No description available.

No description available.

The problem examined in this research is that South Africa practices a system of education that sorts people in a way that makes Blacks receive unequal and separate education. The closer people are to the white power structure, the better their education and the farther away they are, the poorer their access to opportunities for a quality education on equal terms. In other words, it seems that the more white you are, the more opportunities and benefits you receive. This system of education does not appear to help students, especially black children and youth, learn at high levels of accomplishment. Rather, it creates long lasting problems in people's lives and as such may need to be restructured in a way that permits students of all backgrounds to receive a quality education on equal terms. The purpose of the study was to understand reasons selected black South Africans seem to oppose their education system. More specifically, perceptions of these black people were helpful in suggesting the directions in which educational reform in South Africa ought to go. Specifically, the study was guided by two major research questions: (1) What are the perceptions selected black South African adults in the United States have toward their experiences in the apartheid education system in South Africa? (2) What are the recommendations of selected black South African adults in the United States for improving the education system for children and youth in South Africa? To answer these questions, interviews were used to collect data. Seven black South African adults were interviewed and their responses were analyzed, organized and thematically presented. One finding of the study is that apartheid education seems responsible for making respondents feel inadequate, incapable, less human, unable to think critically, inferior, anxious to venture in life beyond school, helpless, uneasy, and dubious to participate in class related activities. The findings of the study show that the education of black people in South Africa deserves speedy attention and major reform. The study concludes that apartheid education is an intolerable system of education that should be eliminated. The form of education to be created is a matter for intense discussion and wise decision making which may lead to quality education for all South Africans. The study recommends that black people should understand their historical underpinnings to help restore their confidence, to dispel negative fabrications, and to become contributors in the development of quality education in South Africa.

This project attempts to bridge conversations between the predominantly Western canon of animal studies and the frequently humanist approach to postcolonial African studies. Drawing on these sometimes incompatible fields, this thesis proposes two premises that emerge from close readings of African cultural texts. First, “Africa” as a discursive construct has long been associated with animals, animality, and the category of the nonhuman, evident in, to give some examples, the current touristic promotion across the globe of African wildlife as an essential part of its continental identity, local and global anxieties over zoonotic transmissions of disease, and the history of race science’s preoccupation with animalizing black and indigenous African bodies. My second premise suggests that in postcolonial and especially African contexts ostensibly “human” concerns are inextricably tied to both the categorical limitations imposed by imperial paradigms of animalization and the precarious existence of nonhuman animals themselves, concern for whom is often occluded in anthropocentric postcolonial discourse. In my dissertation, I examine the role that texts play in directing affective relations of concern locally and globally, reading fictional texts as well as news media, conservation literature, and tourist advertisements. Through these works I examine the complex and often cantankerous politics of cultivating interspecies concern in postcolonial contexts, ranging from the globalized commodification of African wildlife and the dubious international policies that ostensibly protect it, the geography of the North American safari park, the animalization of queer bodies by African state leaders, textual representations of interspecies intimacy, and accounts of the Rwandan genocide. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis responds to the question of how we show concern for animals in postcolonial, globalized, and postconflict worlds. Drawing on the example of multiple texts in African literature, film, and other media, it explores how Africa itself has long been construed in the global imagination as a zone associated with animality. This association appears in texts produced within the West and Africa whose accounts of the continent imagine it to be outside the realm of human ethical concern. Demonstrating how exclusive human ethical concern is for African lives, both human and animal, this thesis argues for an ethics of concern that does not revolve around exclusively the human in postcolonial African studies.

This dissertation positions South African "colored" author Bessie Head as a political novelist. The dissertation also explores the nature of Head's art-form and content situating her achievements in the context of African traditions. The dissertation further highlights elements which distinguish Head as a political writer who both participates in and resists male-defined political discourse. Head's work appears to be an exploration of the possibility of defining "a new code of honour which all nations can abide by." This venture, which she seems to approach from an original angle in every text, leads her to embrace a redemptive kind of politics which is not readily recognizable as "political" writing because of its reliance on African spirituality. A Question of Power in particular, as this dissertation proposes, reveals what I have named the concept of consciousness-invasion, a notion which seems to be informed by African spirituality. Additionally, the thesis analyzes the critical reception accorded Head in the last two decades. It explains two discoveries: that, in general the attempts of Headian scholars to articulate the author's novelistic vision has yielded limited results because they have not seen her work as primarily political; that the view of Head's texts as political exposes the complexity of her canon as represented by her ability to simultaneously depict, with a fine balance, colonialism, racism, sexism, tribalism, and the self-interest which lies in every character who champions these oppression devices. In its redefinition of "political" writing the dissertation further argues that Head's novels exhibit the power dynamics of "macropolitics" in relation to those apparent in "micropolitics" and in "metapolitics". ("Macropolitics" and "micropolitics" are terms adopted from the work of linguist Robin Tolmach Lakoff while "metapolitics" is my own coinage.)

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

An ethnography based on research carried out between 2009 and 2010 in the vicinity of Bor Town, the capital of Jonglei State, in what was then Southern Sudan, this dissertation is primarily concerned with people's reflections on making agreements with one another during a period when the nature of belonging was being publically discussed and redefined. It examines historical narratives and discussions about how people ought to relate to the past and to each other in the changed circumstances following the formal cessation of hostilities between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army in 2005. This dissertation departs from much of the literature on Southern Sudan by focusing on the common place, the nature of promises and ordinary talk, as opposed to state failure and armed conflict. After 21 years of multiple and overlapping conflicts in Sudan, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed in January of 2005. The agreement stipulated national elections during a six-year Interim Period, at the end of which, the people of Southern Sudan were to hold a referendum on self-determination to decide whether to remain united with Sudan or to secede. This dissertation examines questions where were on many people's minds during Sudan's national elections and the run-up to the referendum, a time when questions of history, belonging, and place were very salient. The dissertation begins with a discussion of jokes and other narratives in order to sketch out some popular attitudes toward speech, responsibility and commitments. Most of the body of the dissertation is concerned with everyday talk about the past and with sketching out the background necessary to understand the stakes at play in discussions about citizenship and the definition of a South Sudanese citizen: Did it depend upon one's genealogy or one's place of birth, or one's commitments to a particular place, or their having simply suffered there with others? / Anthropology

<p> This dissertation examines how poor black South African women in rural areas organize themselves to address their poverty situations and meet their practical needs &ndash; those that pertain to their responsibilities as grandmothers, mothers, and community members &ndash; and assesses their organizations' effectiveness for meeting women's goals. My research is based on two groups that are members of the South African Rural Women's Movement. They are the Sisonke Women's Club Group (SSWCG) and the Siyabonga Women's Club Group (SBWCG). A majority of these women are illiterate and were <i>de jure</i> or <i> de facto</i> heads of households. Based on interviews and participant observation, I describe and analyze the strategies that these women employ in an attempt to alleviate poverty, better their lives, and assist in the survival of their families, each other, and the most vulnerable members of their community. Their strategies involve organizing in groups to support each other's income-generating activities and to help each other in times of emergency. Their activities include making floor mats, beading, sewing, baking, and providing caregiving for members who are sick and for orphans. I conclude that, although their organizing helps meet practical needs based on their traditional roles as women, it has not contributed to meeting strategic needs &ndash; to their empowerment as citizens or as heads of households. </p>