UP Journals (Univ. of Pretoria)
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Setting the Stage: Enabling Spaces for Dialogues with Ibali Digital Collections UCT
No full textIn 2021, the Digital Scholarship Services (DSS -formerly Digital Library Services) department at University of Cape Town Libraries launched a university-wide showcasing platform for the university’s digital collections: https://ibali.uct.ac.za. The site is called Ibali (Xhosa for ‘story’), and it runs on a set of semantic web technologies called Omeka S and IIIF. Ibali is part of UCT Libraries’ drive to nurture an Open Access space where digital collections can be created, curated, published, and showcased. It is a highly collaborative and flexible, future-thinking online repository space that supports Digital Humanities projects. Since its launch, Ibali has hosted a range of diverse sites, including heritage and community resources on endangered South African languages, a video archive for a theatrical research project, repeat landscape photography database, student-led curations, and selected library collections.
The main architecture of Ibali is the open-source software Omeka S. Omeka S is a web publishing platform for GLAMs (Galleries | Libraries | Archives | Museums), designed to create relationships between objects in collections as well as describe them through linked open data resources on the internet. The ‘S’ in Omeka S stands for ‘semantic’, as in connecting to the semantic web, where data in web pages is structured and tagged. Its primary focus is on organising elements of a collection such that the links in between items and the greater elements of the internet are strengthened, allowing for much more relevant searches and deeper explorations.
However, what Omeka S also allows, through the many modules developed by its growing open-source community, is the building of interactions between its showcase sites, creators and visitors. The incorporation of semantic technologies within metadata allows the conversations and feedback to be incorporated into the actual showcase site itself, enhancing archives and allowing for multiple voices to emerge and the possibility of many different interpretations of collections. The digital showcase space becomes a stage for stories, embracing the transactional, transformative, and migratory nature of images, events, recordings of our archives and our collective memories.
This paper outlines the Ibali approach to building collection showcase sites that aim to foster dialogue and participation. I weave this together with the opportunities that the metadata infrastructure of Omeka S provides for sharing not only stories but diverse perspectives. Marking five years since its launch, I also briefly reflect on challenges and opportunities related to sustainability and touch upon the impact of AI on the platform and workflows
SeSoDa: A Compact Context-Rich Sesotho-English Dataset for LoRA Fine-Tuning of SLMs
No full textWe introduce SeSoDa, a multidomain Sesotho(Sa Lesotho)-English dataset of 1,966 prompt-completion pairs that span six categories (nouns, verbs, idioms, quantifiers, grammar rules, usage alerts). SeSoDa documents the morphosyntactic complexity, uncaptured Basotho cultural specificity, and orthographic/phonological differences between Lesotho and South African Sesotho. We created a user-friendly, JSON-style corpus with detailed metadata. This aims to lower the technical barrier for new researchers in Lesotho, helping them advance culture-aware machine translation, linguistic analysis, and cultural preservation using AI. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate SeSoDa’s utility by fine-tuning the TinyLlama-1.1B-Chat model using Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) on entirely free Google Colab GPUs and runtime limits. This parameter efficient fine-tuning approach is particularly vital for resource-constrained environments like Lesotho, making advanced NLP model adaptation feasible and accessible without requiring extensive computational resources. We open-source the code for the dataset creation, the baseline model, and the dataset itself. We hope to see both Basotho researchers and developers build on top of our effor
Traditional Readability Approaches in Sesotho and isiZulu: A (First) Overview
No full textThis paper presents a conceptual overview of traditional readability metrics adapted for two South African Indigenous languages, isiZulu and Sesotho, which differ orthographically with conjunctive and disjunctive writing systems, respectively. Both languages are low-resource, lacking extensive corpora, lexicons, and pretrained models necessary for automatic readability assessment. By critically examining these adaptations, we highlight the challenges of applying English-based metrics to morphologically complex African languages and emphasise the need for language-specific digital resources that reflect local linguistic structures. Our work aligns with ongoing efforts to develop and enhance language resources for under-resourced African Indigenous languages, thereby supporting their evolving presence and accessibility in the digital age, including contexts shaped by large language models
Weaving resistance: Feminist embroidery as a political, affective, and artistic practice within the struggle against feminicides in Mexico City: Arts activisms and gender-based violence through transnational perspectives
No full textIn Mexico, an average of 11 women are murdered every day as victims of feminicide, making gender-based violence an urgent and pervasive crisis. In response to this extreme context of violence, feminist activists have developed creative, embodied forms of resistance and collective healing. One such practice is el bordado (embroidery), which holds a long tradition in feminist protest across Latin America. In this article, I explore the multiple and layered meanings of bordado in feminist activism, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork – including participant observation, field notes and group interviews – with two collectives in Mexico City: Las Siemprevivas and Fuentes Rojas. The results show that embroidery can become a form of emotional solidarity and collective healing, providing a way to express the “unspeakable”, and share experiences of injustice and loss. Embroidery fosters the establishment of meaningful connections, “affective communities” and “de-privatising” the pain. Bordado also serves as a form of (counter-)memory work – dignifying and humanising the victims of feminicide while creating a “textile archive” against forgetting. The embroidery circles ( juntanzas) offer spaces of mutual support, practices of care, and empowerment. Furthermore, as a political act of resistance and denunciation, activists carr y the bordados to demonstrations, exhibit them in museums and public spaces across Mexico and globally. By occupying sidewalks and plazas, activists reclaim public space and transform urban landscapes into sites of counter-memory and feminist resistance. In doing so, they fight the normalisation of violence, oppose victim-blaming, and sensitise the public. In short, bordar (to embroider) is a political, affective, and artistic practice that challenges gender-based violence and enacts collective feminist resistance in Mexico
Sport-historical events leading to the South African Amateur Athletics and Cycling Board of Control
No full textThe South African Amateur Athletics Board (SAAAB) is a forgotten memory in South African history. Yet, it provided many athletes an opportunity for recognised participation in sport that was denied them by the Apartheid regime. Established in 1946, it was part of the post Second World War efforts by black sport administrators to provide grassroots participation and to gain international recognition. Central in this effort was Reverend Bernard Sigamoney who was a prominent figure in uniting cricket, soccer and other sports. Evidence exists that proves black sport administrators were influenced by international events, such as the 1936 Olympic Games, to organise themselves nationally. Initially, the two major provinces that spearheaded the SAAAB were Western Province and Natal. Both provinces relied on schools as feeder systems for athletic competitions. However, poor facilities and the absence of qualified physical education teachers at schools, as was the case in the US, hampered athletic development. Nevertheless, the SAAAB left a legacy footprint of efficient administrators and administration that is accessible to historians to create narratives of events leading to its establishment. These developments are captured through a sport-historical narrative that utilises media sources and the author\u27s private collection
6th Ahe-Afrika History Education Conference: Looking back, looking forward: the future(s) of History Education in Africa
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Appraising the regulatory framework for insider trading in mergers and acquisitions in South Africa
Get PDFThe prevalence of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) leads to increased insider trading. This negatively affects companies’ chances of generating more capital and the liquidity of financial markets, thereby affecting the country’s economy due to a lack of investor confidence. Insider trading activity is more likely in M&A because it involves many insiders from the target and acquiring companies. According to the Financial Markets Act, the term “insider” would encompass officers, executives, board members, shareholders or employees directly involved in M&A, and persons such as negotiators who come into possession of the information intentionally or unintentionally during their duties. Inside information is sometimes leaked by financial and legal advisors, investment bankers, and business consultants who are retained by one of the parties to the transaction to assist in due diligence and complex negotiations. South Africa is one of the leading economies in the emerging financial markets. Therefore, effective regulation of insider trading in South Africa will promote stable and reliable economic growth through investment. This article addresses the following: (a) Is South Africa’s current legislative and regulatory framework adequate to curb the problem of insider trading in M&A? (b) Are there any identifiable strengths and weaknesses in the legislation of insider trading in M&A in South Africa? (c) Is there a need to enact laws specifically dealing with insider trading in mergers and acquisitions? (d) Are there any useful lessons South Africa can learn from the approach adopted in the United States? (e) To the extent that the South African regulatory framework on insider trading is inadequate, how can South Africa enhance its legal framework in combating insider trading in mergers and acquisitions
Host communities and competing applications for prospecting rights in terms of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002
Get PDFThe various provisions of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 28 of 2002 (“the Act”) concerning prospecting rights and preferential rights to prospect are discussed in this article. An ordinary prospecting right is granted by the Minister upon application to the applicant if the requirements of section 17 of the Act are met. In addition, section 104(1) of the Act also provides for the granting of a “preferent right to prospect or mine” to a traditional community (as defined in the Act) to prospect on community land. These provisions formed the basis of an unreported decision of the Transvall Provincial Division of the High Court in Bengwenyama Minerals (Pty) Ltd v Genorah Resources (Pty) Ltd (39808/2007 (TPD) (18-11-2008). The judgment dealt with the determination of legal preference where competing applications for prospecting rights were submitted in respect of the Bengwenyama traditional community land. An attempt was made in this case to colour the one application ex post facto as an application for a preferential prospecting right by the traditional community. It is argued that the court\u27s decision concerning the difference and relationship between the two kinds of prospecting rights and the application of the “first come, first served principle” in terms of section 9(1)(b) of the Act was appropriate. It is further submitted that the facts of the Bengwenyama Minerals judgment highlights the shortcoming of the current section 104 of the Actin protecting the interests of a traditional community where someone else applies for prospecting rights on communal land. The proposed 2008 amendments of the Act do not go far enough to ensure participation in prospecting and exploitation of minerals by a traditional community. The conclusion is that the current legislation is in need of an urgent overhaul in order to protect the interests of traditional communities