A socio-cultural community survey of the township Nyanga

Dludla, Mduduzi Elias

A socio-cultural community survey of the township Nyanga

Master Thesis

1983

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Social Development

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

The author wished to study a community and chose Nyanga, a Black township near Cape Town. As a student from Zululand he was at first a stranger to Nyanga, but learned something about it from direct observation. He then decided that his study should use the Method of Survey, that the sur- vey should be socio-cultural, and that it should provisionally be a survey of Nyanga as a community. He believed that whether a township like Nyanga ought to be called a community or a new kind of neighbourhood was an uncertain question on which his research might shed some light. The author did not intend to add to his research a full study of the history and geography of Nyanga. That would be out of the question for a single research student. But he studied its situation to decide the geographical boundaries of his survey and read enough of its history to understand how its people came to be living there. Using established community survey methods, the author determined the scope, dwelling units, sampling technique, interviewing techniques, and procedures for editing, coding, and tabulating his field data. The formal work in the field began with a Pilot Survey in 1980 and was completed with approximately 200 household interviews in the summer of 1980-1981. Bus and school boycotts and serious unrest on the Cape Flats added to the difficulties of the field work, which was nevertheless persevered in and accomplished according to the research design. The household investigations were concluded with the aid of a 22-item field schedule comprising the open-ended questions and other questions listed on page 42 of the dissertation. Thinking mainly in Zulu, the author initially found interviewing in Xhosa somewhat difficult, and the translation of his records into English was also a complication. With much help from the people of Nyanga, from his Xhosa-speaking wife, and with guidance in supervision at the University, these difficulties were surmounted. The data were hand-tabulated by the author rather than having that work performed through a computer service, for detailed scrutiny of the data at every stage and for self- education. The results of the simple classifications are reported in Chapter 6 and a series of 45 bivariate frequency distributions is presented in Chapter 7 and commented upon in Chapters 7 and 8. The author's conclusions are summed up in Chapter 8, in terms of the relative proportions of key opinions expressed, the very pronounced majority opinions, the possible significance of minority opinions, and the status of Nyanga as a community in the light of six criteria from P.V. Young.

Description

Bibliography: leaf 124-126.

Keywords

Social Service

Reference:

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