Sophiatown: Coming of Age in South Africa

1989 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 478
Author(s):  
Thabo N. Masemola ◽  
Don Mattera
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Coming Of Age

scholarly journals Coming of age? Women’s sexual and reproductive health after twentyone years of democracy in South Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (48) ◽  
pp. 79-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Cooper ◽  
Jane Harries ◽  
Jennifer Moodley ◽  
Deborah Constant ◽  
Rebecca Hodes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Reproductive Health ◽  
Sexual And Reproductive Health ◽  
Coming Of Age

SOUTH AFRICA 2016 – A COMING OF AGE: THEOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF SOUTH AFRICA

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
N Barney Pityana
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Herbert Marcuse ◽  
False Consciousness ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
The People ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Ethical Reflections ◽  
And Behavior

This essay marks the maturing of South Africa's democracy since it was established in 1994. It raises questions as to whether the democratic dispensation has fulfilled what it promised, and it examines the reasons thereof. In essence it reasons that democracy has failed the people of South Africa because it lacks democratic accountability, and a firm foundation on the expressed will of the people. The theological and ethical factors in addressing the failings of a democratic system come into view. The essay concludes with an affirmation of the essential character of the church in promoting and defending justice in the world. One-dimensional thought is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and the purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which necessarily and mono-politically repeated, become hypnotic definitions and dictations... The products indoctrinate and manipulat; they promote a false consciousness that is immune against falsehood… This emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior… Herbert Marcuse: One-Dimensional Man (1964)

Melancholy freedom: Movement and stasis in Sibs Shongwe-La Mer's Necktie Youth (2015)

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-224
Author(s):  
Timothy Wright
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Art Film ◽  
Freedom Movement

Abstract This article examines the 2015 art-film Necktie Youth (Sibs Shongwe-La Mer) with a view to understanding new affective, temporal and genre formations in post-transitional South Africa. A quasi-documentary portrait of ennui and depression among a circle of privileged 'born-free' youth in Johannesburg's wealthy suburbs, the film uses a coming-of-age narrative template to allegorize post-transitional South Africa. Yet this allegory is not a straightforward one of either disillusionment or progressivist maturation. Rather, it has something in common with David Scott's analysis of the 'ruined time' of post-revolution: an endless present haunted by the ghosts of futures past. I use Scott's lens to understand the floating, marooned temporalities of the film, whose deep melancholic undertow is at odds with its performance of youthful post-apartheid self-fashioning. Thus, despite its claims to inhabiting a 'new' historical phase, the film remains haunted by the ghosts of what Scott calls the 'allegory of emancipatory redemption'. I show how the film ultimately produces a sense of 'exile from history' ‐ a mode in which key historical events have already happened and in effect overwhelm the present ‐ and argue that this sensibility is key to understanding the contradictory temporalities of the present.

Sophiatown: Coming of Age in South Africa

1989 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Jennifer Seymour Whitaker ◽  
Don Mattera ◽  
Molapetene Collins Ramusi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Coming Of Age

A minor majority

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-392
Author(s):  
Lesley Lokko
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Graduate School ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
African Students ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Age Of Consent ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Age Of Majority ◽  
The University

The terms ‘age of consent’, ‘age of licence’ and ‘age of majority’ – often used interchangeably – give young adults legal and moral permission to drink, drive, vote, smoke, have sex and marry (among other rights). Depending on context, the threshold from being a minor to attaining majority – adulthood – is marked by a ritual or a ceremony, giving the threshold cul-tural as well as legal significance. But thresholds, as we already know, are places of action, movement, change … rarely comfortable or easy, and seldom precise. Drawing on the three years since the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg (GSA) was established in 2016, this essay traces the school's own ‘coming-of-age’ in a time of violent protest and popular uprising against an out-of-date and stubbornly Eurocentric curriculum. Whilst the issues facing young South African students – both black and white – have particular resonance inside South Africa, many of the initiatives that the school has pioneered under the banner of ‘Transformative Pedagogies’ hold meaning for the rest of the African continent. Using a mixture of conventional texts, videos, projects and transcripts, A Minor Majority details the GSA's attempts to seize both the site-specific ‘winds of change’ in South Africa and take advantage of global shifts in research culture and methodology to arrive at new insights and possibilities.

Coming of Age in the New South Africa

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Bentley ◽  
Peter Midgley
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
New South

The Quest for Ubuntu in a Coming-of-Age South Africa – Questions Arising from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Latter Ideas

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 8-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Barrett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Black Intellectuals ◽  
Intellectual Discourse ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Biblical Concepts

AbstractBonhoeffer's latter prison letters contained radical questions about his church's theology in its approach to the secularization (or coming-of-age) of post-Enlightenment Western society. These led him to a burst of remarkable theological exploration in his desire to 'go right back to the beginnings' and try to produce a christologically-based 'non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts'. Here we attempt to follow his exploratory ideas, unworked out as they are, and look for links with the present South African scene: first, the theological scene with its question whether this is the moment for a new Kairos Document and, second, the more general scene in which black intellectuals in particular have been challenged to help awaken the vision and practice of ubuntu (the concept of fullness of being-in-relatedness) – which is too important an objective to be treated in merely socio-political terms. Can Bonhoeffer's legacy, then, encourage fruitful discussion between Christian theology and the proposed intellectual discourse?

Humor and scatology in contemporary Zulu ceremonial songs

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
Noleen Turner
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
Kwazulu Natal

AbstractThis article focuses on humor embedded in the delivery and lyrics of a form of song sung by Zulu women in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa still widely practiced in rural areas, called amaculo omgonqo ‘puberty songs.’ The aim is to ascertain how and why young Zulu females sing these unusual songs which are normally sung in the days preceding two rites of passage ceremonies; firstly, the umhlonyane ceremony, which is held to mark a young girl’s first menstruation during her puberty years, and secondly, approximately 10 years later, the umemulo ‘coming of age’ ceremony which is held for young girls who have reached marriageable age. Analysis is made of the unusual use of scatological and ribald language in these songs, which are sung by young girls before these two ceremonies. These songs are rendered socially acceptable only because of the context in which they are sung, and for the bawdy humor which is core to the lyrics.

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