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Men and health in Africa
No full textVarious intersecting factors in different contexts shape health, from historical to physical environmental/climatic, political, economic, and cultural. Health is also influenced by gender, which refers to roles and behaviours any society considers appropriate for girls and boys, women and men, and people with non-binary gender identities. As a social category, gender is shaped by an equally broad range of intersecting factors as health. The attention previously given to gender in health has, however, been variable. Medicine, including anatomy and clinical trials, have been criticised for having largely been framed around the male body as the prototype. On the other hand, heath interventions have tended to focus mainly on women and the female body, as women were considered prone to health problems because of their supposedly exclusive reproductive role. Demarcating women from men is undoubtedly critical to allow adequately addressing special health needs of diverse sexes and genders. There is, at the same time, risk of over-extending the dichotomy and, as was the case historically with reproductive health, presuming health for women can be promoted with little attention to or input from men. Acknowledging the challenges inherent in linking two interconnected yet multiplex concepts, this chapter presents an overview of the men-health nexus on the African continent. The chapter highlights some epidemiological features of this nexus drawing on selected disease examples as well as life expectancy profiles, and trails the social construction of this picture for men before concluding with some broad thoughts regarding taking forward work on men and health.
Your voice, your choice: a dialogue-driven civic education intervention with youth in Umlazi, South Africa
No full textThis chapter argues that despite living in a democratic South Africa, young people’s barrier to civic participation continues to be a major source of what Amartya Sen calls “unfreedom.” This condition comes from barriers to access, corruption in individuals, and the failure of services, all of which potentially lead to avolition. “Your Voice, Your Choice” was a youth-targeted intervention aimed at empowering young people’s active participation and engagement in civil society. The intervention used dialogue and innovative participatory methodologies to capture young people’s understanding of the political landscape of South Africa, including how they envision changing it. This chapter unpacks the transformative potential of dialogue in the Your Voice, Your Choice (YVYC) intervention as an alternative to bolstering social and economic opportunities for young people in the face of unfreedoms.
Renegotiating citizen participation in local governance in Africa: the case of Cameroon
No full textIn most African countries, political liberation was supported by spontaneous people's movements and various constellations of civil society. The post-independent era witnessed the introduction of a one-party system, which fundamentally curtailed these freedoms which were at the centre of the decolonial debate in Africa. The liberal market ideology that pervaded economic and political spaces after 1990 heralded alternatives for civil society to self-organize for political change in the continent. In the Economic Commission for Central African States (ECCAS), the legislative framework for citizen participation in local governance processes and structures encountered steep resistance from political elites. However, exogenous factors, together with home-grown citizen initiatives to advance the well-being of the people, emerged. In post-independent Cameroon, citizen participation in local governance processes was shaped by the rigid political and, subsequently, economic systems that the country experienced. With the demise of the bipolar World, people fashioned different places of engagement through civil society spaces where expectations and conceptions of civic involvement were developed and articulated. This policy paper analyses the regulatory framework for civil society participation in local governance in the ECCAS sub-region. It also examines citizen participation in local governance processes and structures in Cameroon. The paper identifies key challenges inhibiting citizens from freely engaging in civic activities in the country and presents some policy directions ECCAS and the state of Cameroon need to take to facilitate the effective involvement of citizens in the associational life of the sub-region and of Cameroon.
Revisiting the state (nation) building concept in post-colonial Africa: assessing Cote d
Get PDFHSRC Policy Brief, AugustThe Africa Institute of South Africa, a research institute within the Human Sciences Research Council, conducts research and coordinates HSRC's engagements in and on Africa. It conducts basic, applied policy-relevant and comparative research, while seeking to build capacity and provide policy advice and implementation support to advance South Africa's position on societal development, such as governance, peace, and security. As part of the nation-building project, we embarked on a research trip to Cote d'Ivoire and engaged with various civil society organisations, academia, and government representatives to better understand the country's nation-building projects. In this article, Nicasius Achu Check and Felicity Aphiwe Mkhongi share some insights on this trip.N/
Creating dialogue and collaboration in student affairs using world cafes: insights from the research project 'violence and wellbeing in the context of the South African student movement'
Get PDFPaper presented at the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS) Global Summit, Daegu, South Korea, 21-25th MayN/
The global south leading the global north: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and student affairs
No full textPaper presented at the International Association of Student Affairs and Services (IASAS) Global Summit, Daegu, South Korea, 21-25th MayN/
Gender, informality and innovation: insights from research in Sweetwaters, KwaZulu-Natal
Get PDFHSRC Policy Brief, JulyThis policy brief applies a gender lens to exploring innovation in informal businesses. A gender lens can help policymakers understand the innovation behaviour of both men and women-owned businesses towards the development of suitable targeted interventions. The analysis is based on data collected through the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators' 2017-2018 Innovation in the Informal Sector Survey conducted in a peri-rural area in KwaZulu-Natal, Sweetwaters, Msunduzi KwaZulu-Natal is associated with relatively higher levels of emigration, poverty, unemployment, and inadequate infrastructure. The brief provides snapshots of the data to inform further research.N/
Pastor Colin Lafoy: building churches and leading congregations
No full textA social history from below: Life stories from Wentworth, South Africa, is a collection of edited life story interviews conducted with 25 current and past residents of Wentworth, Durban, that illustrates the social history of this historically ‘çoloured’ township. This history from below documents the formation of the townships in the late 1950s and its history through the life experiences of the 25 residents during various periods. The book illustrates the wide diversity of the members of this black South African community in terms of origin, ancestry, class, educational qualifications, political outlook, self-identification, primary concerns, political activism, contribution to society, social impediments suffered, etc. that refute generalisations made about the ‘race’ to which they belong. The life stories also illustrate the impact of major transformations, such as the advent of democracy, on members of this community.
Eastern Cape: circumcision, ukuthwala, teenage pregnancy and condoms
No full textWith high rates of early sexual debut, low condom use and practices such as ukuthwala and traditional circumcision, the Eastern Cape faces unique health challenges. In August 2024, the HSRC hosted a provincial dialogue in East London to respond to the regional results of the Sixth South African National HIV Prevalence, Incidence, Behaviour and Communication Survey (SABSSM VI). The event encouraged open conversations and
explored community-driven solutions to regional HIV rates and the problems that drive them.N/
Noel Chabani Manganyi: being-while-black-and-alienated in apartheid South Africa
No full textThe book is a philosophically critical engagement with his work, and it constitutes, as it were, part of the author’s overarching project of attempting to reclaim and retrieve hitherto overlooked, ignored and invisibilised Black thinkers of the past and present. Although Manganyi has written over 10 books, the most important and popular being Being-Black-in-the-World (1973) and Alienation and the Body in Racist Society (1977), his ideas and work have, for one reason or another, been disregarded by mainstream South African psychology, let alone philosophy. The author foregrounds philosophy as also a culprit because Manganyi himself describes his work as that of “a psychologist who thinks and conceptualises psychological reality in a phenomenological way”.N/