A variety of instructional strategies were devised to ensure continuity in education during the COVID-19 lockdown. This paper interrogates the exclusion of learners in rural settings of Zimbabwe as a result of the methods of teaching that were adopted by the government during the COVID-19 lockdown. The paper seeks to answer the question; how are the strategies meant to ensure continuity in education during the lockdown excluding learners in rural settings? The strategies that were adopted by the government have been identified to be contributing to the exclusion of learners in rural settings. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews from 20 teachers who teach in rural areas at two of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces. The interviews were done as a follow-up to the approaches of remote teaching adopted during the lockdown. The study argues that the adoption of uniform approaches to teaching and learning throughout the country during COVID-19 lockdown would not suffice as the functionality of each approach depends on the infrastructure and the economic conditions characteristic of each particular geographical location. The strategies adopted during the pandemic in a low-income country like Zimbabwe should not be permanent but should simply be an emergency response. Learners in rural settings are bound to be excluded in education during the pandemic if policymakers enact ‘one size fits all’ approaches meant for abrupt implementation. Strategies that suit the idea of emergency remote teaching during the pandemic are the most favourable.

No abstract

This article sets out to discuss the role of the Ndebele woman within the various institutions of Ndebele culture. It analyses the woman within the context of marriage, family and society as a whole. The researchers trace the development of the woman from a pre-colonial context as reflected in the Ndebele myth of creation, through a colonial context as reflected by contemporary mythology as well as by the contemporary roles of women in most societies. It is through mythology, folklore and proverbs in Ndebele traditional and contemporary society that gender roles are prescribed. This is because orature is the bank that houses society’s history, norms, values and customs. This research therefore investigates the role of the Ndebele woman within the institution of marriage, and within the family structure. It also analyses the presentation of the roles of Ndebele women and men in society, with particular emphasis on domestic and gender roles. In doing so, the article addresses the notion that gender roles did not begin to change during the post-colonial era since that change began in the colonial context and then developed and affected women right through the post-colonial phase. This article reveals this crisis through the juxtaposition of the colonial ‘Christian’ myth of creation and the Ndebele myth of creation.

The role of the academy in the manufacture of individual and group identities remains least understood from theoretical and empirical perspectives. The legitimation and consumption of such identity discourses (by both academic practitioners and the general public) have also been inadequately theorised. What is well known and heavily theorised is the subject of how disciplines have created their own identities but the consequence of such disciplinary identity formations remains a grey area that still requires systematic theorisation. Drawing on a selection of humanities and social science disciplines, their academic associations, journals and journal articles bearing the name 'southern Africa' as its data set, this paper provides a critical discourse analysis of how these fields of study have shaped the idea of southern Africa. The overall intention here is not to flag which discipline provides the best definition and understanding of southern Africa. Rather, the overarching argument is this: in the course of pursuing their individual disciplinary interests, the different strands of the humanities and social sciences have inadvertently invented and sustained competing and contested southern African identities that are inconsistent with the dynamic and fluid nature of the everyday lived experiences of the peoples whose region they purport to describe and represent in academic circles.

No abstract