Issue #57 ‘Urban Culture’

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INTRODUCTION:

Urban Culture: representations and experiences in/of urban space and culture
Guest editor, JUDE CLARK introduces the issue.

Distinguishing beauty, creating distinctions: the politics and poetics of dress among young black women:
NTHABISENG MOTSEMME discusses emerging styles of dress among young Black women. She argues that while these sartorical practices seek to liberate black female bodies from their histories of oppression, they also create new separations and distinction among them.

POETRY:
Freedom
BANDILE GUMBI

Hip-Hop, gender and agency in the age of the Empire:
Through an examination of the work of hip-hop artists Godessa and Immortal Technique, ADAM HAUPT argues that hip-hop is a useful tool for engaging critically and creatively with the realities of marginalized subjects.

Young, hip and happening!
CHANTEL ERFORT met with Burni Amansure, one third of the Cape Town all-woman hip-hop crew, Godessa, and spoke about urban culture, being an educator, and a black woman in a changing country.

Exploring South African psychology:
Township girls, the community and identity in women students’ talk about professional training, JANE CALLAGHAN writes that the township is located as the unexplored space of psychology. She argues that a reclamation by women students of their positioning as ‘township girls’ might provide fertile ground for the development of African psychology.

Re tla dirang ka selo se ba re go ke ghetto fabulous? Academics on the streets:
KAPANO RATELE addresses academics on why they should step out onto the streets. He looks at the fragmentation between lives lived on urban streets and life as taught in lecture halls.

The Tongue is Fire:
Language keeps us connected to our collective past. Writes KHONA DLAMINI. She imagines a world where indigenous languages are given the same prestige as English.

Ideology, aesthetics and democratisation:
ZAMANI MAKHANYA AND SAZI DLAMINI reflect on cultural production through visual art.

POETRY:
Out of Now-here
MALIKA NDLOVU

These words are like swords...
NONTSIKELELO VELEKO writes that graffiti reflects the realities of the people and communities.

Being a ‘bitch’ some questions on the gendered globalisation and consumption of American hip-hop culture in post-apartheid South Africa:
LLIANE LOOTS discusses how urban cultural practices from the North have been hegemonically sold to the south as supierior. She discusses the paternal and often misogynistic messages contained in some forms of Northern hip-hop culture and argues that young artists can subvert these practices to challenge social racism and sexism.

POETRY:
These words
KEITH KUNENE

Great Black Warrior Queens:
An examination of the gender currents within Rastafari thought and adoption if a feminist agenda in the Rasta women’s movement.  Through observations, personal experience and discussions with Rasta mean and women, LISA-ANNE JULIEN explores the Rasta movement from a gender perspective.

‘The tide has turned’: women set their own agenda: 
SHAREN THUMBOO reports on a recent conference hosted by the Office of the Status of Women. ‘Conversations amongst women’.

Shelters:
for abused women, or abusive men? As aids to survival, or as rehabilitation sites?  Shelters for abused women are short-term safety nets and not long-term solutions to the intractable problem of male violence against women, writes LORA BEX LEMPERT.

Globalising terror and tyranny:
HAROLD WITT analyses South Africa’s Anti-Terrorism Bill.

The Constitutional Court upholds the criminalisation of sex work:
RONALD LOUW examines the minority judgment of the State v Jordan case.