Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

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The Role of Social Networks in Destination Selection Among Urban Refugees in Kampala, Uganda
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Ayanzu, Francis; Wet- Billings, Nicole De
The rampant displacements due to armed conflicts, torture, gender-based violence, human rights abuse, and all other forms of displacements increased the number of forced migrants residing in urban areas. This study is about the role of social networks in the destination selection of urban refugees, including asylum seekers. Although asylum seekers differ from refugees in terms of status determination, this group is included under refugees because choices about destination occur prior to arrival in Kampala, the place of asylum, not upon arrival. Destination selection refers to the decisions regarding where to go. Existing studies have pointed to the role of social networks, defined as interpersonal relationships through which resources such as information and social support flow, in facilitating the refugee movements and settlement in urban areas. Studies on urban refugees particularly in the Sub- Saharan Africa showed that refugees use their social networks to access livelihood opportunities upon arrival at an urban area. Related to destination decisions, refugee studies in Uganda and Kenya have shown that strong social networks formed in camps and countries of asylum sometimes affect humanitarian interventions regarding returning refugees to countries of origin or relocation of refugees to new refugee settlement areas. Much of these influences have been attributed to the presence of either refugees from the countries of origin at a particular camp or relationships build through shared ethnic membership with local communities in which the refugees reside. However, not all ethnic members have equal weight in exerting influences on a refugee and not every actor in the social network supports the choice of a destination. Moreover, actors who exert influences are not only at the places of origin or destination, but also those encountered on transit or those living elsewhere in another country or camps. The details of who actually influence the refugees to move to city is important because it enables us to answer the question whether refugees make decisions on where to go and if so, what enables their decision-making capacity. This is a critical aspect in the context of Uganda where refugees are associated with settlements in the rural areas. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to investigate the role of social networks in the selection of Kampala, actors involved in the social networks and how they influenced the refugees’ decisions to specifically move to Kampala. Specifically, study explored the associations between social 17 networks and destination selection and how actors in the social networks influence the decisions of the refugees. The study also investigated the profiles of the refugees associating with destination selection, and patterns of movement to Kampala.
The Persistent Health Burden: Understanding Black South African Working-Class Men’s Experiences of Living with Tuberculosis
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Madhuha, Edmond; Carrasco, Lorena Nunez
This study is the culmination of ethnographic fieldwork on black working-class men’s tuberculosis (TB) illness experiences, conducted during 2020 and 2021 in Modimolle Township, a non-mining, peri-urban community of South Africa’s Limpopo province. The study examines ways men construct masculine identities and how this provides a lens through which to understand their health-seeking behaviours when beset with TB suggestive symptoms. Men’s construction of masculine identities further helps shed light on their tuberculosis illness experiences and treatment outcomes. Tuberculosis scholarship in South Africa has justifiably focused on the impact of silicosis on men, and the subsequent oscillating labour migration as pathways through which the disease is contracted and transmitted to non-mining communities of the country and the southern African region. Men’s experiences with tuberculosis disease in non-mining communities have however received little attention in South Africa’s extensive tuberculosis research. Drawing from the African-centred theories of masculinity is a conceptualisation of men that I call masculinity in sociability. This thesis of masculinity in sociability manifests when men gather in spaces and engage in social behaviours and practices such as sharing cigarettes and beer within proximity of each other. I demonstrate that masculinity in sociability is informed by the socio-cultural values of seriti (dignity, integrity, and respect), maitshwaro (manners and conduct), and botho (humanness, ubuntu, the sum of human values), which engender a sense of belonging and community among men in specific masculinised spaces. I argue that masculinity in sociability illuminates the crucial and intricate interplay between masculinised, enclosed physical spaces and shared air as possible ways tuberculosis is contracted and transmitted among men. Considering that masculinity in practices of sociability is predominantly performed in masculinised spaces, I further argue that its manifestation concomitantly recedes when men experience TB illness in the private sphere of the home. The thesis demonstrates that men’s exposure, infection, diagnosis, and response to tuberculosis treatment are influenced by their masculinity. In contrast to the public performances of masculinity for the purposes of sociability, the vulnerabilities brought about by tuberculosis create a significant disruption in individuals’ life stories. This disruption is evident in men’s experiences of losing their sources of income and becoming dependent on the care provided by mothers and spouses, which can be experienced by men as a return to a more childlike state. From health through to the continuum of TB diagnosis and illness experience, the thesis shows that masculinity exhibits a remarkable flexibility and adaptability. The thesis contributes to our understanding of masculinities by offering a condensed perspective on how iv economically marginalised black men perceive and undergo the challenges of tuberculosis. Using metaphors, men depict TB as a debilitating and insidious illness condition which unmasks their vulnerability.
Rethinking Agricultural Marketing Middlemen in Tanzania: A Social Embeddedness Perspective
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Musinamwana, Earnest; Sefalafala, Thabang Masilo
This thesis explored how social relations of middleman traders influenced and patterned their entrepreneurial actions in informal agricultural output markets of Kasulu District in Tanzania. The study applied a mixed methods social network analysis design which involved a balanced fusion of personal network analysis and ethnographic techniques. The study established that middleman traders’ personal relationships have a pervasive influence on their entrepreneurial actions. Interpersonal trust emerged as a key mediating factor of entrepreneurial actions. Contrary to the perception that middleman roles are performed by minorities and “strangers”, the study showed that trading middlemen emerge from the peasantry and, therefore, represent a form of endogenous entrepreneurship. The study showed that governance of entrepreneurial exchanges occurred mostly through informal personal relationships. The study revealed a tendency for reverse embeddedness involving the overlaying of personal relations on relationships that originate from pure market interactions. The overlaying of social dimensions on pure economic relationships creates a social enforcement mechanism that compensates for the lack of formal rules and regulations. Overall, study results suggest that social embeddedness of informal entrepreneurship manifests through a composite interplay of sociological concepts such as patronage, clientelisation and reciprocity. Based on the study findings, I argue that bean-trading middlemen employ a socially embedded business model in which social relations are accessory to the performance of entrepreneurial actions. In sum, this study has generated new insights regarding the link between social embeddedness and persistence of middlemen in agricultural markets. The integrative theoretical and analytical approach contributes to the quest for a unified approach to studying social embeddedness. Ultimately, the study revealed that, while economic sociology concepts have independent theoretical lives, they are inextricably linked and integrating them is central to understanding the social embeddedness of economic phenomena.
A study of Saemaul Undong in South Korea: Making self, memory and development
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Jeong, Da Un; Roy, Srila
Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement) was South Korea’s state-led rural development project, launched in 1970, under Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian regime. Studies of Saemaul Undong have been deeply polarised, especially along ideological lines, either praising the movement for empowering rural communities, or dismissing it as a tool of political propaganda. While Saemaul Undong has received global attention as a development model in the last two decades, the literature on Saemaul is still limited to judging its success or failure alone. Drawing on a Foucauldian analytic of governmentality and memory-work method, this thesis reveals how Saemaul Undong was not simply imposed by the South Korean state, but also embraced and implemented by rural communities. Taking a triangulated approach of complementing an analysis of state archive materials with participants’ life histories and cultural repertoires of the media, this study explores the experiences, memories and emotions of rural villagers in their engagement with Saemaul Undong and its ‘technologies of the self’. It finds that Saemaul Undong, using visual guidelines and discourses of nation building and ideal citizenship, created a space for the constitution of new types of selves and new ways of relating to the selves, in the long shadow of war, famine and colonialism. This thesis contributes to the fields of development, social movements and state-building in the global South by revealing how power and governance in state-led development projects are played out at the micro level of the self.
Ensemble study and struggle: A history of the Yu Chi Chan Club and the National Liberation Front
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Gamedze, Asher Simiso; Nieftagodien, Noor
This dissertation is a history of the relationship between study and struggle in the lives and afterlives of two formations that were part of the South African and Namibian national liberation struggles – the Yu Chi Chan Club (YCCC) and the National Liberation Front (NLF) – which were founded in the early 1960s in the turn to armed struggle. The YCCC was a study group on guerrilla warfare with a commitment to fighting for socialist democracy and the NLF, founded by the YCCC, was an underground network of cells of guerrillas, a series of overlapping ensembles that sought to unite the various armed forces of the liberation movement. Their personnel, modes of analysis, orientations, tendencies and strategies were present in the earlier and subsequent decades of struggle, finding expression in a wide range of political and intellectual forms –united fronts, underground study groups, education projects, publications, and independent political actions. The project’s scope extends from the late 1950s until the late 1980s, and explores various responses to the changing conditions of apartheid and capitalism in South Africa and Namibia. This radical trajectory of study and struggle was formed outside of a single or stable political home and it evolved through continual experimentation and collaboration with other political organisations. While some of these experiments, and the individuals that constituted them, have been written about in isolated ways, a longer trajectory of these formations that attempts to understand its development over time, has not, up until this point, been written. To research this topic, the dissertation’s process has undertaken semi-structured interviews and done archival work in both officially constituted collections, and personal and private collections of individuals and families who were participant in the history. The work makes an original contribution to the existing literature in three ways. Firstly, by writing this history – the longer tradition of the YCCC/NLF’s study and struggle – for the first time. Secondly, by illuminating their alternative perspectives and alternative approaches within major conjunctures in the liberation struggle, it contests the often-assumed inevitability of the political dispensation of the present moment which is based on a teleological account of the liberation struggle. Thirdly, the dissertation elaborates and develops, as organisational form and a method of historical research, the concept of ensemble. Bands in the black creative music tradition are taken as the paradigmatic expression of ensemble and this is transposed to consider the evolution of the minoritarian tradition of the YCCC/NLF over time. This opens up an affinity for narrative 3 | P a g e and the contradictions that emerge in the course of struggle, understanding the process, and an attentiveness to it, as important in the experimentation with and elaboration of an alternative approach to writing and thinking about history that is informed by the need for ongoing struggle. The dissertation argues that the significance of the history of the YCCC and the NLF cannot be understood only within the moment of their existence and instead needs to be considered in relation to the longer trajectory of their political ideas and practices.
Water Grabbing?: Water Struggles over the Water Regulation of the Water Use Licenses of Coal Mines in Delmas, South Africa
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Loate, Lesego Lester; Wafer, Alex
In various international contexts, attention has been given to the impact of the water use of extractives on water bodies. Some of these discussions are on the role of water regulation of the water use of extractives in the impacts on water bodies contributing to water scarcity for other water users and thus extractives based water struggles. Literature teases out the dynamics of the regulation of the water use of extractives through the three elements of water struggle that mirror elements of water regulation. These discussions focus on the allocation of water rights, the diverse forms of (non)recognition of water users in regulatory rules and participation in regulatory processes and exercise of rules. This study contributes to this literature focusing on coal mining water struggles in Delmas, South Africa. Despite an extensive history in mining, a leading country in coal reserves, as well as a country often touted as water scarce; research in South Africa on extractives based water struggles, in general, and coal mining water struggles in particular is limited. This study uses a case study approach using three coal mines in Delmas to address this gap in discourse. The study is based on interview and focus group data from key informations. The thesis focuses on the role of water regulation in the water problem behind coal mining based water struggles. The study also interrogates the mechanisms water regulation’s in6luence on the water problem behind coal mining based water struggles in Delmas. This study 6inds unfair and unequal regulatory practices in allocation enabling extra-legal water use by coal mines and the failure to enforce the water use of coal mines. Water regulation inequitably bene6its coal mines whilst burdening agricultural water users with pollution. Thus the study argues the water regulation is central to the resultant normalisation of the potential of future water scarcity. Water regulation exposes agricultural water users to structural and future reality. The (dys)function of water regulation of coal mines is the outcome of coal-centric socionatural relations of water that facilitate the water use of coal mines and normalise water scarcity.
Masjid Al-Nasaa: Women Call for an Islamic Elsewhere
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Hoosen, Leyya
My research explores what it means to be a “Muslim woman” in South Africa in the digital age. More broadly, what does Muslimness and Religiosity mean? How do we enact these concepts and practices, and how do they inform our processes of identification? How does access to digital platforms allow a new way of engaging these forces? This research took place over the course of three years, starting in 2020, and was impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. With the increased digitalisation that came with the pandemic, many activities had to shift to online platforms to survive. This also created a space where Muslim women were able to create virtual masjids and hold online prayers. I followed one such online Jumu’ah (Friday prayer) group and interviewed the women who attended. I also interviewed women from a women-led South African Non-Profit Organisation (NPO) on their experiences and relationships with Islam(s). While their relationships with Islam(s) and Muslimness were complex and nuanced, what echoed through all their narratives was that they felt called to Islam(s) in some way and their Islamic practice was a response to that call. In my thesis, I unpack this call and use it as a guiding conceptual and theoretical framework. Through the multifaceted nature of the call, and the different ways that the women are called to Islam(s), I explore what it means to respond to a call that is not bounded or territorial in its address. The thesis takes the form of a masjid (mosque) in its architecture: beginning with a preface that is named ‘Niyyah’ (intention); moving into the ‘Wudhu’ introductory chapter that provides the contextual and historical orientations for the research; and then proceeding to go through seven chapters, named after the minarets (spires) in a masjid complex. These seven core theoretical and narrative chapters unpack the call to Islam(s) that the women experience. The call ranges from a call to the Digital Islamic Elsewhere as an alternate semi-public, to a call beyond essentialised identifications (such as ‘Muslim’), a call that re-orients and queers notions of the ‘Muslim woman’, to a call that challenges a hegemonic ummah (transnational Islamic community) in favour of a multiplicity of ummah(s), a call that is hidden and opaque, and a call that is ensouled in its manifestation. These different frequencies of the call to Islam(s) echo and reverberate through the thesis as I unpack what it means to be a woman in Islam(s) in the digital age.
A gendered inquiry into South Africa’s agrarian question and agro-food system trends
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Mabasa, Khwezi; Williams, Michelle; Cock, Jacklyn
South Africa’s agrarian question has been shaped by the evolution of racial capitalism for nearly four centuries. Dispossession, commodification, and social stratification continue to characterise the country’s agrarian system and broader social structure. However, these three structural features exist in a 21st century finance-led racial capitalist system, which has decoupled socio-economic development from rural-based agrarian livelihoods and exacerbated uneven spatial development across the country. Sixty-seven per cent of the population resides in urban areas and deagrarianisation continues to expand. The country’s agro-food system is highly industrialised, with strong upstream and downstream linkages to other economic sectors dominated by large corporates along value chains. Yet these structural shifts, created through centuries of dispossession and racially segregated industrialisation, have not totally obliterated the role of agrarian livelihood practices in households or community social reproduction. This study used a gendered lens to explore the agrarian political economy structural changes mentioned above, drawing primarily on the experiences of black African women from low-income communities. The discussions elevate gendered socio-economic and sociological impacts of structural agrarian changes in South Africa, which are often underplayed in agrarian political economy literature focusing on transforming race or class relations. More importantly, the study examined the women’s individual and communal agentic agrarian livelihood practices. The main aim was to explore significant lessons for contributing towards debates on alternative agro-food systems in South Africa. Feminist and extended case methodology framed the overall methodological approach in the study, and data was obtained from semi-structured individual and focus group interviews. I relied on Marxist feminist and black feminist political economy literature to develop the study’s theoretical framework and analytical concepts. The central argument of the study is anchored on the following three points. Firstly, South Africa’s post-apartheid agro-food system structural change logic advances narrow agrarian transformation goals, which seek to change racial ownership patterns and integrate ‘emerging’ women farmers into existing commercial agro-food system market structures. This approach has led to negative gendered socio-economic impacts because it fails to address structural social reproduction dimensions that cause gender disparities in the first place. Secondly, black African women have created dynamic agrarian subsistence practices in response to their structural socio-economic challenges, which form part of multiple livelihood and income sources. Their contribution towards local economic v development through these subsistence livelihood practices is overlooked because it takes place outside formal markets. Thus, it is imperative to examine and study these livelihood practices with the aim of obtaining key lessons on how to support marginalised black African women who view agrarian development as an importance source of social reproduction in their communities. Thirdly, black African women-led agency goes beyond orthodox productivism approaches in studying agrarian and non-agrarian livelihood strategies. This study revealed other essential elements in the women’s agentic practices such as solidarity building, experiential learning, indigenous knowledge sharing and creating spaces for formulating women-led public policy demands.
Shifts, Changes and Continuities in Heritage Commemoration and Memorialisation of the 21 March 1960 Sharpeville Massacre: 1960-2010
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Ngoaketsi, Joseph Mairomola; Lekgoathi, S.P
The Sharpeville Massacre was a key turning point in modern South African history. The massacre ended the non-violent civil rights-style political activism and flickered three decades of armed confrontation with the colonial apartheid regime. Most importantly, it became the catalyst for the declaration of apartheid as a crime against humanity by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1966. However, most of the studies on the massacre focus mainly on documenting the events of that day, and very little has been written about the historical re-presentations of the shooting beyond this. This study, therefore, aims to fill the lacuna in the re-presentation and observance of this event. It does so by not only complementing the existing literature but also looking at an area that has been grossly neglected, namely the diverse ways in which the killing has been observed over a period of five decades, starting from the 1960s to 2010. The study employs discourse analysis as well as critical and in-depth analyses of published secondary, historical and archival sources, including newspaper reports and commentaries on the 21 March Sharpeville Day commemorations. These sources are complemented by a large spread, and wide range of biographical sources, unstructured interviews, testimonials, informal discussions, and conversations with key local heritage activist respondents. The focus group consists of members of the Khulumani Support Group at the Sharpeville branch. The findings and conclusions of this study derive from observations of the anniversary commemorations of the massacre by ethnographic participants. The study utilises several theoretical frameworks, while the Life Narrative Interpretative theory of oral history lays the basis for this research venture. As the findings of this thesis bear out, the application of this theory converges oral history and collective memory studies. Other theories used in this study include Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of collective memory, which is located in nostalgia, individual testimony, oral history, tradition, myth, style, language, art, popular culture, and physical landscape. Émile Durkheim’s performance or ritual theory postulates that the past is represented and relived through rituals, and the relationship between the past and the present takes the form of a dramatic (re)presentation. The study observes that cultural rites conducted during memorialisation processes and annual observances of the Sharpeville massacre are marked by human arrangements of performances or viii ritual remembrances. The transitional justice theoretical discourse is applied in the study’s analysis of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission - a socio-political initiative devoted to fact-finding, reconciliation and memory culture. It concludes that memorialisation processes and rituals are communal reflexes for survivors of the Sharpeville Massacre and families of the victims. Contrary to assertions by notable Sharpeville Massacre historians, this day was not observed between 1964 and 1984, despite an international commemorative tradition that developed beginning from 1966. The study observes that during the 1960s, the Human Rights Society, an affiliate of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), commemorated Sharpeville Day even at the height of state repression. It demonstrates that it was the Black Consciousness Movement family of organisations that popularised the commemoration of Sharpeville Day, calling it Heroes Day during the 1970s. The observance of this day took the form of church services, cemetery visitations and political rallies. The study notes that with the formation of the Congress Movement-aligned civic structure in the form of the United Democratic Front, Sharpeville Day was used as a platform to openly defy the apartheid government and undermine its institutions. The 1990s was a period of political transition in South Africa, and the study analyses commemorations of the Sharpeville Massacre during this decade. In the context of the unbanning of liberation movements, observances of this day took place in a more politically tolerable landscape. During the first half of this decade, commemorations of Sharpeville Massacre revealed the deep-seated political and ideological differences between the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress former liberation movements turned political parties in the early 1990s after their unbanning. The study observes that this day was used during this period to garner support for the upcoming elections in 1994. Following the establishment of the Government of National Unity, the hegemonic impulses of the African National Congress overrode long-held traditions of how Sharpeville Day was observed. The study highlights that from the year 1995, 21 March started to be observed as an official public holiday, later transforming into Human Rights Day, instead of being a solemn commemoration, as was the case before the democratic dispensation. The study further observes that during this decade, court-like restorative justice bodies, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created a theatrical environment for victims of gross human rights violations. The ritualistic oral testimonies of those who appeared constituted a ix memorialisation process. Lastly, the study reveals that post-1994, Sharpeville commemorations possess distinct characteristics at the core of which are distortions of history, the watering down of other narratives and contributions, selective amnesia and the silencing of other voices on the part of the governing party. There are further contestations, grand narratives, commemorations, counter commemorations and counter-narratives regarding the memory of Sharpeville by both the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress. In terms of material culture, the study highlights how this tangible feature of Sharpeville’s memory is characterised by official memorials and counter-memorials.
YouTube: Video Commercialization, Value Creation and Identity
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2021-12) Dlamini, Gabby Sipho; White, Hylton
Social media has been blamed for promoting unrealistic flashy lifestyles and an increase in influencer brand marketing. The outcome of this is said to put extreme pressure on individuals to maintain a certain lifestyle to the detriment of their self, promoting a performance of life rather than real life experiences, resulting in the breakdown of social bonds. Yet social media platforms such YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and many others are growing at considerable rates, despite all the critiques. The thesis overall questions how YouTube vloggers turn the intangible value of activities in everyday life into monetary income by attracting online audiences to their vlogs. The research is located as part of transformations taking place in late capitalism, that used to characterise the organisation of labour and, therefore, society in nineteenth and twentieth-century iterations of modern capitalist society; and the changing concepts of “private” and “public” that are described as part of the technological development and integration into our everyday lives. This thesis traces the changing structures and relationships between YouTube, YouTubers and viewers as the economy of YouTube has continued to grow. Whilst influencer brand marketing and social media reach are popularly viewed as detrimental to the individual and society, this thesis argues against this general view. Instead, I argue that in the wake of influencer marketing and the financial economies, embedded within YouTube and other social media, new ways of being and belonging are being negotiated. This thesis, using ethnographic data, focuses on these new ways of being and belonging by explaining how ideas of value, suspicion, affect, and digital footprint are factors in creating online community ties and online identities that continue inside and outside of the online space.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

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