Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

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

Browse

Subject: search.filters.subject.SDG-17: Partnerships for the goals

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Theatre of Resistance in Johannesburg, 1960–2010
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mukonde, Kasonde Thomas; Lekgoath, Sekibakiba Peter; Hlongwane, Ali Khangela
    This thesis explores the relation of art to politics, specifically how black theatre practitioners in South Africa responded to cultural imperialism. It contributes to the historiography of adversarial theatre in South Africa by tracing the establishment and growth of a genre of theatre termed the Theatre of Resistance. The thesis uses the cases of the People’s Experimental Theatre, Mihloti Black Theatre, Bahumutsi and the Soyikwa Institute of African Theatre to provide rich empirical detail on how the work at these theatre companies was a form of cultural resistance. It begins by showing how the Soweto poetry movement and the Black Consciousness Movement were foundational to the development of Theatre of Resistance. Plays that are exemplars of this genre are analysed in the context of the oral history testimonies of the theatre practitioners themselves. Additionally, the issue of censorship is addressed by looking at the deliberations of the Directorate of Publications, whose archives are extant and have only been accessible within the last twenty years. The thesis also shows how the groups negotiated the segregated township spaces of Soweto and Alexandra in Johannesburg to create theatre that was agile and politically relevant. Finally, the thesis discusses Theatre of Resistance after the end of apartheid and beginning of democracy.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    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.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    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.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    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.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    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.