South African Literature Research Articles

Positive psychology constructs associated with academic success in South African secondary schools: A scoping review

In the South African education system, there is consistent concern about academic success and how it can be supported. Using a positive psychology lens could add additional insight on aspects of positive psychological functioning that may be associated with academic success. This scoping review examined literature on positive psychology constructs identified in association with academic success in South African secondary schools. Databases and other relevant sources were searched for studies implemented between 2007 and 2022. The search strategy yielded 15 studies for analysis. The results indicate that out of 46 potential positive psychology constructs, only 25 have been investigated in South African literature. The most researched construct was social support, followed by achievement motivation, and hope.

Leveraging implementation science for secondary prevention of cervical cancer in South Africa

Aim Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer and the top cause of cancer deaths amongst women in South Africa. Evidence-based interventions for secondary prevention of cervical cancer (cervical screening followed by treatment of identified pre-cancerous lesions) are available in South Africa’s health system, yet cervical cancer incidence remains high. This paper argues that this is partly due to implementation failure, i.e., deploying a good intervention ineffectively. Interventions found efficacious in controlled research settings may not achieve desired health outcomes when deployed in the real world due to implementation failure. Methods The field of implementation science offers frameworks for enhancing effective implementation. These frameworks guide the identification of implementation barriers and selection of context-relevant strategies for addressing them. This paper applies implementation science frameworks to secondary prevention in South Africa and promotes using such frameworks in cervical cancer prevention programming. Findings The problem of secondary prevention of cervical cancer in South Africa is contextualised. The paper conceptualises effective implementation as the attainment of implementation outcomes including acceptability, adoption, appropriateness, feasibility, fidelity, implementation cost, reach, and sustainability of evidence-based interventions. Drawing from the South African literature, examples of ineffective and failed implementation of secondary prevention interventions are presented including: low acceptability of screening by users and providers, sub-optimal adoption of screening provision by providers, low feasibility of hospital-centred pre-cancer treatment provision, low implementation fidelity, and limited reach of screening and pre-cancer treatment. Finally, using two examples, the paper provides practical guidance on how implementation science frameworks could be leveraged in South Africa to mitigate implementation failure. Conclusions Greater application of and capacity building in implementation science are recommended to contribute towards strengthening cervical cancer secondary prevention in South Africa.

As die Cape Flats Kon Praat: Locality and the Literature of Precarious Living

This paper discusses the importance of Brian Fredericks’s short story collection, As die Cape Flats Kon Praat (If the Cape Flats Could Speak), published in 2020. The nine stories in the collection present different narratives of male characters and their experiences on the living areas outside Cape Town collectively known as the Cape Flats. These areas are synonymous with poverty and violence, identifiers that simultaneously suggest urgent attention but also reductive stereotyping. Two of the stories in the collection are examined here for information they provide about the intersections between gang culture and family relations, as well as how both are shaped by senses of place. How geographical space (here, space that was engineered during apartheid) influences and is influenced by the movements and actions of people is a point of theoretical interest in this article. This is supported by a short study of the workings of Cape Flats gangs and the transactional role played by violence. Fredericks’s collection joins a growing and necessary library of redress that reflects the value of Cape Flats narratives as essential to South African literature. That this collection includes the language of Afrikaaps, which is undergoing a similar re-evaluation in recent knowledge production, underscores the relevance of newer output that sheds light on the social codes, cultural grammars, and moral economies of a hitherto underrepresented literary region.

Short takes on disjointed times: literary form and social thought in Graham K. Riach’s The Short Story After Apartheid

This essay reviews Graham K. Riach’s recently published monograph The Short Story After Apartheid: Thinking With Form in South African Literature (2023) against the background of a growing preoccupation with temporality, in recent years, in South African writing and criticism. The mode of political formalism Riach espouses in this significant new contribution to the field of South African literature threads together aesthetic and social concerns to propose the post-apartheid short story as a critical vector for making sense of our disjunctive times. Through close readings of stories by Nadine Gordimer, Ivan Vladislavić, Zoë Wicomb, Phaswane Mpe and Henrietta Rose-Innes, Riach opens important new discursive terrain in our apprehension of the social in South Africa, while at the same time advancing our understanding of, and appreciation for the short fiction of these important writers.

A formalist in the trenches: Graham K. Riach’s The Short Story After Apartheid

This essay offers a brief assessment of the potential of a formalist approach to the criticism of South African literature. Examining Graham K. Riach’s recent study The Short Story After Apartheid, it suggests that the “New Formalism” Riach employs provides an innovative mode of criticism that sees the literary text as interactive with its context rather than as a space of passive representation. Viewing the literary text as a spur to insight allows for a creative engagement with and vivification of many of the sedimented categories of South African critical thought. The essay expresses misgivings, however, about, first, the possibility of harnessing this mode of reading to a determinate political end, and second, its general bias toward the conceptual aspects of literary experience over and against the affective.

The Arrival from Abroad: Train Travel and Mobile Ideas of Race in Pre-Apartheid South African Literature

ABSTRACT This article identifies and explores an inciting incident in two pre-apartheid South African novels: the trope of an ‘arrival from abroad’. This trope centres on a character arriving by train from a place figured as foreign, whether that is Cape Town or London, to the rural South African setting of the story, bringing ideas of interracial togetherness with them that challenge local racial hierarchizations. Two novels are used as case studies, one from the beginning of the 20th century – Perceval Gibbon’s Margaret Harding (1911) – and one written on the eve of apartheid – Peter Abrahams’s The Path of Thunder (1948). The traveller from abroad is either a black South African who has been educated in Europe or Cape Town and arrives home to effect change, or the traveller is a white character from Europe whose values are pitted against those of white South Africans. In both cases, the ‘arrival from abroad’ is a destabilizing force to the local community, bringing often unwelcome ideas from outside. Together, Gibbon’s and Abrahams’s novels allow me to explore the interrelations between the mobility of ideas from one place to another, ideologies of race, the figure of the outsider, and train travel in South African literature from the first half of the 20th century. Comparing Gibbon and Abrahams enables me to trace differences and continuities over time and in diverse uses of the trope. This article argues that the ‘arrival from abroad’ trope is used to embody a notion of mobile ideas at a time when trains served to shift both goods and people to radical effect on society.

Deadly Journeys: Thabo Jijana’s Nobody’s Business, the Minibus Taxi Industry, and the Racial Politics of Mobility in Post-Apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT This article examines the politics of mobility in post-1994 South Africa by paying attention to minibus taxis, which have received little consideration from literary scholars although they are ubiquitous in contemporary South African literature. Attending to the minibus taxis that pervade post-apartheid Black writing, I contend, sheds light onto the ongoing racialization of mobility in the country. Offering a socially situated reading of Thabo Jijana’s Nobody’s Business: A Taxi Owner, a Murder, and a Secret (2014), I show that the abysmal state of public transport in present-day South Africa is emblematic of larger realities of immobility which continue to structure the lives of most Black South Africans. Motivated by the death of his father, a taxi owner who was murdered at the job, Jijana’s searing investigative memoir provides a powerful lens into the underbelly of the minibus taxi industry and the violence that drives it. As it reveals the precarity that continues to characterize not just public transport, but every-day life for the Black majority, Nobody’s Business suggests that the politics of mobility in post-apartheid South Africa cannot be understood outside the racism and anti-Blackness that define the democratic dispensation.

Should Monetary Policy in South Africa Lean against the Wind by Targeting the Financial Cycle?

Recently, several studies have argued about the interactions of the real economy and financial system, as well as the importance of financial cycles in business cycle fluctuations. To date, there exists near consensus among central bankers, economists, and other scholars that the financial cycle is an important source of business cycle fluctuations. This has raised the question of whether monetary policy should respond to financial instability and/or imbalances. As a result, we asked the following questions: Should monetary policy lean against the wind by targeting the aggregate financial cycle in South Africa? And what is the role of monetary policy in minimizing financial imbalances and instabilities in South Africa? The present article aims to provide answers to the above-mentioned question. Through the adoption of a multiple-equation generalized method of moments and structural vector autoregressive approaches, this article simultaneously estimates and compares both the finance-augmented and the conventional Taylor rules. It is shown that the South African Reserve Bank has considered developments in the aggregate financial cycle in setting its policy rate. Overall, there is clear evidence to conclude that the South African Reserve Bank can lean against the wind by targeting the aggregate financial cycle, but only as a genuine augmentation not as a fully flagged objective. This article adds new evidence to the South African literature on the prevailing debate of whether monetary policy should respond to developments in the financial system.

Walking the Talk: Reflections on Teaching South African Literature to Foreign Students

Walking the Talk: Reflections on Teaching South African Literature to Foreign Students

Blurred lines in AC Jordan’s novel Ingqumbo Yeminyanya (The Wrath of the Ancestors): a literary geography of factual and imaginary spaces

ABSTRACT This article serves to fill a theoretical lacuna in African language literary scholarship. To date there have been very few literary geographic analyses related to South African literature and there are none that deal with African language literature. The purpose and objective of this article is to apply theoretical aspects of literary geography to an isiXhosa novel, Ingqumbo Yeminyanya. This novel, written by AC Jordan is perhaps the best known and most widely read and translated novel written in isiXhosa. The authors of this article aim to contribute to postcolonial studies by reading the novel of A.C. Jordan spatially, using Hones’s conceptual framework of the novel as a spatial event, considering the complex relationship between the author, the text, and the readers. The background of the author and the historical circumstances that surround the writing of the novel are also explored to see how Jordan’s own spaces are reflected in the novel through characterization and other techniques. The core focus of the article lies in the descriptions and relationship to real or imaginary or in-between spaces and places in relation to the research question, namely how space and places are depicted in Ingqumbo Yeminyanya, as part of the spatial event.

“The Truth Hurts But Silence Kills”: Restitutio ad Integrum and Scriptotherapy in Mario d’Offizi’s Autobiography Bless Me Father

Bless Me Father, the autobiography of South African-Italian poet Mario d’Offizi, enriches the spectrum of masculinities presented in South African white male poets’ autobiographies. It narrates the story of a “marginal” white man growing up under apartheid, and provides an innovative testimony within the rich autobiographical tradition of South Africa. The focus in this article is placed on traumatic episodes in the author’s past and on the relationship with a predatory father figure. The conflict between the choice to remain silent about hurtful events and the desire to expose them is the central dialectic of psychological trauma, and scriptotherapy is the medium used by d’Offizi to grapple with his haunting past and seek healing. Bless Me Father, this article argues, is a story of pain, loss, survival, and triumph over adversities that occupies a distinctive space within post-apartheid South African literature.

Towards Dismantling Heteronormativity at South African Universities: Heterosexual Students’ Perceptions of Heteronormative Ideologies and LGBTIQ+ Identities

South African literature demonstrates that heteronormative ideologies are evident at universities and inform various discriminations against LGBTIQ+ students. These heteronormative ideologies emanate from the traditional heteronormative socialisation in the South African society. While there is notable literature based on the experiences and perceptions of LGBTIQ+ students at universities, not much research pays attention to heterosexual students’ perceptions. It is imperative to consider heterosexual students’ perceptions of LGBTIQ+ identities to challenge heteronormative ideologies and transform universities into inclusive spaces. This article is based on heterosexual university students’ non-heteronormative perceptions of LGBTIQ+ identities. I argue that there is the potential to dismantle heteronormativity at universities since the heterosexual students in this research are critical of heteronormative ideologies and question stereotypes about sexual minority identities. Through semi-structured interviews with 10 self-identifying heterosexual students, the article established that students’ perceptions of LGBTIQ+ identities were affirming as they resisted traditional norms of sexuality and gender and demonstrated sensitivity to sexual diversity. The paper calls for further research to critically engage heterosexual students in conversations around heteronormativity to advance the acceptance, tolerance, and inclusion of LGBTIQ+ students at South African universities.

An investigation into symptoms of depression and anxiety and emotion regulation among older adolescents from low-income settings in South Africa

IntroductionMental health conditions (MHC) among adolescents in low- and middle-income countries, including South Africa, are estimated to be high. Adaptive emotion regulation (ER) skills can protect against MHC among adolescents. In South Africa, there is limited adolescent mental health prevalence data as well as little understanding of the associations between MHC and ER among adolescents. This study aimed to address these gaps by describing the psychosocial characteristics of older South African adolescents from low-income settings as well as investigating associations between depression and anxiety symptoms and ER. MethodsWe selected 12 schools in collaboration with two NGOs. Learners aged 15–18-years were recruited to complete a tablet-based survey. ER, depression, anxiety, and other psychosocial measures were included. Two multiple linear regression models were used to determine associations between depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms, other psychosocial factors, and ER. ResultsOf the 733 participants from 12 Western Cape schools, 417 (56.90%) screened at risk for clinically significant anxiety symptoms, 423 (57.70%) participants for depression symptoms, 229 (31.40%) participants for PTSD symptoms and 263 (35.90%) for risky alcohol use. Depression and anxiety scores were found to be significantly positively correlated with ER difficulties and adolescents struggled most with identifying and utilizing adaptive ER strategies. The adjusted linear regression model reported that female gender, clinically significant depressive, anxiety, post-traumatic stress symptoms and risky-alcohol use were all significantly associated with poorer ER scores, while self-esteem was significantly associated with better ER scores. ConclusionThese findings contribute to the South African adolescent mental health literature and to the research gap on the links between depression and anxiety and ER. Future research should consider further exploration of the relationships between psychosocial factors and ER to inform the urgent development and testing of appropriate adolescent interventions in this setting.

Violence Against Children

Violence against children (VAC) is a global phenomenon that needs deliberate attention. Children exposed to violence in their families, communities, and schools in their early years are likely to maintain this cycle of violence in their youth and adult lives if no efforts are made to break this cycle. Taking this into consideration the author adopts a social-ecological theoretical perspective in exploring global, regional, and South African literature on the risks and causes of VAC as well as the protective factors that can prevent VAC. Embedding VAC within a social-ecological perspective warrants the need to explore it at four crucial levels, namely individual, relationships, community, and society. The literature review embodies the relevance of these four levels since all risk and causal factors of VAC are easily categorised in one or more of these levels. As such, the author provides a social-ecological perspective comprising all four levels that holistically address the prevention of VAC. The literature review indicated that many of the risks and causes of VAC are a common trend across countries even though it is more prevalent within African contexts. This suggests that the preventive measures discussed are likely to have global value.

Perceptions of interprofessional collaborative practice in South Africa: A systematic review.

Interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) were developed to address the health needs of communities through collaborative practice across healthcare disciplines. The impact of IPE on IPCP and clinical service delivery in South Africa is not evident, possibly because of the lack of IPCP experiences among healthcare professionals. International literature reports facilitators and barriers of IPCP implementation, but there was a need to filter the evidence to identify literature from the South African context regarding the perceptions of healthcare workers' perceived barriers and facilitators of IPCP. South African literature. A systematic review was conducted to synthesise evidence from articles published between January 2017 and December 2021. Only qualitative studies targeting health professionals in South Africa who had been exposed to IPCP were included. Consistent with Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis, a multi-database search yielded 424 articles, which were screened for relevance and appraised for quality using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) tool. A thematic synthesis of the findings was conducted by applying ethical principles. Synthesis of barriers and enablers for IPCP implementation in the South African context included key aspects of healthcare systems, management and team leadership. The integration of IPCP into clinical practice in South Africa is still limited as healthcare professionals operate in silos. Recommendations of this study include greater integration of services combined with competent management and visionary leadership, together with the incorporation of IPE into undergraduate professional training programmes.

Interseksionele feminisme in Afrikaanse poësie: Lynthia Julius se Uit die kroes

In the current transnational discourse on fourth-wave feminism, "intersectional feminism" is a fundamental concept. The representation of marginalised voices of especially Black women from underrepresented contexts, such as the Global South, is emphasised in an attempt to decolonise the formal domains of literature, academia and the media. Historically, there is a gap in the representation of diverse Black female voices in South African literatures. However, there has recently been an increase in the publication of the literary texts by previously marginalised voices, especially in Afrikaans poetry. Diverse perspectives are shared regarding the complexities of the intersection of identity categories including race, gender, culture, identity, class, language and socioeconomic status in South African society, and how it affects the previously marginalised. A voice that represents intersectional feminist issues in the South African and Afrikaans contexts can be found in Lynthia Julius's debut poetry book, Uit die kroes (From the kroes, 2020). In this article, the significance of Julius's unique, intersectional feminist viewpoint, with stories and perspectives from the Northern Cape, is investigated. The focus is specifically on how Julius represents a 'triple marginalised' voice in the South African and Afrikaans contexts with regard to her gender, race and language. Furthermore, I will discuss how the uniqueness of her collection of poems and Northern Cape Afrikaans, that have rarely been provided with a platform in the Afrikaans literary canon, contribute to giving a voice to the historic 'voiceless'. The importance of Julius's voice and how it highlights the heterogeneity of previously marginalised groups in South Africa, are also explored. In conclusion it is argued that the publication of poets with diverse intersectional feminist perspectives, such as Julius, can be deemed a positive step in the direction of the decolonising process of the Afrikaans literature and feminism.

Scars of a Colonial History

Central to virtually any indictment of South African literature, its historiography, or otherwise culturally and politically influenced modes of representation persist themes of social, political, and racial inequality. That is not to say that all South African cultural productions revolve around a centrifuge of racially focused social commentary; rather, that when historicizing a work of South African aesthetics such themes inevitably arise because of the nation’s colonial history and the Eurocentrism that have pervaded its modern socio-political foundations. When examining South African aesthetic/cultural representations (in this case, a literary text) it is thus crucial to properly locate the work in as full a historical context as possible. My research therefore aims to link South Africa’s history of colonization with the damaged race relations that ensued in the twentieth century as represented in a prominent work of South African theater: Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold” … And the Boys. My essay traverses the history of British and Dutch colonization in South Africa and seeks therein to register foundations for the Eurocentric, whitewashed ideologies which would eventually translate into official state policy in 1948 and which precipitated the broken race relations that Fugard’s semi-autobiographical play interrogates. I discuss Fugard’s depiction of white privilege while systematically linking such representations back to their colonial foundations, and ultimately assess Fugard’s play as a condemnation of white supremacy and as a plea for the recalibration of prejudiced racial hierarchies.

Stylising agency, identity and solidarities in South African English language classrooms

In a call for papers, the English Academy of Southern Africa (EASA) problematises what we perceive as the challenges of stylising agency, identity and solidarities in South African literature in English and English Language classroom encounters. The academy argues that speaking of literature and literacy in a single breath is to take for granted a linear relationship between literature and literacy. In interrogating ways of reading, this article contends that such proficiency is itself unstable and shifting, subject to different contexts and approaches inasmuch as these diverse ways are contingent upon material and technological changes. Literacy is a contested term: while it denotes the ability to read and write, a more nuanced understanding recognizes its capacity to confer value and influence aesthetic judgment. Already implicit in such an understanding is the mutually reinforcing relation between literature and literacy: the cognitive skillset which enables us to read is constantly being modified by what we read, and by the material forms which our reading takes. The entanglement of literature and literacy is embedded in cultures, compelling us to ask how particular teachers, writers and critical literary approaches shape our reading practices, our ways of seeing. The same entanglement generates questions about social justice, access to education, and material affordances.

Country ownership and sustainable programming of the HIV response in South Africa: A scoping review.

Concerns have arisen regarding the extent to which South Africa's HIV response can be country-owned and sustainable given substantial foreign investment and technical support. To assess the extent to which South Africa's national HIV response is country-owned. We conducted a scoping review of South African literature using the Global Health Initiative Framework for country ownership. South Africa has clear aspirations for what should be accomplished and strategies are aligned with national and international priorities. Although South Africa has leveraged community-based strategies to reach key populations (KPs), most are supported by international donors, which poses a sustainability challenge. Despite robust capacity strengthening and training programmes, South Africa continues to face healthcare worker shortages. While it is commendable that South Africa funds nearly 70% of the national HIV response, the funds mainly support HIV treatment. This may create dependency on international partners. South Africa appears to be progressing well along the spectrum of country ownership, but sustained efforts are required to combat HIV. Greater ownership over KP programming and prevention services are especially needed to achieve greater impact.

The Effect of a Physically Active Academic Intervention on the Physical Fitness and Mathematical Performance of Grade 1 Learners in Cape Town, South Africa

AbstractCombining physical fitness (PF) and academic content can be a beneficial way to improve PF and mathematics performance of learners. The purpose of the current study was to establish whether a physically active academic intervention had an effect on the PF and mathematics performance of Grade 1 learners over 16 weeks. This intervention is based on an educational approach that combines physical activity into the academic environment. The goal is to enhance learning by learning through movement. Grade 1 learners [N = 119] from two schools in the southern suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa, volunteered to participate in this study. They were assigned randomly to an attentional control [n = 51] and an experimental group [n = 68]. Pre- and post-test data were collected with the Fitnessgram which measured their PF and the VASSI Mathematics Proficiency Test which measured their mathematical performance. The intervention included age-appropriate PF components that were incorporated into learners’ academic lessons. The results indicated that the experimental group performed significantly better (p < 0.01) in mathematics and upper body strength after the intervention. It could be assumed that these improvements can be attributed to the physically active academic intervention programme. These findings suggest that these types of interventions could encourage physical activity (PA) and enhance the PF and mathematical performance of young learners. The current study adds to South African Sport Science literature because it is one of few studies performed in this field that have produced significant results.