Zulu Heritage between Institutionalized Commemoration and Tourist Attraction

This article engages critically with an aspect of the flourishing post-apartheid heritage sector in South Africa, shaped by the confluence of conservation objectives, political agendas, and tourism development strategies. It focuses on a number of memorials and new heritage sites in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) that officially commemorate and celebrate Zulu cultural heritage. Rural KZN is home to a complex, rapidly transforming society caught between a global trend toward Westernization and official policies or community forces that promote indigenous Africanist values. This is also a society characterized by the coexistence, or more often fusion, of Christian beliefs on the one hand and traditionalist ancestral beliefs and associated ritual practices on the other.

This article investigates how such cross-cultural influences affecting rural populations in KZN are reflected in the symbolic realm of monuments and memorials honoring the dead. The article first focuses on the recent trend toward the upgrading of burial sites of important clan leaders or members of the Zulu royal house; it then considers the new Spirit of eMakhosini monument, which is meant to draw attention to the eMakhosini Valley as the “Cradle of the Zulu nation” where many early kings lie buried. This monument initiative will be discussed critically in the context of the emergent cultural heritage tourism industry. Lastly, a few new battlefield memorials commemorating the previously unrepresented Zulu victims of the respective battles will be considered, pointing out how the designing artists attempt to fuse a Western, Eurocentric concept with local imagery and Afrocentric references. On the whole, the commemorative objects discussed in this article represent a shift towards modernity and commodification and reflect the values of a hybrid, transforming society.     

Physical growth in a transitional economy: the aftermath of South African apartheid

The economic transition in developing countries is not always the result of the change from a centrally-planned to a free-market economy, but may be found within an already existing free-market economy as a result of profound political change, as in South Africa. The release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990 heralded an end both to the political system of apartheid and to the concomitant social, political, and economic disenfranchisement of 30 million non-White people in South Africa. The first freely elected non-White government came to power in 1994 and initiated a number of social and economic reforms aimed at alleviating the worst consequences of apartheid. This paper examines the effect of post-apartheid economic and social transition on the growth and development of urban children. Over 4000 children born in Soweto and Johannesburg were enrolled in the Birth to Ten (BTT) birth-cohort study in 1990. Whilst these children were born with lower birth weights than in developed countries, they did grow strongly in infancy, particularly in weight, to reflect normal reference values for body mass index (BMI) by 1 year of age. While post-apartheid social and economic changes were expected to take some time to affect child growth and development, the rate of change has been slower than expected. Data from the BTT study demonstrate that the growth of White children continues to be superior to that of their non-White peers and differences that existed at birth and during infancy have not diminished during childhood and early adolescence. Whatever factors are changed at the national or community levels during economic (and social) transition in South Africa appear not yet to have resulted in improved child physical growth.     

Made in China: The Gods Go East

ABSTRACT

Jamie Uys's The Gods Must be Crazy and its sequel films are icons of South African entertainment, perceived both as hilarious comedy and blatant apartheid propaganda. Three further sequels, made from Hong Kong by Chinese directors, are hardly known in South Africa. These films are particularly interesting from a cultural point of view, as they portray Orientals (and white South Africans) from an Oriental perspective and San Bushmen from a position that is neither Western nor set in an apartheid/post-apartheid South African context. The current context of globalization in which cultures are expressed and negotiated creates an interesting space for the analysis of these “multicultural” films. This article examines these films especially, Crazy Safari, and discusses them in terms of responses from focus groups, one of Taiwanese viewers in Durban, and another of Kenyans in Kenya.     

Reconciliation and Revenge in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Rethinking Legal Pluralism and Human Rights

Human rights are a central element in the new governmental project in the new South Africa, and this article traces some of the specific forms of connection and disconnection between notions of justice found in townships of the Vaal and rights discourses as articulated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The introduction of human rights in post-apartheid South Africa has had varied social effects. Religious values and human rights discourse have converged on the notion of reconciliation on the basis of shared value orientations and institutional structures. There are clear divergences, however, between human rights ideas and the notions of justice expressed in local lekgotla, or township courts, which emphasize punishment and retribution. The article concludes that the plurality of legal orders in South Africa results not from systemic relations between law and society but from multiple forms of social action seeking to alter the direction of social change in the area of justice within the context of the nation-building project of the post-apartheid state.     

Unraveling Silence: Violence,Memory and the Limits of Anthropology’s Craft<Superscript>1</Superscript>

What are the ethical dilemmas that conducting anthropological on memory in South Africa poses to the student of violence? In the specific context of “victim support groups” in post-1994 South Africa, one of the most problematic issues relates to the interactions between “trauma experts” and “victims.” In the view of many survivors, the violence of voicelessness, an issue to which there is a particular sensitivity in the country, is re-inscribed in their life through the specific intervention of social scientists. One of the effects of this interventions, which determines the limits and possibilities of any research on memory as it connects to violence, is a widespread reaction against experts, whose work, the production and dissemination of knowledge about trauma on the basis of other people’s experiences, is often perceived by survivors as being part of a broader economy of subtraction where their “voices” have become commodities in a transnational network of prestige.     

Hyperracialized: interracial relationships in post-apartheid South Africa and the informal policing of public spaces

Dynamics of race in South Africa are deeply entangled within a world system that continues to enable hegemonic white privilege. Prevalent views and behaviours towards “interracial” relationships reveal a rebellion against the non-racial philosophies and policies of the new government and are an indicator of the ongoing salience of race in shaping lived experience. Drawing on interviews with couples in so-called “interracial” relationships, this article argues that unequal power dynamics continue to hyperracialize and regulate these relationships through “privatized” racial boundary policing, even though such relationships are no longer stigmatized and criminalized by the state as in apartheid South Africa. Their experiences of racism show up in two distinct ways: aggressive policing and covert policing; these in turn can lead to self-policing, and perpetuate racial social organization.     

Model invasions and the development of national concerns over invasive introduced trees: insights from South African history

This article examines how invasions within a discrete geographic, cultural, and ecological context disproportionately shaped awareness of invasions in other places. Such “model invasions” have been valuable for catalyzing national and international interest in biological invasion since the 1980s. Specifically, this article traces how scientific and public perspectives of invasive introduced trees evolved in South Africa during the twentieth century. It argues that concerns about the impact of invasive introduced trees first developed in the Mediterranean-climate region of the southwestern Cape Province during the 1940s and 1950s before emerging elsewhere in South Africa during the 1970s and early 1980s. Though there has been a nation-wide convergence in scientific and public views of invasive trees since the 1980s, there are still stark geographic and cultural knowledge divergences that hinder the effectiveness of contemporary invasive tree management efforts. This study suggests that geographical knowledge imbalances between regions should not be overlooked when historicizing or planning environmental management schemes at national scales.     

Childhood adversity during the post-apartheid transition and COVID-19 stress independently predict adult PTSD risk in urban South Africa: A biocultural analysis of the stress sensitization hypothesis

Objectives

The COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa introduced new societal adversities and mental health threats in a country where one in three individuals are expected to develop a psychiatric condition sometime in their life. Scientists have suggested that psychosocial stress and trauma during childhood may increase one's vulnerability to the mental health consequences of future stressors—a process known as stress sensitization. This prospective analysis assessed whether childhood adversity experienced among South African children across the first 18 years of life, coinciding with the post-apartheid transition, exacerbates the mental health impacts of psychosocial stress experienced during the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (ca. 2020–2021).

Materials and Methods

Data came from 88 adults who participated in a follow-up study of a longitudinal birth cohort study in Soweto, South Africa. Childhood adversity and COVID-19 psychosocial stress were assessed as primary predictors of adult PTSD risk, and an interaction term between childhood adversity and COVID-19 stress was calculated to evaluate the potential effect of stress sensitization.

Results

Fifty-six percent of adults exhibited moderate-to-severe PTSD symptoms. Greater childhood adversity and higher COVID-19 psychosocial stress independently predicted worse post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in adults. Adults who reported greater childhood adversity exhibited non-significantly worse PTSD symptoms from COVID-19 psychosocial stress.

Discussion

These results highlight the deleterious mental health effects of both childhood trauma and COVID-19 psychosocial stress in our sample and emphasize the need for greater and more accessible mental health support as the pandemic progresses in South Africa.     

Make Afrikaners great again! National populism,democracy and the new white minority politics in post-apartheid South Africa

This article on national populism in South Africa brings a view from the South to scholarship overwhelmingly concentrated on the north Atlantic and European world. While in white majority contexts, national populism seeks to capture formal political power, the white minority’s lack of political leverage in post-apartheid South Africa sees an assertion of white autonomy emerge in the civil society arena. The article examines the discursive strategies of the Solidarity Movement, a broad-based social movement which claims to represent the white minority, particularly white Afrikaans-speakers, amid black majority rule. It shows how through a reinvention of the past, recasting of race, and reformulation of nationalist narratives by neoliberal logics the Movement discursively undermines black majority rule, and seeks to create spaces in which white privilege, power and identities are maintained. These findings provide new insights into the relation between populism and democracy, and hold important lessons for the increasingly multicultural global North.     

A re-examination of levels and differential in fertility in South Africa from recent evidence

The final estimate of South Africa's population as of October 1996 from the first post-apartheid census by Statistics South Africa was lower (40.6 million) than expected (42 million). The expectation of a total population of 42 million was largely based on results of apartheid projections of South Africa's population. The results of the last apartheid census in South Africa in 1991 had been adjusted such that it was consistent with results modelling the population size of South Africa. The discrepancy between the final estimate of the 1996 census and that expected from the modelling described above, and the departure by Statistics South Africa from previous practice of adjusting the census results to be consistent with demographic models, has generated controversies regarding the accuracy of the final results from the 1996 census. This study re-examines levels and differential in fertility in South Africa from recent evidence in order to assess whether or not the fertility inputs in projections of South Africa's population during the apartheid era overestimated fertility.     

‘Our fellow Africans make our lives hell’: the lives of Congolese and Nigerians living in Johannesburg

Xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa has become a major issue. Much of the hostility is directed at Africans from countries north of Southern Africa who are often easily distinguishable due to their physical features, distinctive dress and inability to speak the indigenous languages. This article focuses on immigrants and asylum seekers from two countries, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both groupings have experienced significant antagonism and prejudice from the local population, more especially from black South Africans. The article describes and analyses the interaction of the two groupings in question with the local populace and authorities. What is argued is that during the apartheid era the restrictions on black immigration meant that the number of black foreigners was limited. Since 1990, however, there has been a substantial increase in illegal and legal migration from Southern African countries and countries further north. This increase, in a context of growing unemployment and crime, limited infrastructural growth and fiscal resources, has intensified xenophobia against foreign Africans. The article is mainly based on in-depth interviews with Nigerian and Congolese informants living in Johannesburg's inner city.     

From the Zulu medicine to the European phytomedicine Umckaloabo®

Among the Zulus of South Africa a crude root drug of initially unknown botanical origin was used for the treatment of pulmonary diseases and tuberculosis (TB). An English TB patient called “Stevens” heard about it and travelled to South Africa where, according to his account, he was cured by taking an extract of the crude drug. It was extremely difficult to establish the imported crude herbal drug as a “new TB medicine”, as neither the plant from which the drug originated was identified nor were the constituents and pharmacological effects known at that time.It was only after a professional search and initial chemical and taxonomic investigations enabled the identity of the plant to be determined that the requirements were met for comprehensive chemical, pharmacological and clinical research into the crude drug.The following report traces the long and difficult path of this “mystery drug” from the Zululand of South Africa to the laboratories of Europe.     

Brome Mosaic Virus Infection Mimics, Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus Disease Symptoms in Small Grains

Previous studies on the occurrence of “barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) disease” in South Africa have led to the conclusion that, although this virus is present, the main causative agent of “yellow dwarf” disease in cereals appears to be the unrelated brome mosaic virus (BMV). In this study, material from South Africa, Britain and Australia that had been identified symprtomatically as being infected with BYDV, was found by serological testing to contain BMV. No BYDV could be detected in the same samples. This report discusses the hazards of relying on symptom expression for the diagnosis of a common world-wide disease problem.     

Chronic Non-Communicable Disease and Healthcare Access in Middle-Aged and Older Women Living in Soweto,South Africa

The aim of the current study was to describe the healthcare access, beliefs, and practices of middle-aged and older women residing in Soweto. This is a cross-sectional study of the primary (female) caregivers of the Birth to Twenty Cohort, based in Soweto, South Africa. The study instrument was administered to 1 102 caregivers as part of routine annual data collection. Over half the respondents (50.7%) reported having at least one chronic non-communicable disease (CND), only a small portion (33.3%) of whom reported accessing a healthcare service in the last 6 months. Reported availability of private medical practice and government clinics was high (75.1% and 61.5% respectively). The low utilisation of healthcare services by women with CND is a concern in terms of healthcare management. There is a need to further investigate how healthcare beliefs are formed, as well as the feasibility of programmes to support the ongoing management of CND in Soweto.     

Extended lives in global spaces: the anthropology of Yolngu pre‐burial ceremonies⋆

The focus is on a recently developed Yolngu ritual, the memorial or memorial service, which celebrates the lives of Yolngu who have achieved a national reputation. Held before the burial ceremony, the memorial service is orientated ‘both‐ways’ – to the outside as well as to the Yolngu world. Memorial services are analysed in the context of the articulation between Yolngu and the wider Australian society. A diachronically orientated analysis takes into account the longue durée to show how Yolngu create and understand the performance from a historical position and basis of knowledge very different to those of most non‐Yolngu who attend the event. Anthropological research can reveal the durability of local value creation processes that result in very different trajectories of being in an environment of dynamic change.     

"She drank his money": survival sex and the problem of violence in taverns in Gauteng province,South Africa

This article examines the practice of "survival sex" in the taverns of Soweto and Hammanskraal area, South Africa. Women who engage in survival sex do not self-identify as commercial sex workers, and the community does not identify them as such. Those who structure HIV prevention programs should not confound such women with commercial sex workers, because effective intervention may vary between the two groups. Violence against women who engage in survival sex in taverns is common, as it is argued that, when a woman accepts beer from a man, she is obliged to exchange sex (because she has "drunk his money"). The South African government should prioritize the reduction of violence as a way to reduce HIV transmission, as, in the context of violence, women do not have the option of negotiating safer sex.     

The Dugong Action Plan for the South Pacific: An Evaluation Based on the Need for International and Regional Conservation of Sirenians

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to set out the essential requirements for a successful regional agreement for Sirenians in the South Pacific. To achieve this, the current Dugong Action Plan, which is being formed under the auspice of the South Pacific Regional Environmental Program, will be juxtaposed against the “best practice” in this area, as evinced by current development in international environmental law and policy relating to Sirenians.     

Theoretical perspectives on cinema in Africa: Culture,identity and Diaspora

The study of African cinema is often assumed to be the study of black film. This paper examines this notion with respect to definitions of Africa, questions of identity, and different historical discourses of resistance. Western psychocentric approaches to film criticism are criticized. The issue of authorship is revisited with the question: Can a white director make a film reflecting the “black” experience? This question is explored with reference to debates about Spike Lee's Malcolm X and South African director Oliver Schmitz's Mapantsula. In the process, J examine how meanings are articulated and rearticulated in specific contexts by both those who define them and audiences which interpret them. The articulations of “race wars” in the USA and South Africa respectively are discussed, as is the relationship between race and class in the anti‐apartheid struggle. The disarticulation of Black Consciousness in South Africa from its popularizer, Steve Biko, by film activists in the Mass Democratic Movement during the 1980s, provides a background for the emergence of “non‐racial” cinema. Reception is suggested as a more subtle means of film categorisation. Mapantsula, for example, though made by a mainly white crew, is understood by black audiences to be a film accurately reflecting the experience of the black oppressed in South Africa. Though reception is a dynamic response, shifting and responding to historical trajectories and new discourses, with interpretations fragmenting between different classes and class fractions at different times, such a strategy for area and cultural classification of films avoids the pitfalls of categories based on ideology, myth, race and language.     

Determinants of ethnic identification in the USSR: The soviet Jewish case

This article critically examines the generation of discourses on Greek identity following an episode that took place in northern Greece (2000/2003) when an Albanian student was elected flag-carrier in a commemorative parade. Three versions of Greek identity emerged in this context: the first was based on civic understandings of identity, promoting the current Europeanist project of citizenship as belonging. The second version drew upon the notion of “culture” as an all-encompassing concept to promote ideas of Greek cultural “purity” that have roots in Greek ethnogenesis. The third version adopted an understanding of the “nation” in terms of racial affiliation, transforming it thus into a natural category. The argument put forward is that in the context of the 2000/2003 episode (a) Greek self-perceptions are affected by the problematic economic and cultural position of Greece within Europe and (b) Greek discourses of identity are a form of resistance to processes of Europeanization that threaten traditional “imagined communities” embedded in history.     

The politics of black patients' identity: Ward-rounds on the ‘black side’ of a South African psychiatric hospital

There are many macrosocial studies of the political organisation of health and mental health care in South Africa, and the maldistribution of resources by race is well known. Little attention, however, has been given to the minutiae of the negotiation of power in the clinical setting. This article, which reports on part of a larger study of aspects of culture in South African psychiatry, focuses on interactions in ward-rounds on the Black side of a South African psychiatric hospital. Through analysis of cases, the complexity of interpreting what transpires in such a setting and the central role that the concept of culture has in debates amongst staff members are demonstrated. Close analysis demonstrates the inadequacy of models which seek to locate the institutional racism of apartheid psychiatry in the motives of individual clinicians. Clinicians may simultaneously reproduce and subvert aspects of apartheid practice. A consideration of the social positioning of the clinician both as a South African and as a practitioner of psychiatry is central to the development of psychiatry in a post-apartheid South Africa.