Dynamics of Indian Ocean slavery revealed through isotopic data from the colonial era Cobern Street Burial site, Cape Town, South Africa (1750-1827)

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) intended the Cape of Good Hope to be a refreshment stop for ships travelling between the Netherlands and its eastern colonies. The indigenous Khoisan, however, did not constitute an adequate workforce, therefore the VOC imported slaves from East Africa, Madagascar and Asia to expand the workforce. Cape Town became a cosmopolitan settlement with different categories of people, amongst them a non-European underclass that consisted of slaves, exiles, convicts and free-blacks. This study integrated new strontium isotope data with carbon and nitrogen isotope results from an 18 th -19 th century burial ground at Cobern Street, Cape Town, to identify non-European forced migrants to the Cape. The aim of the study was to elucidate individual mobility patterns, the age at which the forced migration took place and, if possible, geographical provenance. Using three proxies, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr, δ 13 C dentine and the presence of dental modifications, a majority (54.5%) of the individuals were found to be born non-locally. In addition, the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr data suggested that the non-locally born men came from more diverse geographic origins than the migrant women. Possible provenances were suggested for two individuals. These results contribute to an improved understanding of the dynamics of slave trading in the Indian Ocean world

Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities

Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government's post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distinctive identities that are locally relevant and globally aspiring. This has led to the semiotic refiguring of universities from spatial edifices of racially based unequal education, to equal opportunity institutions of higher learning, and to the blurring of historical boundaries between these universities. We conclude that the universities have reconstructed distinct and recognisable identities which speak to a segregated past, but with a post-apartheid voice of equity and redress.IS

The trepidations of an African PhD researcher – who are you and why are you here?

This paper contributes to research that has a predominant focus on western researchers in the global South. Firstly, the paper examines how my African identity fits into a western discourse of being a researcher and their intersections with my other personalities as I world‐travel. ‘World‐travelling’ is about the plurality of selves and an opening for self‐construction. Secondly, the paper elaborates on violence and intimidation in the field and how researchers may succeed or fail in negotiating such risks. As a non‐native researcher in a UK‐Based University, I acknowledge my plurality of selves, and the skills needed to navigate these social worlds

Bioprospecting the African Renaissance: The new value of muthi in South Africa

This article gives an overview of anthropological research on bioprospecting in general and of available literature related to bioprospecting particularly in South Africa. It points out how new insights on value regimes concerning plant-based medicines may be gained through further research and is meant to contribute to a critical discussion about the ethics of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS). In South Africa, traditional healers, plant gatherers, petty traders, researchers and private investors are assembled around the issues of standardization and commercialization of knowledge about plants. This coincides with a nation-building project which promotes the revitalization of local knowledge within the so called African Renaissance. A social science analysis of the transformation of so called Traditional Medicine (TM) may shed light onto this renaissance by tracing social arenas in which different regimes of value are brought into conflict. When medicinal plants turn into assets in a national and global economy, they seem to be manipulated and transformed in relation to their capacity to promote health, their market value, and their potential to construct new ethics of development. In this context, the translation of socially and culturally situated local knowledge about muthi into global pharmaceuticals creates new forms of agency as well as new power differentials between the different actors involved

Without the blanket of the land: agrarian change and biopolitics in post–Apartheid South Africa

This paper connects Marxist approaches to the agrarian political economy of South Africa with post-Marshallian and Foucauldian analyses of distributional regimes and late capitalist governmentality. Looking at South Africa’s stalled agrarian transition through the lens of biopolitics as well as class analysis can make visible otherwise disregarded connections between processes of agrarian change and broader contests about the terms of social and economic incorporation into the South African social and political order before, during and after Apartheid. This can bring a fresh sense of the broader political implications of the course of agrarian change in South Africa, and helps contextualise the enduring salience of land as a flashpoint within South Africa’s unresolved democratic transition

Chronic and structural poverty in South Africa: Challenges for action and research

Ten years after liberation, the persistence of poverty is one of the most important and urgent problems facing South Africa. This paper reflects on some of the findings based on research undertaken as part of the participation of the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape in the work of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), situates it within the broader literature on poverty in South Africa, and considers some emergent challenges. Although PLAAS’s survey, being only the first wave of a panel study, does not yet cast light on short term poverty dynamics, it illuminates key aspects of the structural conditions that underpin long-term poverty: the close interactions between asset poverty, employment-vulnerability and subjection to unequal social power relations. Coming to grips with these dynamics requires going beyond the limitations of conventional ‘sustainable livelihoods’ analyses; and functionalist analyses of South African labour markets. The paper argues for a re-engagement with the traditions of critical sociology, anthropology and the theoretical conventions that allow a closer exploration of the political economy of chronic poverty at micro and macro level

South African Paediatric Surgical Outcomes Study : a 14-day prospective, observational cohort study of paediatric surgical patients

BACKGROUND : Children comprise a large proportion of the population in sub-Saharan Africa. The burden of paediatric surgical disease exceeds available resources in Africa, potentially increasing morbidity and mortality. There are few prospective paediatric perioperative outcomes studies, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). METHODS : We conducted a 14-day multicentre, prospective, observational cohort study of paediatric patients (aged <16 yrs) undergoing surgery in 43 government-funded hospitals in South Africa. The primary outcome was the incidence of in-hospital postoperative complications. RESULTS : We recruited 2024 patients at 43 hospitals. The overall incidence of postoperative complications was 9.7% [95% confidence interval (CI): 8.4–11.0]. The most common postoperative complications were infective (7.3%; 95% CI: 6.2–8.4%). In-hospital mortality rate was 1.1% (95% CI: 0.6–1.5), of which nine of the deaths (41%) were in ASA physical status 1 and 2 patients. The preoperative risk factors independently associated with postoperative complications were ASA physcial status, urgency of surgery, severity of surgery, and an infective indication for surgery. CONCLUSIONS : The risk factors, frequency, and type of complications after paediatric surgery differ between LMICs and high-income countries. The in-hospital mortality is 10 times greater than in high-income countries. These findings should be used to develop strategies to improve paediatric surgical outcomes in LMICs, and support the need for larger prospective, observational paediatric surgical outcomes research in LMICs. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION : NCT03367832.Jan Pretorius Research Fund; Discipline of Anaesthesiology and Critical Care, Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal; Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine, Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Town; Department of Anaesthesia, University of the Witwatersrand; and the Paediatric Anaesthesia Community of South Africa (PACSA).https://bjanaesthesia.org2020-02-01gl2019Anaesthesiolog