Notes towards a history of Khoi literature

This article puts forward a revisionist history of Khoi literature, and also presents a number of translated Khoi narratives that have not been available in English before. Compared to the large volume of Bushman literature and scholarship, there has been very little Khoi literature and engagement with it, and an argument is presented to account for this gap in South African cultural history. Until now, the major source of Khoi literature was Wilhelm Bleek’s Reynard the Fox in South Africa (1864), and this text is critically interrogated as a limiting version of Khoi orature. An alternative corpus of Khoi narratives is presented that was originally published in Leonard Schultze’s Aus Namaland und Kalahari (1907).Web of Scienc

Little perpetrators, witness-bearers and the young and the brave: towards a post-transitional aesthetics

The aesthetic choices characterizing work produced during the transition to democracy have been well documented. We are currently well into the second decade after the 1994 election - what then of the period referred to as the 'second transition'? Have trends consolidated, hardened, shifted, or have new 'post-transitional' trends emerged? What can be expected of the future 'born free' generation of writers and readers, since terms such as restlessness, dissonance and disjuncture are frequently used to describe the experience of constitutional democracy as it co-exists with the emerging new apartheid of poverty? Furthermore, what value is there in identifying post-transitional aesthetic trends?DHE

The Rainbow Womb: Rape and Race in South African Fiction of the Transition

A striking pattern is emerging in fictional representations of rape published during the South African transition from apartheid to multi-racial democracy.1 It is a configuration that relentlessly inserts race into the scene of rape by focussing almost exclusively on interracial rape.2 The light shone on rape is refracted through the prism of race as the country once characterised by racial divisions refashions itself into the ‘rainbow nation’. Within this schema, the consequence of rape is measured in the birth of a ‘mixed race’ child. So dominant is this plot that even a narrative of male rape, K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams, juxtaposes the rape of a black man by a coloured man with a black woman’s conception of a child by a German father. The substitution of woman’s body by body politic is highlighted in her name, Mmabatho (‘mother of the people’). Compelling though this scenario may be to writers, it is one that fails to ring true in reality, where rape is overwhelmingly intraracial and the rate of conception comparatively low.3 The literary script of rape thus distorts the realities of sexual violence in order to direct attention away from the violated female body — or the male body gendered female — and focus it on a trail of ‘blood’ weaving through the woman’s womb

Textual Subjects in Motion: Letters, Literature and Print Medium in an Indian-South African Exchange (1928-1946)

This article traces an epistolary exchange between South Africa and India that was animated by the circulation of print media and literary texts. The exchange – between the South African archivist, poet and social historian MK Jeffreys and the Indian statesmen and scholars VS Srinivasa Sastri and P Kodanda Rao – is read as forming part of a larger web of personal and political relations and textual traffic that contributed to the production of Indian Ocean public spheres. Through engagement with this particular case study, the article seeks to contribute to the scholarly turn from explorations of relations between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ or along a North-South axis toward elaborating those engaging South-South connections within the Indian Ocean arena

Beyond the 90-90-90: refocusing HIV prevention as part of the global HIV response

Introduction: The remarkable expansion in availability of antiretroviral therapy (ART) over the past two decades has transformed HIV infection into a manageable chronic condition. People with HIV infection now live long and healthy lives on treatment that is simpler, safer and cheaper. According to UNAIDS estimates, the global coverage of ART reached 46% in 2015, resulting in a 26% decrease in annual HIV-related deaths since 2010. Such success has positioned treatment access at the centre of the global HIV response as a way to prevent mortality, morbidity and HIV transmission through a “Treat All” approach. Continuing expansion of treatment is needed to further reduce HIV-related mortality. This progress with treatment, however, masks a stagnation in the estimated annual number of new HIV infections. Continuing levels of HIV incidence despite treatment scale-up stem from several factors, which should be addressed in order to prevent new infections and decrease the numbers of people requiring treatment in the future. Discussion: ART can only reach those already diagnosed, and although it is unclear what proportion of new infections occur during acute and early infection prior to treatment initiation, phylogenetic studies suggest that it might be substantial. Thus, better testing approaches to reach the 40% of people with undiagnosed HIV infection as early as possible are critical. New approaches to reach men, young people and key populations, where HIV risk is highest and HIV prevention, testing and treatment coverage is lowest, are also needed. Overall coverage of effective prevention interventions remains low, enabling HIV transmission to occur, or time is required to show population-level effects. For example, the full impact of the medical male circumcision intervention will be seen once a larger proportion of men in age cohorts with high incidence are circumcised. Finally, strategically focused pre-exposure prophylaxis interventions have the potential to prevent HIV acquisition among populations at substantial risk, averting treatment costs in coming years. Conclusions: The United Nations (UN) targets to end AIDS include the “90-90-90” targets for HIV diagnosis, treatment and viral suppression. While 90-90-90 has been widely emphasized and adopted by countries and international funders, the focus thus far has largely been on increasing access to ART – the second “90.” A similar emphasis on achieving UN HIV prevention targets and adequate funding for meeting these is essential, alongside treatment, in order to reduce population-level incidence and change the trajectory of the HIV epidemic over the long term