M. Tech. Drama / The purpose of this study was to develop a broader understanding of aspects of identity relating to Coloured and Indian people in South Africa and the portrayal of these aspects on the post-Apartheid stage. The meaning of the term 'identity' and its relation to drama and theatre was investigated. Identity markers (individual and social) were identified to serve as a framework for the play analyses. Research was also conducted on both Coloured and Indian identities, seen against a historical background, as well as the theatrical and dramatic history of the two groups.

This thesis discusses the significance of popular illegalities in contemporary South African service delivery. Illegal access to and non-payment of services have been indentified by the government as a major criminal problem which undermines effective service delivery. By contrast, this thesis argues that popular illegalities are positive phenomenon which provides otherwise unobtainable benefits for the poor and also exposes the ability of communities to self-manage their own service provision. The thesis begins by surveying a variety of literature on this issue using both contemporary and historical literature. I then discuss the scope of popular illegalities in South Africa and the methods government has used to curtail them, with a particular emphasis on how this has been influenced by the adoption of neo-liberal cost recovery initiatives. Using case studies of three communities where illegal access is prevalent, I discuss both the motivations behind and significance of illegal water and electricity connections. In conclusion, I argue that popular illegalities are a significant phenomenon in so far as they suggest new methods of delivering services. The prevalence of these illegalities is also important as it highlights many of the failings of official delivery. The thesis concludes on a hopeful note in arguing that illegalities may be inherently progressive in both benefiting the marginal and leading to the creation of radically autonomous spaces which can be viewed as laboratories of radical social change.

This research study investigates Lotus FM, as one of many South African Media components that are catering for one specific cultural or religious group. The investigation explores the implications of practice of a pecific media component that caters for specific cultural or religious groups operating in a post-apartheid South Africa. After the end of the apartheid era in South Africa, a number of South African media components have proclaimed their commitment to reconciliation and nation building within South Africa by attempting to unite audiences. The South African Broadcasting Corporation, which held the monopoly on South African Broadcasting for decades, has promulgated the notion of the rainbow nation to audiences in South Africa. Since 1994, sub-components of the different South African media segments were developed to cater for specific ethnic or cultural groups by the station managements. This was aimed at reversing the effects of pre-1994 media that catered for the former ruling minority only or ethnic groups that were categorized by the former political dispensation. It is possible, however, that this has resulted in a renewed and continued separation of interest groups present in South Africa today.

The Maintenance and Revival of isiXhosa print media in South Africa has been left to conglomerate media companies that do not have editorial policies that address their development. These companies are preserving isiXhosa the language they invest in isiXhosa print media to make money of the language. The development of the language is not catered for they are in the business of copies of magazines and newspapers. However, they should not be faulted for this area of indigenous language print media has long been neglected by black business men. From the history of African language print media it shows that this media is sustainably profitable if one is to look at purely the side of media. Ilanga lase Natal is testament to that it is now 116 years the paper has been in print it change ownership several times but that did not prompt the paper to cease existing. This is what unfortunately has happened to isiXhosa newspapers that were famous and influential in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It seems that once they got into the exchange of ownership conflict would ensue this is probably because they were very influential politically and everybody was interested in controlling its audience. Now isiXhosa finds itself to be at the mercy of media companies that are English and Afrikaans language oriented and inclined whose policies only recognize the two languages. In this situation isiXhosa finds itself to be and becomes an artificial minority language in these institutions. This is not to say that if maybe a BEE consortium was to invest in the isiXhosa language print media they were not going to be profit and sales oriented. However, they would be inclined in paying attention to the development of language rather language preservation. The reference to BEE business men in the paper should be understood in relation to the state abandonment and spectacular stagnation of isiXhosa print media and therefor the language of isiXhosa. / NG (2020)

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree Master of Arts (Media Studies) Department of Media Studies School of Literature, Language and Media Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand / This research project studies the consumption of ‘self-help’ media texts with respect to black South African audiences. The core objective of this project is to contribute to expanding debates on race, class, identity, and media consumption. Based on in-depth interviews with 10 avid self-help consumers, the paper develops an argument for the role of self-management in race and other social identities. The deployment of the qualitative methodology of a thematic discourse analysis of over seven hours of interview transcripts assists this paper in providing an account of where, when and how self-help media manifests in the lives of the chosen participants. The paper finds that participants are motivated to consume self-help media texts by a need to ‘know’ and ‘understand’ themselves and others in order for these participants to acquire what they express to be an atmosphere of inter-relational harmony. A growth of media texts forming part of a genre related to the practice of therapy in South Africa is owed to what I argue as a deep-rooted culture of ‘reconciliation’ and a preoccupation with emotions which stems from a particularly murky socio-political past still in a constant state of reparation (prevalent in discourses about reconciliation and forgiveness) in the democratic dispensation. As a key inspiration, the once-off yet pertinent process of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa has noticeably inspired a genre which supplies its audience with an array of self-help, therapy-inspired media texts thriving on the practice of public confession and testimony (key principles of the TRC). This has paved the way for a culture of ‘treatment’ and ‘remedy’ becoming what this paper refers to as a ‘public affair’. Active participants on these self-help, often therapeutic, media texts on mass media platforms regularly do so at the expense of exposing deeply personal issues to ‘experts’ entrusted to assist with ‘healing’ what are deemed to be problem areas in people’s lives. Referred to by some of the interviewees as ‘brave hearts’, these participants (‘public confessors’) hold a complex position in the minds of the interviewed individuals who, ironically, express admiration and respect to the individuals who publicly testify and confess as they are a valued reference of ‘learning’ but at the same time, an expression of disappointment and shame is bestowed upon these ‘public confessors’ for allowing their argued exploitation by the media. Amidst all this, it is apparent that consumption of self-help media texts have particularly intricate influences on the patterns of self-identity as constructed by the participants of this research project. / GR2017

Thesis (PhD (Public Management and Planning))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The principal question this study aims to answer is why and how a left-of-centre government not hobbled by heavy external leverage, with developmental state precedents, potentially positive macroeconomic fundamentals, and well-developed alternative policies for housing and urban reconstruction came to settle on a conservative housing policy founded on ‘precepts of the pre-democratic period’. Arguably, this policy is even more conservative than World Bank strictures and paradigms, whose advice the incoming democratic government ‘normally ignored’ and ‘tacitly rejected’. The study, which spans the period from the early 1990s to 2007, commences from the premise that housing is an expression and component of a society’s wider development agenda and is bound up with daily routines of the ordering and institutionalisation of social existence and social reproduction. It proposes an answer that resides in the mechanics and modalities of post-apartheid state construction and its associated techniques and technologies of societal penetration and regime legitimisation. The vagaries and vicissitudes of post-Cold War statecraft, the weight of history and legacy, strategic blundering, and the absence of a cognitive map and compass to guide post-apartheid statecraft, collectively contribute to past and present defects and deformities of our two decade-old developmentalism, writ large in our human settlements. Alternatives to the technocratic market developmentalism of our current housing praxis spotlight empowering shelter outcomes but were bastardised. This is not unrelated to the toxicity of mixing conservative governmentalities (neoliberal macroeconomic precepts, modernist planning orientations, supply-side citizenship and technocratic projections of state) with ‘ambiguated’ counter-governmentalities (self-empowerment, self-responsibilisation, the aestheticisation of poverty and heroic narratives about the poor). Underscored in the study is the contention that state developmentalism and civil society developmentalism rise and fall together, pivoting on (savvy) reconnection of economics and politics (the vertical axis of governance) and state and society (the horizontal axis). Without robust reconfiguration and recalibration of axes, the revamped or, more appropriately, reconditioned housing policy – Breaking New Ground – struggles to navigate the limitations of the First Decade settlement state shelter delivery regime and the Second Decade’s (weak) developmental state etho-politics. The prospects for success are contingent on structurally rewiring inherited and contemporary contacts and circuits of power, influence and money in order to tilt resource and institutional balances in favour of the poor. Present pasts and present futures, both here and abroad, offer resources for more transformative statecraft and sustainable human settlements, but only if we are prepared to challenge the underlying economic and political interests that to date have, and continue to, preclude such policies. History, experience and contemporary record show there are alternatives – another possible and necessary world – via small and large steps, millimetres and centimetres, trial and error. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die hoof vraag wat hierdie studie probeer beantwoord is hoekom en hoe dit gekom het dat ʼn links-van-die-middel regering wat nie gekniehalter was deur gewigtige, eksterne invloede nie; en met ontwikkelingstaat presedente [of voorbeelde]; potensieel positiewe makro-ekonomiese grondbeginsels, en goed ontwikkelde alternatiewe beleide vir behuising en stedelike herontwikkeling, gevestig [of vasgesteek] het op ʼn konserwatiewe behuisingbeleid, gegrond op ‘voorskrifte van die voor-demokratiese tydperk’. Die beleid is, aanvegbaar, selfs meer konserwatief as ongunstige Wêreld Bank voorskrifte en paradigmas, wie se advies die inkomende demokratiese regering oënskynlik geïgnoreer en stilswyend verwerp het. Die studie, wat strek oor die periode vanaf die vroeë 1990s tot 2007, begin met die aanname dat behuising ʼn uitdrukking en komponent van ʼn gemeenskap se wyer ontwikkelingsagenda is, en saamgebind is met die daaglikse roetine van die ordening en institusionalisering van maatskaplike bestaan en maatskaplike reproduksie. ʼn Antwoord word voorgestel wat berus op die meganika en modaliteite van na-apartheid staatskonstruksie en die meegaande tegnieke en tegnologieë van sosiale penetrasie en regeringstelsel legitimering. Die giere en wisselvallighede van Na-Koue Oorlog staatkunde, die gewig van geskiedenis en nalatingskap, strategiese foute en die afwesigheid van ʼn bewuste kaart en kompas om na-apartheid staatkunde te lei, het gesamentlik bygedra tot die vorige en teenwoordige gebreke en misvormings van ons twee dekade-oue ontwikkelings-isme (‘developmentalism’), groot geskryf in ons menslike nedersettings. Alternatiewe tot die tegnokratiese mark ontwikkelings-isme (‘developmentalism’), van ons huidige behuisingspraktyk, plaas die kollig op bemagtigende skuiling uitkomstes, maar was verbaster. Dit is nie onverwant aan die giftigheid van die meng van konserwatiewe goewermentaliteite (‘governmentalities’) (neoliberale makro-ekonomiese voorskrifte, modernistiese beplannings orientasies, verskaf-kant burgerskap en tegnokratiese projeksies van staat) met teenstrydige teen-goewermentaliteite (‘governmentalities’) (self-bemagtiging, self-verantwoordlikheid (‘self-responsibility’), die estetifikasie (aestheticisation’) van armoede en heldhaftige vertellings omtrent die armes). Onderstreep in die studie is die bewering dat staatsontwikkelings-isme (‘developmentalism’) en siviele gemeenskapsontwikkelings-isme (‘developmentalism’) saam klim en val, en wat roteer om (kundige) herkonneksie van die ekonomie en politiek (die vertikale as van regeerkunde) en staat en gemeenskap (die horisontale as). Sonder robuuste herkonfigurasie en herkalibrering van die asse, sukkel die opgedateerde, of amper her-kondisioneerde behuisingsbeleid – Breaking New Ground – om die limiete van die Eerste Dekade nedersetting staat skuiling leweringstelsel en die Tweede Dekade se (swak) ontwikkelende staat eto-politiek, te navigeer. Die verwagtinge vir sukses is gebaseer op strukturele herbedrading van oorgeërfde en eietydse kontakte en stroombane van mag, invloed en geld, op so ʼn wyse dat hulpbronne en institusionele balans ten gunste van die armes gekantel word. Teenwoordige verledes en teenwoordige toekomste, beide hier en oorsee, bied hulpbronne vir meer transformerende staatkunde en volhoubare menslike nedersettings, maar slegs indien ons bereid is om die onderliggende ekonomies en politiese belange uit te daag, wat tot op datum en nog steeds voortgaan om sodanige beleide te verhinder. Geskiedenis, ondervinding en eietydse rekords, moet wakker bly vir alternatiewe – ʼn ander moontlike en noodsaaklike wêreld – via klein en groot stappe, millimeters en sentimeters, tref of fouteer.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Since the end of Apartheid, many scholars of South Africa celebrated democratisation and offered optimism for the end of racial segregation. Racial segregation, however, still exists in South Africa and in Stellenbosch each residential place is divided along skin colour lines. Such a pattern is far from the position of optimism and seems to suggest that race continues to manifest itself materially through space in Post-Apartheid South Africa, even if such segregation is not imposed by Apartheid laws. This thesis describes how different individuals, especially foreigners, enter historically designated racial areas - ‘African’, ‘Coloured’, ‘White’ – and are ‘interpellated’ into particular racial categories. It aims to grasp the process of abstraction at work when the attempt is made to construct foreigners in these racial categories, and how these individuals come to perceive South Africa. The study suggests that at the points in which the interpellation of race fails are precisely the moments in which we see the possibility for the formation of a truly post-Apartheid Subjectivity. The thesis is cognisant of the particularity of place: focusing on Stellenbosch in the Western Cape necessarily involves engaging specificities of the historical construction of race that mark place in the present, especially in this province. Whilst the discovery of gold in the former Transvaal drove the exploitation of African mine workers and was important in the formation of race there, in the Western Cape the importance economically of the slave and later free labour of Coloured farm workers is important in grasping racial formations in Stellenbosch. At the same time, however, I present the case of an unemployed South African women who is unable to live in any areas previously designated by race, and through her tale, suggest that relationships between race and labour might be being undone, even as this undoing is fraught and not producing subjects who can feel comfortable in democracy. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Opsomming Sedert die einde van Apartheid is demokratisering in akademiese kringe geprys en is die einde van rasse-segregasie met optimisme begroet. Rasse-segregasie leef egter steeds voort in Suid-Afrika en in Stellenbosch is elke residensiële area volgens velkleur verdeel. Hierdie verskynsel is alles behalwe ’n bron van optimisme en blyk aan te toon dat ras voortgaan om ditself op materiële wyse deur ruimte in post-Apartheid Suid-Afrika te manifesteer, selfs in die afwesigheid van segregasie deur Apartheid-wetgewing. Hierdie tesis ondersoek hoe verskillende individue, veral buitelanders, histories-gedefinieerde rasse-areas – ‘swart’, ‘bruin’ en ‘blank’ – binnegaan en ‘geïnterpelleer’ word in spesifieke rassekategorieë. Dit poog om die proses van abstraksie te verstaan waardeur buitelanders in rassekategorieë gekonstrueer word, en hoe hierdie individue Suid-Afrika beskou. Dié studie voer aan dat die plekke waar die interpellasie van ras misluk, die presiese momente is waar die moontlikheid vir die formasie van ’n ware post-Apartheid subjektiwiteit waargeneem kan word. Hierdie studie is bewus van die spesifisiteit van plek: om te fokus op Stellenbosch in die Wes-Kaap vereis noodwendig dat daar ook aandag geskenk sal word aan die spesifisiteit van die historiese konstruksie van ras wat plek in die hede onderlê, veral in dié spesifieke provinsie. Terwyl die ontdekking van goud in die voormalige Transvaal die uitbuiting van swart mynwerkers gedryf het en belangrik was vir die vorming van ras daar, is die ekonomiese belangrikheid van slawe en later vry arbeid van bruin plaaswerkers in die Wes-Kaap belangrik om die formasie van ras in Stellenbosch te verstaan. Op dieselfde tyd bied ek die geval aan van ’n werklose Suid-Afrikaanse vrou vir wie dit nie meer moontlik is om in enige histories-gedefinieerde ras-spesifieke area te bly nie, en wie se verhaal suggereer dat verhoudings tussen ras en arbeid dalk besig is om te ontbind, selfs al is hierdie proses vervaard en nie besig om subjekte te produseer wat gemaklik onder ’n demokratiese bestel kan voel nie.

A dissertation submitted to the School of Language, Literature and Media, Faculty of Humanities for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, March 2017 / Although the burgeoning fields of linguistic and semiotic landscapes (LL and SL) studies provide extensive coverage of urban settings around the globe, it lacks a focus on urban development and the associated phenomenons such as gentrification, with the notable exception of Lou (2016). This dissertation looks at the neighbourhood of Marshalltown, located in the inner city of Johannesburg. Marshalltown is known as the mining district because of its proximity to the original goldmines that sparked the growth of the city. The neighbourhood’s SL has radically shifted from a place of urban decay to a trendy neighbourhood since the late 1990s, after urban development efforts financed by the private sector made the area stand out from the rest of the inner city. The developers working in Marshalltown have purposefully filled it with signs indexing the mining heritage its businesses which tend to cater to the middle-to-upper-classes, thus excluding poorer residents which make up most of the inner city’s population. Against this backdrop, the dissertation aims to answer the following three research questions: 1) How is Marshalltown constructed as a space of heritage, both in its materiality and in its representation in a corpus of media texts? 2) Considering that heritage entails a selection process from a more general historic field, which sections of history are curated in Marshalltown’s SL, which are silenced, and what are the implications for the narratives displayed in the context of post-apartheid South Africa? 3) How is Marshalltown’s urban environment experienced by social actors in a context of globalized trends in urban design which rely on heritage and authenticity to market formerly ignored city centres? The data for this study consists of a corpus of 25 media articles from various outlets, 255 photographs of Marshalltown and its vicinity, ethnographic field notes written between 2012 and 2016, as well as interviews with developers, heritage architect, a deputy director of immovable heritage at the City of Johannesburg, shop owners and people who work in the area. This dissertation aims to contribute to the young field of SL studies, while bringing forth Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) methodological toolkit of geosemiotic which allows for an analysis of signs in place and how people interact with them to draw a pertinent analysis of the construction of place. Geosemiotics is coupled with specific themes for each analytical chapter which brings forth a new way of analysing a SL. Those themes are 1) the language of urban development which drawing on Markus and Cameron (2002) helps analyse the representation of city neighbourhoods; 2) heritage, which brings a temporal perspective to SL studies that I call a chronoscape; 3) authenticity, which brings a visual analysis addition to the recent debate on the topic within sociolinguistics scholarship (Coupland 2003, Bucholtz 2003 and Eckert 2003) and its focus on the discursive construction of what counts as authentic. This study argues that Marshalltown’s post-apartheid SL is carefully designed by a majority of (white) developers wanting to give the area a heritage feel, borrowing from the mining history of the city; thus anchoring a European influenced heritage within their own interpretation of what an African city should look like. The heritage feel of Marshalltown is part of a broader plan to reclaim the city, which means changing the image it acquired previously during an era of urban decay as a dangerous no-go area, into an attractive tourism-friendly urban space. Those changes are achieved by inserting development efforts into the market for authentic urban lifestyle which Marshalltown can provide thanks to its preserved history. The neighbourhood stands out from the rest of the inner city by being privately controlled and maintained thus distancing itself from the popular discourse of inner city Johannesburg and instead developers redesign it as an ideal space for consumption. / XL2018

M. Tech. Comparative Local Development / This study is an assessment of post-apartheid policies operating in the period dating from 1994-2012. Pre-1994 racial inequality was formalised through apartheid laws. Apartheid therefore created National Innovation Systems (NSIs) which were selective and exclusionary, benefiting the White minority. After the end of apartheid the Government of National Unity (GNU) was faced with the task of redressing past imbalances through redistribution and macro-economic policies. This assessment looks at policies at two levels, these being the redistribution and macro-economic policies. It is noted that the implementation of redistribution (socio-economic) and macro-economic policies has yielded mixed results; for instance, although the budget allocation towards housing has increased, supply has been low.

My aim in this dissertation is to explore the manner in which protest leaders in the post-apartheid context understand themselves and their actions against the backdrop of the socio-historical, political and economic conditions within which protests take place. The aim is to contribute to the debate around the nature of the challenge posed by protest action to the post-apartheid neoliberal order. The study uses an actor-oriented ethnographic methodology to examine at close range the nature of the protest movement in working class South African townships focusing on the so-called service delivery protests. In the quest to understand the action, forms of organisation and ideologies characteristic of the protests, and their significance for post-apartheid society, I use concepts and insights from the literature on social movements, discourse theory and, in particular, Gramsci's ideas on hegemony. The latter helps me to define and assess the threat posed by the protests to the dominant order which I characterise as neoliberalism or neoliberal capitalism. The conclusion that I come to is that the protests are best understood in the context of the transition from apartheid to democracy: its dynamics and its unmet expectations. They represent a fragmented and inchoate challenge to the post apartheid neoliberal order. Their weakness, I argue, partly derives from the effects of the demobilisation of the working class movement during the transition to democracy. It will take broader societal developments, including the emergence of a particular kind of leadership and organisation, for the protests to pose a serious challenge to the present order. The experience of the struggle against apartheid suggests the necessity of a vision of alternatives to inspire, shape and cohere struggles around everyday issues and concerns into struggles for radical society-wide alternatives. Protest action was linked to imagination of a different way of doing things and organising society. Without this link, it is likely that the protest movement will be increasingly isolated and contained with some of its energy used negatively, for example, in populist chauvinism, xenophobic attacks, mob justice, and other forms of anti-social behavior that are becoming a worrisome feature of post-apartheid society. Nonetheless, it provides hope and the foundation for a different future. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.