Search

South African youth is described as marginalised and vulnerable because of, amongst others, high unemployment rates, a lack of access to opportunities and environmental degradation that threatens their and future generations’ well-being. Both social work and faith-based organisations place value on the empowerment of marginalised youth, as well as on the importance of participatory environmental initiatives. Practice guidelines to effectively empower youth in this regard are, however, lacking. This discussion was aimed at determining how environmental social work can take place in collaboration with faith-based organisations to contribute to both the empowerment of youth and environmental justice. A search of literature from 2010 onwards was conducted, focusing on the terms ‘sustainable development’, ‘marginalised youth’, ‘environmental and/or green social work’ and ‘faith-based organisations’. Central themes were identified through a thematic analysis. Four central themes were identified for youth empowerment through an interdisciplinary approach to contribute to environmental justice, namely environmental responsibility, attitude, knowledge and concern. It was concluded that the potential of an interdisciplinary environmental approach may be based on collaboration and an openness to include a renewed change orientation where disciplines work together across boundaries in multiple spaces to support environmental change and youth empowerment simultaneously. Contribution: The framework for collaborative initiatives may service as a guide to support marginalised youth to actively participate in social and environmental justice initiatives to contribute to their own and future generations’ well-being.

This article sets out to demonstrate the role of the ‘one-legged devil’ (as the colonialists called Patrick Gichimu Njogu), also called General Kassam. Kassam was one of the pioneer generals of the Mau Mau, a guerrilla movement that operated from the central Kenya forests as they participated in the war of liberation from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. Was Kassam a one-legged general from the word go? Methodologically speaking, the article is partially based on interviews conducted with the general before his death at the age of 89 in 2011. Being an insider, Kassam helped to give an in-depth understanding of the Mau Mau war of independence by relating the role of the Kavirondo people of western Kenya in Mau Mau historiography. Were they enticed by the colonial government to abandon the idea of the armed struggle as a way of writing off colonialism? Or did the Kavirondo (western Kenya) embrace the theology of non-violence (and pacifism) and eventually left the central Kenya group to battle it alone? Or were the people of western Kenya dissuaded to take part in the struggle by the Christian ‘gospel of love’ that abhorred violence, leading to abandoning their colleagues from central Kenya at the last minute? Theoretically speaking, the article is largely informed by John Walton’s theory of reluctant rebels. Walton argues that rebels are always incited by the leading elites in a society that undergoes war or civil war at any given time in history.Contribution: The article contributes to growing knowledge by discussing the Mau-Mau Movement in Kenya’s quest for freedom, from the 1950s to early 1960s, to demonstrate the religious role of armed conflicts in Africa. In this case, General Kassam, a baptised Anglican Christian, whose loyalty to the ancestral pantheons drove him to the quasi-religious war of independence, is the key subject in this article. In this war of independence in Kenya, a seeming conflict between African religion and Christian religion appears as a key emerging issue. The article is relevant to the HTS Journal and the world of scholarship because it is a theo-anthropocentric piece of work which deals with God, creation, and inevitable human conflicts – all of which have answers before God.

The ecological systems theory and the buffering effect model both suggest that the absence of a multi-systemic conceptualisation of supporting parents of children in conflict with the law (CCL) diminishes the impact of traditional generic efforts to meaningfully buffer parents of CCL during the child justice process. This participatory qualitative study involved parents of CCL and child justice officials as co-constructors of a practice model for supporting parents of CCL. The co-constructed practice model shows that parents must have access to informational, emotional, practical and professional support prior to, during and after the child justice process..

This article serves as an introduction to a collection of articles that explores emancipatory methodologies for doing theology and research with children. We focus on both the agency and the participation of children as an ethics and children’s rights imperative as well as the potential impact and outcomes of theology and research that focus on children. The article emphasises that such research should be preceded by an epistemological shift that recognises the validity of local, experiential and different knowledges while insisting on participatory approaches in generating and constructing knowledge. It emphasises a rights-based approach and provides guidelines for ethical and collaborative research with children, moving beyond the paralysis of an ethics conundrum. The life and work of Janet Prest Talbot, who embodies commitment to children’s rights, children’s participation, child justice and God’s joy over children forms a backdrop of and inspiration for this article.

Research indicates that worshippers have to contend with a process of remembrance (recognition) when they participate in liturgy. This article identifies two focal points within the listening process, namely listening as a predominant activity during participation as well as listening that leads to changes in perception, which, in turn, lead to a difference in actions. The research question is: What kind of dynamic perspectives emanate from research on remembrance as a process that edits memories to enable listeners to cultivate a cognisance of seeing? A listener’s remembrance has to do with recollecting familiar things, events and words. Remembering brings new meaning and understanding. Recognition is the spark that ignites participants’ ability to take part in the listening process. This investigation was conducted on the basis of a practical–theological vantage point and interdisciplinary engagement with social psychology and communication sciences. Anamnesis was examined from the perspective of recognition as viewed in terms of the sermon to the Hebrews. The article closes with perspectives on the creative functioning of recognition as a part of active listening. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This research has an inter-disciplinary focus. The concept of recognition (remembrance) is scrutinised in utilising perspectives from the viewpoint of social psychology as well as communication sciences in order to indicate why active listening is pivotal during the act of listening to sermons.

The main objective of this article is to describe a problem portrayed into critical human conditions in urban margins characterised by the deprivation of most basic human needs, housing in particular. This is undertaken in search of alternative ways that promote a bigger plan of urban regeneration while exploring whether faith-based action makes a special contribution to this goal, both sustainably and innovatively. The article uses a case study of faith-based action from the City of Tshwane in Gauteng province, South Africa. It first begins with constructing an untoward paradoxical narrative of urban marginalisation and housing crisis scenario. It proceeds, responding to marginalisation in light of values of spatial justice and housing. This insight leads the article to sketch a paradigmatic point of departure addressing urban margins, looking at the sustainable livelihoods framework and its basic tenets that mobilise livelihood assets (tangible and intangible) to tackle urban marginalisation from its roots. The article moves on to explore a contribution of faith-based action in urban regeneration through housing value. The penultimate point of the article engages the case study followed by drawing the general conclusion and way forward. The article adds to the existing literature, employing an epistemological approach that integrates multidisciplinary sources and empirical reports on urban marginalisation. Unstructured interviews, participatory observations and personal experience on housing practice help to achieve the main objective of the study.

Collective bargaining (coupled with the right to strike) has become a primary means to force employers through negotiation to achieve the improvement of standards and conditions of employment. The South African labour market has been plagued by unprotected strikes as well as violent and lawless behaviour during both protected and unprotected strikes. Some have said that the collective bargaining process is in trouble and has failed the objectives intended by the Labour Relations Act. The fact that collective bargaining in South Africa and elsewhere is quite adversarial puts these criticisms into the spotlight again. Calls to explore a participatory structure, where distributive and non-distributive issues are separated from each other, supplementary to collective bargaining have been made again. What immediately comes to mind is the system of workplace forums, which has been unsuccessful in South Africa thus far.KEYWORDS: collective bargaining; workplace forums; co-determination; trade unions; adversarialism; consultation; information; decision-making; joint decision-making; conditions of employment; distributive issues; non-distributive issues

One of the key strategies for achieving sustainable development is the use of the process of evaluating the potential environmental impacts of development activities. The procedure of environmental impact assessment (EIA) implements the principle of integration which lies at the core of the concept of sustainable development by providing a process through which potential social, economic and environmental impacts of activities are scrutinised and planned for. Sustainable development may not be achieved without sustained and legally mandated efforts to ensure that development planning is participatory. The processes of public participation play a crucial role in ensuring the integration of the socio-economic impacts of a project into the environmental decision-making processes. Public participation is not the only process, nor does the process always ensure the achievement of sustainable development. Nevertheless, decisions that engage the public have the propensity to lead to sustainable development. The public participation provisions in South Africa’s EIA regulations promulgated under the National Environmental Management Act 107 of 1998 show a disjuncture between the idea of public participation and the notion of sustainable development. The provisions do not create a framework for informed participation and leave a wide discretion to environmental assessment practitioners (EAPs) regarding the form which participation should assume. In order for environmental law, specifically EIA laws, to be effective as tools to promote sustainable development the laws must, among other things, provide for effective public participation. The judiciary must also aid in the process by giving content to the legal provisions on public participation in the EIA process.

Disability has remained on the fringes of research in Africa in general and Southern Africa in particular, especially in the field of theology. Its glaring absence constitutes an indictment against both church and society, revealing in the process both the church's and society's penchant for a dependence paradigm which has been the paradigm with respect to issues of disabilities and people with disabilities. Using the participatory method with its proclivity for bringing to the fore the voice of the 'other' and the marginalised, both the dependence and independence paradigms within the context of disability are put under scrutiny. In the process and through the voice of people with disabilities, the practical theological paradigm of interdependence emerges as the most appropriate and friendliest one, as it resonates with both the New Testament notion of koinonia through love and the African notion of botho through interconnection. The practical theology of holding each other in arms resonates with the theology of embrace that has been popularised by Volf within the context of much hatred and alienation. All these different dimensions of the theology of interdependence become the bedrock for inclusive and respectful treatment of each other irrespective of race, gender, religion, ability and social class.

In 1900, the Dutch Ministry of War sent four military observers to South Africa, in an attempt to come to terms with the latest developments in the military field. Once in South Africa, the promising young Dutch officers selected for the mission remained focused strongly on decisive battles Jominian style, which they considered relevant for future warfare in Europe. They almost completely ignored guerrilla warfighting. However, inspired by the Boer commandos, their analysis of the Anglo-Boer War also ended in pleas for a fundamentally new relationship between army and society in Holland, and a new Dutch militia army organisation (a volksleger), comparable to the Boers’ commandos. Fascinatingly, this ideal of a militia army had probably much more to do with the observers’ interpretation of the Dutch national past and the values they regarded characteristic of it, than with contemporary South Africa, since the earliest forms of the Dutch army were also believed to have been a volksleger. In this way, the military observers from the Netherlands converted the South African present into Dutch history to serve their country’s national future.

In this article, the author reports on a mid-year critical evaluation of her teaching practice at a multilingual university with students who are non-indigenous speakers of isiXhosa. Data is gleaned from participatory observations, critical-incident journal entries, students’ assessments, views of an outside observer, and student feedback. The conclusion is drawn that to achieve communicative competence in the Xhosa language, the following are vital towards meeting the challenges of students’ anxieties about the course: increasing student motivation, confronting the differences between students’ home languages and isiXhosa, using tutors who are proficient in the students’ mother tongue, as well as encouraging creativity together by keeping a balance between oral and written tasks.

In this article, a review of the guerrilla (i.e. fourth main) phase of the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 to 1902 is provided; a phase that stretched from March 1900 until >May 1902. It is indicated how and why the war developed from a (semi-) conventional conflict to a full-scale guerrilla war, and what the consequences of those developments were. The way in which the Boers applied guerrilla tactics at, for example, the battles of Sannaspos, Bakenlaagte, Groenkop, Yzerspruit and Tweebosch/De Klipdrift, are briefly analysed, with special reference to the role played by prominent Boer guerrilla commanders such as Generals Christiaan de Wet, Koos de la Rey and Louis Botha. The British counter-guerrilla strategy is also analysed, with special reference to the scorched-earth policy, internment camps, “psychological warfare”, mobile columns, information/intelligence, blockhouses, armoured trains and drivers. The available sources that shed light on the guerrilla phase of the war will be briefly discussed, and this controversial phase of the war will be placed in the broader context of the history of twentieth-century South Africa.

In the course of 1900, the second year of the Anglo-Boer War, Potchefstroomwas occupied three times by British forces and twice evacuated, all in the space offive months. This article focuses on the circumstances leading to these events, theirsignificance for the effective British occupation of south-western Transvaal and onthe effects of the occupations on the civilian population of the town.Possession of Potchefstroom, next to Pretoria and Johannesburg, the mostpopulous town in the Transvaal, was a pre-requisite for British occupation of all ofthe south-western quarter of the Transvaal. The main consideration being that theWestern Railway line ran through Potchefstroom terminating in Klerksdorp. Its usewas indispensable as a supply route for all garrison towns to be established southand west of Krugersdorp. The expectations that all would be accomplished with easewere dashed by the advent of the guerrilla phase of the war by mid-1900. Critical inthis regard was the activation of renewed Boer hostilities securely based in theGatsrand from where all rail and road communication between Potchefstroom andits supply base in Krugersdorp was disrupted. These factors and other considerationsresulted in six months of failed British attempts to secure Potchefstroom.Alternating Boer and British control of the town had interesting repercussionsfor the civilian population with its considerable British element leading to a divisionof loyalty toward the combatants.

Established within the Faculty of Theology at the University of Stellenbosch in 2001, the Unit for Religion and Development Research (URDR)3 has embarked on a major initiative to research the social development needs of local communities and empower the faith-based organisations (FBOs) – churches and faith-based NGOs – in those communities towards self-reliant sustainable social development activity and outcomes (URDR web page). In particular, the work of the Unit proceeds from the understanding that resolving the majority of problems related to poverty in South Africa lies in carrying out two steps. The first is that one needs to gather data on the problem, and the problem must have a human face. The second step is networking, empowering and motivating all relevant parties in a society to address the problem. This problem can be solved only with strong input from grassroots level, where local communities are part and parcel of a participatory action process (Hendriks, Erasmus & Mans, 2004:381).