School of Literature, Language and Media (ETDs)
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Item The 1995 Shobashobane Christmas Day massacre: political mass murder that shook the new South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Khumalo, SibongileThis research report tells the story of the killing of 18 African National Congress (ANC) supporters in the village of Shobashobane on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast by an Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) aligned mob. It is one of the earliest episodes of political conflict that marred post-apartheid South Africa in what was a climax of instability in the region with a long history of violence. The survivors of the massacre still bear the scars of the onslaught and question whether the political change they fought for has brought them the future they envisaged. The gruesome attack, which took place on 25 December 1995, was a consequence of a fight for political hegemony between the IFP and the ANC. Twenty-eight years after the massacre, the events of that fateful Christmas day are still etched in the memory of the survivors and aggravated by the challenging socio-economic conditions of the present. The court found the massacre to be politically motivated by the rival supporters. Those convicted and jailed for their role in the massacre described by the court as ‘well-orchestrated’ have all been released from prison, while others had their convictions overturned on appeal shortly after sentencing. Political violence continues to plague parts of KwaZulu-Natal in different forms, and Shobashobane remains a mishmash of complex socio-political contrasts.Item Comrades on the Road: Stories from South Africa’s Iconic Race(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Brown, Ryan LenoraItem The link between economic and digital diplomacy: The case of US-South Africa relations on LinkedIn(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Ramonoedi, Tshepo; Wekesa, BobIn recent years, there have been several studies focusing on economic diplomacy while using a global communication frameworks. However, there have been limited studies integrating economic diplomacy, perceptions (representation), and digital diplomacy. The study therefore delved into representation held by LinkedIn followers of the selected US entities in accordance with the economic relations between South Africa and the United States of America (US). Thus, the two key pillars of the study are economic relations and perceptions, with a focus on how these pillars converge and diverge. An initial review of the literature shows gaps in studies linking US economic diplomacy and digital diplomacy which the study looks to fill. The study adopted second-level media agenda-setting, third-level media agenda-setting; and media framing which was complemented with analysis of the extent to which the recurrent themes have been featured in the LinkedIn accounts of US entities such as US Mission in South Africa, the US Agency for International Development, the US Commercial Service, the Prosper Africa, the International Development Finance Corporation, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Power Africa, the US African Development Foundation, and the US Trade and Development Agency. The study found that the US successfully used its entities to promote its economic diplomacy through LinkedIn. The study further revealed that the US economic diplomacy towards South Africa was appealing, particularly concerning the energy transition project in South Africa. The findings also revealed that the US effectively applied media framing; second-level media agenda-setting; and third-level media agenda-setting theories to strengthen its economic diplomacy towards South Africa using the LinkedIn platform.Item What is called literature? Heidegger, responsive figuration, and the aspect of be-ing(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Van Niekerk, Marthinus Christoffel; Williams, MerleFrom the metaphysical orientation of Western thinking, being is understood as presence, truth as correspondence, and language as representation. This understanding inclines reflections on the nature of literature towards the question “What is literature?”, and calls for responses that seek determinative commonalities between literary objects. In this thesis, I attempt a different approach to the being of literature, prompted by Heidegger’s thinking, which understands being dynamically and non-substantively as the self-withholding clearing which grants beings their appearance. Language does not unfold primarily in meaningful references between objects, but in dis-closure; it responds to the aspect of be-ing, showing beings in their being by showing the possibility of meaninglessness in every appearance. This is what clears and holds open a reach for referential play. Language therefore entails a response to the self-withholding of being, and in that sense itself speaks. In this light, “What is called literature?” becomes a question concerning how being calls on language to respond as literature, and human beings are called on to participate responsively in this dialogue. Two different but interconnected ways in which literature calls are investigated. On the one hand, literature promises a reach of discursive representability; it demands the disclosure of beings as orderable and immediately available. On the other hand, literature figures a rift, a drawing in the sense both of a meaningfully gathered marking, and of a drawing open which draws away. I read William Blake’s The First Book of Urizen to trace how it literalizes the tension between these callings of literature. It figures a rift, and puts into play a differencing relation between a poetic attunement to delay and non-arrival, and the demand for arrival arising from its positioning within the realm of discursive availability which characterizes the contemporary field of literature.Item Memory, Trauma and Narrative in Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins and Delia Jarrett-Macauley’s Moses, Citizen &Me(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mtongana, Lutho Siphe; Musila, Grace A.The notion of memory is a core fabric of identity and navigating human life both at individual level and collective levels. Therefore, when everyday life is disrupted by traumatic events such as wartime conflict, individual and shared memory becomes highly contested, especially when subaltern voices compete with dominant narratives. This thesis explores the role and power of memory in narrating trauma and violence in Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins (2002) and Delia Jarrett-Macauley’s Moses, Citizen & Me (2005). By depicting how memory is at the centre of both texts, the study interrogates the ways in which the authors use memory as a narrative device to mediate healing, reconciliation and reintegration, or as a weapon of silencing survivors of traumatic wartime experiences. Using Sigmund Freud’s argument that trauma manifests both at the moment of distressing event and at the moment of recall of that event, the thesis interrogates the ways in which Vera and Jarrett-Macauley narrate trauma by cross mapping the representation of the Gukurahundi civil war in Zimbabwe and the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone to the national politics of the respective countries. I argue that while the authors’ approaches to historical conflict differ — with Jarrett-Macauley utilising an expatriate narrator who takes on the role of mediation while Vera draws on history, art and landscape — both authors are concerned with inventing alternative routes to stitching together forms of multidirectional memory.Item The requirements of ethical journalism: An analysis of COVID-19 related news coverage by South African print and online media(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Goba, Lindi Mpumelelo; Sithole, EnockThe media provides people with medical scienYfic informaYon during a health crisis. This funcYon of the media is even more crucial when there are lockdown restricYons as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies of media coverage of pandemics show that reporYng was generally negaYve in that the stories were of an alarmist nature and there were high levels of sensaYonalism. The compromised standards of reporYng could be a`ributed to the need for print and online news media outlets to a`ract audiences and increase profits given the bad state of the economy, parYcularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to analyse the extent to which the South African print and online media met the requirements of ethical journalism, as set out in the South African Press Code, in their reporYng on COVID-19. The researcher uYlised a mixed methods approach as the study includes both qualitaYve and quanYtaYve aspects. The data was collected through the Press Council’s website and was sampled using the keyword COVID-19. In total, there were 105 complaints submi`ed to the Press Council of South Africa during March 2020 and March 2022. Out of the 105, the researcher analysed 13 complaints that were related to COVID-19 reportage made during the same period. This period includes the outbreak of the pandemic, the second wave, and concludes with the third wave which is when the pandemic began to wind down. The results and findings of this study show that the number of complaints submi`ed during the pandemic was significantly low and that the publicaYons that breached the Press Code were mainly sancYoned for serious breaches. This suggests that print and online publicaYons that subscribe to the Press Council pracYced ethical journalism and adhered to the requirements of the Press Code to a moderate extent.Item Intimacy, sadness-as-courage and post-apartheid disillusionment in Nhlanhla P. Maake’s Mangolo a Nnake(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mochechane, Khumo Sophia; Musila, Grace A.In this thesis, I analyse Nhlanhla P. Maake’s 1999 novella, Mangolo a Nnake. While Mangolo readily constitutes apartheid literature, I make a discussion around its prescient nature; that is to say, the ways in which it predicts post-apartheid neocolonialism and ‘ruined time’. The overarching subject matter being black female self-actualisation, I explore Professor Roger Coulibaly’s question, “What do African women need in order to write?”, making a case for the responses space, time and affective prompting. The broad subject of psychosocial support, female solidarity and female social capital is also discussed in line with the ways in which sadness sometimes births the courage to initiate and maintain self-actualisation. By way of close reading of the novella, I discuss various literary devices that are able to cultivate intimacy in a reader. The reader of an epistolary novel can be considered an ‘eavesdropper’, and I show the ways in which literary ‘eavesdropping’ makes way for simulation with a literary character to take place as abstract spectator – that is to say, as reader. I also discuss psychosocial support vis-a-vis female solidarity as an additional need for black women writers. These sometimes find expression by way of storytelling and humour. The latter two are explored in this thesis for their therapeutic and healing abilities. I also read Ntshebo’s disappointment and hurt as allegorical of the larger disappointment of the post-apartheid nation as a result of neocolonialism. A running trope throughout this thesis is the ways in which the concept of the ‘New Woman’ found place and proliferation under the apartheid regime.Item Exploring the Anti-Bildungsroman in Kopano Matlwa’s Coconut (2007) and Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s I Do Not Come to You by Chance (2009)(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Shirinde, Karabelo; Musila, G.AThis study uses the term anti-bildungsroman to reference African post-colonial counter-discursive novels that reconfigure the conventions of the classical bildungsroman. The anti-bildungsroman allows post-colonial writers to ‘talk back’ to empire by claiming narrative forms and structures that have historically centred the bourgeois white male protagonist. This research study explores how the anti-bildungsroman centres post-colonial protagonists’ coming of age in environments deeply affected by colonialism. The study examined the extent to which the coming-of-age novels Coconut (2007) by Kopano Matlwa and I Do Not Come to You By Chance (2009) by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani reconfigure the traditional bildungsroman format to constitute an African counter discourse. The study examines themes tied to the protagonists’ social condition that influence their environment and shaped their daily experiences; the narrative structure and characterology which determined how the structural plots and goals of socialisation are reconfigured; and the historical, socio-political and cultural contexts in which the respective narratives are set, which take into consideration the history of colonialism, contemporary impacts of neoliberalism, and the struggles of nation-building within post-independent states. The study concludes that Coconut (2007) and I Do Not Come to You By Chance (2009) are forms of anti-bildungsroman which express the challenges associated with coming of age in countries stained by the ramifications of colonialism. Matlwa and Nwaubani reject the ideological premises of the classical bildungsroman genre which is tied to European bourgeois subjectivity. Instead, they reconfigure the classical coming of age story in the context of the aftermath of empire.Item Representative Fiction in Muslim Literature in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Paruk, FathimaThis research explores Muslim representative fiction in South Africa, addressing the challenges of limited local readership and reliance on imported content in the South African Muslim publishing sector. It emphasises the need for more representative adult fiction and investigates how independent and hybrid models can amplify diverse Muslim voices. The study employs semi-structured interviews, analyses books by self-identifying Muslim authors, and uses Nielsen Book Data and the Muslim Book Reviewers (MBR) scale to examine epitextual and paratextual elements. Key findings indicate that local Muslim publishers face challenges such as small market size, limited readership, competition with international publishers, and distribution and marketing issues. To address these challenges, it is recommended to conduct regular surveys and focus groups to understand evolving preferences, strengthen networks with local retailers, expand online presence and social media marketing, improve publication quality to meet international standards and ensure culturally relevant and diverse content. Promoting local authors, investing in underrepresented genres, and fostering collaborations with community members and educational institutions are also essential for enhancing the quality, impact, and market reach of Muslim fictionItem Teaching Intermediate Phase isiZulu reading comprehension skills to at-risk readers in uMkhanyakude mainstream schools: Pedagogical strategies that work(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Ntshangase, Chief Langelihle; Tshuma, LindiweDespite several interventions put in place to alleviate the reading crisis in South African primary schools, many teachers still experience challenges in teaching reading comprehension. The situation is even more dire with regards to teaching inclusive reading to at-risk readers in mainstream schools in under-resourced settings. The term at-risk readers refer to learners with reading difficulties. Curriculum guidelines on reading do not outline pedagogical strategies that are effective in reading classrooms that include both at-risk and healthy progress readers. It is against this background that this study investigates the pedagogical strategies used to teach isiZulu inclusive reading comprehension at the Intermediate Phase level. Since the majority of studies conducted around literacy challenges focus on teachers’ capabilities to teach reading, this study extends this debate by interrogating teacher educators’ facilitation of inclusive reading. This qualitative study is guided by the interpretivist paradigm and framed by the Lexical quality hypothesis, Word Learning Theory and the Simple view of reading approach. Non-participant classroom observations and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from 10 intermediate phase isiZulu teachers based in mainstream schools, in uMkhanyakude district. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with seven isiZulu methodology lecturers purposively selected from five South African universities. The qualitative data were analysed by the researcher through thematic analysis. The unit of analysis in this research are the pedagogical strategies for developing intermediate phase isiZulu inclusive reading among At-Risk readers. Findings indicate that intermediate phase isiZulu teachers struggle to organize meaningful and cohesive reading strategies. Strategies employed are not structured to address specific reading challenges and consequently at-risk readers in mainstream schools remain inadequately catered for. Furthermore, university teacher education departments do not adequately equip pre-service intermediate phase teachers with the necessary pedagogical skills to teach inclusive reading to at-risk readers in mainstream schools. This study, thus contributes to the body of knowledge related to the pedagogical strategies best suited for developing inclusive reading.