3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Misery merchants: a creative non-fiction on a private prison in South Africa(2019-07) Hopkins, RuthI visited management prison for the first time in 2012, when I was following up on letters that inmates had sent to the Wits Justice Project (WJP), the organization I worked for. I returned to Mangaung prison many times and interviewed inmates, warders and several other sources. I accessed damming government reports that I had been stuffed under the carpet and leaked video footage of abuse. Mangaung Prison is a Public Private Partnership (PPP). A consortium of five shareholders signed a contract with the government in 2000 to build, run and maintain a private prison. The evidence I gathered showed the prison's riot team-also known as the "Ninjas" - taking inmates to either the hospital or the the isolation unit, where there are CCTV blind spots. There they would shock them with their electrified shock shields. Inmates were also being injected against their will with anti-psychotic drugs, often when they had no history of mental illness. The warders went on several strikes in August September 2023 and the chaos in the prison escalated to unknown heights. When the prison appointed unqualified staff to replace the absent workers, the state stepped in and took over.Item 'Self-awareness, living ethicality, and the primordial unjustifiability of torture'(2017) Janse van Vuuren, DanicaThis study seeks to investigate whether torture is fundamentally wrong and, if so, whether its status is a question of morality or of that which is prior to morality. According to the thought of Jacques Derrida, the play of différance makes it syntactically impossible for any term to signify meaning outside of the interplay of mutually opposing signifiers. Since Deontological and Utilitarian moral principles unfold within this differential play, they are syntactically incapable of signifying a concrete and constant moral status for torture. Even though différance is the syntactic possibility of being, I argue that there is a second and distinct category of experience. Drawing on the writing of Emmanuel Levinas and Bernard Lonergan, I contend that this category is our subjectivity as self-awareness, which always-already unfolds anterior to, as the primordial possibility of, and as otherwise than both différance and being. As an irreducibility constitutive of each person, the alterity of such self-awareness constitutes an absolute and singular relation of otherness between persons; this proximity functions as an absolute obligation and, in fact, constitutes ethics itself. Each subject therefore becomes an individual living ethicality. On this basis, it is always-already incoherent to identify any subject with any idea that we might have of him/her, including the idea of a person as a means to our ends. Since torture intentionally violates the living ethicality of the victim, it follows that torture must be ethically unjustifiable by primordial necessity under any and all possible circumstances. The ethical unjustifiability of torture therefore precedes all moral structures, although I suggest that torture may become permissible under certain practical circumstances, if saving human lives is at stake. Keywords: Torture; self-awareness; alterity; living ethicality; otherwise than being; différance; Emmanuel Levinas; Jacques Derrida; Bernard Lonergan.Item Psychopathology following torture experiences: a retrospective record review of victims of torture presenting to the Southern African Centre for Survivors of Torture (SACST)(2015-03-27) Raghubir, LatishaIntroduction In a constant quest for political power and control incredulously extending from medieval times to present day, the infliction of physical and psychological torture on each other by warring factions is sadly an ongoing reality worldwide. These gross insults on human rights may have a significant impact on the psychological wellbeing of the tortured individuals and result in clinical psychiatric illness. Methods A retrospective record review of all clients visiting the Southern African Centre for Survivors of Torture (SACST) in Johannesburg over a one year period was conducted. Their demographic profiles and torture experiences were analysed using the information available in the centre’s record system. The prevalence of psychiatric illness within this study group was explored. Attempts were made to ascertain differences in trauma experiences endured and psychopathology sustained. The validity of the Self Reporting Questionnaire 8 (SRQ8) rating scale as a screening tool for psychiatric illness was also evaluated. Ethics approval to conduct the study was obtained from the University of the Witwatersrand Human Research Ethics Committee (Medical). IV Results The cases studied were predominantly married, previously employed males less than 40 years old with at least a secondary level of education. All of these cases had experienced some form of torture but their SRQ 8 scores were variable and could not be linked to a specific torture experience or psychiatric diagnosis. Those cases finally assessed by a psychiatrist were all suffering from a psychiatric disorder with a significant 55% diagnosed with a comorbid Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Only 8% had an isolated PTSD and 24% unipolar depression alone. Conclusion The political conflict occurring in neighbouring Zimbabwe has resulted in large numbers of their nationals fleeing across their borders and seeking refuge in South Africa due to alleged human rights abuses including political torture. Assessment of a small percentage of these individuals in this local study has confirmed the prevalence on MDD, PTSD and combined MDD/ PTSD in this population