Depicting the Vhavenda Women Initiation Schools and Their Cultural Practices in Limpopo Province

2022 ◽  
pp. 341-364
Author(s):  
Rendani Tshifhumulo
Keyword(s):  
Human Physiology ◽  
Life Skills ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
Knowledge Preservation

Growing up for many African people has been marked by rites of passage. Vhavenda girls attend various initiation schools that served as rites of passage from one stage to another. The purpose of this study was to explore the initiation schools attended by Vhavenda girls for knowledge preservation. The study is qualitative where data was collected from 15 traditional knowledge holders purposefully using interviews as a tool to collect data. The study revealed that girls attended different schools at various stages from Musevhetho, followed by Vhusha then Domba, which is divided into Tshikanda, Ludodo, and Tshilalandoima. All these schools served a critical purpose on the development of a girl child through to adulthood stage. Knowledge shared in the school covered mostly life skills and human physiology. With the introduction of formal schools, the former was discarded and labeled barbaric leaving a void and opening a door to many social challenges faced by girl children within the Vhavenda community members.

scholarly journals The influence of cultural practices on the HIV and AIDS pandemic in Zambia

2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nolipher Moyo ◽  
Julian C. Müller
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Rites Of Passage ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Bible Study ◽  
Culturally Sensitive ◽  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
African Culture ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Aids Pandemic ◽  
Shed Light

Culture plays a significant role in people’s lives in Zambia and in Africa as a whole. Consequently, there is a need to take Zambian or African culture seriously in order to look at the salient elements of cultural practices in rites of passage that influence the spread of HIV and AIDS. This article analyses four rites of passage associated with birth, puberty, marriage and death. There are numerous rites of passage in Zambian culture. Some of these rites help to curb the spread of HIV and AIDS, whilst others exacerbate the spread of the virus. Using the Reformed Church in Zambia Bible Study Method of Subgroups, discussions were held that allowed victims of cultural practices to tell their stories using the narrative model. This article sought to shed light on cultural practices that exacerbate HIV and AIDS and more importantly, provide culturally sensitive alternatives to these harmful practices.

scholarly journals Perceptions of community members towards youth abusing alcohol in the Capricorn District of the Limpopo Province, South Africa

Curationis ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
T.M. Mothiba ◽  
R.N. Malema
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Alcohol Abuse ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Physical Dependence ◽  
Antisocial Behaviour ◽  
The Body ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Physical Damage

Alcohol abuse is a problem in South Africa and it has negative effects on the wellbeing of individuals, families, friends, work associates and neighbours. Alcohol produces both psychological and physical dependence. Gillies (1999:112) indicated that alcoholism usually interferes with the ability to socialize, work and may lead to much other destructive behaviour. It was further stated that people who are addicted to alcohol often have a low self-esteem, immaturity, are easily frustrated, and have difficulty in solving personal problems. This study investigated the perceptions of community members towards youth abusing alcohol and identified, among others, anti-social behaviour, poor interpersonal relationships, family disorganization, poor integration with family members and physical damage as the major concerns. An attempt was also made to develop strategies that can be used to overcome the problems of alcohol abuse by youth. Design and Method: A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive and contextual research design was followed in this study for the participants to describe their perceptions regarding the phenomenon in question (Brink, 2006:113). Data were collected through individual unstructured interviews in one village of the Capricorn District of the Limpopo Province. The researchers employed the principles of Guba and Lincoln (1993) cited in De Vos (1998:331) relating to trustworthiness and adhered to the ethical standards as set by the Democratic Nurses Association of South Africa (DENOSA, 1998:2.3.2).Findings: Five themes and seven categories emerged from the data analysis, using Tech’s open coding approach (1990), as outlined in De Vos (1998:343), namely, antisocial behaviour, poor interpersonal behaviour, physical damage, poor progress in life processes and effects of alcohol on the body. To address the problem of alcohol abuse by youth in one village (the study area) of the Capricorn District in the Limpopo Province and other villages the study recommends that educational and recreational facilities and the formation of youth structures should be established.

scholarly journals An asset-based participatory community analysis of natural hazards in Naphuno, Greater Tzaneen Municipality, Limpopo province, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Allucia L. Shokane ◽  
Hanna Nel
Keyword(s):  
Natural Hazards ◽  
Community Analysis ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Individual Interviews ◽  
Resilient Communities ◽  
Asset Based Community Development

Natural hazards disrupt the daily lives of people and communities. Consequently, social workers, like any other stakeholders, deal with community predicaments arising from the effects of natural hazards. The social relief distress (SRD) programme of government utilises needs-based, top-down government-driven interventions in communities affected by natural hazards, focused on what communities lack, as opposed to what communities have. This research study involved a community that experienced natural hazards, such as flooding, hail, lightning and windstorms, which destroyed property and livelihoods during the period 2014–2015. Eight experts and 12 affected community members participated in a qualitative participatory action research analysis study between 2016 and 2017. Guided by the asset-based community development (ABCD) approach, the affected community participated in a collaborative manner in the analysis of the consequences of natural hazards within the community. Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews and focus group discussions, and analysed thematically. The findings confirmed the traumatic effects of natural hazards, such as loss of property, crops and livestock, physical injuries and even death. The main finding established that natural hazards should be managed in a collaborative way between formal experts of natural hazards and community members through ABCD principles and methods in building resilient communities.

scholarly journals "So We Thought not to Lose Our Background Completely": Agency and Belonging among South Sudanese Acholi in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Ryan O'Byrne
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
The South ◽  
Community Members ◽  
South Sudanese ◽  
Background Population

<p>The members of the South Sudanese Acholi population in New Zealand are part of the burgeoning number of refugees worldwide. As such, they are at risk of having their personal experiences submerged in the stereotypical view of ‘the refugee experience’. The South Sudanese Acholi community are a small but distinct ethnic sub-community within the wider South Sudanese refugee-background population in New Zealand. One of my primary aims in this thesis is to represent the specifically-situated experiences of individuals from this group within the broader contexts of refugee resettlement. A fundamental aspect of these experiences is the ambiguous and often contradictory senses of belonging which community members describe. Using analysis of the narratives through which these individuals make sense of their resettlement experiences, I determine agency to be an important consideration in experiences of belonging and, therefore, I argue that the role of agency to belonging should be more widely recognised. In this thesis I demonstrate how various attempts by South Sudanese Acholi at cultural (re)production in New Zealand are intimately linked to the many difficulties these individuals experience in resettlement, and particularly to how these difficulties impact the development and maintenance of a sense of belonging. Analyses of individual and common factors demonstrate the importance of belonging to experiences of resettlement. This is apparent throughout all aspects of South Sudanese Acholi’s everyday lives. This thesis is organised around the interlinking nature of three aspects of everyday life: marriage, cultural performance, and discursive practices. A central unifying factor is that each of these aspects of every day experience can be understood as attempts in developing more stable senses of belonging. Data was collected through a combination of participant observation and unstructured interviews. Participant observation was primarily undertaken among the Sudanese Acholi Cultural Association (SACA), a community-organised Acholi cultural performance group. Although not exclusively the focus of this research, the members of this group comprise the basis of my research participants and their resettlement experiences form the basis for my results. A focus on participants’ stories about their lives in resettlement allows analysis of the importance of their everyday practices and perceptions to the ways in which they experience and understand their lives in New Zealand and demonstrates that the on-going interaction between their experiences as refugees and their resettlement experiences are mutually reinforcing. I suggest that if refugees’ own voices and opinions are to be accurately represented, a holistic perspective of the full range of their experiences is required. The ambivalent, multiple, and multifaceted nature of belonging described by South Sudanese Acholi individuals’ is a defining feature of their resettlement experiences. I suggest that South Sudanese Acholi attempts at performing and reproducing their customary cultural practices in New Zealand serve primarily as creative means of adapting to the conditions of resettlement in ways which allow the construction, development, and maintenance of feelings of belonging among community members. However, I also determine that lack of agency is especially important for understanding the ambivalence about belonging South Sudanese Acholi demonstrate when speaking of these resettlement experiences. I argue that behind many of the everyday actions taken by refugees are simultaneous attempts to rediscover a sense of agency and to recreate a foundation for belonging.</p>

scholarly journals Beyond knowledge acquisition: factors influencing family planning utilization among women in conservative communities in Rural Burundi.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
SONIA HAKIZIMANA ◽  
Emmanuel Nene Odjidja
Keyword(s):  
Family Planning ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Fertility Rate ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Unintended Pregnancies ◽  
Negative Beliefs ◽  
Contraceptive Prevalence ◽  
Desired Family Size

Abstract BackgroundWith a fertility rate of 5.4 children per woman, Burundi has been ranked as seventh highest country with the highest fertility rate in the world. Family planning is known to allow couples to achieve the desired family size, appropriate space birth and the limitation of pregnancies. Also, family planning can contribute to mitigating some health issues such as unintended pregnancies and abortions all of which, are often associated with multi-parity. In conservative community in rural Burundi, knowledge on family planning is high and such services are free yet utilisation is low. Employing a mixed methods, this study first quantifies contraceptive prevalence and second, explore the contextual multilevel factors associated with low family planning utilisation among married women.Methods An explanatory sequential mixed study was conducted. Five hundred and thirty women in union were interviewed using structured and pre-tested questionnaire. Next, 11 focus group discussions were held with community members composed of married men and women, administrative and religious leaders (n=132). The study was conducted in eighteen collines of two health districts of Vyanda and Rumonge in Bururi and Rumonge provinces in Burundi. Quantitative data was analysed with SPSS and qualitative data was coded and deductive thematic methods were applied to find themes and codes.ResultsThe overall contraceptive prevalence was 22.6%. From logistic modelling analysis, it was found that women aged 25 to 29, those completed secondary school and having four or less children was significantly associated with use of family planning. Among factors why family planning was unused included experience with side effects and costs associated with its management in the health system. Religious conceptualisation and ancestral negative beliefs of family planning had also shaped how people perceived it. Furthermore, at the household level, gender imbalances between spouses had resulted in break in communication, also serving as a factor for non-use of family planning. ConclusionGiven that use of family planning is rooted in negative beliefs emanating mainly from religious and cultural practices, engaging local religious leaders and community actors may trigger positive behaviours change needed to increase its use.

Exploration of the Impact of the COVID-19 on Girls Education in Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-75
Author(s):  
Morakinyo Akintolu ◽  
Ntandokamenzi P. Dlamini ◽  
Tinuola Oladebo
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Peer Pressure ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
Unwanted Pregnancies ◽  
Past Data ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
The Impact

This article explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on girls education in Nigeria. COVID-19 raises concerns to every nationality and has thus made way to the continent of Africa, therein Nigeria. This pandemic has a significant gendered impact on children, especially girls being out of school. The vast majority of pupils affected by this pandemic are rural girls. Despite the fact that these rural girls from poor backgrounds are already marginalised, the pandemic has highly disadvantaged them in terms of access to education, limited provision of resources and infrastructure to ensure learning is taking place even at home. While some research was found to have been done on COVID-19, none was found specifically on rural girls and education in Nigeria. This paper utilised a secondary research methodology which involved reviewing and interpreting past data to explore the impact of this pandemic on the Nigerian girl child. Among other impacts, peer pressure temptations, sexual abuse, unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, and child exploitation were found to put girls at risk. The researchers were able to suggest possible interventions for the girl child’s education in the post COVID-19 era which include the reviewing of cultural practices and customs, making education fashionable, providing extra classes, establishing programmes and initiatives to empower women, and awareness against gender-based violence. This pandemic has drawn attention to the injustices girls live under; and if these interventions are put into practice, a better life for all can be assured.

Change and Continuity, Practice and Memory: Native American Persistence in Colonial New England

2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Silliman
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
New England ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Cultural Persistence ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
Eastern Pequot

The archaeological study of Native Americans during colonial periods in North America has centered largely on assessing the nature of cultural change and continuity through material culture. Although a valuable approach, it has been hindered by focusing too much on the dichotomies of change and continuity, rather than on their interrelationship, by relying on uncritical cultural categories of artifacts and by not recognizing the role of practice and memory in identity and cultural persistence. Ongoing archaeological research on the Eastern Pequot reservation in Connecticut, which was created in 1683 and has been inhabited continuously since then by Eastern Pequot community members, permits a different view of the nature of change and continuity. Three reservation sites spanning the period between ca. 1740 and 1840 accentuate the scale and temporality of social memory and the relationships between practice and materiality. Although the reservation sites show change when compared to the "precontact baseline," they show remarkable continuity during the reservation period. The resulting interpretation provides not only more grounded and appropriately scaled renderings of past cultural practices but also critical engagements with analytical categories that carry significant political weight well outside of archaeological circles.

scholarly journals Socio-Economic Benefits Stemming from Bush Clearing and Restoration Projects Conducted in the D’Nyala Nature Reserve and Shongoane Village, Lephalale, South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 5133
Author(s):  
Tshepiso Mangani ◽  
Hendri Coetzee ◽  
Klaus Kellner ◽  
George Chirima
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Nature Reserve ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Indirect Benefit ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Similar Nature ◽  
Thematic Content Analysis ◽  
Grazing Capacity

This study aimed to investigate the socio-economic benefits stemming from bush clearing and restoration projects conducted in the Lephalale municipality, within the Limpopo Province of South Africa. The study was conducted at two sites: the D’Nyala Nature Reserve and a nearby local village, Shongoane. A qualitative thematic content analysis approach and semi-structured interviews were used to gather data from 14 purposively selected participants between the ages of 22 and 55 (male = 9 and female = 5). The results indicated that the nature reserve benefited from the project via the improved visibility of the landscape features and game viewing, which made the reserve more attractive for tourists and resulted in increased revenue. The costs of buying feed for game could also be curbed since the grazing capacity increased. Since the nature reserve sourced temporary labour from the local village to execute the project, the community benefited in terms of members being able to earn a wage, which led to an improvement in their livelihoods. Another indirect benefit was the morale and behavioural changes observed amongst community members. It was obvious that the socio-economic benefits derived from projects such as these far outweigh the negatives and that there is every reason to institute projects of a similar nature elsewhere.

scholarly journals Tendencies of children’s growing up in modern educational environment: risks and prospects of development

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 08040
Author(s):  
Vladimir Tereshchenko
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Educational Environment ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
The Other ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Educational Organization ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Pedagogical Analysis ◽  
The One

The relevance of studying the process of child’s growing up is due to a number of contradictions; on the one hand, children’s space of activities is changing, he/she develops in paradoxical, contradictory conditions, on the other hand, growing children do not show an active desire to grow up, sometimes imitate disharmonious forms of behaviour. The purpose of the study is, firstly, to describe the range of domestic and foreign works related to both childhood and adulthood on the background of changing socio-cultural practices, secondly, to isolate the existing manifestations of the problems, identifying the main contradictions caused by changes in the process of growing up, and thirdly, to attempt to develop conceptual provisions of psychological and pedagogical analysis of growing up in modern educational organization. We consider the growing up of a modern child in the educational environment as a process of constant changes in the structure of his/her subjective and objective characteristics, including the formation of child’s image of adulthood in ontogenesis, its development and implementation, as well as the reflection of development of adulthood by children in the psychological and pedagogical space by the participants of educational process (parents, teachers).

scholarly journals Contextual factors affecting the integration of community health workers into the health system in Limpopo Province, South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 281-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Jobson ◽  
Nireshni Naidoo ◽  
Nthabiseng Matlakala ◽  
Gert Marincowitz ◽  
Jean Railton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Community Health ◽  
Community Health Workers ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Limpopo Province ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Decision Making Processes

Abstract Background Community health workers (CHWs) are an essential cadre in the health systems of many low- and middle-income countries. These workers provide a wide variety of services and are key to ongoing processes of task shifting within human immunodeficiency virus programmes in particular. Ward-based outreach teams (WBOTs) are South Africa’s latest iteration of the CHW programme and have been introduced as part of the National Department of Health’s Primary Health Care Re-engineering programme. Methods In order to assess the perceived effectiveness of the WBOTs in supporting the ongoing rollout of antiretroviral therapy, tuberculosis care and patient support, we conducted a qualitative investigation focusing on the perceived successes and challenges of the programme among CHWs, community leaders, healthcare workers and community members in the Mopani district, Limpopo province, South Africa. Results The CHW programme operates across these contexts, each associated with its own set of challenges and opportunities. Conclusions While these challenges may be interrelated, a contextual analysis provides a useful means of understanding the programme’s implementation as part of ongoing decision-making processes.

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