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Loving children: allegories of nation and family in selected South African texts
(University of the Western Cape, 2024) Davis, Tatum
The adult world crucially encompasses children, but research in South African literature has mainly focused on adult worlds, whether white or black. The child, however, is a prominent figure in the poetry and fiction that has tried to capture South African experience in the past, present, and, importantly, implicit projections of the future, through the ways in which children often embody hope for the future. In South Africa, the child is caught up in the politics of the nation through the politics of love and past shame. While it is expected that the child will be loved unconditionally and unfailingly, narratives of love for the child demonstrate the shameful failures of love. Njabulo Ndebele, in Fools and Other Stories, attempts to rewrite the fate of the nation as struggles over black independence emerge, but as Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples shows, loving the child is irrevocably caught within national shame.
Measuring respectful maternal and newborn care in Nepal: comparing linked observation and interview data- prospective cohort study
(Public Library of Science, 2025) Kinney, Mary; Basnet, Omkar; Sacks, Emma
Respectful maternal and newborn care is the cornerstone of high-quality care, however, measuring experience of respectful care has challenges since it can be subjective, and dependent on expectations. In this study, we assess the concordance between women's reported experiences of respectful maternal and newborn care and independent observation of their care in Nepal.MethodsThis is a secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study among 22832 pregnant women conducted in three high volume hospitals in the country: Koshi Provincial Hospital (Hospital A), Bharatpur Hospital (Hospital B), and Lumbini Provincial Hospital (Hospital C) for 18 months between April 2017 and October 2018. The study implemented direct observation during and semi-structured interviews at discharge to evaluate the quality of maternal and newborn care in three large public hospitals. For this analysis, three domains for respectful maternal and newborn care were considered: 1) consent and counselling 2) respect and dignity of care, and 3) care provision. The two data sources (observation checklist and semi-structured interview) were plotted to these three domains to identify common indicators. The level of agreement (LOA) between two measurements was compared using Cohen kappa scores (κ) and Bland Altman plots.FindingsDuring the study period, 22832 women had both observation and interview completed. For consent and counseling, 78.8% of women reported being informed about routine care while only 47.3% were observed to have been consented and counseled (k, LOA = 59.1%). For respect and dignity of care, 99.0% of women reported being treated with dignity and respect and 96.4% were observed (k, LOA = 95.4%). For care provision, 37.9% reported that the infant was kept in immediate skin-to-skin contact after delivery while only 3.9% were observed (k, LOA = 61.7%).ConclusionA significant difference existed between observed and self-reported measures of maternal and newborn care. This study highlights the need for a measurement approach that incorporates independent observations alongside self-reported data. There is also a need to further explore concordance between different sources for progress monitoring.
Value archetypes in future scenarios: the role of scenario co-designers
(Resilience Alliance, 2025) O'Farrell, Patrick; Harmáčková, Zuzana; Eisenack, Klaus
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) relies on future scenarios in its assessments of global social-ecological systems. Scenarios explicitly or implicitly embed normative positions (e.g., values for nature, nature’s contributions to people, good quality of life). Such scenario values shape how scenario narratives evolve, e.g. through driving forces, framings, or ways how decisions are legitimized within a given scenario. Initial research in futures studies has examined how scenario values depend on whose voices are included in scenario co-design. However, less attention has been paid so far to explicitly assessing the extent to which scenario values are associated with different types of scenario co-designers. Our paper expands this knowledge with a set of novel analyses building on the comprehensive review of scenarios in the IPBES values assessment. To this end, we conducted a formal archetype analysis of 257 scenarios assessed in the IPBES values assessment to identify re-appearing archetypal configurations of values and their link to the actors involved as scenario co-designers. The results show that scenarios valuing nature for itself and its benefits to societal well-being were co-designed by experts and academics less frequently than expected under the assumption of stochastic independence; on the contrary, such scenarios were co-designed more frequently than expected by governmental and community actors. The paper illustrates how archetype analysis can contribute to the validation and further development of scientific knowledge feeding into science-policy assessments. The findings are important to acknowledge how scenarios express and possibly re-enforce peoples’ normative positions, and what role values might play when scenarios get translated into realworld decisions and actions.
Modelling soil erosion risk in rural sub-catchments of Zimbabwe using RUSLE, remote sensing and machine learning
(Academic Press, 2025) Musasa, Tatenda; Dube, Timothy; Shoko, Cletah
The study modelled soil erosion risk in the Shashe and Tugwi–Zibagwe rural sub-catchments in Zimbabwe. To derive land use and land cover (LULC) thematic maps for the years 2016, 2020 and 2023, analysis ready data (Sentinel 2) were applied using the Random Forest (RF) algorithm in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. The Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model was applied to understand the drivers of soil loss in the sub-catchments. The rainfall erosivity (R), soil erodibility (K), length slope (LS), crop management (C) and conservation support practice factors (P) were derived in GEE and applied as input to determine soil erosion risk. The findings of the study show that, the Shashe sub-catchment had mean soil losses of 15.75, 45.25, and 23.51 t ha− 1 year− 1 for 2016, 2020, and 2023, respectively. In the Tugwi-Zibagwe sub-catchment, the mean soil losses were 11.62, 18.45, and 37.34 t ha− 1 year− 1 for the same years. The results also show that LULC changes were one of the major drivers to soil loss in the rural dominated sub-catchments. Results further show that, the area under cultivation was exposed to severe erosion which averaged 16–48 t ha− 1 year− 1 when compared to other land covers in the study areas. In conclusion, of all the two sub-catchments the Shashe experiences severe soil loss than Tugwi-Zibagwe due to variations in land use and covers. Soil loss also tends to be considerably high in areas along drainage networks and where vegetation clearance is evident. These findings highlight the pressing need for up-to-date soil management approaches to improve soil conservation in rural dominated sub-catchments of Zimbabwe.
Thinking from and through oppression
(Taylor & Francis, 2025) Pithouse, Richard
We must honor our teachers. In The Perversity of Gratitude Grant Farred honors his best teachers at Livingstone High School and the University of the Western Cape (UWC), both institutions intended for people classified as “coloured” by apartheid. He affirms, with Martin Heidegger that: Denken ist Danken. Thinking is thanking. His sense of gratitude, sometimes expressed as debt, goes beyond the desire togive committed teachers their due though. He insists that “The terms upon whichThe Perversity of Gratitude stands are unambiguous: Disenfranchised apartheid edu-cation constituted fertile ground for thinking.”2 For this he expresses “the perversityof gratitude.”The book, always resolutely dialectical and part philosophical meditation and partmemoir, is as tender as it is forcefully contrarian. It is simultaneously linear andhelical as it moves toward its affecting conclusion. It rewards close, slow and repeatedreading.