scholarly journals The Representation of Religion in Religion Education: Notes from the South African Periphery

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulkader Tayob

Scholars of Religion Education (RE) have promoted a non-confessional approach to the teaching of religions that explores and examines the religious history of humankind, with due attention paid to its complexity and plurality. In this promotion, the public representation of religion and its impact on RE has not received sufficient attention. An often hegemonic representation of religion constitutes an important part of religion in public life. Moreover, this article argues that this representation is a phenomenon shared by secular, secularizing, and deeply religious societies. It shows that a Western understanding of secularization has guided dominant RE visions and practices, informed by a particular mode of representation. As an illustration of how education in and representation of religion merges in RE, the article analyses the South African policy document for religion education. While the policy promotes RE as an educational practice, it also makes room for a representation of religion. This article urges that various forms of the representation of religion should be more carefully examined in other contexts, particularly by those who want to promote a non-confessional and pluralistic approach to RE.

1957 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 1-5

It is unusual in Royal Society Biographical Memoirs to list the Public Appointments of Fellows like the Earl of Athlone, but it will not be possible for the reader to appreciate his very great versatility and industry unless the notice is prefaced by a certain amount of detail of his public life. Born in 1874 he was the youngest son of the first Duke of Teck and Princess Mary and was thus a great-grandson of King George III. He was a brother to Queen Mary and, therefore, a great-uncle to the present Queen. Known up to 1917 as His Serene Highness Prince Alexander, he was educated at Eton, leaving there to enter Sandhurst and in 1894 was gazetted a 2nd Lieutenant of the 7th Hussars. He saw a considerable amount of active service and fought right through the South African war and for these services he was awarded the D.S.O. In 1904 he married Princess Alice, the only daughter of the Duke of Albany who it will be remembered was Queen Victoria’s youngest son. From his marriage to the onset of the war in 1914, Prince Alexander was very active, and in view of the heavy commitments of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) he and his wife found themselves very busily occupied on royal occasions. He found time during this period, however, to play a decisive part in the affairs of the Middlesex Hospital, but reference to this will be made in detail later.


Author(s):  
Gerald O. West

Liberation biblical interpretation and postcolonial biblical interpretation have a long history of mutual constitution. This essay analyzes a particular context in which these discourses and their praxis have forged a third conversation partner: decolonial biblical interpretation. African and specifically South African biblical hermeneutics are the focus of reflections in this essay. The South African postcolony is a “special type” of postcolony, as the South African Communist Party argued in the 1960s. The essay charts the characteristics of the South African postcolony and locates decolonial biblical interpretation within the intersections of these features. Race, culture, land, economics, and the Bible are forged in new ways by contemporary social movements, such as #FeesMustFall. South African biblical studies continues to draw deeply on the legacy of South African black theology, thus reimagining African biblical studies as decolonial African biblical studies—a hybrid of African liberation and African postcolonial biblical interpretation.


2021 ◽  
pp. 54-65
Author(s):  
Liliia Didun ◽  
◽  
Zinaїda Kozyrieva ◽  

This paper offers an overview of dictionaries of Ukrainian complied by lexicographers of the Institute of the Ukrainian Language of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine since the Institute’s foundation; it is devoted to the Institute’s thirtieth anniversary. The article addresses a question as to whether modern Ukrainian academic lexicography is ready to meet the public life needs in independent Ukraine testifying to the devotion to tradition. The Slovnyk Ukraїnsʹkoї Movy (Ukrainian Dictionary, 1970—1980) in 11 volumes served as the basis for both the Slovnyk Ukraїns’koї Movy (Ukrainian Dictionary, 2012) and Slovnyk Ukraїnsʹkoї Movy v 11 Tomakh: Dodatkovyi Tom (Ukrainian Dictionary in 11 Volumes: Additional Volume, 2017) in 2 books, which reflects continuation of tradition of the academic explanatory lexicography. In 1999—2000, the academic edition of the Slovnyk Synonimiv Ukraїnsʹkoї Movy (Ukrainian Dictionary of Synonyms) in 2 volumes was published. It became a valuable reference publication in the national monolingual lexicography. In phraseography, the latest achievements are represented notably by the Frazeolohichnyi Slovnyk Ukraїns’koї Movy in 2 volumes (Ukrainian Phraseological Dictionary, 1993) and the Slovnyk Frazeolohizmiv Ukraїnsʹkoї Movy (Ukrainian Dictionary of Phraseologisms, 2003). The neographic direction is represented by dictionary materials Novi i Aktualizovani Slova ta Znachennia (New and Updated Words and Meanings, 2002-2010), whereas the Rosiisʹko-Ukraїnsʹkyi Slovnyk (Russian-Ukrainian Dictionary, 2011—2014) in 4 volumes covers the field of the translated academic lexicography. The two dictionaries are of great importance to the Ukrainian academic lexicography in general, namely the combined dictionary of the Ukraїnsʹkyi Leksykon Kintsia XVIII — Pochatku XXI Stolittia (Ukrainian Lexicon of the Late 18th — Early 21st Century: Dictionary-Index, 2017) in 3 volumes and Slovnyk Movy Tvorchoї Osobystosti XX — pochatku ХХІ Stolittia (Dictionary of the Language of Creative Personality in 20th — early 21st Century). The latter contains references significant for reflecting the lexical and phraseological structure of Standard Ukrainian. Finally, reestablished in 2003 the annual Lek sy ko hrafichnyi Biuletenʹ (Lexicographic Bulletin) covers issues related to the history of lexicography, making of dictionaries of different types, and the Ukrainian vocabulary, lexicology, and phraseology. Keywords: explanatory lexicography, source basis of lexicography, synonym dictionary, phraseological dictionary, combined dictionary, author’s lexicography, neography, linguopersonology.


Werkwinkel ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-73
Author(s):  
Ruben van Luijk

Abstract The article gives a brief ‘idea history’ of Hesperian melancholy a.k.a. Hesperian depression, the fleeting state of dejection that some humans and animals experience at dusk. The term was apparently coined by the South African poet and naturalist Eugene Marais (1871-1936), who noticed the phenomenon during his field observations of baboons. Marais' observations of primates were in the first place an attempt to shed more light on the evolutionary roots of the human psyche and its afflictions - not in the least his own. A personal focus seems probable in his notes on the use of euphoria-inducing substances among animals and humans, which are an evident reflection of his own morphine addiction; but also in his writings about Hesperian depression. During his lifetime, Marais only published about Hesperian depression twice, once in a very concise article in English, and once in more elaborate form in Afrikaans. The term ‘Hesperian depression’ only became more current when his manuscript on primate behaviour, The Soul of the Ape, was posthumously published in 1963. Since then, the term and its description sometimes appear in (popular) publications of paleobiologists and scholars of the evolution of human behaviour. In psychology and psychiatry, the term was introduced by the eminent American psychoanalyst William G. Niederlander, who presented it in a 1971 article in Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association as an idea of his own. It is evident, however, that he took his cue from Marais, who thus was posthumously plagiarized.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nirmala Dorasamy ◽  
Soma Pillay

This purpose of this article is to explore impediments to effective whistleblowing as a strategy for promoting anti-corruption practices within the South African public sector. Corruption, which violates the public service code of conduct; deters foreign investment, increases the cost of public service delivery, undermines the fight against poverty and unnecessarily burdens the criminal justice system. The article addresses the question on whether legislation on whistleblowing is adequate to encourage whistleblowing in the public sector. A review of literature determines that the effective implementation of whistleblowing legislation is largely dependent on addressing the challenges identified in the article. The quantitative research method was employed in the study to ascertain the views of employees in the public sector on whistleblowing. Empirical findings confirm the hypothesis that the protection of whistleblowers through legislation is inadequate to encourage whistleblowing. The article provides a conceptual framework for the effective achievement of the intended outcomes of whistleblowing in the public sector.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Razeen Davids ◽  
Thabiet Jardine ◽  
Nicola Marais ◽  
Julian C. Jacobs ◽  
Sajith Sebastian

The seventh annual report of the South African Renal Registry summarises the 2018 data on kidney replacement therapy (KRT) for patients with kidney failure in South Africa. In December 2018, the number of patients who were being treated with chronic dialysis or transplantation stood at 10 730, a prevalence of 186 per million population (pmp). Most patients are treated with haemodialysis in the private healthcare sector, where the prevalence was 839 pmp. In the public sector, which serves 85% of the South African population, the prevalence of KRT (67 pmp) remained below the level reported for 1994. Limpopo and Mpumalanga remain the most under-served provinces and Blacks the most under-served population group. The Western Cape province had the highest public sector treatment rates by a large margin and was also where most of the country’s public sector kidney transplants were performed.


Author(s):  
Moses M. Gasela

Background: Those in leadership must always envision endless possibilities even in the event of what appear to be insurmountable problems. Leadership exists to solve problems in any given context. Leadership is a determinant of value creation and sustainable competitive advantage through superior organisational performance in any organisation. Yet, pervasive leadership challenges are prevalent in the South African public entities, and not a lot of research has been done in this area. Hence, this research was an attempt to determine the influence of leadership on organisational performance during strategy implementation in the Northern Cape based public entities.Aim: To empirically investigate the relationship between leadership and organisational performance during strategy implementation in the Northern Cape provincial public entities in South Africa.Setting: Public entities in the Northern Cape province with regards to relationships amongst financial and human resources, poor organisational culture, leadership, organisational performance, as well as service delivery.Method: A survey design and mixed methods were applied in this study. A survey questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from a simple random sample of 38 executives of the public entities and government departments in the Northern Cape province. The response rate was 78%. The t-test, correlational analysis, multiple regression analysis were performed. These were complemented by content analysis of government’s strategic documents.Results: It was found that unqualified leadership and insufficient financial and human resources affect strategy implementations and organisational performance negatively. Most entities have problems with leadership capacity, which creates strategy implementation challenges. Weak Boards in some entities translate into weak leadership because there is no direction in the entities.Conclusion: Unqualified leadership affect organisational performance negatively. This implies that the public sector entities might fail to fulfil their mandate to serve the public. Recommendations are made to minimise the challenges of leadership in the South African public entities to increase organisational performance. When appointing Board members, the quality of the members in terms of qualifications should be considered. Board members, apart from having competence and requisite skills to execute the mandate in the entity, should also be visionary and dedicated to the province. They should provide ethical leadership and corporate governance both at the strategic and governance level. Ethical and honest leadership which is not tainted by corruption (real or perceived) is of critical importance in any organisation and setting.


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