Renting is a common form of tenure in many developing countries in the global south. This is due to a housing shortage in these countries and has led to a situation where the vast majority of ...individuals in major cities find accommodation in the rental market. This situation can be put down to the difficulty to entering the market as a homeowner. While this condition is found in much of the formal housing market in the global south, little has been explored in the informal housing market. This state of affairs has pushed many residence in informal settlements into the rental market. This paper examines the rental market in informal settlements in Johannesburg, South Africa by conducting a qualitative investigation into the experiences of landlords (𝑛 = 11) and tenants (𝑛 = 15) in three informal settlements in Johannesburg. Overall, there is an asymmetric relationship between the two actors within this market, with the perception that landlords, who view their role as noble provider, impose arbitrary rental terms on tenants in an illegal tenancy market.
De-migranticization is becoming a core strategy for overcoming the fetishization of migrants in migration studies. However, this shift in perspectives raises questions about what categories to use ...instead. This paper contributes to these debates by considering the potential of studying immobility as a tool for de-migranticization. It looks at immobility through the lens of liminality: as a transitory phase, as a transformative stage and as one which enables epistemological subversion. In doing so, it goes beyond other border spanning terms to offer methodological insights into using immobility and liminality to de-migranticize. The paper suggests that these qualities of reading immobility through theories of liminality has implications for when, where and how to study migration. The empirical case draws on 165 semi-structured interviews with distance education students from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Nigeria studying at the University of South Africa (UNISA).
There is a huge demand for housing in Johannesburg, South Africa, due to significant in-migration as well as the legacy of apartheid. Rental housing supply in Johannesburg is particularly ...constrained. Despite this, little is known about the formal rental market in terms of middle income access. Thus, this explorative qualitative study seeks to partially address this research gap. Results show that specific legislative constraints, namely the National Credit Act and the Prevention of Illegal Eviction and Unlawful Occupation of Land Act, have created an imbalance between the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants, driving onerous credit checks and documentary demands, all of which are inadvertently excluding individuals from the formal rental market. Thus, while race previously excluded many from the suburbs under study, class now seems to be a significant factor in terms of who can access rental property. As such, rental housing supply is to some degree artificially constrained.
Wetlands are amongst the world’s most important ecosystems, providing direct and indirect benefits to local communities. However, wetlands worldwide continue to be degraded due to unsustainable use ...and improper resource management. In this paper, we assess the perceptions, importance, management and utilisation of wetlands among local community members using a household questionnaire and field observations within the seven Thulamela municipality wetlands, Vhembe Biosphere Reserve in South Africa. Seven wetlands were chosen for the study, with 140 household respondents randomly selected for a questionnaire survey. The study indicated that wetlands were beneficial in supporting local communities through resource provisioning. The unemployment rate and household respondents’ income were the main contributors to increased wetland dependency and utilisation. We found that urban and rural developments, unregulated use and extensive agricultural practices (i.e., cultivation, livestock grazing) have resulted in wetland degradation. We observed that the local communities around the wetlands were interested in the benefits they receive from wetlands when compared to their conservation. Furthermore, the study observed poor wetland co-management or collaboration among the local stakeholders. This has resulted in a lack of openly known, active platforms to discuss wetlands management issues. These results highlight that centralized, top–down approaches to wetland use are insufficient for maintaining and managing wetland ecosystems, posing a challenge to sustainable wetland management. Therefore, there is a need to develop a shared understanding through bottom-up approaches to wetland management nested within national regulatory frameworks, ideally combined with awareness building and knowledge sharing on ecological benefits and management of wetlands.
Since the era of European exploration, the world has been conquered and nations subdued by imperial powers.1 The evidence of colonisation is explicitly seen in the territorial demarcations on the ...global map, borders that at times seem to follow little more than natural boundaries chosen to divide territories between competing powers. The borders that demarcate African countries and separate its people are a clear illustration of this. It is within these borders that sovereign states now function and across these borders that international interactions occur. Geography, as an academic discipline which is concerned with both the physical environment and human interactions that occur within and between the borders of nation states, cannot ignore the politics of space. To date, the understanding and production of geographical knowledge continue to be informed by the European colonial modalities of power.1,2 Even though decolonial scholars acknowledge that the modern episteme is saturated with coloniality1, the geography curricula in African higher education does not show or encourage a different way of imagining or describing indigenous places3. One example of this is how indigenous knowledge, and African and indigenous scholarships, continue to be erased or subsumed.4 Much of the current curricula content continue to exclusively credit only international explorers, e.g. Admiral Antonio with Table Mountain, yet most explorers used local field guides who introduced them to most spaces on the continent. Another example is how the curricula are still referring only to colonial names of places despite many indigenous names of places being known in local languages. Curricula also have a long way to go to sufficiently incorporate local ecological knowledge and practices that have wider implications and practical application, especially in topics of relevance to the higher education geography curricula. Evidence already exists that supports that African mythology can be credited for conservation5,6, yet this is not adequately reflected in African geography curricula. It can, however, be justifiably argued that this omission may be a mere consequence of the mediation of knowledge by different communication technologies, which have uneven power dynamics, especially at the global scale.5 It is therefore imperative that geography as a discipline, and geographers as scholars, take it upon themselves to understand the centrality of this discipline within the call to de-colonise higher education and make an ardent effort towards building de-colonial curricula.7 Such acknowledgement, however, can only support the proposition of Bloor8, which is to interrogate popular discourses and established bodies of knowledge through careful historical geographical scholarship to the African geography higher education curricula. One way of doing so, could be by considering the application of post-colonial theory in tackling the decolonisation of the geography curricula.
Knowledge from the Global South, and particularly Africa, is continuously exported and repackaged, thereby transferring its ownership to those able to conform it to the paradigms of consumption in ...the knowledge economy of the Global North. The list of the top 40 scientific papers by country, according to Scopus, reflects a significant under-representation of publications from Africa. It is significant to note that only one African country – South Africa – features on the list, but only in the bottom five journals. This exclusion may be for many reasons, not withstanding those related to funding and government support, the developmental needs of universities, a lack of ability on the part of the authors themselves to write to Western paradigms and standards, and the career aspirations and needs of African academics. Yet we propose that these issues are not the only reasons for the lack of academic voice from the African continent – there is a substantial amount of research on inequality in global knowledge production which largely focuses on income and resource inequality as the major reason for this situation. It is, however, arguable that focusing only on the technical and economic limitations of African academics, whilst ignoring the greater cultural and political context within which the practice of academia is in itself deeply entrenched, does not sufficiently account for the challenges that they face. However, a significant cause of academic silence is the consequence of barriers resulting from practices of ‘the old boys’ network’. Thus, focusing on the global publication practices in academia, we present fresh arguments to bring to centre stage the consequence of barriers resulting from these networks. Here, the relative socio-political challenges of African academics are critically interwoven into the understanding and functioning of the informal old boys’ network.
With ~70% of the sub-Saharan population living in rural areas, more than 90% of rural African households depend on natural forest products. Although several studies in other parts of South Africa ...have looked into the use of natural forest products in poverty alleviation, little is known on the roles and relative contribution of natural forest products as daily and safety nets specifically within the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve, South Africa. This study assessed the different roles played by natural forest products in households and the patterns of their relative contribution to households both as sources of income and direct consumption within differing household compositions as well as socio-economic factors. These included employment and income diversification role and the monetised value of natural resources in the rural livelihoods of households in Sambandou and Mavunde, Vhembe Biosphere Reserve, Limpopo Province, South Africa. The study inter alia compared a wide use of natural resources by two villages and determined on which forest products they most relied for their economic welfare. Their relative contributions to livelihoods were assessed by identifying factors that affected their contributions. Findings of the study showed that Sambandou had a high number of people with formal jobs and females, and fewer old-age pensioners. Differences in employment and education between villages were observed. In all villages, the most frequently used or harvested resource was fuelwood, wild edible fruits, herbs, grass/shrub hand sweepers, insects for food, thatch grass/reeds and poles for fencing and housing. Overall, Mavunde village households were found to be more dependent on natural resource harvesting both for income and subsistence substitution. Findings suggest that this may have been a consequence of socio-economic factors such as income and employment, as well as general underdevelopment in the village. This study’s findings could contribute to further studies into how these results compare to other parts of the country and region, as well as their respective developmental implications.
Responding to ‘On shaky ground’, Daya (2020) Dalu, Mwazvita T.B.; Gunter, Ashley; Lembani, Reuben L. ...
South African Journal of Science,
03/2020, Volume:
116, Issue:
3-4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
It was with eagerness that we received a response to our original opinion piece entitled ‘Shifting sands: The decolonality of geography and its curriculum in South Africa’.1 This was composed as a ...way to engage in the debate around geography, its history, and where it currently stands in relation to student calls for its decolonisation. With this debate in mind, we South African geographers are making progress in moving towards a curriculum that is being scrutinised and, with wilful effort, being made to move forward. In this reply we seek to address issues we feel are the essence of Daya’s2 response. In doing so, we wish to re-orientate ourselves to the original spirit in which our opinion piece was written. In refocusing our article on its original intent, we have placed most of our focus on addressing three main concerns raised by Daya2, namely: (1) a lack of clarity on what decolonisation might mean for our discipline; (2) misreadings of post-colonial theory; and (3) insular and exclusionary ideas of legitimacy in academic spaces; with the latter two being our main focus and addressed together.
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