Nelisiwe Xaba: Dancing between South Africa and the Global North

2020 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 8-15
Author(s):  
Susan Manning
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global North ◽  
Deliberate Play

Nelisiwe Xaba has spent her career creating and touring works between South Africa and the Global North. Signature elements of her work include small-scale formats (solos, duets, trios), the use of objects that blur the distinction between costume and set, the repurposing of everyday materials, and the deliberate play with the performer’s and spectators’ gaze. In this cluster of articles writers based in South Africa, Germany, and the US explore how her works take on different meanings for different spectators in different cultural contexts.

Social Work and Indigenisation: A South African Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lobelo David Mogorosi ◽  
Dumisani Gaylord Thabede
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Work ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Work Education ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
World View ◽  
Joint Decision ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Global North ◽  
Work Education

For relevance to societal reality and challenges, countries should structure their social work education to deal with specific conditions and cultures. From its global North (i.e. Western Europe and North America) origins, social work has contributed to the expansion of the discipline and profession to the developing world, including South Africa. During the three decades (from the mid-1980s until the present day) during which they have taught social work in South Africa, the authors have witnessed half-hearted efforts to really integrate indigenous knowledge into the curricula. In writings and professional gatherings, scant attention was paid to curricula transformation imperatives enriching practice. To its credit, the Association of South African Social Work Education Institutions (ASASWEI) advocates for decolonisation and indigenisation of social work education. Discussing decolonisation and indigenisation in social work curricula, the paper critiques assumptions of global North ideas, cloaked as if universally applicable. An example is about some principles of social casework – a method of choice in South Africa – which mostly disregards cultural nuances of clientele with a communal collective world view that relies on joint decision-making. A culturally sensitive approach is adopted as theoretical framework for this paper. The paper concludes with recommendations that should help ensure that social work curricula strive towards being indigenous, contextualised and culturally appropriate.

Exploring the South African Government Communication on Land Expropriation without Compensation

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lungisani Moyo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Food Security ◽  
South African ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
South African Government ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
The South ◽  
Land Expropriation ◽  
African Government ◽  
Government Communication

ABSTRACT This paper used qualitative methodology to explore the South African government communication and land expropriation without compensation and its effects on food security using Alice town located in the Eastern Cape Province South Africa as its case study. This was done to allow the participants to give their perceptions on the role of government communication on land expropriation without compensation and its effects on South African food security. In this paper, a total population of 30 comprising of 26 small scale farmers in rural Alice and 4 employees from the Department of Agriculture (Alice), Eastern Cape, South Africa were interviewed to get their perception and views on government communications and land expropriation without compensation and its effects on South African food security. The findings of this paper revealed that the agricultural sector plays a vital role in the South African economy hence there is a great need to speed up transformation in the sector.

Intersectional Discrimination

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shreya Atrey
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Burden Of Proof ◽  
Intersectionality Theory ◽  
Indirect Discrimination ◽  
The Us ◽  
Treaty Body ◽  
The Eu

Why has intersectionality fallen by the wayside of discrimination law? Thirty years after Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term ‘intersectionality’, discrimination lawyers continue to be plagued by this question across a range of jurisdictions, including the US, UK, South Africa, India, Canada, as well as the UN treaty body jurisprudence and the jurisprudence of the EU and the ECHR. Claimants continue to struggle to establish intersectional claims based on more than one ground of discrimination. This book renews the bid for realizing intersectionality in comparative discrimination law. It presents a juridical account of intersectional discrimination as a category of discrimination inspired by intersectionality theory, and distinct from other categories of thinking about discrimination including strict, substantial, capacious, and contextual forms of single-axis discrimination, multiple discrimination, additive discrimination as in combination or compound discrimination, and embedded discrimination. Intersectional discrimination, defined in these theoretical and categorial terms, then needs to be translated into doctrine, recalibrating each of the central concepts and tools of discrimination law to respond to it—including the text of non-discrimination guarantees, the idea of grounds, the test for analogous grounds, the distinction between direct and indirect discrimination, the substantive meaning of discrimination, the use of comparators, the justification analysis and standard of review, the burden of proof between parties, and the range of remedies available. With this, the book presents a granular account of intersectional discrimination in theoretical, conceptual, and doctrinal terms, and aims to transform discrimination law in the process of realizing intersectionality within its discourse.

Southern Looks? A History of African American Missionary Photography of Africa, 1890s–1930s

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-417
Author(s):  
ELISABETH ENGEL
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Christian Missions ◽  
Us South ◽  
New Negro ◽  
American Institution ◽  
African Methodist Episcopal Church ◽  
The Us ◽  
Methodist Episcopal Church ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Description

This article traces and analyzes the missionary photography of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the most important independent black American institution that began to operate in colonial South Africa at the onset of the politics of racial segregation in the 1890s. It argues that AME missionary photography presents a neglected archive, from which a history of black photographic encounters and a subaltern perspective on the dominant visual cultures of European imperialism and Christian missions in Africa can be retrieved. Focussing in particular on how AME missionaries deployed tropes of the culturally refined “New Negro” and the US South in their visual description of South Africa, this article demonstrates that photography was an important tool for black subjects to define their image beyond the representations of black inferiority that established visual traditions constructed.

scholarly journals Xenophobia and Collective Violence in South Africa: A Note of Skepticism About the Scapegoat

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonny Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Collective Violence ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Global Literature ◽  
Foreign Nationals ◽  
The Us

Abstract:This article examines differing explanations for violence against foreign nationals in post-apartheid South Africa. It argues that the most compelling analyses in the scholarship draw from a family of arguments in the global literature that locates popular violence against outsiders within the context of declining sovereign power, explaining theatrical displays of force against enemies within as attempts at the retrieval of that power. To the extent that these arguments rely on the concept of a scapegoat, they are inadequate. More analytical attention needs to be paid to the scene of the encounters between the “us” and the “them” of collective violence.

Film as /and Popular Social Text: The Reception of John Trengove’s Inxeba/The Wound and Wanuri Kahui’s Rafiki

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 55-79
Author(s):  
Gibson Ncube
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Global North ◽  
State Responses

This article is interested in popular and institutional or state responses to the representations of queerness offered in the films Inxeba/The Wound (South Africa, 2017) and Rafiki (Kenya, 2018). Aside from portraying the marked homophobia that continues to circulate on the African continent, the institutional and state responses to the films have overshadowed the positive popular reception which has  characterised conversations around the films on social media and public spaces. This article shows how social media functions as animportant space of contestation for diverse issues relating to non-normative gender and sexual identities. As these films circulate in different spaces and are viewed by diverse audiences, they elicit equally diverse reactions and responses. The article examines how viewers, in Africa and beyond, receive and engage with the queerness represented in the two films. It argues that the multifaceted reactions to Inxeba/The Wound and Rafiki are central to articulating important questions about what it means to be queer in Africa,and particularly what it implies for black queers to inhabit heteronormative and patriarchal spaces on the continent. Through an analysis of the reactions and receptions of the two films in Africa and the global North, it is argued that it is possible to trace important inter-regional, intra-continental and intercontinental dialogues and conversations regarding the representation of queer African subjectivities. The intra-continental and inter-continental dialogues bring to light questions of gaze and viewing that are inherent in the circulation of queer-themed films. Kewords: Inxeba/The Wound, Rafiki, reception, popular culture, queerness

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document