Centre for Social Science Research

The Families and Societies Research Unit, together with the NRF Chair in Customary Law, Indigenous Values and Human Rights hosted a two-day workshop on the relationship and interaction between gender, generation and negotiating power in families on the 21 and 22 of Jan 2019.This workshop provided a forum for scholars working within the sociology and regulation of personal relationships and gender to consider generation and generational interaction through an intersectional framework. The workshop examined how a focus on generation facilitate new understandings of the processes by which social inequalities are made and perpetuated in our intimate lives. Several leading scholars in the area attended the workshop including Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, Deevia Bhana, Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Michael Yarbrough and several emerging scholars including four FaSRU doctoral students. John Comaroff acted as a discussant for the first day and made insightful contributions throughout the course of the day. Elena would like to thank everyone who participated in the workshop and is looking forward to taking this work further.

Elena Moore and Prof. Himonga, in the Mail & Guardian, outline the ways in which the practices of succession in customary law can be challenging for widows. Despite the introduction of new laws, widows can face discriminatory practices and can be denied inheritance following the death of a customary husband. These issues have been in the news recently following the death of Jubalani Tsambo (HHP) and the subsequent court application by his customary wife, Lerato Sengadi. For more see: ‘https://mg.co.za/article/2018-11-23-00-customary-law-can-pose-problems-for-widows

This week the FaSRU team attended the Centre of Excellence in Human Development’s conference on ‘Children, Families and the State: Contestation and Collaboration’ at Wits University. Elena spoke in a panel on “Methodologies for finding out more”. The conference was well attended by most scholars working on children and families in South Africa together with a range of policymakers, postgraduate students and representatives from government.

The presentation will reflect on the pragmatic, political, epistemological and methodological possibilities and challenges of conducting collaborative longitudinal qualitative research with families in 21 study communities in South Africa and Zambia in the context of a large-scale cluster randomised HIV prevention trial. Through describing the will describe the design and conduct of the qualitative cohort study nested within this one trial context, the presentation will explore the benefits and limitations of forms of knowledge produced through this approach. Further, it will think through broader possibilities for and implications of integrating collaborative ethnographic and social scientific research into population-based clinical trials and public health research.

The Mzantsi Wakho and HEY BABY teams – based at ASRU – gave 14 presentations at the International AIDS Conference 2018 and associated events, held on July 19-27, 2018 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Dr Elona Toska presented early findings on pregnancy among adolescents living with HIV in South Africa from the HEY BABY and Mzantsi Wakho studies, while Lesley Gittings presented research on adolescent and provider views on adherence and defaulting, an initiative led by Dr Rebecca Hodes, ASRU director, in collaboration with the Paediatric Adolescent Treatment for Africa.