Faculty of Humanities
School of Basic Social Sciences
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Studies of San rock art in southern Africa have appealed to researchers for specificities of individual rock art sites in order to counter the prevailing practice of conceptualising San rock art as a homogenous entity. This article analyses social interactions through looking at diverse ethnographies and how such ethnographies can reveal information regarding one rock art site. Studies of individual rock art sites can start to unravel the nuanced, diverse and complex nature of San religious beliefs and rites and how these beliefs were affected or influenced by social contact with other social formations. Following Dowson (1994), this article argues that the notion of entering the spiritual realm to obtain powers, potency or medicines or in order to create rain is a notion that acted as a mediatory belief between groups, which allowed Xhosa-speakers and Khoe-San-speakers to have specific third spaces of enunciation, in effect, to exchange beliefs around supernatural creatures.
Contact person: Mr LC Pinto.
The presentation showcased the Academic Development Programme which is a skills-based programme to help students beginning their university education to improve their reading and writing, analytical, and research abilities. ADP helps students learn how to communicate their own thoughts, ideas and opinions effectively. After running this successfully for numerous years in Geography, Ms Kirsten Robinson (Co-presenter) demonstrated with the use of statistics that students attending ADP were doing far better than the rest of the class not attending ADP. Archaeology ran the ADP program in 2011 and ADP students marks were consistent and stated that they would take Archaeology in 2012.
Contact person: Mr LC Pinto.
My research in 2011 has taken two directions: both of which stem from my long standing research relationship in the Venda region of Limpopo Province. I have travelled to Venda 6 times this year to conduct ethnographic investigations into a child antiretroviral (arv) workshop based at Vhutshilo Mountain School in the village of Tshikombani. This is the only example of a child arv workshop in the country, possibly the world, where HIV positive children teach HIV positive children how to take their medication. My anthropological analysis frames this through hierarchical structures of knowledge transfer that originate in Venda initiation schools, and I analyse the workshops as ritualistic rites of passage. I presented a paper on this at the American Anthropological Association in Canada in November, 2011. My second research project results from my relocation to work in Pretoria early in 2011. It is an anthropological analysis of Venda car stickers. The old Venda Bantustan flag appears on many cars driven my Venda speaking people in and around Pretoria. In response to this, another sticker has appeared, in which the old Venda flag has a black cross through it, next to the South African flag, with text reading ‘Vhavenda! You are South Africa! Stop the Bantustan Mentality!’. In my analysis of this, I trace the origin of this symbolic struggle to the recent battle for paramount kingship in Venda which was instigated by the Nhlapo commission. The pattern is that those supporting the royal house of Mphephu have the old Bantustan flag, but those supporting the rival royal house of Tshivhase use the other sticker. I trace this back to Bantustan politics and the transition to democracy, in which Tshivhase emerged as an ANC leader, and Mphephu, who ran the Bantustan government, struggled to shake off the shackles of the past.
Contact person: Dr FG McNeill.
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