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This paper explores difficulties in talking about 'race' and difference in a post-apartheid university classroom. The data come from classroom-based research conducted in a first-year undergraduate English Studies course at a historically 'white' and Afrikaans university in South Africa. Drawing on poststructuralist ideas on discourse and the self, discourse and society, I analyse moments from classroom discourse and argue that the ways in which the students talk and think about 'race' and culture echo both resonances of the past as well as discourses in current circulation. I draw on the Bakhtinian notion of heteroglossia in order to understand why 'race' is simultaneously a taboo topic and an important self-identifier (the product of both apartheid discourses of discrimination and post-apartheid discourses of equity and redress) and argue for the need to deconstruct essentialist notions of 'race' and culture in the post-apartheid classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the growth of language practice and translation studies. It mentions that translation studies became an integral part of applied and general linguistics between the 1950s and 1970s. By the 1980s, scholars of translation studies began using models from other fields, such as psychology and anthropology, to form the emergence of translation studies as its own discipline. The article also discusses the 50th anniversary of the South African Translators' Institute. The current issue of "Southern African Linguistics & Applied Language Studies" features academic papers from the celebration.

The need to provide mental health services in disadvantaged communities remains a priority in South Africa. This paper illustrates how in consultation and partnership with the peri-urban community of Jamestown, a counselling psychology internship was established to provide a range of mental health services at a primary health clinic. We describe how the internship also became an important catalyst for other community interventions. We also illustrate how values of community psychology informed the establishment and foci of the internship. Tensions encountered in reconciling community needs and professional training requirements discussed include the lack of resources at the primary health care level, the bio-medical bias of the primary health setting, and addressing the needs articulated by the community for more direct interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on adolescent youth living in the townships of the Midlands region of KwaZulu- Natal. The subject sample has lived within violence stricken communities for most of their lives. It was assumed that all participants were also victims of poverty and social discrimination. Four different communities, with varying profiles of political and criminal violence, combined with varied access to resources were selected. A life events scale, a symptom checklist and a coping scale were used to ascertain the degree of psychological distress. The results indicated that a number of individual and community variables are likely intervening variables. This led to the development of an interactionist model, which indicates that a number of mediating and/or moderating variables operate which enhance resilience or alternatively place an individual at greater risk for the development of psychopathology. Other probable mediating variables, not fully investigated in this study but suggested in recent literature, are discussed. These include cognitive attribution, meaning of the violence to the individual and the community as well as the nature of the ‘enemy’. The need for greater focus on factors which facilitate coping both at community and individual level are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a need to Africanise family therapy so as to serve the interest of local communities. Western approaches to family therapy have been accused of being irrelevant to African contexts. They are seen as forming part of a dominant scientific knowledge which invalidates local folk and cultural psychologies and thereby continuing a historical tradition of oppressive colonial power relations. This paper aims at archaeologising and evaluating such criticism by situating family therapy within different fields of knowledge that have emerged historically and are currently co-existing in Africa. The advantages and disadvantages of dominant family therapy approaches in African contexts are explored by focussing on power relations between different knowledges in Africa. It is argued that many global narratives of family therapy offer congenial companionship to many local African narratives, but that family therapists should pay more attention to local spiritual and political narratives so as to attain more legitimacy and validation by local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is much debate at present around changing the professional structure of psychology to better meet the needs of South African society. In this paper this debate is assessed in terms of the requirements of the employment sector. Employment advertisements, for psychology and social and human science graduates appearing in three national weekly newspapers over 21 years, from 1976 to 1996, were analyzed. From the data it appears that the role of psychology in the 'New South Africa' is changing, with new opportunities opening up for graduates with broad as opposed to narrow professional qualifications. The implications of this for the professional structure of the discipline of psychology are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present there is a “crisis” in psychology in South Africa. A mental health investigation has been initiated and a national task force appointed in order to reform the profession in all its aspects. These events are the result of a deep sense of unease about the mission, relevance and image of the profession and an awareness that mainstream psychology is irrelevant to the nature and needs of the majority black population. Presently psychology in South Africa is at a crossroads. This paper identifies the mental health needs of the majority black population and suggests professional training programmes for future psychologists and the utilisation of services and resources in delivery systems. The article also re-defines the psychologist's role in a divided and traumatised society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore why rituals of bodily reform play so prominent a role in movements of social reconstruction, particularly in collective action which never attains the level of explicit historical discourse. I argue that the crucial signifying role of the body here derives from its position as primary mediator between the self and the Reviews the book ' ,' by the case of a protest movement in modern South Africa, I show how the semantics of bodily affliction and reform permit participants to address and redress the historical roots of their conflict-laden experience. Here, sociocultural contradiction takes tangible shape in the ‘natural’ contradictions of the human body, and reconstitution proceeds by alike drawing upon media from the body's seemingly inexhaustible stock. But in this, the body is more than mere ‘natural alibi’ or set of unmotivated signs; it provides implements determined by an inherent, natural logic which engages in what is a reciprocally determining relationship with the semantic logic of specific sociohistorical projects. …habit has its abode neither in thought nor in the objective body, but in the body as mediator of a world. (Merleau-Ponty 1970: 266. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence from first world contexts support the notion that strong primary health care teams contain family physicians (FPs). African leaders are looking for evidence from their own context. The roles and scope of practice of FPs are also contextually defined. The South African family medicine discipline has agreed on six roles. These roles were incorporated into a family physician impact assessment tool, previously validated in the Western Cape Province. Methods: A cross-sectional study design was used to assess the perceived impact of family physicians across seven South African provinces. All FPs working in the district health system (DHS) of these seven provinces were invited to participate. Sixteen respondents (including the FP) per enrolled FP were asked to complete the validated 360-degree assessment tool. Results: A total number of 52 FPs enrolled for the survey (a response rate of 56.5%) with a total number of 542 respondents. The mean number of respondents per FP was 10.4 (SD = 3.9). The perceived impact made by FPs was high for five of the six roles. Co-workers rated their FP’s impact across all six roles as higher, compared to the other doctors at the same facility. The perceived beneficial impact was experienced equally across the whole study setting, with no significant differences when comparing location (rural vs. metropolitan), facility type or training model (graduation before and ≥ 2011). Conclusions: The findings support the need to increase the deployment of family physicians in the DHS and to increase the number being trained as per the national position paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychologists have shown a tendency to gaze through lenses of observation, tests and questionnaires at those other than themselves without analysing the discipline itself. This presentation turns the lens on psychology itself by examining how within the South African historical context, psychology has responded to dramatic changes in the social and political landscape. The paper offers a critical overview of the theoretical and methodological debates that have pervaded the development of psychology both as an area of scholarship and as a profession. It considers how psychology moved from silence, omission and collusion during the apartheid years to the emergence of a more critical, liberatory stance at the height of the liberation struggle and then to an engagement with social reconstruction in the postapartheid years. As these changes unfolded, there were related changes in the race and gender demographics of psychologists as a professional and academic community. What does this mean for the contribution of psychology to social development? In reflecting on this and other questions, the conclusion points to contradictions, areas of ambivalence and future challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have found that community health workers (CHWs) with appropriate training are able to accurately identify people at high cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in the community who would benefit from the introduction of preventative management, in Bangladesh, Guatemala, Mexico, and South Africa. This paper examines the attendance pattern for those individuals who were so identified and referred to a health care facility for further assessment and management. Patient records from the health centres in each site were reviewed for data on diagnoses made and treatment commenced. Reasons for non-attendance were sought from participants who had not attended after being referred. Qualitative data were collected from study coordinators regarding their experiences in obtaining the records and conducting the record reviews. The perspectives of CHWs and community members, who were screened, were also obtained. Thirty-seven percent (96/263) of those referred attended follow-up: 36 of 52 (69%) were urgent and 60 of 211 (28.4%) were non-urgent referrals. A diagnosis of hypertension (HTN) was made in 69% of urgent referrals and 37% of non-urgent referrals with treatment instituted in all cases. Reasons for non-attendance included limited self-perception of risk, associated costs, health system obstacles, and lack of trust in CHWs to conduct CVD risk assessments and to refer community members into the health system. The existing barriers to referral in the health care systems negatively impact the gains to be had through screening by training CHWs in the use of a simple risk assessment tool. The new diagnoses of HTN and commencement on treatment in those that attended referrals underscores the value of having persons at the highest risk identified in the community setting and referred to a clinic for further evaluation and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]