PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES FACING THE NEWLY SPLIT SOUTH SUDAN STATE

This paper seeks to explore the possible problems and challenges facing the fledgling South State. It is this impartial approach to addressing such an issue that sets the current study as unique and exclusive. The people of South Sudan have finally managed to establish their own nation state after almost two-decade of internecine civil war. In fact wars between the North and South were fought ever since the dawn of independence, and even before. The newly independent State of the South Sudan has to be prepared to put up with lots of agonies partly seen and predictable and partly not. There are myriad of models of split States across the globe, however the reality of the Southern State is enormously different. The South has for decades been a battle ground for several wars and hardly ever a developmental program started there was fully accomplished as it was planned, no matter how vital was the nature of that project. The South is a land housing a multitude of ethnicities who disparagingly have their different set of cultural and social values with very slender common ground. The South, by its very tropical nature, provides a hospitable milieu for accumulation of diverse diseases. Positive aspects of independence as they shall form the future of the newly emerging nation shall receive their due analytical weight, as well. KEY WORDS: split, corruption, social maladies, ethnicities, cultural and social values, hygienic awareness, newly independent

Remedies of Social Decadence in Context of the Life of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him)

In this article, putrefaction of society has been discussed along with the counterstrategies adopted by the Prophet (Peace be upon him). Since social vices have been the vestigial part of the Arab society, the Prophet (Peace be upon him) took up the cudgels and bestirred to eradicate moral decay, existent among the Arabs from the days of yore. Analogous to the situation, in the contemporary world, the similar social vices are being erected on the pretext of ‘modernization’, which has become the cause of demoralization for many. For this, in the current article, social maladies and moral turpitude like fib, backbiting, adultery, grudge, rancor etc. have been delineated. After being involved in elusive bustling, an individual blemishes his or her life in this world and hereafter, affecting Peace and Stability in the society. The only way out that one can adopt to escape herself/himself from this, is the way that has been unfolded by the Prophet (Peace be upon him). So, by acting upon the Prophet’s (Peace be upon him) instructions we can curb these social vices and moral turpitude in our society.

Confronting Urban Planning Challenges in Chipata District, Zambia: Notes from the Field

Since the public inauguration of the URP (Urban and Regional Planning) Bill in 2009, which is now law (The Urban and Regional Planning Act No. 3 of 2015), urban planning in Zambia has undergone changes. In partnership with the Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO) Federation, the Zambian parliament put into effect pilot urban planning assistance programs to assist districts around the country, including Chipata District in 2011, transition to a more decentralized, integrated and locally-defined approach to urban planning. However, the presence of discrimination, corruption, and negative attitudes towards urban planning engagement, social maladies prominently displayed in Zambian society, pose challenges to implementing the ideal goals of the 2009 URP Bill. The extreme, widespread poverty in Zambia merely exacerbates the propensity towards corrupt and discriminatory behavior, and influences poor attitudes toward urban planning engagement. This paper describes the projects undertaken by the VSO volunteer from the USA between 2011 and 2012 in the light of the specific urban problems facing Chipata District, and discusses the ways the social maladies play out in Zambian society to pose challenges to implementing the recommended changes to the planning system scribed in the 2009 URP Bill.

Human Comedy in Wole Soyinka’s Jero’s metamorphosis: A Pragmatic Analysis

<em>Falsity has turned the best-seller commodity rampantly symptomatic of interpersonal relations within/between most contemporary African nations. Roughly everybody strives adamantly for somebody to lull, betray and suckle to the bone. Combating such insidious victimization has long remained part of most African writers’ concerns. Unfortunately, the latter’s endeavours seem to go misfiring insomuch as the fact keeps steadily worsening. Thence comes to be spurred the rationale sustaining this article, the leading hypothesis of which is: most readers don’t grab the intrinsic intent and philosophy lurking behind the allegorical language of literature. Accordingly, our objective is to accompany readers to more successfully decipher Soyinka’s works so as to make his societal mission more operational. So, our work leans on the principles and methods of pragmatics to analyze an excerpt from the target play. Findings reveal that Soyinka is an alert satirist who makes fun of social maladies while indirectly urging for wiping them away from the human psyche.</em>

HIV/AIDS in Africa - a role for the mental health practitioner?

In the last few decades psychiatric discourse has undergone an important change in its scope and focus. During the heady days of psychoanalytic hegemony, psychiatrists were willing to prognosticate or pontificate on just about anything, from individual neurosis through to social maladies, from medicine to literature, from the unconscious to the conscious. Nowadays, psychiatry self-consciously emphasises its origins as a medical discipline, focuses its diagnostic efforts on operationally defined psychiatric disorders, and argues the value of specific pharmacotherapies and psychotherapies in treating these conditions.