South African Counterparts Research Articles

Civilising the Cape: Public Art Exhibitions and Cape Visual Culture, 1851–1910

Public art galleries in South Africa, in particular the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, owe their establishment to the energetic debates on the role of art and public art galleries that were prevalent in Europe during the 19th century. These debates focused on the ability of art to educate and civilise, and such ideas travelled along imperial networks to the Cape and Australia, where they were negotiated in local contexts. At the Cape, a series of public art exhibitions was initiated with the intent of establishing a permanent art collection and gallery, the ultimate aim being to provide a space in which to cultivate taste and civility in the general public. But the visual culture that emerged from these exhibitions was focused predominantly on local or British landscape and genre. Similarly, in the collection established for Cape Town's permanent gallery, later the national gallery, there was very little grand narrative art or art of the past characteristic of other national galleries. A culture of informality prevailed instead. It is argued that the commitment to nature painting in the Cape and elsewhere in South Africa stemmed from an indifference or antipathy to the metropolitan culture on which major international art galleries were based, compromising the professionalism and status of these local art institutions. A comparative analysis of some of the galleries of Australia, the Cape's colonial rival, reveals that they received far greater support and demonstrated far greater professionalism than their South African counterparts.

‘Age-Related’ Versus ‘Motivational’ Factors in Second/Foreign Language Learning: Some Evidence from Immigrant Learners of English as a Second Language’

In this article, Age related factors in second and foreign language learning were examined to determine the extent to which Lenneberg’s (1967) Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) applies to immigrants in multilingual communities. To achieve this purpose, two groups of students (namely, learners of Mozambican origin and South African locals) were selected to conduct a quantitative study on English second language proficiency as well as integrative motivation. The results obtained in the two groups were correlated in order to determine if integrative motivation played a role in the ultimate attainment of Mozambican immigrants in English second language. The results showed that the Mozambican learners learned English at a faster rate that their South African counterparts. However, this fast rate did not correlate positively with the learners’ integrative motivation as was expected. The article therefore concludes that, for immigrants in multilingual societies, some other factor other that the CPH may explain the fast rate at which the immigrant group learned English. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1340

Foreign Megastores and the Nigerian Economy: A Study of Shoprite

This paper examines the phenomenon of foreign megastores in Nigeria. It offers a historical analysis of the factors responsible for their presence, emerging trends engendered by foreign megastores within the Nigerian market and the implications of such presence for the Nigerian economy. It demonstrates that foreign megastores have profoundly affected the economy and social environment within Nigeria. It adopts as a model of analysis the South African retail store, Shoprite and observes how it is progressively influencing consumer behaviour, expanding the influence of retailers and directing financial flows into Nigeria. Among other things, Shoprite offers consumers the luxury of spacious well organized parking lots, clean environments, a friendly staff and competitive prices to mention a few. Observers of the rapid expansion of Shoprite agree that its presence in Nigeria means that roadside sellers of bread, vegetables and meat would be adversely affected in a country where retailing is largely informal; it thus threatens existing market structures. It also significantly contributes to the fast rising level of health challenges in Nigeria. To this effect, the study set out to test the impact of Shoprite as a foreign megastore on Nigeria’s economy and the data obtained through interviews and from the distribution of questionnaires, and analyzed with the aid of the Statistics Package for Social Science (SPSS), reveal that for Nigerian citizens, the positive effects outweigh the negative and that though foreign megastores are influencing market patterns, they cannot completely displace traditional market systems in Nigeria, at least not in this century; they however, can modify them. More specifically, findings revealed that Shoprite has boosted the Nigerian economy and has significantly shaped the pattern of internationalization of retailing in Nigeria. The research thus recommends, among other things, that government should through the appropriate agencies ensure that it monitors the activities of foreign megastores so as to prevent them from monopolizing the markets and dictating prices. It should also seek out means of ensuring that Nigerians in South Africa have a level playing field and opportunities for expansion like their South African counterparts in the former. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n1p425

Leadership Behaviour Preferences of Student-Athletes: A Comparative Study of South Africa and India

The athlete-coach relationship is a vertical dyadic relationship in which the coach plays a critical leadership role. The direct influence of coaches on their athletes has been widely reported in many studies from various perspectives. These perspectives include sport involvement, enjoyment, and withdrawal, athlete satisfaction; athletes’ physical and psychological status; optimal sport performance; and successful sport performance. The majority of research in sport leadership has focused on the coach, with particular emphasis on personality traits, behavioural attributes, and situational determinants. The current study focuses on a comparison of coach leadership preferences of athletes in South Africa and India. The study used a quantitative research approach using the Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS) to collect data from student-athletes in South Africa and India. There were 221 South African participants with ages ranging between 18 years and 60 years (M = 23.8, SD = 6.0). On the other hand, there were 400 Indian participants with ages ranging between 18 years and 25 years (M = 21.4, SD = 2.1). To analyse data, descriptive statistics in terms of means and standard deviations were computed. Comparisons of different variables between the two countries were determined through computing unpaired samples t-tests. The results revealed that Indian participants had higher mean scores for all the leadership behaviour preferences compared to their South African counterparts. In fact, all the means were statistically significant (p < 0.0001). It is concluded that athletes in India appear not to set the bar too high regarding their preferences and expectations of their coaches compared to South African athletes. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p81

Web 2.0 tools usage: a comparative study of librarians in university libraries in Nigeria and South Africa

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare the extent to which librarians in university libraries in Nigeria and South Africa use Web 2.0 tools.Design/methodology/approachThe study is a descriptive survey using comparative method. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 110 librarians from 11 leading university libraries in Nigeria and South Africa.FindingsThe results showed that the librarians from both countries use Web 2.0 tools, but differences exist between the librarians in university libraries in Nigeria and South Africa. It emerged that librarians in South Africa use various Web 2.0 tools frequently, more than the librarians in university libraries in Nigeria. This might be as a result of lack of awareness, lack of interest, lack of skills, and not willing to embrace emerging technologies on the part of librarians in university libraries in Nigeria. The results revealed that librarians in university libraries in Nigeria are confronted with challenges such as power failure, lack of facilities, lack internet connectivity and lack of skills when compared to their South African counterparts in the use of Web 2.0 tools.Originality/valueThese research results can be consulted by interested librarians, mostly in developing countries, when planning for Web 2.0 applications in their libraries.

La Plume des betes: les animaux dans le roman

While the title of this readable monograph might suggest an overwhelming breadth of material, in fact the focus is primarily on two contemporary postcolonial authors, Patrick Chamoiseau and J. M. Coetzee. However, the title's scope is justified by two rich and insightful opening chapters: ‘Animaux de fiction, fiction des animaux’ and ‘Penser et représenter les animaux’. They survey the literary representation of animals from antiquity through to the present day and locate the ensuing arguments in an impressively wide comparative context. The theoretical reference points range from the literary to the anthropological to the philosophical, from Marina Warner to Claude Lévi-Strauss to Édouard Glissant, and from Donna Haraway to Gilles Deleuze to Jacques Derrida. This theoretical range is matched by an impressive corpus of primary texts that includes La Fontaine, Colette, George Orwell, Angela Carter, and Marie Darrieussecq, to name but a few. Lucile Desblache also authored, in 2002, Bestiaire du roman contemporain d'expression française (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal), so her opening section testifies to a long-standing engagement with the subject of animals in literature. She claims that, in the decade separating her two monographs, the role of animals in fiction has changed: ‘Les créatures non-humaines […] nous parlent beaucoup plus d'elles-mêmes et de nos rapports à elles que de nous-mêmes’ (p. 23). In other words, the catastrophic repercussions of human ‘progress’ have cast doubt on hierarchical systems that consign the animal to the margins. Contemporary fiction, rather than stressing the superiority of the human, seeks instead to underline the commonalities between human and non-human animal. The second half of the study proceeds to a more detailed reading of Chamoiseau and Coetzee. Desblache acknowledges that the two authors are ‘aux antipodes des expériences coloniales et postcoloniales’ (p. 22), and does not ignore key differences in their use of animals: while Chamoiseau, for example, features animal protagonists in novels such as L'Esclave vieil homme et le molosse (1997) and Les Neuf Consciences du malfini (2009), no animal appears as a main character in Coetzee's work. Such observations, valid though they are, cannot help but raise questions around the intrinsic comparability of the Martinican and the South African novelists. Both, in any case, are read as being typical of their place of origin: for Coetzee, in contrast with Antillean writers, ‘les animaux ne sont pas tant les agents réconciliateurs des diversités, que le reflet des perplexités, des violences et des désespoirs qui déchirent l'Afrique du Sud’ (p. 160). If Caribbean writing celebrates fusion and diversity, its South African counterpart is a ‘fiction de scission où races et espèces existent en opposition et souffrent de ces ruptures’ (p. 161). While some readers may find such conclusions reductionist, the textual analysis is generally persuasive and engaging. Of the three indexes at the end of the study — of authors and critics, of concepts, and of animals — it is undoubtedly the last that will prove most useful, allowing students of all literature (and not just postcolonial) to see at a glance how particular animals have been represented in writing through the ages.

Book Review: Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid by Ron Krabill

Starring Mandela and Cosby: Media and the End(s) of Apartheid. Ron Krabill. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010. 199 pp. $21.00 pbk.Military commanders sometimes make decisions that win battles in the short term but ultimately lose the war. This seems to describe policies relating to television in apartheid South Africa before and after its belated introduction there in 1976.After taking power in 1948, the National Party of South Africa banned television, fearing that foreign influences and images of suffering or protesting people and progressive whites might dilute the pure Afrikaner that led the nation to become an international pariah.This thin, densely packed volume reports an ethnographic study by Ron Krabill of the University of Washington, who conducted in-depth interviews of one hundred white South Africans selected through snowball sampling in a way designed to ensure broad representation of various demographic groups. He also did archival research to study assumptions of policy makers.Interviews supported two themes often mentioned in contemporary media studies. First, television does indeed help create a global village, as Marshall McLuhan famously noted more than fifty years ago. People of varying backgrounds, ethnicities, races, and interests tend to see the same images and programs, leading them to share meanings. Even where they disagree, they come to recognize the sharing of ideas, a fact that runs counter to the racial separation enforced brutally by the apartheid regime. This largely explains why 130 nations-many of them poor-had television before South Africa, a relatively wealthy country.Second, media consumers interpret media output in light of their own lives, expectations, and backgrounds. Thus, they often draw conclusions not intended or predicted by those who regulate, produce, select, and distribute such output.Once South Africa did permit television, one extremely popular show was The Cosby Show, which featured an upper-middle-class African American family in the United States. The Huxtables led a very mainstream American life while celebrating black culture through various artifacts in their home, and hosting well-known house guests such as Stevie Wonder and Count Basie. The South African government allowed Cosby to air, apparently on the theory that few South Africans could afford television, so it would not lead them to become uppity or discontented. Also, such a progressive stance was needed to mollify relatively liberal English-speaking whites who favored the United Party so they would continue to support apartheid.Krabill's respondents did not feel that they or their fellow countrymen turned against apartheid in the short term because of Bill Cosby's presence in their living rooms. For one thing, the lifestyle gap between the Huxtables and a resident of the Soweto slum or the homelands was too great. But respondents did come to realize that differences between middle-class African Americans and their South African counterparts stemmed from social learning and culture, not from biology. Krabill asserts that this recognition helped pave the way for apartheid's eventual downfall. …

Is there a Namibian Afrikaans? Recent trends in grammatical variation in Afrikaans varieties within and across Namibia's borders

There has been a tradition of treating geographical factors and social structures as distinct variables in research on language variation within single speech communities, and as a result their mode of interaction has not yet been theorized (Britain 2002). At which point geography, in its human and physical dimensions, precedes or follows social structures in the configuration of language variation seems to depend on two potentially related factors, i.e. the strength or weakness of social network ties, as well as the propensity of a given society to maintain ethnic divides. Of interest here is how far a recent political border can geographically disrupt formerly homogeneous patterns of language variation within a single, yet ethnically divided speech community, and, conversely, how far a range of social factors co-defined by ethnicity can ensure the maintenance of linguistic homogeneity irrespective of new political configurations of space. Variation in has rarely been characterized in terms of the political border separating Namibia (formerly South West Africa or S.W.A.) and South Africa ever since Independence in 1990. Instead, the varieties spoken in S.W.A./Namibia have pretty much been regarded as a constellation of relocated South African varieties. It seems fair to assume that, up until Independence, these varieties had little sociolinguistic scope for diverging from their South African counterparts and that a state of continuum prevailed on account of greater freedom of movement across the border as well as similar degrees of exposure to prescriptive Standard through education. The main question we want to answer here is how much potential for disruption of that continuum, if it prevailed at all, has been brought about by Namibia's political border and its sociolinguistic implications, and whether that potential warrants the use of the label Namibian Afrikaans in reference to the varieties spoken in Namibia.

THE WEST AND THE CAPE SEA ROUTE

Changing perceptions and realities Western strategists and politicians have traditionally acknowledged the vital importance of the Cape Sea Route. Their South African counterparts, for their part, have in the past regarded the Cape Sea Route's importance to the West as almost axiomatic, and have frequently sought to use this fact as a bargaining point in their negotiations with the Western Powers.1 There are increasing signs, however, that are-assessment of the importance of the Cape Sea Route is taking place in the West.

Unravelling Rights: ‘Illegal’ Migrant Domestic Workers in South Africa

ABSTRACT This article discusses the employment experiences of Basotho migrant domestic workers in South Africa. As they generally do not possess South African identity documents, these migrants are constructed (legally, socially and discursively) as ‘illegal’ workers. In 2008, the commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) and the Labour Court officially extended basic labour protections and rights to apply to foreigners working ‘illegally’ in South Africa. Despite these moves, Basotho domestic workers find labour institutions, including unions, inaccessible. As deportable migrants they are afraid of being detected by the authorities; this precludes any engagement with institutions, and often even with fellow domestic workers. Living-in with employers – while an effective strategy for migration and even for concealment from the authorities – also heightens their dependence on employers. Unsurprisingly, these workers' isolation and dependence create the conditions for their exploitation, as reflected by their long working hours, low and/or variable pay levels, and limited access to leave. As with other domestics working under similar structural conditions, Basotho domestics' strategies for stabilising their employment and managing the employment relationship involve cultivating a ‘mask of deference’ and submissiveness. Migrants' reliance on this strategy – and by extension, the significance of migrant ‘illegality’ in shaping their structural position – is evidenced by their popularity with employers. Alongside other cross-border migrants, Basotho women are therefore known amongst employers for their submissiveness vis-àvis their ‘troublesome’ South African counterparts. This analysis carries numerous implications for the regulation of domestic service, while highlighting the significance of employment relations and labour institutions in constructing and reinforcing the ‘illegality’ of unwelcome migrant workers in South Africa.

Piggery and Predictability: An Exploration of the Hog in Football’s Limelight

Piggery and Predictability: An Exploration of the Hog in Football’s Limelight

Evaluating risk awareness in undergraduate students studying mechanical engineering

This paper examines the development of risk awareness among undergraduate students studying mechanical engineering at a South African university. A questionnaire developed at the University of Liverpool was modified and used on students from the first, second and third year cohorts to assess their awareness in the areas of professional responsibility, risk assessment, techniques for reducing risk and potential exposure to hazards and risk in the workplace. Students performed best in hazard identification in the workplace. The student performance was similar in the first and second years, but a significant improvement was evident towards the end of the third year. This was attributed to the third year design curriculum, which formally covers certain aspects of risk awareness, including the ones showing improved performance. The results were compared to those obtained from the University of Liverpool – the UK students outperformed their South African counterparts. It is recommended that teaching interventions regarding health and safety be introduced earlier in the South African Mechanical Engineering curriculum to address this deficiency.

Beyond teaching language: Towards terminological primacy in learners’ geometric conceptualisation

This paper reports on a specific aspect of a broader geometry conceptualisation study that sought to explore and explicate learners’ knowledge of basic geometric terminology in selected Nigerian and South African high schools. It is framed by the notion that students’ acquisition of the correct terminology in school geometry is important for their success in the subject. The original study further aimed to determine the relationship that might exist between a learner’s ability in verbal geometry terminology tasks and his/her ability in visual geometry terminology tasks. A total of 144 learners (72 each from South Africa and Nigeria) were selected for the study, using both the stratified and the fish‐bowl sampling techniques. A questionnaire consisting of a sixty‐item multiple‐choice objective test provided the data for the study. An overall percentage mean score of 44,17% obtained in the test indicated that learners in this study had only a limited knowledge of basic geometric terminology. The Nigerian subsample in the study had a weaker understanding of basic geometric terminology than their South African counterparts. Importantly, there were high positive correlations between participants’ ability in verbal geometry terminology tasks and their ability in visual geometry terminology tasks. These results are consistent with those of several earlier studies, and provide a reasonably firm basis for certain recommendations to be made.

HIV and Sexual Behavior Among Young People: The South African Paradox

HIV and Sexual Behavior Among Young People: The South African Paradox

Primary student teachers' perceptions of and motivations for comparative education: findings from a comparative study of an Irish and South African comparative education course

Comparative Education (CE) in Teacher Education (ITE) receives little attention in the literature, and this attention is mainly focussed on its decline in Western Countries. This article highlights, however, that it is not declining to the same extent in some countries in Asia, Eastern Europe and in South Africa. The study, upon which the article is based, explores a completely neglected aspect of CE in ITE – the perceptions of student teachers studying CE. The research was conducted among student primary teachers in Ireland and South Africa. Even though some similarities emerge, their perceptions are mainly divergent. It is in the analysis of this divergence, however, that a rich picture of student perceptions emerges. The main findings are: the Irish students knew much less about CE than their South African counterparts, and their main motivation for studying CE was to enable them to work abroad, whereas the South African students wanted to learn about other systems of education in order to improve Education in South Africa. Other findings concerning the extent to which CE is considered to enable student teachers to improve their teaching, are interesting and these are considered in the discussion section.

Hidden treasures in ivory towers: The untapped wealth of South African university art collections

This article takes as its point of departure the ongoing financial difficulties of the South African National Gallery (SANG), reviewing the reasons that may account for its precarious status. Often at odds with those in political power, this institution has never gained financial support from the powers that be, and in turn, the majority of its visitors have typically come from a specific demographic. It is the argument of this article that as a result of this situation, universities in South Africa have found themselves in a unique position in which to empower and educate those who may not otherwise have access to artworks, and this should be actively pursued. While globally many university art collections enjoy a prominent status within their communities, and are well endowed and visited, their South African counterparts are sorely underused and undervalued. Thus, the aim of the study is twofold: in the first instance, an argument is made for the positive and productive role South African university art collections could play within their society, and secondly, primary research undertaken at several universities reveals the rich and varied collections held throughout the country.

Cultural authenticity or cultural contamination: American musical influences on South African hip-hop culture

Research into the African music industry tends to be inward-looking in that it focuses more on the internal dynamics of music within specific countries. Little has been done to explore the influence or impact which external music has on African music. This has had the effect of not giving the continent a clearer picture of African people's consumption patterns of Western music. In the long run this ignorance of how African music receives ‘global musical flows’ can actually undermine the search for authentic African identities. The aim of this paper is to explore the nature of the influence some American hip-hop music has had on South Africa's hip-hop musical culture. It would not be possible to discuss all American rappers or their South African counterparts, therefore this article is inclined towards an analysis of the similarities or differences in content and method of rendition, between selected American musicians and the South African hip-hop rapper Proverb, who generally sings about the decay of social morals, his life experiences and growing up in South Africa. This article will mainly focus on his song ‘Sex, drugs and alcohol’. The article argues that although South African hip-hop artists borrow some of their cultural resources from America, the South African artists twist, recreate and even change some of the musical formats that they acquire. This means that the best way to describe South African ‘authentic’ musical identities is to acknowledge cultural ‘contamination’ as the condition of possibility of the South African hip-hop culture.

Center for the Book's South African Journey

From May 25-June 4,2004, the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress led “South Africa: A Journey to Promote Reading &amp; Literacy”, a trip that focused on reading and literacy promotion efforts currently underway in schools, libraries, and educational institutions throughout South Africa. The visit took place during the 10th anniversary year of the new South African democracy - and the link between democracy and reading was a theme for the journey and many of the presentations and discussions. Participants learned about the “new” South Africa directly from their South African counterparts, sharing ideas and experiences with people who also believe in the power of books, reading, literacy, and libraries.

Australian fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus) breeding in Tasmania: population size and status

This study confirms the persistence of five major breeding colonies of Australian fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus) in Tasmanian Bass Strait waters. Incidental births also occasionally occur in very low numbers at other sites. Data collected between 1989 and 1999 shows that estimates of the minimum number of pups born at the major colonies varies considerably between sites and years. No colony has shown a consistent trend in pup production over the last 11 seasons. The most recent count for all Tasmanian colonies for the 1999 breeding season provided a minimum estimate of 3254 pups produced, similar to the estimate of 3373 in 1989. The highest estimate was recorded in 1995 when at least 6024 pups were born. Combining the most recent counts with the numbers estimated for the four Victorian colonies (13 872) gives a minimum pup production of 17 126 for the species, with only one-fifth of all pups being born on Tasmanian islands. Application of population estimators to translate pup numbers to population size for the species results in a conservative estimate of 68 500 individuals with upper and lower bounds of 60 000 and 77 000 Australian fur seals. Numbers of Australian fur seals remain low relative to other fur seal populations, with Australian fur seals being less numerous by an order of magnitude compared with their South African counterpart (A. p. pusillus). The current estimate of the total population of Australian fur seals is approximately half that of pre-sealing levels. The current number of breeding colonies in Tasmania indicates that the population of Australian fur seals breeding in Tasmanian waters has stabilised at well below their historic pre-sealing levels, with at least four sites remaining vacant. The species remains vulnerable due to its small population size, with Tasmanian breeding colonies being particularly vulnerable because of low numbers and due to the profound influence of weather events on pup survival.

Climatic change and quasi-oscillations in central-west Argentina summer precipitation: main features and coherent behaviour with southern African region

Summer rainfall variability (October to March) shows inter-annual to multi-decadal fluctuations over a vast area of subtropical Argentina between 28°S–38°S and 65°W–70°W. Statistically significant oscillations of quasi-period in the bands of 18–21, 6, 4 and 2 years can be found throughout the region and intra-regionally, though the latter are variable. The lower frequency variation produces alternating episodes of above and below normal rainfall each lasting roughly 9 years. This quasi-fluctuation appears to be shared with the summer rainfall region of South Africa and were in-phase related one another until mid-1970s. The teleconnection between both subtropical regions could be generated by an atmospheric-oceanic bridge through the global sea surface temperatures (SSTs), particularly those of the equatorial-tropical South Atlantic. From mid-1970s, the alternating wet and dry pattern has been interrupted in the Argentine region producing the longest, as yet unfinished, wet spell of the century. Thus, a significant change of the long-term variation was observed around 1977 toward lower frequencies. Since then the statistical model that explains more than 89% of the variance of the series until 1977, diverges from the observed values in the 1980s and 1990s. In addition the Yamamoto statistical index, employed to detect a climatic jump, reaches its major value in 1973 at the beginning of the current long wet spell. Therefore the change could be located between 1973 and 1977. Application of the t-student's test gives significant differences of mean values for pre-1977 and post-1977 sub-samples from both individual time series and the regional index series. The spectral analysis also shows changes in energy bands in concordance with the features of the change that occurred from mid-1970s. The change gives rise to a significant increment of more than 20% in average of normal rainfall over the region. Conversely, a drought between mid-1980s and the 1990s has been observed in the South African counterpart with severe characteristics, thereby continuing the quasi-18-year oscillation. Consequently, the low-frequency coherent behaviour between both the Argentine and South African regions is lost from the mid-1970s. The analysis of association of wet/dry spells and warm/cold, El Nino/La Nina episodes appears to be not significant at scales of year-to-year variability although at decadal to multi-decadal scales the association could be relevant. More than one process of multi-decadal variability of global SSTs could influence the Argentine summer rainfall region and the former bi-decadal teleconnection. Finally, potential hypothetical factors of change are discussed, such as the strengthening of direct and indirect mechanisms of moisture flux transport associated with global warming, low-level atmospheric circulation changes and/or to SSTs mean condition long-term variations over tropical and subtropical South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans.