Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/37996

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    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.
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    Experiences of Youth in Agrarian Transformation in Rural South Africa: A Case of Greenplanet Primary Cooperative in Orange Farm
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-03) Chibonore, Wilma Claris; Kariuki, Samuel
    This thesis advanced a qualitative approach to analyse the practices, structures and rationalities that inform youth engagement in agriculture drawing on evidence from Orange Farm in Gauteng Province of South Africa. The study takes off on the premise that there is low generational renewal in agriculture as the older and ageing generation makes the majority of active farmers yet farming holds great potential for creating youth employment whilst youth engagement in agriculture secures food of the future. The study finds that youth (dis)engagement and (dis)interest in farming is directly related to the availability and easy access to everyday support structures particularly those provided by the state and observes that many young people are in fact interested in farming but are currently operating in a structurally disabling environment amidst poor state support which does not allow for growth or access to key resources. The study finds that youth interest in farming exists although these interests are largely skewed towards technologically advanced farming systems and against backward manual farming systems therefore contradicting existing discourse as well as challenging the general narrative and consensus that youths are not interested in farming or that youth interest in farming is waning. The thesis reveals that young farmers understanding, interpretation and engagement with agricultural technology is based on their levels of exposure, location and access to resources. Poverty, structural limitations and marginalization experienced by the youth contribute significantly to their reception and perception of agriculture as a whole. The thesis argues for an agrarian developmental state approach towards the strengthening of agricultural opportunities and the relevant institutional structures and resources such as land, stipends, extension services, training, technology and market allocation to support youth farming in rural South Africa where the economies are generally stagnant and youth unemployment very high. This study observes that young people as active citizens and through utilising individual agency have the capacity to drive their own innovations within the agricultural sector when awarded the platform, opportunity and support to do so. The study reveals that the young farmers are ‘millennials’ who use their youth agency to engage in social networking facilitated by use of social media as a powerful tool for unity and resistance against unfavourable farming environments. Lastly, two contradictory perspectives on the impact of COVID-19 emerge in this study, one of COVID-19 having presented opportunities for growth and success for the young farmers and another of the pandemic having further marginalized and disrupted the already struggling young farmers with both narratives being shaped directly and indirectly by the pre-existing structural challenges. Methodologically, empirical data was mostly gathered through face to face semi-structured interviews, focus groups and conversations with the young farmers with the remainder of interviews having been conducted virtually via Skype, WhatsApp chats and WhatsApp calls upon the emergence of COVID-19 which converged with this study. Participant observation occurred through attending farmers meetings, agriculture tours, engaging in some farming activities on some sites as well as being part of the young farmers WhatsApp group. The thesis also relied on published journals, statistical reports, media reports, policy documents as well as videos from the public hearings regarding the amendment of the South African Constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation in order to bolster the empirical findings.
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    Governing Children in Street Situations in Pretoria: Vulnerability and Social Protection in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022) Matarise, Fungai
    The vulnerability of children in post-Apartheid South Africa has been a major issue in social and development policy debates for decades now. Children are situated within the wider notion of “Vulnerable Groups” that is a central tenet in South African public and development policy discourse. This thesis examines the vulnerability of children in street situations as defined in the Children’s Act no. 38. of 2005. Children in street situations are a distinct category of vulnerable children that has experienced and continues to experience countless privations on the streets across South Africa. The issue of children in street situations raises fundamental questions about the political, economic and social aspects of inequality, marginality, and social exclusion in the post-Apartheid state. Hence, a central question in debates surrounding the interventions of state agencies on children in street situations is to consider how social and public policy articulate in concrete ways the country’s commitment to social inclusion, social justice and the fight against inequalities. Yet, with specific reference to children in street situations, little is known about the legal, material and practical governance of these category of children in South Africa. This study examines the governance of Children in Street Situations in Pretoria– the administrative capital of South Africa. The Department of Social Development (DSD) is the main provider for social interventions in the country, including in Pretoria. This is an exploratory study, based on my field research with informants at the Department of Social Development (DSD) and related organisations working on addressing the issue of Children in Street Situations. The study combines data from face to-face interviews with social workers at the DSD and telephone conversations with non governmental organisations (NGOs) personnel alongside textual analysis of official documents, policy reports and guidelines, legal provisions and media reports. Using discourse analysis and a post structural deconstructive approach, the thesis examines and unpacks the value and limits of vulnerability as a critical and core concept in understanding social protection in South Africa’s public and development policy. The thesis argues that a critical approach to the conceptualisation of vulnerability in South African public and development policy is important because it frames the legal and institutional responses to categories of people perceived to be in need of social protection, including children in street situations. The thesis develops this argument empirically by analyzing and discussing the representations of children in street situations in South Africa along mostly negative perceptions of these children and underlines how these representations are important to the framing and practice of social protection in aw, legislation and social policy. Furthermore, in discussing some of the social interventions for children in street situations and the challenges involved for DSD workers, this study also finds that the social problem of children in street situations is defined by ambiguity: among social workers at the DSD there are divergent views on whether these children exist and pose a policy challenge or not. Against a generic conceptualisation of children as similarly characterized by vulnerability, the thesis suggests that a further disaggregation of children in street situations as children in a specific social situation is necessary to appreciate their special vulnerabilities and needs. This fits a purposive response, more effective and targeted initiatives in care and protection that enhance their capabilities and well-being of children in street situations.