Local peoples’ knowledge and perceptions of Australian wattle (Acacia) species invasion, ecosystem services and disservices in grassland landscapes, South Africa
- Yapi, Thozamile S, Shackleton, Charlie M, Le Maitre, David C, Dziba, Luthando E
- Authors: Yapi, Thozamile S , Shackleton, Charlie M , Le Maitre, David C , Dziba, Luthando E
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/399791 , vital:69559 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2023.2177495"
- Description: Many alien tree species were introduced into grassland ecosystems in South Africa by the commercial forestry industry for paper and timber for furniture. Over decades some of these introduced species escaped into neighbouring farms and community land. Adult trees from these alien species now provide other ecosystem services, notably fuelwood. Depending on the spatio-temporal context, many of these species can also negatively affect ecosystem services. We collected interview data from commercial and communal farmers in the upper Umzimvubu catchment in South Africa to compare farmers’ knowledge and perceptions of invasive wattle species invasion and their associated ecosystem services and disservices. Fuelwood and fencing poles were the most common uses of wattle by commercial (83%; 67%) and communal (99%; 49%) farmers. On the other hand, the reduction of grass cover and loss of grazing land were the most commonly mentioned negative impacts of wattles by commercial (83%; 75%) and communal (92%; 80%) farmers. Although both groups recognise the importance of wattles in providing ecosystem services, most communal farmers perceived wattles to have more negative effects than benefits. The findings demonstrate that both farmer groups highly depend on ecosystem services and are affected by disservices of wattles. However, while large-scale commercial households favour the presence of wattles in the landscape, communal households prefer complete removal of the wattles from the landscape. This may be due to lack of locally available alternative options or inability to replace or purchase ecosystem services affected by wattles from other sources or markets like commercial farmers.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023
- Authors: Yapi, Thozamile S , Shackleton, Charlie M , Le Maitre, David C , Dziba, Luthando E
- Date: 2023
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/399791 , vital:69559 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2023.2177495"
- Description: Many alien tree species were introduced into grassland ecosystems in South Africa by the commercial forestry industry for paper and timber for furniture. Over decades some of these introduced species escaped into neighbouring farms and community land. Adult trees from these alien species now provide other ecosystem services, notably fuelwood. Depending on the spatio-temporal context, many of these species can also negatively affect ecosystem services. We collected interview data from commercial and communal farmers in the upper Umzimvubu catchment in South Africa to compare farmers’ knowledge and perceptions of invasive wattle species invasion and their associated ecosystem services and disservices. Fuelwood and fencing poles were the most common uses of wattle by commercial (83%; 67%) and communal (99%; 49%) farmers. On the other hand, the reduction of grass cover and loss of grazing land were the most commonly mentioned negative impacts of wattles by commercial (83%; 75%) and communal (92%; 80%) farmers. Although both groups recognise the importance of wattles in providing ecosystem services, most communal farmers perceived wattles to have more negative effects than benefits. The findings demonstrate that both farmer groups highly depend on ecosystem services and are affected by disservices of wattles. However, while large-scale commercial households favour the presence of wattles in the landscape, communal households prefer complete removal of the wattles from the landscape. This may be due to lack of locally available alternative options or inability to replace or purchase ecosystem services affected by wattles from other sources or markets like commercial farmers.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2023
Efficient energy transfer in ethynyl bridged corrole–BODIPY dyads
- Yan, Yu, Wu, Fan, Qin, Jiawei, Xu, Haijun, Shi, Maohu, Zhou, Jingfeng, Mack, John, Fomo, Gertrude, Nyokong, Tebello, Shen, Zhen
- Authors: Yan, Yu , Wu, Fan , Qin, Jiawei , Xu, Haijun , Shi, Maohu , Zhou, Jingfeng , Mack, John , Fomo, Gertrude , Nyokong, Tebello , Shen, Zhen
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/240899 , vital:50883 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1039/C6RA12271J"
- Description: A series of new corrole–BODIPY dyads bridged by ethynyl linker moieties have been synthesized in high yields and fully characterized. The direction of energy transfer upon electronic excitation has been explored, and was found to be dependent on the number of corrole rings and their connection position on the BODIPY core. Intense bands in the absorption spectrum cover most of the visible region, which is potentially advantageous for capturing solar energy. Studies on the excitation spectra and lifetimes suggest that the energy transfer efficiency between the BODIPY and corrole moieties reaches almost 85%, which appears to be efficient in the context of energy transfer within the singlet manifold.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Yan, Yu , Wu, Fan , Qin, Jiawei , Xu, Haijun , Shi, Maohu , Zhou, Jingfeng , Mack, John , Fomo, Gertrude , Nyokong, Tebello , Shen, Zhen
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/240899 , vital:50883 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1039/C6RA12271J"
- Description: A series of new corrole–BODIPY dyads bridged by ethynyl linker moieties have been synthesized in high yields and fully characterized. The direction of energy transfer upon electronic excitation has been explored, and was found to be dependent on the number of corrole rings and their connection position on the BODIPY core. Intense bands in the absorption spectrum cover most of the visible region, which is potentially advantageous for capturing solar energy. Studies on the excitation spectra and lifetimes suggest that the energy transfer efficiency between the BODIPY and corrole moieties reaches almost 85%, which appears to be efficient in the context of energy transfer within the singlet manifold.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Synthesis, characterization and electrochemistry of rhodium (iii) complexes of meso-substituted [14] tribenzotriphyrin (2.1. 1)
- Xue, Zhaoli, Wang, Yemei, Mack, John, Mkhize, Scebi, Nyokong, Tebello, Fang, Yuanyuan, Ou, Zhongping, Kadish, Karl M
- Authors: Xue, Zhaoli , Wang, Yemei , Mack, John , Mkhize, Scebi , Nyokong, Tebello , Fang, Yuanyuan , Ou, Zhongping , Kadish, Karl M
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/241043 , vital:50899 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1039/C6RA03028A"
- Description: A thermal reaction using a series of [14]tribenzotriphyrins(2.1.1) (TriPs, 1a–d) with Rh2(C8H12)Cl2 provides RhIII–TriP complexes (2a–d) in 40−52% yields. The complexes were characterized by mass spectrometry, UV-visible absorption and 1H NMR spectroscopy. Single crystal X-ray analysis reveals that 2b adopts a dome-shaped conformation. The rhodium(III) ion is coordinated by the three pyrrole nitrogen atoms, two chloride ions and the nitrogen atom of an acetonitrile (CH3CN) solvent molecule. The optical spectra can be assigned using Michl's perimeter model. The L and B bands of the 2a–d complexes lie at ca. 600 and 500 nm, respectively, and are markedly red shifted relative to those of 1a–d. A reversible one-electron oxidation and two reversible one-electron reductions are observed in the cyclic voltammograms of 2a–d in CH2Cl2. The redox potentials are consistent with the optical data and the relatively narrow HOMO–LUMO gaps that are predicted in DFT calculations. TD-DFT calculations have been used to assign a third intense spectral band at 375 nm to a higher energy π → π* transition of the [14]tribenzotriphyrin(2.1.1) π-system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Xue, Zhaoli , Wang, Yemei , Mack, John , Mkhize, Scebi , Nyokong, Tebello , Fang, Yuanyuan , Ou, Zhongping , Kadish, Karl M
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/241043 , vital:50899 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1039/C6RA03028A"
- Description: A thermal reaction using a series of [14]tribenzotriphyrins(2.1.1) (TriPs, 1a–d) with Rh2(C8H12)Cl2 provides RhIII–TriP complexes (2a–d) in 40−52% yields. The complexes were characterized by mass spectrometry, UV-visible absorption and 1H NMR spectroscopy. Single crystal X-ray analysis reveals that 2b adopts a dome-shaped conformation. The rhodium(III) ion is coordinated by the three pyrrole nitrogen atoms, two chloride ions and the nitrogen atom of an acetonitrile (CH3CN) solvent molecule. The optical spectra can be assigned using Michl's perimeter model. The L and B bands of the 2a–d complexes lie at ca. 600 and 500 nm, respectively, and are markedly red shifted relative to those of 1a–d. A reversible one-electron oxidation and two reversible one-electron reductions are observed in the cyclic voltammograms of 2a–d in CH2Cl2. The redox potentials are consistent with the optical data and the relatively narrow HOMO–LUMO gaps that are predicted in DFT calculations. TD-DFT calculations have been used to assign a third intense spectral band at 375 nm to a higher energy π → π* transition of the [14]tribenzotriphyrin(2.1.1) π-system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Spectroscopic investigations and theoretical calculations of DABCO induced xanthene bridged self-assembled zinc (II) porphyrin dimer
- Xu, Li, Huang, Tingting, Liang, Xu, Mack, John, Harris, Jessica, Nyokong, Tebello, Li, Minzhi, Zhu, Weihua
- Authors: Xu, Li , Huang, Tingting , Liang, Xu , Mack, John , Harris, Jessica , Nyokong, Tebello , Li, Minzhi , Zhu, Weihua
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/240732 , vital:50866 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1142/S1088424616500231"
- Description: An in-depth study of the electronic structure of a 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane (DABCO) induced molecular self-assembled xanthene-bridged and amide-bonded porphyrin dimer is reported. Density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) calculations are used to identify trends in the optical spectroscopic properties. B3LYP geometry optimization predicts the formation of an almost perfectly eclipsed structure with respect to the two porphyrin rings with the analogous pyrrole nitrogens separated by 7.7–8.1 Å. The observed distinctive derivative-shaped band morphology of the pseudo-Faraday-A11 terms in the MCD spectra has been used to identify the main electronic Q and B-bands and to validate the TD-DFT calculations. The absence of a discernible splitting of the redox steps or a quenching of the fluorescence demonstrates that there is no significant exciton coupling between the two porphyrin rings.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Xu, Li , Huang, Tingting , Liang, Xu , Mack, John , Harris, Jessica , Nyokong, Tebello , Li, Minzhi , Zhu, Weihua
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/240732 , vital:50866 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1142/S1088424616500231"
- Description: An in-depth study of the electronic structure of a 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octane (DABCO) induced molecular self-assembled xanthene-bridged and amide-bonded porphyrin dimer is reported. Density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent DFT (TD-DFT) calculations are used to identify trends in the optical spectroscopic properties. B3LYP geometry optimization predicts the formation of an almost perfectly eclipsed structure with respect to the two porphyrin rings with the analogous pyrrole nitrogens separated by 7.7–8.1 Å. The observed distinctive derivative-shaped band morphology of the pseudo-Faraday-A11 terms in the MCD spectra has been used to identify the main electronic Q and B-bands and to validate the TD-DFT calculations. The absence of a discernible splitting of the redox steps or a quenching of the fluorescence demonstrates that there is no significant exciton coupling between the two porphyrin rings.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Towards SDG 15.3: The biome context as the appropriate degradation monitoring dimension
- Xoxo, Sinetemba, Mantel, Sukhmani K, de Vos, Alta, Mahlaba, Bawinile, le Maître, David, Tanner, Jane
- Authors: Xoxo, Sinetemba , Mantel, Sukhmani K , de Vos, Alta , Mahlaba, Bawinile , le Maître, David , Tanner, Jane
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/415961 , vital:71304 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.07.008"
- Description: Accurate and reliable estimation of terrestrial ecosystem degradation is critical to meeting the challenge of reversing land degradation. Remote sensing data (especially land productivity dynamics) is commonly used to estimate land degradation, and this study uses the TRENDS.EARTH toolbox for the period covering 2000–2018, demonstrating the benefit of tracking the degradation process (SDG 15.3.1) at a biophysical unit. Contributing to the country’s SDG 15.3.1 monitoring, anthropogenic degradation was estimated based on RESTREND land productivity, biome-specific land cover trends, and soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. Underlying degradation was evaluated by reclassifying a 28-year national land cover change dataset to match the UNCCD land cover legend. Analysis results indicate that land productivity changes (especially in stable grasslands, afforested, and cropland areas) mainly influenced the degradation status of the biome (19.9% degraded and 25.6% improvement). Global datasets also suggest that land cover and SOC had a minimal contribution (more than 2%) to anthropogenic degradation dynamics in the biome between 2000 and 2018. The GIS analysis showed that long-term, the major contributors to the biome’s underlying 9% anthropogenic degradation were woody proliferation into the Grassland Biome, urban expansion, and wetland drainage.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022
- Authors: Xoxo, Sinetemba , Mantel, Sukhmani K , de Vos, Alta , Mahlaba, Bawinile , le Maître, David , Tanner, Jane
- Date: 2022
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/415961 , vital:71304 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2022.07.008"
- Description: Accurate and reliable estimation of terrestrial ecosystem degradation is critical to meeting the challenge of reversing land degradation. Remote sensing data (especially land productivity dynamics) is commonly used to estimate land degradation, and this study uses the TRENDS.EARTH toolbox for the period covering 2000–2018, demonstrating the benefit of tracking the degradation process (SDG 15.3.1) at a biophysical unit. Contributing to the country’s SDG 15.3.1 monitoring, anthropogenic degradation was estimated based on RESTREND land productivity, biome-specific land cover trends, and soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. Underlying degradation was evaluated by reclassifying a 28-year national land cover change dataset to match the UNCCD land cover legend. Analysis results indicate that land productivity changes (especially in stable grasslands, afforested, and cropland areas) mainly influenced the degradation status of the biome (19.9% degraded and 25.6% improvement). Global datasets also suggest that land cover and SOC had a minimal contribution (more than 2%) to anthropogenic degradation dynamics in the biome between 2000 and 2018. The GIS analysis showed that long-term, the major contributors to the biome’s underlying 9% anthropogenic degradation were woody proliferation into the Grassland Biome, urban expansion, and wetland drainage.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2022
Mongrel: essays, William Dicey
- Authors: Wylie, Dan
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142748 , vital:38113 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/view/143393
- Description: If I had the liberty to run an introductory course on South African history, I might well start with William Dicey’s Borderline (2004). Borderline recounts Dicey and some friends’ canoe trip down the Orange River, from Orania to the sea. It’s by turns lyrical and funny, and rich with historical perspectives stimulated by people and places Dicey encounters en route.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Wylie, Dan
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/142748 , vital:38113 , https://www.ajol.info/index.php/tvl/article/view/143393
- Description: If I had the liberty to run an introductory course on South African history, I might well start with William Dicey’s Borderline (2004). Borderline recounts Dicey and some friends’ canoe trip down the Orange River, from Orania to the sea. It’s by turns lyrical and funny, and rich with historical perspectives stimulated by people and places Dicey encounters en route.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
A chiral hemiporphyrazine derivative
- Wu, Yanping, Gai, Lizhi, Xiao, Xuqiong, Lu, Hua, Li, Zhifang, Mack, John, Harris, Jessica, Nyokong, Tebello, Shen, Zhen
- Authors: Wu, Yanping , Gai, Lizhi , Xiao, Xuqiong , Lu, Hua , Li, Zhifang , Mack, John , Harris, Jessica , Nyokong, Tebello , Shen, Zhen
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/240404 , vital:50831 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1002/asia.201600754"
- Description: The synthesis of an optically active hemiporphyrazine with chiral binaphthyl substituents (1) is reported, providing the first example of the incorporation of an intrinsically chiral moiety into the macrocyclic core of a hemiporphyrazine analogue. A negative circular dichroism (CD) signal is observed in the 325–450 nm region of the CD spectrum of (S,S)-1, while mainly positive bands are observed in the 220–325 nm region. Mirror symmetry is observed across the entire wavelength range of the CD spectra of (R,R)-1 and (S,S)-1. An irreversible one-electron oxidation wave with an onset potential at 1.07 V is observed by cyclic voltammetry, along with a reversible one-electron reduction wave at −0.85 V. Density functional calculations reproduce the experimentally observed data and trends, and provide further insight into the nature of the electronic transitions.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
- Authors: Wu, Yanping , Gai, Lizhi , Xiao, Xuqiong , Lu, Hua , Li, Zhifang , Mack, John , Harris, Jessica , Nyokong, Tebello , Shen, Zhen
- Date: 2016
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/240404 , vital:50831 , xlink:href="https://doi.org/10.1002/asia.201600754"
- Description: The synthesis of an optically active hemiporphyrazine with chiral binaphthyl substituents (1) is reported, providing the first example of the incorporation of an intrinsically chiral moiety into the macrocyclic core of a hemiporphyrazine analogue. A negative circular dichroism (CD) signal is observed in the 325–450 nm region of the CD spectrum of (S,S)-1, while mainly positive bands are observed in the 220–325 nm region. Mirror symmetry is observed across the entire wavelength range of the CD spectra of (R,R)-1 and (S,S)-1. An irreversible one-electron oxidation wave with an onset potential at 1.07 V is observed by cyclic voltammetry, along with a reversible one-electron reduction wave at −0.85 V. Density functional calculations reproduce the experimentally observed data and trends, and provide further insight into the nature of the electronic transitions.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2016
Shakespeare's Victorian Stage: performing history in the theatre of Charles Kean, Richard W. Schoch: book review
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7050 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007393 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48030
- Description: preprint , This book is a primarily a study of Charles Kean’s productions of Shakespeare’s English chronicle plays at the Princess’s Theatre between 1852 and 1859, a period crucial to the development of ideas of English nationalism. Schoch focuses on these particular stagings as more than drama; as performances of nineteenth century theories of history and historical representation. His project operates under the aegis of the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ in cultural theory, and is suspicious of neo-marxian fundamentalism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7050 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007393 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48030
- Description: preprint , This book is a primarily a study of Charles Kean’s productions of Shakespeare’s English chronicle plays at the Princess’s Theatre between 1852 and 1859, a period crucial to the development of ideas of English nationalism. Schoch focuses on these particular stagings as more than drama; as performances of nineteenth century theories of history and historical representation. His project operates under the aegis of the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ in cultural theory, and is suspicious of neo-marxian fundamentalism.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
Guy Butler’s South Africanism: ‘Being present where you are’
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7069 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007460 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2012.730182
- Description: preprint , A peer-reviewed lecture delivered at Rhodes University on the occasion of the presentation to Professor Wright of the English Academy's Gold Medal, 16 November 2011. Guy Butler (1918-2001) has been gone some ten years. This lecture sets out to illuminate the thinking behind his important role in South Africa's national life. The institutions he created continue to make vital cultural contributions in South Africa's efforts to make sense of its own complex historical make-up, working towards a happier, richer, and more equal future. However, despite what he achieved, there is little surety that today the rationale informing his massive effort to foster processes of artistic and cultural endeavour has been appreciated or accurately understood.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2012
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7069 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007460 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10131752.2012.730182
- Description: preprint , A peer-reviewed lecture delivered at Rhodes University on the occasion of the presentation to Professor Wright of the English Academy's Gold Medal, 16 November 2011. Guy Butler (1918-2001) has been gone some ten years. This lecture sets out to illuminate the thinking behind his important role in South Africa's national life. The institutions he created continue to make vital cultural contributions in South Africa's efforts to make sense of its own complex historical make-up, working towards a happier, richer, and more equal future. However, despite what he achieved, there is little surety that today the rationale informing his massive effort to foster processes of artistic and cultural endeavour has been appreciated or accurately understood.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2012
Umabatha: global and local
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7032 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007364 , https://doi.org/10.1080/00138390408691324
- Description: preprint , There can be few shows that test the dimensions and pitfalls of 'globalised' theatre as thoroughly as Welcome Msomi's Umabatha. The worldwide success of the show, in box-office terms, can hardly be argued with. And yet, in its very conception, the vehicle is so riven by intrinsic cultural, theatrical, class and 'nationist' tensions that different audiences cannot but reap utterly different experiences, depending on their own cultural and intellectual inheritance.The show is an instance where theatre practice (sometimes) obfuscates political and aesthetic discourse, showing how easily cultures miss each other and fail to connect, and how easily specific historical, geographical and imperial associations are swamped by shallow 'globalised' audience response.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7032 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007364 , https://doi.org/10.1080/00138390408691324
- Description: preprint , There can be few shows that test the dimensions and pitfalls of 'globalised' theatre as thoroughly as Welcome Msomi's Umabatha. The worldwide success of the show, in box-office terms, can hardly be argued with. And yet, in its very conception, the vehicle is so riven by intrinsic cultural, theatrical, class and 'nationist' tensions that different audiences cannot but reap utterly different experiences, depending on their own cultural and intellectual inheritance.The show is an instance where theatre practice (sometimes) obfuscates political and aesthetic discourse, showing how easily cultures miss each other and fail to connect, and how easily specific historical, geographical and imperial associations are swamped by shallow 'globalised' audience response.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
Language as a ‘resource’ in South Africa: the economic life of language in a globalising society
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7035 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007370 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10131750285310031
- Description: preprint , We need to develop a much more refined and specific understanding of what is meant when people refer to language is a ‘resource’. If something can accurately be described as a resource, then by its very nature it carries with it or attracts, at least in potential, the social motivation associated with the utilization, development or exploitation of that resource. This is strikingly true where language is the resource in question, because language is so intimately bound up with human activity. Where it exists, such social motivation can be augmented and supported so as to realize the ends of language policy. Contrastingly, where it is seen that social motivation informing a particular language situation is at odds with the intent of language policy, then either implementation must retreat and move to other arenas, other points of influence, where intervention can be more effective, or those charged with implementation must resign themselves to costly and messy efforts to force unwanted change through legal authority.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7035 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007370 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10131750285310031
- Description: preprint , We need to develop a much more refined and specific understanding of what is meant when people refer to language is a ‘resource’. If something can accurately be described as a resource, then by its very nature it carries with it or attracts, at least in potential, the social motivation associated with the utilization, development or exploitation of that resource. This is strikingly true where language is the resource in question, because language is so intimately bound up with human activity. Where it exists, such social motivation can be augmented and supported so as to realize the ends of language policy. Contrastingly, where it is seen that social motivation informing a particular language situation is at odds with the intent of language policy, then either implementation must retreat and move to other arenas, other points of influence, where intervention can be more effective, or those charged with implementation must resign themselves to costly and messy efforts to force unwanted change through legal authority.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Nathaniel Merriman’s lecture: “Shakspeare, as Bearing on English History”
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7060 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007424 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48132
- Description: preprint , “Shakspeare, as Bearing on English History” is the second of two lectures on Shakespeare given by Archdeacon Nathaniel Merriman in Grahamstown in 1857. The first was delivered in the Court House on the 2nd September 1857, and the second two months later, on Friday 6th November that same year, again in the Court House. The lecture was published in 1858. An article placing the lectures in their local context appeared in Shakespeare in Southern Africa 20 (2008): 25-37, accompanying an annotated edition of the first lecture, “On the Study of Shakspeare”. Readers desiring details of the editorial principles adopted in producing annotated editions of the two lectures are referred to the introductory material prefacing the first lecture.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2009
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7060 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007424 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48132
- Description: preprint , “Shakspeare, as Bearing on English History” is the second of two lectures on Shakespeare given by Archdeacon Nathaniel Merriman in Grahamstown in 1857. The first was delivered in the Court House on the 2nd September 1857, and the second two months later, on Friday 6th November that same year, again in the Court House. The lecture was published in 1858. An article placing the lectures in their local context appeared in Shakespeare in Southern Africa 20 (2008): 25-37, accompanying an annotated edition of the first lecture, “On the Study of Shakspeare”. Readers desiring details of the editorial principles adopted in producing annotated editions of the two lectures are referred to the introductory material prefacing the first lecture.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2009
An introduction: Peteni in context
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7036 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007372 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47870
- Description: preprint , It is rare for a writer to make a literary impact with only one novel. It is even more unusual when that work is written by a novice author in his early sixties. Yet such is the case of R.L. Peteni, whose novel, Hill of Fools, was published by David Philip in South Africa in 1976, and internationally in the same year by Heinemann in the African Writers Series. Four years later, in 1980, the book was translated by the author into Xhosa as Kwazidenge and published by the Lovedale Press. Twenty years after initial publication, in 1996, there came a television version of Kwazidenge broadcast by the SABC, starring Willie Thambo and Amanda Quwe, though the locale was translated – in the bizarre logic of television – to an urban environment on the Cape Flats. The transposition, though pragmatic in terms of television demographics, destroyed much of the point of Peteni’s work, for Hill of Fools is South Africa’s first regional novel in English by a black writer. It is also the first novel in English by a Xhosa-speaker.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7036 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007372 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47870
- Description: preprint , It is rare for a writer to make a literary impact with only one novel. It is even more unusual when that work is written by a novice author in his early sixties. Yet such is the case of R.L. Peteni, whose novel, Hill of Fools, was published by David Philip in South Africa in 1976, and internationally in the same year by Heinemann in the African Writers Series. Four years later, in 1980, the book was translated by the author into Xhosa as Kwazidenge and published by the Lovedale Press. Twenty years after initial publication, in 1996, there came a television version of Kwazidenge broadcast by the SABC, starring Willie Thambo and Amanda Quwe, though the locale was translated – in the bizarre logic of television – to an urban environment on the Cape Flats. The transposition, though pragmatic in terms of television demographics, destroyed much of the point of Peteni’s work, for Hill of Fools is South Africa’s first regional novel in English by a black writer. It is also the first novel in English by a Xhosa-speaker.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
Ecological thinking: Schopenhauer, J M Coetzee and who we are in the world
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7031 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007362 , https://doi.org/10.5848/CSP.0926.00001
- Description: preprint , For the ecological agenda to make substantive progress, we will have to see powerful people and social agencies turning away from the ecological insanity that threatens us all, and for this to happen, people need to embrace voluntary renunciation, on the understanding that this is not self-sacrifice, but a different and more satisfying way of being in the world. The paper offers some thought, provoked by reading J.M. Coetzee and Arthur Schopenhauer, about what would make this change possible, what might enable it; and secondly why it is implausible that any such ideal might actually come to pass.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7031 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007362 , https://doi.org/10.5848/CSP.0926.00001
- Description: preprint , For the ecological agenda to make substantive progress, we will have to see powerful people and social agencies turning away from the ecological insanity that threatens us all, and for this to happen, people need to embrace voluntary renunciation, on the understanding that this is not self-sacrifice, but a different and more satisfying way of being in the world. The paper offers some thought, provoked by reading J.M. Coetzee and Arthur Schopenhauer, about what would make this change possible, what might enable it; and secondly why it is implausible that any such ideal might actually come to pass.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Introduction [to the book "Scatter the Shrilling Bones" by Sithembele Isaac Xhegwana]
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7056 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007417
- Description: preprint , Scatter the Shrilling Bones by Sithembele Xhegwana comprises an ordered sequence of poems that conveys a journey both literal and spiritual. Revisitation is the organizing principle of the collection – the return to rural sources and origins by a consciousness estranged and illumined by modernity (cf. ‘The Return’). Underlying the collection is the theme of the night journey, whose archetype in western culture is Odysseus’ descent to the underworld – a pattern identified as such in the concluding essay ‘Starting from my Place: Notes on an Aesthetic’. The underworld here is literally the return to the home territory – a journey from Cape Town to the rural Eastern Cape – but also a revisiting of the mental world of traditional Africa: ‘Here at home, here all guilt begins’ (‘Homecoming’). The return journey is haunted by nightmare memories of mental illness, the schizophrenic episodes accompanying (or occasioned by?) the poet’s initial encounters with modernity. This illness is represented as both pathological and cultural – a price paid for challenging and rejecting the old certainties while grappling with new assumptions: “He undermines the ancestors, That’s why he suffers. Let him.” (‘To Himself’)
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7056 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007417
- Description: preprint , Scatter the Shrilling Bones by Sithembele Xhegwana comprises an ordered sequence of poems that conveys a journey both literal and spiritual. Revisitation is the organizing principle of the collection – the return to rural sources and origins by a consciousness estranged and illumined by modernity (cf. ‘The Return’). Underlying the collection is the theme of the night journey, whose archetype in western culture is Odysseus’ descent to the underworld – a pattern identified as such in the concluding essay ‘Starting from my Place: Notes on an Aesthetic’. The underworld here is literally the return to the home territory – a journey from Cape Town to the rural Eastern Cape – but also a revisiting of the mental world of traditional Africa: ‘Here at home, here all guilt begins’ (‘Homecoming’). The return journey is haunted by nightmare memories of mental illness, the schizophrenic episodes accompanying (or occasioned by?) the poet’s initial encounters with modernity. This illness is represented as both pathological and cultural – a price paid for challenging and rejecting the old certainties while grappling with new assumptions: “He undermines the ancestors, That’s why he suffers. Let him.” (‘To Himself’)
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
Language and value: towards accepting a richer linguistic ecology for South Africa
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7042 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007383 , https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.28.2.05wri
- Description: preprint , Language policy debate is often obscured by two factors: failure to acknowledge different time-frames attending contrasting positions, and failure to recognise that ordinary people are motivated by their perceived best interests in the present. This article argues that the key to more general public acceptance of linguistic ecological diversity in South Africa is to shift the emphasis from policy development to practical language cultivation issues. Provide the requisite cultivation support, and acceptance of a revitalised future for African languages becomes more assured. It should also be understood that the modernisation of African languages in South Africa has a political dimension concerning which South African language commentators are strangely silent. This political thrust may not be entirely congruent with the concerns of those whose brief for African languages is primarily cultural or ecological – if, indeed, they are even aware of it. Finally, it needs to be recognised that language development under conditions of controlled influence, as in the civil service or schooling, is potentially achievable (with whatever difficulty), but that this must be complemented by authentic contemporary intellectual work published in African languages if the linguistic dimension of the African Renaissance is to take off.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7042 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007383 , https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.28.2.05wri
- Description: preprint , Language policy debate is often obscured by two factors: failure to acknowledge different time-frames attending contrasting positions, and failure to recognise that ordinary people are motivated by their perceived best interests in the present. This article argues that the key to more general public acceptance of linguistic ecological diversity in South Africa is to shift the emphasis from policy development to practical language cultivation issues. Provide the requisite cultivation support, and acceptance of a revitalised future for African languages becomes more assured. It should also be understood that the modernisation of African languages in South Africa has a political dimension concerning which South African language commentators are strangely silent. This political thrust may not be entirely congruent with the concerns of those whose brief for African languages is primarily cultural or ecological – if, indeed, they are even aware of it. Finally, it needs to be recognised that language development under conditions of controlled influence, as in the civil service or schooling, is potentially achievable (with whatever difficulty), but that this must be complemented by authentic contemporary intellectual work published in African languages if the linguistic dimension of the African Renaissance is to take off.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
Mussolini's moment: Roy Sargeant directs The Merchant of Venice at Maynardville, January, 2007
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7047 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007389 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48107
- Description: preprint , What an inspired choice of play for this year’s Maynardville offering! With the national scene strewn with trials and rumours of trials, all of them vital to the quality of life citizens of this fair city beneath the beautiful mountain (‘Belmont’) may hope to enjoy in the future, Shakespeare’s cliff-hanger about the use and abuse of the law couldn’t be more apt.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2008
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7047 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007389 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC48107
- Description: preprint , What an inspired choice of play for this year’s Maynardville offering! With the national scene strewn with trials and rumours of trials, all of them vital to the quality of life citizens of this fair city beneath the beautiful mountain (‘Belmont’) may hope to enjoy in the future, Shakespeare’s cliff-hanger about the use and abuse of the law couldn’t be more apt.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2008
Hill of Fools: notes towards a publishing history
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7037 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007373 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47868
- Description: preprint , Written in English in the early 70s, Hill of Fools was projected into the market for world literature among distinguished company in the Heinemann African Writers Series (HAWS), at a time when expectations for African writing in English reflected a certain orthodoxy; when the book’s origins in apartheid South Africa pressed certain ‘buttons’ in world readerships, and when the country’s increasing cultural isolation meant that even relatively well-versed literary Africanists were less than familiar with the milieu from which the story springs. The result has been that the novel acquired a rather odd penumbra of interpretation, ranging from the naïve to the dismissive or reductive.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7037 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007373 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47868
- Description: preprint , Written in English in the early 70s, Hill of Fools was projected into the market for world literature among distinguished company in the Heinemann African Writers Series (HAWS), at a time when expectations for African writing in English reflected a certain orthodoxy; when the book’s origins in apartheid South Africa pressed certain ‘buttons’ in world readerships, and when the country’s increasing cultural isolation meant that even relatively well-versed literary Africanists were less than familiar with the milieu from which the story springs. The result has been that the novel acquired a rather odd penumbra of interpretation, ranging from the naïve to the dismissive or reductive.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
The early reception of Hill of Fools
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7040 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007379 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47864
- Description: preprint , The early reception of Peteni’s novel is interesting because it illustrates the mind-sets and critical assumptions of those who first mediated the novel to different readerships. The book initially caused little stir either in South Africa or abroad, and it has made its way quietly in later years in no small part due to support from set-work prescription committees, and its translation into other media, radio and television. A one-off novel by an unknown writer is unlikely to gather critical momentum in international discussion, and the book has been more often noticed in academic studies focused on the Xhosa novel, some of which barely register that the work was first written in English. However, today it is certainly among the novels most widely-read by ordinary South Africans, not only those from the Eastern Cape, but for among many throughout the country who encountered it at school.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2004
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7040 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007379 , http://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC47864
- Description: preprint , The early reception of Peteni’s novel is interesting because it illustrates the mind-sets and critical assumptions of those who first mediated the novel to different readerships. The book initially caused little stir either in South Africa or abroad, and it has made its way quietly in later years in no small part due to support from set-work prescription committees, and its translation into other media, radio and television. A one-off novel by an unknown writer is unlikely to gather critical momentum in international discussion, and the book has been more often noticed in academic studies focused on the Xhosa novel, some of which barely register that the work was first written in English. However, today it is certainly among the novels most widely-read by ordinary South Africans, not only those from the Eastern Cape, but for among many throughout the country who encountered it at school.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2004
The humanities, vocationalism and the public good: exploring 'the Hamlet factor'
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7028 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007214 , https://doi.org/10.1080/17535360712331393503
- Description: preprint , This paper argues that the social mission of the humanities is no longer well understood by the public, sometimes not even by the very institutions seeking to attract students to these disciplines, the universities. It becomes difficult to argue for the cogency of research in the humanities, let alone for a specific national research agenda, when the general relation between the humanities and society is widely mistaken. To address such misapprehensions, the discussion outlines as clearly as possible the characteristic procedures of the humanities, the manner in which they inform individual and social transformation, and the contemporary predicament which makes them more rather than less needed in society’s repertoire of educational resources. With this understanding in place, the paper then puts forward suggestions for strengthening research in the humanities as part of a broader programme to renovate the humanities in the South African education system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Wright, Laurence
- Date: 2007
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: vital:7028 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007214 , https://doi.org/10.1080/17535360712331393503
- Description: preprint , This paper argues that the social mission of the humanities is no longer well understood by the public, sometimes not even by the very institutions seeking to attract students to these disciplines, the universities. It becomes difficult to argue for the cogency of research in the humanities, let alone for a specific national research agenda, when the general relation between the humanities and society is widely mistaken. To address such misapprehensions, the discussion outlines as clearly as possible the characteristic procedures of the humanities, the manner in which they inform individual and social transformation, and the contemporary predicament which makes them more rather than less needed in society’s repertoire of educational resources. With this understanding in place, the paper then puts forward suggestions for strengthening research in the humanities as part of a broader programme to renovate the humanities in the South African education system.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007