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No abstract available / xi, 248 leaves : ill. (some col.) ; 29 cm.

No description available.

This study investigates the content of izigiyo (specified personified solo dance songs) texts that Zulu women perform at social occasions in KwaQwabe, a rural area near KwaDukuza (Stanger) in Northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Though this study focuses on izigiyo, the KwaQwabe have different oral performances that are performed at specific social occasions. In the KwaQwabe area there lives people who practise subsistence farming. The common crops that they (especially women) grow are maize, beans, groundnuts and imifino (herbs). The cattle and goats that the KwaQwabe men keep are mostly slaughtered for the amadlozi rituals. The study proposes that izigiyo as oral texts are largely responses to issues of heritage, culture, women abuse and domestic violence that lead to pent-up emotions, envy, witchery, gossip, and malpractices that can destroy a community-oriented life-style (Turner, 1998) that features in most African communities. The study hypothesises that Zulu women of KwaQwabe need to be treated with dignity and inhlonipho (respect) within the parameters of the Zulu tradition (Msimang, 1975). The study explores issues surrounding the izigiyo performance in order to establish whether Zulu women have always been silent (Bukenya, 2001) when it comes to issues that affect their lives, pertaining to issues that impinge negatively on their lives (Gunner and Gwala, 1991). The intended receivers of the messages (Ndoleriire, 2000) are always implied in the izigiyo texts and aim at serving as social regulators (Gumede, 2000). The language of izigiyo is in most cases metaphorical so as to avoid confrontation. In the midst of the izigiyo expression men and women relay their perceptions, experiences, and feelings about the way of life in their families and communities at large. This study, however, limits itself to the izigiyo texts that are enacted by Zulu women and does not include men’s. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

Traditional male circumcision is a rite of passage among the AmaXhosa in South Africa. According to the custom of male traditional circumcision, initiates should remain in the bush for the entire seclusion period. The AmaXhosa male initiates encounter complications due to a ritual that has gone wrong. Common complications are penile sepsis, dehydration, penile amputations and septicaemia. As a last resort, when the AmaXhosa male initiates do not improve from complications associated with the custom they are referred to hospital for admission (Meintjes, 1998; Warren-Brown, 1998). The main purposes of this study were, first to explore and describe the delivery of care to the hospitalized AmaXhosa male initiates whilst in the hands of healthcare professionals and professional care system. Second, to describe what constitutes culturally appropriate care for hospitalized AmaXhosa male initiates. This study took place in three research sites, that included one rural hospital and two urban hospitals which admitted the AmaXhosa male initiates of traditional circumcision. A total of 13 hospitalized AmaXhosa male initiates and nine health professionals took part in this study. Leininger's ethnonursing qualitative research approach was used to guide this study. Data were collected, using purposive sampling, by means of unstructured interviews using guides, tape-recorder, and field notes. The study was first piloted at Umlamli Hospital using the same data collecting strategies as for the major study. Data from key and general informants were analysed separately using Leininger's (1991) four-phase method. This was carried out in order to answer the research questions and research purposes. Major themes and patterns emerged from this process. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.

Male circumcision evokes emotive responses with those who either support or oppose the practice. It is an area of human interaction that has remained outside the public arena as a result of cultural taboos, but has increasingly come under public scrutiny due to the deaths of young boys as a result of unhygienic circumcision. Some taboos raise the spectre of death over anybody who dares to divulge the secrets of the ritual to outsiders. Male circumcision has resulted in public debates due to death and fatalities of some boys who undergo the ritual, but not much has been done to investigate the impact that male circumcision has on the social lives of the circumcised living in urban areas. This study investigates some of the reasons for the practice of traditional male initiation rituals by amaXhosa males who reside in Clermont-KwaDabeka (Durban); and explores, analyses and assesses the social meaning and effects of male circumcision. An analysis is offered about some of the gendered constructions related to sexual pleasure as an effect of male circumcision as perceived by Xhosa men and women living in Clermont-KwaDabeka. The processes involved in circumcision rites for the circumciser and the circumcised are examined in order to establish the context for the study and to extrapolate the processes in order to reflect on the meaning of the ritual. The study highlights the ongoing debate as to whether circumcision may be practiced as a health intervention strategy, and suggests that male circumcision has no impact on the sexual pleasure experienced by women, and concludes that female orgasm (s) is a problematic issue that needs further investigation. The study also conceives male circumcision as a cultural practice, and as a social construction that is gendered. The study recommends further interrogation of the issues pertaining to culture, sex, sexuality, gender, masculinities and male circumcision in order that this will serve as an intervention towards socialization of boys, and help them in making informed decisions before undergoing initiation. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

Several twentieth century archaeological expeditions to Lower Nubia recovered the skeletal and cultural remains of C-Group populations mainly from cemetery sites between Shellal and the Second Cataract. Along with the remains of the more or less contemporary Pangrave and Kerma peoples, the C-Group archaeological sequence was assigned to the Middle Nubian Period which lasted from the Sixth to the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasties and is dated from ca. 2200 B.C. to ca. 1500 B.C. Conflicting interpretations of C-Group socioeconomic conditions are inevitable since no systematic analysis of the data resulting from the excavations of Middle Nubian cemeteries has ever been undertaken. In an attempt to assess the extent of C-Group economic contact with the Egyptians and to resolve the issue of possible growing social differentiation within the C-Group community, a quantitative analysis of the mortuary remains from fifteen C-Group cemeteries was undertaken. The results indicate that the flow of a small number of Egyptian artefacts into Lower Nubia was relatively constant and that contact between Lower Nubians and Egyptians was probably quite limited. Egyptian portrayals of constant fluctuation in Egyptian-Nubian political relations do not correspond with the evidence from the Nubian archaeological record. The analysis also indicated that economic inequality amongst the Middle Nubian population was present in each date category and tended to increase over time. Socioeconomic differences were greatest during the middle of the Second Intermediate Period. These findings indicate that the Middle Nubian socioeconomic system tolerated increasingly conspicuous differences amongst its members. They are not consistent with the hypothesis that no increase in differential access to burial resources occurred between ca. 2100 and ca. 1550 B.C. and that C-Group social and economic conditions remained virtually unchanged throughout their 800-year history.

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This study has engaged in a critical exploration of the relationship between the Church and Culture in Ga-Marishane village in Limpopo. A Case Study of the Anglican martyr Manche Masemola of Sekhukhune has been used to reveal the extent of tension between the Church and culture in the same village during the Colonial-Missionary era. The topic of this study reflects on the contestation of the Anglican rite of passage of initiation through the baptism sacrament of adults, and the traditional Pedi rite of initiation with special reference to the initiation of girls in Ga-Marishane. These initiation rites live in missional-tension in what they ought to do and to be in the village and therefore an interface has to be arrived at. Christianity as a western culture comes into contact with African culture through the process of evangelizing the African continent, through missionary engagement. The missionaries come into contact with African indigenous people, who have their own system of beliefs and cultural practices, and they want to impose their Christian tradition upon the residents who in turn oppose the teachings of the Church, and harmony is lost. This brings a lot of controversy amongst the Christian converts and the Pedi traditionalists. In the process of this turmoil, a family is deprived of their daughter through death, and the Church loses a catechumen. Manche Masemola’s parents were not happy that she wanted to join the Christian faith, more especially because they said that her behavior was very absurd, especially when she prayed, and they claimed that she acted like someone who had been bewitched. According to Pedi custom, a girl was supposed to eventually get married after she had been proclaimed marriageable. Manche’s parents were not happy when she joined the Church, as there were nuns in the village, who had made vows of remaining celibate and only be married to Jesus Christ. The presence of nuns suggested to them that Manche might want to be one of them, and then they would be deprived of magadi, as well as grandchildren, which would have been perceived by the community as their failure as parents to bring their daughter up. Manche’s determination to be a Christian impacted a lot on her parents, and they never considered their daughter’s desire to be a Christian, i.e. what it meant for her and what her ultimate goal was. This study reveals that both these institutions, the Church and the village are staunch in their practices to the extent that no one wants to compromise their beliefs. Inculturation is found to be one of the methods to be implemented in order to promote wholesome living in Ga-Marishane between the Christian converts (bakriste) and the Pedi traditionalists (baditshaba), in order to eliminate further ‘Blood baptisms.’ / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.