University Botswana Journals
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Women Rights Activists Never Stopped Talking: From Formal Women’s Movements to Informal and Fluid Networks Through the Empowerment Discourse in Post-Donor Aid Botswana
Get PDFThis paper explores the narratives of women in Botswana seeking ‘empowerment’ outside the realmof formal development actors and political structures. From the 1970s to the early 1990s, the postindependencedevelopment era saw the influx of much needed financial aid from international donorswhich benefited women’s non-governmental organisations and the Women’s Affairs Unit in the Ministryof Home Affairs in Botswana. However, the elevation of Botswana to upper-middle income status in 1992heralded substantial reductions in donor aid. The result of the donor flight from Botswana has been thereversal of many gains made in women’s activism. While the decline in donor funding is regrettable, itwould be misleading to claim that women in Botswana have stopped efforts to confront patriarchy. Whathas emerged is a bourgeoning discourse around ‘empowerment of young women’ by various local actors,with and without support of donor funding. This includes utilisation of the cyberspace. Problematic asthe term ‘empowerment’ may be, it has found a lot of resonance with many women, young and old, sothat there has emerged a plethora of ‘generational dialogues’, youth empowerment seminars, high teas,and foundations registered, around the needs of ‘the girl child’. While the developments may not take adirectly ‘political’ posture, our proposal is that they are part of the continuation of conversations aroundBotswana women’s politics of culture, representation, autonomy and agency. They also are indicative ofan interesting intersection between a neo-liberal rights-based agenda of collective movements and a moreagentic and personalised efforts, yet within a collective outlook
ARREST THE MUSIC! THE REBEL ART AND POLITICS OF LAPIRO AND VALSERO: A PEDAGOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Get PDFThis article is a celebration of the vendetta of two anti-establishment songwriters in Cameroon. It chronicles the protest trajectory undertaken by Lapiro de Mbanga and Valsero, alias Le Général against the government of the President of Cameroon, a cancerous regime that thrives on the rape of democracy, human rights abuses, and the emasculation of social justice. The songs analyzed in this article constitute a caustic critic of the inhumaneness, misgovernment and the abortive democratization process with which Cameroon has come to be identified. The leitmotif in the music of these songwriters is dystopia and protest in post-independence Cameroon under President Biya. As songwriters, Lapiro and Valsero have distinguished themselves from their peers by dint of bravado, valiance and the audacity to speak truth to power. The purport of this article is to underscore the critical role played by protest music in fostering post-independence revolutionary ideas in Cameroon and Africa. To do this effectively, we have revisited the songwriters’ musical compositions during the 1990s, an era that marked the advent of multiparty politics in Cameroon. The overriding objective of our work is to propose a few dependable pedagogical paradigms that could be utilized by instructors desirous of adopting the works of these renowned songwriters for pedagogical purposes
IMPLEMENTING MULTILINGUAL POLICIES FOR QUALITY EDUCATION: THE AFRICAN LEADER’S DILEMMA
Get PDFThis theoretical paper aims to address three key questions with regards to the provision of multilingual education: Why is Africa slow to act; what cases exist around the world that offer Africa opportunities to learn from? And what new ways of knowing, thinking and acting can be explored to facilitate the adoption of multilingual education? Education programs operating in many countries indicate a shift from monolingual to multilingual education. The emerging trend in effective bilingual education programs, the use of technologies, new policy orientations, new partnerships and indigenous ways of thinking are explored in order to ascertain how to improve the learning experience of the African child. The paper concludes that Africa needs to employ her indigenous ways of knowing, thinking and acting to provide effective strategies for the acquisition of literacy and multi-literacies, which are critical to Africa’s participation in the global economy. This calls for new pedagogical approaches with a focus on classroom processes that develop multilingualism in learners for global citizenship while, at the same time, preserving and revitalizing indigenous literacies for better education standards
A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS IN PSLE AND JCE AGRICULTURE
Get PDFPoor performance of learners in public schools in Botswana is a matter of concern for the entire nation. This study was triggered by this disorder which if not addressed robustly has potential to snip the nation’s future. The study investigated the performance of learners in Agriculture at PSLE and JCE at Zwenshambe primary school and Zwenshambe CJSS utilising the qualitative research approach. Data collection techniques of individual interviews, focus groups and document analysis were used to solicit information on the performance of learners in agriculture. The findings of the study are that inadequate resources for teaching and learning, inability of learners to answer structured questions at PSLE, limited use of active methodologies and generalists’ teachers PSLE are main causes of poor learner performance in public primary schools in Botswana. The study concludes that there is need for action if the nation still desires for functional education. It is recommended that the Ministry of Basic Education (MOBE) in collaboration with other stakeholders should ensure that Agriculture at primary schools is taught by specialist teachers. It is also critical to ensure that assessment on practical work in Agriculture starts at primary school level.
 
GRADUATES’ EXPERIENCES OF THE BACHELOR OF NURSING SCIENCE PROGRAMME – 2003 – 2017
Get PDFEducational programmes must be periodically reviewed in order to determine whether or not they meet the expectations of the learners and those of the customers served by graduates. A survey was conducted between October 2017 and January 2018 aimed at evaluating the experiences of graduates of an undergraduate nursing programme at a public university in Botswana. The survey solicited data from participants who graduated during the period 2003 to 2017. Eighty-one (81) graduates, made up 42 (53.1%) females and 38 (46.4%) males, responded. The mean age was 31.7 years (SD=4.3). Participants reported positive experiences in most aspects of the programme, notably the nursing content covered and interaction with faculty. The main area of discontent was clinical learning; with both the duration of exposure and the supervision negatively appraised. Future surveys could go beyond curriculum content and objective responses to cover a broader platform with triangulated data collection methods
NEW ENGLISHES AND NIGERIA’S LINGUISTIC ECOLOGY: AN APPRAISAL OF NIGERIAN NEWSCASTERS’ STRESS PATTERNS AS MODEL FOR STANDARD NIGERIAN ENGLISH
Get PDFThis study examines whether Nigerian newscasters (NNC) can serve as a model for Nigerian English. One newscaster each from four television stations: Broadcasting Television of Oyo State (BCOS), Television Continental (TVC), Channels TV and Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) served as sampled informants. Disyllabic, trisyllabic, polysyllabic words with different stress patterns from downloaded clips via YouTube was recorded on the Speech Filing System (SFS) version 1.4.1 for perceptual and qualitative acoustic analysis. Chomsky’s Linguistic performance served as the theoretical framework. Stress placement on the words by the newscasters was compared with the stress placement on the Standard English forms as indicated in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Cumulatively, findings revealed that NNC had 65.8% accuracy in stress placement, with inappropriate use at 34.2%. NNC from Channels had 70%, TVC 73.3% while NTA had 63.3%, BCOS 60%. Thus, newscasters from the private stations outperformed their public counterparts. Results show that NNC can serve as model for standard Nigerian English
LEADERSHIP IDEOLOGY AS A FORM OF REPRESENTATION IN THE INAUGURATION SPEECHES OF OLUSEGUN OBASANJO
Get PDFPresidents of nations have variously used their political speeches to express ideological nuances. Consequently, scholars have examined the various dimensions of language use by political leaders and the ends such use are meant to meet. As many as these studies appear to be, literature is scanty on how former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo deploys linguistic categories in his inauguration speeches to express leadership ideology. This study examines the way power and leadership are expressed in Obasanjo’s two inauguration speeches. It adopts Norman Fairclough’s discourse socio-cultural model of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to explain Obasanjo’s power consciousness which characterises his eight-year democratic government. From Obasanjo’s language repertoire, his two inauguration speeches are purposively sampled as they supposedly provide a blueprint for how he deploys power expressions in a democracy. Linguistic features such as pronouns, assertions, allusions and idioms are subjected to descriptive linguistic analysis to bring out the leadership rhetoric in the inauguration speeches. The study reveals that Obasanjo deploys linguistic features for self-assertion and to portray himself as the messiah needed to heal Nigeria of its ailments