Tribute: Things still apart: Chinua Achebe’s whetstone

No Abstrac

Minority rights and resource-conflict in the poetry of Ibiwari Ikiriko, Nnimmo Bassey and Ogaga Ifowodo

Minority rights appear to be more contentious wherever resource-distribution is contested. Oil and Power are linked inextricably in the poetry that Ibiwari Ikiriko, Nnimmo Bassey and Ogaga Ifowodo have written on the Niger Delta mosaic. Power determines control and dispossession. Thus, these poets have depicted the attitude of the state and its centres of control towards the condition of the oil-bearing communities. The exercise of state might is cast as a strategy of repression which is designed to ensure accumulation for the state and its privileged entities. This essay is to examine the extent to which the poems of Ikiriko, Bassey and Ifowodo stand as mirrors on various sites of tension and conflict in the Niger Delta

Child-headed Households in Rural Zimbabwe: Perceptions of Shona Orphaned Children

This qualitative ethnographic case study explored the phenomenon of Child- Headed Households (CHHs) in rural Zimbabwe from the perspectives of a Shona community. My intention was to gain an understanding on how these children access necessities like food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, and cope on a daily basis without parental care, or adult supervision. The perceptions of both the orphaned children and the adults in their community were investigated through the integrative lens of the Shona philosophy of unhu, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and Bronfenbrenner’s ideas of systems. The findings of this study show that children from child-headed households among the Shona people in Zimbabwe struggle to make ends meet without the traditional family structure and adult supervision, and that they experience social, educational, psychological, and social development problems. Although the orphaned children in this study showed resilience, bravery, and sense of responsibility as they cared for their siblings, they struggle to make ends meet as they fail to access basic needs. The systemic issues affecting Zimbabwe as a country enhance the plight of these children thereby making their stories vital and necessary to understand

Teacher Retention in Zimbabwe: Love for Teaching or Incentives?

This qualitative interpretive study investigated the lived experiences of qualified teachers who have remained in teaching for more than 10 years in Zimbabwean rural secondary schools. In understanding how teachers make meaning of their remaining in teaching, the focus is also on the role and place of teachers in society. The experiences were investigated using a dialoguing unhu theoretical framework based on the writing of Lortie (1975) and unhu philosophy. Teacher participants were drawn from three rural secondary schools in Chirumhanzu district in the Midlands province of Zimbabwe. In addition, two teachers who left teaching in Zimbabwe and are resident in the United States also participated in the study. The teachers had a minimum of 10 years teaching experience. Through semi-structured interviews, teachers were asked and shared information about their decisions to become teachers, how they decided to remain in teaching despite the growing challenges the field is facing, and how they viewed the role of incentives and other motivational mechanisms in their decision to remain in teaching. Data collection was done through interviews, journaling, memos, pictures, and artifacts. Data analysis was done using the phenomenological protocol to ensure trustworthiness and credibility, checking of transcripts, member checking strategy, field journal, and vii triangulation was used. Practicing epoche (suspension of judgments) helped in the bracketing of personal experiences, biases, and assumptions (Hays & Singh, 2012; Patton, 2015). There were several findings that influenced teachers to remain in teaching as cited by teachers: (a) affordability/quality of life, (b) family responsibilities and parental support (c) stepping stone, (d) good relationships, (e) love teaching/kids, and (f) economy and politics. Although they admitted that they face challenges in their professions, they also said that their proclivity to hard work and teaching has kept them going. Further analysis of the themes resulted in higher levels findings explaining why teachers have remained in the profession for more than 10 years. Four higher level findings emerged: the importance of community culture and relationships, the removal of incentives led to dissatisfaction but did not affect love of teaching, the local school context or environment influence, the value of the existence of unhu and respect, and the lack of alternatives to lead a satisfying lifestyle. A love model of teacher retention was developed from the findings to explain teacher retention in rural Zimbabwean schools. Retention of teachers was a result of altruistic, intrinsic, and extrinsic factors. Psychic rewards (Lortie, 1975), play a central role in retaining teachers in the Western context; however, community influence, dialogue, and unhu have been shown as greater influencer to teacher retention in this study as teachers love their jobs and enjoy working with kids. Knowing that they are making a difference is a source of motivation for teacher retention. Love for teaching was undermined by incentives that gave teachers a false sense of satisfaction. It is imperative for responsible authorities, parents, and administrators to be aware of positive factors that hold sway in the retention of teachers and work towards their improvement

Church versus Ogun: Subversion and Irony in Wole Soyinka’s The Road

Inverted subversion is the thrust of irony in Wole Soyinka’s The Road. The play reveals a space of foreboding which is charged with confrontations. The cosmos of the dramatis personae is designed as a kind of high mimetic arena in which all the participants are trapped as they seek to find meaning and value for their daily existence. Their lives are soused in irony, and they are caught on the quicksand between Church and Ogun. A psychic figure spins everyone and everything in thrall and into a vortex of persuasions which keeps knowledge and truth in a state of convolution from one point to another. The aim of this study is to examine the dimension of this subverted space, to mark out the indices of its subversion, and to situate the pervasive tangles within the matrix of irony. It is also to locate the median of the conflict, the lead character, whose past and present collide within him as he propagates Ogunian perceptions in a manner that leaves a grim smudge on both deity and propagator. It will be argued that the confusion of values which are entrenched in the propagator extends as a contest of values in the play.Keywords: Soyinka, Subversion, Irony, Church and Ogun

On Writing and Politics

Panel: Writing and Politics (IC Book Festival panel

Writing Sample

Two poems. Getting Home and We are in the Front Ro

Leadership and political administrative interface in the Gauteng department of human settlements

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management in the field of Public and Development ManagementThere is a significant lack of research that focuses on how political and bureaucratic leaders in developing countries interact, and how their interaction affects institutional and policy reform. Yet this survey of the existing literature finds that political-bureaucratic relations are an important factor in reform success or failure. The findings suggest that PoliticalAdministrative relations that support successful reform often involve a core group of political and bureaucratic leaders who work closely together and share development-centred values and aims; bureaucrats who have unusually high levels of influence in designing policy; and strong political leadership promoting the reform. The goal of this research was to investigate effective leadership that drives organisational change in the Department of Human Settlements to meet the changing environmental needs to improve service delivery within the Gauteng Provincial Government. Organisational change in the human settlements developments must lead to improved service delivery. This paper focuses on the impact of the politics-bureaucracy interface on institutional reform. It offers an assessment of the current state of research on the nature of the ‘Political-Administrative Interface’ in the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements, and its impact on institutional reform. In view of the challenges facing the Gauteng Department of Human Settlements, this paper presents an alternative, hybrid leadership model. A hybrid leadership model framework is multifaceted and multidimensional with its own unique characteristics, diverse perspectives, approaches and strategies. The framework caters for sensitivities of culture, gender, religion, ethnic origin and socio-economic and political differences. A ii combination of leadership approaches is essential in order to improve service delivery.GR201

What Is Postcolonial Intellection to Us: A White Scarecrow in the Field?

Given that postcolonial theory has come to meet a chequered reception in many postcolonial locations, particularly in Africa, it has become imperative that we examine a number of arguments for and against the theory. In the Babel of Voices that has been stirred by this theory, there are still scholars who posit that postcolonialism is a highly relevant theoretical framework for the discursive and historical tenor of African literature. They have argued that the postcoloniality of the African experience falls within the ambit of the theory. This essay supports postcolonialism by canvassing for its proper application. A proper application will be that which respects both the integrity of literary texts and the density of history in the texts. Keywords: Postcolonialism, Postcoloniality, Postcolonial Theory and Africa

Thin film flows with moving contact lines: An approach to reducing the computing time

A numerical method to reduce the computing times of thin-film flows with moving contact lines is presented. The flows of a film and a droplet are calculated in a frame that moves with a nonconstant velocity U(t). The criterion employed to define this velocity is to reduce the maximum height change in the flow's most critical zone. The efficiency of the algorithm in reducing the CPU time is tested in gravity-driven flows, where the computing time is reduced by up to a factor of 13 depending on the parameters of the problem.Fil: Gomba, Juan Manuel. Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas. Instituto de Física Arroyo Seco; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Tandil; Argentin