Cape South Africa Research Articles

The transmission of longevity across generations: The case of the settler Cape Colony

Evidence on long-term multigenerational dynamics is often inadequate as large datasets with multiple generations remain very uncommon. We posit that genealogical records can offer a valuable alternative. Rather than exploring the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status, we rely on birth and death dates of eighteenth and nineteenth century settlers in South Africa's Cape Colony to estimate the intergenerational transmission of longevity. We find that there is a positive and significant association between parents’ and offspring's life duration, as well as between siblings. Although these correlations persist over time, the coefficients are relatively small. While the effect of grandparents’ longevity on that of grandchildren is insignificant, the cousin correlations suggest that inequality in longevity might persist across more than two generations. We suggest that family and environmental factors shared by cousins, beyond grandparental longevity, can explain these results.

Peripartum hysterectomy: Two years experience at Nelson Mandela Academic hospital, Mthatha, Eastern Cape South Africa

Obstetric haemorrhage is the leading direct cause of maternal mortality in South Africa. To determine the incidence, indications, associations and maternal outcomes of emergency peripartum hysterectomies. A descriptive and retrospective analysis of patients who had peripartum hysterectomy between 1(st) February 2007 and 31(st) January 2009 in Nelson Mandela Academic Hospital at Mthatha city. The incidence of 0.95% of peripartum hysterectomies (n=63 or 9.5/1000 births) increased with the increasing maternal age from 0.121% at age of less than 20 years to 0.5% at age more or equal to 30 years. Similarly the incidence increased with parity from 0.332% for Primiparity to 0.468% at parity of four or more. The indications for the operation were uterine atony 19/63 (30.2%), secondary haemorrhage/puerperal sepsis 17/63 (27%) and ruptured uterus 16/63 (23.4%). The main intra operative complication was haemorrhage 13/63 (20.6%). Repeat laparotomy was done in 10/63 (15%) of patients due to haemorrhage. Admission to intensive care unit was 25/63 (39.7%). The case specific mortality rate was of 19 % (n=12). The main causes of death were hypovolaemic shock and septicemia. The incidence of peripartum hysterectomies was high and was associated with ruptured uterus and puerperal sepsis which are preventable.

The role of building learning cities in the rejuvenation of Africa

Although Africa has been home to famous ancient cities in the past, its modern conurbation areas are poor living spaces characterised by squalor, poor planning and human misery. The authors of this paper argue that the learning city concept, still almost unknown in Africa, holds enormous potential for redressing the dysfunctional state of things and for guiding future orderly development of African cities. There have been timid attempts at operationalising the learning city concept, for example in the Western Cape (South Africa) between 2004 and 2006, in Gaborone (Botswana) between 2008 and 2010, and in Lagos State (Nigeria) from 2007 onwards. Furthermore, two African governments, namely those of Nigeria (2005) and South Africa (2006), joined the global “Cities Alliance” partnership, which operates a “Cities without slums action plan”. However, many of these projects have not been successful, and the authors of this article identify five factors which have stood in the way of their proper take-off. Based on this analysis, the authors then propose a model for future learning city projects in Africa. It is a process model that uses critical awareness-building promoted by civil society organisations and government and harnesses the pressure of other social dynamics such as ethnic culture clusters. The authors then offer three policy recommendations and conclude by expressing their hope that the learning city concept will take hold and unfold its potential in Africa in the foreseeable future.

Alcohol consumption and risky sexual behaviour amongst young adults in a low-income community in Cape Town

Aims: The aim of the study was to explore alcohol use and risky sexual behaviour among young adults in a low-income community in Cape Town. Design and setting: The study followed a descriptive correlational design within a quantitative methodological framework. More specifically, a participatory research model was employed in collaboration with young people attending a secondary school in the participating community. Data collection: The street-intercept method was used to administer a structured questionnaire consisting of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test and the Self-Report Risky Sexual Behaviours Scale. Findings: A key finding of this study contributes to the established body of research demonstrating a significant relationship between alcohol consumption and RSB (r = 0.48; p ≤ 0.01; N = 143). Another crucial finding of the study indicates that a substantial amount of the participants are classified as either harmful drinkers (Males = 20.0%; Females = 17.8%) or being alcohol dependent (Males = 54.3%; Females = 47.9%). Conclusions: These statistics are a typical reflection of drinking behaviour in impoverished communities in Cape Town and South Africa in general. The findings display the exigency for interventions to start at both the primary and secondary school level to counter the effects and consequences of alcohol consumption and risky sexual behaviour among young adults in this community.

Jubilee Dandies: Collecting Beadwork in Tsolo, Eastern Cape 1897–1932

This paper deals largely with a single photograph in relation to an unusually coherent collection of beadwork from the Eastern Cape (South Africa) in relation to collecting practices. I explore these beaded forms as aesthetically loaded parts of a particular material culture which has been detached from its original setting, working with and drawing from Appadurai (1986), Edwards (2002), and Poole (1997, 2005) in understanding the ways in which objects are assigned different and contingent meanings. Although I also acknowledge the beadwork in question as a form of creative praxis in its making and wearing, I use the term “material culture” here as a catch-all, because my purpose in this paper is not to argue an art status for beadwork. Beadwork, as I examine it here, is understood primarily a means of “clothing” the body, and throughout most of human history clothing has been, like the other objects we now term “art” in Africa, undifferentiated from other forms of material culture. The collection examined in this paper is in the stores of the British Museum, where it has resided for nearly eighty years without ever, to my knowledge, having been placed on display. Viewed simply as collection of beaded items in a museum store it has very little meaning. When a single piece was published, in full color, by John Mack (2002),1 its isolation from the rest of the collection, and thus its historical context, ensured its appreciation as an aesthetic object, possibly as a “masterpiece,” but any other elements of its potential signification were not fully explored. Yet beadwork in general has a relatively long history in South Africa and this object has a genealogy: not only are beads recorded as part of Southern African material culture from the earliest survivals of human selfdecorating activity, but beadwork using glass beads can be traced through at least four centuries of imported materials and their indigenous uses (Huffman 2007, Wood 2008). In the nineteenth century, the art of making pieces of body adornment or clothing and other accoutrements using imported glass beads expanded exponentially on the east coast of Southern Africa2 and, by 1862, constituted a major form of aesthetic expression among Nguni-speaking peoples south of the Tugela River, and possibly among Tsonga-speaking peoples in the vicinity of Delagoa Bay (Muller and Snelleman n.d. [1892], Nettleton 2007). This paper investigates some aspects of such beadwork as clothing for the body, as a site of not only aesthetic expression and identity politics, but also of resistance to colonial norms, and ultimately as a site of residual curiosity when viewed as a collection. The collection from Tsolo was put together at a mission station and I explore the irony of beadwork’s appeal to missionaries as collectors in the Eastern Cape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century via evidence offered by three photographs emanating from the mission. In trawling European museums for evidence of Southern African objects over the past thirty years, the frequent presence of missionaries as collectors emerged from the information on many acquisitions. In 2007 I was asked to identify an ochered cloth skirt for the Glasgow Museums. The information on the donor provided by the curator of World Cultures at the Museum, Pat Allan,3 reads as follows:

Travelling ‘Under Concern’: Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker Tour the Antipodean Colonies, 1832–41

In 1832, British Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker travelled ‘under concern’ on a trans-imperial journey that took nine years and spanned the Australian colonies of Van Diemen's Land, New South Wales and Swan River in Western Australia, Mauritius and South Africa's Cape Colony. Backhouse and Walker were fundamental to the creation and expansion of humanitarian networks in the antipodes, where they made major humanitarian interventions in matters concerning Aboriginal peoples, penal reform, slavery and education. This paper first traces the genesis and historical dimensions of their journey to contextualise it within a long transnational tradition of Quakers travelling ‘under concern’. The paper considers the tour through diverse interpretative approaches such as transnationalism and new work on transnational social movements, humanitarian travel writing and textuality, and argues that Backhouse and Walker were not imperial agents, nor were they agitators operating outside empire, but rather occupied a complex position as ‘institutional opponents’ working within imperial political circuits to broker various humanitarian reforms at multiple levels in the furtherance of their particular moral empire.

Can floral traits predict an invasive plant's impact on native plant–pollinator communities?

Summary The possession of certain floral traits can determine which insects visit a plant species. If two species possess similar floral traits that determine shared flower visitors, floral traits can be said to mediate plant–plant interactions. Such indirect interactions are important for understanding fundamental relationships of plant communities, such as competition and facilitation but thus far have only been tested within a native community context. We test whether floral‐trait similarity can be used to predict interactions between an invasive plant and co‐occurring native species in South Africa's Cape Floristic Region. We surveyed flower visitation at invaded and uninvaded plots across four sites and correlated floral‐trait similarity between invasive and native species with both invasion impact on native flower visitation and flower visitor overlap of natives and the invasive species. Similarity of all traits (categorical and continuous) and categorical traits alone explained invasion impact (flower visitor overlap) between the native and invasive species. The majority of flower visitor overlap was attributed to the native honeybee Apis mellifera subsp. capensis. This study is the first to show that floral traits can be used to predict novel plant–plant interactions, even amongst ecologically generalized flower visitors and plants and to predict potential impacts of an invasive species on native flowering communities. However, floral traits were not useful for predicting changes in visitation to plant species. Synthesis. Results advance our understanding of the role of plant traits in ecological communities and reveal that they are important in mediating not only plant–pollinator interactions but also plant–plant interactions. Our findings also shed light on invasive–native plant interactions via pollinators and have the potential to predict certain invasion impacts.

Plant invasions, restoration, and economics: Perspectives from South African fynbos

Abstract Restoration is gaining importance in the management of plant invasions. As the success of restoration projects is frequently determined by factors other than ecological ones, we explored the ecological and financial feasibility of active restoration on three different invaded sites in South Africa's Cape Floristic Region. The aim of our study was to identify cost-effective ways of restoring functional native ecosystems following invasion by alien plants. Over three years we evaluated different restoration approaches using field trials and experimental manipulations (i.e. mechanical clearing, burning, different soil restoration techniques and sowing of native species) to reduce elevated soil nutrient levels and to re-establish native fynbos communities. Furthermore we investigated the possibility of introducing native fynbos species that can be used for sustainable harvesting to create an incentive for restoration on private land. Diversity and evenness of native plant species increased significantly after restoration at all three sites, whereas cover of alien plants decreased significantly, confirming that active restoration was successful. However, sowing of native fynbos species had no significant effect on native cover, species richness, diversity or evenness in the Acacia thicket and Kikuyu field, implying that the ecosystem was sufficiently resilient to allow autogenic recovery following clearing and burning of the invasive species. Soil restoration treatments resulted in an increase of available nitrogen in the Acacia thicket, but had no significant effects in the Eucalyptus plantation. However, despite elevated available soil nitrogen levels, native species germinated irrespective whether sown or unsown (i.e. regeneration from the soil seed bank). Without active introduction of native species, native grasses, forbs and other shrubs would have dominated, and proteoids and ericoids (the major fynbos growth forms) would have been under-represented. The financial analysis shows that income from flower harvesting following active restoration consistently outweighs income following passive restoration, but that the associated increase in income does not always justify the higher costs. We conclude that active restoration can be effective and financially feasible when compared to passive restoration, depending on the density of invasion. Active restoration of densely invaded sites may therefore only be justifiable if the target area is in a region of high conservation priority.

Evaluation of Infection Control Advice for Patients at Risk of Chemotherapy-Induced Neutropenia in 2 Pediatric Oncology Centers: Cape Town, South Africa, and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK

Childhood cancers are treated with myelotoxic chemotherapy. Resultant neutropenia can lead to life-threatening infections. There is no consistent guidance on infection control precautions for neutropenic patients who are not yet febrile or infected. Although it is not possible to eradicate infection risk, it is conceivable that the risk could be reduced by effective infection prevention. This study compared infection control measures advised to pediatric and adolescent oncology patients receiving chemotherapy in 2 centers (Cape Town, South Africa, and Newcastle, UK). Prospective, observational, cross-sectional surveys of staff and patients/parents were undertaken using standardized, study-specific questionnaires. Seventy-eight staff and 56 patients/parents participated. Precautions advised in Newcastle were significantly different to Cape Town (all P < .05), except both agreed inpatient isolation was unnecessary. Over 40% of patients/parents felt isolation was important (P < .01). In Cape Town, staff and patients had similar views. In Newcastle, patients/parents had stricter opinions on particular precautions than staff, for example, attending school, playing outside and avoiding busy places (P < .01). Patient/parent responses were similar between centers. Over 90% of staff felt advising patients/parents about hand washing was important. Currently infection prevention advice is inconsistent. Further research is needed to elucidate effective guidance for infection prevention in pediatric neutropenic patients.

Psychosocial Experiences of Coloured Grandmothers who are the Primary Care Givers of Their Grandchildren

This study explored the psychosocial experiences of grandmothers who care for their grandchildren. A qualitative research design was used. Twelve grandmothers (age range = 50 to 65) from a peri-urban community in the Western Cape (South Africa) were selected as participants. Qualitative data were collected using the Mmogo-method® (Roos, 2008; 2012), a visual representation data gathering instrument and reflective group discussions. The data were thematically analyzed. The results showed that grandmothers experienced physical, emotional and financial challenges. Grandmothers coped through their strong belief that caring for their grandchildren was a spiritual calling and by drawing on the support from community and spiritual relations. The coping strategy of identifying with previous intergenerational groups is functional but not beneficial for the relationship between grandmothers and grandchildren and should be addressed in intergenerational interventions.

Traditional healers' views on their indigenous knowledge and the science curriculum

African traditional healers (THs) were interviewed in order to explore their indigenous knowledge (IK) concerning natural science topics and science teaching, with potential implications for school science curriculum. First, THs in Lesotho were interviewed about their general ideas and these were compared with ideas obtained from THs in a previous study in South Africa. Then THs in the Western Cape (South Africa) were interviewed about more specific aspects of their IK that could usefully be taught, and also invited to demonstrate teaching methods. The traditional healers interviewed in these studies expressed a coherent view about what could be taught, how to teach it, and enthusiasm to become more engaged in the schooling of African children.1

Creolization, colonial citizenship(s) and degeneracy: A critique of selected histories of Sierra Leone and South Africa

This work examines the nexus between creolization, colonial citizenship(s) and discourses of degeneration. It focuses on two sites: (1) 19th- and 20th-century Freetown, Sierra Leone, and (2) the early Cape and 20th-century South Africa. The author engages three key thinkers: Edouard Glissant, Jean-Loup Amselle and Mahmood Mamdani to illustrate how these colonial administrations deployed creolization to construct partial citizenships derived from ideas of ‘mixed race’ and ‘corrupted’ or ‘lacking’ culture. The author argues that ‘Creole’ and ‘creole’ signified, in the colonial imagination, a ‘degenerate type’ behind its legal category, ‘non-native’, and shows how uses of the concepts ‘creolization’ and ‘creole’, in selected histories of the Cape and Freetown, surrender to their colonial meanings, obscure their biopolitical significance and so, collude with discourses of degeneration. The article concludes first, that Edouard Glissant’s conception of creolization as method counters ethnological reasoning and second, that his concept ‘Relation’ enables citizenship(s) that contest social inequality and live with difference.

Iron indices in school children in Ceres district of the Western Cape South Africa

Iron indices in school children in Ceres district of the Western Cape South Africa

False killer whale Pseudorca crassidens mass stranding at Long Beach on South Africa's Cape Peninsula, 2009

A mass stranding of false killer whales Pseudorca crassidens at Long Beach near the village of Kommetjie (34°8.18'S, 18°9.77'E) on the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, in May 2009 is described. Theestimated size of stranded group was 55 animals, which is close to the median size of P. crassidens groups that have stranded previously in South Africa (58). Five of the stranded individuals succumbed, 36 were euthanised and 14 were rescued. This was the eighth known mass stranding of this species to occur in South Africa, with all these events occurring on the irregular south-west coast of the Western Cape province.

Present status and historical changes in the fish fauna of the Berg River, South Africa

The Berg River system in the southwestern Cape South Africa was historically populated by at least four species of highly endemic fish species. A litany of anthropogenic changes, including large-scale land transformation, invasion by alien plant species, modification of the natural flow regime of the river, changes to water chemistry, siltation, and introduction of alien fish species, has transformed the system to the extent that some of these species were believed to have been completely eradicated from the system while others had become severely restricted in terms of the ranges they now occupy. This paper pulls together all available data and information (mostly anecdotal) on historical abundance and distribution patterns of indigenous fish species in the system and on the introduction and spread of alien fish species through the system. It also presents results of a series of surveys undertaken in recent years which provide a snapshot of present day abundances and distributions patterns of both the indigenous and alien fish species in the system. These recent surveys are focussed mostly on the main stem of the system but cover the full length of the river from the upper reaches to the estuary. Methods employed in the recent surveys included beach seine netting, gill netting, electrofishing and snorkelling. These surveys have revealed the presence of only three indigenous fish species in the system—the Berg River redfin, Pseudobarbus burgi, the Cape kurper, Sandelia capensis, and the Cape galaxias, Galaxias zebratus. In spite of once being abundant and widespread in the system these species are now confined to the extreme upper reaches of the mainstem and in the upper tributaries where alien species have not yet managed to penetrate and water quality remains pristine. A fourth indigenous species, once reported as being widespread through the system, the witvis, Barbus andrewi, appears to have been extirpated from the system in its entirety. At least ten species of alien species are present in the system and include rainbow trout, Onchorhynchus mykiss, smallmouth bass, Micropterus dolomieu, spotted bass, M. punctulatus, large mouth bass, M. salmoides, Mozambique tilapia, Oreochromis mossambicus, banded tilapia, Tilapia sparrmanii, sharptooth catfish, C. gariepinus, bluegill sunfish, Lepomis macrochirus, carp, Cyprinus carpio, and mosquito fish, Gambusia affinis. These species are most abundant in the mainstem of the river and lower portions of the tributaries, being prevented from penetrating further upstream by a combination of physical barriers, low winter temperature, and turbulent flow patterns which characterise the upper reaches of the Berg River system. Historical surveys of freshwater fish populations in the Berg River system relied mostly on surface observations and angling as survey methods, and thus most of the results of these studies are of an anecdotal nature. However, using these as a base, it has been possible to pinpoint with a reasonable degree of accuracy the time at which most of the alien species were originally introduced into the Berg River system as well as their spread through the system, and the simultaneous decline of indigenous species in the river. We conclude from this analysis that the strong correlation between the spread of alien species through the Berg River system and the concomitant decline of indigenous species is strongly suggestive of a causative relationship. The paper concludes with some speculation on the prognosis for both indigenous and alien fish species in the Berg River system, focusing on the impacts that the newly constructed Berg River Dam may have on these fauna, as well as potential opportunities this may present for their conservation.

Jan van Riebeeck as Pioneering Explorer and Conservator of Natural Resources at the Cape of Good Hope (1652-62)

Abstract The first decade of Dutch VOC occupation of South Africa's Cape of Good Hope has been ill served by environmental historians. An examination of the daily journals covering the first decade of settlement proves fruitful for historians interested in the origins of European exploration, exploitation and conservation of natural resources at the Cape. This settlement is moreover a unique example of seventeenth-century Dutch settlers establishing a cornucopia of food plants in the absence of indigenous agriculturalists, experimenting with species imported from the VOC's many bases. The difficulty of establishing what they may have learned from the indigenous peoples is addressed.

Flowering phenology of invasive alien plant species compared with native species in three Mediterranean-type ecosystems

Flowering phenology is a potentially important component of success of alien species, since elevated fecundity may enhance invasiveness. The flowering patterns of invasive alien plant species and related natives were studied in three regions with Mediterranean-type climate: California, Spain and South Africa's Cape region. A total of 227 invasive-native pairs were compared for seven character types across the regions, with each pair selected on the basis that they shared the same habitat type within a region, had a common growth form and pollination type, and belonged to the same family or genus. Invasive alien plant species have different patterns of flowering phenology from native species in the three regions. Whether the alien species flower earlier, later or at the same time as natives depends on the climatic regime in the native range of the aliens and the proportion of species in the invasive floras originating from different regions. Species invading at least two of the regions displayed the same flowering pattern, showing that flowering phenology is a conservative trait. Invasive species with native ranges in temperate climates flower earlier than natives, those from Mediterranean-type climates at the same time, and species from tropical climates flower later. In California, where the proportion of invaders from the Mediterranean Basin is high, the flowering pattern did not differ between invasive and native species, whereas in Spain the high proportion of tropical species results in a later flowering than natives, and in the Cape region early flowering than natives was the result of a high proportion of temperate invaders. Observed patterns are due to the human-induced sympatry of species with different evolutionary histories whose flowering phenology evolved under different climatic regimes. The severity of the main abiotic filters imposed by the invaded regions (e.g. summer drought) has not been strong enough (yet) to shift the flowering pattern of invasive species to correspond with that of native relatives. It does, however, determine the length of the flowering season and the type of habitat invaded by summer-flowering aliens. Results suggest different implications for impacts at evolutionary time scales among the three regions.

Questioning the pace and pathway of e-government development in Africa: A case study of South Africa's Cape Gateway project

The paper examines e-government development in Africa. This study is based on the Cape Gateway project in South Africa, a leading e-government initiative on the continent. We observe that African countries have jumped on the e-government band wagon by looking mostly at the benefits without a clear risk assessment. We argue that African countries should question the pace and pathway for their e-government programs. We caution that e-government models from developed countries do not necessarily work in Africa. E-government programs in Africa should be balanced with the provision of basic needs and infrastructure. We conclude that e-government in South Africa should adopt multi-cultural approaches, and must be underpinned by national development priorities. We recommend that the Cape Gateway must address the socio-economic context and needs of the country. The pace and pathway of its e-government must depend on the availability of both financial and human resources and also user satisfaction.

New atlas of Africa

A newly revised atlas of Africa features more than 300 satellite images that show striking before and after photographs of environmental changes spanning about 35 years. Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment, compiled by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), provides visual evidence of how development choices, population growth, climate change, and, in some cases, conflicts affect Africa, often negatively. The book includes photographs of shrinking glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro as well as on Uganda's Rwenzori Mountains; deforestation along an expanding road system in the Congo; the drying up of Lake Chad; and the expansion of urban areas such as Cape Town, South Africa, and Dakar, Senegal. Satellite images also indicate some positive signs of environmental management, including action to stop overgrazing in a Tunisian national park, the effects of a management plan for a dam in Zambia that has helped restore seasonal flooding, and positive impacts of wetlands expansion around a national park in Mauritania.

Redescription of Orthoprotella mayeri K.H. Barnard, 1916 (Crustacea: Amphipoda: Caprellidae) from Cape Province, South Africa and description of O. berentsae sp. nov. from New South Wales, Australia

Close examination of Orthoprotella mayeri K.H. Barnard, 1916 (sensu lato) which has been recorded from South Africa and New South Wales, Australia, revealed that there are two distinct species from Cape Province, South Africa and New South Wales, Australia, respectively. The present paper provides a redescription of O. mayeri K.H. Barnard, 1916 (sensu stricto) from South Africa and a description of O. berentsae sp. nov. from New South Wales, Australia. The two species can be identified based on the morphology of antenna 2, pereonites 6 and 7, and the uropods, although characteristic body somites of both species resemble other species.