Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters)

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Browsing Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters) by SDG "SDG-5: Gender equality"

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    Femicide in South Africa: Ideal Victims, Visible Bodies, and Invisible Perpetrators
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-05) Nyathi, Tebogo; Falkof, Nicky
    South Africa’s femicide rate is five times the global average (Statistics South Africa 2018). In recent years, we have seen increased scholarly attention examining media reporting of femicide. These studies have been critical the way South African media have and continue to cover femicide. This study seeks to add to this existing knowledge by exploring the media coverage of three sexual violence murders. This study explores the online news media coverage of three case studies. These case studies are the rape and murder of University of Cape Town student Uyinene Mrwetyana, the rape and murder of Lynette Volschenk, and the rape and murder of grade 7 pupil Janika Mallo. All these murders happened in Cape Town in August 2019 and received prominent media coverage. This study utilizes thematic analytic tools to explore dominant patterns in the data through the framework of representation and intersectionality. The study aims to do a close reading and identify discourses embedded in news media texts to highlight their functions, effects, and social and ideological implications for society. The findings reveal an increased focus on the visible bodily injuries of victims and media used spectacular language to present this. The focus on the bodily injuries resulted in making perpetrators invisible. The analysis confirmed that certain victims matter to media more than others. Furthermore, media represented femicide as a current crisis and ignored the historical structures that enable the prevalence of sexual violence. Although, this study is not comparative media analysis and does not provide media to show that some murders are under reported, because it is only looking at three cases the analysis does demonstrate that other murders matter more than others. The study concludes that the way media cover femicide does not present the ‘true reality’ of sexual violence in South Africa and we are still far from finding long lasting solutions to the rampant violence.
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    She’s Not a Bad Girl, Brenda Fassie: Past, Present and Future, A Canon for the Construction of Post Colonial Feminist Consciousness
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-07) Qwesha, Qhama; Mupotsa, Danai S.
    In this research report, I examine the ways that icon Brenda Fassie operates as an important archive for the articulation of quotidian feminist consciousness. In paying close attention to the present re-emergence of Fassie in South African intimate publics that include idioms, modes, praxes, aesthetics, and consumptive forms that she currently figuratively circulates. I approach the question of an archive from two central sensibilities: first, with regards to authoritative narrative accounts related to her memorialization; and second, in the ways that her figure (re)appears in these intimate publics to reconfigure the meanings we attach to African femme/womanhood and sexualities. Looking to multiple archives is a methodological gesture at assembling a range of cultural objects that include her body of work, including the aural, visual, and aesthetic performance of her work; along with the archive of work produced with or about her that often situates itself around accounts of her biography. With this understanding of her archive, the approach is to see how Fassie figuratively operates, presenting contesting identities through which she can move in and out of multiple temporalities that are often contradictory. Fassie’s ability to transgress while equally forming a part of national historic discourse allows us to inquire into the ways that she complicates notions of gender and sexuality – and how these continue to shape current articulations of feminism in post-apartheid South Africa.
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    Vera Duarte and Paulina Chiziane: The Notion of Womanhood and Post-Colonialism
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-05) de Oliveira, Monica Ester Monteiro Batista; Campos, Marta
    This dissertation intends to present a comparison of the notion of womanhood in the post-colonial context presented by Paulina Chiziane’s novels, namely Niketche: Uma História de Poligamia (2012) and Ventos do Apocalipse (2003) and Vera Duarte’s novels (poetry anthologies) De Risos e Lágrimas (2018) and A Reinvenção do Mar (2018). This research will be done by conducting a comparative study on the works of the African writers Vera Duarte and Paulina Chiziane, using thematic and narrative analysis. This dissertation will contribute to and complement existing research related to both authors and both countries. However, this study is novel in that it compares the works of two female Lusophone writers, from two different Lusophone countries and compares two different styles of literature, poetry and novel.