Research report presented for the degree of Master of Arts (Anthropology) at the University of the Witwatersrand, 2016 / According to the 2014 Euromonitor report on black South African haircare trends, the country exhibited a decrease in sales of damaging hair care products. This trend coincided with the exponential influx of imported Indian hair into the country for the purposes of artificial hair integrations i.e. weaves and extensions. To understand the meaning of these patterns, this project seeks to understand the significance Indian hair held for black women. By analysing anthropological literature on commodities, this work reveals how the purchase of Indian hair not only exposed the state of black hair in contemporary South Africa, but how black women engaged with that environment through its usage. Further, hair’s purchase situated women within a transnational exchange network that was buttressed by racial and gendered hierarchies. As such, hair’s consumption placed women within an “economy of otherness”. However women also utilized this economy by converting the racially charged commodity into social and symbolic capital which they leveraged for their own gain. As such, the purchase of Indian hair not only integrated women within an economy of otherness, but also provided them with the capital to participate within it. / GR2017

This research project looks at the experiences of a group of pregnant teenagers in a low socio-economic area. Teenage sexuality and pregnancy has been the subject of substantial research in South Africa and the rest of the world as it is a global issue. The challenge that pregnant teenagers face are to manage schooling, pregnancy and mothering rather than dropping out of school. This study was conducted using a qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews. The participants consisted of fourteen teenagers ranging from fifteen to eighteen years of age. The teenagers were either pregnant or had delivered their babies. They attended the local high school with the exception of one participant who had dropped out of school. I interviewed one Life Orientation educator from the local high school and one ante natal nursing sister from the local municipal clinic. Teenage pregnancy produced gender inequalities as the female adolescent is unable to attend school whilst recuperating from the birth of the child; the male continues attending school regardless of fathering the child. Culturally it was inappropriate to receive sex education at home so information was gained within the formal setting of Life Orientation classes, peers or social media. Due to varying degrees of familial support, the teenagers were able to return to school after the birth of their babies. The level of family support ranged from taking over full responsibility of the child so the adolescent continued with her former life to the teenager having to care for the child when returning from school and only being able to complete homework tasks once the baby was asleep. Agency was most apparent in the decision of abortion. The teenagers would not be forced into the procedure if it was not the option of their choice despite pressure from boyfriends and family. Teenagers also showed agency in ending relationships with their partners if the partner was dating other girls concurrently. However, they did not use agency in the negotiation of condom use despite stating that they were in equal relationships with their boyfriends. This indicates how structures may constrain agency, specifically structures that are located in gendered inequalities. The teenagers were knowledgeable about the facts of condom use as protection against pregnancy and disease but these facts were not put into practice. Discourses suggest female teenagers’ fear of being rejected by their partner through the insistence of condom use and male domination over the female.

A research project submitted at the University of the Witwatersrand, Department of Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, in fulfilment of the Master of Arts (Research) Degree. / South Africa’s countryside’s are rich in ‘new’ high-demand metal and energy minerals, like platinum and uranium, as well as vast, untapped reserves of industrial staples, above all coal. Yet, these are also characterised by deep rural poverty and legally insecure systems of ‘customary’ tenure, under the local administrative control of traditional authorities. Here, new mining activity is setting in motion significant processes dispossession and Immiseration that are at once tracing, reconfiguring and widening the class, gender and other social divisions that define these rural settings. Communal land is frequently alienated with little or no compensation, local residents forcibly removed to make way for surface infrastructure, and scarce water and other natural resources polluted and depleted. At the same time political tensions are arising from the assumption that local chiefs are ‘custodians’ of the mineral-rich land under their jurisdiction. Questions of land, livelihood and rural democracy are thus intimately bound together on the new frontiers of the regional extractives boom in ways that are having profound implications for growing numbers of the rural poor. Using a case study of the Bapo ba Mogale traditional Authority in the North West Province, South Africa, this thesis seeks to explore how these new mining activities are shaping and reconfiguring the heightened political contestations over the institution of traditional leadership in the area, the definitions of community and belonging/exclusion, and the struggles over land ownership and how mining capital is shaping these struggles and is connected with these struggles / EM2017

South Africa adopted a local integration settlement policy for refugees which formed the basis for the reception of refugees into the country since the early 1990s. This policy also laid the foundation for Refugee legislation that was subsequently developed to deal with the arrival of refugees including the applications for asylum and the processes related thereto. The fact that South Africa decided on a local integration policy in the early 1990s is an anomaly in that many countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region at the time and even now had encampment policies where refugees are kept in camps and have minimal freedom of movement outside camp settlements. Foreign policy sometimes plays a critical role in shaping domestic policy in various spheres. This research study has determined that South Africa’s Foreign Policy Practice both during the transition years between 1991-1994 and post 1994 played a major role in South Africa adopting a human rights based settlement policy for refugees. This was initially informed by South Africa’s desire to show the international community that the country was indeed adopting democratic principles and thus denying any role in the destabilisation in the region. After 1994 South Africa had acceded to international instruments on the protection of refugees without any reservations on the freedom of movement. The focus of the study is on the decision-making process that led to the signing of both the 1991 Memorandum of Understanding and the 1993 Basic Agreement between South Africa and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and subsequent adoption of the Refugees Act in 1998 to establish the role played by foreign policy and other foreign policy factors in the final decision of adopting local integration. Findings from this research further highlight the role of civic actors for both the pre and post 1994 periods. The study has implications for other countries in the region and beyond which are promoting democratic principles while curtailing the right to freedom of movement for refugees.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Built Environment (Housing) / A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Built Environment (Housing) / In South Africa, there is a group of families that live in small four-room houses that were transferred to them by the apartheid regime in 1978. As elsewhere in the developing world, many of these families are extended families which live together because they do not have any other options. This study explores the housing needs and living conditions of the Ndala family and three other extended families living in or near Pimville, Soweto. Structured interviews, observations and evaluation research are utilised to determine the extent to which poor extended families in South Africa are excluded from housing finance. Literature discussing self-help housing, livelihoods, poverty and enablement is presented in order to construct a theoretical framework, after which an overview of housing finance arrangements in the developed world, developing countries and South Africa in particular provides the backdrop against which the findings are discussed. The findings and analysis demonstrate that extended families such as those included in the study fall into a gap in the provisioning of housing finance in South Africa. They do not qualify for government housing assistance, and they also cannot obtain loan finance from banks because they do not meet the strict lending criteria. As a result, the extended families turn to non-conventional sources of income and finance such as rental income, loans from relatives and stokvel funds in order to survive and in some cases extend their houses. It is recommended at the end of the study that South Africa review its current housing policies. Specifically, the study recommends that a new strategy called “rent a room” be put into place in order to assist poor extended families like the Ndalas.

The objectives of this study were to explore adolescents’ perceptions and experiences of poverty and its associated stigma when at school and within their communities. The study attempted to do this by uncovering the effects of poverty on adolescents’ lives; exploring their understanding of the meaning of being poor; exploring how the poverty-related stigma impacted their self-esteem, identity and experiences of the world; and investigated the elements of stigma that maintain the social distance between adolescents from poverty-stricken households and their peers. The study employed a qualitative research design. It used a focus group approach in conjunction with participatory research techniques such as ranking exercises. The issues that the participants raised revolved around a lack of access to money and how this in turn resulted in a lack of access to many other things, which led to a low quality of life for poor children and youths. The definitions they gave of the concept of poverty made reference to a lack of access to things such as houses, food and money. Other indicators of poverty that were mentioned related to the physical and psychological manifestations of the problem. The causes of poverty identified by the participants could broadly be grouped into two groups, namely financial aspects, and personal and family aspects. The issues the participants raised relating to poverty indicated that many of the problems faced by communities, families and children affected by the AIDS pandemic are linked to poverty. Conclusions from the study demonstrated that poverty is multidimensional in nature and therefore affects children and their families in a multitude of ways. The results also showed that the issues mentioned by the participants were not just products of poverty but problems in their own right. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.

While the debate on the indigenous culture of ubuntu/botho in South Africa (SA) goes far back into the history as signified by Ngubane' s (1963 and 1979) works on the role of the ubuntu values in the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid struggle; in the last two decades or so, this debate has gathered even much greater momentum. This recent interest in ubuntu/botho culture could be attributed to the imminence of the collapse of apartheid in the late 1980s and the turn of the 1990s, and also the post-apartheid situation in which the SA society came to confront serious socio-economic and political challenges. Those challenges arose from the country's re-admission into the global world, which presented challenges associated with globalisation phenomenon such as the need to achieve economic competitiveness. They also were presented by the newly attained democratic dispensation along which dawned the urgent need to redress the apartheid-created injustices and to work earnestly towards the eradication of the past legacies such as racial inequalities and poverty while seeking to consolidate and jealously defend the still rather fragile democracy. Event much more recently, the debate came to form part of the current continent-wide sentiment that Africa should claim the twenty-first century and that all efforts should be channelled towards the renewal of Africa following the destructions and distortions caused by colonialism. Central to this debate in SA is the widely held belief and claim that the ubuntu/botho cultural values could be mobilised into developmental and transformative force. In particular, a strong claim is made that for SA to achieve competitive advantage in global markets, its development strategies should tap into the values of the ubuntu/botho culture. While few cases are cited as success stories indicative of ubuntu values positive influence on business management strategies in the workplace, often with the assistance of private consultants, these remain isolated and no any serious follow-up studies were conduced in order to assess the sustainability of such interventions. Thus, what is essentially missing in this debate, is a comprehensive indepth, empirically-based study aimed at not only assessing the validity of these widely held claims, but also at examining the objective conditions under which the ubuntu/botho cultural values can help in realising this role. Also critical and missing is the need to possibilities/opportunities and potential constraints to ubuntu/botho culture's ability to fulfil this role. Often these debates lack any serious theoretical basis or comparative references on which to justify their claims. Further, there is seldom any attempt to locate the debate on ubuntu/botho culture in the wider context of the debate and research in the African continent around questions of traditional cultures, thought systems and development and progress. While the present study approaches this debate in such a way that the gaps highlighted addressed through extensive review of literature, it however takes it even further by giving it an empirical content through an in-depth case study of one South African workplace as an illustrative example. This empirically-based approach, coupled with extensive and critical review of the relevant literature, helped to take the debate on ubuntu/botho culture beyond rhetoric which characterises the current dominant thinking within the debate. I argue, on the basis of my overall findings that while evidence gathered supports the case for the need to explore with the ubuntu/botho culture in the economic and business sphere, and in particular at the workplace level, some serious obstacles would and do stand in the way of realising the potentially transformative and developmental role of the culture's values. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2007.

Aim: The aim of the study was to do an epistemological analysis of the power of women as nurses working in one of the larger and more deprived regions of South Africa, namely KwaZulu-Natal. This research was based on the premises of the Standpoint theory. Concurrent to the collection of data, a literature review and a concept analysis of power, powerfulness, powerlessness and empowerment were done and incorporated where applicable in the final theoretical framework. Methodology: A phenomenological approach was used. This incorporated two to three in depth interviews with each participant, lasting an average of thirty minutes each, was used. Women, relating to the gender factor, as nurses were also marginalised in terms of class, as they belonged to the enrolled category of nurses, and race, being African. A fourth selection criterium was added to analyse the reality of locality, called rurality. The researcher applied the principle of theoretical saturation and a total number of nine women, who belonged to the enrolled category of nurses and who worked in a distinct rural health care setting, were interviewed. A second group consisting of five women enrolled nurses and working in an urban setting were interviewed, as were a third relatively contrasting group of four women registered nurses. All forty four interviews were audio taped and transcribed, and a qualitative software package called NUD*IST was used to identify and refine experiential themes. Findings: The relationship between power and rights was often layered in contradiction during the interviews and the participants portrayed a picture of being oppressed or marginalised and powerless. The women as nurses belonging to the enrolled category were alienated as women and as nurses in terms of being severed from the nursing profession and from the ruling gender of men, of being lost in an ever present routinization of activities, of being misused, maternalised and domesticated at home and at work. These phenomena were quantitatively more voiced by the rural group of women and these participants strongly emphasized the limiting influence of their prescribed scope of practice, the approach of the senior category of nurses and they conveyed a traditionalist and altruistic view of nursing and nurses. The women as registered nurses created their own freedom often away from their men as in divorce. They also sought for solutions concerning powerlessness in more global and distant terms, for example in relation to cultural practices. They communicated a sense of empowerment in terms of for example education, personal qualities and increased job satisfaction. Culture rather than race was emphasized as an essence of womens' oppression. An epistemological framework of the power of women as nurses developed by the researcher constructed the totality of empowerment in terms of fifteen transformational and hierarchial actions incorporating and adapting Dooyeweerd's theory of modalities and the surfaces of class (categorial divide), gender (the eternal carer), race (culture) and locality (rurality). These actions and reformulated concepts could be used for the development of specific strategies to facilitate the empowerment of individuals, groups and communities of women as nurses and nurses as women. Further collaborative research into the phenomenon of power, a reconceptualization of nursing education and levels of expertise and hierarchies within nursing were some of the suggestions for the way forward. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1996.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2003.

The study seeked to investigate an evaluation of the effects of poverty in Khayelitsha Site C. Poverty in this area has manifested in the conditions people live under and the social effects of such conditions in the life of Site C residents was assessed in terms of/or in relation to the following: levels of infant mortality / level of malnutrition / rate of school drop out due to lack of food and other resources / high level of alcohol abuse / lack of basic services and the shortage of toilets etc.