The role of the educator
- Authors: National Union of MetalWorkers of South Africa
- Date: 19--?
- Subjects: Capitalism and education , Black people -- Education -- South Africa , Teachers, Black -- Psychology
- Language: English
- Type: text , pamphlet
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/110914 , vital:33350
- Description: In South Africa, like all other capitalist societies, workers are forced to work for wages to buy the things they need to survive. The land, factories, mines, etc are privately owned by the capitalists. Because the capitalists own the land, factories and mines they control the wealth that is produced. With this wealth, as well as with the ownership of several newspapers and investment in radio and television stations, the capitalists can try and influence how people think. The capitalists also use the political rights and the wealth they have to influence how the government behaves. In South Africa, black workers have no political rights, because of apartheid. So they cannot influence the government in the same way as the capitalists. Workers standing on their own are also weak against their employers because the employers do not need any one particular worker. But the employers cannot do without all their workers. Machines without workers are useless. So if all workers can organise themselves to act together, to act collectively as it is called, then the balance of power changes. Capitalism needs the labour of workers to survive. So organised workers can be the most powerful weapon against capitalism. But the capitalists in South Africa are very powerful. They have a good friend in the apartheid state. Workers need to be well organised to challenge the power of the capitalists. But to build this strength, we need unity. We also need discipline and clear direction. The first step in making a union strong is for the union to have a very large membership. But the members cannot be sleeping members. They must understand the broader aims and objectives of the union and how the union fits into the wider struggle in South Africa. They must also have the skills and knowledge to be able to participate actively in all the activities of the union. Democratic practices increase the strength of workers' organisations and make them more effective. Democratic organisations are also necessary for building democratic societies because they make it possible for the masses of the people to participate in decisions about their lives.
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- Date Issued: 19--?
Privilege, solidarity and social justice struggles in South Africa: a view from Grahamstown
- Authors: Matthews, Sally
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142270 , vital:38064 , DOI:10.1353/trn.2015.0016
- Description: The last decade has seen a significant increase in the number and prominence of social movements in South Africa. Many of these movements are supported by relatively privileged individuals who are not themselves victims of the injustices the movements oppose. In this paper, I draw out some of the possibilities and limitations of the role of privileged individuals in supporting social movements struggling for social justice, looking particularly at the role of students in supporting such movements. The paper is based on research on the relationship between one such movement, the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM), and a student organisation, the Students for Social Justice (SSJ), both of which are based in Grahamstown, South Africa. While acknowledging that privileged supporters of such movements can play a constructive role in social justice struggles, I use the experiences of the UPM and SSJ to explore some of the tensions that are likely to emerge and that need to be addressed when the relatively privileged participate in popular struggles. In particular, I discuss the likely difficulties privileged supporters will experience in bridging social divides and in contributing meaningfully to the theorisation of popular struggles.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2015
Form over function? The practical application of the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act 1998 in South Africa
- Authors: Kruuse, Helen
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: Article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/54094 , vital:26389 , http://journals.co.za/content/ju_jur/2013/1/EJC148455
- Description: The Recognition of Customary Marriages Act 120 of 1998 is a major legislative measure for the development of customary marriages in line with the constitutional principle of equality, specifically for women. The article explores the interactions between this ideal in the Act with empirical observations and the latest judicial decisions concerning its application. It considers various examples of the lack of protection of women in relationships of a customary nature, and it concludes that both the state and courts favour a formal or definitional approach to customary marriage. In considering alternative approaches that could adequately protect vulnerable parties, two conclusions emerge: First, the article recommends a wholesale revision of the South African family law approach from a focus on form to dependency. Second (and as a short-term measure), the article advocates for the putative marriage doctrine to be applied in the customary marriage context to protect many women who are denied access to 'customary marriage' as a form, and as a result, all of the benefits that flow from such marriage.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2013
The role of non-timber forest products in household coping strategies in South Africa: the influence of household wealth and gender
- Authors: Paumgarten, Fiona , Shackleton, Charlie M
- Date: 2011
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6648 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006897
- Description: The prevalence and ranking of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) as safety-nets has been well discussed, but rarely quantified. We report on group discussions and household interviews in two South African villages to assess the frequency and nature of shocks and stresses over a 2-year period and the coping strategies employed, stratified by household wealth and gender of the de jure household head. Overall, kinship was the most widely adopted coping strategy, and NTFPs were the fifth most prevalent (employed by 70% of households). There were relatively few differences in the nature of shocks or responses between male- and female-headed households. Wealth influenced the experience of shocks or stresses as well as responses. Poorer households have fewer options with the increased use or sale of NTFPs being the second most commonly adopted strategy. Increased use and sale of NTFPs is a common manifestation of the safety-net function. To reconcile long-term economic development and biodiversity conservation, it is important to understand people’s use of natural resources and the factors that affect this use, including their responses to shocks and stresses.
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- Date Issued: 2011
Causes of decoupling between larval supply and settlement and consequences for understanding recruitment and population connectivity
- Authors: Pineda, Jesus , Porri, Francesca , Starczak, Victroria , Blythe, Jonathan
- Date: 2010
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6869 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011501
- Description: Marine broadcast spawners have two-phase life cycles, with pelagic larvae and benthic adults. Larval supply and settlement link these two phases and are crucial for the persistence of marine populations. Mainly due to the complexity in sampling larval supply accurately, many researchers use settlement as a proxy for larval supply. Larval supply is a constraining variable for settlement because, without larval supply, there is no settlement. Larval supply and settlement may not be well correlated, however, and settlement may not consistently estimate larval supply. This paper explores the argument that larval supply (i.e., larval abundance near settlement sites) may not relate linearly to settlement. We review the relationship between larval supply and settlement, from estimates and biases in larval supply sampling, to non-behavioral and behavioral components, including small-scale hydrodynamics, competency, gregarious behavior, intensification of settlement, lunar periodicity, predation and cannibalism. Physical and structural processes coupled with behavior, such as small-scale hydrodynamics and intensification of settlement, sometimes result in under- or overestimation of larval supply, where it is predicted from a linear relationship with settlement. Although settlement is a function of larval supply, spatial and temporal processes interact with larval behavior to distort the relationship between larval supply and settlement, and when these distortions act consistently in time and space, they cause biased estimates of larval supply from settlement data. Most of the examples discussed here suggest that behavior is the main source of the decoupling between larval supply and settlement because larval behavior affects the vertical distribution of larvae, the response of larvae to hydrodynamics, intensification of settlement, gregariousness, predation and cannibalism. Thus, larval behavior seems to limit broad generalizations on the regulation of settlement by larval supply. Knowledge of the relationship is further hindered by the lack of a well founded theoretical relationship between the two variables. The larval supply–settlement transition may have strong general consequences for population connectivity, since larval supply is a result of larval transport, and settlement constrains recruitment. Thus, measuring larval supply and settlement effectively allows more accurate quantification and understanding of larval transport, recruitment and population connectivity.
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- Date Issued: 2010
Sperm morphology in five species of cicadettine cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadomorpha: Cicadidae)
- Authors: Chawanji, A S , Hodgson, Alan N , Villet, Martin H
- Date: 2006
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6930 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011948
- Description: Mature spermatozoa from five species of cicadas of the subfamily Cicadettinae (Quintilia wealei, Melampsalta leucoptera, Stagira simplex, Xosopsaltria thunbergi and Monomatapa matoposa) were examined by light and electron microscopy. In each species sperm are elongate, aggregated into organized bundles with their heads embedded in a homogenous matrix to form spermatodesmata, and exhibit polymegaly. The head of the sperm consist of an anteriorly positioned conical acrosome that has a tubular substructure and a deep, posterior invagination that forms the subacrosomal space (eccentrically positioned anteriorly). The acrosome is flattened anteriorly; posteriorly it extends along either side of the nucleus as two tubular processes that gradually decrease in diameter. The filiform nucleus tapers anteriorly and intrudes into the subscrosomal space. Posteriorly the nucleus has a lateral invagination that houses material of the so-called centriolar adjunct. Posterior to the centriolar adjuct and the nucleus are two crystalline mitochondrial derivatives and a centriole, respectively, the latter giving rise to the axoneme, which has a 9 + 9 + 2 arrangement of microtubules. In these respects the sperm are similar to those of platypleurine cicadas. However, some features seem unique to cicadettines, including the structural organization of an enlarged centriolar adjunct and the dimensions of the tails. The enlarged centriolar adjunct has a lamella-like substructure and can be considered a synapomorphic character in the Cicadettinae. It is, therefore, potentially useful in the separation of this subfamily from the Cicadinae. In addition, the great length of the sperm nucleus of long-headed sperm in M. matoposa could be a synapomorphy of this genus and related taphurine and cicadettine species.
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- Date Issued: 2006
Dancing around the same spot? land reform and Ngos in Zimbabwe: the case of SOS Children’s Villages
- Authors: Helliker, Kirk D
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: article , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/61006 , vital:27910 , http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/asr.v13i2.60408
- Description: This paper discusses the rural-based operations of an international NGO in Mashonaland Central province, Zimbabwe. The aim is to highlight the contingent variation of NGO practices within defined limits. It does this through 'thick description’ of the NGO of focus, the SOS Children’s Village, and compares its 'handling' of the transforming countryside with the response of two other NGOs. It concludes by suggesting some conceptual points in understanding organizational dispositions of NGOs.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
New Unity Movement Presidential Address
- Date: 2005-04
- Subjects: Government, Resistance to -- South Africa , South Africa -- History -- 20th century , South Africa -- Politics and government
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/32590 , vital:32138 , Bulk File 7
- Description: Presidential Addresses were delivered at each Annual conference of the New Unity Movement. This collection, though incomplete, has 18 items ranging from 1989 to 2013.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2005-04
Economic review 2001
- Authors: DITSELA
- Date: 2001
- Subjects: Development Institute for Training,Support and Education for Labour (DITSELA)
- Language: English
- Type: text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/178602 , vital:42958
- Description: This volume of Bargaining Indicators for 2002 comes in the context of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the United States’ war on Afghanistan, the collapse of the economy of Argentina and with it the biggest sovereign bankruptcy in history. All these historic events are unfolding within the first synchronised global recession since the 1970s, and have in turn deepened this recession. Within South Africa, this edition of Bargaining Indicators comes in the context of the first anti-government national strike by organised labour since the 1994 elections, and a deepening of the economic slowdown that we noted in the last edition of Bargaining Indicators. In this review of economic developments during 2001 we shine the spotlight on the global recession and its dynamics, and we look in particular at the slide of the world’s largest economy - that of the United States - into its first serious economic crisis since the end of the cold war, and we take a look at the significance of the attacks of September 11 and their aftermath on the dynamics of the global recession. We conclude our discussion of the global recession by discussing the responses of the Bush government and its allies, and at the meaning of these responses for neoliberal economic orthodoxy. We continue our analysis by looking at developments within the South African economy. In particular, we look at the implications of the global recession on the South African economy, and at how the currency crisis that has unfolded since the last quarter of 2001 forms an important moment in the dynamics of the unfolding global recession. Within this context we look at the main economic indicators (GDP; GDE; fixed capital formation, operating surpluses, wages, employment, savings and so on). Lastly, we look at the year ahead, and in particular at the implications of the global and domestic economic developments for the 2002 bargaining season.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2001
Consumer health informatics in the information age and beyond
- Authors: Pottas, Dalenca
- Subjects: Medical informatics , Information technology , f-sa
- Language: English
- Type: text , Lectures
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/20757 , vital:29386
- Description: This paper reviews current and future trends and challenges in the field of consumer health informatics. Emergent innovations driving consumer health informatics in the information age include devices, tools and applications supporting personalised healthcare, electronic personal health record (PHR) systems and a plethora of tools in the health social media domain. Within this domain, a new kind of social media citizen, the consumer specialist or patient opinion leader, is taking the lead in online communities of patients. A new generation of personal health records combining PHRs and social media is emerging, even though pervasive adoption and use of PHRs remains elusive. The accuracy of information, security and privacy of personal health information, legislative matters and the digital divide remain recurring challenges of consumer health informatics. In future, PHR vendors will have to address the lack of espousal of PHRs in innovative ways to provide a compelling case for adoption. The continued uptake of health social media necessitates efforts to understand, through longitudinal studies, precisely who the users are, what they use it for and how it contributes to the achievement of both personal and public health outcomes. Health information consumers, of varying levels of techno-literacy, needs and preferences, must be assisted to move from simply accessing information to distilling relevant and credible information and making informed decisions. Further research is required to understand the changing relationships between patients and healthcare providers and how consumer health information technologies can best support these. There is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of consumer health information technologies to inform both public policy and the next generation of tools, technologies and artefacts that could better facilitate improved health outcomes. Lastly, more effort is required to erode digital inequalities. As we move into a future emphasising both the global and the individual, accelerated connectedness and speed of change, consumer health informatics must respond such that it remains germane and amplifies the value that can be gained by all stakeholders.
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The ‘decolonial turn’: what does it mean for academic staff development?
- Authors: Vorster, Jo-Anne , Quinn, Lynn
- Date: 2017
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66612 , vital:28971 , https://doi.org/10.17159/1947-9417/2017/853
- Description: publisher version , It has become increasingly evident that the discourse of transformation that has shaped the democratising of higher education institutions over the first two decades of the democratic dispensation in South Africa has now run its course. Over the past few years, and particularly during the tumultuous student protests of 2015 and 2016, students and some academics have been calling for the decolonisation of university structures and cultures, including curricula. Using concepts from Margaret Archer’s social realism we consider the failure of the discourse of transformation to lead to real change and examine a constellation of new discourses related to the decolonisation of universities that have emerged in South Africa recently. Furthermore, we critique the discourses that have underpinned our own practices as academic developers over the past two decades and then explore the implications of what could be termed a ‘decolonial turn’ 1 for academic developers and by implication for the academics with whom they work.
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- Date Issued: 2017
The remains of rock glaciers in Bottelnek, East Cape Drakensberg, South Africa
- Authors: Lewis, Colin A , Hanvey, Patricia M
- Date: 1993
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6698 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006734
- Description: Certain debris accumulations in Bottelnek are ascribed a rock glacier origin on the basis of morphological and sedimentological evidence. Radiocarbon dating indicates that rock glaciers were active at or subsequent to 21 000 BP and that cold, stadial conditions, existed on the region after 27 000 BP and before 13 000 BP, during the Bottelnek Stadial. At least sporadic permafrost existed in Bottelnek when the rock glaciers were active.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 1993
Guarded visions: walls, watchtowers and warped perspectives in the Israeli occupied West Bank Palestinian territory
- Authors: Baasch, Rachel M
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147281 , vital:38611 , https://0-hdl.handle.net.wam.seals.ac.za/10520/EJC176318
- Description: This paper examines the relationship between Israel's fortification of physical space and narratives of division in the Israeli occupied Palestinian West Bank Territory. I argue that the fortification and separation of physical space deepens segregation, and increases fear, hostility and disconnection between people living in this context. Furthermore, I suggest that this relationship between narratives of division and insecurity and structural mechanisms of control within the West Bank influences and impacts on individuals such that personal perspectives become guarded and defensive. The mediation of subjects through a defensive lens can prevent individuals from forming connections that acknowledge the permeability of seemingly impenetrable distinctions between inside and outside, or self and an-other. The looking, recording and representation of people in a place that is guarded and framed from a position of insecurity reduces the capacity of individuals to locate openings that traverse restrictive boundaries. In order to contextualise my discussion, I have included personal documentation of defensive structures photographed in the West Bank between 2013 and 2014. I position my observations and analyses in relation to discussions about the Oush Grab Military Base presented by the Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR) in their recent publication Architecture after revolution (2013).
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- Date Issued: 2015
The incurious seeker: waiting, and the search for the stranger in the fiction of Samuel Beckett and JM Coetzee
- Authors: Marais, Mike
- Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/143971 , vital:38299 , https://mediatropes.com/index.php/Mediatropes/article/view/22380/18161
- Description: In J.M. Coetzee and the Novel: Writing and Politics after Beckett, Patrick Hayes argues that Coetzee, while influenced by Beckett’s prose style, assimilates it in such a way that his writing not only departs from the latter’s solipsism but also provides “an anti-foundational imagining of moral community” (71). While there is much merit to this argument, Hayes’s distinction between Beckett’s solipsism and Coetzee’s concern with community downplays the extent to which the human subject’s conception of herself depends on the differential process through which community establishes itself. In the first section of this paper I show that, already in Murphy, we find evidence in support of Ileana Marculescu’s argument that Beckett inscribes solipsism in his writing only to subvert it. Murphy’s attempts at solipsistic knowledge fail precisely because he has been estranged from himself by language and community. What appears to be solipsism is, in fact, a search for the self from which he has been divided by community. In Beckett’s writing, the self’s concern with its ability to know itself is always a concern with community.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2014
New Unity Movement Presidential Address
- Date: 1998-12
- Subjects: Government, Resistance to -- South Africa , South Africa -- History -- 20th century , South Africa -- Politics and government
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/32476 , vital:32109 , Bulk File 7
- Description: Presidential Addresses were delivered at each Annual conference of the New Unity Movement. This collection, though incomplete, has 18 items ranging from 1989 to 2013.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 1998-12
South African quality of life trends over three decades, 1980–2010
- Authors: Moller, Valerie
- Date: 2013
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67145 , vital:29040 , https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0120-y
- Description: publisher version , The South African Quality of Life Trends study has tracked the subjective well-being of South Africans in ten waves from 1983 to 2010. The paper presents the SAQoL trendline of life satisfaction, happiness and perceptions of life getting better or worse against the backdrop of the transition from apartheid to democracy. Subjective well-being peaked in the month following the first open elections in April 1994 when black and white South Africans were equally satisfied and happy at levels found in other democratic societies. But post-election euphoria was short-lived and levels of well-being dropped the following year and racial inequalities in evaluations of life re-emerged. The tenth and latest wave in the study was conducted a few months after South Africa’s successful hosting of the Soccer World Cup. In 2010, the proportions of all South Africans expressing satisfaction, happiness and optimism was among the highest since the coming of democracy—just over half stated they were satisfied, close on two-thirds were happy, and half felt life was getting better. Nonetheless, while the standard of living has increased for a minority of formerly disadvantaged South Africans and a small black middle class has emerged, there are still huge disparities in both material and subjective well-being. In 1997 and 2010, South Africans were asked what would make them happier in future. In 2010, the majority of citizens still hoped for basic necessities, income and employment, to enhance their quality of life.
- Full Text: false
- Date Issued: 2013
The representation of sex workers in South African media: danger, morals and human rights
- Authors: Hunt, Sally , Hubbard, Beatrice
- Date: 2015
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/139101 , vital:37705 , DOI: 10.5842/46-0-618
- Description: The ideological construct of gender typically positions women below men, and “others” certain types of women even more, especially those distinguished from idealised femininity by aspects of their sexuality. This paper explores the representation of sex work and sex workers in the South African media in 2009 and 2010, a time during which there was an increase in news coverage of sex work during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Analysis of the two data sets revealed that sex work is still often perceived as immoral and dangerous, and that sex workers – overwhelmingly represented as women – are criminalised for their actions while client agency is largely obscured, which is in line with previous studies of South African newspapers. However, a strong liberal representation of sex workers was also found in one data set, which advocates the decriminalisation of sex work in the context of human rights. The use of the term “sex work” and its derivatives, rather than “prostitution”, was found to index this progressive stance.
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- Date Issued: 2015
Preferential fuzzy sets: a key to voting patterns
- Authors: Murali, V
- Date: 2008-04-15
- Language: English
- Type: Text
- Identifier: vital:579 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012406
- Description: There is a one-to-one correspondence between ordered partitions and kernels of fuzzy subsets under a natural equivalence relation on them called preferential equality, on any n-element set Xn. We discuss some aspects of this correspondence with respect to counting voter’s choice or preference through the notions of Flags, Keychains and Pinned-flags.
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- Date Issued: 2008-04-15
Installation view: Chale Wote Festival 2018
- Authors: Simbao, Ruth K
- Date: 2018
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147059 , vital:38589 , https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/chale-wote-festival-accra-2018/
- Description: The Chale Wote festival opened on the Day of Re-Membering (20 August), when the Nai Priest poured libations at Brazil House in order to invoke the ancestral spirits. Core events took place on the streets and at various public spaces in James Town from 25 – 26 August. A number of artists including Kiffouly Youchaou, Kresiah Mukwazhi, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT), Charlotte Brathwaite, Percy Nii Nortey and the Ubulungiswa/Justice collective created works inside Ussher Fort and James Fort, which were built as slave forts by the Dutch and the British.
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- Date Issued: 2018