly to understand the complexity of national identities in her country. The image of the trees ties poetry, politics and the environment together, in particular to witness a distinctive shift in political sign systems, and the identity crises that occur as a result. In The Conservationist, Gordimer takes issue with misplaced obsessions with autochthony and heritage, whilst simultaneously investing in the lexical field of botanical names and a fine delineation of literary ecology: the novel both takes apart and preserves a sense of how the landscape can be entwined in a cultivation of identity. In my examination of July's People, I will consider the matter and poetics of the interregnum via the question of "the bush": the environment, landscape and ecosystem contained or in fact uncontained by this term are at the heart of the shift in sign systems that plays out in the novel. The bush in July's People is a heterotopia: an 'other' place that signifies many different meanings, but simultaneously signifies, in the novel, a shift in an entire system of signs. In my final chapter, on No Time Like the Present, I will be continuing to examine the 'language' of trees in Gordimer's work! particularly noting the terminology of trees and plants to signify, and add value to the study of identity and the indigenous versus the alien
Open Access
An analysis of Twitter’s role between 2012 and 2018 in contributing to the new way Black Millennials of African Ancestry produce 21st Century PanAfrican Knowledge and Social Activity
(2019) Rasool, Amira; Bam-Hutchison, June
Social media has provided new opportunities for Black millennials1 (individuals born between 1981–1996) of the diaspora and Africa to communicate, learn, build social and political movements, and curate joint identities. As a result of this group’s active use of social media over the last decade, Black millennials of African ancestry — referred to collectively in this thesis as ‘Africans’ — have become primary research subjects in the study of social media patterns. This research reveals a contemporary tendency for these Africans to engage in Pan-African social and political activities online. Twitter, in particular, has emerged as one of the most useful tools for centralizing Pan-African ideas and activities. The inclusion of Twitter in Pan-African discourses is a new phenomenon that has only narrowly been explored by scholars that analyzed the impact of Twitter on the global African community (Black Africans and Black People of African Ancestry). These works, however, have neglected to illustrate the ways in which Twitter, and most notably ‘Black Twitter’ , has aided in developing a new 21st century definition of Pan- 2 African activity and knowledge. The research explores the way millennials of African ancestry — particularly American-born Africans who have the greatest access to internet channels amongst African millennials (Nielsen 2018) — used Twitter’s technological and communicative tools between 2012 and 2018 to build and promote a more inclusive and wide-reaching PanAfrican movement that encouraged new ideologies, including new social activity, political movements, and intersectional leadership that were not previously exhibited in mainstream 20thcentury Pan-African movements.
Open Access
An exploration of the meaning of social justice for survivors of domestic violence in Zimbabwe
(2023) Zvobgo, Ellen Farisayi; Bennett, Jane
Globally, the WHO (2014: 10) estimates that one in three women experiences sexual and physical violence at the hands of their intimate partner over their lifetime. According to a Violence Against Women (VAW) Baseline study (2013: 11) in Zimbabwe- two in every three (68%) women who were interviewed reported having experienced some type of gendered violence during their lifetime. Although legislation on the prevention of domestic violence has become, globally, part of many countries' legal frameworks, Zimbabwe instantiated its Domestic Violence Act only in 2007. This came as a result of decades of feminist advocacy at state, legal, and NGO levels which theorized the rights of survivors of domestic violence, usually women as essential to Zimbabwean citizenship. These rights included criminalization of domestic violence and full access to legal processes. As in many other contexts, the weak implementation of this legislation has been widely researched, suggesting that Zimbabwean domestic abuse survivors remain vulnerable (Burton, 2008). Alongside the need for more research lies the question at the heart of this dissertation. Feminist theory has established that the vulnerability of domestic abuse survivors comprises both the legal and the social. Theorists of social justice focus on questions of recognition and redistribution (Fraser, 2008), empowerment (Kabeer, 2016) and the notion of capabilities as intrinsic to fair and equitable social systems and processes (Nussbaum, 2011). This study asks whether and how the provision of shelter space to the survivors (for which provision is made in the Domestic Violence Act) can be theorized as a form of social justice, despite the weakness of the system of courts. In carrying out the study, I worked with one particular shelter, Musasa, in Gweru, Zimbabwe, and explored the experiences of those who had worked with the shelter in multiple ways. This built what I called an “exploded view” of the representations of living and working at a specific place. The concept of “exploded view” comes from architecture and connotes a perspective able to understand different parts of a system or process separately to revise the whole. Data gathering was through in-depth interviews and involved listening to the voices of those who imagined and created the shelter and also those running it. At the centre of the study were twenty women who experienced the shelter as a space in which they lived and their voices were critical in theorising sheltering. Data were analysed using both thematic and content analysis and aimed to tease out the multiple threads of meaning through which people associated with the shelter in different ways made sense of its location and importance for tackling domestic violence in Zimbabwe. While the study is aware of its limitations as a case study, the dissertation's theorization of shelter work as social justice contributes to a feminist theorization of redress for survivors of domestic abuse in Zimbabwe.
Open Access
Archaeology education in South Africa : developing curriculum programmes in three Cape Town schools
(2002) Sealy, Emma Georgina; Siebörger, Rob; Hall, Martin
The history of educational archaeology in South Africa and the intersection of the discipline and the South African school curriculum informed the choice of the research question for this project. This question is "What happens when an archaeologist develops educational programmes and curriculum materials for schools in order that the teachers' and learners have access to the archaeological knowledge and archaeological research skills?" The following assumptions were made at the beginning of the project and it was investigated whether they were valid or not, during the research process: 1. That the curriculum materials produced for an archaeological education programme should be able to be used by teachers without the intervention of an archaeologist. 2. That the teachers could be relied on to develop assessment exercises, which would satisfactorily test whether the learners had achieved the outcomes of the particular programme. 3. That the teachers would be willing to participate as critical partners throughout the research process by providing evaluations of the educational material and the particular programme in general. Three Cape Town schools were selected to participate in the project, which follows an action research paradigm, with each programme at each school being one action research cycle. Reﬂections on each programme informed the decisions made in the following one. Educational materials were developed for each school, with the assistance of educational editors and trialled in schools with assistance of teachers. Attention was paid to lesson structure, the pitching of questions and the sources of information used. The materials and the three programmes in general were evaluated with the use of questionnaires, which comprised open-ended and direct questions, formal interviews with teachers, which were recorded and transcribed, observation of classes and detailed note taking. The knowledge and skills learners developed as a result of their participation in the programmes was assessed in a variety of ways. Personal Meaning Maps (PMMs) were used by the researcher at Schools B and C in order to develop an understanding of the breadth of the learners' knowledge and opinion on the subjects of slavery and history. The teachers designed assessment exercises in the form of creative writing essays, a comprehension test and an assessment essay. It was found that the teachers at the three schools needed guidance in order to use the curriculum materials in their classrooms for the main aim of this research project to be achieved. The teachers understood the archaeological knowledge but not the archaeological research methods that were used to produce it, because of this it was also found that the teachers could not be relied on to produce satisfactory methods of assessment. In the process of undertaking research in the three schools in question, the teachers were willing to participate as critical partners if they felt that they were well informed enough about the discipline of archaeology.
Open Access
The beach: the making & remaking of Coffee Bay (1945-2005)
(2005) Wildman, Kim
Coffee Bay, a small beach resort located in the heart of the former Transkei, is one of the current tourist ""hot spots"" on South Africa's Wild Coast. Through a detailed analysis of tourist literature spanning several decades, together with consideration of established theories regarding the 'making of place', this study examines the relationship between visual representations of Coffee Bay and the changing patterns of tourism in the seaside resort from 1945 to the present. This study traces the Coffee Bay's development over three separate periods - 1945 to 1969, 1970 to 1989, and 1990 to 2005 - during which time three different groups of tourists inhabited its space: cottage owners, hotel guests and backpackers. Despite their differences, each group sought the same thing an archetypal, mythical vision of a tourist ""paradise"". They thus inhabited and confected Coffee Bay's touristscape with their interpretations of this Utopia.
Open Access
Between consolidation, promotion and restoration : trade unions and democracy in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland
(2007) Ranchod, Rushil; Maree, Johann
This thesis critically examines the ability of trade unions to consolidate, promote and restore political democracy in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. The process of democratisation is premised on two transitions. First, is the transition from authoritarianism to democratic government, and second, is the transition from this government to the consolidation of democracy. Temporally, the focus of this dissertation is on the period after the first transition to democracy.
Open Access
Beyond the frame : a liminal space in contemporary South African photography
(2009) Hotsko, Jennifer; Shepherd, Nick; Godby, Michael
Anthropologists and ethnographers documenting the African subject – as soldiers of the colonial enterprise, dominated early practices of photography in Africa. These endeavors manufactured a visual narrative that was uniform in its approach to Africa's landscape, which largely persists in the popular imagination.In the early 1990s with the fall of apartheid and transition towards democracy, South Africa's landscape witnessed a new current in the medium of photography; photographers who had been documenting the 'struggle' were suddenly deprived of the central focus of their work. Creative artistic expression, which had been largely restricted, blossomed. This paper examines four of South Africa's 'new generation' of photographers who have seen unprecedented success both in South Africa and in the West. This paper examines whether these photographers and their images are confronting and challenging the stereotypical stock photographs that have misrepresented South Africa's landscape.
Open Access
Black women in post-apartheid South Africa, nation-building and radio: the case of Ukhozi FM
(2014) Nkosi, Lethiwe; Adams, Zuleiga
Nation-building as it relates to the notion of belonging, is a pertinent topic in post-apartheid South Africa. This is primarily because of the prevailing discourse about nation and belonging in apartheid South Africa, whereby citizenship to large sections of the population was on the basis of skin colour. In its hierarchical definition of citizenship and belonging, black women were on the bottom of the rung. This denial was reinforced through the content that was broadcast on national media. This changed with the advent of constitutional democracy. During the transition period from apartheid, the national media sought to convey messages that portrayed a nation characterised by equality and inclusivity. This minor dissertation is concerned with the extent to which the content broadcast on a radio programme engages black female listeners as citizens. It specifically focuses on the content broadcast on Jabul Ujule (Be Happy and Be Content): a programme on Ukhozi FM. By way of background, it sketches a brief history of how radio was used by both the colonial and apartheid government to 'imagine' South Africa as well as construct a particular kind of public sphere. Following upon this, the dissertation locates Ukhozi FM's history within the continuum that begins with the apartheid era and extends to the post-apartheid period and discusses the station's role during both eras, focusing more fully on the latter period. In short, this minor dissertation looks at the history of Jabul Ujule in terms of the content that was broadcast during the apartheid era in order to understand the way in which black women were and are being engaged in the post-apartheid era. Methodologically, it uses discourse analysis to analyse transcripts of the broadcasts as well as a transcript of an interview with the presenter of the programme. Lastly, this work looks at how the infusion of advertisement into the programme's content limits the extent to which the content engages its female listeners as citizens.
Open Access
Blackness as a question of freedom: racial blackness in South African emancipatory thought
(2023) Nkopo, Athinangamso; Haarhoff, Mandisa
This dissertation, using the theoretical framework of Afropessimism, discusses how Blackness is an ethico-political structure, in which the slave's natal alienation and social death establishes the resilient forms of Black (non)being. This project centrally argues against locating a theory of the production of Blackness in the socio-political relations of colonial subjugation, and instead proposes that Blackness is a structure, an ‘abstract code', that must be understood as deriving from racial slavery. This thought enterprise is explored in relation to South African histories of slavery to re-claim the concept of “social death” as inaugurating the structure of Blackness in Southern Africa. By suggesting how it is the absolute negation of the Black slave that creates the conditions for the possibility of the political, ethical, and civil subject – indeed, the very possibility of the Human, this study presents a discussion on how Black studies requires both a temporal and geographical reconstruction in understanding – firstly by extending much further ‘back' than the moment of South African colonialism, and secondly, by expanding the geographies of Blackness beyond European colonial rule. Furthermore, this study explores and exposes the limits of several major South African forms of political and philosophical thought and campaigns for Black emancipation: feminism, liberalism, Marxism, and Black Consciousness. An exploration which serves to highlight how the existing historiography of South Africa has disarticulated the conceptual significance of racial slavery to the making of Blackness in a way that locates it specifically in social death, with all its implications for Black (non)being. While recognizing that the political structure of Blackness precedes or cannot be located in the mechanics of South African colonial settlements, this dissertation exposes the limits and failures of a civil politics of Blackness in both national liberation and ‘progressive' struggles.
Open Access
Border thinking and the modern Plaasroman: a study of three novels
(2021) Winfield, Matthew; Garuba, Harry; Chitonge, Horman
In Afrikaans literature, the farm concept has a history of entanglement with ideals that are racist and nationalist. The early plaasroman (farm novel in Afrikaans) subgenre was a product of the 1920s and the 1930s, a period when Afrikaner nationalism was incipient. Later farm novelists brought new energy to the plaasroman during the second half of the twentieth century. In the modern plaasroman subgenre, challenges to racist-nationalist ideals are exhibited, along with ideals of the early plaasroman. The following study is an attempt to gauge whether, and the extent to which, three modern plaasromans are an expression of border thinking. These novels are Etienne Leroux's Seven Days at the Silbersteins, Etienne van Heerden's Ancestral Voices and Nadine Gordimer's The Conservationist. The paradigm of border thinking is chosen due to the similarities between its objectives, on the one hand, and the critical stance of the modern plaasroman, on the other hand. Both border thinking and the modern plaasroman can be described as a response to racial injustice and inequality. For this reason, it would seem that a study of modern plaasromans is well-suited as a context for the application of border thinking. Given that previous studies addressed challenges by modern plaasromans to racist and nationalist ideals, moreover, a study that deploys border thinking (focusing on racial injustice) is considered to be a valuable critical contribution. In order to determine whether these three novels are expressions of border thinking, this study first formulates three templates of ‘literary border thinking' (border thinking that is expressed in literature). Criteria that are derived from these templates are then used to determine whether, and the extent to which, these novels represent literary border thinking.
Open Access
Can intangibles be tangible? : safeguarding intangible heritage in the new South Africa : towards formulating policy for the conservation and sustainable management for living heritage
(2007) Manetsi, Thabo; Shepherd, Nick
This dissertation takes its lead from ongoing research associated with the process of formulating policy and developing instruments for safeguarding living heritage or intangible heritage as it is commonly known. In the absence of a national policy and management guidelines for the conservation and sustainable management of living heritage, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) has initiated a process of formulating minimum standards and guidelines for the· protection of intangible elements of heritage associated with tangible heritage resources (objects and sites). In terms of the National Heritage Resources Act (NHRA) of 1999, SAHRA has a mandate to manage heritage resources to which oral tradition or living heritage is attached. Being the designated head of the living heritage unit at SAHRA, I have the responsibility to ensure the proper conservation and management of living heritage. As such I have been charged with a number of key responsibilities such as formulating policy and developing management guidelines for living heritage. As part of the process toward developing policy, a major facet of this research project reviews and draws a comparative analysis of existing heritage legislation, legal instruments and best practices in the world that may be useful in the South African context. Drawing from the review and comparative study process, this dissertation also seeks to identify and define key management issues for safeguarding aspects of intangible heritage. The outcome of the literature review stimulates a critical discussion about the findings which explore the challenges and opportunities related to the strengths and weakness of existing heritage policies and management guidelines for the protection of intangible elements of heritage resources. This eventually informs the conclusion and recommendations which provides not only a summary of closing remarks but also suggests a way forward regarding appropriate measures to be adopted for safeguarding living heritage. In this way, this project takes the form of research and policy recommendations, premised on a real-world situation in which I am personally responsible for guiding national policy on the issue at stake.
Open Access
Carefully hidden away: excavating the archive of the Mapungubwe dead and their possessions
(2013) Kashe-Katya, Xolelwa; Hamilton, Carolyn; Shepherd, Nick
Ever since Jerry Van Graan first stumbled upon golden artefacts in 1933, Mapungubwe - an Iron Age civilisation that existed in the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers between 900 and 1300 AD - has been the subject of contestation. Initially knowledge production about Mapungubwe was informed by the need to make a case for the late arrival of Bantu-speaking people in Southern Africa ? a now discredited theory used to justify the subjugation of Africans. In the post-apartheid era, Mapungubwe became a focal point for a new form of myth-building: the myth of liberation and a romantic past but, in my view, with a neo-liberal bias. In this dissertation I interrogate the role played by the disciplines of archaeology and physical anthropology in the political contestation that has surrounded Mapungubwe, focusing on the production of knowledge. I do this by investigating the claim that Mapungubwe was shrouded or hidden away. In particular, I ask: What happens when disciplinary workings, in the course of knowledge production, construe an archive? What do museums, archives and other memory institutions hide and what do they reveal? What gets acknowledged as archive and what is disregarded? How is this knowledge presented in the public domain over time? Lastly, what happens when the archive is construed differently? My interrogation lays bare the continued discomfort and improvisation that prevails among those disciplines or institutions that engage with Mapungubwe. I have chosen to organise the core chapters of the thesis according to specific timeframes: before apartheid, during apartheid and after apartheid. This is done to demonstrate how archaeology, claimed as a science, was a powerful strategy deployed to exchange the messiness for the "true" knowledge of the past. The research on Mapungubwe, by way of the Greefswald Archaeological Project, was the most prolonged research project in the history of South Africa. Its four research phases, which began in 1933 and ended in 2000, mutated as the broader political landscape shifted. As a result, everything that can possibly play itself out in broader post-apartheid South Africa is present in Mapungubwe: contested claims, racial history, land dispossession, apartheid and the military, repatriation, post-apartheid claims, nationalism, pan-Africanism, ethnicity and more. This thesis demonstrates how the disciplinary practices of archaeology were instrumental in keeping Mapungubwe shrouded. An example of this "shrouding" is the deployment of highly technical language in writing about Mapungubwe. Before the end of apartheid, this epistemic hiding offered a convenient retreat for the discipline, to avoid engaging with issues facing South African society at large. This placed the discipline in a position of power, a position of "truth" and "objectivity". All inconvenient forms of knowledge were simply disregarded or silenced through choices, made by powerful institutions and individuals, about what was worthy of being archived. However, when the archive is differently construed, a different picture emerges.
Open Access
Changing the lens of stigma : an exploration of disclosure in self-portraits by South Africans living with HIV in the Through Positive Eyes Arts Initiative.
(2012) Ress, Hanni Eran; Thomas, Kylie
This thesis analyses a collaborative arts initiative, Through Positive Eyes South Africa. The thesis focuses on how photography and personal narrative can contribute to changing the lens through which HIV-positive individuals see themselves and the way they are perceived while also problematising the complexities around disclosure and containment in the face of stigma. There are many projects that have sought to alter the dominant lens of stigma around HIV/AIDS in South Africa but the Through Positive Eyes initiative is unique in its process of self-documentation as the group openly confronts the complexities of living with HIV/AIDS. The thesis shows that challenging stigma through art is not as simple as the claim first appears; in fact, it emerges that even in giving full agency to the participants, the boundaries between the private therapeutic process and the public visual encounter are themselves intertwined and blurred by stigma.
Open Access
The Community of Steinkopf : an stenographic study and an analysis of social °hangs in Namaqualand
(1961) Carstens, WP
This thesis consists mainly of an analysis of the social structure of a small community of rural Coloured people who live on a reserve surrounding the old mission station, Steinkopf, in the North-Western Cape Province. It has been written primarily as an ethnographic study of one of the constituent communities of a composite society, the Republic of South Africa, although a chapter has been devoted to the comparison of Steinkopf with the four other reserves in the Namaqualand district. I have attempted also to desscribe and analyse certain of the processes of social change in the North-Western Cape with particular reference to these Coloured Reserves.
Open Access
Constructing social reality in conversation : a generic and transitivity analysis of life history texts
(2003) Rowe, Joy
Language is a primary medium through which members of society construct a social reality in which they may meaningfully conduct day-to-day lives. The choices speakers make in language encode experiences and notions of the world in particular ways but may be constrained by context. In this study, I analyze the life history interviews of two gay black HIV-positive South African men to explore how speakers use contextually-available linguistic resources to negotiate meaning. Linguistic resources of speech genre, story type, and transitivity offer structural options to speakers but also introduce constraints. Using Fairclough's Foucauldian conception of 'orders of discourse', I establish that life history interviews are a unique hybrid of genre types that draw on conventions of casual conversation and interview genres, providing speakers with new resources for articulating their social world. Generic analysis, incorporating insights from Fairclough (1995), Eggins and Slade (1997), and systemic functionalism, is used to examine the story types that speakers may draw upon to structure their experiences. Given structural and functional constraints within story types, I look at the transitivity choices that speakers make to represent their social realities. Transitivity analysis, also based on systemic functionalism, is used to investigate choices of process (verbs) and their associated participants (nouns) that encode speakers' experiential meanings. The purpose of this study is threefold: to establish that the genre of life history interviews offers speakers opportunities to negotiate power relations and influence genre conventions; to demonstrate that generic analysis may be usefully applied to oral texts to understand speakers' deeper systems of life order; and to describe through generic and transitivity analysis the individual social realities of two gay HIV -positive men. Results include a structural analysis of life history interviews, a structural argument for including Observation and Reminiscence texts within the 'story' typology, and an in-depth analysis of two unrepresented voices of South Africa's HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Open Access
Contestations and conflicts over land access between smallholder settler farmers and nomadic Fulani cattle herdsmen in the Kwahu Afram Plains South District, Ghana
(2022) Otu, Bernard Okoampah; Chitonge, Horman
The study examines the contestations and conflicts over land access between smallholder settler farmers and nomadic cattle herders in the Kwahu Afram Plains South District. Current studies on the farmer-herder conflict in Ghana have emphasised the conflict between indigenous farmers and nomadic herders. This study has contributed to existing knowledge by highlighting the conflict between two migrant groups. As migrants, both settler farmers and nomadic herders are renting land and, in the process, come into conflict. The tension in the area is that both migrant groups have no ownership of land, which exposes their vulnerability to the landowners in the sense that they have no firm land rights. The study's main objective is to examine the root causes of the conflict between crop farmers and nomadic herders in the case study area of the Afram Plains. The environmental scarcity and political ecology theories were utilised to analyse the conflict in the study area. The study adopted the qualitative approach with the purposive and snowball sampling methods used to select participants for the research. The study's findings reveal that increasing land scarcity due to population growth, climate-induced migration, and large-scale land acquisition is a major cause of the land conflict. The study further reveals that, aside from the core issues leading to land scarcity, what instantly ignites conflict between farmers and herders includes crop destruction, burning of grasses, and alleged vices perpetrated by the herders. The findings of the study also reveal that the mitigation measures put in place to address the conflict have been ineffective because of corruption, poor land governance, and greedy chiefs. The study concludes that the farmer-herder conflict is complex and needs to be examined from diverse perspectives to appreciate the nuances of the conflict.
Open Access
Culture, gender and patriarchy : a study of sixteen female teachers in gender specific schools of Lesotho
(2005) Monyane, Temelo; Field, Sean
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-109).
Open Access
Decolonial Daydreams │Taba Aiboli An exploration of the construction of female power Amongst the Lozi people
(2020) Matakala, Chaze; Clarke, Yaliwe
This thesis offers an exploration of the construction of female power amongst the Lozi people of the western province of Zambia, also known as Barotseland. Colonial empirical texts, contemporary literature on Lozi social history, heritage and public culture gloss over the matriarchal roots of Lozi society, leading to the collective, individual and intellectual imperative of this study. Insights necessary for engagement point to the dynamic role of gender in the origin, enactment and preservation of the Lozi royal kinship structure. Building on existing work on the origins of the Lozi royal kinship and the shifts of power through the (post)colonial political periods, the main objective of this research project is to conduct qualitative research into the dynamic role of gender in Lozi society. Data was based on a review of literature on the Lozi people and semi-structured interviews with nine Key Informants in Barotseland who bear embodied knowledge on the ideology of the Lozi royal kinship structure and the sociocultural systems apparent in Lozi society. A qualitative thematic network data analysis demonstrated political motherhood as a mechanism to act as a balancing check on the patrilineal system. The cross-cutting theme of political motherhood across generations and gender is manifested in the roles of Natamoyo and Mukwae Ngula, who are the respective male and female Ministers of Justice. In addition to these roles which emerge from an operative ethic of communalism are the council of women known as Anatambumu. The findings of this research indicate that there are cohesive interacting sociocultural systems that are focused on the mother figure (matrifocal) and also endorsing descent through the male line (patrilineal). Moreover, analysis of the responses shows that there is a strong correlation between the physical geography of Barotseland and the divine ancestresses, Mbuyu and her mother Mwambwa. On this basis it is recommend that the effects of the integration of Barotseland into the postcolonial state of Zambia be studied further, especially as it pertains to political motherhood, marriage and systems of descent amongst the Lozi.
Open Access
Deconstructing “de/colonised knowledge” in South Africa: the case of radical academic history under apartheid (1960-1991)
(2022) Martinerie, Camille; Bam-Hutchison, June; Teulié, Gilles
This thesis explores the inherent complexities and contradictions embedded in the radical turn in South African historiography with regards to the decolonisation of the discipline of history in South African universities under apartheid from 1960 to 1991. By choosing to deconstruct radical history in a white liberal university, the study seeks to further demonstrate the limits of intellectual decolonisation and its underlying assumptions in the academic field during apartheid. It interrogates radical history as a form of academic resistance and leads a reflection on the political role of the intellectual in the context of the anti-apartheid struggle, asking more broadly: to what extent can radical academic history be considered “de/colonised knowledge”? Building on the links between ideology and curriculum, this study aimed to measure the coloniality of history using history examination questions as tools to investigate the methodological, theoretical and ideological assumptions of historians. Theoretically, the study relied on the role of the historian as a recontextualising agent of disciplinary knowledge taught and examined within a historically white higher education institution to study its concomitant underlying historiographical silences at the time. Methodologically, it deployed quantitative and qualitative research methods, using interviews and semi-structured questionnaires with a targeted cohort of authentic interlocutors to triangulate the discursive analysis of institutionalised “de/colonised” historical knowledge. This interdisciplinary study was thus inscribed in a critical deconstructionist approach to knowledge which contributed to a finer conceptual and empirical understanding of the coloniality of history as a discipline and its reproduction in the South African higher education context. The study hopes (1) to contribute to understanding the nuanced intersections between the history of intellectual colonisation and decolonisation and how these tensions impacted on history education in the apartheid university, (2) to provide an original interdisciplinary mixed method of analysis of institutionalised “de/colonised knowledge”, and (3) to contribute new critical insights into blind spots in South African radical historiography in higher education during the period 1960 to 1991, which could shed light on the various understandings of the imperative for decolonisation today in the discipline.