An intersectional analysis of male caregiving in South African palliative care : identifying disruptive potential in reinventions of white, hegemonic masculinity

Abstract: Care work is often feminised and invisible. Intangible components of care, such as emotional labour, are rarely recognised as economically valuable. Men engaging in care work can be stigmatised or simply made invisible for non-conformance to gender norms (Dworzanowski- Venter 2008). Mburu et.al. (2014) and Chikovore et.al. (2016) have studied masculinity from an intersectional perspective. Yet, male caregiving has not enjoyed sufficient intersectional focus. Intersectional analysis of male caregiving has twin benefits of making ‘women’s work’ visible and of finding ways to keep men involved in caring occupations. I foreground the class-gender intersection in this study of black, male, caregivers as emotional labourers involved in palliative care work in Gauteng (2005-2013). Informal AIDS care and specialist oncology nursing are contrasting case studies of male care work presented in this paper. Findings suggest that caregiving men interviewed for this study act in gender disruptive ways and face a stigmatising social backlash in post-colonial South Africa. Oncology nursing has a professional cachet denied to informal sector caregivers. This professional status acts as a class-based insulator against oppressive gender-based stigma, for oncology nursing more closely aligns to an idealised masculinity. The closer to a ‘respectable’ middle-class identity, or bourgeois civility, the better for these men who idealise traditionally white, male, formal sector occupations. However, this insulating effect relies on a denial of emotional aspects of care by male cancer nurses and a lack of activism around breaking down gendered notions of care work. Forming a guild of informal sector AIDs caregivers could add much-needed professional recognition and provide an organisational base for gender norm disruption through activism. This may help to retain more men in informal sector caregiving roles and challenge the norms that are used to stigmatise male caregiving work in general

Seeking barriers to the development of knowledge transgressivity potential (KTP) : lessons from a postgraduate student survey at the University of Johannesburg

Institutional mergers coupled with the distinction between teaching-focused ‘comprehensives’ and traditional, research-intensive universities are evidence of differentiation in action within South African higher education. Comprehensive institutions such as the University of Johannesburg (UJ) are relatively underresearched. A UJ-based survey of postgraduate students (n=300) suggests the possibility of knowledge transgressivity within and outside of UJ. However, the development of a transdisciplinary platform [to facilitate the evolution of knowledge transgressivity potential (KTP)] between natural and social science-focused postgraduates, is likely limited by perceptual class and race barriers, with the former proving most influential. Moreover, inter institutionalKTP between UJ, as a comprehensive, and WITS, as a traditional university, is present, but limited by material class barriers, such as fees differentials. Nevertheless, findings suggest that KTP could be developed at the junior postgraduate level if class perceptions and structural legacies are to be overcome. Comprehensives like UJ are capable of more than solely fulfilling an undergraduate teaching function as such, they should enjoy more research attention. While all South African universities contribute to transformation and competitiveness in distinct ways, the rigid demarcation, and potentially inadvertent ‘privileging’ of some South African universities, should be avoided. This is critical as such demarcation cannot lead to long-term institutional integration and increased potential for true knowledge transgressivity

Selection of a suitable ligand for the supercritical extraction of gold from a low-grade refractory tailing

Reprocessing tailings for gold recovery is generating new low-grade refractory secondary tailings. Unlocking gold trapped within these secondary tailings potentially holds additional economic value. In this study, the use of supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) at 100 bar and 40 °C for gold extraction from such a secondary gold tailings sample (0.27 g Au/t) was investigated. The research identified and screened the following ligands as suitable extractants for gold in scCO2: 3-(trifluoromethyl)-phenyl-thiourea (TPT), 1,1,1-trifluoro-2,4-pentanedione (TFA), betaine bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([Hbet][TF2N]), 4-methyl-4H-1,2,4-triazole-3-thiol (MHTT) and hexafluoroacetylacetone (HFA). Results from screening experiments showed that extraction of gold for all ligands in the presence of a tri-n-butyl phosphate-nitric acid adduct (TBP-HNO3) as oxidant exceeded 50% after 18 h, with the highest extraction offered by [Hbet][TF2N] (82% after 24 h). A comparative study, where no scCO2 was present, showed that the presence of scCO2 offered a distinct advantage in extraction

Using experimental design and response surface methodology (RSM) to optimize gold extraction from refractory sulphidic gold tailings with ionic liquids

© 2020 South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. All rights reserved. This work examined the feasibility of gold extraction from a pyrite flotation concentrate sample using an ionic liquid and water mixture as solvent, thiourea complexing agent, and iron(III) sulphate oxidant. A design of experiment (DOE) methodology was used to optimize the process parameters. The purpose of the investigation was to determine how feasible it would be to replace the traditional cyanide extraction process by using an alternative approach, and compare the yield that could be obtained with a less environmentally damaging and hazardous combination of chemicals. Test parameters such as ionic liquid concentration, pulp density, time, and temperature were varied using two imidazolium-based ionic liquids: 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulphate [Bmim+HSO4–] and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium trifluoromethansulphonate [Bmim+CF3SO3–]. The effects on gold extraction were assessed and screened using a half fractional factorial design (25-1) approach. The ionic liquid concentration, pulp density, and temperature had a statistically significant effect on gold extraction, while the type of ionic liquid and extraction time did not affect the gold extraction as much within the operating range investigated. A high gold extraction was obtained at low ionic liquid concentration, low pulp density, and high temperature. A central composite design in conjunction with response surface methodology were used to create an optimization design with the statistically significant parameters in an attempt to establish the optimal gold extraction conditions. It was found that the optimum concentration of ionic liquid [Bmim+HSO4–] in the aqueous solution was 15% (v/v), pulp density was 15% (w/v), and the temperature 60°C, with a gold extraction of 35.7% under these conditions. This, sadly, was only about half of the yield achieved with the cyanide process. In order to compete with the traditional approach, a way will have to be found to completely destroy the pyrite component in the material, in which a substantial portion of the gold was locked up. This work, and similar studies reported in the literature, indicates that cyanide technology for gold recovery will remain the process of choice in the gold industry for the immediate future

Sociology, dying and AIDS: learning from Hospice Care in South Africa

M.A.In sub-Saharan Africa the importance of understanding the illness and dying experiences of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) is underlined by the fact that some 30 million people are already infected with HIV. Yet, there has been precious little research on chronic illness and dying within the sociology of health and illness. This dissertation begins to address this gap by considering the question ‘how does care of AIDS patients inform a sociology of illness and dying?’ It is argued that AIDS related chronic illness and dying are best understood within the AIDS care context. A theoretical model of quality AIDS care (QACM) was constructed, and highlights access, physical and psychosocial aspects of care. This was evaluated in relation to two South African hospices, both located on the Witwatersrand. In addition, a telephonic survey was undertaken in order to situate the two case studies within a national context of hospice-based AIDS-care. Some of the valuable refinements made to the literature QACM include new staff motivators, self-contained funding, additional dietary concerns, more cost-effective treatments, the importance of stigma, patient-patient support and the advent of hospice day-care centres. It was concluded that caregiver and patient needs must be met to ensure quality care provision. Three noteworthy conclusions were drawn. Firstly, the QACM was found to be a sound reflection of hospice AIDS-care reality. Secondly, the case hospices sufficiently subscribed to the required care standards, but improvements are warranted. Thirdly, and most importantly, the study highlights the impact of stigma on the chronic illness and dying experiences of PLWHAs. This study has taken a small step in the right direction by providing some sociological insights into chronic illness and dying, by the application of Northern-centric literature to the developing context of South African hospice AIDS-care. Further investigations may serve to bear these conclusions out, in alternative care settings, in order to further develop the sociology of illness and dying.Prof. J.M. Uys Prof. P. Alexander

Emotional labour, black men and caregiving: cases from South Africa (1850-2010)

D.Litt. et Phil. (Sociology)Reid and Walker (2005) suggest that black South African men are ‘behaving differently’. Added to this Budlender (2008) has found that South African men are more likely to engage in unpaid community care work than conventional wisdom suggests. Part of this community work involves black men acting as AIDS caregivers. It is imperative to gain knowledge about masculine caregivers as the informal health care sector bears the brunt of the HIV pandemic. The fragmented and over-burdened public health system simply cannot absorb the 15-20% of HIV infected South Africans. Coovadia et.al. (2009) point to a lacuna in the scholarship regarding community health workers (CHW) in South Africa. My study of black masculine caregivers, located in the world of informal AIDS care, hopes to fill this gap. Yet, I do something more for I tackle the conventional wisdom that suggests South African men are different and exceptional if they conduct feminised care work. The emotions involved in care processes are the basis upon which society may feminise care work. My argument is also premised upon forging links between the past and the present. As such, I focus upon determining the extent to which emotional labour that may be exhibited by historical and contemporary black men. I make use of W.E.B. Du Bois’ (1903) notion of double-consciousness to show how the normalising society, surrounding masculine care, impacts this category of black men. In so doing, I not only forge links between past and present by means of doubleconsciousness, but I perform an intersectional analysis of emotional labour, and the context, in which it occurs. In so doing, I show how double-consciousness is an intersectionally-forged mechanism for Foucault’s (1978) biopower, and one that has become reinvented in present day South Africa. In this way I augment the works of Du Bois (1903) and Foucault (1978) for both did not give primacy to gender as a construct. It is essentially this view of black men, involved in AIDS care that contributes to the originality of this work. This historical-sociological investigation relied upon the linking of cases. I conducted historical research upon two cases: ‘houseboys’ in colonial Natal (1850 – 1928) and mine hospital ‘ward boys’ (1931 – 1959). Contemporary cases were constructed to reflect the world of AIDS and cancer care. The 13 original cases were compressed into seven case categories and based on triangulated survey and interview data (29 AIDS and 18 cancer caregivers were interviewed; while 195 community workers involved in AIDS care were surveyed in 2005/6; follow-up interviews were conducted with 11 caregivers across all case categories in 2010)

Oxidative leaching of refractory sulphidic gold tailings with an ionic liquid

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd The effect of temperature in the range of 20–65 °C on gold extraction from refractory gold tailings containing pyrite in 20% (v/v) of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulphate [Bmim+HSO4−]-water solution with thiourea as complexing agent and iron(III) sulphate oxidant, at pH of 1 was examined for 12 h leaching time intervals. The experimental results revealed that the extraction of gold improved by increasing the temperature. The effect of time showed that a substantial amount of gold extraction took place during the first day of extraction and thereafter very little gold extraction occurred. The ionic liquid [Bmim+HSO4−] is water soluble and in aquatic solution can act like a Brønsted acid by releasing H+ ions. The apparent activation energy (Ea) was calculated based on the Arrhenius theory and it suggests that the kinetic process of gold leaching with this acidic ionic liquid follows shrinking core model with mixed and diffusion controlled reaction regions having Ea of 17.97 kJ/mol and 27.17 kJ/mol, respectively. In the SEM image of the solid residue of the leached sample some pores appeared on the reactive pyrite particles, whereas the pyrite particles in the unleached sample looked smooth. Additionally, Raman spectra detected sulphur shifts in the recorded spectra of the solid residue after leaching which can be an indication of the formation of a product surface layer of elemental sulphur, which supports the diffusion through a product layer in the kinetic model

Investigating the effect of lip froth washing on coal yield during flotation of a high ash South African coal

An investigation was conducted to evaluate the effect of lip washing on coal flotation at Anglo American’s Goedehoop South (GHS) fine coal plant in South Africa. In the test-work, performance of cells with lip washing system were compared with baseline cells without lip washing in terms of coal yield and coal quality. Yields observed with lip washing were significantly higher than those of baseline cells. Improvements of up to 15% were recorded. The product obtained at low flotation reagent dosages (1.30–1.45 kg/t) on lip wash cells had ~16.85% ash content against ~17.65% with baseline cells, suggesting that higher yields could be achieved at superior qualities to those achieved with baseline cells. At higher reagent dosages (1.60–1.75 kg/t), coal yields further improved but quality reduced on lip wash cells. Calorific Values (CV) of coal products obtained by lip washing and baseline flotation were similar. When different coal particle size fractions were floated separately, the yield increased as particle size increased from 75 to 300 μm and then decreased from 300 to 500 μm for both baseline and lip washing flotation. Lip washing caused a marked increase in the yield for finer particles (< 300 μm) with optimum size class of between 212 – 300 μm. In addition, a much bigger increase in the yield was achievable with lip washing of lower quality coal. The ash content after lip washing of poor-quality coal were also comparable to the ash content after lip washing of good quality coal