SINCE the first edition of this book went to press I have come across some fresh information of considerable importance which I have felt bound to include in my work. Further, I have thought it desirable to add descriptions of several practices which were omitted from my original draft. These additions appear below under the titles of the respective chapters in which they might otherwise have been incorporated. Foremost among these are those derived from the valuable Venda and Ndebele texts gathered from native informants, translated, and published in the form of Government blue books by Dr. N. J. Van Warmelo. I was not aware, when I wrote my book, that these texts contained musical information. This information, however, is of such value that I have considered it advisable to quote much of it verbatim, particularly as it was obtained, in the vernacular, from native informants.

CHAPTER I: RATTLES AND CLAPPERS

Bushman rattles.

A description of a rudimentary type of rattle was obtained by Dr. Bleek and Miss Lloyd from a /Xam Bushman between 1870 and 1880. It has been recently edited and published by Miss D. F. Bleek. ‘They strike sticks (upon each other), because they want the sun to come out. They also beat shoes together, when they see the sun getting small; they beat the shoes because they want the sun to come out, until it gets big, until it comes out, and stands outside in the sky. Then they leave off.’ This passage describes how the Bushmen behaved during an eclipse of the sun, and it is interesting to note that they deliberately attempted to attract the sun's attention by beating sticks together, for, as they said, ‘We fear the sun not alittle, for we know that if we should be on the hunting-ground and the sun were to go in, darkness would shut as out from home.’;

Venda rattles.

Dr. Van Warmelo has obtained and translated a number of original Tshivenda texts in which two types of Venda rattle are described. The first type is described in a passage which deals with one phase of the sungwi, or circumcision ceremony of the Venda girls.

This chapter outlines current developments in relation to dynamic assessment (DA), an interactive assessment procedure that uses deliberate and planned mediational teaching and assesses the impact of that teaching on subsequent performance. The objective of the chapter is to critically review the major criticisms of the traditional ‘static’ testing approach, discuss the theoretical basis of the DA approach and its relevance within the South African context, and present an overview of current empirical research on DA.

There has been an increased demand worldwide for nondiscriminatory assessment procedures (Haywood & Tzuriel, 1992; Hessels & Hessels-Schlatter, 2002; Nell, 2000; Seabi & Amod, 2009; Skuy, Gewer, Osrin, Khunou, Fridjhon & Rushton, 2002; Tzuriel & Kaufman, 1999). The major criticism regarding the use of standardised intelligence tests is that they primarily reflect Eurocentric, middleclass values and attitudes (Nell, 2000). It is argued that they do not accommodate diversity in relation to culture, language, values, experiential background and cognitive styles. Given the political, socio-economic and educational conditions that have prevailed in South Africa under the apartheid regime and as an effect of its legacy, the application of traditional assessment procedures may be unfair to certain groups of people. Alternative, more equitable forms of assessment such as the DA approach have been proposed by several theorists and researchers for use within the multilingual and multicultural South African context (Amod, 2003; De Beer, 2005; Fairon, 2007; Floquet, 2008; Gewer, 1998; Lipson, 1992; Murphy & Maree, 2006; Seabi & Amod, 2009; Skuy et al., 2002).

A further criticism directed at the use of traditional intelligence tests/ psychometric evaluations is that the scores are derived from a ‘static’ testing situation which provides minimal information regarding the individual's learning potential or potential to respond to intervention. ‘Static’ testing refers to the administration of tests in a standardised manner as stipulated in test manuals. Intervention which could include feedback, training and teaching is refrained from in the traditional static testing approach (Hessels-Schlatter & Hessels, 2009). The limitation of this approach is that the knowledge and skills needed to fulfil the requirements of tests have not necessarily been taught to the child, and this will undoubtedly limit his or her ability to perform well on these tests. In essence, the emphasis in DA is on intra-individual change rather than inter-individual difference.

EVERY race inhabiting South Africa either has or had a drum of some kind at one period of its existence, but such drums vary considerably in both form and function.

Apparently the drum was not originally employed by the Bushmen. In spite of thorough investigation I have not been able to find any reference to it in the earliest records, and those which appear later seem to me to indicate clearly that the instrument was borrowed from the Hottentots. Borcherds described a drum which he saw played by the Bushmen near the Orange River in 1801: ‘The Bushmen were enjoying themselves with playing their native music, produced by beating on a pot covered with skin, a rude drum known as the rommelpot.’ He pointed out that the name is that known to the colonists, and also stated that drum-beating, as well as dancing and loud outcries, were indulged in by the Bushmen during thunder-storms and on moonlight nights. The name rommelpot, however, was that by which the colonists described the Hottentot drum; the origin of the application of this name to the instrument I shall deal with when discussing the drum of the latter race. The drum observed by Burchell in the hands of Bushman performers at Kaobi's kraal in 1812, and called by him a ‘water-drum’, appears to show the Hottentot influence distinctly. It is a great pity that Burchell did not obtain the name given by the Bushmen to this instrument, as thereby the question would probably have been cleared up. According to Burchell,

Baragwanath Hospital was a difficult place in which to work. For much of its existence, its overcrowded, understaffed wards were, in the words of one of its doctors, David Seftel, ‘a cacophony of voices and sick sounds, a theatre of the bizarre and the absurd which was sometimes difficult to imagine as a place of healing rather than a carnival’. It was considered by many to be a ‘backwater’ hospital, often referred to disparagingly as ‘that place beyond Uncle Charlie's’ (the roadhouse that came to mark the end of Johannesburg and the beginning of Soweto) and spoken of as playing second fiddle to the older, more established white hospital, the Johannesburg General. Asher Dubb said that ‘the medical school hierarchy was concentrated on the Johannesburg Hospital, that was seen as the flagship … There was a perception, which I personally think was exaggerated, that Bara was the poor relation’.

In contrast many Baragwanath doctors, including some world-class specialists, talked about the hospital in glowing tones. They stressed that Baragwanath was a unique and special place to work in, one that offered unparalleled opportunities for professional and personal growth. Then there were others for whom Baragwanath, and the type of medicine practised there, chimed well with their political and social identity.

Patients, pathology and physicians

Baragwanath could not rival Johannesburg General Hospital's research funding and resources. The third superintendent, WHF Kenny, who served from 1963 to 1969, put it as follows: ‘Baragwanath Hospital has no research appointments and no research funds other than those private contributions gleaned by enthusiastic members of staff. There are no departmental typists and no tape recorders; records are liable to get lost.’ Two decades later there were still major discrepancies between resources at the two institutions. As David Seftel was later to say, ‘At Jo'burg there were armies of people helping you, at Bara you had to draw blood yourself and get it 500 metres from the ward to the lab. You had to run it there and then back to your patient. This was health care on the edge where patients’ survival was based upon your own physical agility as much as your mental acumen.’ Despite these deficiencies, David Seftel perceived Baragwanath as an advantageous site for important medical innovations and developments, ‘the classic case of ingenuity in the face of adversity.

Working in the traumatic stress field for the past 25 years in South Africa as therapist, trainer, clinical supervisor, consultant and researcher – with populations as diverse as rape and torture survivors; political detainees; accident, crime and domestic violence victims; combat veterans; refugees and the traumatically bereaved – I have found it of great value to draw upon aspects of psychodynamic thinking and practice, as will be elaborated in this chapter. During these 25 years the landscape of trauma and trauma intervention has changed markedly. My earliest exposure to trauma intervention was through involvement in the feminist- influenced, rape crisis organisations that grew up around the country in the 1970s. The counselling offered by these organisations was located within a crisis counselling model influenced by insights from feminism about understanding the causes and effects of sexual violence. Later, in the 1980s, like many other progressive professionals in the country, I became involved in an anti-apartheid group, the Organisation for Appropriate Social Services in South Africa (OASSSA), which aimed to address mental health issues relating to oppression and political repression, including trauma-related issues. Two central projects of OASSSA were, firstly, to offer counselling services to ex-detainees, many of whom had been tortured or abused during their time in detention, and secondly, to run crisis counselling workshops for community groups. The latter often entailed conducting some trauma intervention for the trainees themselves, many of whom had been damaged in a variety of ways within the political system. During this time few of us explicitly understood our work within the framework of traumatic stress, a diagnostic and conceptual category that really only gained purchase in South Africa in the early 1990s, although it is now widely employed by a range of practitioners and theorists across the country. Pioneers of trauma work in South Africa tended to become involved in such work in large part out of a political commitment to victims and survivors, given that traumatised populations often represent groups that have been oppressed in some way. In contemporary South Africa there is a much broader spectrum of people involved in trauma work dealing with a wide range of victims, much of this work being undertaken in workplace employee assistance programmes.

Psychologists worldwide have used the Rorschach Inkblot Method ever since Hermann Rorschach first published his research in 1921 (Rorschach, 1921/1942). The clinician presents a standard set of ten cards with inkblots and asks the client to indicate what she or he sees on each card, where it is seen and what characteristics of the blot make it look the way it does. Clients’ responses suggest how people perceive and think about their world, solve problems, make decisions, manage stress and view themselves and others. The Rorschach has been accurately described as a perceptual, an associational, an interpersonal and a sequential task. Taken together, these features enable the Rorschach user to come to a remarkably comprehensive interpretation of personality processes and structures (Weiner, 2000).

Those in South Africa who use the Rorschach as more than a mere projective technique currently use the Exner Comprehensive System, into which all of the empirically defensible features of other, earlier approaches have been merged. Exner's work represents a major attempt, mostly successful, at integrating some of the most meaningful contributions of earlier interpretation systems – for example, those of Rorschach himself, Piotrowski, Rapaport, Beck, Hertz and Klopfer. Research regarding the Exner Comprehensive System is still ongoing, also in South Africa.

The Rorschach as a personality test

The main aim of the Rorschach is not to achieve a specific psychiatric diagnosis, but to enhance understanding of the interactive, dynamic personality processes and characteristics of a unique individual (Exner, 2003; Meloy, 2005).

The Exner Comprehensive System enables the Rorschach user to come to wellvalidated conclusions about personality features such as capacity for control and coping with stress, affective functioning, interpersonal perception, self-perception and cognitive processes. The latter include the use of cognitive defences, rationality of thinking, accuracy of perception and problem-solving style. Because it measures personality processes, the data gathered can contribute to identifying conditions that are defined by personality characteristics (Weiner, 2000). Specific diagnostic indices have been developed, but have to be applied with caution, taking into consideration contextual information and the results of other personality tests. These indices include a Suicide Index, a Depression Index, a Perceptual-Thinking Index (picking up on irrational thinking and perceptual distortions often associated with psychosis or organic brain syndromes), a Coping Deficit Index (sensitive to features associated with personality disorders), a Hypervigilance Index and an Obsessive Style Index.

Intake night – Baragwanath Hospital

Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali

The ward was like a battlefield –

victims of war

waged in the dark alley

flocked in cars, taxis, ambulances, vans and trucks.

They bore

knife wounds

axe wounds

bullet wounds

burns and lacerations.

A stench

of fresh blood

warm urine

excreta,

mingled with iodine and methylated spirits.

Groans

sighs

moans – Help me doctor!

curses – C'mon bloody nurse!

Doctors darting

from place to place

with harried nurses at their sides.

‘So! It's Friday night!

Everybody is enjoying

in Soweto.’

Baragwanath Hospital

Oupa Thando Mthimkulu

Speak Baragwanath speak

How many souls did you swallow

Who were intentionally killed

Who genuinely and sincerely died

How many arrived satisfactorily dead

Come Bara, tell us the real tale

Of your patients – what do you have to say?

Are they really gone forever

Did they all have inquests

Did they all claim indemnities

How many won their cases

Baragwanath hospital, big one

Are you hospitable enough

To testify to us all?

Baragwanath Hospital was built on the outskirts of the burgeoning black township that would become Soweto, situated just over twenty kilometres from Johannesburg, South Africa's wealthiest and most populous city – not only the largest hospital serving black Africans in South Africa but also the largest specialist hospital in the southern hemisphere (the hospital's size was recognised in the Guinness Book of Records in 1997). Over its lifespan, Baragwanath has gained a legendary status. The Soweto tourist industry includes ‘Bara’ – as the hospital has come to be affectionately known – as a highlight of the ‘Day-in-Soweto’ tours. Many medical students and doctors from around the world have passed through the hospital for their dose of the ‘Bara experience’ – considered unique because of the sheer numbers of patients, the severity of the pathology presented, and the quantity of trauma cases treated. Baragwanath was (and is) ever-present in the media. In the popular imagination and in official publications the hospital's distinctiveness has often been invoked:

In 1990 South Africa entered a period of transition to democracy. President FW de Klerk announced the unbanning of the ANC, the Pan Africanist Congress and the Communist Party. Nelson Mandela and his fellow political prisoners began to be released and South Africa was on the path to its first democratic election. A new phoenix was born at Baragwanath, a phoenix that was to live through tumultuous times.

The changes in hospital policy, discussed in Chapter 1, began the process of transition. Not only was Baragwanath officially desegregated but its administration also became further centralised. This did little to affect daily functioning. The historical problems of staff shortages, lack of funding and ever-increasing patient numbers continued to plague the hospital which faced, in addition, the new challenges of HIV/AIDS, a gradual breakdown in discipline and management structures, and increasing labour tensions. The major strikes that occurred at the hospital in 1992 and 1995 set the background for Baragwanath's transition, one marked by continuity and change.

According to the South African Medical Journal of August 1992, the first diagnosed cases of HIV/AIDS were recorded at Baragwanath in 1987. By December 1990, 181 HIV-positive black adults had been admitted to the medical wards. Four times this number had been identified as HIV-positive. Half of these patients were in the late stages of HIV infection and two years later thirty-four per cent of those diagnosed in 1990 had died. In 1990, fiftyone symptomatic children were also identified at Baragwanath.

Over the next few years the numbers continued to grow and HIV/ AIDS quickly became an important aspect of the increasing workload and the increase in in-hospital mortality. HIV-related paediatric deaths during hospital stays at Baragwanath increased from eleven children in 1992 to 111 deaths in 1996. Seeing the challenges that HIV/AIDS was posing for the hospital, even in those early years, the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and that of Paediatrics at the University of the Witwatersrand developed the Baragwanath Perinatal HIV Research Unit which was initiated in 1991 by Dr James McIntyre. By 1995 the unit was formalised, and it has continued to be overseen by McIntyre and Dr Glenda Gray.

Torfing said that we must accept a world of politics full of antagonism. Once we accept this, we need to then envisage how it is possible under those conditions to create or maintain a pluralistic democratic order, with a distinction between ‘enemy’ and ‘adversary’ (1999: 121). One of my main premises is that ‘democracy’ is secured precisely through its resistance to perfect or final realisation, and it is characterised ultimately by indeterminacy. My conceptual starting point, then, is that the tension between the media and the ANC is internal to democracy itself. One of my conclusions is that, through populist interventions such as ideological labelling, disparate antagonisms are condensed into one figure, ‘the media’. Antagonistic interpellations against the media include that it is a body which is anti-transformation, that it lacks diversity, is profitdriven, is an enemy of the people, lacks ubuntu and is hysterical. In trying to control the media in South Africa, the ANC and some of its alliance partners have not accepted that a fractured society cannot exist without contestations or that there is a distinction between enemy and adversary in a pluralistic democratic order. The ideological labelling is a case of obfuscation.

My argument throughout this book is that the independent media is an agonistic, adversarial space and journalists are legitimate adversaries who have a significant role to play in the creation of, and the deepening of, a pluralistic democratic order. It is therefore inappropriate, but also unfair, to gaze on them as enemies, anti-transformation and unpatriotic. To constitute the media as an ‘us and them’ is to make it an outsider to the democratic space. Through the use of psychoanalytical concepts of ideological interpellation, Master- Signifiers and floating signifiers, social fantasy, and the gaze, I suggest that the ANC is unmasked as having regressive tendencies, and through its paranoia and hysteria is itself, rather than the media, blocking transformation. The ANC has turned the issue around to brand the media as the regressive force, indulging in ideological interpellation of critical voices in the media, hailing them through the performative of naming. It has summoned the intervention of a media appeals tribunal as a means of control.

IN this chapter, accent is understood in the most literal way, as it refers to the varieties of English spoken by South Africans. Accentedness and lack of accentedness are themes running through the work of Njabulo Ndebele, considered by many to be the leading intellectual in South Africa today. He has published some highly acclaimed fiction (in particular Fools and The Cry of Winnie Mandela), but it is his cultural and literary essay collections, Rediscovery of the Ordinary (1991, 1994 and 2006) and Fine Lines from the Box (2007) that have come to have the greatest influence. Many of the pieces collected in Rediscovery of the Ordinary and in Fine Lines from the Box were delivered as addresses and lectures, and contain traces of and references to the particular contexts for which they were written and where they were delivered. Repeatedly, one sees Ndebele drawing attention to the fact that every speech utterance is the activation of intertextual fields. The second volume of essays contains a rather shocking postscript by a South African academic, Tlhalo Raditlhalo. Raditlhalo has written elsewhere on the effects of exile on South Africa's literary traditions, and his approach to literary history is a good example of the accented scholarship about which this book theorises. Being invited to contribute a piece on Njabulo Ndebele's work, writes Raditlhalo, was ‘the culmination of a dream long harboured’ (2007: 257). Yet, contrasted with this statement of a dream long dreamt and now about to come true, is another anecdote which at first reading seems perplexing. It is a story of silence and misperception, of lack of trust in his audience. Raditlhalo (2007: 257) begins:

The Media Appeals Tribunal Resolution adopted at the ANC National General Council in Durban, 20-24 September 2010.

The existing self-regulatory system (Press Ombudsman and Press Council) is ineffective and needs to be strengthened to balance the rights of the media and those of other citizens, guided by the values enshrined in our bill of rights, for example human dignity, equality and freedom. The commission affirmed the call for Parliament to conduct a public enquiry on:

a) balancing the rights enshrined in the Constitution, like rights to dignity, freedom of expression and media, guided by the values enshrined in our bill of rights, human dignity, equality and freedom.

b) enquiry on transformation of the print media in respect of a [black economic empowerment] media charter, ownership and control, advertising and marketing and the desirability of the establishment of a media accountability mechanism, for example the media appeals tribunal.

c) the media accountability mechanism [should be] in the public interest including the investigations into the best international practices, without compromising the values enshrined in our Constitution

d) what regulatory mechanisms can be put in place to ensure the effective balancing of rights, this may include self-regulation, co-regulation and independent regulation. Any media accountability mechanism, should be independent of commercial and party political interests, should act without fear, favour and prejudice, should be empowered to impose appropriate sanctions and must not be pre-publication censorship.

In preparation for this enquiry, the ANC will itself submit to Parliament its own submissions. (Source: The Daily Maverick: 27 September 2010: www.thedailymaverick. co.za)

TRAVELS TO THE CONGO

In the winter of 1931 there was a huge international exhibition in the town of Elizabethville in the Katanga region of the Congo. This exhibition was funded by the Belgian, Belgian Congo, South African and Northern and Southern Rhodesian governments. With the assistance of the railways department here in South Africa, Plaatje was able to travel to the Congo to learn about the affairs and lives of the African people in that country. The colonisers of that country were the Belgians, and the language of instruction was French. Their literature was written in French.

On his return from the Congo,lx Plaatje addressed a large gathering, including many Europeans, in Bulawayo. The chief justice of Southern Rhodesia, Mr Justice Russell, who was also the chairman of the conference, introduced Plaatje with moving and heartfelt appreciation. He had lived in South Africa when he had been a member of the Cape Provincial Council and had known Plaatje since those days. Plaatje related how Africans in the Congo were still behind South Africans, especially in the standard of education, the size of their educational institutions and the number of schools serving a population of around twenty million. Nevertheless, African people in the Congo did jobs which were reserved for Europeans in South Africa. Some even managed the railways, while others were postmasters and gold-mine managers. Some were train drivers and others were stationmasters, or police commissioners and army generals. Even though African people in that country had been persecuted under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium since around 1912, they were equal to Europeans before the law.

OUR HERITAGE AND THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER OF TRUE TEMPLARS

I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.

As the tents of Kedar, and the curtains of Solomon.

Look not upon me because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me.

My mother's children were angry with me;

They made me keeper of the vineyards;

But mine own vineyard have I not kept.

All the newspapers and periodicals Plaatje edited carried these words – Plaatje's signature, if you will – from Koranta ea Becoana (1901-1909) to Tsala ea Batho (1910-1917), to Boswa jwa rona (Our Heritage) (1931-1932). Only Plaatje really knew the significance of these words. It was as if he was elevating the nations of Africa and celebrating black skin colour.