3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item The experiences of being black in the South African workplace(2019) Magubane, Nokulunga N.The psychosocial condition and socioeconomic position of black employees in the South African workplace remain unchanged in spite of the advent of democracy in 1994. The black employee’s racial experience in the workplace is indicative of the normative experience of blackness in contemporary South African society that is in agreement with the everyday familiarity of socioeconomic disadvantage and psychosocial subjugation that affects the overall existential experience of blackness. As such, hostile racial interactions in the workplace reflect that the socioeconomic and psychosocial changes expected post-apartheid are materialising at seemingly substandard rates. The current investigation utilised a phenomenological approach to the broader critical psychology of race the interpretive research paradigm and semi-structured interviews to direct thematic data analysis techniques that informed the study conclusions. The participant group consisted of eight tertiary educated black employees, one male and seven females, with an age range of 21 to 27 years, with workplace experience ranging from two weeks to four years. The results of this investigation significantly shows the inefficiency of the democratic redress policy in the facilitation of workplace diversification, and its ineptitude in expediting psychosocial and socioeconomic inclusion, integration and participation such that the existential black employee’s experience of racial identity in the post-apartheid South African workplace is not adversarial. The findings of this investigation suggest that the instances of on-going racism in the workplace are the result of an institutional socioeconomic investment in racial inequality that facilitates hostile racial interactions in the workplace.Item The making of Coloured Identity in Vereeniging: 1912 to early 2000s(2019) Hein, Nathan J.PThe current literature on coloured identities focuses overwhelmingly on the port-city of Cape Town and what is today Western Cape. Consequently, the vast majority of what is known about coloured identity is based on the people and processes of identity making in what is today Western Cape and limited by the lack of understanding of the different sets of spatial and temporal settings and historical conditions, which made coloured identities that are distinction from those scholars have focused on in the Western Cape. This dissertation examines the processes of imagining and settling of coloured identity across the different spaces of Cape Stands, Top Location and Rust-ter-Vaal and changing times through the periods of the segregationist, apartheid and democratic eras. This dissertation shifts the focus to two semi-rural townships in Vereeniging and by doing so complicates the exiexisting literature and challenges existing popular discourse on coloured identity. Based on life history interviews, it analyses and explains the making of coloured identities through the lens of social and local history, and shows how everyday social and cultural experiences played a role in this process. The study demonstrates that, before the group areas removals in 1968, coloured identity in Cape Stands and Top Location, Vereeniging, was characterised by a relative ambiguity and which overlapped but never fully collapsed the demarcations of coloured and African identities. However, after the removals of Africans to Sharpeville in the 1940s and 1950s, followed by the removal of coloureds under the Group Areas Act to Rust-ter-Vaal in 1968, the boundaries of racial identity gradually strengthened, making ‘coloured’ the primary identity among Vereeniging’s coloured population. After 1994, democracy and the process of desegregation set the stage to reconfigure and remake colouredness. This post-apartheid colouredness in some ways reflected former Cape Stands identities, but in others was also laden with the legacies of apartheid and the identities formed in a context of racially-segregated resettlement. The study of Vereeniging raises questions about the nuanced and ambiguous processes of making identities and what this means for how people understand themselves and the relationships with other people, communities and the government within and beyond Vereeniging.Item Race and Identity politics in post-apartheid South Africa: the use of new media for racial discourse(2018) Mdluli, NothandoIn post-apartheid South African, the government instituted policies that were established to foster the vision of a non-racial society following the colonial history of the country. Some of these policies include the Black Economic Empowerment Policy, the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2000 (Act 4 of 2000), as well as the idea of the Rainbow Nation, to name but a few strategies put in place to foster the vision of a non-racial society. Although these policies were enacted to create the idea of nationhood and building a new national identity, the period of 2016 and 2017, however, the country was engulfed with intense racial events that led to notions of the reawakening of racism in the society. A number of these events were facilitated through the use of social media that adversely sought to confront and challenge these enacted policies. As a result, the issue of race and identity continues to be persistent and appears to be challenging institutionalized government initiatives for a viable democracy. Thus, the significance of this study is to confront this racial antagonism so as to understand how race and identity is constructed in post-colonial South Africa Also, this is to ascertain the role of new media in facilitating racial debates, such as through the idea of citizen engagements on race and identity discourses. Methods of data collection for this study include cyber ethnography where online platforms, namely Nelson Mandela Facebook page, Andile Mngxitama’s Facebook page, and Letters from White South Africa Facebook page, were used as fundamental online communities to carry out an online study in order to understand how citizens engage on the issue of race and identity politics. Informal interviews were conducted amongst three political analysts, namely Ralf Mathekga, Tinyiko Mashiqi, and Steven Friedman and with representatives from the country’s three main political parties such as the African National Congress, Democratic Alliance, and Economic Freedom Fighters. Thus, the study concluded that race and identity politics remain a challenge in the post - apartheid South African society. This was evident through immense racial contestations or tensions that were facilitated through the use of social media, which continue to challenge government’s efforts in realizing the vision of a non-racist society. The study further established that there are various political, socio, and economic factors that contribute towards the construction of race-racism and identity in post-apartheid South Africa, which require robust interventions by the state.Item Ethics and identity(2017) Kok, Cecelia MargaretIn this paper, I examine the connection between race and the morality of action. I argue that moral racial identitarianism, where this is the position that in some cases the moral status of a person’s actions depends on their race, is false.Item Regimes and rights on the Orange River: possessing and dispossessing Griqua Philippolis and Afrikaner Orania(2012) Cavanagh, EdwardGriqua Philippolis (1824-1862) and Afrikaner Orania (1990-present) are explored in this thesis, according to a legal-history framework that allows for a comparative appraisal of their foundations. As I argue, property – specifically, property in land – helps us to understand sovereignty and the question of rights in the South Africa. As this thesis explores, both settlements were formerly home to prior inhabitants (the San in Philippolis; Coloured squatters in Orania), and these inhabitants had to be transferred away. Both communities emerged out of contested and dynamic political contexts – situations that would determine how they saw themselves and others. Land regulations were devised within these respective contexts, in direct response to specific external pressures and the demands of the market. Internally, both polities were tightly governed. Externally, to various institutions and individuals, both argued for their ‘rights’ – mainly rights to land and to special treatment – all the time. Indeed, in a way, this study is an historical exploration of the effective deployment of ‘rights talk’, and to that end, my argument carries across two centuries right up to the present day using Orania and Philippolis to do this. This thesis, then, is a study about land rights, and the different regimes that create and erase them, that acknowledge and ignore them; it is a local history of settler colonialism past and present, using two case studies to explore the continuities of South Africa’s ever-pertinent land question.Item Women in white-collar work at the University of the Witwatersrand: a comparison between black and white female administrators(2017) Mabapa, Rosina MooreThis research report seeks to explore the experiences of women in white-collar work, particularly by comparing the experiences of black and white female administrators at of the University of the Witwatersrand. What this report illustrates is that both race and generational differences play a significant role in informing the experiences of the female administrators. A qualitative methodology was used to collect data for this report, particularly in-depth interviews to get “detailed information” about the participants’ experiences, beliefs and thoughts. Three main generational groups have been identified among the Wits administrators: Baby Boomers, which is the older generation that is dominated by white female administrators; Generation X; and the Millennial group, which is dominated by black female administrators and consist of the younger generations. This research report thus argues that race has affected the workplace experiences of Wits administrators through generational differences. Furthermore, while generations share similar experiences and world views, they are not homogeneous categoriesItem Affirmative action in South African sport : a moral game for all(2017) Johnson, Craig VirgilThe following paper examines the moral justification for affirmative action within South African sport, more specifically the forms pertaining to “preferential treatment” and “reverse discrimination”. The paper begins with an articulation of the nature of our sport as well as that of affirmative action, which in turn lays the foundation for my moral justification. South African sport, it seems, must share centre stage in our country’s reconciliation and nation-building process if we are to faster realise a substantively equal and non-racial society. I argue that by appropriately bringing about the right kind of integration in South African sport we can create a better country for all by reducing, inter alia, our racial and class disparities, racial prejudices and racism. That said, there appears to be a greater moral significance that comes from using “preferential treatment” and “reverse discrimination” in South African sport, as opposed to their complete absence.Item Black consciousness revived: the rise of black consciousness thinking in South African student politics(2017) Sikhosana, Nompumelelo PertuniaThe history of segregation in South Africa is well documented. The shadows of the apartheid system still linger in society to date, especially in the form of racial inequality, race consciousness and racial classification. Contemporary student protests and vandalism in institutions of higher education reveal deep-seated tensions that open a can of worms concerning race and equality – elements that have long been of concern in the Black Consciousness Movement and its ideology in the early 1960s and 70s. This research report assesses how Black Consciousness tenets’ and rhetoric are re-emerging in the current national student movement, from the #RhodesMustFall to the #FeesMustFall movements. Black Consciousness ideology in South Africa, as articulated by Biko, sought the attainment of a radical egalitarian and non-racial society. Amongst some of the espoused principles of the Black Consciousness Movement that defined South African youth politics in the 1970s, is that Black Consciousness emphasised values of black solidarity, self-reliance, individual and collective responsibility, and black liberation. The year 2015 witnessed the resurgence of Black Consciousness language at the forefront of student movements, most notably the #RhodesMustFall and the #FeesMustFall campaigns. The #FeesMustFall movement and its supporters uphold that their cause is legitimate because it does not make sense for household incomes to depreciate next to escalating costs of living and rising tuition fees. It further states that the ANC fears it because its demands stand contrary to ANC-led government’s interests and have accused the ANC of attempting to capture the movement – hence the declaration that #FeesMustFall is a direct critique of the entire socio-economic and political order of the ruling ANC and exposes ANC corruption and betrayal. The movement continues, though its cause tends to be diluted and convoluted, the struggle is real but so is the legacy of Biko and the spirit of Black Consciousness.Item A critical examination of anti-Indian racism in post-apartheid South Africa(2016) Nyar, AnnsillaThis dissertation is a critical examination of anti-Indian racism in post-apartheid South Africa. While racism presents an intractable problem for all racial groups in South Africa, this dissertation will show that Indian South Africans are especially framed by a specific racist discourse related to broad perceptions of economic exploitation within the context of redistributive and resource-allocation conflicts, political corruption, insularity and general lack of a socio-cultural ‘fit’ with the rest of South African society. This is not unique to present day South Africa and is (albeit in evolving ways) a long standing phenomenon. Key concerns addressed by the dissertation are: the lack of critical attention to the matter of anti-Indian racism, the historical origins of anti-Indian racism, the characteristics and dynamics of anti-Indian racism and its persistence in post-apartheid South Africa despite an avowed commitment of South Africa’s new post-apartheid dispensation to a non-racial society.Item On being black & being Muslim in South Africa: explorations into blackness and spiritualism(2016) Nkuna, ThabangBlackness has become a right to death that sees in death its almost essential property. The essence of blackness, its origin or its possibility, would be this right to death; but a death denuded of that ...sovereignty that gains from death its own sacrificial mastery ... and maintains itself in it. This is life as the work of death, a work born of fidelity to death, but death without transcendence (Marriot cited in Sexton 2015: 132). The advent of colonial modernity in South Africa marks the rupture of identity and being of Africans. That is, after the emergence of colonial modernity Africans cease to be Africans only but however they become black. Blackness becomes an object exclusion in the encounter with modernity. Blacks and by extension Africa is seen as being outside modern temporality inhabiting a zone of non-being and fungability. The encounter with modernity, without any doubt causes doubts in the Africans modes of existence or being and it is here that liberation and emancipatory movements/projects that have been initiated by blacks have sought to steer their lenses to try and liberate as well as understand how blacks can best live in modern conditions of racism or should there be any alternative to modern empty time. This study seeks to make an intervention, especially in South African Political studies, with concern to alternative political strategies that have not been take into consideration. [No abstract provided. Information taken from introduction].