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Interaction between an entomopathogenic fungus and entomopathogenic nematodes for increased mortality of Thaumatotibia leucotreta (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae)

  • Authors: Prinsloo, Sandra , Hill, Martin P , Moore, Sean D , Malan, Antoinette P , Coombes, Candice A
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/417738 , vital:71482 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09583157.2022.2099528"
  • Description: Thaumatotibia leucotreta (Meyrick) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) is a major phytosanitary pest of citrus in South Africa. Although several management tools exist, control options registered for use against the soil-dwelling life stages are limited. Both entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) and entomopathogenic fungi have been investigated previously, but they have not been studied in combination against T. leucotreta. Thus, this study investigated the interaction of an indigenous entomopathogenic fungus, Metarhizium pinghaense (previously anisopliae) FCM Ar 23 B3 with three indigenous EPNs: Steinernema yirgalemense 157-C, S. jeffreyense J194 and Heterorhabditis noenieputensis 158-C for increased late instar T. leucotreta larval mortality. Before interaction experiments, lethal concentration (LC) values for each of these microbial agents were determined through dose–response bioassays. Heterorhabditis noenieputensis recorded the highest LC50 amongst the nematodes (7.11 IJs/50 µl). Using the pre-determined LC70 value of M. pinghaense and the LC50 values for each of the nematode species, interaction experiments were conducted. Combinations of the nematodes either applied simultaneously with the fungus or at 24, 48, 72 or 96 h post-fungal application showed predominantly additive interactions. Synergy between the simultaneous application of S. yirgalemense and M. pinghaense was found, whilst the interaction between H. noenieputensis and M. pinghaense applied simultaneously and S. jeffreyense applied 24 h post-fungal application, recorded antagonistic interactions. The use of these agents in combination may therefore have the potential to increase control of T. leucotreta soil-dwelling life stages in citrus orchards across South Africa and should be further investigated.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Interdisciplinarity requires careful stewardship of powerful knowledge

  • Authors: McKenna, Sioux , de Bie G J
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/434487 , vital:73068 , ISBN 9780367518707 , https://www.routledge.com/Enhancing-Science-Education-Exploring-Knowledge-Practices-with-Legitimation/Blackie-Adendorff-Mouton/p/book/9780367518707#:~:text=The%20book%20introduces%20Legitimation%20Code,grasp%20difficult%20and%20dense%20concepts
  • Description: This book helps meet an urgent need for theorized, accessible and discipline-sensitive publications to assist science, technology, engineering and mathematics educators. The book introduces Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and demonstrates how it can be used to improve teaching and learning in tertiary courses across the sciences. LCT provides a suite of tools which science educators can employ in order to help their students grasp difficult and dense concepts. The chapters cover a broad range of subjects, including biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics, as well as different curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices. This is a crucial resource for any science educator who wants to better understand and improve their teaching.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

International Centre for parliamentary Studies (ICPS) Award for Peace and Human Rights

  • Date: 2022 , 2022-10-05
  • Subjects: Bam, Brigalia , Bam, Brigalia -- Awards
  • Language: English
  • Type: award , realia
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/56813 , vital:57191
  • Description: Dr. Brigalia Bam received the International Centre for parliamentary Studies (ICPS) Award for Peace and Human Rights. , The International Centre for Parliamentary Studies exists to promote effective policy making and good governance through better interaction between Parliaments, Governments and other stakeholders in society. , Donated/gifted to Nelson Mandela University Archives , Forms part of: Brigalia Bam collection
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Invasive alien aquatic plant species management drives aquatic ecosystem community recovery: An exploration using stable isotope analysis

  • Authors: Motitsoe, Samuel N , Hill, Jaclyn M , Coetzee, Julie A , Hill, Martin P
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/423527 , vital:72069 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocontrol.2022.104995"
  • Description: The socio-economic and ecological impacts of invasive alien aquatic plant (IAAP) species have been well studied globally. However less is known about ecosystem recovery following the management of IAAP species. This study employed a before-after study design to investigate ecological recovery following the management of Salvinia molesta D.S. Mitchell, at four field sites in South Africa. We hypothesized that the presence of S. molesta would have a negative impact on the ecosystem food web structure, and that following S. molesta control, the systems would show positive ecosystem recovery. Aquatic macroinvertebrate and macrophyte samples collected before and after mechanical or biological control of S. molesta, were analysed for δ13C and δ15N stable isotopes. Salvinia molesta infestations negatively impacted the food web structure, indicated by reduced food chain length, trophic diversity and basal resources. This represented an altered aquatic food web structure, that in some cases, led to the collapse of the aquatic community. In contrast, after either mechanical or biological control, there were increases in food chain length, trophic diversity and abundance of energy resources accessed by consumers, indicating improved food web structure. Although the study showed positive ecosystem recovery following control, we noted that each control method followed a different recovery trajectory. We conclude that S. molesta invasions reduce aquatic biodiversity and alter ecosystem trophic dynamics and related ecosystem processes, necessitating control.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Investigating signer-independent sign language recognition on the lsa64 dataset

  • Authors: Marais, Marc , Brown, Dane L , Connan, James , Boby, Alden , Kuhlane, Luxolo L
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465179 , vital:76580 , xlink:href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marc-Marais/publication/363174384_Investigating_Signer-Independ-ent_Sign_Language_Recognition_on_the_LSA64_Dataset/links/63108c7d5eed5e4bd138680f/Investigating-Signer-Independent-Sign-Language-Recognition-on-the-LSA64-Dataset.pdf"
  • Description: Conversing with hearing disabled people is a significant challenge; however, computer vision advancements have significantly improved this through automated sign language recognition. One of the common issues in sign language recognition is signer-dependence, where variations arise from varying signers, who gesticulate naturally. Utilising the LSA64 dataset, a small scale Argentinian isolated sign language recognition, we investigate signer-independent sign language recognition. An InceptionV3-GRU architecture is employed to extract and classify spatial and temporal information for automated sign language recognition. The signer-dependent approach yielded an accuracy of 97.03%, whereas the signer-independent approach achieved an accuracy of 74.22%. The signer-independent system shows promise towards addressing the real-world and common issue of signer-dependence in sign language recognition.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Investigating the Effects of Image Correction Through Affine Transformations on Licence Plate Recognition

  • Authors: Boby, Alden , Brown, Dane L , Connan, James , Marais, Marc
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/465190 , vital:76581 , xlink:href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9856380"
  • Description: Licence plate recognition has many real-world applications, which fall under security and surveillance. Deep learning for licence plate recognition has been adopted to improve existing image-based processing techniques in recent years. Object detectors are a popular choice for approaching this task. All object detectors are some form of a convolutional neural network. The You Only Look Once framework and Region-Based Convolutional Neural Networks are popular models within this field. A novel architecture called the Warped Planar Object Detector is a recent development by Zou et al. that takes inspiration from YOLO and Spatial Network Transformers. This paper aims to compare the performance of the Warped Planar Object Detector and YOLO on licence plate recognition by training both models with the same data and then directing their output to an Enhanced Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Network to upscale the output image, then lastly using an Optical Character Recognition engine to classify characters detected from the images.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Is education blithely producing unemployed graduates?: A reflection based on a review of environmental skills initiatives 2016-2021

  • Authors: Rosenberg, Eureta
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/370619 , vital:66360 , xlink:href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i89a08"
  • Description: A statement from the president of the Black Business Council (BBC) that "our education system continues to produce the unemployed graduates" (NewZRoomAfrika, 2021) because "the courses they are doing are not required by industry" reflects the perennial perception that South Africa's education system is a cause of unemployment. In this paper, I explore aspects of this perception through a meta-review of environmental skills-related studies conducted over the past five years. Data used in these studies include graduation trends based on higher education, employer surveys, analyses of skills needs in the workplace compared to courses offered, and case examples of internships and teacher development. Using an ecological-systems model, I relate the findings, in a layered critical realist analysis, to the socio-cultural milieu in South Africa. I challenge the conception of relevant graduate education evident in the BBC's statement.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Is green space associated with reduced crime? A national-scale study from the Global South

  • Authors: Venter, Zander S , Shackleton, Charlie M , Faull, Andrew , Lancaster, Lizette , Breetzke, Gregory , Edelstein, Ian
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/402340 , vital:69843 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154005"
  • Description: Assumptions about the link between green space and crime mitigation are informed by literature that overwhelmingly originates in the Global North. Little is known about the association between green spaces and crime in the Global South. We utilized 10 years of precinct-level crime statistics (n = 1152) over South Africa, a global crime hotspot, to test the hypothesis that green space is associated with reduced crime rates. We found that, after controlling for a number of socio-demographic confounders (unemployment, income, age, education, land use and population density), for every 1% increase in total green space there is a 1.2% (0.7 to 1.7%; 95% confidence interval) decrease in violent crime, and 1.3% (0.8 to 1.8%) decrease in property crime, with no effect on sexual crimes. However, the direction of the association changed for property crimes when exploring the effect of green space characteristics including tree cover and park accessibility. Property crimes increase by 0.4% (0.1 to 0.7%) with a percentage increase in tree cover, and by 0.9% (0.5 to 1.3%) with every kilometer increase in proximity to a public park. Further research, including experimental studies, is needed to better isolate causal mechanisms behind crime-green space associations, especially considering that green space may map to race and income inequality and that there may be more crime reporting in affluent areas. Nevertheless, our results provide a complementary contribution to the evidence from the Global North, highlighting the need for more nuanced definitions of green space and its characteristics when considering links to crime. When viewed in light of the broader suite of ecosystem services provided by green space, our results support urban greening as a major strategy towards achieving just and sustainable cities and towns.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Is the instrumental approach a ‘silver bullet’for addressing non-compliance in recreational fisheries: A South African case study

  • Authors: Bova, Christopher S , Stephens, Jed , Aswani, Shankar , Potts, Warren M
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/391359 , vital:68644 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fishres.2022.106439"
  • Description: Non-compliance with recreational fishery regulations is considered to be one of the biggest threats to the sustainability of fisheries. Dedicated non-compliance studies are seldom carried out at the national level which makes it difficult to discern the behavioural compliance norms within a population. The instrumental approach for compliance is the traditional paradigm in recreational fisheries. It postulates that increased enforcement activities and the corresponding punishment will improve compliance behaviour, although there is little empirical evidence for such a supposition within the recreational fisheries context. Using face-to-face encounter surveys employing the ballot box method for reducing social desirability bias (SDB), South African marine shore-based fishery (MSBF) participants were questioned on their compliance behaviour with a set of regulations pertaining to the fishery. Overall non-compliance levels were very high (52%), and non-compliance levels with individual regulations varied based on provincial locality. Perceptions and observations of enforcement activity had no significant impact on compliance behaviour. Participants that had previously been caught by law enforcement violating the regulations were still more likely to violate the regulations than participants that had not faced enforcement action. Results indicate that calls for increased enforcement as a means of improving compliance behaviour are questionable in the South African MSBF, and further emphasise the need to develop alternative approaches, such as those pertaining to normative theory, within recreational fisheries.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

It's a numbers game: inundative biological control of water hyacinth (Pontederia crassipes), using Megamelus scutellaris (Hemiptera: Delphacidae) yields success at a high elevation, hypertrophic reservoir in South Africa

  • Authors: Coetzee, Julie A , Miller, Benjamin E , Kinsler, David , Sebola, Keneilwe , Hill, Martin P
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/417749 , vital:71483 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09583157.2022.2109594"
  • Description: Classical biological control of water hyacinth in South Africa has been constrained by cool winter temperatures that limit population growth of the biological control agents, and highly eutrophic waters which enhance plant growth. However, inundative releases of the control agent, Megamelus scutellaris (Hemiptera: Delphacidae), at the Hartbeespoort Dam, South Africa, suggest that water hyacinth can be managed successfully using biological control as a standalone intervention for the first time in the absence of herbicide operations, despite eutrophication and a temperate climate. Sentinel-2 satellite images were used to measure the reduction in water hyacinth cover from over 37% to less than 6% over two consecutive years since M. scutellaris was first released on the dam in 2018, while site surveys confirmed a corresponding increase in M. scutellaris population density from fewer than 500 insects/m2 in October 2019, to more than 6000 insects/m2 by March 2020. Inundative release strategies are recommended for the control of water hyacinth in South Africa at key stages of its invasion, particularly after winter, and flooding events.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Iterative Refinement Versus Generative Adversarial Networks for Super-Resolution Towards Licence Plate Detection

  • Authors: Boby, Alden , Brown, Dane L , Connan, James
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/463417 , vital:76407 , xlink:href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-99-1624-5_26"
  • Description: Licence plate detection in unconstrained scenarios can be difficult because of the medium used to capture the data. Such data is not captured at very high resolution for practical reasons. Super-resolution can be used to improve the resolution of an image with fidelity beyond that of non-machine learning-based image upscaling algorithms such as bilinear or bicubic upscaling. Technological advances have introduced more than one way to perform super-resolution, with the best results coming from generative adversarial networks and iterative refinement with diffusion-based models. This paper puts the two best-performing super-resolution models against each other to see which is best for licence plate super-resolution. Quantitative results favour the generative adversarial network, while qualitative results lean towards the iterative refinement model.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Key for the identification of third instar larvae of African blowflies (Diptera Calliphoridae) of forensic importance in death investigations

  • Authors: Szpila, Krzysztof , Williams, Kirstin A , Soszyńska, Agnieszka , Ekanem, Mfon , Heyns, Marise , Dinka, Mergi D , Villet, Martin H
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/440761 , vital:73810 , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2023.111889
  • Description: Blowfly larvae are the insects primarily responsible for the active stage of decomposition of exposed vertebrate remains and are the most frequently collected entomological evidence during forensic investigations of death. The necrophagous calliphorids in continental Africa that consistently develop on large vertebrate carrion include 11 species belonging to four genera: Calliphora, Chrysomya, Hemipyrellia and Lucilia. Most of these species are widespread in Africa and frequently reported on large animal carcasses and carrion and human corpses. A few keys have been compiled for identification of their third instar larvae, but none of them covers the complete set of taxa. Therefore, we provide a new comprehensive key with original illustrations of all taxonomically significant characters. The key is based on characters that should be easily observable even in poorly equipped local laboratories and is a reliable taxonomic tool for material collected in either urban or rural areas where synanthropic species predominate. However, it should be used with some caution in areas with relatively pristine natural habitats, where additional carrion-breeding species may occur. The publication of the key will significantly facilitate both medical and forensic entomological research and practice in Africa.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Kinetic energy radio

  • Date: 2022 , 2022-09-20
  • Subjects: Bam, Brigalia , Radio
  • Language: English
  • Type: realia
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/56423 , vital:56648
  • Description: South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) kinetic energy radio, given to the first Board of the Democratic Dispensation of South Africa. It is a symbol of transformation and access to information and some form of entertainment to the rest of South Africa. , Donated/gifted to Nelson Mandela University Archives , Forms part of: Brigalia Bam collection
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Lalela uLwandle: An experiment in plural governance discussions

  • Authors: Erwin, Kira , Pereira, Taryn , McGarry, Dylan K , Coppen, Neil
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , book chapter
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/436145 , vital:73230 , ISBN 978-3-030-99347-4 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99347-4_20
  • Description: Symbolic, cultural and spiritual meanings of the oceans, whilst different depending on positionality, are important aspects of understanding humans’ relationship with the oceans. Currently in South Africa, cultural, social and spiritual meanings of the oceans are given little consideration in the rush for the Blue Economy and ocean governance frame-works. Neither are they widely considered in environmental conservation and management. This chapter argues that for inclusive ocean governance it is necessary to create more equitable listening forums for how different epistemologies makes sense of the oceans. The chapter draws from the research-based theatre project called Lalela uLwandle performed along the KwaZulu-Natal Coast. The chapter explores what is lost when knowledge systems are conceived as incommensurable and how this serves hegemonic interests. Importantly, it also explores what might be gained when we embody more fluid and plural epistemologies that can mould, expand, broaden and enrich our decision-making process on the ocean.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Landscape drivers of mammal habitat use and richness in a protected area and its surrounding agricultural lands

  • Authors: Bellón, Beatriz , Henry, Dominic AW , Renaud, Pierre-Cyril , Roque, Fabio de O , Santos, Cyntia Cavalcante , Melo, Isabel , Arvor, Damien , de Vos, Alta
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/415873 , vital:71296 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2022.107989"
  • Description: Protected areas (PAs) are key to conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services globally, but their effectiveness increasingly depends on the ability of the surrounding agricultural areas to support biodiversity and secure connectivity at the landscape level. This requires monitoring the broader multi-use landscapes in which PAs exist and identifying the landscape characteristics that support rich, functional wildlife communities. Here, we investigated the species richness and habitat use patterns of a mammal community in relation to different landscape variables and land use and land cover (LULC) types in a PA and its surrounding agricultural lands in the Cerrado. We first used a hierarchical multi-species occupancy model with input camera trap data and eight landscape variables (vegetation productivity, phenology, and heterogeneity, distance to water, roads and settlements, and the PA, slope, and elevation) to estimate the species richness and habitat use of 29 mammal species across the landscape. We then analyzed the relationships between the species richness and habitat use and the landscape variables at the site level, as well as the distribution of species at the landscape level in relation to the different natural and agricultural LULC types.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Language, music, self-representation and claiming the space: artists from Limpopo Province in South Africa

  • Authors: Aiseng, Kealeboga
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455271 , vital:75417 , https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-imbizo-v13-n2-a3
  • Description: It is widely accepted that popular culture is a product of the masses, for the masses. But even then, popular culture is embedded with ideolo-gies of control, manipulation, power dynamics, exclusion and inclusion, empowerment, and disempowerment. For a long time, the South Afri-can mainstream music industry has been dominated by artists and groups from Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. These two prov-inces have produced many musical artists, film productions, television shows and many other artistic personnel. Language has always been a key factor in the South African mainstream music industry. IsiZulu, isiXhosa and instances of codeswitching have dominated the songs in the country. This has left other social groups and their languages out-side mainstream music. However, what happens when a culture of selfrepresentation emerges among a social group? What happens when a social group mobilises itself and claims the space? What about the power of languages in achieving self-representation? This study is influenced by these research questions to do qualitative, textual re-search on how a selected group of musical artists from Limpopo, South Africa is using music to achieve selfrepresentation.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Lessons from bright-spots for advancing knowledge exchange at the interface of marine science and policy

Lessons from COVID-19 for wildlife ranching in a changing world

  • Authors: Clements, Hayley S , Child, Matthew F , Lindeque, Lehman , Lunderstedt, Kyra , de Vos, Alta
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/415886 , vital:71297 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00961-1"
  • Description: The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to assess the impacts of a global disturbance on conservation land uses and learn from responses to the crisis to enable more resilient conservation systems. To understand socio-economic responses of diverse wildlife working lands to COVID-19, we surveyed owners and managers of 78 private wildlife ranches (wildlife working lands), 23 agricultural farms (conventional working lands) and six public protected areas (conventional conservation lands) in South Africa. Most protected areas lost more than 75% of their revenues during 2020, while most agricultural farms lost less than 10%. The impact on wildlife ranches was more varied. Ranches with more diverse activities, particularly mixed wildlife–agriculture systems, lost less revenue, shifting their activities from those heavily impacted (international ecotourism, trophy hunting) to those less afected (for example, wildlife meat, livestock). This adaptive capacity suggests that wildlife-based enterprises could represent key ecosystem-based adaptations, providing lessons for integrated global policies that seek to incorporate private land models in the 2030 Biodiversity Framework.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Liberation philology: decolonizing Classics in Africa, a native view from the South

  • Authors: Van Schoor, David J , Ackah, Kofi , Okyere Asante, Michael K
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468479 , vital:77064 , https://doi.org/10.1093/bics/qbac005
  • Description: If you were a manumitted slave, the child of a slave or de-scendant of enslaved or dispossessed people or, say, you were a member of your society’s lowest castes and you were given the opportunity to study, and perhaps even to take up scholarship as your life’s work, your vocation, what subject would you, should you elect to learn? William Sanders Scar-borough was born in slavery in the deep South of the United States. His father, Jeremiah, was libertus, a freeman. None-theless, William De Graffenreid, the owner of Scarborough’s mother Frances, magnanimously allowed Jeremiah to marry her, his property. She gave birth to her son in Macon, Geor-gia, in 1852. Scarborough would go on to become one of the first Black Hellenists in the United States. Over a productive life he was a schoolteacher, a professor at Wilberforce Uni-versity in Ohio, an early Black member of the American Philo-logical Association (the first was Richard Greener, his friend and fellow classicist), the first Black member of the Modern Languages Association, the president of Wilberforce, and a founding member of the Negro Academy and of the NAACP.
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  • Date Issued: 2022

Liberatory violence or the gift: paths to decoloniality in Black Panther

  • Authors: Mabasa, Xiletelo , Boshoff, Priscilla A
  • Date: 2022
  • Subjects: To be catalogued
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , article
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/455509 , vital:75435 , http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2022/n36a7
  • Description: Black Panther's (Coogler 2018) popularity amongst its black audiences in part stems from its foregrounding of the persistent social injustices engendered by colonialism and slavery (what Aníbal Quijano (2000: 533) terms' coloniality') and black people's struggles to overcome them. As a representational tactic in approaching this theme, the Hollywood blockbuster draws on the imaginings of Afrofuturism, which variously endorses radical or more conciliatory approaches to decoloniality. This southern theoretical approach and the critique of coloniality offered by Afrofuturism frame our exploration of how the film positions the hero, T'Challa and the villain, Erik Killmonger, as embodiments of contrasting approaches to emancipation from colonialism's entrenched legacy. Us-ing a structuralist approach that draws on the narrative models of Tsvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss, we analyse the film's approach to decoloniality by examining the relationship be-tween T'Challa and Killmonger as the protagonist and antagonist re-spectively. The analysis reveals the limitations of the film's construction of the hero's and villain's understandings of the path to liberation. Ra-ther than offering a revolutionary remedy for the injustices of colonial-ism and its aftermath, the film embraces a liberal standpoint that re-mains palatable to the white establishment, both within Hollywood and the broader socio-political milieu.
  • Full Text:
  • Date Issued: 2022
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