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Strengthening teamwork and respect (STAR): nurses’ perspectives and experiences of disrespectful maternity care in rural district hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
(Taylor and Francis Ltd., 2026) Horwood, Christiane; Haskins, Lyn; Luthuli, Silondile; Mapumulo, Sphindile; Filippi, Veronique; Penn-Kekana, Loveday; Doherty, Tanya
Background: Disrespectful maternal care has been reported from women’s perspectives, but less is known about how health workers understand these behaviours. To develop interventions, it is important to explore the drivers of disrespectful care from providers’ perspectives. Objective: To explore nurses’ perspectives on disrespectful maternal care. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 nurses in maternity units in nine rural district hospitals in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, between April and August 2024. This was part of a continuous process evaluation for a participatory learning and action intervention called Strengthening Teamwork and Respect (STAR). One STAR champion and one team member were selected from each hospital. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed using a reflexive thematic approach. Results: Participants reflected on how STAR changed their perceptions and understanding of respectful care. Five themes were identified: limited understanding of disrespectful care; normalisation of disrespectful behaviours; justification of disrespectful care; blaming women for disrespectful care; and perceptions of disrespect in the community. Overt incidents of disrespectful care were reported to be commonplace, including rudeness, shouting and slapping women. Lack of dignity and privacy was also common. Nurses recognised these behaviours as unacceptable and unprofessional and offered several explanations, including peer pressure, stress, burnout, and a poor work environment. Some believed that harsh behaviour was sometimes necessary to ensure safe delivery, particularly when women were perceived as uncooperative. Conclusions: Normalisation of disrespectful care highlights the need for interventions that address the underlying culture and the organisational and contextual factors that support and sustain these behaviours.
The literary exception and the rule of law: a conversation on liberal democracy, populism, interpretation, law and poetry
(Sun Media, 2026) Van Der Walt, Johan; Van Marle, Karin; Le Roux, Wessel
Johan van der Walt discusses key themes from his most recent book The Literary Exception and the Rule of Law Oxfordshire Routledge (2023) with Karin van Marle and Wessel le Roux. Van der Walt calls for a genre of law and literature scholarship that does not seek to soften or erase the differences between law and literature, as is typical in most law-as-literature scholarship, but that seeks to highlight the tensions between law and literature (represented by the avant garde poetry of Paul Celan and Paul Valéry). Van der Walt argues that the same event can give rise to a legal and a poetic response. Liberal society exists in the space that is opened up by these opposing trajectories. Liberal law must respect the non-poetic nature of its regulatory function and resist attempts, especially among nationalists and populists, to cure the existential inadequacy of law.
Searching for the missing middle: exploring the ‘bakkie collectors’ in South Africa’s waste value chain
(Routledge, 2026) Van Hille, Rob; Van Hille, Nicky; Schenck, Catherina
This article reports on the first quantitative study on bakkie collectors operating in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria. The study aimed to understand how these micro-entrepreneurs facilitate the collection, transportation and sale of recyclable waste materials, while examining their socio-economic contributions, challenges, and the broader impact of their activities on informal waste pickers, informal and formal buy-back centres and the formal recycling systems. An exploratory cross-sectional study was selected to investigate the role and activities of bakkie collectors in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria (grouped together into the Gauteng region). This study makes a significant contribution toward understanding a previously under-researched segment of South Africa’s recycling value chain. The results show that bakkie collectors play a vital intermediary role, connecting informal waste pickers to buy-back centres, generating livelihoods for themselves and their assistants, waste pickers and community members, and diverting waste from landfills. Despite this, the sector operates largely without formal recognition or support.
The magpi survey: emission-line products data release and the role of spectroscopic aperture covering fraction on the balmer decrement–stellar mass relation
(Oxford University Press, 2026) Battisti, Andrew; Muller, Eric; Wisnioski, Emily; Mendel, J.T; Foster, C; Lagos, C.D.P; Harborne, K.E; Aalia, I.U; Barsanti, S; Breda, I; Calzetti, D; Croom, S.M; Das, P.K; Ferré-Mateu, A; Gao, T; Gjergo, E; Grasha, K; Mai, Y; Mailvaganam, A; Mukherjee, T; Mun, M; Remus, R.-S; Sharma, G; Sweet, S.M; Thater, S; Valenzuela, L.M; Van de Sande, J; Van de Ven, G; Zafar, T; Ziegler, B
The Middle Ages Galaxy Properties with Integral field spectroscopy (MAGPI) survey is a Large Program on the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument. This paper presents the data release for the MAGPI emission-line products and includes emission-line maps for 836 galaxies at (Formula presented) ((Formula presented) -window) and aperture-based emission-line measurements for 2607 galaxies at (Formula presented) (upper bound is [O ii] cut-off), both based on the gist software, for all 56 MAGPI fields. We use these data to examine dust attenuation, which represents a major source of uncertainty in the derived properties of galaxies that are critical to constrain models of galaxy evolution. We examine the role that the spectroscopic aperture covering fraction ((Formula presented) ) has on the relationship between the Balmer decrement ((Formula presented) ; a common proxy for dust attenuation) and the total stellar mass ((Formula presented) ). Several studies have suggested that the BD–(Formula presented) relation may be redshift invariant; however, the compared surveys often have different (Formula presented) due to their differing fibre or slit sizes that can cause systematic offsets. Our results indicate that (Formula presented) has a significant impact on this relationship, due to galaxies having negative BD radial gradients, which are more negative for more massive galaxies at (Formula presented). Comparing spectroscopic surveys with (Formula presented), we find that the BD–(Formula presented) relation shows a preference for redshift evolution and is roughly consistent with the behaviour of ultraviolet stellar continuum attenuation redshift evolution ((Formula presented) -z), with the average dust attenuation in galaxies peaking at (Formula presented) and decreasing at lower and higher redshifts.
A service framework for interventions for rural families affected by a relative’s substance use disorder
(University of the Western Cape, 2026) Marinus-Baartman, Denise Ronelle
The devastating impact of substance use on families of a person with a Substance Use Disorder (SUD) has been documented. However, services to support such families are under-emphasised as interventions primarily focus on the person with the SUD, while the family has to take on added family responsibilities to deal with the substance-related problems within the family. This is particularly the case in rural areas in South Africa due to, among others, socioeconomic conditions and the lack of infrastructure, family values and cultural influences, and the availability and supply of substances in rural communities. South African policies and legislation recognise the impact of SUDs on families, and provide guidelines emphasising the need for support services to both the person with a SUD and their families. Despite these guidelines, families are often overlooked when services are provided. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a service framework for interventions for rural families affected by a relative’s SUD. For this, a critical engagement was required to determine their lived experiences, challenges and coping strategies. It also required an exploration of the perspectives of social workers working in the field of substance use in rural areas.The strengths-based approach and the family resilience and ecological systems theories served as the theoretical framework that underpinned this study. From a functional pragmatic paradigm, this researcher employed the convergent parallel mixed methods approach utilising the survey, contextual and narrative research designs. The population consisted of families and registered social workers in rural areas of the Western Cape Province in South Africa. Non-probability purposive and snowball sampling were employed to identify 25 family members affected by a relative’s SUD, and 17 registered social workers working in the field of substance use in the Cape Winelands and Overberg Districts of the Western Cape. A survey was used to collect the quantitative data, and semi-structured interviews with family members and online focus groups with social workers to collect the qualitative data. The IBM Statistical Package for the Social Science Sciences (SPSS) were used to analyse the quantitative data, and qualitative data analysis was done according to the framework provided by Maguire and Delahunt (2017).