Search

Sexism and sexual harassment in educational settings have rightfully gained much attention from researchers. Explicit harassment has seemingly been restrained through the introduction of policies criminalising these acts, but latent or less discernible harassment still occurs through channels such as sexist humour. This study sampled 20 female and ten male students at a university in Zimbabwe. Through interviews and focus group discussions, it explored how gender intersects with ‘culture’, manifesting in sexist humour, and how this contributes to campuses being hostile to females. Grounded on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the study explored issues of power and powerlessness and the invisible power that underlies sexist humour in education settings. It revealed that females in higher education settings are often subjects of gender ideology and stereotyping where female submission is emphasised, as evidenced by the kind of sexist humour that prevails. The study concluded that sexist language use is related to a particular kind of hegemonic masculinity that condones verbal violence against female students. Key words: Misogyny, sexist humour, patriarchy, harassment, gender

This paper utilizes critical theory to interrogate and problematize the practice of anonymising research sites as an ethical imperative. The contributing authors conduct research in and with various communities in southern Africa, position themselves and work from and within diverse areas and specialities of the social sciences. This article is developed from their rich and wide spectrum of field experience with a great diversity of communities, but mainly the poorer, under-resourced, socially and economically marginalized. The authors strongly identify with these communities whose anonymity in published research is seen as marginalizing. Such research sites are places and communities where these researchers grew up and live in, and thus not just as peripheral or ‘out there’ entities. Therefore, the naming of research sites in this context is deemed as being ethical, out of respect for participants, for a contextually embedded understanding, and for well-targeted interventions and policy influence.

High rates of sexual coercion among female students in institutions of higher education are a global concern. Although this phenomenon is universal, female university students’ experiences and reactions to coercive sexual practices vary greatly due to differences in geo-socio-cultural milieus in universities. This study investigated the extent to which female students acquiesced or resisted gendered codes of sexual conduct during experiences of sexual coercion. Using mixed methodology, the study drew on the narratives of 341 female students and three key informants from a Zimbabwean university. The study’s findings revealed that female students showed significant levels of acquiescence to gendered sexual norms and coercive sexual practices. This suggests that normative sexual practices embedded in university cultures subordinate women’s sexuality, resulting in their vulnerability and acquiescence to coercive sexual practices. However, despite being positioned in a restrictive context which worked to instill and reproduce gendered norms of sexuality and acquiescence to coercive sexual practices, some female students demonstrated significant levels of “constrained” sexual agency, power and subjectivity. These students enacted embodied resistances and (re)negotiated gendered norms of sexuality in the form of negotiations, antagonistic reactions and (re)construction of dominant sexual practices and norms. Therefore, the study concludes that, while female university students conform to dominant sexual practices and norms, they also have the capacity to challenge them and actively resist and manage their experiences of sexual coercion

Climate change and the multidimensional nature of flood vulnerability, necessitate an in-depth consideration of experiential knowledge in reducing flood vulnerability in geospatial environments suc...

The central aim of this study is to explore and examine the role of religion and religious leaders in marital conflict resolution through perspective of Congolese migrants’ families living in Durban, South Africa. In order to achieve the objectives qualitative study, employing an interpretive approach was used in data collection. The finding from this study revealed that religion and religious leaders play a very critical role in marital conflict resolution among Congolese migrant families living in Durban. While marital conflict resolution is settled through extended family structures headed by the head of the family in the country of origin, church leadership has replaced this in the host country. It was apparent that when people are in a foreign country they try to find people whom they can rely on, trust, and seek advice during difficult times such as in times of economic difficulties and family conflicts. The findings shown that church leaders and church counselors were seen as most trusted persons who can give lasting solution to marital conflict. Not only are they able to provide advice, but according to these participants, they also offer counseling and follow-up on progress of marital and relationship. The study has also shown that mediation and communication was identified as the major approaches used by these church leaders and church counselors to resolve marital conflict.

The deepening levels of poverty in Zimbabwe have resulted in high numbers of Zimbabwean women migrating to South Africa in the hopes of securing better wages and job security. Most of these migrants end up working in the informal sector with limited income, high levels of insecurity, and a lack of protection against gender-based violence and xenophobia. Regardless of the adversities that these women encounter, they often display resilience and adaptability. Based on semi-structured interviews with 22 Zimbabwean migrant women, this article documents how these migrant women navigated some of the vulnerabilities and challenges they encountered. Instead of always being constrained by different structures of violence, this article unpacks the women’s strategies to ensure their survival.

The current study unravels religious practices, politics and perceptions as forms of multiple identities within and amongst different types of migrant groups in South Africa. Using purpose sampling from members of the Christ Assembly Church of Africa, we explore how the appeal to religion is a form of identity construction that differentiates Congolese from other groups of migrants. We utilized social identity theory in showing how Congolese use religious practices at the mentioned church to assert and reaffirm their identity and use it as a form of resilience to any external threat to the existence of their ‘culture’. Our findings reveal that there exists a complex relationship between religion and Congolese refugees in Durban that is an identity maker that acts as a form of mobilization and resilience to any form of external threats to the identity of the Congolese community in Durban. Furthermore, our findings reveal that the negotiation and construction of Congolese identity through religious practices at Christ Assemblies Church of Africa can play an important role in determining how prejudices and behaviour that reject, exclude and often vilify persons based on the perception that they are outsiders or foreigners to the community are constructed.

This descriptive and exploratory paper looks at how the khomba cultural practice that is ostensibly positioned as transitioning the girl child from adolescence to adulthood and is used to ‘construct the female body’. The study focuses on the Shangaan people of the Mahenye community in the south eastern part of Zimbabwe and draws from narratives and experiences of both men and women via semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The paper also contextualises how the practice of khomba culturally creates the ‘female body’ and how it strengthens masculinity behaviours amongst the Shangaan people. The paper describes and analyses khomba as a rite of passage and considers how it defines what a ‘real woman’ is, according to the Shangaan belief system. The researchers noted that the cultural practice of khomba is used as a tool or vehicle to create the ‘female’ or ‘cultural body’ and strengthens masculinity behaviours.Keywords: khomba; rite of passage; initiation rites; social identity; masculinity; Mahenye community

Peace as a concept has been relatively under-researched in view of its conception within the rural knowledge system and especially in connection to water access. This study used a sequential exploratory design to gather and analyse qualitative data in the form of semi-structured interviews from 20 village residents. In addition, quantitative data, drawn from a questionnaire, was used to validate the findings from the semi-structured interviews. This research showed that cooperation in the management of common water resources harmonises relations and brings unity and peace. The results also revealed that in as much as the rural Zimbabweans desire peace, corruption in water management increases the likelihood of grievance-based conflicts. Collaborative activities improve community relations and create a space for collective resolution of conflicts. The researchers recommend using local peace institutions to absorb macro-conflicts.

For the majority of women, university represents a time of hopefulness and opportunities such that gendered incidences questioning their academic merit poses a serious setback. Sexist humor is one such incident which communicates a message that females are irrelevant and insignificant. This article discusses the nature and perceptions of sexist humor on University campuses. The views on how students on campus perceive sexist humor are crucial for understanding students’ response and offer a clear understanding of what justifies and normalizes sexist humor. The paper analyzes how the use of language can be connected to sexism and violence. Using a mixed methodology for data collection at Great Zimbabwe University, the paper attempts to link language, sexual violence, misogyny, and sexism as well as chronicle the overall pattern of exclusion and marginalization of women in higher education settings. The findings of the paper present evidence that the institutional and intellectual cultures of educational institutions are permeated with sexual and gender dynamics that have become embedded and naturalized in popular thought. Normalization of verbal harassment contributes to muting victimized women, thus perpetuating a culture in which violence against women becomes part of the social milieu. Thus, this study concludes that while one may consider higher education institutions in Africa as safer spaces for women, these are highly contested terrains as misogyny through sexist humor, among other hindrances, has created an obstacle for women’s equal participation in higher education.

This qualitative article aims at unraveling the impact of displacement on the access to (quality) education. The article is premised on the inherent role played by education to equip displaced children with functional skills and act as a liberating force in the face of forced displacement. Using purposive homogeneous sampling from Hopley and Caledonia settlements for internally displaced people (Zimbabwe), the article attempts to evaluate effects of displacement on the quality of education or access thereof. The article uses inter-textuality as a method to complement empirical evidence with reviewed literature. The Capability Approach is applied to assess the implications of forced migration on the provision of (quality) education. In terms of the Capability Approach, quality education is measured through the actual achievements realised by any human being who has been exposed to it (education). Therefore, the Capability Approach posits that every human being has the inherent potential to be who they aspire to be when exposed to a conducive environment. In the context of this article, access to quality education is an enabling environment. The findings indicate that displacement is invariably detrimental to the provision of quality education. Moreover, this condition enhances the vulnerabilities of forced migrants as education is critical, instrumental, and of intrinsic value to the socio-economic development of its recipients. This being so, the impact of displacement on internally displaced persons’ access to quality education is a topical issue worthy of discussion so as to chart relevant solutions to the varying contexts of displacement.

This exploratory and descriptive article explores male perceptions toward the cultural practice of chinamwali/khomba among the Shangaan of the Mahenye community of Chipinge district in Zimbabwe. Chinamwali/khomba is the cultural practice of female initiation among the Mahenye people. The article draws on narratives of men from interviews and focus group discussions and describes khomba/chinamwali as a central aspect of (female) body politics in the Mahenye community, where the female practice of chinamwali marks the entrance into so-called ‘womanhood’ [sic]. The men’s sexually gendered narratives reveal how the women’s bodily sexual enactments become ‘cultural texts’ prescribed and inscribed by (male) societal perceptions and social (sexual) interactions. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were carried out with 40 men from the community. Social role theory was the lens which was used to analyse these dynamics. Emergent findings reveal that the men of the community compel an overtly patriarchal agenda by encouraging and compelling women to be initiated.

Involuntary human mobility within and outside national borders continue to raise connotations of these migrants being dispossessed of more than their physical shelter. In 2005, the Zimbabwean government demolished hundreds of buildings, which it had condemned as illegal through a program code named Operation Murambatsvina. Likewise, for the people dislodged by this program, the article contends that internal displacement did not only lead to loss of shelter but also denied them their inherent dignity and rendered them ‘invisible’. In turn, this heightened their susceptibility to deprivations that are synonymous with forced migration. Therefore, this article aims to explore the forced migrants’ perspectives of the effects of displacement on their lives vis-à-vis the above contentions. It mainly seeks to address the displaced people’s perceptions and socially constructed meanings of internal displacement. This qualitative article is based on empirical data gathered from Hopley and Caledonia settlements in Zimbabwe. The essay uses purposive sampling and snowballing to capture the people living in displacement. The article’s findings indicate that displacement births adaptive preferences which are used to counter the negative effects experienced due to the conditions in their settlements. Despite the conspicuousness of Hopley and Caledonia residents’ type of shelter, the article also establishes that internal displacement has ironically increased their invisibility both within and outside Zimbabwe. The article determines that their ‘invisibility’ is manifested through waning interest by institutions mandated to safeguard their assistance and protection, which exposes them to heightened vulnerabilities.

Mapping informal settlements’ diverse morphological patterns remains intricate due to the unavailability and huge costs of high-resolution data, as well as the spatial heterogeneity of urban environments. The accessibility to high-spatial-resolution PlanetScope imagery, coupled with the convenience of simple non-iterative clustering (SNIC) algorithm within the Google Earth Engine (GEE), presents the potential for Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) to map the spatial morphology of deprivation pockets in a complex built-up environment of Durban. Such advances in multi-sensor satellite image inventories on GEE also afford the possibility to integrate data from sensors with different spectral characteristics and spatial resolutions for effective abstraction of informal settlement diversity. The main objective is to exploit Sentinel-1 radar data, Sentinel-2 and PlanetScope optical data fusion for more accurate and precise localization of informal settlements using GEOBIA, within GEE. The findings reveal that the Random Forests classification model achieved informal settlement identification accuracy of 87% (F-score) and overall accuracy of 96%. An assessment of agreement between observed informal settlement extents and ground truth dimensions was conducted through regression analysis, yielding root mean square log error (RMSLE) = 0.69 and mean absolute percent error (MAPE) = 0.28. The results demonstrate reliability of the classification model in capturing variability of spatial characteristics of informal settlements. The research findings confirm efficacy of combined advantages of GEOBIA within GEE, and integrated datasets for more precise capturing of characteristic morphologic informal settlement features. The outcomes suggest a shift from standard static conventional approaches towards more dynamic, on-demand informal settlement mapping through cloud computing, a powerful analysis platform that simplifies access to and the processing of voluminous data. The study has important implications for identifying the most effective ways to map informal settlements in a complex urban landscape, thus providing a benchmark for other regions with significant landscape heterogeneity.

The study sought to establish the role of health professionals in promoting peace through health care using a case study of Chegutu Urban District in Zimbabwe. The participants were drawn from health professionals employed in three council clinics and were interviewed on their views on programmes that promote peace and end violence. Their narratives were thematically presented. Results revealed that although the participants had ideas on how to promote peace through health care, did health education and assisted victims of violence, their programmes were inhibited by several challenges, predominantly related to the state of the Zimbabwean economy. The study recommended a systematic focus on these challenges so that the health professionals can realize their potential. The study also recommended further research into the impact of village health workers in community peace and the use of a multisectoral approach to managing artisanal violence.

Informal practices to manage water resources are widely utilised in subsistence economies. However, there is a need for a more nuanced insight in respect of their processes for water social justice...

In recent times more embodied and seemingly more participant-empowering research methodologies such as body mapping have been used in a bid to allow greater agency to the ‘researched’, within the ‘...

This article probes the rural economic development approach in selected informal settlements in Durban and how such approach affects the vulnerability of local Black women to flood impacts within the areas. Qualitative data for the study were gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with 25 local Black women from Inanda, Ntuzuma, KwaMashu and Umlazi. Five key informants from the eThekwini (Durban) metropolitan municipality were also interviewed. Findings from the study showed that although there is improved economic development in the selected settlements, which constitute informal settlements designated for Black South Africans during the apartheid era, such an economic development approach has not significantly improved the livelihoods and adaptive capacity of the local women. The article suggests a multidimensional approach to development that is practical, inclusive and equitable, and addresses local women’s challenges associated with climate adaptation and sustainable livelihoods.

“Voluntary” out-migration is anything but voluntary or driven by “free” volition. Forced migration and displacement in turn draw the gaze to the complexities and fraught realities imbricated in certain compelled contexts of “displacements” and movements of people and their livelihoods. The paper works through the prismatic lens of sense-making theory in attempting to reveal how a group of internally displaced people in Zimbabwe endeavour to reconstruct their displaced lives. Seen through a sense-making lens, each displaced individual is understood as moving through space and time and interacting with other (displaced) individuals and certain scavenged material and emotional artefacts or relics which to rebuild and assemble a material (and emotional) shelter or dwelling place, while simultaneously attempting to assemble order in a world of political complexity, immense uncertainty and continuous change. Adopting a micro-analytical perspective and focusing on “space” (as opposed to “place” or home) allows one to see space as a socially and discursively constructed aspect of the displaced person’s experiences. Working through the narratives of a sample community of twelve participants living at Caledonia settlement in Zimbabwe, the paper problematizes and “troubles” the notion of subaltern agency within the context of displacement. The qualitative data elicited, in turn reveals the layers and multiple tiers of both visible deprivation as well as (in)visible agency embedded in the actions of the displaced people. KEY WORDS: displacement, refugee, migration, sense-making, space

Izikhothani (young African males) are known for their expensive fashion sense and wearing bright colours in townships where certain gendered stereotypes exist about the colours men and women ought ...

This study involved a group of isiZulu-speaking nurses who were also traditional healers or izangoma2 within the South African amaZulu culture. The paper explored traditional healing beliefs and practices through the perspectives of this group of traditional healers who were alsoformally trained nurses. The narratives shared by the nurses, referred to as ‘sangoma-nurses’, revealed that their ‘cultural’ training and experiences dominated the manner in which they understood many of the illnesses that presented at the hospital. Working through the lens of social constructionism and through narrative analysis, the paper reveals that much of their views on ill health, even within the ‘biomedical’ defined hospital space, articulated by and large through the lens of their cultural worldviews, rather than the training they underwent as nurses. Findings reveal that the sangoma-nurses, in large part, struggled to straddle their dual positionality; as so called ‘western’ nurse andtraditional isangomaand were...

The migrant crisis of displaced populations has taken on astronomical proportions globally. In the context of sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa is one of the countries that has drawn an increasing n...

This focus piece works on a micro-level and is based on a qualitative study with four differently-abled young Black African women living at a university hostel in South Africa. The piece proceeds through their stories, taking as a starting point that ‘ethnographies of the particular’ offer a critical and intimate window into how these young women self-interpret and attempt to (re)claim their sexuality. The young women's excavated narratives testify to how both ‘sexuality’ and ‘disability’ have been co-constructed within the able-bodied community, which in a sense works to ‘erase’ their sexuality and render them both asexual and sexually invisible. The recovered narratives also reveal that disability is deeply imbricated within gender and gendered regimes of aesthetics. The narratives further expose fissures in their reclamation stories, as they also show up instances of ‘internalised oppression’ alongside other life-affirming aspirations and ideas of romance, love, sexual liaisons and motherhood.

Particular communities and groups of people develop particular prevailing points of view, including how health and illness is understood. Our prevailing points of view, ‘worldviews’ or positioning, are a result of the ‘dialogue’ between us and our wider society (see Creswell 2009:8) and is a process of “active construction” (Fox 2001: 23). As such, we approach reality from our particular point of view which has been constructed and developed over time (see Rosaldo 2003:583). Different societies have in turn, their specific practices and beliefs, as well as their approach to health and illness (see Naidu 2013: 257; Naidu 2014: 147; Vaughn, Jacquez, and Baker 2009: 65). As Whyte, van der Geest and Hordon (2002: 118) assert, many factors “influence people's response to ill-health, including entrenched beliefs”. As such, the understanding and approach to illnesses vary from one society to another, one setting to another, and one belief system to another. This paper looked at what isiZulu-speaking nurses understand by illness and healing. It explored what sickness means to the Ama Zulu African nurses. In exploring this understanding of nurses, the paper explored the wider cultural belief system of the isiZulu-speaking nurses within which their understandings are deeply embedded.

This paper is situated at the junction of feminist pedagogy and critical disability theory and draws from the insights gained from interviews with visually impaired students as part of a project on 'body', learning and 'disability theory'. The paper attempts to bring into mainstream discussion, tertiary teaching amongst the visually impaired, compelling us to rethink their corporeality within our classes. The paper works through the methodological approach of narrative analysis and suggests that teaching the visually impaired calls for recognition of a more specific kind of productive pedagogy that works to embrace the (social) learning experiences of this category of student. While critical disability theory speaks to the political insights and issues of power (or lack thereof) within contexts of material and social impairment, feminist pedagogy speaks to a democratic (co)creation of knowledge, and participatory teaching and learning in classrooms that we seek to construct as being inclusive.

Illness and health is more often than not, embedded in a matrix of cultural beliefs and is often more than about simply 'being ill' or 'being healthy'. The cause of the 'ill health' may also be located in social and spiritual realms, so that ethnomedical aetiology may include witchcraft and sorcery, and 'attack' by familiars or malevolent spirits. In many communities, constructed understandings of the body and health, for oneself, as well as that of the unborn child, extend back inter-generationally, and point to wider understandings of the (cosmological) world and how the individual is 'located' within this world. Likewise, with many categories of peri-urban and rural African communities, there is an entrenched belief that a pregnant woman and her unborn foetus can be protected from harm, and reproductive health can be promoted by turning to traditional health practices. This paper examines one particular traditional practice; that of offering a decoction known generically as isihlambezo in isiZulu, meant to aid in the delivery of a healthy baby. The paper works through qualitative data gathered from a sample group of pregnant women and traditional healers (sangomas), and probes the popularly constructed meaning of the decoction or isihlambezo. The narratives of the isiZulu participants around isihlambezo, in turn reveal that a complex web of beliefs cohere around understandings of reproductive health and the well-being of the unborn child. These narratives additionally problematise what appears as the hegemonic positioning of the western biomedical discourse which appears to 'push' the faith and reliance on indigenous herbal remedies underground, thus rendering its use somewhat invisible against the more visibly championed western reproductive health care and prenatal medicines.

There has been for the last decade, in the tenor of general scholarship, much enthusiastic talk about the 'mobilities turn' in the social sciences, and of borders made porous by mass communication and the various patterns of migration and circuits of mobility. International foreign 'students' form one vector amongst the multiple trajectories of migratory movement, and represent foreign 'bodies', who (choose to) become mobile in search of educational opportunities. Such movement renders them 'international', and in some instances cosmopolitan. Many remain however, rooted to their home spaces through their use and choice of communication through their home languages; and further use their home language to satisfy a sense of belonging in a foreign host space. Language (and communication) is thus considered key in unpacking notions of belonging. This exploratory paper employs an interpretivist lens and works through a sample of narratives of a small group of foreign African students and unpacks how language(s) and communication are used by the students in a way that 'speaks' to a sense of self and belonging.

Despite what many would construe as massive political and legislative transformation, many South Africans still inhabit what can be best described as a fragmented and discontinuous geographical and ideological landscape. A case in point is the 'township' of Wentworth as a spatial and temporally situated example of a community dispossessed. Wentworth is home to a historically disenfranchised Coloured community that holds to an identity that is rich, in as much as it is complex and fraught. This paper works through excavating memory of 'place' and 'people' as shared through the narratives of residents of Wentworth, a so called 'Coloured' suburb in Durban. It works through a social constructionist and interpretivist approach and proceeds through the narratives of a sample group of thirty one participants. It excavates, through narrative inquiry, a sense of self as articulated by the participants, through their experiences of living in Wentworth. Their narratives reveal that many of them still squat within fuzzily marked spaces delineated by a racial classificatory system framed by 'White' and 'Black' at either ends.

Memories, as emotional artefacts of what has transpired, are vital as they allow migrants to connect to their past. Anthropological perspectives on memory explain memory through constructionist and...

The biblical narratives are inspired texts to the Pentecostals, as they are to many other Christians. Most Pentecostals accept that these biblical narratives offer the guiding templates through whi...

This paper has a transdisciplinary orientation and is located in both anthropology and tourism studies. It draws on the seminal theoretical work of the post structural anthropologist Victor Turner and brings to the study of tourism, the concepts of performance, memory and 'experience'. The paper focuses on what the world has come to know as the place of incarceration for Nelson Mandela, and now declared a World Heritage Site and museum, established as the blurb goes, 'as a poignant reminder to the newly democratic South Afr ica of the price paid for freedom'. The paper looks at the construction of the site of Robben Island Prison Museum, in Cape Town South Africa as a performance space for the reliving and experiencing of a collective shared past and history and probes how visitors to the site, experience the space. Methodologically the paper uses narrative analysis of tourists' sharing stories of their visits in small focus type groups and in one-on-one interviews. It also draws on a thematic analysis of the visitor entries in a Visitors Book spanning a six month period of visits. T he paper attempts to show that the site and constructed heritage product (or tour), emerges as a 'liminal spa ce' where different racial categories of visitors, who have had differently shaped life histories, might be made to 'experience' a shared past of denial and oppression. Liminality speaks to a dislocation of structure and hierarchies, and by drawing on the ethnographic interviews of a randomised sample group of local and international visitors to the site, the paper shows that the visitor is placed into a liminal space by the manner in which the tour space is constructed and experienced.