Community In Cape Town Research Articles

Who Consults Sangomas in Khayelitsha? An Exploratory Quantitative Analysis

This paper employs quantitative analysis to explore which people in Khayelitsha (an urban African community in Cape Town) are likely to be clients of ‘sangomas’, that is, traditional healers who specialise in divining illnesses usually perceived to be caused by witchcraft. It shows that sangoma clients are older, disproportionately female, poorer and less well educated than other people and that they are less trusting of others and more likely to believe in the efficacy of witchcraft. Being a recipient of a disability grant is the most significant predictor of whether the respondent is a sangoma client or not. The paper also discusses different quantitative sources for the use of traditional healers in South Africa, showing that the way the question is posed is all important.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) in South Africa: Engaging multiple constituents to shape the research question

Community engagement is an on-going, arduous, and necessary process for developing effective health promotion programs. The challenges are amplified when the particular health issue or research question is not prominent in the consciousness of the targeted community. In this paper, we explore the community-based participatory research (CBPR) model as a means to negotiate a mutual agenda between communities and researchers. The paper is focused on the (perceived) need for cervical cancer screening in an under-resourced community in Cape Town, South Africa. Cervical cancer is a significant health problem in this community and elsewhere in South Africa. Unlike HIV-AIDS, however, many Black South Africans have not been educated about cervical cancer and the importance of obtaining screening. Many may not consider screening a priority in their lives. Our research included extensive consultations and informal interviews with diverse community and regional stakeholders. Following these, we conducted 27 focus groups and 106 demographic surveys with randomly selected youth, parents, local health care personnel, educators and school staff. Focus group data were summarized and analyzed cross-sectionally. Community stakeholders were involved throughout this research. Our consultations, interviews, and focus group data were key in identifying the concerns and priorities of the community. By engaging community stakeholders, we developed a research framework that incorporated the community's concerns and priorities, and stressed the intersecting roles of poverty, violence, and other cultural forces in shaping community members’ health and wellbeing. Community members helped to refocus our research from cervical cancer to ‘cervical health,’ a concept that acknowledged the impact on women's bodies and lives of HIV-AIDS and STDs, sexual violence, poverty, and multiple social problems. We conclude that the research agenda and questions in community-based health research should not be considered immutable. They need to be open to negotiation, creativity, and constant reinvention.

Paradoxical helminthiasis and giardiasis in Cape Town, South Africa: epidemiology and control.

South Africa has endorsed a World Health Assembly (WHA) resolution calling for control of soil-transmitted helminths (STHs). In Cape Town, services and housing that exist in old-established suburbs should minimise the prevalence of intestinal parasitic infections, even when residents are poor. Where families live in shacks in densely-populated areas without effective sanitation, more than 90% of children can be infected by STHs. The humoral immune response to worms theoretically favours infection by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and HIV. Obtain estimates of gender-, age-, school-related and overall prevalence of helminthiasis and giardiasis in a low-income but well-serviced community. Assess possible sources of infection. Alert health services to the need for control measures and the threat from protozoal pathogens. Warn that the immune response to intestinal parasites may favour tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS. A cross-sectional study of the prevalence of helminthiasis and giardiasis was carried out in a large, non-selective sample of children attending nine schools. Gender, school and age effects were related to non-medical preventive services, sewage disposal practices and possible sources of infection. The overall STH infestation rate was 55.8%. Prevalence was inluenced by school and age but not by gender. Eggs and cysts were seen at the following prevalence: Ascaris 24.8%; Trichuris 50.6%; Hymenolepis nana 2.2%; Enterobius 0.6%; Giardia 17.3%; hookworm 0.08%; and Trichostrongylus 0.1%. Approximately 60% of sewage sludge is used in a form that will contain viable eggs and cysts. Prevalence trends in this old community in Cape Town could indicate infection by swallowing eggs or cysts on food or in water, more than by exposure to polluted soil. Sewage sludge and effluent might be sources of infection. In adjacent, under serviced, newer communities, promiscuous defecation occurs. Probable vectors are discussed. The immune response to intestinal parasites might be a risk factor for HIV/AIDS and TB.

Hydra's Heads: PAGAD and Responses to the PAGAD Phenomenon in a Cape Muslim Community*

People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), a Cape Town-based movement that arose out of the context of some of the most violent and crime-ridden Coloured townships in Cape Town in the 1990s, has attracted a lot of interest in the media and from academics. A central issue in the debate on PAGAD has been what role Islamist discourses have played in the generation of support for the movement and, more specifically, whether one can regard such discourses as motivating factors for individual PAGAD members. In this article, I present the case-story of a convicted PAGAD member in a community in Cape Town, and the ways in which the Muslim community in which he resided responded to the phenomenon. On the basis of ethnographical data, I argue that PAGAD ought to be seen as a movement attracting actors from a variety of social backgrounds within Muslim communities in Cape Town, and that the common-sensical assertion of a linkage between Islamist discourses and PAGAD violence therefore is problematic. PAGAD's violence is linked to the long history of vigilantism in non-white areas in South Africa, to young South Africans’ exposure to violence in the anti-apartheid struggle, to the absence of legitimacy of the police and the courts, to local models of masculinity, and to marginalisation. PAGAD was bound up with the hybrid social and religious formations of Coloured communities in Cape Town, yet its outward expressions as an Islamist movement cannot be reduced to a mere epiphenomenon in relation to its social and cultural origins. In the community of Mekaar, PAGAD failed to attract a substantial following due to the fact that most actors in the community stalled at the prospect of a cycle of violence between local PAGAD-members and local drug-lords. This article emphasises the general significance of local social and cultural contexts for the understanding of so-called Islamist movements.

Discourse, Differentiation, and Agency: Muslim Community Schools in Postapartheid Cape Town

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscourse, Differentiation, and Agency: Muslim Community Schools in Postapartheid Cape TownAslam FataarAslam Fataar Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 49, Number 1February 2005 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/426159 Views: 68Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref © 2005 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Nina Hoel Exploring Women's Madrasahs in South Africa: Implications for the Construction of Muslim Personhood and Religious Literacy, Religious Education 111, no.11 (Feb 2016): 30–48.https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2016.1124011Nuraan Davids Muslim schools in post-apartheid South Africa: Living with an apartheid past?, Education as Change 18, no.22 (Apr 2014): 227–236.https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2013.879668Yasien Mohamed The Gülen Philosophy of Education and Its Application in a South African School, (May 2014): 407–419.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8972-1_23Riad Nasser, Irene Nasser Textbooks as a vehicle for segregation and domination: state efforts to shape Palestinian Israelis’ identities as citizens, Journal of Curriculum Studies 40, no.55 (Oct 2008): 627–650.https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270802072804Suzanne Grant Lewis, Jordan Naidoo School governance and the pursuit of democratic participation: Lessons from South Africa, International Journal of Educational Development 26, no.44 (Jul 2006): 415–427.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2005.09.003

When Muslims marry non‐Muslims: marriage as incorporation in a cape Muslim community1

This article, based on anthropological fieldwork in a township community in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2000, analyses genealogical data on the frequency of inter‐religious marriages in a coloured Cape Muslim community, and presents two Muslim marital narratives in order to illustrate what the limits of tolerance for atypical marital situations with regard to normative Islamic precepts may be in this specific Muslim community. I argue that the high frequency of inter‐religious marriages, as well as the high frequency of inter‐religious marriages involving Muslim‐born females, can only be explained by reference to a field characterised by socio‐religious fluidity, and by reinstating a notion of social agency of Muslim females in the organisation of their own marriages. I describe Cape Muslim identities as hybrid, and Islam as non‐determinative in the making of these identities.

Brief report: Social and neighbourhood correlates of adolescent drunkenness: a pilot study in Cape Town, South Africa

Aim To identify social and neighbourhood correlates of drunkenness among adolescents. Design A cross-sectional, community study. Participants A multi-stage cluster sampling strategy was used to select 90 adolescents aged 11–17 years from nine distinct communities in Cape Town, South Africa. The sample was stratified by race, income, and gender. Randomly selected adolescents from each household were interviewed by trained interviewers. Instrument A questionnaire that included questions on substance use behaviour, peers, neighbourhood factors and recreational activities. Results A third of the sample indicated having been drunk at least once in their lifetime. Older adolescents and adolescents whose friends drink were significantly more likely to have been drunk. The risk of having been drunk was also associated with being white and with being exposed to public drunkenness on a daily or at least weekly basis. Gender was not associated with reporting of lifetime drunkenness. Attendance at religious services (at least weekly) was found to be a significant protective factor against drunkenness. Conclusion The study highlights a number of environmental factors that should be considered in tackling adolescent drunkenness.

Citizenship, Community Participation and Social Change: The Case of Area Coordinating Teams in Cape Town, South Africa

1 Community participation and social change Social change does not roll in under the wheels of inevitability. On the contrary, we have to organise for it, mobilise for it, struggle for it and indeed, plan for it. This is especially so in a country such as South Africa, where centuries of colonial-cum-apartheid thought and practices have led planning bureaucracies to create and perpetuate socioeconomic patterns of uneven development and neglect. Amidst the geographies of largely “white” affluence, fear and collective “othering”, those others, i.e. predominantly “black”, unemployed, homeless, destitute, angry and alienated, are increasingly demanding their basic rights, rights that are enshrined in the post-apartheid Constitution (RSA 1995). One of the many structures that have been created in order to make available constitutionally guaranteed opportunities for participation in governance has been Areas Coordinating Teams (ACTs), established in the late 1990s as a vehicle through which government agencies could engage local communities in development planning. The ACTs were established in order to encourage consensus among politicians, bureaucrats and communities with regard to specific planning issues such as housing, health care and overall infrastructure at grassroots level. This article addresses the question of whether the ACTs, as spaces for participation in development planning available to the local communities of Cape Town, do indeed contribute towards grassrootsoriented, bottom-up programmes in post-apartheid South Africa. It draws on two complementary studies. The first consists of informal interviews with councillors and officials. In these interviews, the politicians and the bureaucrats expressed their views and understanding of ACTs. The second study was based on a structured questionnaire directed at community-based organisations (CBOs) attending the ACTs initiated/coordinated meetings. My focus here is on the relationships between the official, “invited” spaces of the ACTs and other spaces within the community and on the relationships that officials and elected representatives have with these spaces, in order to assess their potential for democratising the development planning process.

Brief report: Social and neighbourhood correlates of adolescent drunkenness: a pilot study in Cape Town, South Africa

Aim: To identify social and neighbourhood correlates of drunkenness among adolescents.Design: A cross-sectional, community study.Participants: A multi-stage cluster sampling strategy was used to select 90 adolescents aged 11–17 years from nine distinct communities in Cape Town, South Africa. The sample was stratified by race, income, and gender. Randomly selected adolescents from each household were interviewed by trained interviewers.Instrument: A questionnaire that included questions on substance use behaviour, peers, neighbourhood factors and recreational activities.Results: A third of the sample indicated having been drunk at least once in their lifetime. Older adolescents and adolescents whose friends drink were significantly more likely to have been drunk. The risk of having been drunk was also associated with being white and with being exposed to public drunkenness on a daily or at least weekly basis. Gender was not associated with reporting of lifetime drunkenness. Attendance at religious services (at least weekly) was found to be a significant protective factor against drunkenness.Conclusion: The study highlights a number of environmental factors that should be considered in tackling adolescent drunkenness.

The Changed Circumstances for the Performance of Religious Authority in a Cape Muslim Community

AbstractIn the Muslim communities of Cape Town, South Africa, religious authority is based on processes of designation in local communities. Increased access to higher religious education, and increased exposure to the diversity of local and global Islamic discourses as a result of general societal democratisation and processes of globalisation, leads to increased contestation over religious authority in Cape Muslim communities. As the rights to Muslim discourse are democratised, religious authority becomes more unstable. This article, based on fieldwork in a coloured township south of Cape Town, argues that there has been a shift in the symbolic capital required of Muslim religious leaders from mastery of form to mastery of content, and suggests that the democratisation of Muslim discourse has opened avenues to religious authority for Muslim females.

Validation of a new biomarker of fetal exposure to alcohol

ObjectiveTo test the sensitivity and specificity of fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEEs) extracted from meconium to identify alcohol-using pregnant women with a sensitive and specific methodology, gas chromatography-tandem mass spectroscopy (GC/MS/MS). Study designTwenty-seven samples of meconium were obtained from infants from the mixed race community in Cape Town, South Africa, who were enrolled in a longitudinal neurobehavioral study. Maternal alcohol use was reported prospectively during pregnancy. FAEEs were isolated from meconium and quantitated by GC/MS/MS. ResultsEthyl oleate was the FAEE that correlated most strongly with maternal self-reported drinking, especially with the average ounces of absolute alcohol ingested per drinking day. Ethyl oleate was most strongly related to drinking in the second and third trimesters (Pearson r=.55 and .40, respectively). At a threshold of 1.5 average ounces of absolute alcohol ingested per drinking day, the area under the receiving operator characteristic curve was .92 (95% confidence interval, 0.74–0.97). Using a cut-off value of 32 ng/g, sensitivity was 84.2% and specificity was 83.3%. ConclusionsEthyl oleate concentration in meconium assayed by GC/MS/MS provides a highly sensitive and specific indicator of maternal alcohol use during pregnancy.

Les Malais du Cap existent-ils ?

Eric Germain The Malay community of Cape Town has its origin in the slaves and political exiles sent there in the second half of the 17th c. Islam, the religion shared by the Malays and some Indian communities, was officially recognised only a century later and spread through new groups: Malagasi, Black people and mestizos. The unity, divisions and the denomination of this pluri- ethnic community have been conditioned ever since by political and economic choices coming from inside as well as outside its circle. The diachronic study of these various strategies offers an example of the way dynamics of identity are implemented.

Who Goes to School? Educational Stratification by Gender, Caste, and Ethnicity in Nepal

Cette etude examine deux problemes majeurs : d'abord les effets positifs de l'expansion et la democratisation de l'enseignement au Nepal sur les ecarts de niveau d'education subsistant entre les sexes et les classes sociales. L'article montre ensuite que l'origine sociale et les differences de genre affectent le progres et l'acces a l'education de base pour les enfants d'âge scolaire. En introduction, les auteurs reprennent historiquement l'evolution du systeme educatif au Nepal avant d'expliquer les questions de hierarchisation et de stratification de la societe nepalaise...

Classification of drug-resistant tuberculosis in an epidemic area

Traditionally, patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis are classified as having acquired drug-resistant or primary drug-resistant disease on the basis of a history of previous tuberculosis treatment. Only cases of primary drug resistance are assumed to be due to transmission of drug-resistant strains. This descriptive study of 63 patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis assessed the relative contribution of transmission of drug-resistant strains in a high-incidence community of Cape Town, South Africa, by restriction-fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). The RFLP results were compared with the results obtained by traditional classification methods. According to RFLP definitions, 52% (33 cases) of drug-resistant tuberculosis was caused by transmission of a drug-resistant strain. The proportion of cases due to transmission was higher for multidrug-resistant (64%; 29 cases) than for single-drug-resistant (no cases) tuberculosis. By the clinical classification, only 18 (29%) patients were classified as having primary drug-resistant tuberculosis (implying transmission). The clinical classification was thus misleading in 25 patients. The term acquired drug resistance includes patients infected with strains that truly acquired drug resistance during treatment and patients who were initially infected with or reinfected with a drug-resistant strain. This definition could lead to misinterpretation of surveillance studies, incorrect evaluation of tuberculosis programmes, and delayed diagnosis and treatment of patients with multidrug-resistant disease. The clinical term acquired drug resistance should be replaced with the term "drug resistance in previously treated cases", which includes cases with drug resistance due to true acquisition as well as that due to transmitted drug-resistant strains.

Primary aldosteronism; a community based survey in 3 ethnic communities in cape town, south africa

Primary aldosteronism; a community based survey in 3 ethnic communities in cape town, south africa

The Effect of Carbamazepine and Sodium Valproate on the Blood and Serum Values of Children From a Third-World Environment

In third-world countries many children with epilepsy also suffer from malnutrition, anemia, liver disease, and immunosuppression. Doctors might have reservations about the use of anticonvulsants that could aggravate these disorders. The purpose of this study was to establish the prevalence of abnormal blood and serum values in children receiving carbamazepine or sodium valproate as monotherapy who attended a child neurology clinic serving a third-world community in Cape Town, South Africa Blood samples were taken at routine follow-up visits from 104 children who had been on carbamazepine or sodium valproate monotherapy for at least 6 months. Hematology, serum chemistry, immunoglobulins, and anticonvulsant levels were measured by standard laboratory procedures. Very few subjects had any values outside accepted normal ranges. When clinically indicated and available, carbamazepine and sodium valproate can be prescribed for children from a third-world environment. Frequent blood and serum testing is not necessary in asymptomatic individuals.

Perceptions of overweight African women about acceptable body size of women and children

Malnutrition, presenting as obesity in women and under-nutrition in children, is a prevalent problem in the squatter communities of Cape Town. Food habits are determined by a complex matrix of economic, social and cultural factors which need to be understood by health professionals prior to the implementation of strategies to improve the nutritional status of this community. This qualitative study is designed to explore the perceptions of overweight black women in Cape Town, with underweight infants, about the culturally acceptable body size for women and children. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 overweight black women who were resident in the metropolitan area of Khayelitsha in Cape Town. A snowballing technique was utilised to select the key informants, all of whom were mothers of underweight infants. The interviews were conducted in Xhosa and recorded, with the permission of participants, onto tape. They were then transcribed and translated into English. The transcripts were coded and analysed by two researchers who worked independently to ensure content validity. The informants came from disadvantaged communities in which food was highly valued as a result of the fact that food security was not assured. The concept of an individual voluntarily regulating the intake of nutrients when food did become available, appeared unacceptable to the informants. It was not clear from the interviews how the participants perceived their normal or "desired" body weight. Increased body mass was regarded as a token of well-being in that marital harmony was perceived to be reflected in increased body weight. Overweight children were regarded as reflecting health as it was associated with sufficient food supply and intake. Although women expressed the desire to loose some excess weight for practical reasons, there was no negative social pressure to motivate this. The attitudes recorded from this qualitative research project suggest cultural perceptions of excess body weight that will complicate the design of effective health promotion strategies to normalise and maintain ideal body weight in this group of African women.

Childhood tuberculosis in an urban population in South Africa: burden and risk factor.

To study the epidemiology of childhood tuberculosis (TB) in a developing country. Two urban communities of Cape Town, South Africa with a TB case notification rate of 1149/100 000. Retrospective descriptive study using the national population census (1991), 10 year official TB notification records, and a geographical information system. The case notification rate of TB in children 0-5 years old was 3588 cases/100 000 children aged 0-5 years, 3.5 times the case notification rate in adults. Children (0-14 years) accounted for 39% of the total case load. Childhood TB case notification rate correlated with parental education (r = -0.64), annual household income (r = -0.6), and crowding (r = 0.32). Children, especially those living in poor socioeconomic conditions, form an important epidemiological group and account for a notable proportion of the morbidity caused by TB. Efforts to improve TB control must therefore not only target adults (case detection and cure of infectious cases) but also children (screening of child contacts of adult cases) and the socioeconomic living conditions.

‘We Know Why We're Here’: the experience of African children in a ‘coloured’ school in Cape Town, South Africa[1

With the abolition of formal apartheid in education in South Africa there has been a movement of children classified African into schools which were previously reserved for Indians, ‘coloureds’ and whites. While this development has yielded a number of highly positive outcomes, of concern, has been the difficulty host schools have encountered in dealing with the social, cultural and economic backgrounds which entering children have brought with them. Significantly, host schools previously classified ‘coloured’ have had as much difficulty as white schools in dealing with social and cultural difference. This article is based on research conducted in a working‐class community in Cape Town which has admitted a large number of children classified African. Drawing on extensive interviews with African boys and girls, it looks at the problems which they have encountered and how they have dealt with these problems in giving voice to their identity. The argument which the article seeks to make is that young people develop complex identities in the process of attending schools which seek to pull them into the dominant discourse of apartheid. They recognise the exclusionary strategies in school which seek them to sublimate their Africanness and work with these strategies in the classroom and the playground. While they accede to the dominant messages of school, at the same time they reject the representational structures within those messages. [1] The terms ‘coloured’, African, white and Indian are part of the nomenclature and vocabulary of apartheid. While I recognise that they have been assimilated and are used in everyday speech, I reject the racism and the racial essentialism embedded in their use.

Depression in the elderly living in the community. Its presentation and features.

A prevalence of depression of 13% was found among 139 coloured persons aged 65 years and over, living in the community in Cape Town, which accords with figures elsewhere. A high rate of hypochondriasis was found, but there was a low rate of suicidal intent, which could be explained by good social support. Observed depression and a depressed mood occurred in almost all depressed patients; as defined in the Present State Examination, these items appear to be an excellent screen for depression.