[A] girl from the village: totally unspoilt
- Authors: Naidu, Samantha
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158057 , vital:40144 , ISBN 9781498591775
- Description: The South Asian women’s diaspora engages in spatio-temporal interactions and power differentials in a variety of narratives, articulating agency, multiplicities of belonging and culturally integrative practices, highlighting homing paradigms. The sense of alienness in a new homeland, rather in worldwide home places, triggers rethinking of diasporic conceptions and epistemes of individual and group histories, personal and collective experiences. Some of the questions that this anthology seeks to consider are: How do women from the South Asian diaspora represent cultural negotiations and alienness of the adopted homeland in various narratives? What are the themes/issues they select to portray their perceptions of foreignness? How do culture, history and politics intervene in their portrayal of lived experiences? How do they locate themselves in the matrix of foreignness and diaspora? The contributors to this anthology examine narratives depicting South Asian women, their complexly positioned voices, gesturing at the proliferating challenges and reflecting the grim realities of a globalized world.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Anger, Pain and the Body in the Public Sphere:
- Authors: Garman, Anthea
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158459 , vital:40188 , ISBN 9781776145898
- Description: In this timely, original and sophisticated collection, writers from the Global South demonstrate that forms of publicness are multiple, mobile and varied. The notion that societies mediate issues through certain kinds of engagement is at the heart of imaginings of democracy and often centers on the ideal of the public sphere. But this imagined foundation of how we live collectively appears to have suffered a dramatic collapse across the world, with many democracies apparently unable to solve problems through talk – or even to agree on who speaks, in what ways and where. In the 10 essays in this timely, original and sophisticated collection, writers from southern Africa combine theoretical analysis with the examination of historical cases and contemporary developments to demonstrate that forms of publicness are multiple, mobile and varied. They propose new concepts and methodologies to analyse how public engagements work in society.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
From the Booth to the Dock: 2018 elections in Zimbabwe and the elusive search for electoral integrity
- Authors: Mwonzora, Gift , Xaba, Mzingaye Brilliant
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/159946 , vital:40358 , https://doi.org/10.1080/14662043.2020.1813457
- Description: The issue of presidential election petitions seems to be repeating itself with regularity in much of Africa, thus warranting the need for thorough analysis. Utilising the 2018 presidential election petition in Zimbabwe, the article examines whether electoral integrity and legitimacy can be derived from court-based action. Data for this article was gleaned from case law analysis, review of expert analysis from constitutional lawyers and election experts, video evidence, in-depth and critical reading of grey material. The article concludes that there are limitations in relying on litigation in seeking to realise electoral justice in much of Africa, including in Zimbabwe.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Geotourism, iconic landforms and island-style speciation patterns in National Parks of East Africa:
- Authors: Scoon, Roger N
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/158252 , vital:40166 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1007/s12371-020-00486-z
- Description: Many of the national parks in East Africa are equally as famous for their iconic landforms as they are for their diversity and concentrations of fauna and flora. The newly formed Ngorongoro-Lengai Geopark in northern Tanzania is the first geopark to be established in the region, but there is remarkable potential for geotourism in the majority of the national parks. The most spectacular landforms have been shaped by the East African Rift System. Formation of the two major rifts in the region, the Albertine Rift (or western branch) and the Gregory Rift (or eastern branch), was accompanied, or in some cases preceded, by extensive alkaline volcanism. The rifting and volcanism are primarily Late Cenozoic phenomenon that dissected and overprinted the older regional plateaus. Rifting impacted the regional drainage and captured major rivers, including the Victoria Nile.
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- Date Issued: 2020
More than a century of biological control against invasive alien plants in South Africa: a synoptic view of what has been accomplished
- Authors: Hill, Martin P , Moran, Vincent C , Hoffmann, John H , Neser, Stefan , Zimmermann, Helmuth G , Simelane, David O , Klein, Hildegard , Zachariades, Costas , Wood, Alan R , Byrne, Marcus J , Paterson, Iain D , Martin, Grant D , Coetzee, Julie A
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/176260 , vital:42679 , ISBN 978-3-030-32394-3 , 10.1007/978-3-030-32394-3
- Description: Invasive alien plant species negatively affect agricultural production, degrade conservation areas, reduce water supplies, and increase the intensity of wild fires. Since 1913, biological control agents ie plant-feeding insects, mites, and fungal pathogens, have been deployed in South Africa to supplement other management practices (herbicides and mechanical controls) used against these invasive plant species. We do not describe the biological control agent species.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2020
Plant Fibre Crafts Production, Trade and Income in Eswatini, Malawi and Zimbabwe
- Authors: Thondhlana, Gladman , Pullanikkatil, Deepa , Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/175936 , vital:42642 , https://doi.org/10.3390/f11080832 , https://doi.org/10.21504/RUR.c.5388470.v1
- Description: The production of plant fibre products is considered a promising pathway for contributing to people’s livelihoods particularly in developing countries, where economic options might be limited. However, there are limited comparative studies across countries on plant fibre products, making it difficult to examine how local and broader biophysical, socioeconomic, cultural and policy contexts influence craft production patterns in terms of primary plant resources used, products made and contributions to livelihoods. Using household surveys for data collection, this paper presents findings from a comparative analysis of plant fibre craft production and income in three southern African countries, Eswatini, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Structural Characterization of Carbonic Anhydrase VIII and Effects of Missense Single Nucleotide Variations to Protein Structure and Function:
- Authors: Sanyanga, Taremekedzwa Allan , Tastan Bishop, Özlem
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/149670 , vital:38873 , https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21082764
- Description: Human carbonic anhydrase 8 (CA-VIII) is an acatalytic isoform of the α -CA family. Though the protein cannot hydrate CO2, CA-VIII is essential for calcium (Ca2+) homeostasis within the body, and achieves this by allosterically inhibiting the binding of inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate (IP3) to the IP3 receptor type 1 (ITPR1) protein. However, the mechanism of interaction of CA-VIII to ITPR1 is not well understood. In addition, functional defects to CA-VIII due to non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNVs) result in Ca2+ dysregulation and the development of the phenotypes such as cerebellar ataxia, mental retardation and disequilibrium syndrome 3 (CAMRQ3). The pathogenesis of CAMRQ3 is also not well understood. The structure and function of CA-VIII was characterised, and pathogenesis of CAMRQ3 investigated. Structural and functional characterisation of CA-VIII was conducted through SiteMap and CPORT to identify potential binding site residues.
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- Date Issued: 2020
Unsustainable trade-offs: provisioning ecosystem services in rapidly changing Likangala River catchment in southern Malawi
- Authors: Pullanikkatil, Deepa , Mograbi, Penelope J , Palamuleni, Lobina , Ruhiiga, Tabukeli , Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/176308 , vital:42683 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-018-0240-x
- Description: Provisioning ecosystem services of the Likangala River Catchment in southern Malawi are important for livelihoods of those living there. Remote sensing, participatory mapping and focus group discussions were used to explore the spatio-temporal changes and trade-ofs in land-cover change from 1984 to 2013, and how that afects provisioning ecosystem services in the area. Communities derive a number of provisioning ecosystem services from the catchment. Forty-eight species of edible wild animals (including birds), 28 species of edible wild plants and fungi, 22 species of medicinal plants, construction materials, ornamental fowers, frewood, honey, gum, reeds and thatch/weaving grasses were derived from the catchment and used by local communities.
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- Date Issued: 2020
A functional ontology for information systems
- Authors: Motara, Yusuf, M , Van der Schyff, Karl
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/428936 , vital:72547 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC-1d75ba3e4a
- Description: The ontology of information systems — the way in which knowledge claims, and thus theories, are conceptualised and represented — is of particular importance in the information systems field, due to its reliance on relations between entities. This work proposes, demonstrates, and evaluates an alternative ontology for theory description which is arguably more powerful and more expressive than the dominant ontological model.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Econo-Language Planning and Transformation in South Africa: From Localisation to Globalisation
- Authors: Kaschula, Russell H
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/174657 , vital:42498 , ISBN 9781108425346
- Description: This chapter seeks to create an understanding of the historical, sociopolitical and economic context within which language planning has taken place in South Africa (Alexander 1992). Furthermore, the extent to which government agencies and other stakeholder bodies have taken language planning into account when developing economic and development policies within the contemporary global reality will be assessed (Edozie 2004). Policies (if one can call them policies) such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), as well as the National Development Plan (NDP) in South Africa are analysed against the backdrop of language policy planning and implementation, to see if there are linkages between opportunity language planning on the ground (Antia 2017) and economic development. In other words does language planning create work opportunities through policy creation and implementation where our languages are seen as resources to be used appropriately in the market place?.
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- Date Issued: 2019
Out of Africa?: a dated molecular phylogeny of the cicada tribe Platypleurini Schmidt (Hemiptera: Cicadidae), with a focus on African genera and the genus Platypleura Amyot and Audinet‐Serville
- Authors: Price, Benjamin W , Marshall, David C , Barker, Nigel P , Simon, Chris , Villet, Martin H
- Date: 2019
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/140704 , vital:37911 , DOI: 10.1111/syen.12360
- Description: The Platypleurini is a large group of charismatic cicadas distributed from Cape Agulhas in South Africa, through tropical Africa, Madagascar, India and eastern Asia to Japan, with generic diversity concentrated in equatorial and southern Africa. This distribution suggests the possibility of a Gondwanan origin and dispersal to eastern Asia from Africa or India. We used a four-gene (three mitochondrial) molecular dataset, fossil calibrations and molecular clock information to explore the phylogenetic relationships of the platypleurine cicadas and the timing and geography of their diversification. The earliest splits in the tribe were found to separate forest genera in Madagascar and equatorial Africa from the main radiation, and all of the Asian/Indian species sampled formed a younger clade nested well within the African taxa.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2019
Alternatives to Development in Africa:
- Authors: Matthews, Sally
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142202 , vital:38058 , ISBN 9783319675091 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67510-7_7
- Description: Africa’s place in the world has been closely linked to the idea of development. Building on post-development theory’s critique of development, Matthews’ chapter asks whether and how we can move beyond development in Africa. She argues that contrary to the wishes of some post-development theorists, we cannot retrieve, discover, or create something that is purely not-development, entirely non-Western, and fully outside of coloniality. However, this does not mean that we ought to acquiesce in the face of the powerful discourses that have come to dominate the way in which we talk about Africa. The chapter tentatively explores some possible ways in which development can be both resisted and reappropriated in creative ways.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Exploring grade 3 teachers’ resistance to ‘take up’progressive mathematics teaching roles
- Authors: Graven, Mellony , Westaway, Lise
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69700 , vital:29568 , https://DOI: 10.1007/s13394-018-0237-7
- Description: This article addresses the question: Why teachers of mathematics have yet to ‘take up’ progressive roles? Drawing on the philosophy of critical realism and its methodological equivalent, social realism, we analyse interview and observation data of four grade 3 teachers, with the view to identifying the mechanisms conditioning the expression of teachers’ identities. In so doing, we show how post-apartheid changes in systemic roles of teachers create contradictory tensions for teachers as these bring their own mathematical learning and teaching experiences into contradiction with the new post-apartheid roles they are mandated to enact. We examine how this contradiction, together with beliefs about mathematics, pedagogy and learners, is expressed in the teaching of grade 3 mathematics. We maintain that the complementarity between teachers’ beliefs and old systemic roles provides an explanation for why teachers of grade 3 mathematics have yet to ‘take-up’ progressive roles. The implications point to the need for teacher development that creates enablers that lead to changes in classroom practices that align with policy-designated, progressive roles in teaching mathematics.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Hepatitis C and HIV Coinfection in Developing Countries:
- Authors: Tastan Bishop, Özlem
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/148228 , vital:38721 , ISBN 9780128032343 , https://books.google.co.za/books?id=XSmlCgAAQBAJanddq=hepatitis+c+in+developing+countriesandsource=gbs_navlinks_s
- Description: Because of the common routes of transmission, hepatitis C virus (HCV) coinfection with HIV is frequent. Of the 36.6 million HIV-infected individuals worldwide, about 25% are also coinfected with HCV. Developing countries face the greatest burden of coinfection. HIV infection has been shown to have a significant impact on the progression of chronic HCV, with a higher risk of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Because of the improvements in the management and treatment of HIV/AIDS in resource-limited countries, HCV/HIV coinfection is becoming a significant clinical problem and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. HCV/HIV coinfection is characterized by aggressive hepatic fibrogenesis, incidence of cirrhosis, and HCC. HCC is currently a major cause for liver-related deaths in HIV patients. Viral eradication has been difficult to attain with interferon and ribavirin therapies. Novel therapies with direct-acting antiviral agents have been promising for this population. However, access to such expensive regimen is far beyond the capabilities of most resource-limited countries. Yet, studies lag behind those for HCV monoinfection.
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- Date Issued: 2018
How to be or not to be? A critical dialogue on the limitations and opportunities of academic development in the current higher education context
- Authors: Behari-Leak, Kasturi , Chitanand, N , Padayachee, Kershree , Masehela, L , Vorster, Jo-Anne E , Ganas, Rieta , Merckel, Vanessa
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124217 , vital:35577 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC-13671ff578
- Description: In the tumultuous time we find ourselves, debates about pedagogy have taken centre stage once again. Concerns raised by the student protests of 2015 and 2016 have highlighted the urgent need to re-think traditional teaching, learning and assessment practices, as well as the development of decolonised and transformative curricula.Traditional notions of academic and professional development are now being tested and contested, insofar as they are able to respond to student challenges in appropriate, responsive, legitimate and relevant ways. As a professional organisation dedicated to supporting learning and teaching, the executive team of HELTASA responded to the challenge in this article by engaging with perspectives on the purpose, role and conceptualisation of academic development in the current decolonial moment in the South African Higher Education landscape. Critical processes that enable academics to engage, share thoughts and debate epistemological, pedagogical and methodological options to support students and academics are much needed. And the context and spirit in which these debates occur may be as important as the debates themselves.At its annual conference, the executive team facilitated a critical dialogue with conference delegates on the limitations and opportunities of AD in our current context. Given the diverse teaching and learning contexts and institutional differentiation in the sector, this article explores individual and collective theorised observations, reflections and experiences of the seven facilitators who led the CD. These reflections were analysed and discussed against the backdrop of AD as well as the affordances of CD as a participatory learning and engagement methodology. The findings showed that there is dire need to re-imagine, not only AD’s role but alternative forms of critical engagement in the sector.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2018
Jesus, Che, Luaty: on the relationship between a digital picture and an iconic image in political iconography in Angola
- Authors: Siegert, Nadine
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/145919 , vital:38478 , DOI: 10.2979/africatoday.65.1.04
- Description: This essay makes a close examination of a selection of images of the Angolan rapper Luaty Beirão, who became internationally known as a political activist during his imprisonment in June 2015, accused of staging a coup d'état. By analyzing and interpreting images that were highly mediatized during that period, this article shows how political iconography can be traced back to Christian iconography and other images. Such filiations of images and their mediatization invoke a power that contributes to the formation of political and popular icons. This article analyzes this nexus by deconstructing the transmutation of a photograph into a popular icon.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Niq Mhlongo told us# FeesMustFall, or why the surface matters in Dog Eat Dog:
- Authors: Dass, Minesh
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142609 , vital:38095 , DOI: 10.4314/eia.v45i3.6
- Description: In this paper, I investigate some of the reasons for the relative paucity of scholarly attention given to Niq Mhlongo’s debut novel, Dog Eat Dog. I argue that this text anticipates and articulates themes that are vital to contemporary South African culture generally, and to the academic space of the university specifically. For this reason, I contend that it is a work worthy of consideration, both because of its unusual form (it is a novel of ordeal rather than a Bildungsroman), and its prescient depiction of issues to do with institutional racism and academic exclusion – subjects which were central during the student-led protests on South African campuses in 2015 and 2016. A principal thesis of this article is that one of the reasons for literary study’s unwillingness to engage with the novel is the discipline’s predisposition to a hermeneutics of suspicion, a method of analysis that I show is unsuited to Mhlongo’s text. Instead, I argue for the use of surface reading as a valid and appropriate praxis given the form and the content of Dog Eat Dog.
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- Date Issued: 2018
The “Pleasure Streets” of exile: queer subjectivities and the body in Arthur Nortje’s London poems
- Authors: Thorpe, Andrea
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/68432 , vital:29255 , https://doi.org/10.1080/02564718.2018.1447865
- Description: Publisher version , In this article, I aim to expand our understanding of Arthur Nortje as a poet of “exile” by exploring the dialectic between self-loathing and pleasure, as well as between engagement and isolation, which he portrays performatively through his London poetry. While critics have emphasised Nortje’s “marginality” or “liminality”, both as an “exile” and a “coloured” South African, I draw on the critical writing of Zoë Wicomb in order to extend readings of his poetry beyond this tragic paradigm. I furthermore take up Sarah Nuttall’s suggestion that Nortje’s London poetry describes a degree of immersion within the city and that this aspect of his work demands further study. After tracing Nortje’s playful use of literary influences and his reworking of the trope of flânerie, I provide a series of close readings of poems in which Nortje depicts an exploration of queer subjectivities, staged within the city. In his London poetry, Nortje subverts and eludes fixed racial, sexual, national and class identities. Nortje’s London poetry exemplifies how South African literature was developed in response to the alienating condition of exile, but also through engagement with the places where exile occurred.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2018
Understanding Collective Learning and Human Agency in Diverse Social, Cultural and Material Settings
- Authors: Olvitt, Lausanne L , Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Læssøe, Jeppe , Jordt Jørgensen, Nanna
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127226 , vital:35979 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/sajee/article/view/172221/161620
- Description: The significance of environment and sustainability education research and practice, and its potential contribution to a sustainable future for humanity, is conveyed by the International Social Science Council (n.d.), which explains: People everywhere will need to learn how to create new forms of human activity and new social systems that are more sustainable and socially just. However, we have limited knowledge about the type of learning that creates such change, how such learning emerges, or how it can be scaled-up to create transformations at many levels.Here, the important shift is towards considering what social systems, forms of knowledge, learning processes and questions of justice are associated with perpetuating or halting the decline of Earth’s bio-geo-chemical systems. This edition of the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education contributes three research papers and a themed Think Piece collection to these international deliberations about the role of education in enabling transformations to sustainability. Collectively, the articles highlight how relationality and the formation of human agency in socio-cultural and material settings in past–present–future configurations underpin all environment-oriented learning processes. The three research papers constituting the first part of this volume offer glimpses into how current unsustainable socio-cultural and material configurations might be transformed to address social inequalities and damaged people–nature relations. The Think Piece collection, introduced by Lotz-Sisitka, Læssøe and Jørgensen later in this editorial, focuses on how learning can foster and contribute to the development of change agents and collective agency for climate-resilient development.
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- Date Issued: 2018
Dangers of generic pedagogical panaceas: implementing sevice-learning differently in diverse disciplines
- Authors: Hlengwa, Amanda I , McKenna, Sioux
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61051 , vital:27933 , http://joe.ukzn.ac.za/Libraries/No_67_2017/Dangers_of_generic_pedagogical_panaceas_Implementing_service-learning_differently_in_diverse_disciplines.sflb.ashx
- Description: Descriptions of service-learning in the literature tend to position it as a powerful pedagogic tool as well as an exemplar of ‘best practice’ applicable across all disciplines and institutional contexts. Furthermore service-learning is couched as a moral imperative. In the South African context, this moral imperative is translated into policy pronouncements driving institutions of higher education to demonstrate responsiveness to the transformation needs of broader society. In this article, two departments, Philosophy and Environmental Science, at one university are used as case studies to interrogate what enables the uptake of service-learning as a pedagogic tool. Drawing on the work of Fairclough, this paper identifies the dominant discourses at play and considers how they constrain or enable the uptake of service-learning. We advocate for the infusion of service-learning in curricula, but argue that institutional culture, disciplinary values and the structure of knowledge impact on its uptake and should not be dismissed in the implementation process.
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- Date Issued: 2017