scholarly journals Where does the black population of South Africa stand on the nutrition transition?

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (1a) ◽  
pp. 157-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley T Bourne ◽  
Estelle V Lambert ◽  
Krisela Steyn
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Total Energy ◽  
South African ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Black Population ◽  
Obesity Prevalence ◽  
National Prevalence ◽  
Hiv Aids

AbstractObjective:To review data on selected risk factors related to the emergence of non communicable diseases (NCDs) in the black population of South Africa.Methods:Data from existing literature on South African blacks were reviewed with an emphasis placed on changes in diet and the emergence of obesity and related NCDs.Design:Review and analysis of secondary data over time relating to diet, physical activity and obesity and relevant to nutrition-related NCDs.Settings:Urban, peri-urban and rural areas of South Africa. National prevalence data are also included.Subjects:Black adults over the age of 15 years were examined.Results:Shifts in dietary intake, to a less prudent pattern, are occurring with apparent increasing momentum, particularly among blacks, who constitute three-quarters of the population. Data have shown that among urban blacks, fat intakes have increased from 16.4% to 26.2% of total energy (a relative increase of 59.7%), while carbohydrate intakes have decreased from 69.3% to 61.7% of total energy (a relative decrease of 10.9%) in the past 50 years. Shifts towards the Western diet are apparent among rural African dwellers as well. The South African Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 1998 revealed that 31.8% of African women (over the age of 15 years) were obese (body mass index (BMI) ≥ 30 kgm−2) and that a further 26.7% were overweight (BMI ≥ 25 to <30 kgm−2). The obesity prevalence among men of the same age was 6.0%, with 19.4% being overweight. The national prevalence of hypertension in blacks was 24.4%, using the cut-off point of 140/90 mmHg. There are limited data on the population's physical activity patterns. However, the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic will become increasingly important.Conclusions:The increasing emergence of NCDs in black South Africans, compounded by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, presents a complex picture for health workers and policy makers. Increasing emphasis needs to be placed on healthy lifestyles.

Effective Planning for Rural Development in A Democratic South Africa: The Prospects of Rural Cooperatives

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
France Khutso Lavhelani Kgobe
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Development ◽  
South African ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Social Capital Theory ◽  
Capital Theory ◽  
Rural Cooperatives ◽  
The Government ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Effective Planning

This paper explores the potency of rural cooperatives for the effective planning and implementation of rural strategies to address poverty. Rural cooperatives function as a participatory approach that provides the potential to equip and empower people in rural areas with various skills. Hence, rural cooperatives represent the means and strategies to unshackle rural people from the vicious circle of poverty. The contestation about a deadlock of rural development has become pertinent in the recent and ongoing political transformation in South Africa. This paper is grounded on the social capital theory and its ideals. As such, it depends on a literature review for its premise, argument, crux and purpose, as well as drawing up results and conclusions. The paper gathers information in respect of various scholars’ notions on rural cooperatives and rural development from related articles, journals and books. The paper reveals that where the South African government is confronted and characterised by some form of upheaval and service delivery challenges, so rural cooperatives are fit to capacitate citizens to avoid depending on the government for scarce resources. The paper further reveals that rural cooperatives are deemed to ameliorate the long-standing patterns of developmental backlogs in almost all South African municipalities. The conclusion that can be made from this paper is that the authentic promotion of rural development in the formulation of a well-informed legislative framework, that is clear and unambiguous, can deal effectively with the challenges of rural cooperatives.

scholarly journals Polygynous Muslim Marriages in South Africa: Their Potential Impact on the Incidence of HIV/AIDS

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
N Moosa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
The South ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Islamic Values ◽  
Hiv Aids

This article examines whether there is any relationship between the institution of polygynous marriages in Islam and the incidence or spread of the disease. It is suggested that, while polygyny may be a contributing factor, it is not the institution of marriage per se that relates to the disease (although the prospect of greater infection intra marriage must be present in polygynous marriages, if the husband is the infecting party), but the conduct of the parties to the marriage relationship, whatever its nature.The focus and thrust lies with the institution of polygyny in Islam, the South African response to polygyny, the (potential) impact of polygyny on the incidence of AIDS, and the contribution that both an informed approach to HIV and an enlightened approach to the application of Islamic values could or would have on the limitation of the disease's spread

The Interplay of Agents in Improvising Telecommunication Infrastructures' Services to Rural Community of South Africa

2015 ◽  
pp. 208-225
Author(s):  
Sharol Mkhomazi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
South African ◽  
Service Provider ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Telecommunication Network ◽  
Structuration Theory ◽  
Telecommunication Service ◽  
Network Service Provider

The deployment of telecommunication infrastructures is a challenge in many parts of South Africa particularly in the rural areas. The challenge has impact of communities' members as they do not have network coverage for Internet in some areas. The challenge gets worse with individual telecommunication service provider. Hence there is technological proposal for sharing of infrastructure by the service providers. However, the sharing of infrastructure is not as easy as notion by many individuals and groups institutions included. The article presents findings from a study on how a South African telecommunication network service provider could deploy shared infrastructures in the country's rural communities. The sharing of infrastructure is described by the structure and actions of agents within the infrastructure sharing process. Structuration theory was employed as a lens in the data analysis. The key findings include insufficient distribution of infrastructure, ownership responsibility, competitiveness, infrastructure deployment cost, and signification of regulation.

Paradoxical Payoffs: Migrant Women, Informal Sector Work, and Hiv/Aids in South Africa

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gayatri Singh
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Informal Sector ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Significant Rise ◽  
African Women ◽  
Simultaneous Increase ◽  
Migrant Women ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Black African ◽  
Hiv Aids

In post-apartheid South Africa, there has been a significant rise in women's out-migration from rural areas and across its territorial borders for economic purposes resulting in gender reconfiguration of migration streams. Alongside, there has been a simultaneous increase in the participation of women in the labor force. However, this has mostly grown in the informal sector,1 which is often associated with low earnings and insecure working conditions. One consequence has been the increasing reliance of migrant women on survivalist activities such as informal sexual exchanges that increase their risk of contracting HIV infection. Insecure working environments also expose migrant women to sexual abuses. This article is based on the author's work in South Africa's major urban centers and examines the nature of the relationship between the increased migration of black African women in South Africa, the nature of their work, and their resultant vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.

Electronic Music and the Problem of Electricity

2021 ◽  
pp. 253-273
Author(s):  
Gavin Steingo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Electrical Energy ◽  
Black Population ◽  
Electricity Supply ◽  
Material Constitution ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Electricity Infrastructure

For the past twenty years, South African popular music has been dominated by electronic genres such as house, kwaito, and hip-hop—especially among the Black population living in and around major urban centers. Based on fieldwork in the townships of Soweto, this chapter focuses on a fundamental condition of possibility for any kind of electronic music: electricity. Since 2008, South Africa has experienced massive problems with its electricity infrastructure. These problems resulted in widespread rolling blackouts between 2008 and 2009, and since 2014 the situation has worsened. The chapter asks what becomes of electronic music in a context where access to electricity is radically unreliable, if not completely absent. What do musicians do when the electricity supply stops? What kinds of affect become impossible, and what kinds of affect are generated? How do power outages impact a musician’s relationship to citizenship and to the state? The chapter traces the lines of connection between informal home studios and Eskom (South Africa’s state-owned electricity utility) as way of listening to and for infrastructure—developing a critique regarding the tropes of invisibility and breakdown in infrastructural research along the way. It further illuminates the ways that electronic musicians in South Africa are compelled to engage the very material basis of their activities. With this approach, the meaning of the term “electronic music” is revealed to be much more than a generic or stylistic description. In South Africa, electronic music refers first and foremost to its material constitution as electrical energy.

Between Self-help and Dependence: Donor Funding and the Fight Against HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Africa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista Johnson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
South African Government ◽  
The South ◽  
African Countries ◽  
African Government ◽  
Global Response ◽  
Donor Funding ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Hiv Aids

This article examines funding for HIV/AIDS in South Africa, and the relationship between foreign donors and the South African government. The recognition of the AIDS pandemic as an epochal crisis has led to a proliferation of international and donor organizations now directly involved in the governance, tracking and management of the pandemic in many African countries. In many ways, the heavy donor hand that is increasingly defining the pandemic and the global response to it feeds into a new imperialist logic that subordinates pan-African agendas, masks broader issues of access central to the fight against the pandemic, and strengthens traditional relationships of dependence between wealthy Western nations and poorer African nations. The South African government's relationship with foreign donors, however, has been shaped by its efforts to develop an African response to the pandemic not determined nor primarily funded by foreign aid. This article highlights the positive and negative implications of the sometimes contentious relationship between the South African government and foreign donors, as well as the Africa-centred, self-help agenda it pursues, highlighting the opportunities as well as challenges for African governments to define the global response to the pandemic.

HIV/AIDS and National Health Insurance in South Africa

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel Crisp
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
South African ◽  
National Health Insurance ◽  
National Health ◽  
National Health Insurance Scheme ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
African Health ◽  
South African Health ◽  
Hiv Aids

Chapter 18 describes how Dr Motsoaledi, the South African Health Minister, set about leading the fight on HIV/AIDS in South Africa, and introducing a national health insurance scheme in order to offer healthcare to every person in the country, by building on the work that was already underway. It describes his complex story, with many confusing cross-currents and elements of conflict and intrigue, and how a large part of the Minister’s role involved trying to cut through the confusion, offer a clear pathway for the future, and communicate

scholarly journals Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 509-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan David Bakker ◽  
Christopher Parsons ◽  
Ferdinand Rauch
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
Migration Cost ◽  
Process Of Urbanization ◽  
Positive Population

Abstract Although Africa has experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades, little is known about the process of urbanization across the continent. This paper exploits a natural experiment, the abolition of South African pass laws, to explore how exogenous population shocks affect the spatial distribution of economic activity. Under apartheid, black South Africans were severely restricted in their choice of location, and many were forced to live in homelands. Following the abolition of apartheid they were free to migrate. Given a migration cost in distance, a town nearer to the homelands will receive a larger inflow of people than a more distant town following the removal of mobility restrictions. Drawing upon this exogenous variation, this study examines the effect of migration on urbanization in South Africa. While it is found that on average there is no endogenous adjustment of population location to a positive population shock, there is heterogeneity in the results. Cities that start off larger do grow endogenously in the wake of a migration shock, while rural areas that start off small do not respond in the same way. This heterogeneity indicates that population shocks lead to an increase in urban relative to rural populations. Overall, the evidence suggests that exogenous migration shocks can foster urbanization in the medium run.

DEATH ‘ON THE MOVE’: FUNERALS, ENTREPRENEURS AND THE RURAL–URBAN NEXUS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Africa ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebekah Lee
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Funeral Directors ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Cultural Mediators ◽  
The Dead

ABSTRACTThis article primarily concerns the intersection of the changing management of death with the problems and possibilities presented by the growing mobility of the African, and specifically Xhosa-speaking, population in South Africa from the latter half of the twentieth century to the present day. I am interested in how shifts in the practices and beliefs around death are mediated by individuals, households and businesses who have an historical affinity towards movement, particularly across what has been called the ‘rural–urban nexus’. In what ways has this more mobile orientation influenced the perception of rites and responsibilities surrounding death? And how have more mobile ‘ways of dying’ in turn created new subjectivities and new ways in which to imagine relations between the living and the dead? I argue that African funeral directors based in Cape Town and the rural areas of the Eastern Cape – a steadily more numerous and prominent group of entrepreneurs – are well-placed to shape these processes, through their role as cultural mediators and technological innovators, and their particular emphasis on maintaining a flow of bodies (both dead and alive) between rural and urban areas. I focus on two aspects of contemporary South African funerals – embalming and exhumations – that are suggestive of how the migration dynamic, and the continuing demands from mobile mourners for innovations via the funeral industry, have encouraged new perceptions of and relations to the dead body.

scholarly journals From apartheid to Post-Apartheid: The Representational Trajectory to a Multiracial Nation in Nadine Gordimer’s None to Accompany Me, Andre Brink’s The Rights of Desire and Zakes Mda’s The Madonna of Excelsior

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 707-724
Author(s):  
FORTI ETIENNE LANGMIA
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Black Population ◽  
Nadine Gordimer ◽  
South Africans ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Andre Brink ◽  
New Nation ◽  
Zakes Mda ◽  
African Writers

This article, which draws inspiration from the literary works of three South African writers, focuses on the two (amongst many) major historic periods in the life of the present-day nation described as post-apartheid South Africa. The two periods, evident in the works of Andre Brink, Zakes Mda and Nadine Gordimer under review, are the reign of apartheid and the transition to a democratic multiracial society built on the principles of equality and the respect of the rights and freedoms of South Africans.  From both historical and literary standpoints, the transition to multiracialism is the outcome of the struggle of the oppressed black population of South Africa against the oppressive monolithic racist regime which ruled the country on an official governance policy which it called ‘Apartheid’. In order to enforce this inhumane worldview, the said racist regime used means of brutality and savagery with the intention of transforming the country into a ‘white nation’ that would belong to a minority-turned majority known as the Afrikaners. The often callous and gruesome acts of inhumanity perpetrated by the different racist apartheid regimes (that ruled South Africa from 1948-1994) became a major concern to the world at large and South African anti-apartheid writers in particular.  Thus this category of the country’s writers tended to use literature as an instrument of protest against racial discrimination, which brought untold hardship to the black population. Andre Brink, Zakes Mda, and Nadine Gordimer are among the writers whose works vividly trace the South African experience from apartheid to post-apartheid eras. Brink, Mda and Gordimer in their respective works attempt to portray the endeavours and challenges of reconstructing the new nation from the debris of close to four decades of the brutal regime. The main issues discussed in this article are analyzed from New Historicist and Postcolonial perspectives due to the peculiar postcolonial nature of South Africa.

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