A Model of Heterosexual Adaptive Relationship Functioning in South Africa: Implications for HIV Prevention Interventions

Abstract

Objectives: Couple-based HIV prevention efforts are an important HIV prevention strategy in South Africa but there is a lack of understanding as to what constitutes healthy relationships in South African sociodisadvantaged communities. Methods: To address this, 8 focus group discussions were conducted with 27 men and 23 Black African women living in a large disadvantaged community in Cape Town, South Africa. Results: A model of adaptive relationship functioning is put forth, which involves four primary relationship components that emerged as central to healthy relationships: active relationship building, emotional support/display, communication, and problem-solving. Conclusions: The results of this study can inform couple-based HIV prevention efforts.     

Anxious urbanity: xenophobia,the native subject and the refugee camp

G. Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall; A history of South African ‘Coloured’ politics, (Cape Town, David Philip, 1987)

Ian Goldin, Making Race: The politics and economics of Coloured identity in South Africa (Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1987).

Gavin Lewis, Between the Wire and the Wall: A History of South African ‘Coloured’ Politics (Cape Town: David Philip, 1987).

Women in African Literature Today, No. 15, James Curry Limited, London: 1987.

Left‐Radical Movements in South Africa and Namibia 1900–1981 A Bibliographical and Historical Study, compiled by Elizabeth W. Böhmer. 2 vols. Cape Town: South African Library, 1986 and 1987.

South African Review 4. Edited and compiled by Glenn Moss and Ingrid Obery for the Southern African Research Service (SARS). Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987, 599 pp., R24,95

The Rise and Decline of Apartheid: A study of political movements among the coloured people of South Africa, 1880–1985, R.E. van der Ross, (Cape Town, Tafelberg, 1986)

Setiloane, Gabriel M. African Theology ‐An Introduction. Johannnesburg. Skotaville 1986.

Pass Controls and the Urban African Proletariat, by Doug Hindson, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1987.

Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives, edited by Belinda Bozzoli (Ravan, Johannesburg, 1987).     

Book reviews

The Skewed Revolution: Trends in South African Higher Education 1988–1998. By David Cooper and George Subotzky. Cape Town: Education Policy Unit of the University of the Western Cape. 2001. 284 pages. Paperback

Africanizing Anthropology: Fieldwork, Networks and the Making of Cultural Knowledge in Central Africa. By Lyn Schumaker. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2001. 376 & xii pages.

On the Postcolony By Achille Mbembe. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 2001. 274pp. Paperback.

Fighting Poverty: Labour Markets and Inequality in South African Studies. By Haroon Bhorat, Murray Leibbrandt, Muzi Maziya, Servaas van der Berg and Ingrid Woolard. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. 2001. 252 pages.     

Manuel Castells and the New South Africa

The revisionist literature of the 1970s approached social stratification in South Africa with the insistence that proper ‘weighting’ of the race and class factors should occur. Arguing that class and not racial consciousness was the key determinant of social structure in pre‐industrial South Africa, it concluded that eighteenth century Cape society in certain areas of the colony was characterised by greater fluidity than the caste system of the American South or industrialised South Africa. George Fredrickson's comparative analysis of American and South African history rejects the first mentioned approach but agrees with the conclusion. This article argues that Fredrickson erred by characterising Cape society as being largely based on class and a permeable colour line. The extent to which Cape Town or frontier society can be categorised as such was limited, while the agrarian Western Cape, in terms of manumission rates and the incidence of mixed marriages, was one of the most rigid caste societies in the world. The article concludes by observing that only by studying how political and class relationships reinforced each other can the full complexity of eighteenth century Cape society be revealed.     

Disablement, Disability and the Nigerian Society

This paper seeks to examine the question of disability in developing countries, particularly Nigeria. Most of the diseases causing disabilities are preventable. Many of these are infections which could be prevented with medical care.

The perception of handicapping conditions by most Nigerians it is argued, are greatly influenced by myth and superstition, which in turn influences the negative attitude of people towards disabled people.

The lack of medical facilities has contributed to the spread of common diseases which otherwise would have been controlled or eradicated, as is the case in developed countries like Britain and America.

Rights of disabled people are emphasized. This includes the right to an education and the right of access into buildings. Fortunately, there are moves towards the attainment of these basic rights in various sectors, particularly the University of Jos which has the largest concentration of blind students in one single institution of higher learning.     

On the shaping of South African society

The Shaping of South African Society edited by Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee. Cape Town: Longman Penguin Southern Africa. R15,00.     

Support and Access in Sports and Leisure Provision

This paper will look at different ways of enabling people with learning difficulties to engage in leisure opportunities: the Support Model and the Access Model. These models will be put in their social context and then critiqued.

The support model will be be contextualised in the theory of normalisation, access in disability theory. The support worker role will be shown to be useful in motivating people with learning difficlties into new activities, as well as having a protecting element, and unwittingly, disguise the level of discrimination people with learning difficulties are subject to.

The access worker role will be shown to have strengths in understanding discrimi nation. With this analysis, it has the potential to dismantle disabling practices. However, the needs of people with learning difficulties have ramifications for disability theory. In practice, that means that ideas of self-advocacy need to be taken on board.

Through interviews with sports personnel, social workers and people with learning difficulties, the implications of creating fully comprehensive access will be examined. I will conclude that both effective support and comprehensive access must be in place before people with learning difficulties are able to make a meaningful choice as to how they are enabled to participate in sports. It is only at that point of choice that the two models become complementary rather than competing discourses of provision.     

An interview with George Hallett

The distinguished South African photographer George Hallett speaks about his childhood, schooling, career in photography, exile in Europe and return to South Africa. Born in District Six and raised in Hout Bay, Hallett was introduced to the world of politics, literature and art by the novelist Richard Rive, who was his high school English teacher, and by the poet James Matthews and artist Peter Clarke, who became friends, as well as mentors. Hallett began his photographic career in Cape Town, but, struggling under the restrictions of life under apartheid, soon left for London. In Britain and, later, France and the Netherlands, he established himself as a leading photojournalist and fine art photographer. After brief stays in the United States and Zimbabwe, he returned to South Africa to photograph the 1994 elections for the African National Congress.     

Poverty and disability in Eastern and Western Cape Provinces,South Africa

The impact of disability on the living conditions of people living in specifically resource‐poor areas in South Africa has not previously been addressed. This paper presents a comparison of people with a disability and their non‐disabled peers with respect to some key poverty indicators among a sample of Xhosa speaking individuals in resource‐poor areas of Eastern and Western Cape Provinces. A questionnaire on the level of living conditions (household composition and socio‐economic characteristics) and a detailed disability questionnaire that captured more specific details of the disability experience of the individual with a disability were adapted to the South African context and utilised. Despite the improved situation of households with a disabled family member in terms of financial resources (due primarily to the allocation of disability grants), other measures of poverty (education and employment) remain divisive for those with disabilities.     

RESPONSE

In this engagement with the idea of the common in contemporary South Africa, the author uses three episodes from his own experience in and of South Africa – a performance at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2009; a bus journey from Cape Town in 2010; news of the Marikana mine massacre in August 2012 – as well as recent work by theorists Lauren Berlant, Bernard Stiegler and Paolo Virno, as prompts to explore how issues of public and private feature in recent representations and experiences of the South African postcolony. In responding to several of the essays included in this issue, the author also discusses the role of the institutions and infrastructures of cultural mediation in the production of cultural products that engage with these issues, and gestures towards the responsibilities of intellectuals and artists in interrogating their own positions in relation to the idea of the commons in South Africa.     

JOURNAL REVIEW

Hidden Struggles in Rural South Africa: Politics and Popular Movements in the Transkei and Eastern Cape, 1890–1930 by W. Beinart and C. Bundy. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987.

The Rise and Fall of the South African Peasantry, 2nd edition, by C. Bundy. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988.

War and Society: The Militarisation of South Africa edited by Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988.

White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid's Bitter Roots as Witnessed by Eight Generations of an Afrikaner Family by Marq de Villiers. New York: Viking Penguin, 1988.

Home Truths by Basil Du Toit and Spoils of War by John Eppel. Cape Town: Carrefour Press, 1988 and 1989.

Because They Chose the Plan of God: The story of the Bulhoek Massacre by Robert Edgar. History Workshop Topic Series I. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988.

Brewers, Beerhalls and Boycotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa by Paul la Hausse. History Workshop Topic Series 2. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988.

Detention and Torture in South Africa: Psychological, Legal and Historical Studies by Don Foster, with contributions by Dennis Davis and research assistance by Diane Sandier. Cape Town: David Philip, 1987.

State Resistance and Change in South Africa edited by Philip Frankel, Noam Pines and Mark Swilling. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1988.

Building Tomorrow Today; African Workers in Trade Unions 1970–1984 by Steven Friedman. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1987.

Facing The Storm: Portraits of Black Lives in Rural South Africa by Tim Keegan. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988.

History of Southern Africa by J.D. Omer‐Cooper. London: James Currey, 1987.

Journey Continued: An Autobiography by Alan Paton. Cape Town: David Philip, 1988.

The Dead Will Arise: Nongqawuse and the Great Xhosa Cattle Killing Movement of 1856–7 by J.B. Peires. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1989.

The Blood of Our Silence by Kelwyn Sole. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1988.     

Zambian Women in South Africa: Insights Into Health Experiences of Labia Elongation

Labia minora elongation consists in the manual stretching of the inner lips of the external genitalia. This practice is documented in east and southern Africa. The experiences of African women in the diaspora practicing elongation are not thoroughly understood. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the health harms and benefits associated with this practice of Zambian women who have migrated to Cape Town, South Africa. Twenty women and seventeen men participated in this study. Between December 2013 and May 2014, in-depth interviews and natural group discussions were conducted with the participants. The focus of this article is to report on the emic of the women related to notions of health, hygiene, and well-being. Labial elongation is perceived as a practice involving minor, short-term adverse effects that can be prevented by following some basic hygiene. Overall, personal and social value is placed on this practice because of its reported benefits for the sexual health of men and women, and for women's femininity and self-image. Further research is necessary on how female genital modifications influence Zambians’ sexual preferences to inform the development of culturally appropriate health promotion interventions.     

Slavery and freedom in South Africa

The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840. By RICHARD ELPHICK and HERMANN GILIOMEE. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 1989. Second Edition. xix, 623 pp.

The Slave Question: Liberty and Property in South Africa. By R.L. WATSON. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1990. xi, 274 pp.     

The United States and South Africa since 1948 1

South Africa and the United States: The Erosion of an Influence Relationship by Richard Bissel, New York: Praeger, 1982.

The United States and South Africa, 1968–1985: Constructive Engagement and its Critics by Christopher Coker, Durham: Duke University Press, 1986.

United States/South African Relations: Past, Present and Future by P.H. Kapp and G.C. Olivier (eds), Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1987.

Cold War and Black Liberation: The United States and White Rule in Africa, 1948–1968 by Thomas J. Noer, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985.     

Mines and Labour Migrants in Southern Africa

Jonathan Crush, Alan Jeeves and David Yudelman, South Africa's Labor Empire: A History of Black Migrancy to the Gold Mines (Westview Press: David Philip, Boulder: Cape Town, 1991), xvi+266 pp.
Patrick Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c.1860–1910 (Heinemann: Witwatersrand University Press: James Curry, Portsmouth: Johannesburg: London: 1994), xxiii+305 pp.
T. Dunbar Moodie (with Vivienne Ndatshe), Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994), xxi+337 pp.
Wilmot G. James, Our Precious Metal: African Labour in South Africa's Gold Industry, 1970–1990 (David Philip: Indiana University Press: James Currey, Cape Town: Bloomington: London, 1992), ix+188 pp.     

The Mafeje and the UCT saga: unfinished business?

This article focuses on the thorny and vexed relationship between Archie Mafeje, a black South African scholar and the University of Cape Town. Mafeje was appointed on merit in 1968 as Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. His appointment was rescinded by the University Council acting under pressure from the apartheid state. With the imminent demise of apartheid, Mafeje re-applied in the early 1990s for a position at the University of Cape Town in the early 1990s. His application was turned down. This piece offers a detailed reading and analysis of what became known as the “Mafeje affair” and raises issues about the meaning of transformation at the University of Cape Town.     

The Curriculum to Meet Special Educational Needs

The development of objectives-based curricula in special education has brought considerable benefits to the education of children with special educational needs. Schools can look to even greater successes as they become more experienced in using and modifying their curricula. In the integrationist climate, provision for children with special educational needs has become increasingly flexible.

The role of the special school is changing, and is developing a system of 'resource centres' to enable wider provisions for meeting pupils special educational needs in mainstream. Such development has created new and important challenges in the field of special education. The opportunities which objectives-based curricula extend through planned and structured teaching initiatives for pupils with special educational needs, are commensurate with the opportunities provided through integration.

The article draws attention to matters of particular concern for teachers meeting pupils' special educational needs, and highlights the aims and objectives critical to curriculum design.     

‘The Tortoise under the couch’: an African woman’s reflections on negotiating insider- outsider positionalities and issues of serendipity on conducting a qualitative research project in Cape Town,South Africa§

Issues of positionality of Black African researchers researching African issues is seldom discussed in methodological literature. In this article, I reflect from an African perspective on issues of insider/outsider positionalities and of serendipity and unexpectedness during my fieldwork which are areas often dominated by writing from the global north and by writers and researchers who do not identify as African people of color and hope that my article will contribute to fill this gap. I share my background, identity, gender and age, and how these might have influenced my approach and interpretation during the process. My qualitative study explored perspectives and subjective experiences of Xhosa speaking adults with epilepsy and their carers in an urban Black township in Cape Town, South Africa. I conclude with the tortoise metaphor to show the cultural relevance thereof, the importance of curiosity and of embracing events of unexpectedness in fieldwork.     

Cast in a racial mould

Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa 1900 ‐1983 by Belinda Bozzoli, with the assistance of Mmantho Nkotsoe, Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1991.

Our Precious Metal: African Labour in South Africa's Gold Industry, 1970–1990 by Wilmot G. James, David Philip, James Currey &; Indiana University Press, Cape Town, London &; Bloomington,1992.

Bounds of Possibility ‐ The Legacy of Steve Biko &; Black Consciousness by N.B. Pityana, M. Ramphele, M. Mpumlwana, &; L. Wilson, (eds), Cape Town, David Philip, 1991.

Faces in the revolution: the psychological effects of violence on township youth in South Africa by Gill Straker, with Fathima Moosa, Rise Becker and Madiyoyo Nkwale. Cape Town, David Philip, 1992 and Athens, Ohio, Ohio University Press, 1992.

Lives of Courage: Women for a New South Africa by Diana E.H.Russell. New York, Basic Books, 1989.

Towards Justice? Crime and State Control in South Africa by Desiree Hansson and Dirk van Zyl Smit (eds), Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1990.

South Africa in the Nineties by DJ van Vuuren, NE Wiehahn, NJ Rhoodie en M Wiechers (eds), HSRC Publishers, 1991.

To Live in Fear: Witchburning and Medicine Murder in Venda by A de V. Minnar, D Offringa and C Payze, HSRC, Pretoria, 1992.

The Anti‐Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power by James Ferguson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Zimbabwe's Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices by Norma J. Kriger. Cambridge University Press, African Studies Series, number 70,1992.

A Passage to England ‐ Barbadian Londoners speak of home by John Western. U.C.L. Press, London, 1992.

Breaking the formal frame: Readings in South African education in the eighties by Clive Millar, Sarah‐Anne Raynham and Angela Schaffer (eds). Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Negotiation : Theories, Strategies and Skills by Wynand Pienaar and Manie Spoelstra, Kenwyn, Juta, 1991

SUM: Selected Works by Martin Versveld. Cape Town: Carrefour Press 1991.

Projections in the Past Tense, by Kelwyn Sole. Ravan Press, 1992.     

Using life histories to explore change: women's urban struggles in Cape Town,South Africa

This article shows how life histories can be useful in analyzing the impact of political and economic change on the lives of individuals and social groups in South Africa. Four case studies are presented to highlight the shared and individual experiences of four women who arrived in Cape Town in defiance of the pass laws, which prohibited such migration. Comparing the four stories, it is clear that certain aspects of South Africa's influx controls affected all the women as women. Women were the targets of most pass raids in the townships, hostels, squatter camps and held a much more precarious position in the city. Also, the age and stage in the life cycle determined their ability to make a living in their town in order to survive shocking outbreaks of violence in the Crossroads squatter camp in 1983 and to avoid arrest under the "pass laws" of the apartheid era.