In recent years, the South African basic and higher education departments have been besieged by egregious forms of violence. Although this has been a worrisome phenomenon dating back to time immemorial, of late, violence is at a very concerning and alarming level. The profusion of violence serves as an indictment to various stakeholders including…

In this paper, the author explores some of the issues associated with teaching about compulsory heterosexuality and schooling in an undergraduate sociology programme. Using a novel approach to gathering data, the article analyses the stories students submitted about themselves or others who were counter normative in terms of gender and sexuality…

South Africa is inherently a violent country. From the service delivery protests, rise in murder rates, gender-based violence, and an increasingly violent higher education sector; South Africans are increasingly feeling vulnerable and despondent about the future. In this paper, I attempt to provide a conceptual understanding of violence in higher…

Gender-based violence (GBV) is one of the greatest social issues affecting South Africa, and universities are no exception. This article reports preliminary results of a pilot study conducted at the University of South Africa (Unisa). The study aimed to ascertain perceptions of GBV among university staff. A range of frequency-seeking questions…

In this article, I critically reflect and describe how our Chess Development Project (CDP), initiated by pre-service teachers at a university in South Africa, helped create a safer, non-violent, and more supportive school environment. This participatory action research (PAR) project highlights the idea that higher education institutions should not…

This article focuses on the behaviour of students during protest action at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). The objectives of the study on which the article is based were to assess factors that contribute to student hooliganism and to evaluate the effects of violent student protests on the university community. The data were collected using…

Of late, South African higher education sectors have been engulfed with spontaneous and frequent protests by students. These protests have often led into violence and horrifying physical injuries to some victims, some victims being students, while some are members of the public. Amongst others, the latest episodes of the #FeesMustFall movement and…

Using Critical Realism, this article looks at articles from selected South African newspapers which reported on the #FeesMustFall protests. The study established that, arising from the protests, was a culture characteried by tensions and distrust amongst stakeholders such as students, university management and the government. This, the article…

On 20 September 2019 in Cape Town, as part of the global protests on inaction on climate change, the African Climate Alliance submitted a memorandum of demands to South African government representatives, one of which was 'the creation of a mandatory climate-education curriculum for South Africa'. This raises the question of how this imperative…

The segregation enforced during apartheid has not only ensured widely disparate South African university landscapes, but also framed constructions of activism in historical discourses of racial disenfranchisement and marginalisation. As a result, activism is implicitly and explicitly associated with disadvantaged universities; with black students;…

The need to transform higher education in South Africa is indisputable. This article explores how the recent #mustfall protests, as an Event, could inform transformation. An Event follows three phases: reframing (shattering the frame through which we understand reality), the fall (the loss of a primordial unity which is a retroactive illusion) and…

This article reports on the emotional factors that contribute to children's sadness. As teachers are the most appropriate caregivers to detect problems and to address the impact of these challenges, 30 teachers asked 224 children (N=224) to draw and describe their experiences of sadness. From these drawings, two distinctive themes emerged, namely…

Objective: In South Africa, Black African women between the ages of 15 and 24 years are especially vulnerable to HIV. The heterosexual transmission of the disease is exacerbated by social and cultural conditions that perpetuate gender relations of inequality. Problematic conceptualisations of femininity increase sexual risk. The objective of this…

Universities, in their multiplex roles of social, political, epistemological and capital reform, are by their constitution expected to both symbolise and enact transformation. While institutions of higher education in South Africa have been terrains of protest and reform -- whether during apartheid or post-apartheid -- the intense multiplex roles…

Background: Exposure to a blended experience has the potential to heighten students' online critical literacy skills, and prepare them to participate in the new online communities that emerge within a networked society. Objectives: This article considered the perceptions of a cohort of third-year undergraduates of the Department of Communication…