Southern Africa

This study aims to identify regions in the Zambezi River Basin in Southern Africa that are prone to risk of violent conflicts (collective violence, popular unrest) induced by climatic changes/variability. The Zambezi River is 575 kilometres long and the basin covers eight coun- tries: Zambia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, Botswana, Mo- zambique and Namibia.Besides the ecological impact, the study argues that socio-econom- ic and political problems are disproportionately multiplied by climate change/variability. Climate change/variability amplifies stresses on the socio-political fabric because it affects the governance of resources, and hence, is linked to the weakened mitigation and adaptation capac- ity of societies, that are already facing economic challenges (rising food prices, etc.). Society becomes highly vulnerable to climate induced con- flicts when it suffers from poor central leadership, weak institutions and polarized social identities. Taking all these factors into consideration, this study identifies Bulawayo/Matableleland-North in Zimbabwe and the Zambezia Province in Mozambique as the most likely regions to experience climate induced conflicts in the near future. The reasons for arriving at this conclusion are: a) Climatechange/variability will have a significant impact on these two regions; due to increasing water scarcity in Bulawayo/Matabeleland- North; and intensified flooding, sea-level rise, and costal erosion in the Zambezia Province. b) Due to climate change/variability, agricultural production in these two regions will become highly volatile, leading to severe food insecurity. c) Both regions are suffering from low quality political governance, having unscrupulous elites, weak institutions, and polarized social identities.

The term 'feminism' basically stands for the rights and equality of women. There is no definite definition of feminism. The feminist thinkers struggled a lot for making the simple and innocent women of the society aware about this and they always are trying to solve several issues related to women. It is again not a recent concept. Feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, Virginia Woolf and many more thinkers forwarded a lot of different perspectives related to feminism. Ama Ata Aidoo, the former Education Minister of Ghana and an excellent academician has fought for the rights of the women of her native land. During her reign several provisions for Girls' Education were implemented in Ghana. She has a great contribution towards the literary field. In the present paper three of her popular literary pieces are taken into account to study the issues related to women of Africa especially of Ghana. These three literary works are: Anowa (1970), Our Sister Killjoy or Reflections from a Black-Eyed Squint (1977) and Changes: A Love Story (1991). These three literary pieces deal with women issue from different perspectives. She is also featuring her protagonists accordingly, Anowa, Sissie and Esi are different from each other. Her protagonists seem to be very bold, independent which reveal the strength of women.

Fieldwork in the social sciences is, by its nature, a messy and complicated process. Human relationships established between researcher and participants must be forged and maintained across social boundaries. Notions of difference, perceived through our bodies as they interact with other bodies, can often complicate these experiences in the ‘field’. Because of this, it is important that we remain aware of the effects our own positionalities can have on our research, as demonstrated in the experiences described in this article. Coming to terms with our own privileged identities, be it class, race, gender, nationality or educational background, in peripheral contexts, has demanded a degree of introspection from each of us. Many of us have often questioned our own legitimacy in the field and find ourselves wondering what right we have to enter communities and write about lived realities that we ourselves often do not experience. In seminar groups, hallways and coffee rooms of UCT, we often interrogate our positionality as young researchers in the field. This ‘identity crisis’ is partly because we are conscious that, in the context of the field, the researcher is continuously challenged with the implications of what her/ his body represents – difference and privilege. For some, this discussion may be dismissed as middle-class, guilt-ridden, self-involved drivel. However, the topics addressed in this collective piece continue to be unresolved in terms of how we, as up-and-coming researchers, rationalise the “body politics” of our own work. Here, we reflect on and respond to this real and permeating challenge which continues to emerge in our experiences and lives as global citizens and academics. The notes which we kept during our ‘fieldwork’, as a method to track and reflect on these issues in our research experiences, were key sources for the article.
This is not a discussion that will necessarily bring new insights into the various themes we explore, but it does provide a critical forum in which we can collectively highlight some of the internal tensions we grapple with in the field as we interact with different and not so different communities. It might also intimate ways of tackling how we may transcend these challenges by moving towards a communicable purpose for those involved in the research process.
This article threads together stories of language, nationality, gender, class and race, exploring how they feed into our individual and collective research experiences. These reflections also make use of Elaine Salo and Sophie Oldfield’s core course and its analytical ‘toolbox’ – a course in which all of us were participants between 2007-8. Moving from the narrated experiences of obvious outsiders to those included in some ways, and not in others, to an experience of doing research ‘at home’, the piece weaves together various experiences of difference. Perhaps these experiences of difference are linked to something more than just overt identity markers – that of simply being a researcher in the first place.

Heroes play a role in every nation's founding narrative, embodying a group's strength and courage, its dedication to protecting all within its fold, and its most important traditions and promises. Yet hero images and tropes have not received the attention they deserve in the social science literature on nations and nationalism. Recent theories of character work-the rhetorical construction of heroes, villains, victims, and minions-reveal the challenges of building an inclusive nationalism in post-colonial states. We engage the debates over some of Namibia's most prominent and contested heroes through the memorials dedicated to them and the commemorations honoring victims of past struggles. We study the victims that these heroes sought to defend and trace the process by which victims become heroes of endurance. The Namibian state has, after its recent independence, constructed a memorial to fallen heroes, Heroes Acre, and an Independence Memorial Museum. Alongside these state-sanctioned memorial sites, a range of citizens have sought to honor and defend their own heroes. By honoring different heroes, they have defined alternative understandings of the nation. We also demonstrate the power of victims in mobilizing present day campaigns for justice and reparations. In Namibia, as elsewhere, greater attention to victims could shift the balance of political power. This article demonstrates how a focus on struggles over the legitimacy of particular heroes and victims can provide unanticipated insights into the study of divided nationalism.