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Students’ impressions of African Culture prior to exposure to the module

Collecting the students’ impressions about African culture at the start of the module was important because an understanding of their impressions informs their approach on reporting and commenting on African issues. Their understanding has ethical implications in that it is a determinant factor in whether they represent or misrepresent their subjects.

Issues of gender

A number of students noted that upon examining relations between African women and men, they got the impression that African culture promoted inequality between sexes. According to one observation, an Afrikaans female student notes that in African culture “[m]ales are dominant…and are also heads of the household”. This is echoed by a Sotho student who is concerned that African culture places “men on a higher level, giving the impression that women and children have to scuttle around to attend to their male counterparts’ needs”. Another female Afrikaans student sees lobola [1] as a manifestation of gender inequality. It is one of the practices the student “dislikes” about African culture:

Lobola is just one of the things I personally fail to understand. Exchanging your daughter for how many cattle (or money these days) she is worth just seems wrong, not even to mention sexist. This male chauvinist way just seems cruel and not entirely thought through. Maybe I’m ill-informed, maybe I just haven’t accepted the patriarchal world, I still feel it is wrong.

She is not alone in this discomfort and apprehension about lobola. To a Pedi student, the “first thing that comes to mind” when she thinks of African culture “is the issue that most black young African women like myself will have to face someday…lobola”. She wonders why the recipients of this “gift” have to “name the price”. Or “even more important”, she asks: “do the sometimes exorbitant figures not put the young couple on the back foot in their finances?” Her questions and concerns are somewhat echoed by a female Coloured student who notes that lobola “[t]o most Western minds, the exchange of a girl for money sounds too commercial”.

Issues of race and ethnicity

When the term “African culture” is mentioned, a Coloured female student “honestly first think[s] of black people who are part of an ethnic group such as Xhosa, Zulu, Venda, Sesotho etc. who have certain customs such as lobola, veldt [2] circumcisions and who believe in ancestors or sangomas [3] that influence their way of life, beliefs and from whom they seek advice through their lives”. Similarly, to a White, Afrikaner female student “[w]hen the question of the what and how of ‘African culture’ enters a conversation between myse本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。