Browsing by Department "Intercultural and Diversity Studies of Southern Africa (iNCUDISA)"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    "Because the country says they have to change" : an analysis of a diversity intervention in a South African Police Service (SAPS) station
    (2011-12) Faull, Andrew
    This resource will be of value to scholars of transformation in South African organisations. The shift from apartheid to a constitutional democracy in South Africa brought with it a plethora of questions concerning ideas of nationhood, citizenship, and organisational transformation. Integrally caught up in the revolution, the South African Police Service (SAPS) faces transformative challenges on scales far larger than most other organisations in the country. From being the strong arm of the oppressive elite, it has had to restructure and re-articulate its function while simultaneously attempting to maintain law and order. Like many other corporations and organisations, the SAPS has engaged in interventions aimed at aiding the fluidity of this process. This report is an analysis of one such intervention. It attempts to ascertain the extent to which members are changing as a result of particular diversity workshops conducted in a region of the Western Cape. The analysis focuses on members at one particular station.
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    Community healing in BonteLanga : a space for social healing and reconciliation
    (2008) Ankersen, Imke Kristin; Steyn, Melissa
    The South Africa of today remains a largely divided society in which people of racialised groups often still regard one another with suspicion. This is not only a case of black and white since racially inflected attitudes and perceptions are just as rife amongst segments of the coloured and black community. This holds particularly true where resources are as scarce as in the townships of Cape Town's Cape Flats. The 'Community Healing Project' facilitated by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) uses dialogue and debate as main tools in a community-level reconciliation project between Langa, a black African township, and Bonteheuwel, a coloured township. Using the IJR's intetTention as a case study, this thesis deals with community dialogue as a means of correcting misconceptions and promoting attitudinal change. The aim of the study is to assess the impact of the intervention on some participants and its importance for the prevention of future conflict. The thesis draws on various disciplines to provide a theoretical framework for community dialogue interventions. Participant observation, indepth interviews as well as a critical discourse analysis of two IJR publications are then employed to identify and discuss some of the practical challenges as experienced in the implementation of the project. The analysis of the semi-structured in-depth interviews is centred on four distinct but closely interconnected themes. The analysis of the data suggests that despite some frustrations the community intervention has impacted significantly on participants' lives and the relations between the two communities and the IJR's approach proves meaningful for the participants. Includes bibliographical references (pages 77-87).
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    Diversity intervention for health educators : a detailed description of diversity workshops with health educators at UCT
    (2011-12) Ismail, Salma; Steyn, Melissa
    This report is of value to scholars of organisational transformation in post-apartheid South African organisations. Also, diversity practitioners who work in the context of higher education will find this report to be of interest. The diversity workshops were held with academic staff who supervise fourth year medical students' research and health promotion projects in the Public and Primary Health Care Department at the University of Cape Town. These include staff who are site facilitators, lecturers and registrars in the Health Science Faculty. Many of them, except for the site facilitators, who mainly supervise the health promotion projects, have had no training in teaching methodology or educational theory. Therefore, the emphasis of the training was on the supervision of the research (Epidemiology) projects. The supervisors were facing complex challenges in establishing new ways of teaching to support the changing learning environment - small group learning in institutional and community settings, and the increasing diversity of the student body. To enable staff to respond to these challenges an Adult Educator from the Centre of Higher Education and Development was asked to run workshops with staff in which diversity is made an explicit presence in the learning process. This report documents the process of the workshop implementation.
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    Human rights, disability, and higher education : conference held at UCT Middle Campus, Cape Town from 25 to 26 January 2003
    (University of Cape Town. Intercultural and Diversity Studies of Southern Africa (iNCUDISA), 2014-09-19) University of Cape Town. Intercultural and Diversity Studies of Southern Africa (iNCUDISA); Van Zyl, Mikki
    This report will be of value to Disability Studies scholars, educational theorists and researchers, as well as those interested in the construction of disability within the context of transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. Over the past three decades, the discipline of Disability Studies has emerged as an independent field within the social science research and theoretical arena. Questions surrounding the nature and origin of (oppressive) societal responses to impairment - ranging from service installations to bureaucratic policies, linguistic conventions to exclusionary practices - are the primary concern of the field. Disability Studies attempts to examine and debunk the 'disabled' identity as one ascribed to individuals arbitrarily, yet selectively designated as disabled. Broadly, key theoretical positions within the field assert that the negatively valued and ascribed group identity of being 'disabled' is one which serves, through the operation of complex ideological machinery, to justify and obscure the systematic exclusion of persons so designated from equitable participation in the production of culture. This study looks at dynamics of human rights and disability within higher education institutions from this perspective.
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    "Like that statue at Jammie stairs" : some student perceptions and experiences of institutional culture at the University of Cape Town in 1999
    (2011-12) Steyn, Melissa; Van Zyl, Mikki
    This report is of value to those studying institutional culture in post-apartheid South Africa, and dynamics of transformation at South African institutions of higher learning. In this project, students spoke out about their experiences at UCT. In particular they describe how they perceived the university and the other students, and how their experiences impacted upon their academic performance and general well-being while attending UCT. In the study, the authors consulted a variety of policy documents and publicity materials from UCT. The authors then held 19 workshops with focus groups of students. Five were mixed while fourteen were purposive in that certain designated students, such as black student,s foreign students, women, etc. were targeted. The initiator of the study conducted ten of the focus groups, but for the others peer facilitators were used. From the findings it is clear that in students' experiences 'whiteness' still largely characterises the institutional culture. Many black students and some white students described incidents of overt racism against black academic staff and students. This report documents suggestions made by students, and also puts forward some recommendations. It is hoped that these will be received in the spirit in which the research was undertaken, namely to be helpful to UCT as it continues along the road of transformation. This report provides a forum in which diverse students voices are collated and reflected, on behalf of the students and committed educators, and for the continuance of outstanding education at UCT.
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    Networks of accountability: HIV/AIDS action research in action on Western Cape farms
    (2011-12) Van Zyl, Mikki
    This case study will be of value to researchers using action research as a methodology. The case study will also be of interest to those studying and researching HIV/AIDS in rural South African contexts. During 2005 Mikki van Zyl was contracted as a consultant to do action research on farm dwellers perceptions and experiences of HIV/AIDS in two districts of the Western Cape, South Africa. The research project was the first step in a provisional three - year process to develop and implement integrated strategic interventions for addressing HIV/AIDS on farms through multi-stake holder forums in the two districts. Employing a team of community researchers working in local run NGOs on HIV/AIDS we used individual interviews, focus groups, case studies, researcher field notes, evaluations and workshops for our dataset. The research process is presented as a case study - focusing on the context, dynamics and challenges in conducting the research and preparing the groundwork for setting up the stakeholder forums.
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    Not naming race : some medical students' perceptions and experiences of 'race' and racism at the Health Sciences faculty of the University of Cape Town
    (2011-12) Erasmus, Zimitri; De Wet, Jacques
    This report will be of value to those studying and researching transformation in higher education in post-apartheid South Africa. Over the past few years the Faculty of Health Sciences at UCT embarked upon a series of transformation processes. Despite these efforts, students at Medical School continue to lodge complaints about racist practices on the part of staff at the School and to claim such practices undermine their learning and academic performance. Following some complaints lodged early in 2001, the Dean of the Faculty convened a meeting where a study was commissioned to provide a scan of issues to inform terms of reference for a panel to be tasked with an in-depth evaluation of processes of transformation at Medical School. These issues are specifically related to students' experiences and perceptions of 'race' and racism.
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    The "O" Report
    (2011-12) Kelly, Claire
    This report will be of value to those studying human resource management, and those who wish to learn more about transformation within post-apartheid South African organisations. This case study is one of ten case studies being conducted as part of a larger research project on Diversity and Equity Interventions in South Africa (DEISA). The aim of the research is to develop codes of good practice around diversity work in South African organisations. The organisation (0) was approached by iNCUDISA to take part in a case study. O is a small ingredient manufacturing concern based in Cape Town. At the time of the research they employed 232 people. An HR consultant was employed five years ago to implement an EE plan. Part of the implementation of this plan involved the establishment of an Employment Equity Committee. The EEC also took on the mandate of training, making it the Employment Equity and Training Committee. The HR manager named the EETC as the diversity intervention in this case. As the focus of the research was on good practice it was important that the HR manager judge this intervention to be successful Although he/she admitted that there were areas of difficulty, the intervention was judged as a success overall. The aim of this research was to investigate the effects that this intervention had had on the organisation.