Cyril Adonis

• Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)

Apartheid left in its wake a South Africa characterized by social inequalities that are embedded and reflected in all spheres of social life, including the higher education system. While the post-apartheid government has made efforts to transform the higher education system it inherited, the pace has been slow and has fallen significantly short of...

Prior to May 2016, the relatively unknown community of Vuwani in the Limpopo Province of South Africa had hardly been prone to violent protests and destruction of public property. This changed when the Limpopo High Court dismissed an application by the Masia Tribal Council and eight others to set aside the Municipal Demarcation Board’s decision to...

In this chapter we discuss the discursive structure and features of pre-burial visits among the Basotho people. We look at these visits as a pragmatic phenomenon, with a particular focus on the language used and how the social context shapes language use. Language used in these contexts constitutes a particular kind of social action whose function...

Apartheid, as a systemised and institutionalised process of race-based discrimination, exploitation and oppression, left in its wake a deeply traumatised society. Many feel that this collective trauma has not been sufficiently addressed and that this has rendered the peace achieved after Apartheid’s demise increasingly fragile. In addition to this,...

The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) was established in 1997 to promote proper police conduct and to ensure a transformed police service in line with the spirit and purport of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Concerns within the ICD that the police very often do not comply with their recommendations led to a joint ICD/ISS r...

This study explored the issue of generational forgiveness in the political sphere in contemporary South Africa. It is based on qualitative interviews conducted with 20 children and grandchildren (females = 10, males = 10) of victims of Apartheidera gross human rights violations. The interview data were interpretively analysed to uncover underlying...

This study explores interpersonal issues and challenges confronting ex-combatant fathers and their sons in post-apartheid South Africa. It draws on life-story interviews conducted with six father-son pairs. The interviews were subjected to a thematic interpretive analysis, which revealed a number of salient themes. Some of these were shared by both...