UWC Scholar Publishing Support (University of the Western Cape)
Not a member yet
1520 research outputs found
Sort by
Compatible Compacts? The “Social Life” of Vulnerability, Migration Governance, and Protection at the Zimbabwe–South Africa Border
Get PDFThe central argument of this paper is that interventions of humanitarian organizations at the Zimbabwe–South Africa border reveal the importance placed on making very clear distinctions between those needing protection and those who do not. This is the case even in times wherein migrants have other protection needs that fall outside these boundaries or intersect with those of others. These boundaries are retained in the stable definitions of migrant in/vulnerability that have been legitimized by the increased emphasis of two separate frameworks: one, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) for managing migration and the other, the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) that determines a set of stable norms for international refugee protection. These mandates are also connected to other tidy, established identities of vulnerability that pertain to gender, health, legal standing, and persecution. In contexts marked by conflicting and overlapping experiences for persons on the move, and mixed migration flows, these ideas are unstable as a way of governing migration. This is because they can also reproduce and intensify social divisions that may lead to inconsistencies and unethical practices in international protection and migration governance for irregular migrants, as well as failures to respond to “the ‘social life’ of vulnerability.” We propose this novel concept in the paper to capture and reimagine the limits and possibilities for protection
A Mercy: Two Books by Hanif Abdurraqib
No full textHanif Abdurraqib is always alert to those moments when ordinary life gets inhabited by the presence of something larger. Perhaps this is why his writing on music and pop culture in the US is furnished with words like grace, mercy, prayer. Consider for instance how an otherwise ordinary domestic scene is transformed into something holy in the poem, ‘When We Were 13, Jeff’s Father Left the Needle Down on a Journey Record Before Leaving the House One Morning and Never Coming Back’. Abdurraqib recasts this episode from his childhood in Columbus, Ohio, in the 90s, as a religious experience, an exorcism
Conditions constraining the potential of Educational Development to impact on the transformation of teaching and learning
Get PDFThis paper argues that the field of Educational Development has not fulfilled its potential to contribute to the transformation of teaching and learning in South African universities because of conditions constraining the agency of practitioners. It draws on, and extends, previous work. It then draws on, and extends, previous work (Shay, 2012; Boughey, 2022) to identify these conditions using a framework drawn from Bhaskar’s (1978) critical realism and Archer’s (1995, 1996, 2000) critical realism
The Heart of the Flats
Get PDFThe poem"The Heart of the Flats" by Bronwyn February describes the author\u27s journey as a youth development worker in the Cape Flats area of South Africa. The author highlights how daily communal struggles are overcome with resilience and the gift of being an empathetic leader who plants seeds of change, hope, and peace. 
A Practical Guide to Levitation: Stories by José Eduardo Agualusa
Get PDFMozambique-based writer José Eduardo Agualusa and his wonderful translator, Daniel Hahn, have a way with words, the fantastical and the surreal. They bring ghosts to life with dry humour, and immerse us in alternate cosmologies, showing us other ways the world might be
Gender and food systems in six African countries: Aligning research, policies and research funding
Get PDFResearch plays a fundamental role in achieving food systems outcomes but research funders and researchers often set agendas that are not necessarily informed by policy needs. This analysis explores synergies between research publications, funding and policy priorities using a gender and food systems lens. In this article the authors argue that gender research is not being adequately leveraged to investigate food systems challenges that are considered national priorities. They call on research funders, researchers and policy-makers to collaborate to define research agendas that address policy needs
What to do about the South African economy?
Get PDFIt goes without saying that in terms of economic performance South Africa is in dire straits. As many commentators have identified, per capita incomes have stagnated or fallen for over a decade, manufacturing – a sector of historical significance to long-term growth worldwide – has also fared poorly, and the disastrous state of key labor market indicators is known to all. It’s not only the state of the economy that leaves much to be desired; the state of economics commentary also needs to be strengthened through robust debate. Misgovernance and inappropriate policy choices have played a role in economic performance; there is and ought to be extensive conversation about this. For Duma Gqubule1 and several other commentators, the public deficit has been much too low, and it is possible to forecast (to one decimal point) macroeconomic outcomes if the ANC’s macro-policy choices were to persist after five or ten years of a possible coalition between the ANC and the center-right Democratic Alliance. A bigger deficit is seen to be a panacea
Letting Go
Get PDFMy mom didn’t allow me to hold anything close. Not her or my dad. She bathed me in discomfort. Dried me in shame. Let me feel the uttermost of temperatures. I had to find footholds. Learn that branches break. I slipped, fell in mud. Stood up without help. Today I held her memory close without fear to let her go. My mom taught me what freedom is
Fighting in the Shadow of an Apartheid State: Boxing and Colonialism in Zimbabwe
Get PDFBoxing was arguably the most popular and controversial sport in colonial Zimbabwe. To tame the sport\u27s violence, which was considered too extreme, colonial officials in Zimbabwe sought guidance and advice from South Africa from the mid-1930s on how best to regulate the sport. South Africa occupied a unique position in this regard, not only because of the relationship it had with colonial Zimbabwe as a neighbouring white settler colony, but also because of how sections of its white settler community responded to the triumphs of Black boxers over white opponents around the world. The colony of South Africa played a significant role in shaping the control of boxing in colonial Zimbabwe. The relationship between the two colonies culminated in the passage of the Boxing and Wrestling Control Act of 1956 in colonial Zimbabwe, an identical version to a similarly named law that South Africa had passed just two years prior
Ukusebenza/Ukuphangela: Raiding the Work of the Future.
Get PDFThis paper is not about work or labour itself, and how it changes historically in South Africa (from pastoral, to agricultural and industrial; native labour, wage labour, migrant labour etc.), but about how the meaning of \u27work\u27 and \u27labour\u27 itself changes. What we want to suggest, is that an \u27original\u27 meaning of the tasks/duties associated with \u27work\u27 was \u27woman\u27: ukusebenza. What men did, does not constitute \u27work\u27 but something else entirely: raiding, moving, occasional, going etc.: ukuphangela. It is in the latter term, ukuphangela, that the term \u27raid\u27 emerges, and the argument draws on this notion and meaning of raid to underscore the re-thinking of gender, the subject and her relation to work, and history. The paper operates in two registers, focusing on the historic meanings of work and labour in the Eastern Cape and tracing lateral translations of these meanings into East London in the 1950s. It argues that in re-thinking meanings of labour and work through multiple temporalities, and through the contested meanings of the isiXhosa terms ukusebenza and ukuphangela, these word fragments are read as \u27entryways to a wordliness\u27 that puts lateral universals and temporalities of work back into circulation. As such, we pose the question rather, following Anne Kelk Mager and Helen Bradford, of whether it is gender (and what it means to be a man or a woman) that is at the forefront not only of class and race struggles, but of what comes to constitute the meaning of \u27work\u27, a concept whose provenance and meaning changes, as we have noted, with the making of modernity, industrialisation/capitalism, and the \u27Europeanisation\u27 of the world