List of Titles

From the grave to the cradle : the possibility of post-mortem gamete retrieval and reproduction in South Africa

Authors: Kruuse, Helen
Date: 2012
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:24533 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/36254 , http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19962126.2012.11865059
Description: The development of reproductive technologies in the last century, such as effective contraceptive methods, artificial insemination, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, amongst others, has fundamentally reshaped traditional concepts of reproduction parenthood and has raised practical and ethical concerns. This article describes one such development, namely, post-mortem gamete retrieval (PMGR) for the purposes of posthumous reproduction. In exploring the particular concerns arising from this technology, I argue that South Africa lacks a coherent, considered approach to the issue. In considering models adopted in overseas jurisdictions, and the various bases for the legalisation of such a procedure, I adopt an interest theory of rights to argue for restricted access to such a technology in suitable circumstances.
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Date Issued: 2012

Mortgage bonds and the right of access to adequate housing in South Africa: Gundwana v Stoke Development and Others 2011 (3) SA 608 (CC)

- Juma, Laurence

Authors: Juma, Laurence
Date: 2012
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/127479 , vital:36015 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC129329
Description: This article offers a critique of Gundwana v Stoke Development and Others 2011 (3) SA 608 (CC), a case in which the Constitutional Court of South Africa found it to be unconstitutional for the registrar of a high court to declare immovable properties specially executable when ordering a default judgement, to the extent that such an order "permitted the sale and execution of a home of a person". The Court interpreted the property clause in section 25, access to right to housing in section 26 of the Constitution, as mandating "further judicial oversight" in all cases where execution is levied against residential property. The article raises some of the shortcomings of this interpretive scheme and suggests that constitutional values, when used to curtail or enlarge obligations of parties to a mortgage bond, must take into account the general rights and duties which the parties assumed at the signing of the agreement; the circumstances of each of the parties at the time of execution and ascertained through a careful evaluation based on a clearly articulated set of principles, and the nature of constitutional rights themselves. The article argues that, whereas there may be circumstances in which a debtor may need protection, rather than impose a blanket abrogation of procedures allowing for expedient disposal of uncontested claims, the court should instead have considered the establishment of further procedural safeguards.
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Date Issued: 2012

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Violence and the cultural logics of pain: representations of sexuality in the work of Nicholas Hlobo and Zanele Muholi

- Makhubu, Nomusa

Authors: Makhubu, Nomusa
Date: 2012
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/147814 , vital:38675 , https://0-doi.org.wam.seals.ac.za/10.1080/02560046.2012.723843
Description: Nicholas Hlobo and Zanele Muholi have raised critical issues regarding sexual identity in patriarchal contexts since they premiered at the Michael Stevenson Gallery in 2005. Nicholas Hlobo, a sculptor and performance artist, and Zanele Muholi, a photographer and activist, explore different ways of representing sexuality – in particular, homosexuality. Hlobo investigates notions of masculinity and the practice of circumcision, while Muholi documents the existence of transgender and homosexuality in township spaces (her recent work expands to various other spaces). This article focuses on the roles that violence plays in the sexual politics represented in Hlobo and Muholi’s work.
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Date Issued: 2012

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Cultivating a scholarly community of practice

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila, Ellery, Karen, Olvitt, Lausanne L, Schudel, Ingrid J, O'Donoghue, Rob B

Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila , Ellery, Karen , Olvitt, Lausanne L , Schudel, Ingrid J , O'Donoghue, Rob B
Date: 2010
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69777 , vital:29579 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC15102
Description: In the field of Environment and Sustainability Education we are seeking ways of developing our teaching and supervision practices to enable social changes in a rapidly transforming field of practice where global issues of truth, judgement, justice and sustainability define our engagements with the public good. This article explores the process of cultivating a scholarly community of practice as a model of supervision that not only engages scholars in an intellectual community oriented towards socio-ecological transformation, but also extends and enhances dialogue with individuals on the technical and theoretical aspects of their postgraduate studies.
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Date Issued: 2010

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Indicators of sustainable fishing for South African sardine Sardinops sagax and anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus

- Fairweather, T P, Van der Lingen, C D, Booth, Anthony J, Drapeau, L, Van Der Westhuizen, J J

Authors: Fairweather, T P , Van der Lingen, C D , Booth, Anthony J , Drapeau, L , Van Der Westhuizen, J J
Date: 2010
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124778 , vital:35691 , https://doi.10.2989/18142320609504215
Description: Six indicators were investigated for South African sardine Sardinops sagax and anchovy Engraulis encrasicolus: mean length of catch, length-at-50% maturity, total mortality, exploitation rate, ratio of bycatch, and centre of gravity of commercial catches. Sardine length-at-50% maturity is the most promising as a descriptive indicator because it is positively correlated with population size for an extensive time period (1953–2005). The remaining indicators were limited by shorter data-series (1984–2005). However, mean length of catch, ratio of bycatch and exploitation rate were found to be useful when considered in conjunction with other indicators. The centre of gravity of commercial sardine catches has shown a significant eastward shift from the West Coast, whereas that of anchovy has remained off that coast. Ratio of bycatch indicates that school composition is a reliable descriptive indicator of relative abundance in the two species. Fewer indicators for anchovy were useful, which is attributed to this species’ flexible life-history pattern.
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Date Issued: 2010

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Third World Express: trains and “revolution” in Southern African poetry

- Wright, Laurence

Authors: Wright, Laurence
Date: 2010
Language: English
Type: text , article
Identifier: vital:7066 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007453 , https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v31i1.34
Description: preprint , This article examines political dimensions of the train metaphor in selected southern African poems, some of them in English translation. Exploring work by Mongane Serote, B.W. Vilakazi, Demetrius Segooa, Phedi Tlhobolo, Thami Mseleku, Jeremy Cronin, Alan Lennox-Short, Anthony Farmer, Freedom T.V. Nyamubaya, Abduraghiem Johnstone and Mondli Gwala, the argument shows some of the ways in which the technological character of trains and railways is made to carry a message of political insurrection and revolution. The author shows that the political potential of the railway metaphor builds on the general response to railways evident in poems indebted to traditional African praise poetry. The piece also demonstrates that political contention within different strands of the southern African liberation movement could also find expression using the railway metaphor.
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Date Issued: 2010

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Towards enhancing indigenous language acquisition skills through MMORPGs

- Kaschula, Russell H, Mostert, André M

Authors: Kaschula, Russell H , Mostert, André M
Date: 2010
Subjects: Indigenous peoples -- Languages -- Study and teaching -- South Africa , Language and languags -- Computer-assisted instruction , Language and languags -- Study and teaching -- Technological innovation , Language acquisition , Computer games
Language: English
Type: article , text
Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/59343 , vital:27559 , http://alternation.ukzn.ac.za/Files/docs/17.1/08 Kas FIN.pdf
Description: The growing interest and access to massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) has opened up significant new scope for educational methodologies, from standard language teaching options through to formalising the skills that a ‘player’ develops through their quests and other activities. This scope is extensive and has created numerous opportunities for innovation both within education and the world of work. This is evidenced by the increasing presence of educational establishments in the virtual world, with Second Life being the most popular for conventional educational purposes. In Second Life and many other realms participants are earning some income and in some cases enjoying a reasonable living from online activities, while developing their skills base. These MMORPGs may open opportunities for promoting language acquisition provided this is located within a suitably attractive realm; ‘players’ would then engage in activities that would contribute to their abilities to use the indigenous languages in everyday life. This article explores how such a system could be developed and the likely contribution it could make to promote a multilingual environment at school and post school levels. Further, it will identify the implications for the future of teaching and learning through the harnessing of MMORPGs.
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Date Issued: 2010

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Using systematic case studies to investigate therapist responsiveness : examples from a case series of PTSD treatments

- Edwards, David J A

Authors: Edwards, David J A
Date: 2010
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:6224 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007774
Description: This article highlights the emerging literature on therapist responsiveness in psychotherapy and examines several concepts used to identify dimensions of responsiveness. Some methodological obstacles are identified to studying responsiveness in a systematic manner, and several examples of existing responsiveness research are reviewed. It is argued that meaningful theory on responsiveness has emerged from research methods that are qualitative and interpretive and that the writing of systematic case studies can be of particular importance since only the presentation of a case unfolding over time can disclose some of the more complex aspects of therapist responsiveness. Examination of a series of systematic case studies of the treatment of post traumatic case disorder in South Africa was used to derive a model for guiding therapist responsiveness with respect with what to focus on at a particular phase of the therapy within a particular session. Material from the cases is used to illustrate aspects of the model related to building social support for the client and promoting emotional processing of trauma memories. , Acknowledgements: This research was supported by grants from the National Research Foundation and the Joint Research Committee of Rhodes University. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Conference of the Society for Psychotherapy Research in Barcelona in 2008 (Edwards, 2008).
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Date Issued: 2010

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Challenges for South African anthropology in the 3rd Millennium

- Palmer, Robin C G

Authors: Palmer, Robin C G
Date: 2009
Language: English
Type: Text
Identifier: vital:6111 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1008105
Description: Towards the end of one’s career, there’s a powerful inclination to look backwards instead of forwards. You become more interested in histories, biographies and obituaries; you reflect on your own life and career. It’s not inevitable, and it can be resisted. Marshall McLuhan was well into his 50s – an obscure Canadian Eng Lit academic – when he had his vision of the nature and future of the media and anticipated a ‘global village’ that the Internet has turned into a reality since his death in 1980 (McLuhan and Powers 1989) – but more on that in due course. Cui Bono? At first I gave into the tendency to look back. Initially, for this lecture, I thought to analyse my own career in South Africa in terms of who benefited most from it: South African anthropology and my students … or me. I would call the lecture ‘Cui Bono?’ But then I realised, with Latin tags on the way out, younger colleagues and students in the audience might think I was referring to a traditional Australian greeting (Coo-ee) and an Irish philanthropist pop singer (Bono). The title would be totally mystifying to many until I explained that it meant ‘to whom the good’ – in other words, who benefits? But there were other objections to this project besides the title. Even the most postmodern of reflexive anthropologists would balk at making such a self-assessment – it was not for me to judge. Anyway, I already knew the answer: My career in South Africa has not been impeded by political harassments, imprisonment or conscription. I did make some small negligible contributions to the ‘struggle’ through writing or drawing, and I did some community service, on campus or off in the same way. At a critical stage I assisted with the process that eventually produced a national staff association, now called NTESU. The only price I have paid for these distractions from serious publishing at a critical stage of my career was deservedly slow promotion. I continue to contribute to the community mainly through membership of the older of Grahamstown’s two very active Rotary clubs. It’s all I have time for, but nothing to boast about. In sum, I’ve enjoyed what my long-term colleague and Grahamstown’s Citizen of the Year (another Rotary initiative) Michael Whisson likes to call ‘sheltered employment’ – his typically ironic way of reminding us of how privileged we academics are, doing what we enjoy, in pleasant surroundings, among intelligent colleagues and the cream of our youth, with plenty of flexi-time and opportunities for subsidized travel. And now I have benefited again by being promoted to full professor without sufficiently earning my keep through subsidies on academic outputs. Whatever I might have given back through teaching and administration the net is in my favour, and I am grateful beyond words.
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Date Issued: 2009

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Disjunctions in the Diptera (Insecta) fauna of the Mediterranean Province and southern Africa and a discussion of biogeographical considerations : ecological overview article

- Kirk-Spriggs, A H, McGregor, Gillian K

Authors: Kirk-Spriggs, A H , McGregor, Gillian K
Date: 2009
Language: English
Type: text , Article
Identifier: vital:6880 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011636
Description: This paper explores disjunctions in the Diptera fauna of the Mediterranean Province and southern Africa, drawing from eight families of Diptera, the more ancient Psychodidae and Vermileonidae, and the more recent Acroceridae, Asilidae, Bombyliidae, Dolichopodidae, Pipunculidae and Sciomyzidae. Information from recent published revisions is geo-referenced and plotted onto maps using GIS software. These distribution patterns are interpreted and probable means and routes of dispersal between the two regions are discussed. The concept of an Afrotropical sub-Saharan boundary is outlined and it is argued that although the vast, arid and virtually abiotic Sahara acts as a barrier to dispersal today, relict floral and faunal populations of Mediterranean provincial origin still occur on the Hoggar and Tibesti Mountains of the central Sahara, indicating that the aridification of the Sahara is a very recent event. The presence of extensive palaeolakes formerly covering ca 10% of the present-day Sahara is regarded as evidence in support of this hypothesis. These lakes and their associated catchments, situated in basins between the central Saharan mountains, could clearly have acted as a humid route of dispersal as recently as 4000 BP, when these lakes began to recede, and this route is here regarded as a "central high Africa corridor"; a filter-bridge between the Mediterranean Province and southern Africa. Examples of Mediterranean provincial species of Ephydridae and the muscid genus Lispe Latreille, 1796, occurring as far south as the AÏr Massif in northern Niger are cited as examples of relict montane Diptera of Mediterranean provincial origin in the southern Hoggar Mountains; these groups being associated with the margins of standing water. Balinsky's (1962) concept of an "arid corridor" is also re-examined, using examples from the larger, less mobile Diptera, and it is concluded that such a pattern may not be the result of aridity, but represent an "eastern high Africa corridor", broadly corresponding to the "African Supers well". Other perceived distribution pathways between the Holarctic and Afrotropical Regions are mapped. Anemochore dispersal is considered, and the extent of the Afrotropical Region is discussed. Mediterranean tectonic evolution on both a globe of constant size and on a smaller Jurassic globe is also considered. It is concluded that if all the transitional zones between the zoogeographical regions are to be given more-or-less equivalent treatment, we must avoid setting boundaries based on earlier faunal distributions. For this reason the current boundary between the Palaearctic and Afrotropical Regions, arbitrary as it is, should be retained, despite evidence suggesting recent continuity between sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, corresponding broadly to the African and Arabian lithospheric plates.
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Date Issued: 2009

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Epistemological access as an open question in education

- Lotz-Sisitka, Heila

Authors: Lotz-Sisitka, Heila
Date: 2009
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:21219 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7123 , http://joe.ukzn.ac.za/Libraries/No_46_June_2009/Epistemological_access_as_an_open_question_in_education.sflb.ashx
Description: In his book Learning to Teach in South Africa Morrow (2007)1 argues that teacher education’s ultimate aim is to enable epistemological access2 to knowledge in the modern world, and that there is a need to find new ways of thinking about teaching in South Africa if we are to meet the challenge of enabling all learners to gain such epistemological access. Morrow relates problems of epistemological access to the dominance of an empiricist epistemology in education, and he also comments on how this is obscured by the ideologies of Outcomes Based Education and learner-centred education (with attendant constructivist, relativist assumptions about knowledge). These problems, he argues, have come to shape curriculum thinking, and hence teaching practice, creating a muddled epistemological context in which teaching practices are taking place. He argues for a realist focus but he does not elaborate on what such a realist focus might mean for enabling epistemological access or for associated teaching practice or for teacher education. He does, however, propose that systematic learning is a necessary way forward.
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Date Issued: 2009

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South African Shakespeare in the twentieth century

- Wright, Laurence

Authors: Wright, Laurence
Date: 2009
Language: English
Type: Book chapter
Identifier: vital:7061 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007425
Description: This special section of the Shakespearean International Yearbook asks a series of questions about South African Shakespeare, chapter by chapter, focusing on the twentieth century. The temporal emphasis is deliberate, because it was particularly in the last century that Shakespeare became an issue, albeit a minor one, in relation to the titanic political and ideological struggles that convulsed the country throughout the period. The articles set out to examine and re-assess, in historical sequence, some of the acknowledged highlights of Shakespeare in South Africa in the last century. These are the moments when, for a range of different reasons, Shakespeare troubles the public sphere to claim attention in excess of that normally accorded ‘routine Shakespeare,’ that haphazard succession of productions, tours, educational debates, academic publications, reviews and commentary that comprises the internal history of the subject.
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Date Issued: 2009

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The TPR2B domain of the Hsp70/Hsp90 organizing protein (Hop) may contribute towards its dimerization

- Longshaw, Victoria M, Stephens, Linda L, Daniel, Sheril, Blatch, Gregory L

Authors: Longshaw, Victoria M , Stephens, Linda L , Daniel, Sheril , Blatch, Gregory L
Date: 2009
Language: English
Type: Article
Identifier: vital:6481 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1006253 , http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/092986609787848162
Description: The role of the TPR2B domain of Hop is as yet unknown. We have shown here by site directed mutagenesis and size exclusion chromatography for the first time that the TPR1 and TPR2B domains of Hop independently dimerized, and that the dimerization of TPR2B was not dependent on its predicted two-carboxylate clamp residues. Furthermore, our data indicated that the dimerization of Hop and its domains was not disrupted in the presence of Hsp70 and Hsp90 peptides.
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Date Issued: 2009

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Towards a GPS-based TEC prediction model for Southern Africa with feed forward networks

- Habarulema, John B, McKinnell, Lee-Anne, Opperman, Ben D L

Authors: Habarulema, John B , McKinnell, Lee-Anne , Opperman, Ben D L
Date: 2009
Language: English
Type: text , Article
Identifier: vital:6806 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1004192
Description: In this paper, first results from a national Global Positioning System (GPS) based total electron content (TEC) prediction model over South Africa are presented. Data for 10 GPS receiver stations distributed through out the country were used to train a feed forward neural network (NN) over an interval of at most five years. In the NN training, validating and testing processes, five factors which are well known to influence TEC variability namely diurnal variation, seasonal variation, magnetic activity, solar activity and the geographic position of the GPS receivers were included in the NN model. The database consisted of 1-min data and therefore the NN model developed can be used to forecast TEC values 1 min in advance. Results from the NN national model (NM) were compared with hourly TEC values generated by the earlier developed NN single station models (SSMs) at Sutherland (32.38°S, 20.81°E) and Springbok (29.67°S, 17.88°E), to predict TEC variations over the Cape Town (33.95°S, 18.47°E) and Upington (28.41°S, 21.26°E) stations, respectively, during equinoxes and solstices. This revealed that, on average, the NM led to an improvement in TEC prediction accuracy compared to the SSMs for the considered testing periods.
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Date Issued: 2009

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