Scholarship on African women has progressed from mainly focusing on royal women, political struggle heroines, and activists to include more stories of domestic workers, farmers, mothers, and daughters. Over time, feminist oral historians gradually moved from research with rigid traditional approaches to update their approaches to include creative methodologies that can enhance and extend interlocutor participation. Through a feminist lens, the paper articulates how a creative and alternative methodology extended interlocutor participation in the Umzi ka mama oral history project. The project explored unreported stories of seven African women who have owned family property in Fingo Village, Makhanda since pre-1994. The article explores how a multidisciplinary methodology spanning over three disciplines, history, drama and film, helped gather data using interviews, video, forum, play-back and image theatre inspired techniques. The results revealed how extended participation beyond oral history interviews presented more opportunities for shared authority and negotiations throughout the process. Additionally, the results show how accessible dissemination can be achieved. Although history, film and drama methods pair well together as cross-cutting approaches, there are disciplinary tensions that are embedded in multidisciplinary studies. The paper highlights these tensions to show why negotiation is a necessary part of multidisciplinary research.

This article explores how museum communication can be enhanced in museums in Durban, South Africa, using the Old Court House Museum (OCHM) in Durban, South Africa, as a point of departure for analysis and discussion. The aim is to close the gap between the humanities disciplines through disciplinary hybridisation while focusing on exploring the intersection of theatre arts and museums through applied theatre (AT) strategies to enhance museum communication. Grounded in Richard Schechner’s multidisciplinary approach to performance studies (PS), it incorporates the viewpoints of Dwight Conquergood on PS. The argument is that the humanities disciplines are historically and conceptually linked through cultural performance. The research employs qualitative methods, including historical-analytic analysis, key informant interviews (KIIs), and direct observation. The findings suggest the practice of the museum theatre (MT) concept in some parts of the South African cultural ecosystem, but with scant attention on Durban municipal museums.

Human rights violations remain a historical issue. Thus, exploring this concern amidst the dysfunctionality of the state is more alarming considering that political terrain could serve as a breeding and conducive atmosphere for further human rights violations. This paper explores the nexus between the dysfunctionality of states and its implications on human rights violations in Nigeria. Using secondary data and thematic analysis, we more specifically focused on human rights violation cases in the two terms of office of President Mohammadu Buhari (2015- 2023). The paper explored the state of dysfunctionality and the violation of human rights during this period. The findings show there were violations of socio-economic and cultural rights, freedom of the press, freedom of movement, right to peaceful demonstration, and freedom of gathering and association, in Nigeria during President Buhari's administration. The paper concluded that for citizens’ rights to be adequately protected, the causal factors of a dysfunctional state must be addressed to avoid perverseness and continuous violation of human rights. Recommendations were made in favor of a newly negotiated social contract.

This study analyses electioneering discourses in selected social media sites of Phuthaditjhaba in South Africa. It focuses on political messages and images posted by political parties on selected Facebook Pages and X handles in Phuthaditjhaba. Using critical discourse analysis as a method and netnography as an instrument to collect data from selected sites, I analyse the packaging and language of political communication and highlighting socio-economic issues used by political parties to persuade voters and undermine messages of their competitors. The theoretical underpinnings of the study are drawn from Kubin and von Sikorski’s (2021) notions of ideological and affective polarisation, and Entman’s (1995) idea of social media constructions of poverty. Their ideas guide my analysis of how political rivals capitalise on existing socio-economic issues in Phuthaditjhaba to mobilise sentiment among disgruntled residents. Data was collected from ten social media sites namely, four Facebook group pages, four X group handles and two individual X handles. Ten images and accompanying texts were sampled from the selected sites. Thematic analysis was used to categorise the data. The findings of the study show that while politicians used social media for campaign purposes, residents of Phuthaditjhaba used it to contest, and challenge messages of political parties.

Public health organisations and policy leaders have long called for more coordinated strategies and resources to address vaccine hesitancy in the United States. However, to date, no dedicated policy, public health department, or resources have been aimed at vaccine confidence and acceptance of issues. Misinformation is propagated through social media platforms and online communities have contributed to the dissemination of unfounded claims linking vaccines to adverse health outcomes, such as autism (Nuwarda, Ramzan, Weekes and Veysel, 2022). The World Health Organisation (2015) also opines that vaccine hesitancy is influenced by factors such as misinformation, complacency, convenience, and lack of confidence. One can also not rule out the role of historical injustices as system disparities in health care have played on the marginalised communities and have, one way or the other, left a scar on the citizens. One such example is the Tuskegee experiment which began in 1932. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was conducted in 1930s Alabama on African American men with untreated syphilis. The study focused on poverty-stricken men in Macon County, who lacked education and job opportunities. Local doctors sought to understand the disease's impact by surveying both white and black residents (Gilliard, 2010: Perlstadt, 2024). Hence there is a need for these issues to be addressed so that the trust of the communities can be gained. Cultural and religious beliefs also play an important role in shaping vaccine attitudes, and understanding cultural perspective is crucial for engaging hesitant communities. Previous research has found that vaccine hesitancy often occurs after a systematic assessment of vaccinations and most times, the decision to reject vaccination is not due to lack of access to care.

Tensions between academic and professional staff are still experienced in universities of technology. The article focuses on the mobility and shifting boundaries which appear to be developing in regard to this working relationship at one South African university of technology. The mixed-methods exploratory research involved data gathered in 2018 and in 2021 from both academic and professional staff. The data included findings from staff whose work spans both roles and those who have moved from one role to the other. Findings indicate that professional staff are often drawn into performing teaching and research functions, and yet experience barriers which impede their academic progress. The article argues for more overt recognition and facilitation of this blending of roles, which would seem to be particularly appropriate for universities of technology. No current literature exists on this phenomenon in South African Universities of Technology and this article hopes to fill this gap and initiate this conversation.

Substance misuse among young people is a widespread phenomenon and continues to rise. Even though parents are the primary support system of a young person and unavoidably suffer the consequences of problem, they are often excluded in the intervention of a young person misusing substances. This study sought to understand the challenges of social workers in involving parents in the intervention process of young persons misusing substances. The family systems theory was employed as a theoretical base for the study. Thus, a qualitative semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 11 individual participants. Furthermore, non-probability purposive sampling was adopted to recruit a sample of social workers at the 10 service points of the Gauteng Department of Social Development (DSD), in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality (CTMM). Five themes emerged from the interviews, namely inadequate information provided by a young person misusing substances, parents’ employment status, nature of the social work intervention process to a young person misusing substances, poor parent/child relationship, majority age of a young person misusing substances and confidentiality barriers in the professional relationship, and a lack of parents’ insight. To enhance the quality of the social work intervention process to a young person misusing substances, there is a need for parents to be actively involved throughout the recovery process of a young person.

This study examines the role of traditional leadership (village head and chiefs) in curbing gender-based violence (GBV) in rural communities. GBV disproportionately affects women in rural areas. The paper argues that traditional leaders have a role in addressing GBV in rural communities and posits that given the limited presence of formal institutions in rural communities, traditional leaders actively address and prevent GBV in their localities. This study is part of a 2022 Doctor of Philosophy thesis that explores the role of communal institutions in addressing GBV in Seke District, Ward 8, Zimbabwe. This study relies on qualitative research based on in-depth interviews and observations at the Chief's court. Findings from interviews with two officers and 10 village heads and chiefs and five observations that involved 14 participants indicate that traditional leaders use mediation, the traditional court system, referrals to the police, and awareness campaigns to address GBV. The study also indicates that food insecurity, infidelity, drug abuse, land ownership, and patriarchy are some of the drivers of GBV in the community. The paper recommends that the government, law enforcement, and private stakeholders use education on GBV to empower traditional leaders, who are essential players in addressing GBV in rural communities.

Coastal regions are experiencing rapid urbanization, leading to substantial land use and land cover (LULC) transformations that profoundly impact the environment, livelihoods, and ecosystem services, and this has become a concern for environmentalists. However, research linking dynamics to ecosystem service valuation in this critically important ecoregion is rarely studied. This study attempts to bridge this gap by quantifying the ecosystem services in Lagos, Nigeria's rapidly urbanizing coastal region. A multi-temporal Landsat imagery of 2003, 2013, and 2023 was employed to map LULC categories in the region. Furthermore, the Value transfer method was employed to estimate the ecosystem services in each LULC type. The estimated ecosystem service values revealed significant transitions, with an overall decline of $985.01 million from 2003-2013; built-up areas experienced the most significant increase, rising with $47.06 million, while mangrove forests saw the most significant decline, dropping to $ 602.86 million. Between 2013 and 2023, built-up continue to exhibit the most significant increase in value, with $15.72 million. Conversely, mangroves experienced a sharp decline, decreasing with $153.52 million. The valuation of LULC-associated ecosystem services in Lagos's coastal zone highlights the urgent need to integrate environmental accounting into coastal management.

This paper explores co-creation as a strategy for emergent learning design in developing a new postgraduate diploma in blended and online learning (BOLD) at a large South African university. In this conceptual paper, grounded both in theory and critical collaborative autoethnography, we examine how co-creation functions as an epistemological, ontological, and political project in learning design. The “Designing with AI" design process illustrates the complexities and uncertainties inherent in emergent learning design. Our reflections reveal that co-creation challenges traditional notions of expertise disrupts established roles and processes, and addresses issues of social justice and equity in education. We propose a set of principles for co-creation in emergent learning design, including the affirmation of multiple knowledges, embracing entangled processes, and recognising the importance of affect and power dynamics. The paper highlights the potential of co-creation to navigate the uncertainties of rapidly evolving fields like AI in education while acknowledging the challenges and tensions inherent in this approach. We argue that co-creation when applied thoughtfully, can lead to more flexible, inclusive, and responsive learning designs. However, we also recognise that institutional contexts and individual positionalities within higher education may influence the ability to engage in such emergent practices.