On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization upgraded the outbreak of COVID-19 to pandemic status. On 15 March 2020, the South African president declared a national state of disaster under the Disaster Management Act of 2002. On 26 March 2020, national lockdown, which included measures stipulated in guidelines for education in emergencies, was implemented in South Africa. The presidential declaration and subsequent lockdown came at a time when some of the universities in South Africa were already struggling either to commence the academic year, or to make up for time lost due to persistent student protests relating to several student demands. However, disaster management now entailed that all schools and institutions of higher education were forced to close immediately for extended periods, necessitating alternative ways of ensuring access to education. The qualitative case study presented in this article sought to document the intervention strategies developed by two universities located in remote parts of Eastern Cape Province to deliver education during the COVID-19 restrictions. A second aim was an examination of the challenges experienced by the two institutions' largely rural student population. The authors collected data using a questionnaire completed by 15 educators and 30 students from the two universities. They also analysed official communications documents from the universities addressed to lecturers and students. The results indicate that access to online teaching and learning platforms and resources for students from poor rural communities in South Africa is challenging, and that there are gross inequalities in educational outcomes for learners from different socioeconomic backgrounds. This affects the future plans of higher education institutions to provide teaching and learning through online-based platforms. The authors conclude their article by providing recommendations to support online learning in rural areas, which has the potential to expand higher education access post-COVID-19.
The grand objective of foundational pedagogy is underpinned by an endeavour to create access to higher education for marginalised learners. Without a deliberate plan of action to bridge the knowledge and skills gap, it would be challenging for learners to proceed to, and progress in, higher education institutions. In the multilingual South African space, language is essential in access to education given the legacies of colonialism and apartheid. However, language is currently a tool of exclusion in SA University classrooms. It is against this background that this paper disrupts the prevailing hegemony of English, using translanguaging: a subversive theory that acknowledges linguistic and cultural diversity. This paper shifts prevailing monolingual cultures, and explores practical ways of designing instruction that accommodates multilingual repertoires. We reflect on the rich linguistic canvas, initiate necessary conversations and ask relevant questions in an attempt to transform the educational experience for learners in marginalised contexts. This paper challenges attitudes of delegitimizing multilingual practices and branding them as corrupted and unacceptable. We acknowledge that sites of education are sites of legitimate struggle for decolonisation and transformation. Therefore, through translanguaging, learners' plural identities and humanity are embraced. Most importantly, foundation learners are free to use their complete linguistic repertoire to access knowledge without prejudice.
The abuse of women and girls by individuals in authority has been a subject of complex debates in both social and academic discourses. This article analyses the language of deception used by the clergy in winning the trust of women and girls in Christian congregations prior to abusing them. We used Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the language of religious leaders in the narrative of women and abuse as reflected in the media. Using a qualitative approach, the study analyzed 17 news articles drawn from the Zimbabwean media landscape. With these analyses, we were interested in the language used by the religious leaders as reported by the victims. Findings indicate that, to entice their victims, religious leaders rely on groominga persuasion process that, in the context of the clergy, invariably fuses the language of courtship, spiritual language, and religious language in order to persuade. The clergy also often used their 'elevated' religious position to threaten women with evil spirits and the perpetuation of their problems if they would not do as the religious leader instructed, which often led directly to sexual assault. Coupling the threats were assurances that only the pastor could rid them of their problems. This approach left the women and girls, already vulnerable due to all kinds of reasons that have brought them to seek help from the clergy in the first place, devastated and dependent on the Nhlanhla Landa, Sindiso Zhou, and Baba Tshotsho 2 of 20 pages religious leaders. The victims would thus often seek the perpetrator-to-be for his services. We conclude that the vulnerability of women and girls and their trust in the clergy expose them to exploitation, manipulation, and sexual abuse by the same religious leaders supposed to be representing purity. Further, due to the burden of poverty, unemployment, and the worsening economic environment in Zimbabwe, women remain at the risk of falling prey to the deceptive language of the sexually abusive clergy.
The higher education landscape has been in a state of flux since the turn of the twenty-first century owing to pressure to internationalise and adopt entrepreneurial approaches in response to global demands. These exigencies have not spared middle-level managers in the academy who straddle the divide between administration and scholarship. This article explores the administrator-scholar paradigm in the context of the globalisation momentum in the academy, using an autoethnographical approach, in which I examine my personal and professional experience as a department chair in two universities over a period of five years. The study pays particular attention to how the dual role was enacted and views the administrator-scholar phenomenon as a resource, not a problem, as explicated in existing research. I articulate the leadership qualities that middle-level managers – more particularly, heads of departments – need, to navigate the contested space and ambivalent landscape of higher education leadership. Institutional gaps and the absence of systemic socialisation led me to develop a domain acculturation model, Divergent Collaborative Leadership, which emphasises the administrator- scholar in the construction of professional identities in higher education in the African context.
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