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4968 results in Wits University Press

Page 103 of 249

  • 7 - Managing multilingualism in education: policies and practices

  • from Part Three - Language in education
  • Edited by Russell Kaschula, Pamela Maseko, H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Christine Anthonissen, Bassey E. Antia, Ken Barris, Rebecca Domingo, Jeanne Toit, Regine Fourie, Nompumelelo Frans, Wanga Gambushe, Eunice Ivala, Michael Joseph, Gregory Kamwendo, Hleze Kunju, Noleen Leach, Linda Manashe, Koliswa Moropa, Andre M. Mostert, Ndimande-Hlongwa, Dion Nkomo, Anneke Potgieter, Monwabisi Ralarala, Esther Ramani, Justus C. Roux, Feziwe Shoba, Zakhile Somlata, Undine S. Weber, Nogwaja S. Zulu
  • Book:
    Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 131-156

  • Summary

    The context

    As a country with 11 official languages, South Africa is strongly reliant on a lingua franca for communication across linguistic and cultural borders. With the hegemony of Afrikaans steadily declining since the transition to an inclusive democracy in 1994, English has, not surprisingly, emerged as the most powerful contender, its status as a global language no doubt serving as the driving force. Perceived as a status marker, for many South Africans English has become symbolic of education, affluence, internationalism and freedom (for example, see Nomlomo 2004; Sigcau 2004; Heugh 2007). It is regarded as serving not only the nation in promoting public and cross-cultural communication2 but even more so the individual, as the golden key to upward socioeconomic mobility. How this perception of the value of English will affect traditional identities, indigenous languages and cultural heritage is a moot point. Whatever the long-term effect, South Africans who at this point in time have acceptable levels of proficiency in English, certainly do benefit from it (Heugh 2007). For this reason, the conviction prevails that all South African learners should be allowed equal and sufficient opportunities to attain an enabling level of English proficiency. The reality, however, is that comparatively few South African learners have been afforded such access and, ‘whilst English is believed to be the horizontal language of access, it has in effect become the vertical language of exclusion’ (Heugh 2007: 200).

    Scholars such as Nomlomo (2004) and Probyn (2005) have referred to a common misconception that being exposed to English as medium of instruction (MoI)3 for as much time as possible, regardless of the learner's first language (L1), is a secure strategy for attaining a high level of proficiency in the MoI. Although the national Language in Education Policy (DoE 1997) promotes, on linguistically solid grounds, additive bilingualism4 with the home language as MoI at least during the foundational years, it is widely agreed that this policy has not been actively implemented (Plüddemann et al. 2004; Heugh 2007; Beukes 2008). According to Probyn (2005), the African schools that adapted their language policy generally chose to incorporate English as the language of learning and teaching at an even earlier stage than is recommended.

  • Chapter 5 - Labour Aristocracy or Marginal Labour Elite? Cosatu members' income, other sources of livelihood and household support

    • By Christine Bischoff, Wits City Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Bianca Tame, Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town
  • Edited by Andries Bezuidenhout, Malehoko Tshoaedi
  • Christine Bischoff, Janet Cherry, Nkosinathi Paul Jikeka, Boitumelo James Malope, Johann Maree, Sandla Nomvete, Ntsehiseng Nthejane, Ari Sitas, Bianca Tame
  • Book:
    Labour Beyond Cosatu
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 62-84

  • Summary

    WORKERS, HOUSEHOLDS AND SOUTH AFRICA'S SOCIO-ECONOMIC ORDER

    This chapter attempts to examine critically the view of Cosatu workers as a labour aristocracy or a ‘self-interested’ elite. It does so by examining wage data gathered from members of Cosatu affiliates in the fifth of a series of surveys of Cosatu membership which have been conducted since 1994, and it looks at the wage data through a number of other variables derived from questions in the 2014 survey of membership.

    The notion of Cosatu members as a labour aristocracy can be related to the growing divisions in the labour market between permanent and temporary workers and high-income and low-income earners (see Forslund and Reddy 2015: 84–88). Our data suggests that Cosatu does not organise many temporary workers but it does organise workers who earn low wages. Importantly, those who support the labour aristocracy thesis often use labour market data as applied to individuals. In this chapter we take seriously the point that trade union members support dependents on their wages. Pnina Werbner's (2010) use of the notion of a ‘marginal labour elite’ provides a far more useful way of understanding Cosatu's membership. Werbner's ‘marginal labour elite’ locates trade union members outside of the workplace and in relation to their social reality by focusing specifically on their role in the household as a wage earner.

    Twenty years into democracy, South African society is still marked by immense socio-economic problems such as chronic levels of unemployment and incessant levels of poverty and inequality. The number and intensity of strikes have increased in private and public sector workplaces. Globally, in the phase of informationtechnology- led capitalism, the number of workers employed as permanent workers is decreasing as the number employed as temporary, casual or part-time workers is increasing.

    This trend is explained by Jan Theron's (2010) description of the interrelated processes of ‘informalisation from above’ and ‘informalisation from below’. Whereas ‘informalisation from below’ refers to those who engage in survivalist activities or self-employment, ‘informalisation from above’ is a response to employers’ efforts to restructure workplaces by externalising labour. This process fragments and differentiates the workforce by creating a layer of workers who, despite being located in the formal workplace, find themselves on the outside of labour legislation and collective bargaining because their employer, the service provider, determines their working conditions and is not legally bound to an employment relationship with the core business.

  • Chapter 17 - Contesting reconstruction

  • from PART THREE - Post-rebellion politics
  • Robert Ross
  • Book:
    These Oppressions Won't Cease
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 155-170

  • Summary

    Document 76: The rebels’ view of a post-rebellion society

    Translation of a communication received by the Governor from certain Rebel Hottentots, now without the Colony, addressed jointly to the Governor and to the Parliament.

    17 January 1855

    The object of Memorialists is to give Your Excellency a short sketch of the causes of the later War.

    These subjects of the British Government, placed under and governed by Laws carried out by Commissioners, or Functionaries, appointed by Government and regarded as faithful and upright persons in the execution of their several duties and offices connected therewith,—they were expected to be upright and impartial in the exercise of such duties, according to law; but have at last greatly to regret that prejudices against colour and condition existed, so that the poor and ignorant mostly became the sufferers where justice and lawfulness were to be exercised.

    As a proof of the aforesaid, and to corroborate that injustice is more minded than praised, when it concerns the coloured classes, Memorialists will give a circumstance which occurred between Sir A. Stockenström and the white colonists relative to his administration as Lieut.-Governor of the Eastern Province: he was forcibly opposed, and the greatest discontent was shown, as if they could, or would, not agree with him. We do not know the reasons they had, for we had not opportunity of ascertaining it, and also took no part, and had no vote of approval or disapproval of his retaining the situation of Governor here.

    Memorialists can judge, partly, as he is a person whom they love as far as they have witnessed his character, for under his orders they have done much service for the government, and he placed rich and poor under the law (as judges and rulers ought to do) on the same footing; and, partly, because there is no respect of colour or condition with him, who, in as far as we have studied his character, cared only (to the extent that God gave him knowledge and ability) to preserve peace and prosperity among Her Majesty's subjects in general, and who exerted himself, to the utmost of his power, to become acquainted with the circumstances and wants of Her Majesty's poor coloured subjects, and to apply remedies where possible.

  • Chapter 6 - The Interbellum

  • from PART ONE - The incorporation of the Khoesan into the colonial body politic
  • Robert Ross
  • Book:
    These Oppressions Won't Cease
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 72-84

  • Summary

    In the dozen or so years between the end of Hintsa's War and the beginning of the War of the Axe, the Eastern Cape Khoekhoe continued to express their ‘Hottentot nationalism’. They gave their commentary on, and participated in, the debates on the political development of the Cape Colony. Most often, these comments were made in language that seems subservient, but in fact contains a surprising degree of sharpness.

    Document 23: Address to Sir Andries Stockenström

    This address to Andries Stockenström, as the new lieutenant-governor of the Eastern Province, though apparently conventional, should be seen in the context of the great hostility which his appointment and he himself met among the British settlers of Grahamstown and its surrounds. This was occasioned by Stockenström's testimony before the Select Committee on Aborigines, which was regarded both as a slander on the character of the settlers and as the reason for the Glenelg Dispatch, by which Queen Adelaide Province (roughly the area between the Keiskamma and the Kei rivers) was returned to the amaXhosa, thus annulling its acquisition through conquest during Hintsa's War. As a result, many white settlers lost the lands which they had been expecting to acquire in the province. Stockenström was received in Grahamstown with considerable hostility, and eventually forced to resign as lieutenant-governor on account of settler opposition. The Kat River people's endorsement of Stockenström and of his policies was thus in no way a neutral act.

    To His Honor Andries Stockenström Esq., Lieut-Governor of the Eastern Province of the Cape of Good Hope, &c. &c.

    We the undersigned Inhabitants of the Kat River Settlement, beg to express the unfeigned pleasure we feel at the safe return of your Honor and family to this colony, but more especially at the appointment of your Honor to that high station which His Majesty, our gracious King, has been pleased to assign to you, knowing as we do your qualifications for that office. After the independent manner in which evidence has been given before the Committee of the House of Commons, on the subject of colonial affairs, and from the intimate knowledge which you possess of native character and feelings, we place implicit confidence in the justice of your proceedings, being assured that they will be of a conciliatory nature towards the Caffers, and will tend to the peace and prosperity of the Settlement and of the colony at large.

  • 19 - In a Closing Net

  • Rusty Bernstein
  • Book:
    Memory Against Forgetting
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 301-314

  • Summary

    1964

    For reasons which I no longer understand it seems vital that I do not go down those stairs again. If I am going to be rearrested it must be in open court, in full sight of the press and public. I elbow my way through the ring of policemen around the dock – they are uncertain whether to restrain me – and push through to our lawyers in the well of the court.

    Detective Sergeant Dirker rushes over and starts to drag me away. He says I am under arrest. Vernon Berrangé intercepts him: ‘After your disgraceful exhibition in the witness box, I take it you will not oppose bail when we apply for it.’ Dirker is intimidated and pulls me away, muttering a reply which I cannot catch. Captain Swanepoel comes across and joins him and together they hurry me past the empty dock and out of the court. My colleagues are already down in the cells below, and I have not even seen them go.

    Suddenly I feel terribly alone. We have been together, on and off, for so many years. We have sat together, talked together and decided everything together during the whole year of the trial. We have learnt to depend on each other for advice, for strength and courage. Now, suddenly it is all over. They have gone, without our being able to exchange a word or touch, and without any farewells.

    It will be twenty-seven years before I see them again. Things are happening too fast. I no longer feel in control of my own fate, but have become a puppet being pushed about by people like Swanepoel and Dirker. I am unable to celebrate my good fortune; I am still shocked and numb as they take me back to the prison to collect my few belongings. Apart from the warders I see no one I know and talk to no one. I am put into the back of a car filled with Special Branch men and taken back to Johannesburg.

    Swanepoel is bragging to the others as though I am not there. If he had his time over, he says, he would be a advocate – big money just for asking questions. The talk just washes over me.

  • Chapter 3 - Chiefs, Missionaries, Communities and the Department of Native Education

  • Linda Chisholm
  • Book:
    Between Worlds
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 41-58

  • Summary

    Lucas Mangope, a local traditionalist who was later installed as a Bantustan leader, continued the practice of chiefly alliance with the mission, which had been established by earlier generations of chiefs. The close relationship the Hermannsburgers enjoyed with Mangope did not, however, characterise all relationships between the mission and the chiefs. Indeed, relationships were often tense and conflictual, and became increasingly so during the 1950s. Much of this conflict emerged in the preceding decades when local communities challenged chiefly authority on the grounds of financial mismanagement or efforts to extract levies from communities who belonged to the ethnic group but did not have any interest in the land, to pay for indebted land.

    Particularly in the 1940s and 1950s, there is evidence that these conflicts spilled over into schooling. If in the earlier period conflict had centred within the ethnic group, in the later period the mission was identified as a problematic locus of authority alongside the chief. As schools became central to conflicts between communities, missionaries and chiefs, their authority was increasingly challenged and their position became more vulnerable. The chief inspectors of Native Education and the Native Affairs department were recruited by both sides in these battles and played a critical mediating role.

    The Bantu Education Act (No. 47 of 1953) envisaged a removal of control from missionaries, not only to the state, but in rural areas also to local African communities linked with traditional authorities recognised by the state. While many African schools did have some form of school board or committee before the Act was passed, the Act now specified their composition: in rural areas two of their seven members were to be nominated by the secretary for Bantu Education to represent religious or other interests, while the rest were to be nominated by the tribal authority or by the chief subject to the secretary's approval. The ‘retribalisation’ purposes of the Act have been well-documented: to situate Africans ‘psycho-ideologically where the Bantustans placed them physically and politically’.

  • Suddenly the Storm: the play script: A play in five scenes

  • Paul Slabolepszy
  • Book:
    Suddenly the Storm
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 1-2

  • Summary

    CHARACTERS

    DWAYNE … sixty-plus

    SHANELL … pushing fifty

    NAMHLA … forty

    Launched to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising of 1976, Suddenly the Storm had its world premiere at the Barney Simon at Johannesburg's Market Theatre on 7 June 2016. The production was directed by Bobby Heaney, with set and costume design by Greg King and lighting design by Wesley France.

    Dwayne was played by Paul Slabolepszy, Shanell by Charmaine Weir-Smith and Namhla by Renate Stuurman.

    The play was subsequently performed with the same cast at the Auto & General Theatre on the Square, Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton, from 27 October 2016.

    The action takes place in the office-cum-workshop of a security gate and fence works on the outer reaches of the Far East Rand, the home of an ageing former policeman and his much younger wife.

    The time is early summer 2016.

  • 16 - Language, intercultural communication and literature

  • from Part Five - Language, culture and intercultural communication
  • Edited by Russell Kaschula, Pamela Maseko, H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Christine Anthonissen, Bassey E. Antia, Ken Barris, Rebecca Domingo, Jeanne Toit, Regine Fourie, Nompumelelo Frans, Wanga Gambushe, Eunice Ivala, Michael Joseph, Gregory Kamwendo, Hleze Kunju, Noleen Leach, Linda Manashe, Koliswa Moropa, Andre M. Mostert, Ndimande-Hlongwa, Dion Nkomo, Anneke Potgieter, Monwabisi Ralarala, Esther Ramani, Justus C. Roux, Feziwe Shoba, Zakhile Somlata, Undine S. Weber, Nogwaja S. Zulu
  • Book:
    Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 301-312

  • Summary

    What does knowing an individual's cultural identity tell you about that individual? If you assume that that individual is like everyone else in that culture, you have stereotyped all the many various people in that culture into one mould. You know that you are different from others in your culture. Other cultures are as diverse. The diversity within cultures probably exceeds the differences between cultures. So, just knowing a person's cultural identity doesn't provide complete or reliable information about that person.

    Fred E Jandt, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication

    This chapter investigates intercultural communication in literary texts. The chapter analyses Sesotho and isiZulu novels, aiming to answer the following questions: What is it that texts encourage or discourage about personal, relational and communal identities? How do texts represent cultural identities such as age, gender, religion, social class, race, ethnicity and nationality, among other aspects? Do they represent intercultural interaction that encourages the positive interplay between cultural differences and similarities? What do they present as barriers to intercultural communication, or its facilitators?

    Underpinning the chapter is the contextual approach to intercultural communication proposed by Neuliep (2012). The approach is ‘based on the idea that whenever people from different cultures come together and exchange verbal and nonverbal messages, they do so within a variety of contexts, including a cultural, micro-cultural, environmental, socio-relational and perceptual context’ (Neuliep 2012: xiii).

    At this stage, it may perhaps be useful to answer the question: What is ‘intercultural communication’? Intercultural communication occurs between people of different cultures and involves a ‘minimum of two persons from different cultures’ (Neuliep 2012: 24). As a field of study, intercultural communication concentrates on intercultural relationships based on the dynamics at work in those intercultural interactions (Martin and Nakayama 2007). It is from narratives of such relationships that ‘we can learn a tremendous amount about other people and their cultures and about ourselves and our own cultural background’ (Martin and Nakayama 2007: 4).

  • 11 - Language and law: ‘cultural translation’ of narratives into sworn statements

  • from Part Four - Language in the professions: law, media, science and language technology
    • By Monwabisi K Ralarala, associate professor and director of the Language Centre at the University of Fort Hare.
  • Edited by Russell Kaschula, Pamela Maseko, H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Christine Anthonissen, Bassey E. Antia, Ken Barris, Rebecca Domingo, Jeanne Toit, Regine Fourie, Nompumelelo Frans, Wanga Gambushe, Eunice Ivala, Michael Joseph, Gregory Kamwendo, Hleze Kunju, Noleen Leach, Linda Manashe, Koliswa Moropa, Andre M. Mostert, Ndimande-Hlongwa, Dion Nkomo, Anneke Potgieter, Monwabisi Ralarala, Esther Ramani, Justus C. Roux, Feziwe Shoba, Zakhile Somlata, Undine S. Weber, Nogwaja S. Zulu
  • Book:
    Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 211-222

  • Summary

    Theorising about cultural translation

    The concept of ‘cultural translation’, which underlies this discussion, has its roots in the discipline of cultural anthropology. In his convincing article, ‘The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social Anthropology’, Asad (2010: 26–27) provides a critical account of the concept of cultural translation, as follows:

    The process of ‘cultural translation’ is inevitably enmeshed in conditions of power – professional, national, international. And among these conditions is the authority of ethnographers to uncover the implicit meanings of subordinate societies. Given that that is so, the interesting question for enquiry is not whether, and if so to what extent, anthropologists should be relativists or nationalists, critical or charitable, toward other cultures, but how power enters into the process of ‘cultural translation’, seen both as a discursive and as a non-discursive practice.

    In the same vein, Sturge (2007: 8–9) complements this view when pointing out that:

    The powerful ethnographic ‘authority’ of the text subsumes the voice of the original speakers into seamless written English partly by hiding the processes of editing and translation that have gone on … Because of the unequal relationship between the cultures concerned, the translation does not remain cordoned off inside some Western ivory tower but instead takes up a powerful position in the practical world.

    In the light of the aforementioned observations, it is worth commenting briefly on imperatives related to the work of ‘transpreters'1 and their pre-statement taking and record reconstruction of sworn statements within the police service:

  • • The process of seeking information or obtaining information by transpreters for purposes of further investigation, and possibly securing a conviction, is inevitably and intrinsically authoritative. Thus, power and authority are a hallmark of this exercise.

  • • The instant relationship between the transpreters and the complainants or witnesses is best described as a relationship between unequals.

  • • The question of ‘translation’ or representation – central in this discussion – resonates with the assigned function of transpreters, who are duty-bound to ‘translate’ (from African languages into English) original narratives of those who lack proficiency in the language of the legal record in order to benefit the English-speaking readership – primarily the courts. Within this context, transpreters assume an audible ‘voice’ in the ‘story retelling’ process, the content of which may not be contested or disputed by those that are being ‘represented’.

The Backroom Boy
  • Andrew Malengeni's Story
  • Mandla Mathebula
  • Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017
  • The Backroom Boy opens dramatically in China, 1962. Andrew Mlangeni is one of a small select group undergoing military training there. The unannounced visitor is Mao Tse-Tung or Chairman Mao as he was known, Chairman of the Communist Party of China.Mlangeni was selected as one of the first-ever six members who received military training in China before the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. He seems to have been chosen because he was a dedicated, intelligent and dependable operative, rather than a leader. Even after his release after 25 years on Robben Island, Mlangeni was not given a senior position in the post-apartheid democratic government. ‘I was always the backroom boy,’ says Andrew Mlangeni about himself.Andrew Mlangeni, is a struggle stalwart, Rivonia Trialist, and Robben Island prisoner 467/64 who was next door inmate to Nelson Mandela’s acclaimed 466/64 prison number. Released after 26 years of incarceration, he served as Member of Parliament, and is Chairman of the ANC’s Integrity Commission and Founder of the June and Andrew Mlangeni Foundation. With the passing of Ahmed Kathrada (March 2017), Mlangeni (91) is one of only two Rivonia Trialist still alive with Denis Goldberg.While still at school, Andrew Mlangeni joined the Communist Party of South Africa and also the ANC Youth League. These were the organisations that shaped his values. Decades of resourceful activism were to lead to his arrest and life sentence in the Rivonia trial. Mlangeni’s lifelong commitment to the struggle for liberation reverberates with other biographies and memoirs of leading figures, such as Rusty Bernstein’s Memory Against Forgetting and Albie Sachs’ We, the People: Insights of an Activist Judge. This story of an ANC elder is a well-researched historical record overlaid with intensely personal refl ections which intersect with the political narrative. Above all, it is one man’s story, set in the maelstrom of the liberation struggle.This biographical project has been developed for, and published in conjunction with, the June and Andrew Mlangeni Foundation.

  • 13 - Using African languages to teach Science in higher education

  • from Part Four - Language in the professions: law, media, science and language technology
    • By Wanga Gambushe, PhD candidate at SOAS, University of London., Dion Nkomo, lectures in the School of Languages and Literatures, African Language Studies, at Rhodes University., Pamela Maseko, associate professor in African Language Studies at Rhodes University and holds a doctorate in the field of African language intellectualisation.
  • Edited by Russell Kaschula, Pamela Maseko, H. Ekkehard Wolff
  • Christine Anthonissen, Bassey E. Antia, Ken Barris, Rebecca Domingo, Jeanne Toit, Regine Fourie, Nompumelelo Frans, Wanga Gambushe, Eunice Ivala, Michael Joseph, Gregory Kamwendo, Hleze Kunju, Noleen Leach, Linda Manashe, Koliswa Moropa, Andre M. Mostert, Ndimande-Hlongwa, Dion Nkomo, Anneke Potgieter, Monwabisi Ralarala, Esther Ramani, Justus C. Roux, Feziwe Shoba, Zakhile Somlata, Undine S. Weber, Nogwaja S. Zulu
  • Book:
    Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    23 March 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 247-261

  • Summary

    Background

    Although access to higher education (HE) in South Africa has widened since 1994 to reflect the country's linguistic and cultural diversity, patterns of high failure and repetition rates, underperformance and low throughput rates remain typically linked to race and language (see Statistics on Post-School Education and Training in South Africa: 2011 [DHET 2013]; Review of Higher Education in South Africa: Selected Themes [CHE 2007]; Higher Education Monitor: The State of Higher Education in South Africa [CHE 2009]). Multilingualism is now a norm in South African HE, as it is an acknowledged societal norm in the country at large. However, it is a norm only as far as the linguistic composition of students and (to a lesser extent) staff is concerned. Teaching in most institutions is monolingual in the medium of English, which is a second language to most South African HE students. The choice for English as a language of learning and teaching (LoLT), especially for speakers of languages other than English, may be considered a historical legacy. On the one hand, English is historically the language of academia in South Africa, given the marginalisation of African languages in HE during the pre-1994 period. On the other hand, it is a global language and is seen as presenting opportunities for economic and social mobility. African languages are not regarded as well-developed enough for use as languages of academia (Jokweni 2004). Research on bi- and multilingual teaching and learning that embraces African languages in HE (Bamgbose 1991; Obanya 2004) is also not considered advanced enough to provide models that can be used to support cognition, and therefore success and throughput for English second language (ESL) students (Mesthrie 2008). Yet this research confirms the important relationship between language and cognition in the learning process, and illustrates that the mother tongue of a learner is critical in contributing to quality education.

    The relationship between language and learning is motivated by the fact that students enter a learning process in possession of their mother tongue with its set of linguistic and conceptual knowledge. Cummins (1981), one of the proponents of mother-tongue-based bilingual learning, argues that bilingual learners should be encouraged to draw on their mother tongue to acquire new knowledge, and opportunities should be presented for the newly acquired knowledge to be contextualised within the pre-existing knowledge, and new knowledge to emerge in this process.

  • Chapter 19 - On the rights of burghers

  • from PART THREE - Post-rebellion politics
  • Robert Ross
  • Book:
    These Oppressions Won't Cease
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 188-192

  • Summary

    Document 98: On the privileges of Kat River burghers in war

    By 1879, when the last of the frontier wars in the Eastern Cape broke out, a new political order was beginning to emerge. There was an increasingly large Xhosa Christian elite developing, for whom the politics of warfare began to seem outmoded and certainly unproductive. The call, made at the end of the war by Isaac Wauchope, to ‘Lay down the spear,/ Come out of the Hoho and Mnyube forests./ Fight with the Pen’ was more generally answered. A new form of modern politics was developing, in which parliamentary politics and the forerunners of the nationalist parties were seen as the way forward. Nevertheless, in the Kat River, the old reflexes were still in play. The following petition reviews the loyalist history of the Kat River Settlement, and returns to their previous grievances, all the way back to the meeting on the Vagrancy Bill fortyfive years earlier. At that meeting, Andries Hatha had sat behind the table recording the speeches that were made. Now in 1879 he once again chaired the meeting.

    That your humble Petitioners are landed proprietors, of the Hottentot, Bastard, and other mixed races of the Colony, as above described, and they would beg to place before your Honourable House the fact that, since the establishment of the Kat River, otherwise called the Stockenstrom, Settlement in 1829, they were always designated, or according to European usage, belonged to that class who are supposed to enjoy certain privileges in boroughs, and who, besides other rights, have the privilege of returning one or more members to serve in Parliament.

    II. Under this designation they were called out in Kafir patrols, Kafir wars, expeditions, or campaigns, under their own commandants and field-cornets, subject to European generals or superior officers, and did eminent service, especially in the wars of 1835, 1846, and 1851 (and in the late Kafir war, as a militia, furnishing altogether over four hundred men, and now again in the Morosi war two hundred men, consisting of levies and volunteers, for the campaign against that rebel chief), under various commanders or general officers, as their Excellencies the late Sir B. D'Urban, Sir P. Maitland, Sir H. Somerset, Sir A. Stockenström, and many others, as the archives of the Colony may show.

  • Scene 5

  • Paul Slabolepszy
  • Book:
    Suddenly the Storm
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 63-96

  • Summary

    Several days later. Early evening.

    As the lights fade up the office looks much as it always has apart from several empty McDonald's and KFC boxes lying around. Jonas's blanket lies crumpled on the car seat, suggesting that DWAYNE has been sleeping as well as eating here.

    The music continues as DWAYNE appears in the alcove, freshly showered and groomed. He wears his ‘special occasion smart shirt’ and clean trousers. He adjusts the animal skin bracelet on his wrist and then spots his gun on his desk. Checking that the firearm is on safety he opens a top drawer and places it carefully inside and the music fades out. Noticing the takeaway boxes, he scoops them up, tossing them into the workshop before crossing to the mirror above the basin to check his appearance.

    The sound of a car we have heard before sends DWAYNE into a mini panic. He grabs his brandy bottle and glass from the coffee table and places them beside the fridge. Moving swiftly to his desk, he removes a can of antiperspirant from a drawer, blasting under each arm before putting it back. He whips up a remote device and activates the lock to the outside security gate. NAMHLA soon appears in the doorway, stylishly dressed.

    DWAYNE: Come in, come in. Welcome. Make yourself at home.

    Spotting a single forgotten takeaway box, he kicks it swiftly beneath his desk. His current ‘bachelor-like’ existence does not go unnoticed.

    NAMHLA [ultra-cool]: How's your wife? I trust she's well?

    DWAYNE [flustered]: Ja, no … she's … she's lekker, she's …

    NAMHLA: Not in tonight?

    DWAYNE: Gone to a movie with her friend in town. [A trifle too smarmy.] Smart move, don't you think?

    NAMHLA: Depends.

    DWAYNE [momentarily thrown]: Sorry?

    NAMHLA: I said it depends.

    DWAYNE: On what?

    NAMHLA: On what you have in mind.

    Beat.

    DWAYNE [warily]: We discussing the debt you want me to collect.

    NAMHLA: You're sure about that?

  • Chapter 2 - The Mandela Imaginary: Reflections on Post-Reconciliation Libidinal Economy

    • By Derek Hook, Associate Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University
  • Edited by Maurits Bever Donker, Ross Truscott, Premesh Premesh Lalu, Gary Minkley
  • Derek Hook, Mari Ruti, Jaco Barnard-Naude, Annemarie Lawless, Aidan Erasmus, Helena Pohlandt-McCormick
  • Book:
    Remains of the Social
    Published by:
    Wits University Press
    Published online:
    21 April 2018
    Print publication:
    31 December 2017, pp 40-64

  • Summary

    Throughout June, July and August 2013, much of South Africa's news media was preoccupied with the question of Nelson Mandela's ailing health. Leaving aside for the time being the question of South Africa's tendency to exhibit a type of media fixation on a single iconic person – the cases of Oscar Pistorius and Julius Malema are clear examples – my objective here will be to offer some speculative comments on the social and psychical significance of this period of uncertainty leading to Mandela's death in late 2013. Considering the meaning of Mandela in this period – as opposed to the period immediately after his death – represents a very different line of inquiry from any ostensibly objective assessment of Mandela's political or symbolic legacy. The reason for this is that I broach the topic of Mandela's role in the what, following Jean-Francois Lyotard, can be called the libidinal economy of the South African nation, that is, in terms of the various clusters of affect and unconscious ideation that his role represented at the time and beyond.

    Societal hagiography

    I begin by asking: how might one approach the obsessive media speculation concerning Mandela's declining health prior to his eventual death? Popular media commentaries on Mandela during the middle of 2013 as a rule wavered between requests that the public honour appropriate cultural customs – to respect the privacy of Mandela and his family – and an unrelenting thirst for ever more details pertaining to the former South African president and his feuding family. The obvious point to note here is that each such impulse effectively undoes the other, in a to-and-fro, self-perpetuating fashion.

    A related tension was also at play. A variety of political personalities and media pundits made the call – presumably preparing us all for the inevitable – that the public needed to ‘let Mandela go’. Verne Harris of the Nelson Mandela Foundation made such a request as early as 2011: ‘He is already gone – as an active voice who offers us a last resort. He is no longer with us. He has been frustrated by our dependence on him. He wants to see us walking without him. We must allow him to go’ (Nuttall & Mbembe 283).

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