scholarly journals Editorial: Engaging with African Customary Law: Legal History in Contemporary South Africa

Author(s):  
Paul Du Plessis ◽  
Willemien Du Plessis

This special edition consists of a selection of the contributions delivered an event on Custom, Oral History and Law: Writing South African Legal History, co-hosted by the Law School, University of Edinburgh and the Faculty of Law, North-West University.

Author(s):  
Chuma Himonga

This special edition comprises a selection of contributions delivered at a conference hosted by the Chair in Customary Law, Indigenous Values and Human Rights at the University of Cape Town in collaboration with its research partner, the Research Chair on Legal Diversity and Indigenous Peoples at the University of Ottawa, on "The Recording of Customary Law in South Africa, Canada and New Caledonia" in May 2018.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Stephanus Muller

Stephanus Le Roux Marais (1896−1979) lived in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, for nearly a quarter of a century. He taught music at the local secondary school, composed most of his extended output of Afrikaans art songs, and painted a number of small landscapes in the garden of his small house, nestled in the bend of the Sunday’s River. Marais’s music earned him a position of cultural significance in the decades of Afrikaner dominance of South Africa. His best-known songs (“Heimwee,” “Kom dans, Klaradyn,” and “Oktobermaand”) earned him the local appellation of “the Afrikaans Schubert” and were famously sung all over the world by the soprano Mimi Coertse. The role his ouevre played in the construction of a so-called European culture in Africa is uncontested. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the rich evocations of landscape encountered in Marais’s work. Contextualized by a selection of Marais’s paintings, this article glosses the index of landscape in this body of cultural production. The prevalence of landscape in Marais’s work and the range of its expression contribute novel perspectives to understanding colonial constructions of the twentieth-century South African landscape. Like the vast, empty, and ancient landscape of the Karoo, where Marais lived during the last decades of his life, his music assumes specificity not through efforts to prioritize individual expression, but through the distinct absence of such efforts. Listening for landscape in Marais’s songs, one encounters the embrace of generic musical conventions as a condition for the construction of a particular national identity. Colonial white landscape, Marais’s work seems to suggest, is deprived of a compelling musical aesthetic by its very embrace and desired possession of that landscape.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dabesaki Mac-Ikemenjima

There is growing interest in the development of measures and indexes of youth wellbeing. However, there has been a limited discussion on indicators to measure and select them. This paper reports on the results of a qualitative study on the selection of indicators to measure the wellbeing of young people in South Africa, and reflects on the relevance of the content of their values in choosing indicators for measuring their wellbeing. The data used in this analysis is based on telephone (9) and email (6) interviews conducted with 15 young people (male=5, female=10) aged 22 to 32 from five South African cities during July 2010. In the interviews, participants were asked to identify five issues they considered important to their lives, after which they were asked to rank them in order of importance. The issues indicated by the participants are described and discussed in six dimensions: economic, relationships, spiritual and health, education, time use and material. The indicators developed from this study are discussed in terms of their relevance for use in a measure of youth wellbeing in South Africa.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jugathambal Ramdhani ◽  
Suriamurthee Maistry

In South Africa, the school textbook remains a powerful source of content knowledge to both teachers and learners. Such knowledge is often engaged uncritically by textbook users. As such, the worldviews and value systems in the knowledge selected for consumption remain embedded and are likely to do powerful ideological work. In this article, we present an account of the ideological orientations of knowledge in a corpus of school economics textbooks. We engage the tenets of critical discourse analysis to examine the representations of the construct “poverty” as a taught topic in the Further Education and Training Economics curriculum. Using Thompson’s legitimation as a strategy and form-function analysis as specific analytical tools, we unearth the subtext of curriculum content in a selection of Grade 12 Economics textbooks. The study reveals how power and domination are normalised through a strategy of economic legitimation, thereby offering a “legitimate” rationale for the existence of poverty in the world. The article concludes with implications for curriculum and a humanising pedagogy, and a call for embracing critical knowledge on poverty in the South African curriculum.


Literator ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. John

This study looks at a selection of Afrikaans prose texts from the period 1918 to 1926 in an attempt to establish a relation between the rapid industrialisation which South Africa was being subjected to and the literature produced during this time. Georg Lukács’ argument that "nature is a social category" is used to show that a preoccupation with certain desires and emotions with which these texts are marked is an indication that a massive intervention into ‘nature’, in the form of the emotional lives of especially white Afrikaans workers, was either on the way or being proposed through the medium of literature during this time. This intervention is seen as part of an attempt by the white Afrikaans ruling class to draw Afrikaans workers into its fold in its struggle for political power. A contiguous concern of the study is to propose this kind of approach as a basis for the study of South African literature as a whole.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wm. G. Bennett ◽  
Maxine Diemer ◽  
Justine Kerford ◽  
Tracy Probert ◽  
Tsholofelo Wesi

Setswana (also known as ‘Tswana’ or, more archaically, ‘Chuana’ or ‘Sechuana’) is a Bantu language (group S.30; ISO code tsn) spoken by an estimated four million people in South Africa. There are a further one million or more speakers in Botswana, where it is the dominant national language, and a smaller number of speakers in Namibia. The recordings accompanying this article were mostly produced with a 21-year-old male speaker from the area of Taung, North-West province, South Africa. Some of the accompanying recordings are of a 23-year-old female speaker from Kuruman (approximately 150 km west of Taung). The observations reported here are based on consulting with both these speakers, as well as a third speaker, from Kimberley. All three were speakers of South African Setswana varieties. For discussion of some differences between these varieties and more Northern and Eastern Setswana dialects – including those spoken in Botswana – see (Doke 1954, Cole 1955, University of Botswana 2001).


Literator ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Verhoef

Functional multilingualism in South Africa: an unattainable ideal? Although much has been done on an official level to establish true multilingualism in South Africa, a tendency towards English monolingualism seems to exist in the country. The aim of this article is to describe the official stipulations in pursuit of multilingualism, as they appear in the Constitution (Act 108 of 1996), the School Act (Act 84 of 1996) and the final report of Langtag. In addition to the present demands, the article also responds to previous demands for multilingualism in the South African context, particularly as stated in the Bantu Education Act of 1953. It is argued that, because of the negative connotations associated with mother-tongue instruction in the past, contemporary mother-tongue instruction will also be contaminated. Apart from the theoretical investigation into multilingualism, the article reports on empirical research that has been done in this regard in the North West Province where the attitudes and perceptions of the school population towards the regional languages were measured. Although the subjects reacted positively to the official status granted to several South African languages, they expressed a preference for English as working language because of the access it gives to personal, economic and social development and empowerment. The article concludes with brief recommendations regarding language planning opportunities that derive from this situation.


Author(s):  
P. C.B. Turnbull ◽  
M. Diekman ◽  
J. W. Killian ◽  
W. Versfeld ◽  
V. De Vos ◽  
...  

TURNBULLP, P.C.B. DIEKMANNM,M., KILIAN, J.W., VERSFELDW, W.,DE VOS, V., ARNTZENL, L.,WOLTER, K., BARTELS, P. & KOTZE, A. 2008.N aturally acquired antibodies to Bacillusa nthracisp rotective antigeni n vultureso f southern Africa. Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research, T5:95-102 Sera from 19 wild caught vultures in northern Namibia and 15 (12 wild caught and three captive bred but with minimal histories) in North West Province, South Africa, were examined by an enzyme-linked immunosorbenats say( ELISA)f or antibodiesto the Bacillus anthracis toxin protective antigen (PA). As assessed from the baseline established with a control group of ten captive reared vultures with well-documented histories, elevated titres were found in 12 of the 19 (63%) wild caught Namibian birds as compared with none of the 15 South African ones. There was a highly significant difference between the Namibian group as a hole and the other groups (P < 0.001) and no significant difference between the South African and control groups (P > 0.05). Numbers in the Namibian group were too small to determine any significances in species-, sex- or age-related differences within the raw data showing elevated titres in four out of six Cape Vultures, Gyps coprotheress, six out of ten Whitebacked Vultures, Gyps africanus, and one out of three Lappet-faced Vultures, Aegypiust racheliotus, or in five of six males versus three of seven females, and ten of 15 adults versus one of four juveniles. The results are in line with the available data on the incidence of anthrax in northern Namibia and South Africa and the likely contact of the vultures tested with anthrax carcasses. lt is not known whether elevated titre indicates infection per se in vultures or absorption of incompletely digested epitopes of the toxin or both. The results are discussed in relation to distances travelled by vultures as determined by new tracking techniques, how serology can reveal anthrax activity in an area and the issue of the role of vultures in transmission of anthrax.


Author(s):  
Andisiwe Diko ◽  
Wang Jun

Aims: Maize is of great significance in the national food security of South Africa. Maize production levels in South Africa continue to decline, further deteriorating the situation of increased food insecurity, unemployment and increased poverty levels in the face of increasing population. This paper investigated fundamental variables influencing maize yield in the South African major maize producing regions. Study Design: A multi-stage stratified sampling method was employed to select maize producing farmers in the major maize producing provinces, namely Mpumalanga, Free State and North West provinces of South Africa. Furthermore, three districts were selected from which maize farmers were then selected. Methodology: Using linear multiple regression for a sample of 202 maize farmers, maize yield as a dependent variable was regressed against land size, fertilizer usage, labour, herbicides and seeds as independent variables. The paper employed the Cobb-Douglas production function to estimate parameters. The data obtained from the field were subjected to analysis using inferential statistics using SPSS v20. Results: The study showed that fertilizer, labour, and herbicides used in the production of maize in the study area were positively and statistically significant at a 5% confidence interval (P<0.05) with elasticity coefficients of 0.55, 0.47 and 0.198 respectively. The independent variables computed in the model had positive elasticity coefficients indicating a direct positive relationship between the input variables and maize output. The study also revealed that farmers in the study area were applying fewer amounts of fertilizer than the recommended rates per hectare. Conclusion: The study recommends that the South African government should supply inputs to maize farmers at subsidized rates to promote correct application rates and attain higher yields.  The promotion of good quality extension services to foster good agricultural practices in the production of maize is also recommended.


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