This thesis examines four themes that surface through the Crypt Centre's activities towards its upcoming exhibition entitled Bearing Witness. The themes include the role of remembrance, bearing witness, the parameters of inclusions and exclusions, and the Crypt Centre's physical and symbolic significance.

In April 2010, amidst the nation-unifying discourses prevalent during the preparation for the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup™ to be hosted in South Africa, a series of events gave rise to the revitalization of other discourses in the national media: those of racial polarization and the possibility of a race war.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-96). / This dissertation uses ethnography as a means to examine how multiple-scale patterns of interaction between social and ecological systems as they manifest locally in St Helena Bay. The growing integration of the West Coast has brought rapid change in the form of industrial production, urban development and in-migration. The pressure placed on local resources by these processes has been exacerbated by the rationalisation of the local fisheries - there are fewer jobs in the formal industry and small-scale fishing rights have become circumscribed. In the neighbourhood of Laingville, historically-contingent racial categories have become reinvigorated in a context resource scarcity.

It is important for present and future urban research to take into account the subtle dynamics and social relations at work in the city. There are alternative and beneficial forms of living together in the supposedly 'disordered' urban space, which are mobilised in order to function in a difficult, changing, and hopeful environment. It is especially pertinent to uncover the complex dynamics at work in everyday life in African cities, as they continue to undergo transformations. In the context of segregation, separation and uncertain futures people create and mobilise intricate ways of connecting to people and spaces in the city. In order to study the intricacies in a South African urban environment, this study examines how people use trust and distrust in a 'disorderly' urban space. I argue that beneficial social relations that are based on trust and distrust manifest in a liminal space, as is especially exemplified by 'strangers' in and of the environment (Simmel, [1908] 1971). Furthermore, I posit that there is a need to trust liminally and spatially in order to be able to function in an 'unruly', 'rogue' environment, specifically Observatory, Cape Town. This analysis focuses on five types of trust: personal, social, institutional, liminal, and spatial trust, and how they are mobilised in the suburb of Observatory, Cape Town. These forms of trust are paramount to functioning in a city, in which many people are unknown others with whom one needs to live alongside. In order to study this abstract concept, an endogenous anthropological methodology was used to observe how and why people use 'trust' in the 'unruly', liminal urban environment of Observatory. Ethnographic qualitative data-collection was vital to this project: namely participant-observation, interviews, open-ended discussions, and examination of what is said in popular media and discussion on the suburb. 'Walking' in the suburb provided a way to examine ethnographically how trust and distrust function on the everyday city streets. Furthermore, my positionality as a 'stranger' (Simmel, [1908] 1971) contributed positively in my study of liminality in Observatory, especially as an anthropological researcher. I conclude that there are beneficial forms and methods of trusting to be found in the liminal people, spaces, and situations in a city. Subtle and important forms of collectivity, agency, and autonomy are to be found in the 'disorder' of African cities.

Informal settlement sanitation service delivery continues as one the most urgent, imposing challenges of contemporary basic service provision in South Africa. Municipal, provincial and national sanitation and political authorities expect informal settlement residents to take ownership of and responsibility for state-installed toilet facilities, with municipally-managed janitorial services also in operation in many settlements countrywide. Yet resident-driven sanitation management practices and the site-specific realities of informal settlements have not been adequately understood nor have they informed basic service delivery development. This has in part led to uncertainty in terms of how to designate and sustain responsibilities to relevant stakeholders regarding sanitation maintenance. Based on fieldwork in the Masiphumelele Wetlands informal settlement and temporary relocation area on Cape Town's southern peninsula, this dissertation describes a range of communally-managed sanitation systems that operate alongside municipally-managed janitorial services and which demonstrate varying degrees of local senses of ownership of responsibility for municipally-provided flush toilet facilities. A bottom-up, iterative development approach is argued for, one that critically considers the spectrum of factors that constrain and stimulate ownership and responsibility by informal settlement residents as well as the cultural contingencies that constitute communal sanitation management in informal settlements.

This ethnographic study explores how people deal with suspicion and navigate the fear of crime in the Observatory suburb of Cape Town, South Africa. The study grapples with the question of how the neighbourhood watch, as a recently revived institution, operates. It analyses the institution and relationships within and around it as an alternative source of trust to the state in combatting crime and its wider impact on lived sociality in the suburb and, perhaps, beyond. The focus of the study lies in understanding the strategies people employ habitually in order to create a sense of security in a context where the anticipation of violence permeates various everyday routines. In analysing strategies of living through insecurities, I focus on examining material and highly visible security measures, such as patrol cars and barbed wires, and engage with the body as a site of social and political memory and struggle, while considering the roles it takes on in the face of perceived precariousness. This dissertation offers an insight in to how the body is deployed as an instrument or buffer to deal with insecurity and crime vulnerability. The quality of public life becomes compromised through embodied strategies of (in)security and vulnerability as employed by the neighbourhood watch. The capacity of a constantly perceived presence of criminal violence in shaping individual and institutional bodies and strategies constitutes the main focus of this study. While the study does not identify the roots of crime as is currently practice with related studies of crime in South Africa, it illuminates the engagement with its perceived presence and thus moves away from a fixed victim-perpetrator dichotomy that has dominated the public discourse.

Bibliography: leaves 86-89. / The thesis focuses on the role of the zoo for people in today's context. It explores the construction, deconstruction or reconstruction of the knowledge and meaning of non-domestic animals. It examines the influence of current animal rights and conservation discourse on the evolution of the zoo's architecture and purpose, and its effect on those that use the zoo. Fieldwork was conducted in three different zoos in Cape Town; Tygerberg Zoo Park was the main area of fieldwork. Additional fieldwork took place in the Aquarium and the Bee Farm for comparison. Fieldwork took place during six weeks in 2001 and included conservations as well as participant observation, in the zoo, and outside the zoo, with ninety-five visitors.

This research examines the ways in which a history of social segregation together with present actions by the state interact to inform the nature of healthcare narratives of mothers and children in the case of a childhood cancer diagnosis. I argue that families become internally displaced to seek life-saving treatment for the child diagnosed with cancer. By actively engaging with theories of ‘home’ and ‘households’ I aim to present greater insights into the ways in which people create meanings for these terms in the hospital setting. I argue that my participants come to share many of the characteristics of internally displaced people, due to the inequality that manifests in the healthcare system.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-104). / This paper considers the significance of Tuberculosis (TB)-related stigma and stigmatising acts in areas of Khayelitsha Township in Cape Town, South Africa. Data is drawn from three months of in-depth participant observation, interviews and support group sessions. Stigma is a moral process which emerges within social webs of meaning making. By focusing on patient narratives and local illness transmission models (ITMs) both 'enacted' and 'felt' stigma are explored. Three themes emerged during fieldwork: the singularity of dirt as a mode of TB transmission, the paradoxical visibility of the face hidden by the clinical mask, and the ordering/disordering intentions of those who gossip. Utilising Das' (1990) idea of 'organising images' to understand these themes, it is evident they are each imbued with power and meaning within local worlds and thus extend our understanding of stigma and stigmatisation. I argue for the theoretical expansion of stigma through employing alternative literatures, such as the anthropology of violence, witchcraft and narrative studies. In addition, new methods need to be explored which mirror the adversity faced by those living with TB. In this work I suggest 'provoking' stigma is the most effective manner to understand its effects.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-82). / Religion has played a significant role in the historical unfolding of what is now understood as "development." Until recently, however, religious modes of contemporary development have been overlooked in development scholarship. The dissertation uses ethnographic data about the religious ethics undergirding the discourse, and practices of development agents in Catholic Welfare and Development (CWD), a faith-based NGO in Cape Town, South Africa. It explores how the particular modalities for the ethical/moral development of the subjectivities of CWD's developers. Informed by their own development, developers attempted to develop those they considered to be beneficiaries. The dissertation argues, and provides evidence to demonstrate, that, through the shared experience of development as an interpersonal and intersubjective encounter, both developers and beneficiaries were developed and also developed each other.