South African Project Research Articles

Primordialist paranoia, essentialism and South African realities: participating and observing across the ‘anthropological divide’

This article interrogates the exigency of some of the current concerns of South African anthropology. The contribution is autobiographical and occasionally anecdotal; personal narrative hence shapes the mode of text development. In considering the current state of the South African anthropology project, the following, inter alia, receive particular attention: the legitimacy of the perseverance with the notion of an ‘anthropological divide’; the persistence of discrete ‘quoting circles’; a debilitating past which still haunts the contemporary anthropological enterprise and results in a kind of primordialist paranoia; and a state of selective denial as regards prevailing perceived, lived and legislated South African realities—the new essentialist challenge for constructivist anthropologists.

Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment (review)

Reviewed by: Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment Paul Josephson (bio) Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment. By Jacques Leslie . New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005. Pp. 368. $25. In Deep Water, Jacques Leslie, a journalist, offers an account of his visits to dams on river systems in India, South Africa, and Australia. In each setting, he relates his discussions with an individual central to the dams: in India, the antidam activist Medha Patkar; in South Africa, the American anthropologist Thayer Scudder; and in Australia, the water-resources manager Donald Blackmore. Leslie became involved in the study of dams because of a heartfelt worry about growing water shortages, about the disproportionate impact of such water-melioration technologies as dams, irrigation systems, and hydroelectricity stations on the poor and very poor—including the loss of lands, lifestyle, and culture—and about their seemingly irreversible negative environmental impacts. Medha Patkar has devoted her life to fighting dam projects on the Narmada River, notably the Sardar Sarovar Dam, because of its displacement of indigenous people and its environmental impacts. She has threatened to drown herself in the waters rising behind the dam as protest against the inequities of the project, especially its disproportionate effect on the tribal people who are one-tenth of India's population, but half of those displaced by dams. Leslie discusses the role of the World Bank and other international organizations in pushing for dams as solutions to poverty. Indian engineers and planners view dams and irrigation systems as the way to solve India's serious problem of water demand. But for Medha Patkar, the dams are a symbol of patriarchy and globalization, with devastating consequences for tribal people who are forced out of their homes to lands less fertile. Paradoxically though expectedly, the engineers for the Sardar Sarovar live in spacious, clean, air-conditioned quarters, and more funds may have been devoted to these facilities than for resettlement. [End Page 210] Similarly, on the Zambezi River in Zambia, the Okavango River in Botswana, and the Orange River in Lesotho, dams have pushed peoples further into poverty. Still, Thayer Scudder, who has served as a consultant on big dam projects for decades, remains convinced of their utility and believes it possible to work both with those supporting the projects and with NGOs that oppose them in order to arrive at a good dam with benefits to all. In this discussion, Leslie raises the issue that dams must be inherently political, but does not address it head-on. Yet his discussion of South African projects should leave no doubt that decisions to build them are both deeply political and technical. For what is a dam? It is newly built roads and an airstrip, quarries, a power station and power lines, demand located far from supply, bulldozers and police to remove the poor so that construction can proceed, resettlement carried out poorly with families and communities split up and moved to infertile land. And while a dam is all about water, paradoxically many resettlement communities have no piped water five years later. In the last section of Deep Water, Leslie discusses the efforts of Donald Blackmore to use a bureaucracy to solve conflicts over water use among locals, farmers, fisheries, and power producers through integrated catch-basin management on the River Murray basin. Blackmore has had many successes, even though the basin has suffered through 150 years of deforestation, sheep grazing, increasing salinity of soils, and displacement of Aborigines. Much of Leslie's information is anecdotal and in many places his book resembles "stream of reporting" rather than systematic analysis, because he refuses to draw conclusions from the rich stories he has gathered. Even so, Deep Water has nuggets of important information for those interested in the history of big water projects in the late twentieth century. The book has no index, bibliography, or footnotes, but there are a few maps to help place the reader. Paul Josephson Paul Josephson teaches history at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Copyright © 2007 The Society for the History of Technology

Generic Instability and the National Project: History, Nation, and Form in Sol T. Plaatje'sMhudi

This paper examines the way in which Plaatje, in recreating in Mhudi the genesis of the failed Union of South Africa in 1910, keeps open the oppressive history of the present and looks forward to a South Africa that could give scope to his social, cultural, and political ideals. In many ways, such a South Africa is remarkably similar to the one that technically came into being in 1994, but the temptation to bring such historical closure to a text premised on historical open-endedness is one that must be avoided. In tracing the significance of the various editions of Mhudi that have appeared over the years, this paper tries to situate the work in relation to changing senses of the South African national project. It follows the text as it shifts from being read as an appeal for inclusion in the state, to being an oppositional document against the state, to becoming firmly situated within the political orthodoxy of the state.

Risk factors affecting software projects in South Africa

This paper reports on an analysis of risk factors relevant to South African software projects. Seven of the most widely cited studies in the research literature regarding software project risk were evaluated along with a detailed examination of the 53 risk factors developed by Schmidt, Lyytinen, Keil & Cule (2001). Forty completed questionnaires, submitted by software project managers, were analysed.The main findings of this research were:Project managers of varying experience perceived different software risks to be important Risks relating to quality, cost, time, requirements or methodology were not perceived to be more important than risks relating to people, relationships or change) by project managersThe top ten most important risks as perceived by project managers were:Lack of top management commitment to the projectUnclear/ misunderstood scope/ objectives Schedule Flaw Lack of client responsibility, ownership and buy-in of the project and it’s delivered systems No planning or inadequate planning Project not based on sound business case Lack of available skilled personnel Not managing change properly Lack of adequate user involvement Poor risk managementFrom this list it was noted that risks number 5, 6, 7 and 8 were unique to this study and were not found in prior studies in the research literature. It was concluded that the importance of these risks may be unique to South African software projects.

Everything, for ever? The preservation of South African websites for future research and scholarship

The amount of material published on the worldwide web continues to grow. This is also true of South Africa. Much of this material is banal and ephemeral, but it nevertheless forms part of South Africa's documentary heritage. It will have value for future historians and social scientists just as previous centuries’ printed broadsheets, newspapers and ‘penny horribles’ are used today as raw material for research. The proliferation of websites worldwide poses enormous challenges to heritage institutions such as national, research and repository libraries. In the developed countries the capturing, organization and preservation of websites have become an important theme in the professional literature of information science. Many difficulties have to be overcome before we can be sure that an adequate proportion of this material is preserved for future use. The difficulties are not only of a technical nature, but also organizational, economic, political, legal and ethical. This paper draws on experience gained in two current projects funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The first is the Political Communications Web Archiving Project, undertaken in the United States under the aegis of the Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, which has attempted to develop a model for the preservation of websites for use by area studies researchers at US universities. The second is a South African project on the legal deposit of electronic publications, managed by the Foundation for Library and Information Service Development (FLISD) on behalf of the National Library of South Africa. The paper outlines the major issues that have to be addressed when a national system for the preservation of websites is set up, with special emphasis on ‘soft’ issues (political, legal and moral) rather than technical issues.

Generic Instability and the National Project: History, Nation, and Form in Sol T. Plaatje's Mhudi

This paper examines the way in which Plaatje, in recreating in Mhudi the genesis of the failed "Union" of South Africa in 1910, keeps open the oppressive history of the present and looks forward to a South Africa that could give scope to his social, cultural, and political ideals. In many ways, such a South Africa is remarkably similar to the one that technically came into being in 1994, but the temptation to bring such historical closure to a text premised on historical open-endedness is one that must be avoided. In tracing the significance of the various editions of Mhudi that have appeared over the years, this paper tries to situate the work in relation to changing senses of the South African national project. It follows the text as it shifts from being read as an appeal for inclusion in the state, to being an oppositional document against the state, to becoming firmly situated within the political orthodoxy of the state.

Guest Editorial: Nuclear Power and Public Health

Guest Editorial: Nuclear Power and Public Health

Using psychosocial interventions in a South African township

Hilary Mairs and colleagues describe how a UK and South African collaborative project is helping to improve access to mental health services for residents of KwaZakhele township

Experiments with Truth and Justice in South Africa: Stockenström, Gandhi and the TRC

This article sets out to trace the intellectual and political antecedents of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the longer perspective of South African history. It does so by taking a closer look at some of the longstanding if intermittent series of South African projects invoking notions of truth and justice, most recently exemplified by the TRC in the context of the new democratic and post-apartheid South Africa of the 1990s. It traces the history from Stockenström's stand for truth and justice on the frontier in the 1830s, through Gandhi's mobilisation of ‘truth-force’ as a resource for popular protest at the beginning of the twentieth century, to truth and justice in the theory and practice of the TRC. It argues that the TRC process was characterised by a major shift from a central concern with truth as acknowledgement and justice as recognition during the initial victims' hearings to the quasi-judicial aims and procedures of the amnesty hearings and the perpetrator findings of the TRC Report. It concludes that no direct line can be traced from Stockenström and Gandhi's truth experiments to the TRC process as a founding action of the ‘new South Africa’. None of these experiments is deemed anything like an unqualified ‘success’, or even to have produced clear and unambiguous outcomes. In trying to speak of ‘truth’ and ‘justice’ in South African conditions, Stockenström, Gandhi, and the TRC successively became ensnared in a range of confusions, ambivalences and contradictions.

The South African Indigenous Games Research Project of 2001/2002 : research article

Research on indigenous games and play behaviour within the South African context has to a great extent been ad hoc, and influenced by theoretical traditions and practices. Informed by global research trends and national interest, a research project was undertaken in an attempt to address the need for indigenous knowledgeresearch. This paper reports on the National Indigenous Games Research Project of 2001/2002 in which eleven tertiary institutions collaborated. Researchers from these institutions collected data from 6489 participants through questionnaires (quantitative data on trends, content and nature of games), triangulated with focus groups, case studies, observations and visual recordings (qualitative data). The sample is representative of the ethnic, gender, geographic (urban and rural), and socio-economic diversity in all nine provinces of the Republic of South Africa. A rationale is offered for an ethno-scientific taxonomy, representing a culturally informed reconstruction of South African children's games. The paper explores and reports on game preference, socio-cultural themes and play behaviour. An analysis of the theoretical underpinnings, participant-constructed meanings, reasons for playing and play patterns are reflected upon. Keywords: Indigenous games, Play, Culture, South Africa South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation Vol.26(1) 2004: 9-23

The jagged paths to multicultural education : international experiences and South Africa's response in the new dispensation

An ideal form of multicultural education is one that not only recognizes and acknowledges diversity, practices tolerance and respect of human rights, but works to liberate cultures that have been subjugated. Such an education would go beyond being nice to those less fortunate to working to promote equality of cultural trade. For what it is worth, pre-1994 multicultural education in South Africa did recognize diversity, but it was diversity as a strategy for containment. It was of a variety that was exclusionary in nature and constituted a cruel inscription of those colonized Others into the mainstream. From here, international experiences of multicultural education do not offer much inspiration. Multicultural education in the US, Canada, UK , and Australia is driven and fuelled in large part by an assimilationist agenda that denies authenticity to the marginalized cultures. In the South African situation, the Constitution, which is hinged on ten powerful principles, seeks to promote tolerance and respect for all cultures and to promote common values across the rainbow nation of South Africa. However, there is no attempt at this point to valorize the content of the culture of the different groups. This paper argues that silence is also policy. South Africa should therefore work towards a deeper and proactive diagnosis of the content of the culture of its diverse peoples and find spaces for dialogue based on equity within the education system. In order to do this, deeper analysis of the forms of cultural violence, their alibis, etc. that characterized the apartheid system, but which is now couched as mainstream, needs to be undertaken. In this regard, emerging pers pectives from the South African History Project and the Indigenous Knowledge Systems movement, (especially its message of transcendence and cultural he aling) need to be considered . South African Journal of Education Vol.23(3) 2003: 193-198

Ethical and social dilemmas in community‐based controlled trials in situations of poverty: a view from a South African project

All psychological and social research presents ethical dilemmas, many of which centre around the difficulties which flow from the power imbalances between those conducting the research and the research respondents or participants. Issues of power are magnified in research undertaken in contexts of poverty, and there is a burgeoning literature on ethical issues in research in developing countries. In this article, we augment the existing literature by focusing on the experiences of an assessor working in a controlled trial of a mother-infant intervention in a poor South African community. We consider issues of community expectations, the presentation to our project of physical health problems, the issue of HIV/AIDS, cultural beliefs which impact on the research, child protection issues, and the tensions between research assessment and ubuntu--a cultural norm which requires helpful engagement with others. We suggest that our experiences may assist with the development of further research.

Pebble-bed design returns [nuclear reactor

Chicago's Exelon Corp., the largest operator of nuclear plants in the United States, and three international partners will make a decision that could jump-start a nuclear revival. Led by South Africa's state utility Eskom, of Johannesburg, the four will decide whether to continue investing in the pebble-bed modular reactor technology. The concept originated in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, and is now experiencing a startling revival. Specifically, the four companies will decide whether to fund a full-scale prototype pebble-bed reactor in South Africa, at Koeberg, near Cape Town. If the South African pebble-bed project moves ahead, Exelon will seek design certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Rockville, Md., so that the technology could be sold as a standardized, off-the-shelf design, like the three advanced light-water designs already precertified by the NRC. Exelon hopes to submit an application for a pebble-bed modular-reactor license to the commission in late 2002, start construction around mid-2005, and begin operations for the first unit about three years later. The pebble-bed concept uses a helium coolant and a graphite moderator. The fuel-uranium dioxide enriched in /sup 235/U to 8-10%-consists of particles coated with two layers of carbon and one of silicon carbide, embedded in a carbon matrix, which act as the principal barrier against radioactive releases. The paper describes the operating features of this technology, the safety aspects and commercial prospects.

Re-Semiotizing the South African Democratic Project: The African Renaissance

This article reviews the relationship between the semiotic implications of the emerging concept of the African Renaissance, and the historical trajectory of semiotic studies in South Africa. Linked with the residual ideological territories occupied under the rubrics of ‘semiotics’ and/or ‘semiology’ are the ways these discourses have been re-articulated or re-presented within the politics of the post-apartheid era. As a concept of the ‘post’, therefore, the semiotic implications of a projective strategy like the African Renaissance require more than the mindless dyadism of linguistic semiology. The article sketches the outline of the case for a radical appropriation of the semiotics embedded in C.S. Peirce's pragmatism as a way of constituting the reality of ‘Renaissance’ concepts in terms of a Task. The place of semiotics within the broader philosophical and analytical programme is illustrated by means of a table that links semiotics, pragmatism, and radical theory. The table indicates how the issues discussed in this article can be seen to fall under a schema that foregrounds Peirce's realization that aesthetic and ethical concepts are prior to those based purely on logic. As such, therefore, the article suggests that topics in social or cultural semiotics are more readily amenable to semiotic interpretation and analysis under a pragmatic rather than a linguistic methodological regime.

Core competencies required of project managers

Project management is internationally recognised as a management tool that is critical for success in the current work environment. In South Africa, initiatives are under way to produce internationally acceptable education and certification standards for the profession. The aim of this study is to identify the competencies and training needs required of project managers operating in South Africa's unique context. A questionnaire based on both previous international studies and personal interviews was administered by e-mail to members of the Project Management Institute of South Africa. Data was received from 128 respondents operating primarily in information technology, construction and engineering fields across the country. The results of the survey establish a rank ordered list of the competencies and training needs of South African project managers, and confirm that project management competencies are generic in nature. The findings are unique to South Africa, and proffer a set of core competencies which has important implications for the certification and training of South African project managers.

The Development and Establishment of Technology in South Africa

In a two-part analysis (Part 2 follows on pp 27–31), the authors discuss the key results of a South African project conducted during 1996 which focused on the factors relating to the development and establishment of technology in a country. The study investigated through a detailed questionnaire survey and a literature survey the various factors that promote the development and establishment of technology by comparing their perceived importance with the actual role they currently play in South Africa. This paper, Part 1, concentrates on the role of higher education. The importance of academic institutions in supplying high-level human resources was rated very highly (90.47%) but the role it is currently playing in reality was rated at 52.8%. Closely connected with this, the availability of high-level skilled technological people was given an importance of 89% while the current reality was rated at only 43%. This clearly shows that the South African higher education system is performing poorly in addressing these vital needs. The availability of entrepreneurs with innovative and creative skills to participate in the development and diffusion of technology was given an importance rating of 84.3% against a current situation of 42.2%, again indicating South Africa's weak performance. The results of the survey and the consequent recommendations are important to all developing countries with newly industrial economies.

The Development and Establishment of Technology in South Africa

In a two-part analysis (see pp 17–26 for Part 1), the authors discuss the key results of a South African project conducted during 1996 which focused on the factors relating to the development and establishment of technology in a country. The study investigated through a detailed questionnaire survey and a literature survey the various factors that promote the development and establishment of technology by comparing their perceived importance with the actual role they currently play in South Africa. This paper, Part 2, concentrates on the role of industry. The study showed that the availability of high-level technological people dominated the top (at 90%) of the list of factors relating to individual organizations and the role they play in the development of technology. Other prominent factors were the existence of a corporate technology strategy (88.4%), the need to improve manufacturing efficiency and processes (88.4%), the ability of top management to understand new technologies (87.9%), and the availability of funds for research and development (86.2%). The survey clearly indicated that South African organizations were not performing well with respect to these and other factors evaluated. All of them have been rated below 50%, indicating the seriousness of the problem. The corresponding recommendations made are of importance to younger countries with developing economies.

Nationalism, modernity and postmodernity: comparing the South African and Australian experiences

ABSTRACT South Africa and Australia emerged into the twentieth century sharing similar racist (white‐Anglo) modernist nationalist projects – one created by Lord Alfred Milner the other by Alfred Deakin. However, these two societies leave the twentieth century with what seems like fundamentally different futures. In large measure this is because South Africans and Australians have responded quite differently to the economic and cultural trends associated with globalization, postfordism and post‐modernity. Since 1983 Australians have systematically destroyed their old modernist and nationalist social order built upon the “Deakin Settlement”. In its stead, they have dived headlong into the uncertainties of engaging with globalization and post‐fordist economic restructuring and have immersed themselves in a world awash with postmodern (and ‘post‐national') significations. South Africans, on the other hand, appear to be content to leave the old modernist and nationalist frameworks unchallenged — hence their post‐1994 project appears to have become the construction of a modernizing (black) nationalist state built ironically upon the foundations originally laid out by Lord Milner's (white) racist‐modernist state. So in true South African fashion, the ‘new’ South African project may turn out to be a highly conservative venture when measured against trends in the rest of the world. It seems as if South Africa may yet be steered into a modernist cul de sac, substantially isolated from global post‐fordism and its related postmodernization trends. The two different paths of South Africa and Australia will be explored.

MANAGING URBAN GROWTH IN SOUTH AFRICA: LEARNING FROM THE INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE

ABSTRACT The objective is to introduce a special collection of papers on Third World urbanization which aims to offer certain policy lessons for South African policy-makers concerning issues of managing urban growth. Two sections of material are presented. First, the basic challenge of urban management for South African policy-makers is set forth in respect of rectifying past policy omissions and of tackling future needs. In addition, signposts are provided to important sources of comparative material for the study of urban management in the developing world. Second, the paper surveys the broad contours and directions of the Urban Foundation's South African research project on comparative international urbanization and presents key themes in the collection of eight policy studies.

Geostatistical evaluation of hydrogeochemical parameters as a tool to interpret regional geology : Proc APCOM 87, Johannesburg, 19–23 Oct 1987V2, P147–164. Publ Johannesburg: SAIMM, 1987

Approximately 850 groundwater samples were collected over a 29 300 km region of the semi-arid Northwestern Cape during the site selection phase of the South African radioactive waste disposal project. The purpose of the geostatistical investigation was primarily to delineate metallogenic occurrences and provinces which might exist below the thin veneer of surficial material and could thus interfere with the suitability of the site, and to quantify the distribution patterns of groundwater parameters in order to establish a relationship to local and regional geology. Up to 34 variables were analysed for each sample. Structural analysis revealed that the study area is statistically uniform. The variables have low correlation coefficients, with the exception of major ions, indicating a general poor degree of interrelationship between the spatial distribution patterns of the different variables. On the other hand, the long semivariogram range of the majority of variables, which reaches 70 km in cases, demonstrates their continuity on a regional scale. Kriging, which was repeated for each parameter, reveals that most variables, particularly trace metals, have distribution trends which are not influenced by local geomorphology or surface lithology. A 50 km wide, 220 km long metallogenic province, defined by kriging, could possibly reflect a broad metallogenic imprint on the basement and could represent a target area for prospecting. Kriging also reveals the possible existence of a wrench faulting system which may well have influenced the Namaqualand coastal graben and the western boundary of the Karoo.