Editorial

Two decades into the current millennium, there are still questions about the status and situatedness of Africa in the global community. One central question about Africa is the historical footprint and arrangements of the colonial occupiers. From this standpoint, additional questions center on the lived experiences of Africans, especially in terms of the colonial impact on settlement arrangements and planning models. Several policy initiatives aim to empower and improve the African condition from the global to the continental levels. From the global context, the United Nations-inspired Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (2000 to 2015) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2015 to 2030) are instructive. While the former goals focused on the Global South, which included the African subregion, the latter set of goals focused on both the Global North and Global South (Hanson, Puplampu and Shaw, 2018). The SDGs, especially SDG 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities), SDG 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions), and SDG (partnership for the goals) are essential in addressing the nexus of the environment, human settlements, and global partnership. At the continental level is the African Union Agenda 2063 and its inspiring undertones of creating an Africa that Africans want based on sustainability (Africa Union et al., 2016). The important point is that both the global and continental policy initiatives have significant implications for any discussions on coloniality, autonomy, identity, and spatial justice, the issues at the heart of this special issue of the Journal of Inclusive Cities and Built Environment. It is thus an opportune time through this special issue to unpack how well contemporary policy and research on the continent have come to grips with the interplay between (de)coloniality, autonomy, identity, and spatial justice. The special issue aims to contribute in durable ways to the possibilities of reimagining space and place in the built environment from a decolonial lens. The reflections in this issue arise from engagement with questions of spatial difference, autonomy, identity, and change in Africa, aspects of which have become more apparent through the current debates on decolonization. These experiences form the basis of reflection stimulated in this issue to reflect on what confronts and motivates built environment knowledge holders in deepening the critique of past colonial injustices. The question of what the built environment (i.e., planning, urban planning, architecture, housing, social geography, and spatial planning) can do to contribute to the decolonial debate. Colonialism connotes a power relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, often expressed in a superior-inferior binary in state-to-state relations (Young, 2018; Whyte, 2018; Hechter, 2020). The legacies of colonialism are visible in a post-colonial society (MaldonadoTorres, 2017; Bonilla, 2020; Enns and Bersaglio, 2020, Patrick et al., 2022) and the pattern of power relations in such society (Ricaurte, 2019). While many may trace Africa’s colonial realities back to the conquest and subjugation of Africa in the slave trade era (Wabah and N-ue, 2020; Masaka, 2021), one can argue invariably that the official colonialization of Africa was formalized in the Berlin conference of 1884/85, chaired by Otto van Bismark (Idejiora-Kalu, 2019; Babatunde, 2020). The implications of this event for any conceptualization of African identity in the historical contemporary contexts cannot be overemphasized. Identity, it needs to be stressed, is about a sense of self and how others recognize and response to that sense of self. Indeed, is there an African identity currently in an era of neoliberal globalization

Exploring Vrede Community views on government communications on COVID-19.

Research Articles. Criminology and Forensic Studies.The unprecedented speed and scale of the global pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have literally shut down countries and the global economy. Though a limited outbreak of the disease was noticed around December 2019 in Wuhan, China, the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020, and a pandemic on 11 March 2020. While the impact of the disease is unique in different countries because of cultural norms, mitigation efforts and health infrastructure, the biggest challenge of various countries is communicating the behaviour of the disease and public health programmes articulated by various governments to inform and educate their citizens. Vrede in Free State Province, South Africa, has also seen these challenges, ranging from cultural challenges to infodemics, which is a major concern for WHO. Using a qualitative approach, the study adopted the Health Belief Model (HBM) theory to examine the views of the residents of Vrede community on government crises and risk communication strategies with a view to evolving effective communication strategies to achieve public safety. The study adopted the semi-structured interview data collection method and spoke with 12 participants of different sex and age, and analysed the data using the applied thematic analysis. The study concluded that, while infodemic was perceived as misleading information, there is a need for governmental information to become bottom-up in ensuring effective communication

Was wearing a facemask a form of cultural resistance or a crisis communication challenge? Retrospections on Vrede Community experiences.

Research Articles. Criminology and Forensic Studies.It has been three years since the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the warning level for COVID-19 and declared it a global public health emergency. Since then, the virus has killed approximately seven million people. However, some experts believe that this data is an underestimation. The WHO's declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic in 2020 caught everyone off guard, but it was necessary for the global health watchdog to do so that it could be addressed as an emergency. Wearing a facemask was one of the ways public health planners and virologists in many countries thought of stopping the virus's spread before the development of a vaccine. The public, including some conservative politicians in the world, received it with mixed feelings, and some outright rejected it. The apathy towards wearing facemasks also reverberated in South Africa. This study explores this apathy with a view to appreciating the attitudes of the people and why they think wearing a mask is awkward for their culture. Using a qualitative and structured interview research approach, the study interviewed male and female participants in the Vrede community in Freestate Province, and concluded that some of the apathy was based on misunderstandings because the messaging from the government on wearing a facemask and COVID-19 did not quite address their cultural biases and attitudinal dispositions and was not firm on enforcement. The study concludes that the government had to have approached the advocacy for wearing facemasks from an inclusive stakeholder management and crisis communication perspective

The role of indigenous language and appropriate channel as strategies for effective health communication in Vrede.

Research Article: Criminology and Forensic Studies.The World Health Organization (WHO) constitution declares health as a fundamental right of every human being, and describes it as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. WHO mandates member states to promote the health of her citizens as the value is to all including the state. To this end, governments including the ones in the global south have evolved policies, institutions and programmes to achieve these objectives. However, the successes or failures of these objectives differ in communities, and it is based on the how health information is delivered to members of the communities so that they can make informed health decisions. In delivering this health information, the use of language that is indigenous and intelligible to the people is important. Thus, indigenous language is autochthonous, and spoken among native people in a community. It is used for communication, expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release. This paper examined how health information is communicated to members of the community in Vrede, and which indigenous language has been mobilized to address the dominant groups without excluding the others, to what extend do the indigenous people participate in this mobilization, and also the appropriate medium that is preferred by the community members to achieve their health information needs in order to bring about health development and social change in the community. The paper mobilized a qualitative approach by undertaking interviews with varied demography of Vrede to ascertain which indigenous language is preferred and dominant in the town, and if the people including the migrant community are unilingual, bilingual or trilingual. The paper also ascertained the experiences of the residents on health information from government and health institutions, how they receive it, and the medium they consider appropriate. The outcome of the research concluded that indigenous language is an effective communication strategy in disseminating health information in Vrede, thus leading to the social change in the community and improve their wellbeing. It shows that dominant indigenous language should be used in that communication, and the medium of communication to be deployed by the health information planners should be face-to-face communication, community engagement, and the use of social media, especially Facebook