scholarly journals Patterns of blunt force homicide in the West Metropole of the City of Cape Town, South Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 113 (5/6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtnee Clark ◽  
Calvin G. Mole ◽  
Marise Heyns ◽  
◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The West ◽  
Blunt Force ◽  
Blunt Force Trauma ◽  
Lack Of Information ◽  
Salt River ◽  
The City ◽  
Ballistic Trauma

There is currently a lack of information regarding the prevalence of and characteristics associated with blunt force trauma related homicides in South Africa. Information relating to the patterns of blunt force trauma could assist in the development and implementation of interventions targeted at specific areas or individuals as well as direct future research towards areas in need of investigation. This study is a 5-year retrospective review of autopsy reports obtained from Salt River Mortuary (Cape Town, South Africa). The prevalence of blunt force trauma was considered for unnatural deaths with a focus on homicide. The patterns of homicidal blunt force trauma are also presented. A total of 15 519 autopsy cases was analysed. In 1198 (7.72%) of these cases, the cause of death was found to be blunt force trauma and 828 (5.32%) of these cases were classified as homicides. Approximately 11% of blunt force homicide cases occurred in combination with sharp and/or ballistic trauma. Men from poor socio-economic areas were shown to be most at risk of blunt force homicide in the City of Cape Town.

scholarly journals Perspectives of wild medicine harvesters from Cape Town, South Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 113 (9/10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leif Petersen ◽  
Andrew M. Reid ◽  
Eugene J. Moll ◽  
Marc T. Hockings
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
National Park ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Traditional Healers ◽  
Cape Floristic Region ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Conservation Areas ◽  
Economic Survival ◽  
Wild Resources ◽  
The City

Cape Town is a fast-growing cityscape in the Cape Floristic Region in South Africa with 24 formally protected conservation areas including the World Heritage Table Mountain National Park. These sites have been protected and managed as critical sites for local biodiversity, representing potentially one-third of all Cape Floristic Region flora species and 18% of South Africa’s plant diversity. Cape Town is also inhabited by a rapidly growing culturally and economically diverse citizenry with distinct and potentially conflicting perspectives on access to, and management of, local natural resources. In a qualitative study of 58 locally resident traditional healers of distinct cultural groups, we examined motivations underlying the generally illicit activity of harvesting of wild resources from Cape Town protected areas. Resource harvester motivations primarily link to local economic survival, health care and cultural links to particular resources and practices, ‘access for all’ outlooks, and wholesale profit-seeking perspectives. We describe these motivations, contrast them with the current formal, legal and institutional perspectives for biodiversity protection in the city, and propose managerial interventions that may improve sustainability of ongoing harvest activities.

scholarly journals Urban social movements in South Africa today: Its meaning for theological education and the church

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan F. De Beer
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Theological Education ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
Gustavo Gutierrez ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

In the past decade, significant social movements emerged in South Africa, in response to specific urban challenges of injustice or exclusion. This article will interrogate the meaning of such urban social movements for theological education and the church. Departing from a firm conviction that such movements are irruptions of the poor, in the way described by Gustavo Gutierrez and others, and that movements of liberation residing with, or in a commitment to, the poor, should be the locus of our theological reflection, this article suggests that there is much to be gained from the praxis of urban social movements, in disrupting, informing and shaping the praxis of both theological education and the church. I will give special consideration to Ndifuna Ukwazi and the Reclaim the City campaign in Cape Town, the Social Justice Coalition in Cape Town, and Abahlali baseMjondolo based in Durban, considering these as some of the most important and exciting examples of liberatory praxes in South Africa today. I argue that theological education and educators, and a church committed to the Jesus who came ‘to liberate the oppressed’, ignore these irruptions of the Spirit at our own peril.

From East Harlem to Cape Town: Tupac Shakur’s legacy as a globalised oppositional repertoire

Ethnography ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146613812092337
Author(s):  
Dariusz Dziewanski
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Cultural Resource ◽  
East Harlem ◽  
Shared Experiences ◽  
Street Culture ◽  
Cultural Strategies ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

For marginalised people living in Cape Town, South Africa, rapper Tupac Shakur represents a globalised oppositional repertoire that people draw on for strength and esteem. The study focused on 22 purposefully sampled interviews from township communities throughout Cape Town, which were conducted within a broader multi-year research project that focused on street culture and gangs in the city. Perhaps the most obvious narrative emerging from the research was that of male gang members connecting to the defiant masculine aggression often projected through Tupac’s music. But research also found that gang girls can also draw on the oppositional power he embodies as a street soldier, leveraging it in order to push back against their physical and material insecurity through performances of street culture. There are also ways that Tupac, as the globalised ghetto prophet, serves as a cultural resource for those trying to resist the streets and participation in gangs. The continued resonance of his legacy and image among township residents in Cape Town hints at the links they find in common with disenfranchised groups in American ghettos, and the myriad of similarly segregated urban spaces around the world. Many such groups pursue common cultural strategies to counter their shared experiences with disenfranchisement and disempowerment.

scholarly journals The transport of atmospheric NO<sub>x</sub> and HNO<sub>3</sub> over Cape Town

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 559-575 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. Abiodun ◽  
A. M. Ojumu ◽  
S. Jenner ◽  
T. V. Ojumu
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Atmospheric Pollutants ◽  
Atmospheric Conditions ◽  
High Concentration ◽  
Budget Analysis ◽  
The City ◽  
Pollution Events

Abstract. Cape Town, the most popular tourist city in Africa, usually experiences air pollution with unpleasant odour in winter. Previous studies have associated the pollution with local emission of pollutants within the city. The present study examines the transport of atmospheric pollutants (NOx and HNO3) over South Africa and shows how the transport of pollutants from the Mpumalanga Highveld, a major South African industrial area, may contribute to the pollution in Cape Town. The study analysed observation data (2001–2008) from the Cape Town air-quality network and simulation data (2001–2004) from a regional climate model (RegCM) over southern Africa. The simulation accounts for the influence of complex topography, atmospheric conditions, and atmospheric chemistry on emission and transport of pollutants over southern Africa. Flux budget analysis was used to examine whether Cape Town is a source or sink for NOx and HNO3 during the extreme pollution events. The results show that extreme pollution events in Cape Town are associated with the lower level (surface – 850 hPa) transport of NOx from the Mpumalanga Highveld to Cape Town, and with a tongue of high concentration of HNO3 that extends from the Mpumalanga Highveld to Cape Town along the south coast of South Africa. The prevailing atmospheric conditions during the extreme pollution events feature an upper-level (700 hPa) anticyclone over South Africa and a lower-level col over Cape Town. The anticyclone induces a strong subsidence motion, which prevents vertical mixing of the pollutants and caps high concentration of pollutants close to the surface as they are transported from the Mpumalanga Highveld toward Cape Town. The col accumulates the pollutants over the city. This study shows that Cape Town can be a sink for the NOx and HNO3 during extreme pollution events and suggests that the accumulation of pollutants transported from other areas (e.g. the Mpumalanga Highveld) may contribute to the air pollution in Cape Town.

scholarly journals The bus rapid transit system: A service quality dimension of commuter uptake in Cape Town, South Africa

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Prince D. Ugo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Service Quality ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Stated Preference ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Bus Rapid Transit ◽  
Rapid Transit ◽  
Transit System ◽  
Area Of Interest ◽  
The City

This study evaluated commuter uptake of the bus rapid transit (BRT) system in Cape Town,South Africa. As a stated preference survey was not carried out prior to the launch of the new BRT system in the City of Cape Town, it became difficult to assess commuters’ preferences,which would have provided City policymakers and planners with an understanding of customer satisfaction of the proposed bus service. The commuting trend of the BRT system in the City indicates that tickets sales and utilisation by commuters is gradually picking up, but one would have expected high commuter engagement in terms of the modernity profile of the BRT system. This study investigated commuters’ (n = 260) satisfaction levels with 30 service quality variables on a self-rated questionnaire, using quantitative research methodology.The study result showed that passengers were not satisfied with the transport fare and the availability or accessibility of ticket sales outlets. In the context of this study, this result implies that the ‘responsiveness and affordability’ variable of the service quality dimensions should be an area of interest and review to City of Cape Town policymakers and planners. Service quality trends in public transport were also highlighted.

scholarly journals Making Place, Making Home: Lesbian Queer World-Making in Cape Town

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Holland-Muter
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Place Making ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Black Lesbian ◽  
The One ◽  
The City

Abstract: Two dominant, contrasting, narratives characterise public discourse on queer sexualities in Cape Town. On the one hand, the city is touted as the gay capital of South Africa. This, however, is troubled by a binary framing of white zones of safety and black zones of danger (Melanie JUDGE, 2018), which simultaneously brings the ‘the black lesbian’ into view through the lens of discrimination, violence and death. This article explores lesbian, queer and gay women’s narratives of their everyday lives in Cape Town. Their counter narratives reveal how they ‘make’ Cape Town home in relation to racialized and classed heteronormativies. These grey the racialised binary of territorial safety and danger, and produce modes of lesbian constructions of home, notably the modes of embedded lesbianism, homonormativity and borderlands. These reveal lesbian queer life worlds which are ephemeral, contingent and fractured, making known hybrid, contrasting and competing narratives of the city.

scholarly journals Multi-locus sequence analyses reveal a clonal L. borgpetersenii genotype in a heterogeneous invasive Rattus spp. community across the City of Johannesburg, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Hamish Moseley ◽  
Kovashnee Naidoo ◽  
Armanda Bastos ◽  
Liezl Retief ◽  
John Frean ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Infection Prevalence ◽  
Invasion History ◽  
Sequence Analyses ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Significant Public Health ◽  
The City

Abstract Background Rattus spp. are frequently implicated as key reservoir hosts for leptospirosis, one of the most common, but neglected, bacterial zoonoses in the world. Although leptospirosis is predicted to be a significant public health threat in Africa, studies from the continent are limited. Methods Rattus spp. (n=171) were sampled (January-May 2016) across the City of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest inland metropole. Rattus spp. genetic diversity was evaluated by full length (1140 bp) cyt b sequencing of 42 samples. For comparison, a further 12 R. norvegicus samples collected in Cape Town, South Africa’s largest coastal metropole, were also genotyped. Leptospira infections were identified and genotyped using real-time PCR and multi-locus (lfb1, secY, lipL41) DNA sequencing. Results Five R. norvegicus haplotypes were identified across Johannesburg, four of which have not previously been detected in South Africa, and one in Cape Town. Across Johannesburg we identified a Leptospira spp. infection prevalence of 44% (75/171) and noted significant differences in the prevalence between administrative regions within the metropole. Multi-locus sequence analyses identified a clonal genotype consistent with L. borgpetersenii serogroup Javanica (serovar Ceylonica).Discussion The prevalence of infection identified in this study is amongst the highest detected in Rattus spp. in similar contexts across Africa. Despite the complex invasion history suggested by the heterogeneity in R. norvegicus haplotypes identified in Johannesburg, a single L. borgpetersenii genotype was identified in all infected rodents. The lack of L. interrogans in a rodent community dominated by R. norvegicus is notable given the widely recognised host-pathogen association between these species and evidence for L. interrogans infection in R. norvegicus in Cape Town. It is likely that environmental conditions (cold, dry winters) in Johannesburg may limit the transmission of L. interrogans. Spatial heterogeneity in prevalence suggest that local factors, such as land use, influence disease risk in the metropole. Conclusion In South Africa, as in other African countries, leptospirosis is likely underdiagnosed. The high prevalence of infection in urban rodents in Johannesburg suggest that further work is urgently needed to understand the potential public health risk posed by this neglected zoonotic pathogen.

scholarly journals Multi-locus sequence analyses reveal a clonal L. borgpetersenii genotype in a heterogeneous invasive Rattus spp. community across the City of Johannesburg, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Hamish Moseley ◽  
Kovashnee Naidoo ◽  
Armanda Bastos ◽  
Liezl Retief ◽  
John Frean ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Disease Risk ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Infection Prevalence ◽  
Invasion History ◽  
Sequence Analyses ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Significant Public Health ◽  
The City

Abstract BackgroundRattus spp. are frequently implicated as key reservoir hosts for leptospirosis, one of the most common, but neglected, bacterial zoonoses in the world. Although leptospirosis is predicted to be a significant public health threat in Africa, studies from the continent are limited. Methods Rattus spp. (n=171) were sampled (January-May 2016) across the City of Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest inland metropole. Rattus spp. genetic diversity was evaluated by full length (1140 bp) cyt b sequencing of 42 samples. For comparison, a further 12 R. norvegicus samples collected in Cape Town, South Africa’s largest coastal metropole, were also genotyped. Leptospira infections were identified and genotyped using real-time PCR and multi-locus (lfb1, secY, lipL41) DNA sequencing. Results Five R. norvegicus haplotypes were identified across Johannesburg, four of which have not previously been detected in South Africa, and one in Cape Town. Across Johannesburg we identified a Leptospira spp. infection prevalence of 44% (75/171) and noted significant differences in the prevalence between administrative regions within the metropole. Multi-locus sequence analyses identified a clonal genotype consistent with L. borgpetersenii serogroup Javanica (serovar Ceylonica).DiscussionThe prevalence of infection identified in this study is amongst the highest detected in Rattus spp. in similar contexts across Africa. Despite the complex invasion history suggested by the heterogeneity in R. norvegicus haplotypes identified in Johannesburg, a single L. borgpetersenii genotype was identified in all infected rodents. The lack of L. interrogans in a rodent community dominated by R. norvegicus is notable, given the widely recognised host-pathogen association between these species and evidence for L. interrogans infection in R. norvegicus in Cape Town. It is likely that environmental conditions (cold, dry winters) in Johannesburg may limit the transmission of L. interrogans. Spatial heterogeneity in prevalence suggest that local factors, such as land use, influence disease risk in the metropole. ConclusionIn South Africa, as in other African countries, leptospirosis is likely underdiagnosed. The high prevalence of infection in urban rodents in Johannesburg suggest that further work is urgently needed to understand the potential public health risk posed by this neglected zoonotic pathogen.

scholarly journals In bodies and homes: Gendering citizenship in Southern African cities

Urbani izziv ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol Supplement (30) ◽  
pp. 37-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie Oldfield ◽  
Netsai Sarah Mathsaka ◽  
Elaine Salo ◽  
Ann Schlyter
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Body Politics ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
African Cities ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Urban Contexts ◽  
The City

How do the everyday contexts in which ordinary women struggle to access and maintain a place on the peripheries of the city shape experiences of citizenship? This paper explores this question in George, a periurban Lusaka neighbourhood in Zambia and through experiences of Zimbabwean migrant women’s negotiation of a place on the peri-urban edges of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. In the logics of citizen-subjects, the experiences of these groups of women should be poles apart, the first with rights imbued in citizenship, the second migrants without. Here instead, we demonstrate the ways in which gendered political subjectivities embed in the hard, lived realities of home. In placing gender and everyday body politics at the forefront of our analysis, the paper makes visible the micro-realities of making home. We demonstrate that an assumed recursive relationship between citizenship and home, as a physical and social place in the city, is problematic. Building on debates on citizenship and its gendering in post-colonial African urban contexts, we demonstrate instead that citizenship and its gendered contestations and emergent forms in Southern African are crafted in quotidian activities in homes and everyday city contexts.

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