Global Kids Online South Africa: barriers, opportunities and risks. A glimpse into South African children’s internet use and online activities

How do children use the internet? How do they access it? Does it present risks or opportunities for them, or both? What do parents think of their children’s online activities? Do they support it as an opportunity for learning? Or do they see it as harmful? We asked 913 children between nine and seventeen years, from three provinces in South Africa, and from different levels of household incomes, these questions and more. To compare their answers and find out more about the parents’ internet use, we asked 532 parents of the same children the same questions. Finally, we dug deeper into the children and parents’ answers with focus group discussions with 49 children and 20 of their parents. The report contains some of the things we found – some surprising, some not. It also makes some recommendations for opportunities for parents, teachers and schools, policy makers and reserachers, and mobile companies

Moral dilemmas: managing white privilege in the context of white female employers’ relationships with black female domestic workers in contemporary South Africa.

Master of Social Science in Psychology. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2015.For many years whiteness has been a neglected topic of study globally, but within the last 20 years academics have made great strides in theorising it. In South Africa, a country with a history of violent racial oppression, understanding the functioning of white privilege holds great relevance for understanding the continued racial hierarchies and race-based tensions in the country. This study sought to investigate the functioning of white privilege in the current setting with a particular focus on the ways in which whites make sense of the continued economic and social privilege they enjoy in post-apartheid South Africa. This was done by examining how white female employers of black African female domestic workers managed their privileged identity in talk about their relationships, considering the moral dilemmas attached to employing a domestic worker. Through the use of a Google+ online community, twelve white female employers from an affluent suburb in KwaZulu-Natal participated in this study, contributing their thoughts and reflections about their relationship with their employees to an online focus groups. This data was analysed using a broadly Foucauldian discourse analysis method, drawing guidance from Willig (2008) and others. Analysis identified patterns of accounting for the participants’ racial identity that suggested that the participants were actively working to produce favourable identity in their talk, despite the unfavourable positioning in which identifying as an employer of domestic worker placed them. This was found to be achieved in two key ways, by either constructing themselves as more moral than their employee (relational morality style) or constructing themselves as more moral than other whites (functional morality style). The participants worked to prove that they were virtuous, ethical people as means of undoing the unflattering characteristics associated with whiteness in South Africa. The findings of this study suggested that through managing how their morality is perceived, whites are able to reconcile their privileged whiteness with post-apartheid

Calling for a comprehensive approach: Violence prevention and early childhood development

Violence and violent crime are significant social problems in South Africa. Yet currently these problems are only addressed as or after they occur, with the state and civil society missing valuable opportunities to prevent violence before it happens. This article focuses on the intersection between early childhood development services and primary violence prevention interventions. It encourages a developmental approach to violence prevention by promoting healthy physical and social development and preventing direct and indirect exposure to violence during early childhood. The article outlines the extent to which this approach is currently reflected in South Africa’s policy framework and proposes areas of intervention based on local and international literature