South African National Identity Research Articles

‘Suddenly I was with my people’: two South African choirs contributing to community development

Abstract Singing is a rich and dynamic part of South African cultural and national identity. The authors explore the identity of two choirs in the Cape Town metropole against the background of response to ongoing social change. The disparate yet similar choirs enhance the well-being of their members as communities and who sing for community. Community development as an outcome of community music is understood as process-driven. The Identity Process Theory serves as a useful integrative framework in which identity, social action and social change can be collectively examined with qualitative thematic analysis to code and analyse questionnaire and interview data (2017–2022). Three overarching themes are discussed, focusing on the experiences as perceived by research participants from the two choirs in relation to ‘singing as a music community’, ‘having a place to belong’ and ‘singing during COVID-19’. The discussion highlights differences, similarities, challenges and opportunities for these choirs in relation to community musicians, identity and place. Although generalizations to other choirs cannot necessarily be made, recommendations are offered, both for further research and of a practical nature. This paper argues that diverse forms of communal singing continue to play an important role in South Africa’s group identity for choirs, fostering hope for communities and their development. Notions of community development and community music should not become narrowly defined, excluding many choral groups and their contributions to society from the global conversation.

Record linkage for Routinely Collected Health Data in an African Health Information Exchange

IntroductionThe Patient Master Index (PMI) plays an important role in management of patient information and epidemiological research, and the availability of unique patient identifiers improves the accuracy when linking patient records across disparate datasets. In our environment, however, a unique identifier is seldom present in all datasets containing patient information. Quasi identifiers are used to attempt to link patient records but sometimes present higher risk of over-linking. Data quality and completeness thus affect the ability to make correct linkages. AimThis paper describes the record linkage system that is currently implemented at the Provincial Health Data Centre (PHDC) in the Western Cape, South Africa, and assesses its output to date. MethodsWe apply a stepwise deterministic record linkage approach to link patient data that are routinely collected from health information systems in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Variables used in the linkage process include South African National Identity number (RSA ID), date of birth, year of birth, month of birth, day of birth, residential address and contact information. Descriptive analyses are used to estimate the level and extent of duplication in the provincial PMI. ResultsThe percentage of duplicates in the provincial PMI lies between 10% and 20%. Duplicates mainly arise from spelling errors, and surname and first names carry most of the errors, with the first names and surname being different for the same individual in approximately 22% of duplicates. The RSA ID is the variable mostly affected by poor completeness with less than 30% of the records having an RSA ID. The current linkage algorithm requires refinement as it makes use of algorithms that have been developed and validated on anglicised names which might not work well for local names. Linkage is also affected by data quality-related issues that are associated with the routine nature of the data which often make it difficult to validate and enforce integrity at the point of data capture.

Record linkage for routinely collected health data in an African health information exchange.

The Patient Master Index (PMI) plays an important role in management of patient information and epidemiological research, and the availability of unique patient identifiers improves the accuracy when linking patient records across disparate datasets. In our environment, however, a unique identifier is seldom present in all datasets containing patient information. Quasi identifiers are used to attempt to link patient records but sometimes present higher risk of over-linking. Data quality and completeness thus affect the ability to make correct linkages. This paper describes the record linkage system that is currently implemented at the Provincial Health Data Centre (PHDC) in the Western Cape, South Africa, and assesses its output to date. We apply a stepwise deterministic record linkage approach to link patient data that are routinely collected from health information systems in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Variables used in the linkage process include South African National Identity number (RSA ID), date of birth, year of birth, month of birth, day of birth, residential address and contact information. Descriptive analyses are used to estimate the level and extent of duplication in the provincial PMI. The percentage of duplicates in the provincial PMI lies between 10% and 20%. Duplicates mainly arise from spelling errors, and surname and first names carry most of the errors, with the first names and surname being different for the same individual in approximately 22% of duplicates. The RSA ID is the variable mostly affected by poor completeness with less than 30% of the records having an RSA ID.The current linkage algorithm requires refinement as it makes use of algorithms that have been developed and validated on anglicised names which might not work well for local names. Linkage is also affected by data quality-related issues that are associated with the routine nature of the data which often make it difficult to validate and enforce integrity at the point of data capture.

Prismatic Performances: Queer South Africa and the Fragmentation of the Rainbow Nation

Prismatic Performances: Queer South Africa and the Fragmentation of the Rainbow Nation

Record linkage for Routinely Collected Health Data in an African Health Information Exchange.

Objectives
 
 To describe the record linkage system that is currently implemented at the Provincial Health Data Centre (PHDC) in the Western Cape, South Africa
 To assess its output to date with respect to types of matches and duplicates trends
 To describe the errors affecting patient matching
 
 ApproachWe apply a stepwise deterministic record linkage approach to link patient data that are routinely collected from health information systems in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Variables used in the linkage process include South African National Identity number (RSA ID), date of birth, year of birth, month of birth, day of birth, residential address and contact information. Matching records are established from sequentially running the data through multiple passes formed by various combinations of linkage variables. Descriptive analyses are used to estimate the extent of mismatches and duplication in the provincial patient master index (PMI).
 Results
 
 The proportion of duplicates dropped from approximately 16.8% in December 2015 to 9.6% in October 2020, indicating improved data linkage over time.
 Duplicates mainly arise from spelling errors, and surname and first names carry most of the errors, with different first names and surname for the same individual in approximately 22% of duplicates.
 Linkage is also affected by completeness, with less than 30 % completeness for the South African national identity (RSA ID) number which is mainly because RSA ID is not mandatory when seeking healthcare.
 
 ConclusionLinkage improvement could be due to improved registration practices. Further improvements are possible by repeating data linkage where patients register before creating a new patient record following a failed search. This could use the PHDC linkage approach whilst leveraging all data in addition to search terms used by the clerk.

Cultural Villages and Their Idea of South Africa: A Decolonial Critique

Cultural villages are currently one of the most popular tourism attractions in South Africa, but in spite of their popularity, the villages also face a barrage of criticisms leveled against the manner in which they represent culture and identity, as well as their political economy. Thus, the criticisms leveled against the cultural villages range from that they represent myths instead of culture to that they stage identity and culture in an essentialist and ahistorical manner as though culture is circumscribed and “frozen in time.” In the context of crafting a cohesive South African national identity, the question that arises in light of the above criticism leveled against the cultural villages is that of: To what extent does their representation of culture and identity contribute to the making of an inclusive and cohesive South African national identity? This question is important not only because cultural representations such as the cultural villages of South Africa serve as mirrors of how people imagine themselves and their relationship with others but also because such representation can neither negate nor enhance the idea of constructing a new identity. In this article, I examine both the negative and positive contributions of the cultural village project to the idea of an inclusive and cohesive South Africa. Thus, I deploy the case study of PheZulu Safari Park and Lesedi cultural villages to examine the extent to which the construction of cultural villages enhances and/or negates the idea of a cohesive national identity in South Africa.

NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OTHER: NEW ZEALAND CHILDREN RESPONDING TO SOUTH AFRICAN PICTURE BOOKS

The issue of national identity is a central concern for learners both in terms of formal education (social studies) and personal pleasure (sports). This study adopted a theoretical model of how national identity can be envisaged by middle school learners, and through an intensive week’s case study, demonstrated both the strengths and potential problems of using picture books as a source of information about a nation state. Having self-reflected on their own sense of national identity, a class from a provincial town in New Zealand (NZ) were given the opportunity to explore over 85 educational readers/trade picture book titles sourced from South Africa (SA) (plus other texts from Africa that were locally available) and attempt to define what it is to be a South African. Prior knowledge was factored in the findings and the results were compared to a South African class’s perceptions using the same theoretical model. This article draws a tentative conclusion as to the presences and absences of which South African national identity features can be located whilst reading the two types of fictional texts. Additionally the article proposes that the methodology can be replicated in the classroom in the context of learning as inquiry.

Intersections of Queer in Post-apartheid Cape Town

In 2013, Siona O'Connell, Nadia Davids and I were awarded an Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) grant to support our Sequins, Self & Struggle: Performing and Archiving Sex, Place and Class in Pageant Competitions in Cape Town project, the aims of which are to research, document and disseminate archives of the Spring Queen and Miss Gay Western Cape (MGWC) pageants performed by disparate coloured communities in the Western Cape. Important to these performance events is the figure of the ‘moffie’, a queer male, often a transsexual, who has traditionally choreographed and designed the Spring Queen pageant, but who is forbidden from competing in it. Alternatively, MGWC is a platform for queers of colour to perform in a secure environment without exploitation. My individual work in this collaboration focuses on the MGWC pageant and the attendant methodological questions that have arisen in our attempt to forge bridges between Western queer theory and local articulations of gender identity and alternative sexualities, considering the current preoccupations in scholarship around (South) Africa that cut across geography, politics, economics and history. I will briefly outline the research questions that have arisen from my particular focus on the project aims: the relationship between post-apartheid South African national identity and gay rights, new postcolonial directions in queer theory and the sexual geographies of Cape Town that are bounded by race and economic privilege.

The State, Citizens and Control: Film and African Audiences in South Africa, 1910–1948

The period between Union in 1910 and the inception of apartheid in 1948 was an important stage in building a South African nation and national identity. In the context of racial segregation, this South African nation and national identity was white: ‘Boer and Brit’, to be more precise. Film was an important component of building English–Afrikaner national identity and unity. Black people in general and Africans in particular stood outside this nation-building project, on and off screen. In fact, cinema for Africans positioned them in such a way that their exclusion from any putative South African ‘nation’ seemed a ‘reasonable’ decision. Through the widespread and effective control of cinematic production, exhibition and censorship, Africans were framed simultaneously as visually unsophisticated, mischievous and criminal, and therefore unable to assume the role of responsible citizens of a modern nation. State control of all three aspects of cinema was never fully centralised; instead it was widely dispersed throughout the various provinces and state departments which exercised a degree of autonomy in the granting or withholding of exhibition licences to private operators. It is precisely this decentralisation and dispersion, however, that made control so much more effective, because the ideological framing of Africans as criminally credulous audiences remained a consistently shared vision among the key players in the state and among the white citizenry.

‘Captain Diplomacy’: Paul Roos and the Creation of South Africa's Rugby ‘Springboks’

The iconic Springboks are not only synonymous with South African rugby but with South African national identity as a whole. Based on research gathered within South Africa over the past decade, this paper explores the creation of the Springbok identity with particular focus on the historic 1906 rugby tour to Britain and France – the first by a South African team overseas. Set against the backdrop of political instability and racial tension within South Africa, the tour took place only four years after the end of the Anglo-Boer War and was used as an opportunity to unify the divided nation. This paper will explore the role of Paul Roos, captain of the 1906 side, on this tour and the iconic status that this Afrikaans schoolteacher has since achieved within South African rugby folklore.

Queer Desire and the Men of the Nation: Reading Race, Masculinity, and South African National Identity in John Greyson’s Proteus

This article examines John Greyson’s film, Proteus, for the way it figures queer masculinity and race in South Africa’s national historical narrative. The film offers an esthetic rendering of an eighteenth century interracial sodomy trial set on Robben Island. Drawing on contemporary queer theory and recent South African narratives of masculinity that privilege heternormativity and nationalism, this paper argues that the film carves out a space for queer identity within national history where it had previously been denied. The paper traces the way that the film interjects queer narratives into South Africa’s national identity, disrupts the heteronormalization of various sites of national iconography on South Africa’s historical terrain (such as Robben Island), and offers a queer masculinity that resists racial segregation. Moreover, this paper traces the ways that the film has implications for contemporary queer communities within South Africa.

International sporting events in South Africa, identity re-alignment, and Schneider's EVENT X

In its review of Carlin's Invictus (2008, back cover), The Daily Telegraph ‘Books of the Year’ refers to the symbolic power of sport, which gains ‘power not only from the achievements of the players, but also from the dreams of those who watch them’. This article examines the degree to which the Rugby World Cup of 1995 and the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup, both hosted in South Africa, can be evaluated in terms of Schneider's Dynamic Model as examples of EVENT X, in the sense that they have prompted identity re-alignment, acted as a spur to the development of South African English (SAfE), and promoted South African national identity. Selected texts are evaluated to demonstrate the identity re-alignments and linguistic consequences that these sporting events elicited. The Lead SA initiative demonstrates the desire that the shifts should not be transient, but continue beyond the sporting events themselves.

Pressed Flowers: Notions of Indigenous and Alien Vegetation in South Africa's Western Cape, c. 1902–1945

In the early twentieth century, botanists in South Africa's Western Cape sought urgently to popularise and protect the region's unique indigenous Fynbos flora. Plants imported from the 1840s, some of which proved invasive, became a physical and symbolic focus for their advocacy. The botanists' efforts resonated with political attempts to forge a common white South African national identity that drew on notions of landscape and the indigenous flora for symbolism and that consciously exploited the politically integrative potential of the new science of ecology. Introduced by overseas-trained experts, ecological theory was, however, inappropriate for the local flora, and had unfortunate consequences for the scientifically-informed research and management particularly of the fire-maintained Fynbos. While botanists and conservationists were united in defending the local flora against invasive introduced plants, they drew distinctions between what was ‘indigenous’ and what was ‘natural’ that further complicated their attitudes to the local flora. These historical debates illuminate agendas and policies on introduced (‘alien’) and indigenous flora in the region today.1 1 These plants are now universally termed ‘invasive alien plants’ in South Africa, but I prefer the less pejorative terms ‘introduced’ or ‘exotic’ to ‘alien’.

The Evolution of Theory, Method and Technique in Southern African Rock Art Research

Southern African rock art research has progressed from an essentially denigrating social and political milieu, through an empiricist period, to contemporary social and historical approaches. Empiricism, once thought to be the salvation of southern African rock art research, was a theoretically and methodologically flawed enterprise. Attempts to see the art through an emic perspective facilitated by copious nineteenth- and twentieth-century San ethnography is a more useful approach. It began briefly, but was then abandoned, in the nineteenth century. Today, diverse theoretical and methodological approaches are being constructed on an ethnographic foundation. The centrality of the San in South African national identity has been recognized.

Do Strong Group Identities Fuel Intolerance? Evidence From the South African Case

One conventional explanation of intergroup conflict is Social Identity Theory. That theory asserts that strong ingroup sympathies can give rise to outgroup antipathies which in turn fuel intolerance and conflict. While embraced by both macro- and microlevel analysts, this theory actually has not been widely investigated outside a laboratory environment. In this article, I test hypotheses linking group identities with intolerance, based on a 2001 survey in South Africa, a country where group identities have long been politicized. My empirical findings indicate that group identities are not useful predictors of South African intolerance. Indeed, for neither the black majority nor the white minority do ingroup identities activate very much outgroup intolerance. Moreover, group identities are positively, not negatively, correlated with holding a South African national identity. These findings, based on unusually broad indicators of both identity and tolerance, suggest that the causes of group conflict lie elsewhere than in group attachments.

Coat of Arms and the Body Politic: Khoisan Imagery and South African National Identity

This paper focuses on the imagery of state and nation in post-apartheid South Africa, and more specifically on the use of ‘Bushmen’ or ‘San’ in the symbolic reconstruction of national unity through South Africa’s new motto and Coat of Arms. The Coat of Arms is based on a redrawing of a figure from rock art, while the motto !Ke e: /xarra //ke (officially translated ‘Diverse people unite’) comes from the extinct /Xam language once spoken in the Northern Cape. The choice of the figure and of the language of the motto were deliberate, and explicitly evoke the idea of Bushman as ancestral man and original South African, while the meaning of the motto (much criticized in contemporary South Africa) is shown here to be much richer than previously known.

State of the Discipline: Science, Culture and Identity in South African Archaeology, 1870–2003

This article gives an account of the development of archaeology in South Africa in the period 1870–2003, focusing on key formative ideas and contexts. Taking as its theme a Foucauldian notion of ‘knowledge construction’, it attempts to understand archaeology as a form of social practice rooted in broader political and economic contexts. Two periods were especially important in the emergence of South African archaeology. The first was the period 1923–1948, coinciding with the local career of John Goodwin, which saw the institutionalisation of archaeology and the emergence of a specific, local conception of prehistory under the political patronage of J. C. Smuts. During these years the study of prehistory played a key role in an emergent South African national identity. The second was the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s which saw the re-emergence of the discipline following a time of comparative neglect, as part of the general cultural apparatus of a modernising apartheid state. Finally, a detailed account is given of developments post- 1994, including figures for student enrolments at major teaching institutions, a survey of archaeological curricula and a survey of grants from the National Research Foundation. If (as I argue) the impulse of the discipline in periods of social transformation has been to take shelter behind hard versions of science and culture, then the challenge for a post-apartheid archaeology lies in developing socially engaged and reflexive forms of theory and practice able to speak to the complexity of contemporary circumstances.

South African National Identity: A Research Agenda for Social Psychologists

South African social psychology has largely neglected the topic of national identity. Where the issue has been addressed, the theories applied and questions posed have been limited by the dominant ‘intergroup relations’ paradigm. This paper is an attempt to encourage local social psychologists to take a renewed interest in national identification processes. The paper argues for the intrinsic academic interest, and the practical social importance, of this topic in the South African context. A range of international research is presented, arranged according to a typology of national identity work suggested by Reicher, Hopkins and Condor (1997). Existing research within the Social Cognitive, Social Identity Theory / Self-Categorisation Theory, and discursive traditions, is shown to offer a wealth of ideas for exploration in South Africa. The intention is to stimulate the development of a lively research agenda for the study of South African national identity.