New social bandits? A comparative analysis of gangsterism in the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-196
Author(s):  
Theodore Petrus ◽  
Irvin Kinnes

Gang violence has been extensively highlighted as an issue of national concern in South Africa. Gangs also pose concerns about the social contexts of the communities in which they are found. The Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces have had the most prolific occurrences of gangsterism. Here gangs have demonstrated unique characteristics that set them apart from gangs in other areas. This article examines the context of gangsterism in the selected provinces by means of a comparative analysis. The purpose is to provide some strategies for effective intervention. The discussion also interrogates how or why intervention efforts may have failed and what could be improved in order to strengthen the chances of success of future interventions in affected communities.

Koedoe ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Heyns

A population of Xiphinema bolandium from the Baviaanskloof Wilderness Area in the Eastern Cape Province was studied, and the four juvenile stages described and figured for the first time. New distribution records are listed from several localities in the Western Cape Province, mostly from vineyards and peach orchards, as well as from fynbos.


Author(s):  
Michelle De Jong ◽  
Asha George ◽  
Tanya Jacobs

Abstract Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) affects babies born to mothers who consume alcohol while pregnant. South Africa has the highest prevalence of FASD in the world. We review the social determinants underpinning FASD in South Africa and add critical insight from an intersectional feminist perspective. We undertook a scoping review, guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews guidelines. Drawing from EBSCOhost and PubMed, 95 articles were screened, with 21 selected for analysis. We used the intersectionality wheel to conceptualize how the social and structural determinants of FASD identified by the literature are interconnected and indicative of broader inequalities shaping the women and children affected. Key intersecting social determinants that facilitate drinking during pregnancy among marginalized populations in South Africa documented in the existing literature include social norms and knowledge around drinking and drinking during pregnancy, alcohol addiction and biological dependence, gender-based violence, inadequate access to contraception and abortion services, trauma and mental health, and moralization and stigma. Most of the studies found were quantitative. From an intersectional perspective, there was limited analysis of how the determinants identified intersect with one another in ways that exacerbate inequalities and how they relate to the broader structural and systemic factors undermining healthy pregnancies. There was also little representation of pregnant women’s own perspectives or discussion about the power dynamics involved. While social determinants are noted in the literature on FASD in South Africa, much more is needed from an intersectionality lens to understand the perspectives of affected women, their social contexts and the nature of the power relations involved. A critical stance towards the victim/active agent dichotomy that often frames women who drink during pregnancy opens up space to understand the nuances needed to support the women involved while also illustrating the contextual barriers to drinking cessation that need to be addressed through holistic approaches.


Author(s):  
Jessica Stephenson

Born in 1934 in Bedford, Eastern Cape, South Africa, William (Bill) Stewart Ainslie was a painter and educator, and the founder of a number of visual art programs and workshops that countered discriminatory racial and educational policies in apartheid-era South Africa. These programs encouraged students to work in abstract and other modernist idioms not practiced in the country at the time. Until his untimely death at age 55, Ainslie melded his career as an artist with his vision of art as a means to combat apartheid. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ainslie fostered the only multiracial art programs in the country, culminating in a formal art school, the non-profit Johannesburg Art Foundation (1982). He helped found the Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA) and the art schools Fuba Academy (1978), Funda Center (1983) (funda means "learn" in Xhosa), and the Alexandra Arts Centre (1986). The generation of modern African artists and educators trained at these institutions shaped the course of art after apartheid. Ainslie also organized short-term workshops, most notably the Thupelo Art Workshop (thupelo means "to teach by example" in Southern Sotho) in 1983. Thupelo linked local and international artists and focused on abstraction, a radical departure from the social realist style expected of politically engaged South African art of the 1980s.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
MORGAN B. PFEIFFER ◽  
JAN A. VENTER ◽  
COLLEEN T. DOWNS

SummaryDeclines in Old World vulture populations have been linked to anthropogenic pressures. To assess these threats, the social dimensions of vulture conservation must be explored. Prior research in Africa focused on commercial farmers’ perceptions of vultures and identified that small stock farmers used poison more than large stock farmers to deter livestock predators. However, the vulnerable Cape Vulture Gyps coprotheres breeds throughout communal farmland in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Consequently, community interviews were conducted within the foraging range of the Msikaba Cape Vulture colony, separating regions according to the amount of transformed land. Residents in the least transformed land region perceived the smallest reductions in livestock ownership over the past ten years, while residents of the moderately transformed region perceived the greatest reductions in livestock ownership. Livestock carcasses were reported to be available for vultures at ‘informal vulture restaurants’. Arrangement of livestock carcasses was found to be independent of land use; however type of carcass consumed varied. None of the respondents stated they used poison to eliminate livestock predators. More respondents cited illegal poaching of vultures for traditional medicine as a threat, although the majority stated that vultures benefited the community.


1998 ◽  
Vol 88 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.B. Edwards

AbstractThe seasonal abundance and rates of parasitism of three species of Mesoclanis seed flies was studied in South Africa. The three species occur on Chrysanthemoides monilifera, and were recorded during most months of the year, whenever C. monilifera was flowering. At three sites in KwaZulu-Natal, numbers of eggs per capitulum of Mesoclanis polana Munro were highest on C. monilifera rotundata between June and November (winter/spring), towards the end of the main flowering flush. Parasitism of M. polana was between 50% and 90% for most of the year. Two other species of Mesoclanis (M. magnipalpis Bezzi and M. dubia Walker) occurred together on C. m. rotundata in the Eastern Cape (St Francis Bay), where parasitism during the year was between 55% and 95%. Peak numbers of eggs per capitulum (M. magnipalpis and M. dubia combined) occurred in May/June (winter), in the latter part of the main flowering flush. Mesoclanis magnipalpis was the only species recorded on C. m. pisifera in De Hoop Nature Reserve (Western Cape), where there was only one peak of oviposition (May/June), coinciding with the short and discrete flowering period of this subspecies. Parasitism was between 50% and 65%. At least nine species of parasitoid were reared from immature Mesoclanis stages. Eurytoma sp. (Eurytomidae) was a dominant parasitoid at all sites. Results are discussed in relation to the possible effectiveness of species of Mesoclanis seed flies as biological control agents of C. monilifera in Australia.


2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele S. Moses

The author’s primary aims are to clarify the differing rationales for affirmative action that have emerged in five nations—France, India, South Africa, the United States, and Brazil—and to make the case for the most compelling rationales, whether instrumentally or morally based. She examines the different social contexts surrounding the establishment and public discussion of each nation’s policy. Next, she examines four justifications for affirmative action in these nations: remediation, economics, diversity, and social justice. She offers philosophical analysis of the justifications for affirmative action in each country and synthesizes federal and state legislation, court decisions, news media sources, and research-based scholarship. She argues that the social justice rationale ought to be invoked more centrally, underscoring affirmative action’s role in fostering a democratic society.


2010 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
Author(s):  
C Jacobs ◽  
D A Sewry

After the so-called “dot-com crash” of the Internet in the early 2000s, tertiary level student enrolments in IT-related subjects began to experience a significant decline both in international countries and South Africa. The paper replicates research done in the Western Cape, South Africa, by Seymour et al. (2005) [20], in which grade 12 learner inclinations to study Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) at tertiary level were analysed and underlying factors affecting their interest in the subjects were determined. The study analyses the “misguided” perceptions that learners and students have of these subjects; the implications of the decline in enrolments on students, educational sectors and industry; and determines a set of underlying factors that influence learners in their attitudes toward further degrees in IT, starting from the secondary level of education. The research compares South African Eastern Cape learner perceptions with those from the Western Cape study and establishes three to four years later, that the reasons behind the decline in IT enrolments are still influenced by an underlying demographic and digital divide.


Bothalia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. A. Snijman

Cyrtanthus aureolinus Snijman is a new, rare species of fire lily, which is localized in a vlei on the northern slopes of the Groot Swartberg, Western Cape. The upright or slightly spreading, yellow to cream-coloured flowers and the perigone tube which gradually widens to the throat suggest that it is closely related to the Western Cape endemic, C.  ochroleucus (Herb.) Burch, ex Steud., and C. mackenii Hook.f., a variable species from southern KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape. The species differs mainly by the shape, size and position of the tepals and the length of the filaments. Cyrtanthus mackenii var. cooperi (Baker) R.A.Dyer is raised to subspecies rank as C.  mackenii subsp. cooperi (Baker) Snijman. Its hysteranthous leaf habit and grassland habitat differ from the riverine habitat of the evergreen C. mackenii subsp. mackenii. Described in detail are C. aureolinus, C. ochroleucus, and C. mackenii.


Author(s):  
Mary-Louise Penrith

The histories of the two swine fevers in southern Africa differ widely. Classical swine fever (hog cholera) has been known in the northern hemisphere since 1830 and it is probable that early cases of ‘swine fever’ in European settlers’ pigs in southern Africa were accepted to be that disease. It was only in 1921 that the first description of African swine fever as an entity different from classical swine fever was published after the disease had been studied in settlers’ pigs in Kenya. Shortly after that, reports of African swine fever in settlers’ pigs emerged from South Africa and Angola. In South Africa, the report related to pigs in the north-eastern part of the country. Previously (in 1905 or earlier) a disease assumed to be classical swine fever caused high mortality among pigs in the Western Cape and was only eradicated in 1918. African swine fever was found over the following years to be endemic in most southern African countries. Classical swine fever, however, apart from an introduction with subsequent endemic establishment in Madagascar and a number of introductions into Mauritius, the last one in 2000, had apparently remained absent from the region until it was diagnosed in the Western and subsequently the Eastern Cape of South Africa in 2005. It was eradicated by 2007. The history of these diseases in the southern African region demonstrates their importance and their potential for spread over long distances, emphasising the need for improved management of both diseases wherever they occur.


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