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Statistics of struggling and failed mega projects testify that the impact of cultural complexities on mega project implementation over the years has become a talking point that needs a deeper understanding. This is pertinent with mega projects as strategic alliances exacerbate culture and national cultural differences which would require more harmonising to effect utmost success. The possibility of cultural disruptions in implementing Mega Construction Projects (MCPs) in South Africa using Medupi and Kusile coal plant projects as cases for this study was explored with the intention of enlightening project stakeholders in order to assist developing countries achieve their sustainable develop- ment objectives and overcome the challenges that hinder the successful development of MCPs. Based on the findings, the study results reveal that there are cultural disruptions that can be found in implementing mega construction projects, ignoring and mismanaging these cultural differences could lead to massive project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the Asian presence in South Africa through the work of Ronnie Govender. One of its concerns is how fictional worlds based on real-life experiences become a means to counter the discourses of apartheid that insisted upon the incommensurability of cultural difference as regards Asian and African communities. In this light, the paper references how a white hegemony sets about compromising an already fragile co-existence that existed between the Black, Coloured, and Asian communities and considers the body of Govender's work as a repository which aids future generations to connect with the traumatic nature of apartheid so as to reconnect with the era's lost possibilities. Throughout the analysis of Govender's texts, the Group Areas Act emerges as a silent actor that casts its shadow upon his writing. This paper notes how these Acts were detrimental to conviviality and shows how Govender creates textual cartographies that counter the surveilling and controlling of ethnic groups under apartheid. Regarding the Indian presence within South Africa, the paper presents how Govender adapts an Afro-centric position as regards the configuring of this identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I attempt a comparison between the sacred significance of fat and honey in the myths and rituals of the San peoples of southern Africa and the ancient Greeks. As Biesele (1993) and Lewis-Williams (2015) have convincingly demonstrated, the creation narratives of the diverse linguistic groups which constitute the /Xam (San) peoples of southern Africa, arguably the first peoples to call this country 'home', reveal strong links between the gathering and possession of animal fat and honey, and access to spiritual power. In ancient Greek mythology, as is well known from Callimachus and many later texts (e.g., Apollodorus and Nonnus), the infant Zeus was fed on honey by the bee-woman, Melissa. Many fundamental rites in ancient Greek religion, as reflected in texts from Homer onwards--libations, some sacrifices, ritual offerings such as the 'panspermia', and funerary rites--all provide evidence of the Greek belief in the spiritual potency of fat and honey. I thus analyse the similarities and differences between the significance of the fat-honey nexus in these two religious traditions and reflect on cross-cultural comparisons, their history, and their purpose in contemporary South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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