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- Title
- Popular expressions of Southern African nationalism(s : convergences, divergences, and reconciliations in South Africa and Zimbabwe
- Creator
- Mavima, Blessing Shingirirai
- Date
- 2019
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
Popular Expressions of Pan-Africanism and Southern African Nationalism(s): Convergences, Divergences, and Reconciliations in South Africa and Zimbabwe is a dissertation study that traces the transformations, reveals the tensions, and critically analyzes diverging and converging trajectories of different manifestations of African nationalism, including ethnic nationalism, state nationalism, and Pan-Africanism using contemporary South Africa and Zimbabwe as sites of analyses. Focusing on the...
Show morePopular Expressions of Pan-Africanism and Southern African Nationalism(s): Convergences, Divergences, and Reconciliations in South Africa and Zimbabwe is a dissertation study that traces the transformations, reveals the tensions, and critically analyzes diverging and converging trajectories of different manifestations of African nationalism, including ethnic nationalism, state nationalism, and Pan-Africanism using contemporary South Africa and Zimbabwe as sites of analyses. Focusing on the metropolitan provinces of Gauteng and Harare respectively, I use the study to interrogate how popular expressions of African nationalism have emerged and evolved in the neighboring nations during their anti-colonial/anti-apartheid struggles throughout the 20th century, and how they exist today. Presenting a thesis that I call nationalisms from below, the research study reveals how these manifestations of nationalism are imagined, practiced, and represented by the initiatives and actions of different members of the civil society including artists, activists, laborers, and migrants in the two countries' contemporary politics and society. My findings lead to a nuanced determination of the factors that influence the intersections, divergences, and convergences of what I refer to in the study as Africa's tripartite nationalist expressions and identities-ethnicism, African Nationalism, and Pan-Africanism. Critically, the study also aims to disrupt traditional elitist conceptualizations of these phenomena by employing a critical bottom-up approach that gives agency to oft-marginalized participants in the manifestation of nationalism in its various incarnations: the general populace along with its multiple identities and contradictions.The study interrogates the interrelations among ethnic nationalism, state and national nationalism, and Pan-Africanism, using South Africa and Zimbabwe as case studies that both represent the larger postcolonial region, yet also bear distinct dynamics birthed out of the histories of settler colonialism and the late advent of majority rule. In so doing, I demonstrate the relevance and manifestations of nationalism and Pan-Africanism in the everyday lives of Black South Africans and Zimbabweans. While using the two countries as a window into the general condition of postcolonial Africa, the research also interrogates how their distinct history of settler colonialisms, racialism, and delayed transitions to democracy have shaped the ways in which the populace in the two countries engage with Pan-Africanism and African nationalism.
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- Title
- African American athletes, actors, singers, peformers, and the anti-apartheid movement, 1948-1994
- Creator
- Jackson, Ronald L., 1970-
- Date
- 2018
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
“African American Athletes, Actors, Singers, Performers and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1948-1994” is the first study to explore the multiple roles African American artists and athletes in the global struggle against apartheid in South Africa. As a transnational study, this dissertation pays attention to the multiple trans-Atlantic dialogues that occurred for over a century between African American entertainers and the people of South Africa. Based on archival sources in the United States...
Show more“African American Athletes, Actors, Singers, Performers and the Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1948-1994” is the first study to explore the multiple roles African American artists and athletes in the global struggle against apartheid in South Africa. As a transnational study, this dissertation pays attention to the multiple trans-Atlantic dialogues that occurred for over a century between African American entertainers and the people of South Africa. Based on archival sources in the United States and South Africa, it argues that many Black Americans in the popular culture industry used their celebrity status to galvanize support for a free South Africa, while others chose paths of accommodation, and, in some cases, collaborated with the Pretoria regime. African American singers, actors, musicians, boxers, golfers, and tennis players were often motivated, both intrinsically and extrinsically, by pan-African connections forged by an empathetic sense of a shared history of racial oppression endured by blacks in both the United States and South Africa during similar time periods. This study addresses questions about the African Diaspora that have not fully been addressed in previous studies. What factors prompted black American entertainers to join the anti-apartheid movement? Did anti-apartheid activists in South Africa consider the support of black American entertainers an essential component of the struggle? Why did some black American entertainers elect to ignore the cultural boycott and tour South Africa?
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- Title
- New routes to the African diaspora(s : locating 'Naija' identities in transnational cultural productions
- Creator
- Nwabara, Olaocha Nwadiuto
- Date
- 2017
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
Nigerian American Yvonne Orji–star of HBO Series Insecure–shared her self-defined expressions of her Nigerian Diaspora aka 'Naija' identity at a Breakfast Club online interview. She demonstrated her negotiation of her Nigerian and Black American identity, and in doing so reveals the multiplicity of her Black identity. The Nigerian Diaspora is increasingly producing normalized tropes in global Black popular culture, such as formulations of the Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, and...
Show moreNigerian American Yvonne Orji–star of HBO Series Insecure–shared her self-defined expressions of her Nigerian Diaspora aka 'Naija' identity at a Breakfast Club online interview. She demonstrated her negotiation of her Nigerian and Black American identity, and in doing so reveals the multiplicity of her Black identity. The Nigerian Diaspora is increasingly producing normalized tropes in global Black popular culture, such as formulations of the Nigerian film industry, Nollywood, and transnational music in the Afrobeat and Naija Mix genres. Cultural productions that come from these and other Nigerian cultural industries are being created and represented by members of the Nigerian "cultural" Diaspora all over the world. These cultural representations are mapped onto cultural artifacts (e.g. film, music, literature, television, food, clothing) are reflected back into diasporic communities when accepted by its members as having meaning and telling stories of their everyday experiences. Works like these are constitutive of a growing cohort and body of cultural productions emerging from the African Diaspora in the post-colonial era. Examples examined in the current dissertation study include the now famous Nigerian Diaspora representations conveyed in cultural productions such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, rapper Wale's "My Sweetie" and "The God Smile," Yewande Omotoso's Bom Boy, Akin Omotoso's Man on Ground, and Adze Ugah's Jacob's Cross to name a few. This dissertation is situated within the growing scholarly discourse about new African Diasporas through the prism of cultural diasporas. To guide the study theoretically, I draw from African Diaspora theorists such as Kim Butler, Isidore Okpewho, Paul Zeleza, Juan Flores, and Ruth Simms Hamilton as well as from Cultural Studies theorists Stuart Hall and Pierre Bourdieu to examine select Nigerian artists, their productions, and subsequent representations in the Nigerian Diaspora as cultural diasporas. I present these cultural productions of Nigerian diasporas as a way of examining the transformative and transnational identities (i.e. racial, ethnic, cultural) and community formations that are forged in the dialectical relationship between African homelands (Nigeria) and African Diaspora hostlands (the US and South Africa). In this dissertation, I argue that the social construction of the core identity formation of Nigerian Diasporas (Naija) has a purposeful and useful function for Nigeria in the world through its migrants Diaspora hostlands. The study shows the Nigerian Diaspora identity in this regard acknowledges and unifies Nigerians wherever they may be in the world and allows them to asserts an emotional attraction and belonging to the Nigerian homeland. The social construction of 'Naija' is used in this study as prism for interrogating issues facing Nigerian people in their respective diasporas, while also revealing the distinctive cultural life-styles that Nigerian Black immigrants bring and contribute to their hostlands. The research design focuses in on those primary components of the cultural diasporas–the experiences of the cultural producers (interviews and public talks) and the analysis of their cultural productions (literature, film, television, YouTube, music)–in order to extrapolate cultural representations of the Nigerian Diaspora communities in the United States and South Africa. The study aims to use this data to significantly contribute perspectives of how Nigerian Diasporic cultural identities and experiences are self-represented and exerted in global Diasporic communities, specifically in the racially and ethnic diverse nations of the United States and South Africa. Further, the dissertation examines how representations of self and community becomes decolonial tools for defining and asserting complex Black Diasporic identities and cultural formations.
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- Title
- Why not academia?---The streamlined career choice process of Black African women engineers : a grounded theory study
- Creator
- Mlambo, Yeukai Angela
- Date
- 2017
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
Black African women are grossly underrepresented as academic staff in engineering programs at South African universities. The problem is exacerbated at historically White institutions (HWI) where Black women are simply absent as engineering research and teaching staff. The absence of Black African women in the academy occurs despite Black African women enrolling and graduating with engineering postgraduate degrees making them eligible for academic jobs. Furthermore, despite Black African...
Show moreBlack African women are grossly underrepresented as academic staff in engineering programs at South African universities. The problem is exacerbated at historically White institutions (HWI) where Black women are simply absent as engineering research and teaching staff. The absence of Black African women in the academy occurs despite Black African women enrolling and graduating with engineering postgraduate degrees making them eligible for academic jobs. Furthermore, despite Black African women representing the largest population in South Africa at 41% of the population overall, and affirmative action policies in place, engineering academic spaces remain predominantly White and male, not representative of the country's population. In fact White women are overrepresented in engineering academe and in some cases White women are the only female presence in engineering higher education employment. If Black African women are graduating with engineering degrees why are they not equally represented in engineering academe as their White female counterparts? How can the absence of Black African women engineering academics be explained? I use Charmaz's constructivist grounded theory (CGT) to understand the career choice processes of Black African engineering alumni women in South Africa to explain why their career choices thus far have not included the academy. Approaching the research from a social constructivist paradigm, loosely guided by a conceptual framework of African feminism(s) and CGT, and borrowing from life history interview methods this study addresses the underrepresentation of Black African women in engineering academe. Findings indicate Black African women's career choices in engineering are driven by prospects of socio-economic mobility and family/community responsibilities, a product of historical circumstances during apartheid that created social inequalities with Black families relegated to lower socio-economic statuses. In this study career choices were heavily influenced by teachers in pre-tertiary schooling, student academic competencies in mathematics and science, and industry practices that included providing bursary funds to only support engineering higher education endeavors, thereby dictating to students from low income households which careers to pursue especially in cases where the absence of such funding meant one would not be able to afford university costs. The academy was not viewed as a place of work seen instead as a transitory space. The image of the academy as made up of older White males also created the perception that it was not a place for Black women. The combination of the factors influencing career choices in school and the image of the academy as an unwelcoming space for Black women explains Black women's absence in South African engineering academia. Postsecondary institutional leaders should work on changing the image of the academy and marketing it as a career option for students in pre-tertiary and postsecondary education. Institutional culture and representation needs to reflect the diverse student population while actively working to ensure all students, academic and administrative staff feels welcome and valued. More importantly financial resources need to be made available and leveraged to support Black African women's education in a bursary-style format to encourage more Black women to follow academic career pathways.
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- Title
- Art toward social development : an exhibition of South African Art
- Creator
- MEDU Art Ensemble (Gaborone, Botswana)
- Date
- 1982
- Collection
- Africana Posters Collection
- Description
-
Lithograph poster shows figure in beret and blindfolded on a tightrope. In his back pocket are a pencil and a paintbrush. Below him are images of a city divided by the tightrope. On the right side are large fenced in houses with pools, cars, and military tanks on the street. On the left are smaller, tightly packed houses with black figures in the streets. In the distance of both sides is a city scape. On the right are tall buildings, and on the left are buildings very close together with...
Show moreLithograph poster shows figure in beret and blindfolded on a tightrope. In his back pocket are a pencil and a paintbrush. Below him are images of a city divided by the tightrope. On the right side are large fenced in houses with pools, cars, and military tanks on the street. On the left are smaller, tightly packed houses with black figures in the streets. In the distance of both sides is a city scape. On the right are tall buildings, and on the left are buildings very close together with smoke stacks. Title and information on the exhibition are below image. Image text are bordered in burgundy.
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