4. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - Faculties submissions

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    Using Complexity to Unlock Emergent-Decolonial Development
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Chikane, Rekgotsofetse
    This thesis argues the need for a theoretical and philosophical understanding of emergent-decolonial development within development studies and decolonial thinking to formulate the notion of decolonisation within both fields as an ongoing developmental practice. As both a theoretical and philosophical framework, emergent-decolonial development functions as an economic, policy and philosophical analytic exercise to unravel the complex nature of the entanglement of political and economic notions of decolonisation that create an epistemological quagmire within developmental discourse, currently understood as coloniality. This quagmire is the result of the continued use of the dialectical relationship between the ideal and the non-ideal in the framing of development and decolonial thinking that has resulted in development viewing the idea of decolonisation as only the process of self-determination and limiting decolonial thinking to focusing on the epistemological and ontological expression of peripheral voices. This limitation allows for an understanding of coloniality and colonialism but denies researchers the ability to tackle both through continuous public policy interventions. The thesis argues the importance of untangling this relationship in a manner that would allow for the emergence of a new humanism in a manner that is replicable through policy interventions which would challenge the emergent nature of modernity/coloniality. In order to achieve the above, the thesis utilised a combination of two methodologies: an integrative literature review and a documentary analysis. The integrative literature review critically appraises the core theories of development, decolonial thinking and complexity to form the theoretical and philosophical framing of emergent-decolonial development. Thereafter, through the use of both thematic and content analysis of four liberatory texts from India, Tanzania, South Africa and Ecuador, respectively, the results were utilised to augment the framework where necessary. The results of the thesis indicate that the limitations of both development and decolonial studies inhibit decolonisation from being explored as an ongoing process meant to counteract coloniality and instead view coloniality as an emergent property of modernist approaches to development and decolonial thinking. Furthermore, the thesis found that development and decoloniality can be retooled through complexity science as emergent properties within complex adaptive systems that directly contend with the influence of coloniality. The colonial situation experienced by ‘the wretch’ has created an exceedingly complex and nuanced understanding of the coloniser and the colonised in the 21st century. As a result, the need to devise an approach to understanding decolonisation in this new world has become increasingly important. This framework provides the means to begin the resurgence of decolonisation and decolonial thought as an active public policy tool that others can adopt
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    The South African Arts Scene and European Cultural Institutions - A Troubled Relationship?
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-02) Heide, Josephine Elisabeth; Tagwirei, Cuthbeth
    Framed within the conceptual idea of decoloniality, this research critically investigates the power dynamic between South African artists and European cultural institutions that operate in South Africa. The study examines colonial legacies of exploitative practices, knowledge imposition and neo-colonisation disguised as charity and development aid in the Arts. It highlights the disproportionate dependence on European institutions due to a lack of sufficient sources of funding and support available to artists in South Africa. The study further establishes the legitimate place of European cultural institutions in the cultural landscape and their significant role according to the perspectives of the interview partners who shared their experiences as art practitioners and cultural policy experts. A qualitative research process comprising six semi-structured narrative interviews with South African artists was conducted. The collected data are explored using experienced-centred Narrative Analysis, focusing on the identification of colonial legacies that surface from the narratives. The research uses decolonial theory as a theoretical lens into the investigated power dynamics in the field of cultural cooperation between European institutions and South African partners. Decoloniality helps to unpack and dismantle the underlying complexities. The analysis elicits the perspectives and experiences of art practitioners which indicate perpetuated colonial relations on different levels. The study concludes with a set of recommendations for practitioners on how a more decolonised practice in the field of transcultural collaboration between South African artists and European cultural institutions can be achieved.
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    Media Voices and Power: A decolonial analysis of black voices in the post-apartheid South African media landscape using City Press newspaper as an analytical focus
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) Mgibisa, Mbuyisi; Menon, Dilip; Daniels, Glenda
    This study conducts a decolonial analysis of black voices in the post-apartheid South African media landscape using City Press newspaper as an analytical focus. For the purposes of this study, I have analysed four case studies linked to the mediation and meditation of black voices in the media and public sphere. First, this study explores the subjection of black voices inside the newsroom using the black-oriented newspaper, City Press, as an example. It assesses the structure of whiteness in that newspaper and interrogate whether it provided its black journalists with a room to write from the standpoint of “black perspective”. The second theme is an exploration and personal account of my lived experience in the typical South African neoliberal newsroom and an attempt to bring theory in order to figure out my lived experience. Third, this thesis focuses on forms of gendered and racialised forms of subjection posed by the silencing of voices of black women journalists in the South African mainstream media, including social media. And the fourth theme looks at the importance and significance of voice or speech in doing politics in the post-apartheid South Africa and interrogates how the Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF) has deployed its “radical black voice” through the concept of Black rage. The study utilises decolonial theory and Steve Biko’s Black Consciousness philosophy as a lens as it seeks to investigate how essentialised, racialised, politicised, gendered and lived are black voices in post 1994 South Africa media landscape and public sphere. This study, then, involves the critical analysis of four themes, all of which are integrally related. The main argument advanced in this thesis is that black voices continue to be subjected through the concept and function of coloniality. For this reason, the study not only historizes black voices as producers, users and custodians of knowledge but also situates their lived experiences. This study finds that even in the face of debilitating coloniality in our everyday lives, black voices persist through those politicised, gendered, racialised and lived negative forms of invisibility and marginalisation and think and speak from the perspective of blackness. Therefore, this thesis posits that black voices are a communicative plane on which blackness performs and articulate itself, for itself. Moreover, this study is a form of epistemic protest against systematic and systemic silencing of black voices and an attempt to counter efforts of rendering black people, in particular black women, speechless. The transdisciplinary methodological approach deployed here is, first and foremost, embedded in the theoretical framework and various methods and concepts will be operationalised to bring to light the complex and complicated nature of how black voices are mediated in the post-apartheid South African media landscape and public sphere. The interview method, which comprises a reflective commentary, and autoethnography are important components of this study. Additionally, the empirical findings through interview material, newspaper articles and tweeter feeds have been examined through discourse analysis and through the prism of the conceptual analytical tools deployed here.
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    The role of place names as indegenous knowledge in the archeology of the Makgabeng-Blouberg area, South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Vena, Kgolagano; Namono, Catherine
    The act of naming places has a twofold process of significance, firstly, it acts a locator of a particular geographical place and secondly reveals the ideology of the place that gives it its legitimacy. As such, place names represent one of the oldest forms of human cultural heritage. Place names are tailored for encrypting heritage and indigenous knowledge. However, in areas that have had significant interaction with external naming regimes, the indigenous naming processes have been suppressed. The Makgabeng-Blouberg area cultural landscape has an exceedingly long and interactive process with colonial naming processes. This research analyses the socio-political processes that shaped the prevalence of colonial place names in the Makgabeng-Blouberg area and significance of indigenous toponyms to the community. The study suggests that colonial power had far reaching effects in the region. The prevalence of colonial names is a result of subsequent naming regimes continuing the hegemonic ideological dominance over places to reflect their control. However, these indigenous communities, navigate this subjugation through engaging in alternative naming systems. Indigenous place names are used by these communities to preserve their culture and heritage. As such, these place names became part of the community's sense of identity and their historical value, thus creating generational ties and anthropological places for the community.
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    Justice as Recognition in the Ecological Community
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-06) Francis, Romain; Hamilton, Lawrence
    This thesis postulates that an alternate mode of recognition is required to develop an authentic conception of justice that reconciles the subaltern’s desire for dignity with affording greater love, care, and respect for nature. Extant redistributive and recognitive justice frames within traditional western political theory and philosophy are strictly anthropocentric and restrict nature to a purely utilitarian function in the satisfaction of human needs. This maintains a moral hierarchy between humans and nature that perpetuates ecological injustice. Using decoloniality as both a method and critical analytical framework, this thesis develops and employs the coloniality of nature to illustrate that the continued destruction, exploitation, and disrespect for nature is fundamentally tied to the misrecognition of subaltern people. Misrecognition is a product of a deep-seated sociogenic problem of coloniality introduced during European colonisation, which consolidated the superior status of a hegemonic western subjectivity. Other experiences, knowledges, practices, and ways of articulating human-nature relations were rendered as non-scientific and superstitious and devoid of any value. The misrecognition of subaltern people denied humanity an opportunity to learn from other viewpoints and integrate them into an inclusive idea of justice where no single subjectivity assumes a dominant status. Centered on a decolonial love predicated on Fanon’s idea of “building the world of the You”, not the I, Us or We, this thesis draws on the principles of transculturalism and border thinking to promulgate a practical idea of justice as recognition in the context of an ecological community, that is more inclusive of other living and non-living entities. It advances a dialogical mode of recognition that attempts to achieve the following objectives: i) promote critical introspection amongst the subaltern to understand how their experience of (mis)recognition is connected to the destruction of nature, and how their attitudes towards nature were altered by the introduction of western modernity, capitalism and colonisation, ii) enable those social groups that are on the top of the ontological hierarchy to understand their role in such processes and how to address them, and iii) to demonstrate that increasing humanity’s love, care, and respect for nature is not possible without first addressing misrecognition between people.