To cite this article: Thabile Mbatha (2011) Addressing girls' challenges of water and sanitation in a rural schooling context in Swaziland, Agenda: Empowering women for gender equity, 25:2, 35-42To link to this article: http://dx.
This focus piece presents an analysis of interviews, used as a methodology to investigate the experiences of 7 black South African women in polygynous marriages. Some of them had since opted out of these marriages, and were staying separately from their spouses. The women's understandings of safe and risky marriages are further explored, with analysis of qualitative interviews conducted within the context of liberal feminism. Gender inequality, biased religious and cultural beliefs, infidelity and ill-treatment were some of the forms of oppression that these married women suffered, where men were usually seen as perpetrators and women as victims. HIV/AIDS was a major risk arising from polygyny and infidelity, because married women in polygynous marriages could not negotiate condom use. The limitations of the sample are fully recognised. However, the analysis provides preliminary data on women in polygynous marriages and a foundation for further research. It was also found that there were other disconcerting voices among the women, suggesting that women continued to stay in unsafe marriages for unguaranteed financial security from men. Those who had moved out of polygynous marriages were seen as disobedient to their culture. The focus concludes that the decision to quit a risky marriage is long and hard to reach due to socially constructed discriminatory practices. It also shows that the decision to stay in a risky marriage is changing among women across marriage types.
Despite a robust national language policy, multilingual learning has yet to make headway in South African universities. In addressing the gap between the language of instruction and the languages South African university students are competent in, this article begins with a brief review of current national and institutional policy positions and recent multilingual learning theoretical discussions at university. Lines of thinking that emerge include: significance of academic literacy and how it underpins university studies; and separatist solutions where academic literacy is taught in dedicated modules. However the uncertain academic status of African language studies and negative attitudes to its speakers may compromise the potential of multilingual initiatives in universities. To solicit student impressions on the actuality and potential of multilingualism in universities, a focus group discussion was conducted with 15 students in the School of Agricultural Sciences and Agribusiness at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Students concurred that trying to process information in a language they were not competent in limited their understanding of lectures. Attempts to cope using mother tongue in study groups was limited by lack of terminology and conceptual equivalents, however, being taught in mother tongue was unacceptable to students because their aim was to acquire better English at university. In addition, foreign students expressed anxiety that multilingualism might disadvantage them.The study concludes that multilingualism could assist students in developing academic literacy and academic discourse but students seem blind to this advantage.
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