The high value of good health in Africa and the serious threat to life posed by diseases that plague the African continent including South Africa, are highlighted in this thesis. The question whether the church in South Africa as a stakeholder in human development in Africa, contributes meaningfully to the continental and national vision of "a better life for all" or "good health for all" is posed and an attempt made to answer it. Operating from the Western world-view, the Hervormde Kerk in Suidelike Afrika (HKSA) is found not to be contributing meaningfully to the realisation of the African vision of "good health for all". Resistance to cure and healing by means of Western medicine and pastoral care and counselling as well as a lack of spiritual and numerical growth in the HKSA are identified as consequences of the imposition of exclusively Western Christian theological formulations on the African church. The assumption underlying this thesis is that ministry to the sick in the African mainline churches should recognise the role played by supernatural forces in the belief systems of Africans regarding health and illness. This assumption is based on the fact that theological formulations are socially influenced and constructed. Following Zerfass' methodological model, this research examines the principles underlying the ministry to the sick in the HKSA and the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (NHKA); highlights the core African beliefs with regard to the health and illness discourse and practice; points out the shortcomings of the current ministry to the sick in the HKSA. The findings of the investigation into the theological tradition and the results of the exploration of the literature on the African context are brought into the critical dialogue. On the strength of findings of the critical dialogue between the church's traditional theological theory and the results of the exploration of the literature on the African context, the church's healing ministry is recommended as a necessary part of the church's official task in a black South African context. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Th. (Practical Theology)

‘A critical review of language errors in the writing of distance education students’ examines linguistic competence and investigates the language errors made by a heterogeneous group of 100 entry-level distance education university students with a view to improving their academic writing skills. The research follows a process of error identification and statistical analysis, and reviews intervention strategies based on the findings. Despite the continuing debates on the value of error correction, especially in relation to ‘World Englishes’, language accuracy remains a key factor in determining academic success. This is of particular concern in the South African multi-lingual context and in the light of the under-performance of South African students as evidenced in international comparative studies. The implications of the bimodal pattern of distribution in the review findings are discussed and pedagogically appropriate approaches and intervention strategies are suggested. / English Studies / M.A. (TESOL (Teaching English to speakers of other languages))

In this thesis, I examine a critical procedure appropriate to Black South African autobiography of the 1950s and early 1960s. In particular, I examine these autobiographies as examples of counterhegemonic writing in which the self counters the hegemonic apartheid notion of identity, based on racial and cultural purity, and I propose that the hybrid selves encoded in these narratives have the capacity to inform a new South African nationhood. Chapter One necessitates an autocritique, in which I locate my own discourse within the intersecting discursive strands of Western and local theory, an effort that is guided by the imperatives that emerge from the autobiographies themselves. In Chapter Two, I suggest that the postcolonial autos displaces Humanist, and appropriates postmodernist, conceptions of the "I". Rewriting the terms of the autobiographical pact, the authority of grapos is re-instated in counternarratives that give privileged status to the bios - to lives that claim "I AM!" and selves that reconstruct identity. A related concern is the relationship between autobiographical criticism in South Africa and hegemony. In the chapters that follow, I examine the various ways in which counterhegemonic selves are constructed in Tell freedom, Down Second Avenue, Drawn in colour: African Contrasts and The Ochre People. Peter Abrahams's autobiography is discussed largely in terms of Frantz Fanon's insights on identity construction and the notion of a "hybrid I". Es'kia Mphahlek's (re)writing of the self - whose main feature is ambivalence - forms the focus of Chapter Four. These notions are developed in the final chapter, which focuses on Noni Jabavu's narratives that encode an "in-between" cultural identity and, as in the autobiographies of Abrahams and Mphahlele, a metonymic "I". / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)

In this thesis, I examine a critical procedure appropriate to Black South African autobiography of the 1950s and early 1960s. In particular, I examine these autobiographies as examples of counterhegemonic writing in which the self counters the hegemonic apartheid notion of identity, based on racial and cultural purity, and I propose that the hybrid selves encoded in these narratives have the capacity to inform a new South African nationhood. Chapter One necessitates an autocritique, in which I locate my own discourse within the intersecting discursive strands of Western and local theory, an effort that is guided by the imperatives that emerge from the autobiographies themselves. In Chapter Two, I suggest that the postcolonial autos displaces Humanist, and appropriates postmodernist, conceptions of the "I". Rewriting the terms of the autobiographical pact, the authority of grapos is re-instated in counternarratives that give privileged status to the bios - to lives that claim "I AM!" and selves that reconstruct identity. A related concern is the relationship between autobiographical criticism in South Africa and hegemony. In the chapters that follow, I examine the various ways in which counterhegemonic selves are constructed in Tell freedom, Down Second Avenue, Drawn in colour: African Contrasts and The Ochre People. Peter Abrahams's autobiography is discussed largely in terms of Frantz Fanon's insights on identity construction and the notion of a "hybrid I". Es'kia Mphahlek's (re)writing of the self - whose main feature is ambivalence - forms the focus of Chapter Four. These notions are developed in the final chapter, which focuses on Noni Jabavu's narratives that encode an "in-between" cultural identity and, as in the autobiographies of Abrahams and Mphahlele, a metonymic "I". / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)