Ethical quandaries in spiritual healing and herbal medicine: A critical analysis of the morality of traditional medicine advertising in southern African urban societies

This paper critically examines the morality of advertising by practitioners in spiritual healing and herbal medicine heretofore referred to as traditional medicine, in southern African urban societies. While the subject of traditional medicine has been heavily contested in medical studies in the last few decades, the monumental studies on the subject have emphasised the place of traditional medicine in basic health services. Insignificant attention has been devoted to examine the ethical problems associated with traditional medicine advertising. Critical look at the worthiness of some advertising strategies used by practitioners in traditional medicine in launching their products and services on market thus has been largely ignored. Yet, though advertising is key to helping traditional medicine practitioners’ products and services known by prospective customers, this research registers a number of morally negative effects that seem to outweigh the merits that the activity brings to prospective customers. The paper adopts southern African urban societies, and in particular Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe as particular references. The choice of the trio is not accidental, but based on the fact that these countries have in the last few decades been flooded with traditional medicine practitioners/traditional healers from within the continent and from abroad. Most of these practitioners use immoral advertising strategies in communicating to the public the products and services they offer. It is against this background that this paper examines the morality of advertising strategies deployed by practitioners in launching their products and services. To examine the moral worthiness of the advertising strategies used by traditional medical practitioners, I used qualitative analysis of street adverts as well as electronic and print media. From the results obtained through thematic content analysis, the paper concludes that most of the practitioners in traditional medicine lack both business and medical ethics. That said, the paper urges practitioners to seriously consider the morality of their adverts as in most cases they (adverts) do more harm than good. Further to that, the piece recommends the governments of the affected countries to put in place stringent measures to address this mounting problem

Critical reflections on the principle of beneficence in biomedicine

Medical ethics as a scholarly discipline and a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, anthropology and sociology. As such there are a number of values in medical ethics such as autonomy, non-maleficence, confidentiality, dignity, honesty, justice and beneficence, among others. These values act as guidelines for professionals in the medical fraternity and are therefore used to judge different cases in the fraternity. For purposes of this work, this paper examines the principle of beneficence in biomedicine. Using both hypothetical cases and others in real life situations, the paper reflects on the implications of beneficence in biomedicine. It argues that the principle of beneficence is a prima facie obligation that should “always be acted upon unless it conflicts on a particular occasion with an equal or stronger principle”

Forest insects, personhood and the environment: Harurwa (edible stinkbugs) and conservation in south-eastern Zimbabwe

Includes bibliographical references.This study critically examines the possibilities for the mutual, symbiotic coexistence of human beings, biological organisms (a unique species of insects), and natural forests in a specific environment, Norumedzo, in the south-eastern region of rural Zimbabwe. Based on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in the aforementioned region between December 2011 and December 2012, the study interrogates the enlightenment modernist paradigmatic oppositions such as science versus indigenous knowledge and nature versus culture and as such forms part of a major epistemological shift in Anthropology towards rethinking the binaries created by enlightenment modern thought which have for so long served to confine anthropological attention to the social. The study advances the argument that modernist divides/binaries are artificial and impede understanding of environmentalities, especially of relationships between social ‘actors’ in any given space, given that mutual relationships and interactions between humans and other beings as well as between diverse epistemologies are an effective proxy of nurturing ‘sustainable’ conservation. The study demonstrates how some aspects of the emerging body of literature in the post-humanities and relational ontologies can work to grasp the collaborative interactional space for different social “actors” in the environment through which knowledge communities can be extended. Given that the post-humanities approach advanced in this work focuses attention on relationships among people, animals, ancestors, and things, it rethinks the enlightenment modernist division of the world into subjects and objects, that is, into humans and things. Rethinking those divisions enables fresh conversations between the [Western] sciences and other knowledge forms especially indigenous epistemologies. In this study, the rethinking of those divides is facilitated by an anthropological exploration of the social interconnectedness and mutual interdependence of rural Zimbabweans, forest insects known as edible stinkbugs (harurwa in vernacular) and the natural forests which, in fact, are critical to understanding the eco-systemic knowledges upon which livelihoods of many rural Zimbabweans are hinged

The effects and socio-economic contribution of Batonga Community Museum in Zimbabwe : an ethnographic field study

Zimbabwean history is rooted in ethnic and cultural identities, inequalities, and injustices which the post-colonial government has sought to address since its national independence in 1980. Marginalisation of some ethnic groups has been one of the persistent problems in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Of particular significance to this thesis has been the marginalisation of the BaTonga people of north-western Zimbabwe. The marginalisation of the BaTonga people is historical with its roots traceable from the colonial era through the early years of national independence. Post-colonial Zimbabwe's emphasis on cultural identity and confirmation has, however, prompted the establishment of community museums such as the BaTonga Community Museum (BCM), to promote cultures of the local people. The establishment of cultural heritage sites such as the BCM has, however, impacted on the lives of the local people in various ways. This study critically examines the effects and socio-economic contribution of the BCM to the local communities, which ranges from generation of revenue to education training, environmental conservation and creation of employment in several sectors of the economy. On examining this topic, I draw extensively on the work of Kopytoff, who wrote about biographies of things. In his work, Kopytoff argues that all things, including cultural objects relate in a way that allows the analysis of relationships between persons and things as a process of social transformation that involves a series of changes in status. As Kopytoff (1986) insists, cultural biographical approach is culturally informed given that things are culturally constructed and reconstructed in much the same way people are culturally (re-)constructed through time. I draw on the work of Kopytoff in a critically sympathetic manner to delve into the effects and socio-economic contribution of the BCM to the local communities. I, nevertheless, bring to the fore the argument that although Kopytoff does not explicitly argue that things have life, his cultural biographical approach implies this and that by tracing a biography of a thing we recognise its agency as 7 well. It is through the careful analysis of agency of these things that I examine the effects and socio-economic contribution of the BCM to communities surrounding the site

The effect of employee turnover on performance: a case study of the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Arts and Culture.

Master of Commerce. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2017.Employee turnover influences both employees and the performance of an organisation. When employee turnover occurs in an organisation, the remaining employees have to acquire new skills. Organisations endure the loss of certain skills that are not easy to replace and bear the cost of recruitment and performance level equal to the person who has the left the organisation. Employee turnover is a major component that destabilises the performance of organisations. Government departments in South Africa have been struggling with the issue of retaining skilled employees, as they have been moving to better paying corporate organisations in the private sector. When employees depart from an organisation, the remaining employees tend to perform additional work until another employee is recruited, which influences the performance of the organisation. The study aims to assess the effect of employee turnover on performance at the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) Department of Arts and Culture (DAC) and make recommendations on how to reduce employee turnover and improve performance at the department. The study’s objectives are to identify the factors that cause employee turnover and identify performance challenges faced by the DAC as a whole because of employee turnover. The study will benefit DAC and other government departments in South Africa to enhance performance. The study is exploratory and descriptive in nature. The study undertook mixed methods approach, which is qualitative, and quantitative research design. For data collection, a structured questionnaire was used that comprised of closed-ended and open-ended questions, and 127 KZN DAC employees participated in the study. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and thematic analysis was used to analyse data. The findings show that the causes of employee turnover at the DAC were a lack of career advancement, lack of promotion, unsatisfactory salary, unsatisfactory working conditions, and work stress. Additionally, the performance challenges were wastage of resources, reduction in work productivity, disruptions in service delivery, increased workload and spending too much time training new staff. The study recommended that the Department should improve on mechanisms of getting feedback from its staff members regarding problems that have been identified as causes of high staff turnover rates

Academic contrapower sexual harassment in public universities in Zimbabwe

Sexual harassment in the workplace, including the university, is not a behaviour perceived to be perpetrated only by males. In this article contrapower sexual harassment was investigated to find out whether female students harassed male lecturers at universities, and how harassment manifests with a view to devising measures to mitigate such harassment incidences. A qualitative case study research design was employed to explore the thoughts and experiences of participants at two public universities in Zimbabwe. Purposive sampling was employed in the identification and selection of participants with knowledge and experience of subjecting male lecturers to contrapower sexual harassment. Data were gathered through audio-taped face to face in-depth interviews with female undergraduates using a digital voice recorder. As data were collected through interviews, an iterative process was done. The study verified the existence of contrapower sexual harassment of male lecturers by female students. The study found that the measures that can be taken to mitigate contrapower harassment should include the explicit identification of all behaviours that constitute harassment and their consequences in university codes of conduct and policies. Universities should build a culture of respect in which students and lecturers interact without fear of harassment from either party. Universities need to ensure that lecturers are informed of the available resources should they have disturbing experiences pertaining to harassment from a student

The politics and symbolism of the #ThisFlag in Zimbabwe

In the context of the hashtag movement #ThisFlag, this paper examines the sensual affects drawn from flag symbolism and why the Zimbabwean flag is policed by the state. It uses the symbolism and politics of the hashtag movements by focusing on Evan Mawarires national lament and the Zimbabwean flag. It employs a literary and discursive analysis of Mawarires lament using desktop research on the contestations surrounding the flag. It shows that in dominant nationalist discourses, the flag is imaged as the land/nation and feminised to warrant it utmost respect, protection, sanctity and re/productive capacity. On the other hand, the #ThisFlag has made use of the flag to resist and subvert grand and naturalised dominant discourses of nationalism and citizenship to foster new imagi/nations of the nation. The use of the flag by the movement provoked ZANU-PFs ownership of the national flag, which is quite similar to and has been drawn from the flag of the party, hence the movement was challenging the identity of the party, its ownership and its relevance. The paper shows the fluidity of symbols and symbolic meanings and why #ThisFlag had symbolic radical power and the possibilities of using the states and ZANU-PFs cultural tools to challenge ZANU-PFs hold on national knowledge and power. It contributes to our understanding of both state-power retention and how subaltern voices can uncover the agency of subjects within the very instruments of control incessantly used by dominant regimes.http://www.up.ac.za/en/political-sciences/article/19718/strategic-review-for-southern-africahj2021Historical and Heritage Studie

Use of physiotherapy services by elderly patients at a central hospital in Zimbabwe

The health status of the elderly in a community may he reflected in their use of the available health services. The records of elderly patients who utilized physiotherapy services at a central hospital in Zimbabwe over a five-year period (1989-1993) were reviewed to determine the range of medical problems for which the patients had been treated through physiotherapy. It is argued that physiotherapy has a role to play in improving the quality of life of older Zimbabweans with physical disabilities. Further, a case is made out for physiotherapists to become involved in health-education programmes to prevent the occurrence of factors which contribute to the onset of physical disability in older persons

Decentering nationalism: Representing and contesting Chimurenga in Zimbabwean popular culture

Philosophiae Doctor - PhDThis study seeks to uncover the non-coercive, intricate and insidious ways which have generated both the 'willing' acceptance of and resistance to the rule of Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe. I consider how popular culture is a site that produces complex and persuasive meanings and enactments of citizenship and belonging in contemporary Zimbabwe and focus on 'agency,' 'subversion' and their interconnectedness or blurring. The study argues that understanding nationalism's impact in Zimbabwe necessitates an analysis of the complex ways in which dominant articulations of nationalism are both imbibed and contested, with its contestation often demonstrating the tremendous power of covert forms of resistance. The focus on the politics of popular culture in Zimbabwe called for eclectic and critical engagements with different social constructionist traditions, including postcolonial feminism, aspects of the work of Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. My eclectic borrowing is aimed at enlisting theory to analyse ways in which co-optation, subversion and compromise often coexist in the meanings generated by various popular and public culture forms. These include revered national figures and symbols, sacrosanct dead bodies and retrievals, slogans and campaign material, sport, public speeches, the mass media and music. The study therefore explores political sites and responses that existing disciplinary studies, especially politics and history, tend to side-line. A central thesis of the study is that Zimbabwe, in dominant articulations of the nation, is often constituted in a discourse of anti-colonial war, and its present and future are imagined as a defence of what has already been gained from previous wars in the form of "chimurenga." I argue that formal sites of political contestation often reinforce forms of patriarchal, heterosexist, ethnic, neo-imperial and class authoritarianism often associated only with the ZANU PF as the overtly autocratic ruling party. In turning to diverse forms of popular culture and their reception, I identify and analyze sites and texts that, rather than constituting mere entertainment or reflecting organized and party political struggles, testify to the complexity and intensity of current forms of domination and resistance in the country. Contrary to the view that Zimbabwe has been witnessing a steady paralysis of popular protest, the study argues that slogans, satire, jokes, metaphor, music and general performance arts by the ordinary people are spaces on which "even the highly spectacular deployment of gender and sexuality to naturalize a nationalism informed by the 'efficacy' of a phallocentric power 'cult' is full of contestations and ruptures.

EVALUATION OF THE NZIRAMASANGA REPORT OF INQUIRY INTO EDUCATION IN ZIMBABWE, 1999: THE CASE OF GENDER EQUITY IN EDUCATION

ABSTRAC