Educational struggles and political community in South Africa

Democracy is often said to rest on some form of deeper argument, some self-understanding amongst people as belonging to a common political community. This paper explores this issue in the situation of South Africa. The policies of Apartheid have left a legacy of a morally fractured society with little by way of a shared moral discourse, and the paper raises the question of whether the concepts of democracy and community which emerged out of educational struggles in South Africa might provide a basis for the development of a shared moral discourse. The answer provided in the paper is that, although such concepts cannot provide the basis for democracy at a national level, they do provide some hints of how schools might contribute to the emergence of a shared moral discourse, and, thus, the starting point for building a unified political community.     

Philosophy of education in South Africa: A Re-vision"

In this article an attempt is made to provide a re-vision of philosophy of education that will redress the legacy of the past in South Africa, and contribute to laying the foundations of a critical civil society with a culture of tolerance, public debate and accommodation of differences and competing interests. This re-vision of philosophy of education, which finds its roots in developments in philosophy in the twentieth century, and especially in the discourse of postmodernism, directs attention to a pluralistic problem-centred approach to philosophy of education.     

FAITH,SCIENCE, AND NONRELIGIOUS IDENTITY FORMATION AMONG MALE KENYAN YOUTH

The faith and science dialogue has received scholarly attention in the recent past. Within the African landscape at large, the underlying assumption has been that Africans are religious. However, there has been a rising cohort of Africans who are increasingly identified as nonreligious or atheist or agnostic. This research presents a qualitative analysis of the sociocultural factors that affect or influence these minority identities within a pluralistic African context, exploring their emergence and diversities within the African context, with a specific focus on 20 male Kenyan youth who are identified as nonreligious. This research utilized purposive sampling within nonreligious groups and networks. Second, this research aims at exploring how nonreligious identities are constructed, particularly given the concomitant issues surrounding emerging adulthood and new media. This builds up on the theories around youth and identity formation, while foregrounding science and belief as a central theme of study.     

How Exceptional Is the West? An Investigation of Worldwide Trends in Societal-Average Levels of Religiosity, 1981–2020

Research shows most Western societies became less religious over recent decades. But we know much less about the rest of the world. Is the non-Western world also becoming less religious, as some varieties of secularization theory would lead us to expect? Using 1981-to-2020 World/European Values Survey data from 103 countries, this study describes, and uses mixed-effects models to rigorously estimate, religious trends in eight world regions and five former Soviet and Eastern Bloc (FSEB) subregions. Results indicate that religious decline occurred in Latin America, Central and Baltic Europe, and (recently) in the Mideast and North Africa. But there is little evidence of such decline elsewhere in Asia, Africa, or the FSEB—despite the broad reach of many modernizing social trends. These findings do not lend support to a strong version of secularization theory but may be consistent with some versions of the idea that modernization can make people less religious.     

Cognitive and Behavioral Contributions to Depression Severity,Quality of Life,and Functioning Among People Living With HIV in South Africa

Cognitive-behavioral treatments for depression typically address both behavioral (e.g., activation) and cognitive (e.g., rumination) components, and consequently improve quality of life (QOL) and function in high-resource settings. However, little is known about the cross-cultural applicability and relative contribution of these components to depression symptom severity, QOL, and functional impairment in South Africa and other resource-limited global settings with high HIV prevalence rates.Persons with HIV (N = 274) from a peri-urban community outside Cape Town, South Africa, were administered multiple measures of depression (Hamilton Depression Scale, Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, South African Depression Scale), cognitive and behavioral components related to depression (Ruminative Response Scale, Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale), and measures of QOL and functioning (Sheehan Disability Scale, Quality of Life Enjoyment and Satisfaction Scale—Short Form). Multiple linear regression models were fit to assess the relative contribution of behavioral and cognitive components to depression severity, QOL, and functional impairment in this population.Models accounting for age and sex revealed that lower levels of behavioral activation (BA) were significantly associated with all measures of depression, as well as with QOL and functional impairment (all ps < .01). Rumination was associated with all measures of depression (all ps < .01), but not with QOL or functional impairment.The consistent and unique association of BA with depression, QOL, and functional impairment bolsters its importance as a treatment target for this population.     

The Contributions of Political Life Events to Psychological Distress Among South African

The psychological consequences of adverse political experiences among South African youth were studied in a sample of 540 black and white adolescents from two age groups, evenly divided by gender. Three questionnaires were administered, measuring exposure to political life events, the presence of symptoms of psychopathology, and stressful personal life events during the previous 5 years. The first hypothesis, predicting a substantial contribution of stressful political experiences to psychopathology, was strongly supported; when stressful personal life events were partialed out, a significant effect for political life events remained both on general distress and symptomatology indices. The second hypothesis of a linear relation between exposure to political life events and severity of distress was also confirmed. The findings underscore the enduring impact on children's mental health of past apartheid policies in South Africa specifically, and adverse political environments in general.     

Happiness Trends Under Democracy: Where Will the New South African

Five years after South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, life satisfaction and happiness still reflect societal divides sowed by apartheid social engineering. The paper reports the indicators: life satisfaction, happiness and expectations for the future, from national surveys conducted between 1983 and 1999 for the South African Quality-of-Life Trends Project. Post-election euphoria, which saw all South Africans happy and satisfied with life for a brief moment in 1994, raises the question where the new set-level of subjective well-being will eventually come to rest. In 1999, in spite of some gains in living conditions, the level of life satisfaction of blacks has not risen above the mid-point and happiness is only slightly above the mid-point. Meanwhile, whites, who have forfeited their political dominance, continue to score above the mid-point on happiness and life satisfaction. The paper draws on the literature, particularly on quality-of-life trends in reunified Germany and paradoxical trends in African-American life satisfaction when discussing the dynamics underlying South African subjective well-being. It is argued that coping mechanisms may play an important role in determining levels of subjective well-being in the complex situation of South Africa.     

Understanding the Relationships Among HIV/AIDS-Related Stigma,Health Service Utilization,and HIV Prevalence and Incidence in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Multi-level Theoretical Perspective

HIV-positive individuals often face community-wide discrimination or public shame and humiliation as a result of their HIV-status. In Sub-Saharan Africa, high HIV incidence coupled with unique cultural contexts make HIV-positive individuals particularly likely to experience this kind of HIV/AIDS-related (HAR) stigma. To date, there is a relatively small amount of high-quality empirical literature specific to HAR stigma in this context, supporting the notion that a better understanding of this phenomenon is needed to inform potential interventions. This paper provides a thorough review of the literature specific to HAR stigma in Sub-Saharan Africa, finding (a) qualitative support for the existence of important relationships between HAR stigma and health service utilization and barriers; (b) a need for more quantitative study of stigma and its relationships both to health service utilization and to HIV outcomes directly; and (c) a disconnect between methodological techniques used in this context-specific literature and well-known theories about stigma as a general phenomenon. This paper then draws from its empirical literature review, as well as from well-known theoretical frameworks from multiple disciplines, to propose a theoretical framework for the ecological and multilevel relationships among HAR stigma, health service utilization, and HIV outcomes in this context.     

New Technologies,New Identities,and the Growth of Mass Opposition in the Arab Spring

The recent revolutions known as the Arab Spring have been characterized as the products of social media. However, there is an alternative view that revolution takes place on the street or the battlefield and that the role of social media has been overstated. We argue that some new technologies can serve to facilitate rapid social change when they provide ways to overcome restrictions on the freedoms of expression and association. In doing so, communication technologies enable the formation of new social identities that can challenge existing social orders by promoting the growth of a social movement that is positioned as loyal to the nation and its people but opposed to the government. Our analyses focus on the role of social media in spreading video images of dissent and the links between this video material, satellite television, and mobile telephones in Tunisia and Egypt.     

Anglicans and Islam in East Africa: The Diocese of Zanzibar and the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (1923–63)

This article examines the legacy of Godfrey Dale, who in 1923 published a Qur'an in Swahili, with the intention of letting people “know what the Qur?ān does say.” The work of his successors is explored. It discusses the proposals for work amongst Muslims submitted by lay and ordained members of the Diocese of Zanzibar for consideration at the 1944 Diocesan Conference, as the Diocese prepared for the situation after World War II. Finally, it examines the role of the Diocese with particular reference to Christian–Muslim relations as Tanganyika and Zanzibar prepared for Independence.