Decolonising HIV Prevention: A Critical Examination of Ukusoma and Virginity Testing

A question that the Southern African region has been struggling with for some time is that, despite the efforts at preventing HIV through various methods, the region is still experiencing new HIV infections. Although this happens at a low rate, it still raises an alarm. Some, if not most, of the traditional HIV prevention methods from Africa have been criticised and rejected as human rights violations and as ‘sinful’. For this reason, this study is a critical examination of two African traditional practices namely ukusoma and virginity testing. These are two of the traditional methods of HIV prevention, particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Adopting African feminists’ critical hermeneutics, this paper explains the different and complex implica-tions of both ukusoma and virginity testing on the lives of girls and on the prevention of HIV. The study argues that generally it would be an oversim-plifiication to claim that ukusoma and virginity testing are unequivocally either good or bad for girls, without a critical analysis of these practices while taking into account the shadow cast by HIV on ukusoma. I discuss how these traditional indigenous practices can, on one hand, be limiting and on the other hand, be a source of female power in a context of patriarchy, particularly taking into account the HIV epidemic

The Gender Implications of the Immigration Regulations of South Africa on “career wives” : An African Feminist Perspective

The search by South Africa for scarce skills that contribute to the economic development of the country attracted many people around the world, particularly Africa to migrate to this country for economic purposes. Among those who respond to the call for scarce skills are married men who migrate with their wives who do not qualify to apply for a scarce skills visa. This non empirical qualitative study analyses how the South African immigration regulations affects wives of migrants particularly career-wives who choose to join their husbands during migration. The broader principles of African feminism are used to analyse the gender implications of the South African immigration to career-wives who accompany their husbands on migration. Findings of this study indicate that the South African immigration policy is gender biased and overlooks the legacies of colonialism that encouraged boys to study Science and Mathematics and girls to study Arts subjects. In addition the study reveals that the South African immigration policy does not align itself with the international, regional and national instruments that promote and protect gender equality despite being signatory.Institute for Gender Studie

Pastoral care with children in a context of HIV and AIDS : towards a contextual pastoral care model with unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) from Zimbabwe in the Methodist Church Community Centre in Johannesburg

The study investigates the welfare of children in crisis with Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URMs) from Zimbabwe and the models of pastoral care that are extended to them in a context of HIV and AIDS. URMs are children who have been forced to migrate by the socio-economic and political conditions prevalent in Zimbabwe. Other than the socio-economic and political conditions these children are vulnerable to HIV and AIDS. Many of the children are received at the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg. They are taken care of by caregivers from Zimbabwe. Some of URMs reside in the Methodist church community centre in Soweto and some reside in the Central Methodist Church building in Johannesburg. This study is done from an African perspective of pastoral care in a context of HIV and AIDS. It seeks to study pastoral care that is organic using the reality of URMs in a context of HIV and AIDS. The Central Methodist Church received URMs as a form of pastoral care, but it is not clear what models of pastoral care are used to care for them. This grounded theory study used data collected through interviews and narrative research (story telling) from 20 URMs and 3 Care givers from Zimbabwe and Bishop Paul Verryn the head of the Central Methodist Church in Johannesburg. Analyzed data was used to describe in detail URMs and their Care givers‟ understanding of pastoral care as well as the models of pastoral care offered to URMs in a context of HIV and AIDS. Finally, the findings lead to a contextual pastoral care model with children in crisis in a context of HIV and AIDS. This study formulated this contextual model as a cultural-gendered pastoral care model with children in crisis in a context of HIV and AIDS. The model was established to develop a practical method to use in practical theology and pastoral care in the care for children in crisis without adult guidance in a context of HIV and AIDS. The results of the study describe the significance of culture and gender in caring for children in a context of HIV and AIDS.Philosophy, Practical and Systematic TheologyD. Th. (Practical Theology

Patriachy and resistance : a feminist symbolic interactionist perspective of highly educated married black women

The struggles with patriarchy in the marriages of highly educated married black women are not clearly defined by research, leading to generalisations that all women experience, interpret and resist patriarchy in a uniform way. Written from an African feminist and symbolic interactionist perspective this qualitative study sought to investigate the cognitive processes of highly educated married black women that develop from their lived experiences, interpretations and resistance with regard to patriarchy in their marriages. Data were collected through (auto)biographical narrative essays, semi-structured interviews and observations and analysed using thematic data analysis. The findings indicate that highly educated married black women experience, interpret and resist patriarchy in diverse ways, highlighting three clusters of these women – the liberal, the conformist and the secretive. Their self-concept and identity are more likely to be shaped by their social experiences and interactions with their husbands and the extended family than interactions in their professions.SociologyM.A. (Sociology

Church Discipline as Virginity Testing: Shaping Adolescent Girls’ Sexuality in the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Africa

Church discipline for falling pregnant out of wedlock is in practice discriminatory as it effectively affects girls than boys in the majority of cases. This article seeks to explore the role of church discipline in the Evangelical Lutheran Churches in Africa in controlling and shaping adolescent girls’ sexuality. The church teaches about abstinence before marriage to both boys and girls. However reality as evidenced by pregnancies in schools by adolescents and the high rate of new HIV infections attests to the failure of the message of abstinence. The message of abstinence implies that the church views virginity until marriage as a sign of purity. The Lutheran churches’ church discipline and subsequent process of public absolution to adolescent girls who fall pregnant out of wedlock is considered by this study as a form of virginity testing that is practiced by the church in order to control and shape women’s sexuality at an early age. This qualitative exploratory study is non empirical however some empirical research is taken from participant observation research that was conducted during an earlier research project. The study seeks to present a meta-narrative analysis of the Lutheran church discipline process as a gendered power issue used to control and shape adolescent girls’ sexuality. Findings of this study are that the Christian church’s emphasis on abstinence is in fact a focus on virginity as a form of purity which is a way of controlling and shaping women’s sexuality since in most cases girls are the ones seen seeking for absolution after giving birth. Those who make them pregnant are not usual visible. This way, those who seek for absolution are no longer virgins, ideally implying that those who have not fallen pregnant are still virgins and pure. Findings of this study are evaluated through African women’s cultural hermeneutics and hermeneutics of suspicion

Deliver us from patriarchy : a gendered perspective of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa and implications for pastoral care

CITATION: Chisale, S. S. 2020. Deliver us from patriarchy : a gendered perspective of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa and implications for pastoral care. Verbum et Ecclesia, 41(1),1-8, doi:10.4102/ve.v41i1.2003.The original publication is available at: http://www.scielo.org.zaThe church is a fertile ground for nurturing and protecting patriarchy. Within the Christian church, gender equality remains a theoretical notion, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (ELCSA) is no exception in this regard. Written from the perspective of African women’s theology, this article critically reflects on and interprets gender issues in ELCSA leadership structures by exploring the gender biases involved in the running of the church and the implications of these biases for gender questions about reformation and pastoral care in ELCSA congregations. Findings indicate that the gender gap in ELCSA structures is neither biblical nor constitutional but is protected by the presence of wives of bishops, deans and pastors who are placed strategically in women’s leagues, particularly the Prayer Women’s League (PWL). In addition, qualifying the bishops, deans and pastors as ex-officio members of these groups constitutes an obstacle to achieving gender equality in the Church’s leadership structures and has implications for pastoral care in the ELCSA. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article is written from a Christian-anthropological perspective. By reviewing literature from social sciences, practical and systematic theology, it integrates sociological and African traditional assumptions of gender and religion that hinder the African church’s reformation praxis, thereby affecting pastoral care.Publisher's versio

The human dilemma of displacement

In this book social responsive theological research converges to provide practical theological and ecclesiological perspectives on the growing human dilemma of displacement. The book presents the research of practical theologians, a missiologist and a religious practitioner whose work pertains first and foremost to the (South) African context. The different fields of expertise of the contributors within the broader field of practical theology worked towards a unique compilation of themes, each relevant to the issue at stake. The majority of chapters are theoretically orientated, except where authors refer to empirical work conducted during previous research. The main contribution of this collaborative work is to be sought in the practical theological and ecclesiological perspectives it provides. It engages the critical questions of what kind of church we need, and what kind of care we should provide in the face of the growing predicament of human displacement. The theological and theoretical principles uncovered in the different chapters will be of use to theologians from all theological subdisciplines, as well as to religious practitioners and leaders of faith communities that are challenged with the growing realities of strangers on their doorsteps and in their pews

Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Theology

The theological role of African women and men in sustainable development and environmental justice strongly emerges in this book. Picking up the theme and metaphor of the fifth pan-African conference of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (hereafter ‘Circle’), ‘Mother Earth and Mother Africa’, this book titled Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Theology presents original and innovative research by scholarly members and friends of the Circle. The main contribution of the volume is its multi- and trans-disciplinary exploration and reimagining of human relationships to Earth from an African ecofeminist and ecowomanist theological perspective. It engages in critical conversations of re-interpreting and re-imagining African cultural, religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives on gender and the Earth. The aim is to construct Earth-friendly relationships in the face of the growing global environmental crisis. Scholarly voices of African women and men from fields such as Theology, Environmental Law and Policy, Tourism, Agricultural Science and Natural Resources, and Economics are reflected in this book, which consists of three parts: Creation, the Trinity, and Mother Africa; Caring for Mother Africa; and Mother Africa and her daughters’ (in)fertility. Each of the eleven chapters in the volume presents the metaphor of Mother Earth, Mother Africa, and gender relations, with the aim to explore life-affirming, life-enhancing human relationships to Earth from the author’s particular area of specialisation and context

Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Theology

The theological role of African women and men in sustainable development and environmental justice strongly emerges in this book. Picking up the theme and metaphor of the fifth pan-African conference of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians (hereafter ‘Circle’), ‘Mother Earth and Mother Africa’, this book titled Mother Earth, Mother Africa and Theology presents original and innovative research by scholarly members and friends of the Circle. The main contribution of the volume is its multi- and trans-disciplinary exploration and reimagining of human relationships to Earth from an African ecofeminist and ecowomanist theological perspective. It engages in critical conversations of re-interpreting and re-imagining African cultural, religious, theological, and philosophical perspectives on gender and the Earth. The aim is to construct Earth-friendly relationships in the face of the growing global environmental crisis. Scholarly voices of African women and men from fields such as Theology, Environmental Law and Policy, Tourism, Agricultural Science and Natural Resources, and Economics are reflected in this book, which consists of three parts: Creation, the Trinity, and Mother Africa; Caring for Mother Africa; and Mother Africa and her daughters’ (in)fertility. Each of the eleven chapters in the volume presents the metaphor of Mother Earth, Mother Africa, and gender relations, with the aim to explore life-affirming, life-enhancing human relationships to Earth from the author’s particular area of specialisation and context

Love, discipline, punishment or wife battering: A view from Ubuntu

Marriage is conceptualised in a hierarchical and patriarchal manner by the elderly  people from KwaZulu-Natal. Men have authority over their wives, children and property. In this paper I grapple with wife battering in traditional Zulu marriage from an African philosophical point of view. I shall draw from the philosophy of Ubuntu and the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault. I shall tease out how the elderly perceive wife battering as love, discipline and punishment. Data used in this paper shall be drawn  from structured interviews and focus groups that were conducted in 2015 under the auspices of the NRF-funded ‘Archaeology of Ubuntu’ study. The interviews were  conducted among elderly men and women aged between 65 and 80 years in the Greater Kwa-Zulu Natal province. Findings indicate that elderly women conflated wife battering with love and discipline, while elderly men conflated wife battering with discipline and punishment.Keywords: love, discipline, punishment, wife battering, Ubuntu, marriag