Nolwazi Mkhwanazi
Biographic Data
| ID | 99064 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nolwazi Mkhwanazi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nolwazi |
| FAMILY NAME | Mkhwanazi |
| SIGNATURE | MKHWANAZI N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Witwatersrand |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3245-2557 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 59 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Enclaving, cosmopolitanism and class-based exclusion in Rosebank
Rosebank, an upmarket suburb in Johannesburg, attracts residents and visitors with the promise of security, affluence, leisure and global connectivity. Once a racialized enclave during apartheid, Rosebank is today racially diverse and cosmopolitan, yet it remains exclusive. Drawing on the concept of enclaving, we argue that Rosebank is a site of ‘cosmopolitan enclaving’, an ongoing process through which post-apartheid racial inclusion is reworked…
Re-worlding reproduction as a call to action
Inspired by decolonial theorist Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni's notion of 'reworlding' and his use of the concept to reconsider Western epistemes and ways of 'being in the world', we argue for the importance of 're-worlding reproduction' in future work on health systems and reproductive health. Current approaches to reproductive health have failed to bring the thriving and wellbeing they once promised to the 'marginalised majority' in the world. Re-worl…
What good is anthropology
Different forms of care work are essential for the practice of anthropology in South Africa. In this biographical commentary, I describe how I enacted care work in my anthropological practice. I suggest that what is good about anthropology is its potential to be attentive to the multiple ways in which care work is enacted by us as anthropologists, as teachers of the discipline, as well as by our interlocutors
Re-Imagining Reproduction
Reproduction is political. Citation is political. In this essay, I link the anthropological concept of reproduction (biological and social), which is closely tied to kin-making, to citation. I suggest that citation can be viewed as "academic" reproduction and kin-making. To make this argument, I describe my professional and intellectual journey as a Black woman anthropologist based in the global South. I show how the amalgamation of the various c…
Editors’ response
2021). Editors’ response: how connections of kinship and care are made and embraced. Anthropology Southern Africa: Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 44-46
Conflict and care in sexual and reproductive health services for young mothers in urban South Africa
In South Africa, sexual and reproductive health services aim to facilitate access to and utilisation of care to young people. We draw on narrative interviews with 45 young mothers and six health care providers delivering sexual and reproductive health services at an urban health centre, to understand how young mothers experienced services in relation to ante- and post-natal care, including termination services. Although health care providers emph…
Receipt of emotional support among rural South African adults
As the world undergoes rapid ageing, informal support from friends and relatives is becoming especially important among older adults in middle- and low-income countries, where formalised social protections may be limited. We use new data from a cohort of adults aged 40 and older in rural South Africa to explore how receipt of emotional support differs by gender and marital status. Our findings suggest that women are more likely to get emotional s…
Of dreams and nightmares
This article uses the accelerated saturation initiative (ASI) Soka Uncobe, which took place in the kingdom of eSwatini in 2011 and 2012, to comment on HIV humanitarian health interventions in Africa. Soka Uncobe, the first ASI on voluntary medical male circumcision, aimed to circumcise 80 per cent of all HIV-negative men aged fifteen to forty-nine years over a twelve-month period. Using written and verbal accounts, I draw attention to the dreams …
Inclusion, access and social justice
Wamkelekile, karibu, welkom, and welcome to this special issue of the journal titled ‘Medical and Health Humanities in Africa – Inclusion, Access and Social Justice’. Medical and Health Humanities (MHH) is a nascent field on the African continent; while the research, teaching, and practices of many people can be categorised as being MHH, it is only in the last six years that practitioners have initiated formal networks, convened conferences, and …
Beyond the lab
Eh!woza is a public engagement initiative that explores the biomedical and social aspects of tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa. The project is a collaboration between scientists based in an infectious disease research institute, a local conceptual/visual artist, a youth-based educational non-governmental organization (NGO) and young learners from a high-burden TB community. The learners participate in a series of interactive science and media pro…
Understanding and acting on the developmental origins of health and disease in Africa would improve health across generations
Data from many high- and low- or middle-income countries have linked exposures during key developmental periods (in particular pregnancy and infancy) to later health and disease. Africa faces substantial challenges with persisting infectious disease and now burgeoning non-communicable disease.This paper opens the debate to the value of strengthening the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) research focus in Africa to tackle critica…
Fragility, fluidity, and resilience
HIV and AIDS have impacted on social relations in many ways, eroding personal networks, contributing to household poverty, and rupturing intimate relations. With the continuing transmission of HIV particularly in resource-poor settings, families and others must find new ways to care for those who are living with HIV, for those who are ill and need increased levels of personal and medical care, and for orphaned children. These needs occur concurre…
Paternity matters
In this article we discuss the role that fathers and paternal families play in acknowledging and caring for children born outside of a recognised union in two southern African communities – Nyanga East, South Africa and Mokhotlong, Lesotho. While these communities are geographically and culturally close, there are important differences in the responses to the care of children born outside of a recognised union. In Nyanga East, despite not paying …
Medical Anthropology in Africa
In the growing number of publications in medical anthropology about sub-Saharan Africa, there is a tendency to tell a single story of medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior. The heavy reliance on telling this singular story means that there is very little exposure to other stories. In this article, I draw on five books published in the past five years to illustrate the various components that make up this dominant narrative. I then provide…
Revisiting the dynamics of early childbearing in South African townships
In South Africa over the last two decades, births to girls under the age of 20 years of age have steadily declined. The reason for the decline has been attributed to progressive social and educational policies and more accommodating reactions from families. This paper uses ethnographic data collected in 2001-2002 and again in 2013 in order to compare young women's perceptions and experiences of early childbearing at the turn of the twenty-first c…
Twenty years of democracy and the politics of reproduction in South Africa
Reproduction is political. This article is about how young women's experiences of pregnancy and motherhood in South Africa have been affected by politics. Early childbearing has been a norm for a great part of the twentieth century, particularly among South Africa's black and coloured populations. However, it was only in the 1970s that the issue of ‘teenage pregnancy’ was singled out as an area of concern and one that was worthy of study. The int…
An African way of doing things
In this article I draw on ethnographic research conducted in the townships of Nyanga East and Khayelitsha, South Africa, to suggest a link between normative ideals about the relations between children and adults, normative practises around the care of children, and the high rates of early child bearing. I argue that the attempt to uphold these ideals is what creates fertile ground for the occurrence of a pregnancy during the teenage years. My inv…
Books and Babies
A tough love approach indeed
In South Africa the rates of teenage pregnancy have steadily decreased over the last two decades. However despite the decrease, teenage pregnancy remains a concern. The recent discourse regarding teenage pregnancy circulating among government officials and those in positions of power has been decidedly unforgiving. Pregnant teenagers are blamed for arresting development in South Africa. For these government officials and the black elite, teenage …
Teenage desire in relation to sexual and reproductive health citizenship
Professor Catriona Macleod is Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University. She is author of ‘Adolescence’, pregnancy and abortion: Constructing a threat of degeneration, published by Routledge. This book received the Association for Women in Psychology's 2011 Distinguished Publication Award. Catriona has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in books. She trained as an Educational Psychologist and worked for the Wits …
Developing and expanding our ideas about teenage desire and fertility
‘Teenage-hood’ has acquired the status of a universally applicable category of human development, with the experience of ‘teenage-hood’ contingent on one's circumstances and adoption of certain values. In its popular usage, the term ‘teenager’ refers to a person who is neither child nor adult. In this liminal space between childhood and adulthood, teenage-hood is encouraged to be and characterised as a time of self-discovery, anxiety, experimenta…
Understanding teenage pregnancy in a post-apartheid South African township
Although South Africa's total fertility rate is one of the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, high rates of early childbearing remain a concern. Most teenage pregnancies occur among poor black and coloured South Africans. The majority of these pregnancies are said to be unwanted and unplanned and the teenager's relationships, unstable. Becoming a mother during one's teenage years is perceived to be socially, economically and physically deleterious for…
Partial truths
In this article the author identifies three schools of research on teenage pregnancy that were dominant from the 1980s to 2003 in South Africa. By providing a comparison with some of the research in the United States and in England, the author draws attention to the similarity in the representations of teenage pregnancy in South Africa and in the latter countries. The strengths and weaknesses of each research school are discussed. The author then…
Reflections on the ethical dilemmas that arise for anthropologists conducting fieldwork on the provision of sexuality education in South Africa
The revised ethical guidelines and principles of conduct for anthropologists in Southern Africa offer suggestions for the anthropologist's relations with and responsibility to research participants. Reflecting on the provision of sexuality education, I draw critical attention to the premises that underlie these guidelines, in particular those underpinning what the principles of conduct describe as a commitment to ‘local understandings of respect …
Medical Anthropology in Africa
In the growing number of publications in medical anthropology about sub-Saharan Africa, there is a tendency to tell a single story of medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior. The heavy reliance on telling this singular story means that there is very little exposure to other stories. In this article, I draw on five books published in the past five years to illustrate the various components that make up this dominant narrative. I then provide…
An African way of doing things
In this article I draw on ethnographic research conducted in the townships of Nyanga East and Khayelitsha, South Africa, to suggest a link between normative ideals about the relations between children and adults, normative practises around the care of children, and the high rates of early child bearing. I argue that the attempt to uphold these ideals is what creates fertile ground for the occurrence of a pregnancy during the teenage years. My inv…
Partial truths
In this article the author identifies three schools of research on teenage pregnancy that were dominant from the 1980s to 2003 in South Africa. By providing a comparison with some of the research in the United States and in England, the author draws attention to the similarity in the representations of teenage pregnancy in South Africa and in the latter countries. The strengths and weaknesses of each research school are discussed. The author then…
What good is anthropology
Different forms of care work are essential for the practice of anthropology in South Africa. In this biographical commentary, I describe how I enacted care work in my anthropological practice. I suggest that what is good about anthropology is its potential to be attentive to the multiple ways in which care work is enacted by us as anthropologists, as teachers of the discipline, as well as by our interlocutors
A tough love approach indeed
In South Africa the rates of teenage pregnancy have steadily decreased over the last two decades. However despite the decrease, teenage pregnancy remains a concern. The recent discourse regarding teenage pregnancy circulating among government officials and those in positions of power has been decidedly unforgiving. Pregnant teenagers are blamed for arresting development in South Africa. For these government officials and the black elite, teenage …
Twenty years of democracy and the politics of reproduction in South Africa
Reproduction is political. This article is about how young women's experiences of pregnancy and motherhood in South Africa have been affected by politics. Early childbearing has been a norm for a great part of the twentieth century, particularly among South Africa's black and coloured populations. However, it was only in the 1970s that the issue of ‘teenage pregnancy’ was singled out as an area of concern and one that was worthy of study. The int…
Reflections on the ethical dilemmas that arise for anthropologists conducting fieldwork on the provision of sexuality education in South Africa
The revised ethical guidelines and principles of conduct for anthropologists in Southern Africa offer suggestions for the anthropologist's relations with and responsibility to research participants. Reflecting on the provision of sexuality education, I draw critical attention to the premises that underlie these guidelines, in particular those underpinning what the principles of conduct describe as a commitment to ‘local understandings of respect …
Re-Imagining Reproduction
Reproduction is political. Citation is political. In this essay, I link the anthropological concept of reproduction (biological and social), which is closely tied to kin-making, to citation. I suggest that citation can be viewed as "academic" reproduction and kin-making. To make this argument, I describe my professional and intellectual journey as a Black woman anthropologist based in the global South. I show how the amalgamation of the various c…
Of dreams and nightmares
This article uses the accelerated saturation initiative (ASI) Soka Uncobe, which took place in the kingdom of eSwatini in 2011 and 2012, to comment on HIV humanitarian health interventions in Africa. Soka Uncobe, the first ASI on voluntary medical male circumcision, aimed to circumcise 80 per cent of all HIV-negative men aged fifteen to forty-nine years over a twelve-month period. Using written and verbal accounts, I draw attention to the dreams …
Paternity matters
In this article we discuss the role that fathers and paternal families play in acknowledging and caring for children born outside of a recognised union in two southern African communities – Nyanga East, South Africa and Mokhotlong, Lesotho. While these communities are geographically and culturally close, there are important differences in the responses to the care of children born outside of a recognised union. In Nyanga East, despite not paying …
Receipt of emotional support among rural South African adults
As the world undergoes rapid ageing, informal support from friends and relatives is becoming especially important among older adults in middle- and low-income countries, where formalised social protections may be limited. We use new data from a cohort of adults aged 40 and older in rural South Africa to explore how receipt of emotional support differs by gender and marital status. Our findings suggest that women are more likely to get emotional s…
Developing and expanding our ideas about teenage desire and fertility
‘Teenage-hood’ has acquired the status of a universally applicable category of human development, with the experience of ‘teenage-hood’ contingent on one's circumstances and adoption of certain values. In its popular usage, the term ‘teenager’ refers to a person who is neither child nor adult. In this liminal space between childhood and adulthood, teenage-hood is encouraged to be and characterised as a time of self-discovery, anxiety, experimenta…
Reflections on the ethical dilemmas that arise for anthropologists conducting fieldwork on the provision of sexuality education in South Africa
The revised ethical guidelines and principles of conduct for anthropologists in Southern Africa offer suggestions for the anthropologist's relations with and responsibility to research participants. Reflecting on the provision of sexuality education, I draw critical attention to the premises that underlie these guidelines, in particular those underpinning what the principles of conduct describe as a commitment to ‘local understandings of respect …
Partial truths
In this article the author identifies three schools of research on teenage pregnancy that were dominant from the 1980s to 2003 in South Africa. By providing a comparison with some of the research in the United States and in England, the author draws attention to the similarity in the representations of teenage pregnancy in South Africa and in the latter countries. The strengths and weaknesses of each research school are discussed. The author then…
Understanding teenage pregnancy in a post-apartheid South African township
Although South Africa's total fertility rate is one of the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa, high rates of early childbearing remain a concern. Most teenage pregnancies occur among poor black and coloured South Africans. The majority of these pregnancies are said to be unwanted and unplanned and the teenager's relationships, unstable. Becoming a mother during one's teenage years is perceived to be socially, economically and physically deleterious for…
Teenage desire in relation to sexual and reproductive health citizenship
Professor Catriona Macleod is Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University. She is author of ‘Adolescence’, pregnancy and abortion: Constructing a threat of degeneration, published by Routledge. This book received the Association for Women in Psychology's 2011 Distinguished Publication Award. Catriona has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in books. She trained as an Educational Psychologist and worked for the Wits …
Developing and expanding our ideas about teenage desire and fertility
‘Teenage-hood’ has acquired the status of a universally applicable category of human development, with the experience of ‘teenage-hood’ contingent on one's circumstances and adoption of certain values. In its popular usage, the term ‘teenager’ refers to a person who is neither child nor adult. In this liminal space between childhood and adulthood, teenage-hood is encouraged to be and characterised as a time of self-discovery, anxiety, experimenta…
A tough love approach indeed
In South Africa the rates of teenage pregnancy have steadily decreased over the last two decades. However despite the decrease, teenage pregnancy remains a concern. The recent discourse regarding teenage pregnancy circulating among government officials and those in positions of power has been decidedly unforgiving. Pregnant teenagers are blamed for arresting development in South Africa. For these government officials and the black elite, teenage …
Books and Babies
Revisiting the dynamics of early childbearing in South African townships
In South Africa over the last two decades, births to girls under the age of 20 years of age have steadily declined. The reason for the decline has been attributed to progressive social and educational policies and more accommodating reactions from families. This paper uses ethnographic data collected in 2001-2002 and again in 2013 in order to compare young women's perceptions and experiences of early childbearing at the turn of the twenty-first c…
Twenty years of democracy and the politics of reproduction in South Africa
Reproduction is political. This article is about how young women's experiences of pregnancy and motherhood in South Africa have been affected by politics. Early childbearing has been a norm for a great part of the twentieth century, particularly among South Africa's black and coloured populations. However, it was only in the 1970s that the issue of ‘teenage pregnancy’ was singled out as an area of concern and one that was worthy of study. The int…
An African way of doing things
In this article I draw on ethnographic research conducted in the townships of Nyanga East and Khayelitsha, South Africa, to suggest a link between normative ideals about the relations between children and adults, normative practises around the care of children, and the high rates of early child bearing. I argue that the attempt to uphold these ideals is what creates fertile ground for the occurrence of a pregnancy during the teenage years. My inv…
Fragility, fluidity, and resilience
HIV and AIDS have impacted on social relations in many ways, eroding personal networks, contributing to household poverty, and rupturing intimate relations. With the continuing transmission of HIV particularly in resource-poor settings, families and others must find new ways to care for those who are living with HIV, for those who are ill and need increased levels of personal and medical care, and for orphaned children. These needs occur concurre…
Paternity matters
In this article we discuss the role that fathers and paternal families play in acknowledging and caring for children born outside of a recognised union in two southern African communities – Nyanga East, South Africa and Mokhotlong, Lesotho. While these communities are geographically and culturally close, there are important differences in the responses to the care of children born outside of a recognised union. In Nyanga East, despite not paying …
Medical Anthropology in Africa
In the growing number of publications in medical anthropology about sub-Saharan Africa, there is a tendency to tell a single story of medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior. The heavy reliance on telling this singular story means that there is very little exposure to other stories. In this article, I draw on five books published in the past five years to illustrate the various components that make up this dominant narrative. I then provide…
Understanding and acting on the developmental origins of health and disease in Africa would improve health across generations
Data from many high- and low- or middle-income countries have linked exposures during key developmental periods (in particular pregnancy and infancy) to later health and disease. Africa faces substantial challenges with persisting infectious disease and now burgeoning non-communicable disease.This paper opens the debate to the value of strengthening the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) research focus in Africa to tackle critica…
Inclusion, access and social justice
Wamkelekile, karibu, welkom, and welcome to this special issue of the journal titled ‘Medical and Health Humanities in Africa – Inclusion, Access and Social Justice’. Medical and Health Humanities (MHH) is a nascent field on the African continent; while the research, teaching, and practices of many people can be categorised as being MHH, it is only in the last six years that practitioners have initiated formal networks, convened conferences, and …
Beyond the lab
Eh!woza is a public engagement initiative that explores the biomedical and social aspects of tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa. The project is a collaboration between scientists based in an infectious disease research institute, a local conceptual/visual artist, a youth-based educational non-governmental organization (NGO) and young learners from a high-burden TB community. The learners participate in a series of interactive science and media pro…
Conflict and care in sexual and reproductive health services for young mothers in urban South Africa
In South Africa, sexual and reproductive health services aim to facilitate access to and utilisation of care to young people. We draw on narrative interviews with 45 young mothers and six health care providers delivering sexual and reproductive health services at an urban health centre, to understand how young mothers experienced services in relation to ante- and post-natal care, including termination services. Although health care providers emph…
Receipt of emotional support among rural South African adults
As the world undergoes rapid ageing, informal support from friends and relatives is becoming especially important among older adults in middle- and low-income countries, where formalised social protections may be limited. We use new data from a cohort of adults aged 40 and older in rural South Africa to explore how receipt of emotional support differs by gender and marital status. Our findings suggest that women are more likely to get emotional s…
Of dreams and nightmares
This article uses the accelerated saturation initiative (ASI) Soka Uncobe, which took place in the kingdom of eSwatini in 2011 and 2012, to comment on HIV humanitarian health interventions in Africa. Soka Uncobe, the first ASI on voluntary medical male circumcision, aimed to circumcise 80 per cent of all HIV-negative men aged fifteen to forty-nine years over a twelve-month period. Using written and verbal accounts, I draw attention to the dreams …
Editors’ response
2021). Editors’ response: how connections of kinship and care are made and embraced. Anthropology Southern Africa: Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 44-46
Re-Imagining Reproduction
Reproduction is political. Citation is political. In this essay, I link the anthropological concept of reproduction (biological and social), which is closely tied to kin-making, to citation. I suggest that citation can be viewed as "academic" reproduction and kin-making. To make this argument, I describe my professional and intellectual journey as a Black woman anthropologist based in the global South. I show how the amalgamation of the various c…
What good is anthropology
Different forms of care work are essential for the practice of anthropology in South Africa. In this biographical commentary, I describe how I enacted care work in my anthropological practice. I suggest that what is good about anthropology is its potential to be attentive to the multiple ways in which care work is enacted by us as anthropologists, as teachers of the discipline, as well as by our interlocutors
Enclaving, cosmopolitanism and class-based exclusion in Rosebank
Rosebank, an upmarket suburb in Johannesburg, attracts residents and visitors with the promise of security, affluence, leisure and global connectivity. Once a racialized enclave during apartheid, Rosebank is today racially diverse and cosmopolitan, yet it remains exclusive. Drawing on the concept of enclaving, we argue that Rosebank is a site of ‘cosmopolitan enclaving’, an ongoing process through which post-apartheid racial inclusion is reworked…
Re-worlding reproduction as a call to action
Inspired by decolonial theorist Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni's notion of 'reworlding' and his use of the concept to reconsider Western epistemes and ways of 'being in the world', we argue for the importance of 're-worlding reproduction' in future work on health systems and reproductive health. Current approaches to reproductive health have failed to bring the thriving and wellbeing they once promised to the 'marginalised majority' in the world. Re-worl…
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (15 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health (10 works) · Demography (9 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Population (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare (8 works)