UJ Press Journals
Not a member yet
2155 research outputs found
Sort by
Pentecostal Reinventions of the Passover: Contextual Reflections on the End of Year Night Worship Festivals in Uganda
No full textPentecostal scholarship in and about Africa is a vibrant arena in world Christianity, with an upswing in the proliferation of scholarly works on Pentecostal Churches and its centrality in the political and social fabric of African societies. Pentecostalism has been hailed for revival of Christian conservatism in Sub-Saharan Africa, predominated by the nominal Roman Catholics and Protestant Christianity. While some authors have studied African Pentecostalism with prejudgments based on other Christian traditions, some have hailed the theological innovations in healing and evangelism. The study of the Pentecostal end of year worship festivals unravels one of the innovations that justifies the uniqueness of African Pentecostalism, promulgating theologies and traditions on the one hand, and reinventing Judeo-Christian practices in African perspectives, which in a sense give African Pentecostal Churches a claim to divine originality, on the other. In another way, theologies, traditions, and practices emerging from the observance of the annual Pentecostal worship festivals place African Pentecostal Churches among the towering African Christian traditions, which then borrow rather than debunk such Pentecostal theological innovations. This article therefore discusses the Pentecostal Church reinvention of the ancient Jewish Passover festival to mirror the lives of African Christians in contemporary contexts. The ‘contextual theology’ analysis is employed to reflect on both the Jewish Passover and annual Pentecostal worship festivals, with a view of establishing how Passover (non-)parallels and reinventions have produced African Pentecostal theologies, traditions, and practices defining the uniqueness of African Pentecostalism
Smart Battery Storage Integration in An IoT-Based Solar-Powered Waste Management System
No full textWith over 33% of the world\u27s 2.01 billion tons of annual solid waste managed poorly and projections of 3.40 billion tons by 2050, the global waste crisis is escalating. As daily per capita waste ranges from 0.11 to 4.54 kilograms, low-income countries face a tripling of waste production by 2050. Traditional waste management systems are inefficient and contribute to environmental pollution and operational costs. To address these challenges, integrating smart battery storage with IoT-powered solar waste management offers a sustainable alternative. By harnessing solar energy and storing it in smart batteries, these systems ensure the continuous operation of IoT devices, sensors, and waste collection vehicles, reducing reliance on grid power and carbon emissions. A prototype system, designed, developed, and simulated using Proteus circuit simulation, incorporates IoT sensors, solar panels, and smart battery storage to optimise energy use and improve waste collection efficiency. The research findings contribute to advancing sustainable waste management practices and inform the development of similar IoT-based systems for various urban applications
Impact Of Magnetised Water on Nigeria Broiler Chicken Performance and Growth Rate
No full textPoultry farming is vital to Nigeria’s economy and provides a key protein source, yet many farms struggle with slow growth and high mortality in broiler chickens. This study aimed to assess the impact of magnetised water on broiler growth.
40 broiler chickens were housed in four groups (T0-T3) at the National Integrated Farm Project in Ilorin, Nigeria. The water treatment involved a setup with neodymium magnets and varied exposure times: T0 (control, no magnetisation), T1 (55 s), T2 (110 s), and T3 (165 s). Each group had 10 birds, and weekly weight was recorded over seven weeks. A paired t-test was used to analyze growth differences between treatments.
Average weekly weight gains for T0, T1, T2, and T3 increased progressively, with T3 showing the highest gain. Paired t-test results indicated significant differences in growth between magnetised and non-magnetised groups, with calculated values above the threshold (ttab = 2.969).
This study established that magnetised water increased the performance and growth rate of broiler chicken. It is therefore recommended that magnetised water can be used in producing broiler chicken for high income from poultry farming
Projections on (re)designing pedagogical pathways towards decolonial praxis in postgraduate literacy education
Get PDFWhat would it mean to teach a postgraduate course about literacy education in South Africa in a way attuned to place, bodies, ways of being, and decolonial knowledge making? In this paper, we engage with this question through reflections and projections on our ongoing work of curriculum re-design of a master’s level course on literacy theories. This course, which we have taught three times since 2018, seeks to place the existing theoretical architecture of sociocultural literacy under pressure, asking whether these various frameworks still hold relevance for literacy education in South Africa in this post-Fallist and, more recently, post-Covid-19 reality. In each iteration of the course, we have invited students to think together with us about how literacy education in the Global South might respond to the opposing forces of globalisation and decolonisation. Yet, each time, the course has flowed differently as the configuration of bodies, identities, languages, knowledges, dispositions, affects, and materialities of learning mode has changed year by year. We aim to map the pedagogical pathways, in the sense of “configurations that guide the constraints and potentialities shaping the movement of pedagogy” (Madden, 2015:2) of the course. We draw on decolonial theory and transhumanist ideas of relational ontologies to explore selected incidents when significant discursive, affective, institutional, and material elements crystallised into patterns revealing of the ways in which coloniality can be either reproduced or challenged within our particular context. Emerging insights relate to assessment issues, multimodal tasks, article selection, and student reflections across time, and gesture towards a decolonial praxis. We conclude by projecting the lessons learned into the course’s future redesign.
Amazwi Amasha: New Approaches to Sustainable Poetry Teaching and Learning
Get PDFAt many South African schools poetry is considered to be a “problem genre”, with both teachers and learners viewing it as “difficult” and as a genre that lowers schools’ pass rates in the National Senior Certificate (NSC) (Matric) examination. For this reason, schools tend to shy away from prescribing poetry at the Further Education and Training (FET) level (that is, in Grades 10-12). This article argues that the poems that are prescribed for English First Additional Language (EFAL) classes are difficult for learners to relate to because of having been written in contexts that are temporally and geographically distant from the learners’ life-worlds. In addition, many learners may not understand the particular variety of English that is used in canonical poetry. A new teaching anthology, entitled Amazwi Amasha (New Voices), containing South African post-1994 poetry, is in the process of being compiled to address the problem of learners’ alienation from their prescribed poems. This anthology forms the topic of this article. The theory and methodology underpinning the selection of poems and the design of learning activities to accompany each poem are described, along with the selection of themes that are relevant to young South Africans. The argument concludes that a more multimodal, interactive approach to teaching and learning poetry can help tap into the resources of this capacious and fascinating genre
Emerging Voices
Get PDFNsamu Moonga, a music therapist whose doctoral research employs Indigenous research methodologies centring participants’ experiences, provides a critique of the University of Johannesburg Art Therapy Conference held in July 2023, focusing on the intersection of race, coloniality, and professionalisation within arts therapies. His reflections advocate for urgent structural reform and cultural sensitivity, promoting Indigenisation practices to dismantle exclusionary frameworks in the profession. Moonga’s paper carefully positions the challenges of the sector and critically highlights the systemic barriers faced by minoritised practitioners and communities whose valuable contributions and needs remain marginalised in professional discourse
Crossing Research Boundaries: ‘Our Nankani Daughter’ in Academia
Get PDFWestern education has the tendency of blurring specific or individual socio-cultural identities in the name of knowledge and civilization, creating in the process cross-cultural or multicultural identities. Although the extent of this impact is debatable, the art and craft of research, the hub of Western education, takes a toll on who we are, as non-Western scholars. Our identity, as beings of defined locations and creativity, is drawn into a sharp negotiation process. ‘Crossing research boundaries’ examines some of the problems of academic research and its impact on African researchers and their religiocultural identities from a female perspective
Sexuality and Sexual Scripting in African Traditional Religion: Mumbi in A Grain of Wheat
Get PDFThe African novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his novel A Grain of Wheat introduces a female character Mumbi. Mumbi resides in a village of pre-independence Kenya and shares the same name with the first woman in the Agikuyu myth of origins. In the novel, her life story brings to the centre stage religious, sexual and gender politics in the realm of everyday life. Whilst her husband Gikonyo is in detention, she gets pregnant by Karanja. Upon his release, Gikonyo swears never to talk about the child, continue with life as if nothing had happened, but never enter Mumbi’s bed. Eventually out of frustration, he becomes violent to Mumbi to the extent that she leaves him to return to her parents. Using narratological text analysis and the sexual scripting approach, this paper examines Mumbi’s sexuality in the context of her traditional village deeply immersed in Agikuyu traditional religion to explore the dilemmas of women’s autonomous sexuality in African traditional societies. Sexual scripts existing at the Agikuyu traditional societal level are contrasted with those arising from both the interpersonal and intrapsychic levels in order to examine processes of transitions related to family, Agikuyu religion and sexuality and how Mumbi adopts new ways of negotiating sexual life
Mamalawo? The Controversy Over Women Practicing Ifa Divination
Get PDFAs the tradition of Ifa divination has gained increasing popularity and membership around the world, the previously male-dominated composition of its priesthood has become challenged. This article traces the origins of women who have sought the highest levels of Ifa initiation—primarily in Cuba and the US—engages the various arguments, concerns, and appeals to authority of the numerous players. Much of the debate hinges around ritual practice associated with the mysterious oriṣa Odu, and consequently the article addresses the relevant mythology and rituals associated with her in an Ifa context. It also places the male-oriented nature of Ifa within the larger context of Yoruba gender norms, contrasting Yoruba notions of gender with modern values of gender equality. Thus, it seeks to explain why male Ifa priests from West Africa have been eager and willing to initiate women. In addition, the article demonstrates that—contrary to many popular claims—several women have become Ifa diviners in West Africa, but that the important ways that gender is understood in a variety of different contexts, its ramifications for initiation rituals, and the rapidly growing number of female initiates in diaspora, will likely change the dynamics of the tradition going forward
Women without Limits and Limited Women: Pentecostal Women Navigating between Empowerment and Disempowerment in Kenya
Get PDFNeo-Pentecostalism has been characterised as offering freedoms and empowerment for women in the Global South, Africa in particular. Despite the limitations on freedom, women are able to negotiate, navigate and contest their (dis)empowerment in the context of rapidly modernized but heavily patriarchal societies, such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa. This article explores how women in Jubilee Christian Centre (JCC) and the Ministry of Repentance and Holiness (MRH), popular Neo-Pentecostal Churches, navigate and negotiate between empowerment and disempowerment positions in their spiritual and personal lives. I seek to point out the seemingly invisible yet critical threads associated with gender and religion and how these strands shape women’s lives. These threads are associated with self-understanding, self-definition, personal and collective empowerment or disempowerment and the building of self-esteem