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Journal articles on the topic 'Personal narratives, South African'
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1
Stephens, David. "RECONCEPTUALISING THE ROLE OF NARRATIVE IN EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA: LESSONS FROM THE FIELD." International Journal of Educational Development in Africa 1, no. 1 (October 14, 2014): 19–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/2312-3540/3.
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There has been a major ‘turn’ towards narrative, biographical and life history approaches in the academy over the last 30 years. But whereas some significant narrative research has been carried out in the West, such approaches are in their infancy on the African continent. This article explores narrative at three levels from the influence of Western meta narratives to the national and more personal narratives of teachers and students. Drawing on two periods of narrative field work in Ghana and South Africa, the article concludes with a discussion of three important lessons to be learnt from the field: that the relationship between ‘grand’ hegemonic narratives and individual life histories needs to be re-thought; that context and culture provide the hermeneutic ‘glue’ that provides meaning to the field narratives; and that narrative research can provide alternative sources of evidence for policymakers.
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Angu, Pineteh E., and Thecla Ngwi Mulu. "The Changing Material Conditions of Cameroonian Migrants in South Africa: What does this say about an “Afrophobic†post-apartheid State?" African Human Mobility Review 6, no. 2 (April 23, 2021): 130–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.14426/ahmr.v6i2.803.
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Violent attacks on African migrants have produced a richer body of knowledge on African transnational migration, xenophobia/Afrophobia, and their intersections with questions of citizenship and autochthony, especially in a country that historically has always been a home for African migrants. Constellations of narratives now vilify South Africa as a demonic state whose hatred of Africans and fixation on exorcising them have short-circuited the process of nation-building. The vilification of South Africa also tells us that many researchers, scholars, and even migrants are unaware of the ways that the country has transformed the lives of its increasing African migrant population. This article reflects on the changing material conditions of Cameroonians in South Africa to understand why this “Afrophobic†state is still a key migration destination for Cameroonians. Drawing on personal exilic experiences, observations, and relevant literature, we argue that despite the victimization of Africans, including Cameroonians, this constitutional democracy has opened up political, economic and sociocultural opportunities for many Cameroonians residing permanently in the country. In forging this argument, the article interrogates the political landscape in Cameroon and examines key economic and sociocultural moments/activities in South Africa as well as accomplishments in this migrant community, to elicit how access to different opportunities in South Africa has significantly transformed the lives of Cameroonians.
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Rudakoff, Judith. "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow: White-Female-Canadian Dramaturge in Cape Town." TDR/The Drama Review 48, no. 1 (March 2004): 126–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/105420404772990745.
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In post-apartheid South Africa, economic inequity between the races, street violence, rivalries between the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party, and the AIDS pandemic continue to vex the nation. In this context, the larger narratives of apartheid and colonialism are joined by personal narratives of individual discovery. The result is theatre that is finding new forms, performance situations, and audiences.
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Ndlovu, Isaac. "Inside out: Gender, individualism, and representations of the contemporary South African prison." Journal of Commonwealth Literature 54, no. 3 (August 24, 2017): 399–412. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0021989417726107.
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This article examines A Human Being Died that Night: A Story of Forgiveness by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela and Red Ink by Angela Makholwa, which are, respectively, auto/biographical and fictional narrative representations of the contemporary South African prison. Both narratives foreground gender because their female authors consciously posit their own femininity, in the case of Gobodo-Madikizela, and of her protagonist, in the case of Makholwa, as significant to the prison they portray. Although the way non-fiction and fiction operate cannot be conflated, Makholwa’s novel seems to mirror the structure of Gobodo-Madikizela’s auto/biography in obvious ways; an observation that helps justify why I analytically compare these narratives in this article. Most apartheid prison narratives, by authors of all genders, largely adopted an unambiguously political frame in articulating the subject positions of characters. The personal was deliberately subsumed in what appeared to be an urgent political need to dismantle the oppressive apartheid system. By contrast, there is a clear shift to the individualization of the prisoner at the expense of politicized collectivity in the selected narratives. However, my reading seeks to demonstrate that the ostensibly apolitical stance adopted by Makholwa and the personal and psychological approach taken by Gobodo-Madikizela are in fact deeply political and community-engaged processes.
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Healy-Clancy, Meghan. "The Politics of New African Marriage in Segregationist South Africa." African Studies Review 57, no. 2 (August 18, 2014): 7–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/asr.2014.45.
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Abstract:For the mission-educated men and women known as “New Africans” in segregationist South Africa, the pleasures and challenges of courtship and marriage were not only experienced privately. New Africans also broadcast marital narratives as political discourses of race-making and nation-building. Through close readings of neglected press sources and memoirs, this article examines this political interpolation of private life in public culture. Women’s writing about the politics of marriage provides a lens onto theorizations of their personal and political ideals in the 1930s and 1940s, a period in which the role of women in nationalist public culture has generally been dismissed as marginal by scholars.
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Anthonissen, Christine. "Autobiographical Narrative of Traumatic Experience: Disruption and Resilience in South African Truth Commission Testimonies." Applied Linguistics 41, no. 3 (March 12, 2020): 370–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/amaa010.
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Abstract Following a suggestion by Crosthwaite (2005) that autobiographical narratives can be viewed as organizational practices, this article turns attention to events of recalling and articulating personal histories of trauma produced during and after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings of 1996–8. Witness testimonies at the TRC were institutionally framed to fit the aims of national reconciliation in ways that may have limited the kinds of contribution witnesses unfamiliar with the institutional structure could make. Discourses recorded at the human rights violations hearings of the TRC give evidence of speakers recalling traumatic events of state violence that disrupted their lives and displaced them both physically and psychologically. This article considers how traumatic experience poses challenges to the coherence of autobiographical narrative as well as how narrative structures that do not fit institutionally introduced formats can become opaque to the institutional setting. It will also reflect on how the Truth Commission narrations of trauma carry linguistic and cultural cues that signal not only disruption but also the resilience of the narrator.
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Rapmund, Val, and Cora Moore. "Enhancing Learners' Personal Resources through Narrative: Embracing Diversity." South African Journal of Psychology 32, no. 4 (December 2002): 22–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/008124630203200403.
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A shift is proposed from the traditional ‘deficit approach’ towards a ‘strengths approach’ in learner support in the South African context. The Student Self-Empowerment and Enrichment Programme serves as an example of a strengths approach in which diversity is embraced, and where facilitators and students are engaged in the process of making new meaning in conversation with one another. The narrative research approach is followed and narrative analysis is the method adopted for the interpretations. The following themes were identified as important in enhancing learners' personal resources: Benefiting from the sharing of information and experiences; The role of different backgrounds in seeking connection; The facilitator-participant relationship; Responsibilities; Communication skills; Change; Personal problems; Strengths reflected in the narratives. The results bear evidence of the impact of the programme, and the benefit of replacing traditional methods of teaching with more egalitarian and participatory methods. Embracing diversity benefits facilitators and learners alike, and contributes to the richness of life stories and the ability to function in new ways.
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De Medeiros, Kate, and Gwendolyn Etter-Lewis. "“Place” in the Small Stories of African American Elders: A Narrative Case Study." Gerontologist 60, no. 5 (August 31, 2019): 821–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnz122.
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Abstract Background and Objectives Although there is a rich literature on place and home within gerontology, few studies have considered how place acts as identity markers for older African Americans. Since narratives and stories represent ways of expressing self and identity through ordered talk, they offer an interesting way to consider how people age biographically such as through links between place and self. Research Design and Methods We analyzed small stories (i.e., stories that can appear as snippets of talk immersed within a larger narrative) from five African Americans (three women, two men, ages 78–93 years) to better understand “place” in the context of their lives. Results Overall, place in participants’ small stories was linked to the African American oral tradition and, for some, the Great Migration (1915–1970) from south to north. Place identity in the small stories therefore went beyond fond reminisce and instead became a type of resistance to dominant narratives of place. Discussion and Implications Studying small stories can therefore be an important tool in better understanding deeply personal experiences of place for under-represented elders.
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Ulanova, Natalya S. "Russian aircrews in Africa (eyewitness narrative accounts)." Asia and Africa Today, no. 7 (2021): 69. http://dx.doi.org/10.31857/s032150750013880-0.
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The last decade of the 20th century saw another boom in the supply of Soviet-made civil aircraft to the countries of Africa. Hundreds of highly qualified aviation specialists from all post-Soviet states were involved in its operation and maintenance. Market relations, new for many of them, the aggressive way of doing business on the part of entrepreneurs, as well as the complicated military and political situation in some regions, have led to the formation of a certain type of business and personal relationships. Lessons learned over the thirty years of work in special economic and socio-cultural conditions are still actual. Nevertheless, this aspect of Russia-Africa relations remains one of the least studied. Analysis of the narratives of the eyewitnesses - pilots, flight engineers, translators - is still the only way to know more about some hallmarks of the African aviation market, which still has a significant shadow segment. For this study the narratives of a Russian flight engineer who has worked as a flight crew member in various African countries for more than ten years were collected. The recollections presented relate to the first organized trip to South Africa and Mozambique in 1992, and to the later period of private contract work in Angola and Rwanda, and are interesting because they trace the formation of psychological and ethnocultural aspects of business and personal contacts with the employers, local residents and co-workers.
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Kelly, Jane F., and Catherine L. Ward. "Narratives of Gang Disengagement Among Former Gang Members in South Africa." Criminal Justice and Behavior 47, no. 11 (August 12, 2020): 1509–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0093854820949603.
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Understanding gang disengagement is important for the development of effective interventions. This research sought to examine how former South African gang members understand their gang disengagement. Two rounds of life history interviews were conducted with 12 former gang members. Thematic narrative analysis was used to analyze the interview data. Findings revealed that personal agency was key to the participants’ disengagement, which included forming a purposive intention to change, committing to and maintaining this change, despite challenges faced, and taking personal responsibility for their pasts. It also involved actively drawing on protective resources—such as meaningful and practical support from loved ones—and prosocial identities available to them within their environments, thus illustrating how the disengagement process is an interaction between inner and outer resources. Therefore, it is imperative that gang-related interventions ensure that individuals have access to the kinds of resources that will support their disengagement.
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Soldati-Kahimbaara, Kulukazi. "Parental ‘coming out’: The journeys of black South African mothers through their personal narratives." South African Review of Sociology 47, no. 3 (July 2, 2016): 110–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21528586.2016.1182443.
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Marsh, Tyson E. J., and Christopher B. Knaus. "Fostering Movements or Silencing Voices: Learning from Egypt and South Africa, Leading Against Racism." International Journal of Multicultural Education 17, no. 1 (January 28, 2015): 188. http://dx.doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v17i1.969.
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In this paper, we examine the role of educational leadership in promoting and/or challenging racism as an intentional outcome of schooling. We focus on Egypt and South Africa, two countries uniquely framed as both deeply divided (by race, religion, and/or class) and as models of resistance and conscious activism. We draw upon experiences working as, or with, school principals in South Africa and Egypt to reveal how the context of education is negatively shaped by schooling practices that foster race and class-based inequalities. Using personal narratives of school principals, we situate educational leadership as core to understanding how Western educational reforms are structured, conceived and enacted within Egyptian and South African contexts. This analysis sheds light on how educational inequalities are reinforced and justified by contexts of educational leadership and how efforts to resist are institutionally silenced.
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Cuthbertson, Greg, and Louise Kretzschmar. "‘I don’t sing for people who do not see me’: Women, Gender and the Historiography of Christianity in South Africa." Studies in Church History 34 (1998): 487–507. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400013838.
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One of the cultural features of South Africa’s new democracy is the prolific publication of autobiographical narratives by previously marginalized people. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has also focused attention on the plight of oppressed groups under apartheid, and many of the voices being heard are those of women. These personal accounts are breathing life into the sinews of organized political protest and – to mix metaphors – unearthing the ‘hidden past’ interred in apartheid history. As Alison Goebel also reminds us, life histories or personal narratives have long been identified as ‘an ideal feminist method’, and have frequently been used in work about African women.
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Currie, Mark T. S. "The ‘Other’ Here and the ‘Other’ There:." Cultural and Pedagogical Inquiry 12, no. 2 (April 24, 2021): 27–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.18733/cpi29577.
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Through examining key family narratives and selected personal experiences in this article, I reflect on how I began to rethink and (re)frame the representation of my racialized and (trans)national identities as a hyphenated, South African-Canadian citizen. The article summarizes my experiences of visiting Cape Town, South Africa (for the first time), when I engaged in a semester-long, secondary school teaching internship, conducting in-class action research while teaching Grades 9 and 10 History and English. I was sure that I was not just going to teach—I was going to discover myself. To borrow Derrida’s term, the “edges” of my identity continue to become blurred in relation to the shifting social and economic contexts.
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_, _. "Exploring Guanxi in a Cross-Cultural Context." Journal of Chinese Overseas 13, no. 2 (January 17, 2017): 263–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/17932548-12341357.
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Abstract Using a case study of recently arrived Cantonese-speaking migrants, this article examines the role of guanxi in shaping Chinese newcomers’ economic activities and opportunities in South Africa. In Johannesburg, Cantonese-speaking migrants tend to be employed in restaurant and fahfee (gambling) sectors, which are partially inherited from the early generations of South African Chinese. Through narratives and stories, this article reveals that Cantonese newcomers often strengthen personal and employment relationships through the practice of guanxi, but that doing so can also constrain their employment decisions. Moreover, the ambiguous boundary between the act of bribery and the practice of guanxi may facilitate Chinese participation but can also result in the victimization of the newcomers.
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Tsampiras, Carla. "Two Tales about Illness, Ideologies, and Intimate Identities: Sexuality Politics and AIDS in South Africa, 1980–95." Medical History 58, no. 2 (April 2014): 230–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2014.7.
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AbstractThis article focuses on the micro-narratives of two individuals whose responses to AIDS were mediated by their sexual identity, AIDS activism and the political context of South Africa during a time of transition. Their experiences were also mediated by well-established metanarratives about AIDS and ‘homosexuality’ created in the USA and the UK which were transplanted and reinforced (with local variations) into South Africa by medico-scientific and political leaders.The nascent process of writing South African AIDS histories provides the opportunity to record responses to AIDS at institutional level, reveal the connections between narratives about AIDS and those responses, and draw on the personal stories of those who were at the nexus of impersonal official responses and the personal politics of AIDS. This article records the experiences of Dennis Sifris, a physician who helped establish one of the first AIDS clinics in South Africa and emptied the dance floors, and Pierre Brouard, a clinical psychologist who was involved in early counselling, support and education initiatives for HIV-positive people, and counselled people about dying, and then about living. Their stories show how, even within government-aligned health care spaces hostile to gay men, they were able to provide support and treatment to people; benefited from international connections with other gay communities; and engaged in socially subversive activities. These oral histories thus provide otherwise hidden insights into the experiences of some gay men at the start of an epidemic that was initially almost exclusively constructed on, and about, gay men’s bodies.
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Palmer, Fileve T. "Racialism and Representation in the Rainbow Nation." SAGE Open 6, no. 4 (October 2016): 215824401667387. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2158244016673873.
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Despite a commitment to non-racialism in the South African Constitution and anthropology’s steadfast position that race is a social construction, race is still a highly valued ideology with real-life implications for citizens. In South Africa, racialism particularly affects heterogeneous, multigenerational, multiethnic creole people known as “Coloureds.” The larger category of Coloured is often essentialized based on its intermediary status between Black and White and its relationship to South Africa’s “mother city” (Cape Town, where the majority of Coloured people live). Through research on Coloured identity in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, I show how the nuances of personal and collective histories, spatial constraints, and education affect the identities of youth and elders differently from their Cape counterparts. By incorporating a photo-voice methodology, which I called Photo Ethnography Project (PEP), participants produced their own visual materials and challenged essentialized versions of themselves (specifically) and South Africa (in general). Through three public displays of photography and narratives, youth in three communities answered the question of what it means to be Coloured in today’s rainbow nation.
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Stewart, Jackie, Leslie Swartz, and Catherine Ward. "THE PERSONAL POLITICS OF DISASTER: NARRATIVES OF SURVIVORS OF A SOUTH AFRICAN SHANTY TOWN FIRE." Journal of Community Psychology 40, no. 4 (April 18, 2012): 422–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.20522.
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Roos, Carla, and Neshane Harvey. "Storytelling for personal connection: A pedagogical strategy to localise fashion education." Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South 8, no. 1 (April 30, 2024): 74–100. http://dx.doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v8i1.296.
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The 2015 student protests, #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall, gave rise to the call to decolonise curricula and end the dominance of Western ideologies in South African higher education (HE). The argument put forward in this paper is the need to shift from a traditional approach to a humanised pedagogical approach, wherein students frame knowledge around individual experiences to construct personal and shared understanding. Although limited scholarship around decolonising South African fashion HE exists, such scholarship does not focus on storytelling and circle learning as pedagogical strategies. To address this research gap, narrative humanism, referred to in this research as storytelling, and circle learning are put forward as pedagogical strategies to integrate student identities for personal connection in South African fashion HE. This paper aims to explore the affordances of storytelling and circle learning to decolonise South African fashion HE. Through qualitative action research, two teaching and learning interventions, termed the pilot and main studies, were designed and applied with fashion students at a South African HE institution. Data collection entailed semi-structured student questionnaires, artefacts, and a reflective research journal. To analyse the data, content analysis was employed. The findings reveal that, irrespective of cultural lived experiences or diverse backgrounds, storytelling afforded a decolonised approach in terms of inclusivity, collaboration, and a safe environment for socially engaged dialogue and peer feedback. Similarly, circle learning seemed to reduce teacher-student power relations and contrasted traditional modes of delivery. Circle learning appeared to encourage meaningful, engaged participation, affording a progressive pedagogical strategy to accommodate student and teacher voices in open dialogue. This paper contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning in that storytelling and circle learning are suitable pedagogies to decolonise fashion education in the Global South.
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Noble, Alex, and Daniela Gachago. "Developing Critical Digital Literacies Through Digital Storytelling." International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning 14, no. 3 (July 1, 2022): 1–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/ijmbl.312184.
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The South African Higher Education sector has undergone major transformation since the end of Apartheid more than 25 years ago. Critical digital literacies and critical (digital) citizenship, aligns with the most important aspects of the transformation agenda, ‘the production of socially conscious graduates that will become the thinkers and leaders of tomorrow' (Soudien et al 2008). The ability to link the past and the present, the personal and the political is an important element of critical digital literacies. This paper reflects on projects introduced in a first year Extended Curriculum Programme course for Architectural Technology and Interior Design students at a University of Technology, in which students created a digital story after visiting historical sites in the Western Cape. Framed by Critical Race Theory concepts of master narratives and counter-storytelling, using multimodal analysis of the digital stories, this paper will highlight examples of students' attempts to disrupt common narratives through their creative yet personal engagement with the past and the present.
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Horne, Felicity. "Can personal narratives heal trauma? A consideration of testimonies given at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission." Social Dynamics 39, no. 3 (September 2013): 443–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533952.2013.842338.
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Lees, Deborah, and André Van Zyl. "Honoring Student “Voice” in Investigating Student Identity Development in a Narrative Study: A Methodological and Analytical Example." Qualitative Sociology Review 18, no. 1 (January 31, 2022): 28–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.18.1.02.
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Multiple, interrelated narrative methods were employed in a doctoral study purposed to investigate the student identity development of seven first-year participants. This approach provided them with multiple opportunities to convey their unique first-year experiences and revealed rich understandings of how they constructed their identities at a private higher education provider in Johannesburg, South Africa. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that fostering the trust of participants ensured the formation of rich biographical narrative portraits through multiple narrative-type collection methods and forms of analyses, resulting in rich tapestries of personal experience, which were constitutive of their identity formation. Each participant’s narratives revealed their particularities, complexities, and unique experiences of their first year. Although each participant experienced their first year of study very differently, this article weaves in the first-year experiences of one person into its fabric. The narrations of Kondwani (pseudonym), a Zambian student, are used to illustrate how her voice emerged and was held in a trustful research relationship. Her case is representative of all the participants in that it is an exemplar to illustrate the richness of the individual narratives gleaned from carefully chosen methods and forms of analysis that were employed in the study.
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Waetjen, Thembisa, and Goolam Vahed. "THE DIASPORA AT HOME: INDIAN VIEWS AND THE MAKING OF ZULEIKHA MAYAT'S PUBLIC VOICE." Africa 81, no. 1 (January 24, 2011): 23–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0001972010000021.
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ABSTRACTThis article examines how the Gujarati-speaking Muslim trading class in South(ern) Africa was linked as a reading public through a newspaper, Indian Views, which had been founded in early twentieth-century Durban in opposition to Mahatma Gandhi's Indian Opinion. Under the editorship of Moosa Meer (1929–63) it was a conduit for sustaining existing social networks as well as offering common narratives that galvanized an idea of community embracing its geographically disparate readership. Between 1956 and 1963, Zuleikha Mayat, a self-described housewife born in Potchefstroom but married to a medical doctor in Durban whom she ‘met’ through the newspaper, wrote a weekly column that represented one of the first instances of a South African Muslim woman offering her ideas in print. She spoke across gender divides and articulated a moral social vision that accounted for both local and diasporic concerns. This article provides a narrative account of how Mayat came to write for Indian Views, a story that underscores the personal linkages within this diasporic community and, more broadly, how literacy and the family enterprises that constituted local print capitalism provided a material means of sustaining existing networks of village and family. It also reveals the role of newspaper as an interface between public and private spaces in helping to create a community of linguistically related readers who imagined themselves as part of a larger print culture.
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Kemende Wunseh, Quinta, and Erasmos Charamba. "Language Brokering and Code Switching as Teaching and Learning Tools in Multilingual Settings: Reflections of Two Immigrant Children." Journal of Languages and Language Teaching 11, no. 1 (January 20, 2023): 114. http://dx.doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v11i1.6447.
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Language diversity is generally a norm in multilingual South African classroom. Orellana and García (2014) describe how multilingual speakers need to learn tools to allow them to be flexible with their language skills. Language brokering and code-switching form part of the everyday teaching and learning tools needed in South African multilingual classroom setting. Data was collected by means of observation and semi-structured interviews. Snowball sampling was used to select Francophone immigrant children or learners who were observed outside the classroom in order to establish how they interacted with their peers on school playgrounds. Their personal narratives were collected and analyzed to enhance triangulation and thematic analysis was used to understand how immigrant children acted as language brokers. This research sets out to consolidate the position of language brokering and code-switching as pedagogically oriented language practices in a multilingual classroom setting. Using the sociocultural theories and the funds of knowledge (FoK), the current study rejects a deficit model, where linguistically and culturally diverse institutions of learning are reputed to be incapable of offering rich learning experiences and resources.
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Jung, Courtney. "Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left By Allison Drew. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2000. 282p. $74.95." American Political Science Review 96, no. 1 (March 2002): 236–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0003055402314333.
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Drawing on a wealth of new information made available by the opening of the Comintern archives, Drew sheds the light of hindsight on the relationship between the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and, in turn, the Soviet Comintern, the South African liberation movement, and the white and black trade union movements in the first half of the twentieth century. This rich book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of ties between the Comintern and its satellite parties as well as the early history of the South African antiapartheid movement. There are only two other major books on this period of party history, and both are memoirs of party members who try to establish a particular version of the record. Drew contests the teleology of their accounts of communist party history and instead weaves a contingent narrative that identifies major turning points that narrowed the possibility for a radical reorientation of the party (p. 281). It was not inevitable that the party would split and finally dissolve in the way it did—other outcomes were possible, almost until the end. That they were not taken was the layered result of personal and ideological rivalries and party alliances that made socialism, and socialists, perpetually weak and vulnerable in the context of South African politics.
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Schermuly, Allegra Clare, and Helen Forbes-Mewett. "Food, identity and belonging: a case study of South African-Australians." British Food Journal 118, no. 10 (October 3, 2016): 2434–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/bfj-01-2016-0037.
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Purpose Culturally familiar food is of great importance to migrants. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of food in the lives of South African migrants to Australia. How food impacts on notions of identity and belonging for immigrants is framed and discussed within the context of nostalgia, sharing and Bourdieu’s “habitus”. Design/methodology/approach Through mixed qualitative methods, including participatory research, document analysis and in-depth interviews, this study examines the everyday experiences of South African-Australians. The study employs an interpretivist approach that aims for greater understanding of the subject through the perspectives of the research participants. Findings Culinary rituals and traditions feature large in personal narratives of adjustment that reveal the important role of food in contributing to identity translation in a destination society and, ultimately, the attainment of belonging for migrants. Research limitations/implications The study provides a “snapshot” of a topic that would benefit from further exploration. Practical implications The importance for migrants to have access to cultural traditions surrounding food is acknowledged in the contemporary world where increasingly mobile populations need to maintain a sense of identity and feel a sense of belonging while integrating into host societies. Social implications Traditional cuisines are an integral part of the mechanisms by which migrants can better integrate leading to overall greater social cohesion. Originality/value The study contributes a new dimension to the body of literature pertaining to food access and security for culturally diverse groups in multicultural societies.
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Walker, Melanie. "The Achievement of University Access: Conversion Factors, Capabilities and Choices." Social Inclusion 7, no. 1 (January 10, 2019): 52–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.17645/si.v7i1.1615.
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In the light both of persistent inequality of education opportunities for low income families and a wide equality gap in South Africa, this article explores students’ university access by applying Amartya Sen’s capability approach to a South African case study. The article demonstrates empirically that access is more than an individual project, shaped both by objective conditions and subjective biographies, that is by general conversion factors and a person’s social and personal options. Key conversion factors are material (income) and social (family, community, school, information), which produce an interlocking system of opportunity. Access thus requires more than formal opportunity to enable social mobility for all. The case study comprises qualitative interviews with diverse students in their first year at one university; illustrative narratives are selected to show different pathways, conversion factors and choices. Agency and self-efficacy emerge as especially important for making choices but also for constructing a higher education pathway where none exists for that person and her family. The article suggests that higher education has the potential to advance social mobility provided that it moves in the direction of expanding the capabilities of all students to have the choice of higher education.
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Sibongiseni Ngcamu, Bethuel. "Transformation through the lens of leadership capabilities in South African universities." Problems and Perspectives in Management 18, no. 3 (August 14, 2020): 67–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.18(3).2020.06.
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The university leaders of the 21st century have failed to expose the transformation needs and demands of their institutions and have only implemented transformational strategies and measures that suit their career endeavors. This has been compounded by their lack of personal, interpersonal, and cognitive capabilities, which are essential in driving, shaping, and achieving the transformation agenda of their respective institutions. Against this backdrop, this article ascertains university leaders’ knowledgeability of factors and their understanding of change initiatives that could drive and achieve universities’ transformation agenda. The leadership traits, cognitive abilities, and qualities that can also influence transforming universities are assessed in this empirical study. A quantitative research approach was adopted in this comparative study, where a structured questionnaire was distributed to 191 respondents. A 70% response rate was obtained at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), while 59% was achieved at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 12 was used to capture and analyze the data. This study has the potential to influence university leaders in totality in their nomenclature on transformation and the traits needed for effective transformation. The current research study revealed fascinating results that leaders from both the universities believed that transformation refers to restructuring rather than the widely shared narrative of addressing the racial imbalances of the apartheid era. Furthermore, the results suggest that the university leaders understand their institutional transformation agendas although the freedom of speech and open debates are not promoted and that leaders are not good listeners.
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Sapire, Hilary. "Apartheid's ‘Testing Ground’: Urban ‘Native Policy’ and African Politics in Brakpan, South Africa, 1943–1948." Journal of African History 35, no. 1 (March 1994): 99–123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021853700025986.
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Although studies of both state ‘urban native’ policy and African life on the Witwatersrand in the 1940s have increased in volume and sophistication over the last decade, these two themes have generally been treated discretely in the literature. While a regional focus has yielded a complex and differentiated picture of urban African politics and culture, studies of the state still tend to miss this complexity by focusing on the ‘view from above’, from the vantage point of central state institutions.This article draws together these two separate historiographical threads to examine state policy from the perspective of local state officials, those individuals most intimately concerned with day-to-day administration of urban African communities in the rapidly industrialising Witwatersrand of the 1940s. Through the narrative of a deep personal antagonism between an African politician in the Witwatersrand location of Brakpan and a white administrator, the article explores the intersection of two microcosms: the world of the Afrikaner intellectual, educated in the tradition of ‘volkekunde’ and thereby claiming expert knowledge of the African, and the real worlds of the Africans the expert claimed to know—themselves shaped by new, radical currents in the changing wartime urban context. Using the Brakpan case study, the article also shows that in contrast to the national government's fumbling indecision in the face of the urban crisis, it was the municipalities which agitated for state control over all Africans, tighter influx and efflux controls and the more efficient distribution of African labour between different economic sectors. In voicing their discontent with state policy and in their policy improvizations, local officials anticipated much in the apartheid order of the 1950s.
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Wilshire Jones Bornman, Anna, and Carol Jean Mitchell. "Pathways through homelessness: the perceptions of homeless children in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa." Journal of Children's Services 15, no. 3 (July 22, 2020): 141–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/jcs-01-2018-0002.
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Purpose The purpose of this study was to explore children’s pathways through homelessness within the South African context, with particular attention paid to pathways out of homelessness. This study focusses on factors influencing children’s successful transitions out of homelessness. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative exploratory design was used, using interviews with nine children who had exited or were in the process of exiting homelessness. Interviews were conducted at a children’s shelter in Pietermaritzburg or in the children’s home environments. Interviews were analysed thematically. Findings An ecological framework was used to frame the factors influencing children’s pathways in, through and out of homelessness in the children’s narratives. These included institutions, relationships and intrapersonal strengths and resources. The study suggested that constructive relationships with shelter staff and parental figures, as well as intrapersonal strengths, were the most prominent factors in children successfully negotiating their way through their homelessness. The importance of a relationship with the paternal family within some African cultures was also a point of leverage. Research limitations/implications Implications for policy and practise include the need for systemic change, as well as greater support for shelters and shelter staff. The issue of rivalry in the shelter context and the role of the paternal family in the reintegration process require more research attention. The research is limited to homeless children in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Practical implications This study provided feedback to the shelter regarding their strategies for assisting homeless children off the streets. It further provided evidence for the importance of the work of the shelter, to strengthen advocacy efforts. This may be useful to others in similar circumstances. Social implications This study highlights the importance of macrosystemic interventions in the efforts to assist homeless children, while at the same time not ignoring the inter and intra, personal elements to enhancing their well-being. Originality/value This paper is singular in its exploration of factors influencing children’s successful transitions out of homelessness within the South African context.
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Nduna, Mzikazi. "CASE STUDY NARRATIVE ACCOUNTS OF GENDER AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION IN YOUNG BLACK WOMEN FROM AN EASTERN CAPE TOWNSHIP IN SOUTH AFRICA." Gender Questions 1, no. 1 (September 20, 2016): 45–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/2412-8457/1546.
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In South Africa, the experiences of gender non-conforming young women, as a population separate from adults, are understudied. This article explores what distresses young gender non-conforming females from a South African township. The challenges facing such women growing up in a township in the Eastern Cape province in South Africa are discussed and illuminated through case studies of participants’ personal accounts. The sample was obtained through snowballing. One-on-one in-depth interviews were held and subjected to domain analysis. Domains discovered were: pressure to conform to a female gender identity to be like a lady; being misunderstood in their communities; and disapproval from peers, family and other members of society. The challenges young, black, gender non-conforming girls faced in growing up were based on familial, personal and social factors. Familial and social environments, such as the school, seemed to have a policing effect. Concerns about being isolated, ousted and alienated from society resulted in perceptions that their homes and schools were unsafe and insecure environments. Education and culturally competent support services are needed to educate families about the importance of offering protective support to adolescents, and for schools to create a comfortable environment for gender non-conforming female learners.
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Anker, Johan. "Poetic devices as part of the trauma narrative in Country of My Skull." Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 54, no. 1 (March 24, 2017): 77–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/tvl.v.54i1.5.
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This article investigates the role of poetic devices in a trauma narrative like Country of My Skull. The nature and characteristics of a trauma narrative are described with reference to Country of My Skull and Antjie Krog's style as poet and journalist. The theory and role of figurative language in trauma narratives suggest an attempt to describe that which is indescribable and unrepresentable about traumatic events and experiences like Krog attempts to do in Country of My Skull. Different tropes like skull, language, body, sounds and landscape or country are identified and followed through the text as part of the working through of a traumatic experience. Krog is the narrator in this 'highly personal account', describing the traumatic testimonies of witnesses during the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She is confronted with her own traumatic experience as secondary witness to these events as a reporter, journalist, and translator-interpreter of stories of unspeakable horror. The broadening of perspective in the different tropes shows signs of the working through of this trauma and the process of healing to the reintegration of a divided, fragmented identity and agency.
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Knittelfelder, Elisabeth. "The “Ordinary” Cruelty and the Theatre as Witness in Four South African Plays." Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 8, no. 1 (May 11, 2020): 160–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2020-0012.
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AbstractThis essay looks at how four contemporary South African plays use performance to render, address, and acknowledge personal and national trauma. By staging acts of cruelty that happen as “ordinary” experience, as perpetual pain, or as representation of life-in-crisis, these plays not only question and complement the national narrative by telling stories that have not found a stage or a listener before, but they also inform and speak to topical societal issues in South Africa such as that of apathy to violence and the question of complicity. Yael Farber and Lara Foot employ a distinctly South African theatre language that draws on theatrical concepts of the European avant-garde, especially those of Antonin Artaud, as well as on the tradition of oral storytelling and ritual to render cruelty as the “ordinary” and crisis as an ongoing condition in the sociohistorical context of apartheid and the apartheid-influenced post-1994 world. By excavating, tracing, and acknowledging “ordinary” cruelty as experienced personally and collectively, the plays explore revelations about the human condition, open up a discussion on the nature of memory or (collective) amnesia, on trauma, complicity, and the crucial role of the witness.
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Canham, Hugo. "“Tea girl and garden boy” bankers: exploring substantive equality in bankers’ narratives." Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal 38, no. 4 (May 20, 2019): 402–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/edi-07-2017-0148.
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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore what narratives of inequality tell us about societal inequality both inside and outside of workplaces. It illuminates the intertwined fates of social agents and the productive potential of seeing organisational actors as social beings in order to advance resistance and substantive equality. Design/methodology/approach This research empirically examines narratives of inequality and substantive empowerment among a group of 25 black bankers within a major bank in Johannesburg, South Africa. Data were gathered through one-on-one interviews. The data were analysed using narrative analysis. Findings The findings indicate that narratives of organisational agents always contain fragments of personal and societal narratives. An intersectional lens of how people experience inequality allows us to work towards a more substantive kind of equality. Substantive equality of organisational actors is closely tied to the recognition and elimination of broader societal inequality. Research limitations/implications The implications for teaching and research are for scholars to methodically centre the continuities between the personal, organisational and societal in ways that highlight the productive tensions and possibilities for a more radical form of equality. Moreover, teaching, research and policy interventions should always foreground how the present comes to be constituted historically. Practical implications Policy and inclusivity interventions would be better served by using substantive empowerment as a theoretical base for deeper changes beyond what we currently conceive of as empowerment. At base, this requires policy makers and diversity practitioners to see all oppression and inequality as interconnected. Individuals are simultaneously organisational beings and societal agents. Social implications Third world approaches to diversity and inclusion need to be vigilant against globalised western notions of equity that are not contextually and historically informed. The failure of equity initiatives in SA means that alternative ideas and approaches are necessary. Originality/value The paper illustrates how individual narratives become social scripts of resistance. It develops a way for attaining substantive empowerment through the use of narrative approaches. It allows us to see that employees are also social agents.
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Sprague, Courtenay, Abigail M. Hatcher, Nataly Woollett, and Vivian Black. "How Nurses in Johannesburg Address Intimate Partner Violence in Female Patients: Understanding IPV Responses in Low- and Middle-Income Country Health Systems." Journal of Interpersonal Violence 32, no. 11 (June 19, 2015): 1591–619. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260515589929.
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One in three women, globally, experiences intimate partner violence (IPV). Although 80% of the world’s population resides in the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), health system responses to IPV are poorly understood. In 2013, the World Health Organization released new guidelines for IPV but universal screening was not recommended in LMICs due to perceived lack of capacity and insufficient evidence. South Africa, with IPV prevalence estimated at 31% to 55%, offers a window into LMIC health systems. South African women seek health care for partner abuse, yet no guidelines exist to direct providers. This research aimed to understand how and why nurses respond to IPV. Using a descriptive design, 25 nurses from five health facilities were interviewed, generating rich narratives of provider actions. Themes were coded and analyzed. An iterative process of constant comparison of emergent data was undertaken to verify and confirm final themes. In the absence of IPV guidelines, nurses employed interventions characterized as counseling, ascertaining abuse, and referral. Nurses’ actions were motivated by fear for patients’ survival, perceived professional obligations, patients’ expectations of receiving treatment, personal experiences of IPV, and weak police responses to IPV. Findings indicated nurses were responding to IPV in a routine manner, yet comprehensive guidelines remain essential to govern and locate their actions within the framework of a public health response. South Africa yields lessons for enhancing understanding of IPV responses in LMICs, while contributing to a slim evidence base of the “how” and “why” of provider actions toward IPV in patients.
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Hendricks, Fatima, and Susan Toth-Cohen. "Perceptions about Authentic Leadership Development: South African Occupational Therapy Students’ Camp Experience." Occupational Therapy International 2018 (2018): 1–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2018/1587906.
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Background. Twenty-three years into democracy, concern is deepening regarding the slow progress of Occupational Therapy (OT) in South Africa, especially with regard to diversity and inclusion within OT. Methods. This study explores authentic leadership development primarily among Black OT students attending a pilot Occupational Therapy Association of South Africa (OTASA) National Student Leadership Camp. It seeks to ascertain their perceptions on leadership and leadership development. This descriptive pilot study employs in-depth interviews and subsequent content analysis, with 12 OT students from six university OT programs in South Africa. Findings. Four categories of participant perceptions on authentic leadership development emerged from the analysis: (1) perceptions about oneself as a leader based on personal narrative, self-awareness, self-control, and psychological capital; (2) perceptions about others, specifically current leaders, with regard to their moral crisis, including continuing inequality, insincerity, greed, and selfishness; (3) goals and aspirations for leadership development via student camps; and (4) effects of leadership on the system. Conclusions. Recommendations for future practice include promotion of storytelling as a means of personal reflection for authentic leadership development and focused investment in camps for developing student leadership skills and building authentic leadership knowledge.
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Gordon, Will. "Eerste Daar." Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 49, no. 2 (2021): 137–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.5787/49-2-1338.
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In the introduction to his book, Van der Waals claims that the book is largely based ona manuscript that he wrote for his children about 15 years ago, and he acknowledges that it is not an academic work.564 With this disclaimer of sorts, Van der Waals firmly places his book in the memoire segment of recent South African military historiography.While this is true – the book certainly reads like a memoire – Van der Waals manages to incorporate much more than just personal reflections and recollections in his work. Perhaps due to his academic background, his narrative is lifted above the proliferation of recent memoires by South African Defence Force (SADF) soldiers by occasional analyses and opinions interspersed throughout the book.
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Mattera, Errol Teddy. "The birth of film in the maker: A selfie of my introduction to cinema." Journal of African Cinemas 15, no. 1 (March 1, 2023): 97–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/jac_00092_1.
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This reflexive article examines how identity is informed by the personal, the political and the practice of filmmaking. As a South African filmmaker of mixed heritage (classified as ‘coloured’ under the Apartheid-era code), I recall a childhood of cinema, of cinematic moments, of screen heroes and of sociocultural traditions (imported, imposed and Indigenous) that shaped our ideas and expressions of masculinity as boys and men. Constant in this reflection is how spatial Apartheid (as effected through the Group Areas Act of 1950) impacted Black life in all its manifestations, but particularly the ways it determined how we lived and engaged with cinema in these designated and tightly controlled spaces. The fact that we could find resonance with films narratives, by interpreting them into our own lingo and bribing the screen icons into our realities gave us a window to reimagine our reality.
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Terblanche, Hettie, Henry D. Mason, and Barend van Wyk. "Developing Mindsets: A Qualitative Study among First-Year South African University Students." Journal for Students Affairs in Africa 9, no. 2 (December 28, 2021): 199–216. http://dx.doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v9i2.2206.
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This article reports on a qualitative study that evaluated first-year students’ lived experiences of attending a 12-week student support programme focused on fostering mindsets. Participants included 545 first year Engineering students enrolled for academic studies at a South African university. All participants completed qualitative narrative sketches depicting their experiences. A random sample of 300 students’ narrative sketches was included as data in the qualitative study. The data were analysed using thematic analysis, and Dweck’s theory on mindsets served as the theoretical lens through which the data were interpreted. The results indicate that the majority of students experienced significant personal growth from attending the student support programme. Additionally, the findings point to the relevance and importance of offering student support programmes focused on exploring mindsets to first-year students. The results of this exploratory study suggest that mindset theory should be considered as an essential component when advising first-year South African Engineering students. Furthermore, we make a case for the relevance of positive psychology-based development programmes for first-year students.
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Paasche, Karin Ilona. "The Linguistics of Literature in Education: African Literature in African Universities." New Trends and Issues Proceedings on Humanities and Social Sciences 2, no. 9 (April 6, 2017): 65–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.18844/prosoc.v2i9.1086.
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Teaching African Literature - the English text - would seem to be a replicable skill across continents and countries. Experience shows that understanding texts depends less on the lecturer’s skills and more on student perceptions. Since the inventions of the Gutenberg Press and subsequently of “Oral Man†the story of Africa has been the story about Africa. Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) speaks of deliberate attempts “to destroy every last remnant of alternative ways of knowing and living, to obliterate collective identities and memories and to impose a new order†on the colonized. Education has been one of the chief instruments in this process, systematically alienating students from their cultural roots. Today as African writers learn to tell the story of Africa, African students are less able to relate to these literary texts than for example students in a German university. Even though texts reflect their own culture, they resist the “other ways of knowing†Tuhiwai Smith speaks about and force internalized perceptions of their own selves on to narrative texts. Careful linguistic analysis provides students with the opportunity to re-connect with the cultural values a foreign-based education system has attempted to abolish from their cultural memory. The tools provided by critical discourse analysis are invaluable in helping students understand differences in approach in literature; they become a means for students to hear the extent of cultural and personal alienation from their own selves, and to re-connect. This paper explores what happens when students are almost totally alienated from the culture as reflected in their own literature written in the colonizer’s language. It seeks an approach that makes fruitful learning possible as African students study the works of South African novelist Zakes Mda; Zanzibari novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah and Malian filmmaker Cheik Oumar Sissoko. Â
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Treffry-Goatley, Astrid, Richard John Lessells, Relebohile Moletsane, Tulio de Oliveira, and Bernhard Gaede. "Community engagement with HIV drug adherence in rural South Africa: a transdisciplinary approach." Medical Humanities 44, no. 4 (November 27, 2018): 239–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2018-011474.
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Digital storytelling (DST) is an emerging participatory visual method which combines storytelling traditions with computer and video production technology. In this project, at the heart of the HIV epidemic in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, we used DST to create a culturally grounded community engagement intervention. Our aim was to use narratives of people living with HIV on antiretroviral therapy (ART) to stimulate dialogue among the wider community and to encourage reflection on the contextual factors that influence ART adherence in this setting. We also wanted to explore whether exposure to the personal narratives might influence health literacy around HIV and ART. We ran two DST workshops, where 20 community participants were supported to create short digital stories about personal experiences of adherence. We then hosted 151 screenings of the digital stories at seven local health facilities and evaluated the impact of the intervention using a three-tiered mixed methods approach. We conducted two independent quantitative surveys of healthcare users (852 respondents during the preintervention round and 860 people during the postintervention round), five focus group discussions and observation of practice. Exposure to the digital stories did stimulate rich dialogue among community members, which broadened from the focus on ART adherence to other aspects around the impact of HIV and its treatment on individuals and the community. In the independently conducted surveys, we found no clear difference in knowledge or understanding of HIV and ART between the people exposed to the digital stories and those who were not exposed. Our findings provide support for the use of DST as an engagement intervention, but highlight some of the challenges in delivering this type of intervention and in evaluating the impact of this approach.
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Van der Spuy, Alicia, and Lakshmi Jayakrishnan. "Making Sense of the Unknown: A Narrative Analysis of COVID-19 Stories as Told by WSU Research Students." Research in Social Sciences and Technology 6, no. 2 (September 14, 2021): 183–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.46303/ressat.2021.18.
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Storytelling is an important tool through which to make sense of life experiences. Stories can be classified as personal narratives, historical documentaries and those that inform the viewer about a specific concept or practice. These narratives can be used to promote discussion about current issues in the world. Storytelling can thus be seen as an effective learning tool for students by providing a strong foundation in “Twenty First Century Literacy” skills as well as advancing emotional intelligence and social learning. This project used storytelling to gather information regarding people’s encounters with COVID-19 and lockdown, with specific focus on the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Employing a content analysis methodology, it attempts to analyze responses to narrative inquiry interviews about the COVID-19 pandemic as conducted by students, as part of their introduction to the methodology of research. These responses were used to generalize findings, as well as to look at individual reactions that could bring light to, and make sense of the human experience of the pandemic within an educational context. Both negative and positive experiences were related by interviewees and students.
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Canham, Hugo. "Outsiders within: non-conformity among four contemporary black female managers in South Africa." Gender in Management: An International Journal 29, no. 3 (April 29, 2014): 148–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/gm-05-2013-0057.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to foreground non-conformity in organisational life as it relates to black female managers. My intervention here is to problematise organisational theory in relation to its limited ability to engage with affect and to point to a more generative framework. Through centering the body, the author also seeks to offer a counter narrative to the field of Positive Organisation Scholarship and its drive to primarily engage with happy feelings and harmony. Design/methodology/approach – The author gives a close reading of four black women's interview-based narratives to engage with the ways in which they refuse to conform to organisational scripts of happiness. The author makes a case for using both critical discourse-based and affective readings of everyday experience which social science readings cannot readily account for. Findings – Non-conformity has a number of local effects including negotiating the present from a position of alternative histories of struggle and cultural values, and holding different and conflicting realities and subject positions. Moreover, a reading of these women's accounts suggests that affect is both personal and social and can manifest in multiple, embodied, transformative, and potentially destructive ways. The author comes to new ways of understanding organisations and resistance when the author uses affect as an investigative lens. Research limitations/implications – By virtue of the close reading necessitated by the nature of the study, the sample of this research is small. While the intention is not generality, the findings of the research have to be understood in context and applied within different settings with caution. The implications of this research are that there remains an urgent need for critical-orientated research which centers affect in order to counter the growing positive psychologies which relegate asymmetries to the margins. Social implications – In South Africa where black women constitute the numerical majority, there is an urgent need to understand and reverse their status as a minority in management and social life. This research goes some way in explicating this process. Originality/value – While there is well-developed body of feminist research which seeks to study black women in South Africa, there is a dearth of research into black women in the workplace. This paper therefore presents an original look at black female managers by applying international theoretical tools to a context that is under theorised. This research presents new methodological and theoretical tools and analysis to the South African workplace.
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Gimeno Pahissa, Laura. "Former Slaves on the Move: The Plantation Household, the White House, and the Postwar South as Spaces of Transit in Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes." Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, no. 25 (November 15, 2012): 335. http://dx.doi.org/10.14198/raei.2012.25.23.
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Travel writing has been central to the American literary canon. From all possible backgrounds, origins and spaces, religious dissenters, immigrants and others have described their travelling experiences in North America. Within this profoundly American tradition, black Americans’ narratives are a special case. Most scholars agree that their personal accounts are not only autobiographical texts and political manifestos, but also travel narratives. Thus, the slaves’ journey is interpreted both as a physical experience—from the plantation to a free state—and a spiritual one—from ignorance into knowledge. After Emancipation, former slaves continued publishing their life experiences, and African American women became significantly active in autobiographical writing. These women challenged previous roles, and reinterpreted themselves as independent middle class entrepreneurs. Such is the case of the author analyzed in the present article: Elizabeth Keckley. Her journey from the plantation to Washington D.C. becomes an overt challenges to the racial and gender restrictions imposed upon her and gives wings to her desire for independence. Above all, the locations she inhabits while transiting from enslavement to middle class entrepreneurship inform this crucial transformation. By means of her transit, Keckley discovers her identity not only as female member of an oppressed race, but also as an individual who can achieve and prosper beyond the barriers imposed by (white and black) male society.
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Ladeira, Ilda, Nicola J. Bidwell, and Xolile Sigaji. "DIGITAL STORYTELLING DESIGN LEARNING FROM NON-DIGITAL NARRATIVES: TWO CASE STUDIES IN SOUTH AFRICA." Oral History Journal of South Africa 2, no. 1 (September 22, 2016): 41–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/2309-5792/1582.
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Digital tools for User Generated Content (UGC) aim to enable people to interact with media in conversational and creative ways that are independent of technology producers or media organisations. In this article we describe two case studies in South Africa that show that UGC is not simply something tied to technology or the internet but emerges in non-digital storytelling. At the District Six Museum in Cape Town, District Six ex-residents are central collaborators in the narratives presented. Ex-residents tell stories in the museum and can write onto inscriptive exhibits, such as a floor map showing where they used to live, and visitors can write messages on ‘memory clothes’, which are later preserved through hand embroidery. Such explicit infrastructures to access and protect cultural records are less available to rural inhabitants of the former Transkei. To address this gap local traditional leaders and villagers collaborated with a National Archives Outreach Programme by co-generating a workshop that linked various local priorities, such as representation to government, land rights and ecotourism to natural and cultural heritage. Both studies start to reveal opportunities to design technologies that increase participation in recording and sharing personal and cultural stories. They also show the need to respect values embedded in place-based oral customs, such as the importance of enabling transparency and supporting alternative views on historical events.
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Majee, Wilson, Laura Schopp, Levona Johnson, Adaobi Anakwe, Anthea Rhoda, and Jose Frantz. "Emerging from the Shadows: Intrinsic and Extrinsic Factors Facing Community Health Workers in Western Cape, South Africa." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 9 (May 4, 2020): 3199. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17093199.
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Community health workers (CHWs) have been identified as a key component of the health workforce in South Africa. However, the efficacy of CHW programs continues to be limited by a poor understanding of facilitators and barriers to CHW engagement. This study explores intrinsic and extrinsic factors that CHWs face. We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 CHWs in order to understand the challenges they may face as they implement their duties linked to the primary health care strategy in the Western Cape, South Africa. All interviews were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, coded and analyzed using NVivo 12. Drawing on narratives of CHWs, we illustrate the complex issues surrounding CHW outreach in poor rural communities. The CHWs identified five key areas of challenges with respect to personal health, gender issues, poor community understanding of CHWs roles, environmental challenges and lack of patient adherence. These all hinder the ability of CHWs to meet their personal and familial needs, as well as those of the community members they support. There is a need to address the intrinsic needs of CHWs in order to ensure their emotional and physical well-being, as well as a need to create an awareness of the roles of CHWs.
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Padmanabhanunni, Anita, and Nondumiso Gqomfa. "“The Ugliness of It Seeps into Me”: Experiences of Vicarious Trauma among Female Psychologists Treating Survivors of Sexual Assault." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19, no. 7 (March 25, 2022): 3925. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19073925.
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The current study explores the lived experiences of female psychologists who provide psychological treatment to women survivors of sexual assault. These practitioners are a population of special interest due to the frequency of their exposure to narratives and graphic images of sexual trauma. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 female South African psychologists. The data, which were analyzed using an interpretative phenomenological approach, revealed experiences characteristic of vicarious traumatization. Participants reported having an enhanced sense of personal vulnerability to sexual assault and heightened awareness of the betrayals of trust that women experience from male figures, which has led to increased mistrust of men and hypervigilance regarding the safety of their daughters. Internalization of feelings of helplessness experienced by the victim evoked self-blame for practitioners and appraisals of being complicit in abuse. Practitioners also experienced survivor guilt about being spared from harm. Symptoms of intrusive re-experiencing of client trauma and cognitive and behavioral disengagement were evident. These findings have important implications for clinical practice and underscore the necessity for clinicians to cultivate an awareness of the impact of treating sexual trauma and working in ways that are self-protective.
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Johnson, Lynn R. "Striving for a Complete Life: The Spiritual Essence of African–Americans’ Food Justice Activism." Religions 14, no. 11 (October 27, 2023): 1361. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel14111361.
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This essay employs Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s sermon, “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life”, as an acute lens through which to assess and impart new meanings to African–American activists’ strivings to reach an ideal state of humanness and communal holism as they fulfilled their personal, political, and spiritual missions in the food realm during the 1960s Civil Rights era and the contemporary food justice movement. Narrative analyses of these Black activists’ personal testimonies convey that their discrete journeys to completeness—what Dr King called the ideal state of humanity in its fullness—were not only facilitated by a divine calling but were also conditioned by the enactment of their Christian faith, particularly in reconciling the affective tolls engendered by their participation in lunch-counter sit-ins and by their quests to help alleviate food insecurity among impoverish populations in the American South. Indeed, when these individuals consciously endeavored to master the three dimensions of a complete life—recognize their agency, honor the interconnectedness of humanity, and seek God’s guidance in doing both—were they able to embody their best selves and demand the realization of a truly democratic nation.
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Leman-Langlois, Stéphane. "Mobilizing Victimization." Criminologie 33, no. 1 (October 2, 2002): 145–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/004732ar.
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Abstract The "Truth and Reconciliation" commission (TRC) was implemented following the first democratic elections in South Africa in order to bring to light the brutality of the apartheid regime, to offer individual amnesty to persons responsible, and to compensate victims. From the outset, an important aspect of its emergent legitimizing discourse concerned the role and the needs of victims of brutality - whether victims of the former authoritarian government or of the liberation movements - within a rhetoric of "national reconciliation". The TRC's definition was to correspond to a notion of criminal justice that excluded any response of direct punishment or compensation: the proposed amnesty would relieve of responsibility all those to whom it applied.This context gave rise to a highly specific discourse concerning victims of "past conflicts", a discourse created within a precise range of nuances that were designed to make the TRC conceptually compatible with its public image, and vice versa. In evidence was the gradual construction of a language that allowed the Commission to be described in positive terms of satisfying needs, of respect for a greater, more honest and more universal ethical basis than that of retribution, of successful national reconciliation, etc. The propagation and effectiveness of this language were indispensable considering the concurrent dominant discourse about criminal justice in general, which maintained a hard line with regard to crime and which resulted in practice in an uncontrolled inflation of the penal population (two blocks away from the Commission's headquarters, parliament considered such solutions as corporal punishment, the establishment of prisons in abandoned mines, etc.) According to the Commission's discourse, victims identified two common fundamental outcomes of their victimization: their need for financial assistance, and their desire to know the truth. This desire for truth was manifested in two forms: first, the need to know the truth concerning the matter itself, for example, the disappearance of loved ones, and secondly, the restoration of individual dignity through an official and public acknowledgment of their victimization. Whether these outcomes in fact corresponded to the reality experienced by victims themselves tends to be a question of secondary importance, since the organization of the Commission's discourse allowed perfect integration of their testimonies, their attitude, and even their actual participation. This integrative power is to a great extent the result of the characteristic form both of testimonies made to the Commission and of statements concerning the participation by and satisfaction of its members: that is, the narrative form. Because of the great capacity of personal biographies to communicate the experience of injustice and of reparation compatible with the daily experiences of the general public, from these narratives may be drawn a normative language almost beyond reproach. Furthermore, each of the narratives, without exception extremely emotionally moving, included the Commission's role in the implicit or explicit denouement of victimization. The Commission's logic is further reinforced thereby, as it appears to be extracted from the actual experience of the persons who participated. In relating their narratives, victims provided the Commission with the necessary material to persuade other victims to participate in the process, to justify itself to the population of South Africa, and to meet its mandate of restoring dignity to victims. Such circularity is a natural element of all discourse, since it contains in its terms of reference the construction of its context, its subjects, its problems and its solutions. The Commission thus met its mission, primarily through a readjustment of its concepts and language but also by a concrete modification of social reality - if such a modification were possible, and possible to observe outside of the language used in its description. From the outset, "dignity" was very apparent not as an objective personal condition but as the outcome of a specific symbolic reality. Whether or not victims felt better following their visit to the Commission, or after the publication of its report, would have no effect on the general availability of a discourse of restored dignity to describe South African reality. On the contrary, the success of this enormous and costly institution, with its mission of rewriting the history of apartheid, could not fail to transform the social representation of its victims.
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Gilbert, Juliet. "Mobile identities: photography, smartphones and aspirations in urban Nigeria." Africa 89, no. 2 (May 2019): 246–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s000197201900007x.
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AbstractSince 2012, the influx of affordable smartphones to urban Nigeria has revolutionized how young people take, store and circulate photographs. Crucially, this ever-expanding digital archive provides urban youth with a means to communicate new ideas of self, allowing a marginalized group to display fortunes that often belie their difficult realities. Through gestures and poses, fashion and style, the companionship of others, or the use of particular backdrops and locations, these photographs contain certain semiotics that allude to the subject owning the means for success in urban Nigeria. Similarly, as youth constantly store photographs of themselves on their handsets alongside those of celebrities, patrons and friends, coveted commodities and aspirational memes, they construct personal narratives that place them at the centre of global flows and networks. With the ability to constantly retake, update and propagate photographs, the discrepancies between in- and off-frame identities become ambiguous. This article explores how young people in Calabar, south-eastern Nigeria, use digital photographs on their mobile phones to cultivate new visions of themselves. Arguing that these photographs not only represent superlative aspirations but are also integral to social becoming, the discussion examines how digital images allow youth to reposition themselves within (and beyond) Nigerian society. Ephemerality is central: digital photographs can be easily circulated and retain some permanence on social media, yet these immaterial objects can easily be lost from handsets. In thinking about the futures of African youth and African photography, this article therefore interrogates the tensions of private and public archives.