Enforced sojourn: Zimbabwean dispensation, special and exemption permits
- Authors: Maziyanhanga, Zvikomborero
- Date: 2023-03-30
- Subjects: Citizenship , Immigrants South Africa , Residence permit , Foreign workers, Zimbabwean South Africa , Discrimination , Emigration and immigration law South Africa
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/408913 , vital:70537
- Description: This thesis investigates Zimbabwean’s immigration to South Africa. Zimbabwean’s immigration to South Africa dates back to the early 2000s. This thesis uses a combination of theories to interrogate and discuss the Zimbabwe special permits and some of the post-apartheid government’s amendments to the South African Citizenship Act and other immigration policies. Some of the theories that theoretically underpin this research project’s methodology include Marxism, Pan-Africanism, Liberalism and culture-based theories. This thesis interrogates the discursive strategies these permits draw on to frame and understand Zimbabwean immigrants in South Africa. This study has found that these permits use similar operating logic as the White South African governments used the migrant labour system to exploit Blacks from all of Southern Africa in the 20th century. For instance, the migrant labour system used during apartheid made all Blacks in South Africa “guest workers” who could be deported at the government’s whim. The apartheid government used racist pass laws to regulate the movement of Black people in South Africa, whereas the post-apartheid government uses Zimbabwean special permits to regulate the movement of Zimbabweans in South Africa. The pass laws were fundamentally racist, and their ultimate objective was to reinforce the idea of White citizenship, whereas the Zimbabwe special permits are not racist. Their colonial similarity, however, lies in how they make Zimbabwean migrants perpetual migrants in South Africa and the various ways in which they cast Zimbabweans as not deserving of South African citizenship. These special permits force Zimbabwe migrants to become “guest workers” who build the post-apartheid economy and then return home when they are no longer “useful” to the economy. This thesis concludes that the post-apartheid Zimbabwe special permits achieve analogous objectives. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Political and International Studies, 2023
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- Date Issued: 2023-03-30
Skewed interactions with evidence: a discussion of fixed sexually prejudiced beliefs
- Authors: Kirkaldy, Hannah Tshirukhwe
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: Homophobia , Discrimination , Prejudices , Belief and doubt
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/7279 , vital:21238
- Description: In this thesis, I will argue that a challenge to the combatting of sexual prejudice (more commonly known as homophobia) through argument and evidence is that those on both sides of the issue are prone to a phenomenon known in psychology as confirmation bias. While the motivating concern of the thesis is sexual prejudice, and while I do discuss sexual prejudice throughout the thesis, I will focus mostly on confirmation bias, with the understanding that the picture I set out will have implications for combatting sexual prejudice at a later stage. The term confirmation bias refers either to the tendency to look for evidence which confirms one's already-held beliefs, or to engage differently with evidence based on whether or not you agree with its conclusion. After dissecting two paradigmatic experiments which explore these two kinds of confirmation bias, and arguing that they can be further broken down into sub-phenomena, I will focus on the latter kind, as I think it is the more relevant to sexual prejudice. Its essential effect on beliefs is to hold them steady in the face of evidence. In an attempt to explore the motivations we might have for engaging in this form of confirmation bias, I will argue that we can understand the tendency through a combination of a picture of beliefs as forming an interconnected web, and an understanding of the effect of affective elements on belief. Furthermore, given this motivational story, it is sometimes reasonable to hold beliefs steady. I will argue that finding the balance between giving up beliefs too easily in the face of contrary evidence, and holding onto them too rigidly, is an epistemic virtue. Finally, defending my picture from the objection that the mental states I discuss do not count as beliefs, I will argue that confirmation bias is a way of maintaining fixed beliefs.
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- Date Issued: 2017