South Africa has a progressive Language in Education Policy (LiEP) advocating multilingualism, but the policy has been widely criticised for its lack of implementation. Notable is the hegemony of English in many schools, and in ex-Model C schools in particular. Some have argued that the choices of middle-class African parents in sending their children to English medium schools is threatening the survival of African languages and leading to language shift (De Klerk, 2000;Kamwangamalu, 2003a;2003b). Drawing on observation and interview data from two desegregated co-educational ex-Model C high schools in Johannesburg, this paper focuses on the language practices and views towards indigenous South African languages of African learners. It captures their perspectives on the schools' language policies as well as their views on the use of indigenous languages in the classroom and in other domains in the school. The paper shows that learners often use African languages in the school space, frequently through code-switching and code-mixing. This paper argues that claims of language shift are not appropriate, since multilingual language behaviour points to some degree of language maintenance of African languages. The use of African languages by learners enables them to insert new identities into this space and interrupt the exclusive power of English.

This paper discusses aspects of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in South African higher education (HE) and locates it within what it calls Southern theories. Three examples of such theories that the paper advances are Southern decolonial theory, decoloniality, and transversality, which it frames from the Global South standpoint. Concerning the first theory, the paper argues that SoTL, both as a notion and as a practice, needs to be problematized, critiqued, and contextualized according to the Global South HE settings in which it is applied. One of its key points in this regard is that SoTL has to question and critique the dominant epistemic practices and scholarly practices underpinning the curricula of Global South higher education institutions (HEIs), and through which students are framed in these HEIs. With reference to both decoloniality and transversality, the paper foregrounds components of SoTL that are aligned to these two approaches in a way that dismantles their hierarchical relations. Most importantly, it contends that transversality is capable of decentering Western truth claims in favor of polycentric epistemologies, frameworks, and methodologies that resonate with and that have applicability to the Global South.

In response to pressure to participate in the 'knowledge economy', universities are offering a wide range of different masters programmes oriented to the professions. Universities are opening their doors without fully understanding what these programmes entail, and with little attention to the literacy challenges that students face together with supervisors and academic literacy teachers. This article contributes to our understanding of the mixed forms of academic discourse produced by postgraduates in professional masters' programmes by focusing on students registered for the MTech in Policing at a large ODL (Open Distance Learning) university at the point where they are writing research proposals. I trace how students use recontextualisation strategies, such as mimicry and transformation, to signal how they engage with research literacies, as they shuttle between the workplace and academic contexts. The implications for supervisors and literacy educators about the nature of social practices in an ODL context acknowledge and embrace hybridity as an emerging feature of the research literacy practices, rather than as a problem to be erased, based on a proposed hybrid PWU (Profession Workplace University) model.

This paper analyses the voices, and subjectivities that are constructed in songs about men and women within siSwati traditional popular music. These songs position men and women in different ways. This positioning contradicts some of the gender stereotypes of male versus female identities. Discourses of male domination, subjugation of women, inferiority of women, and asymmetrical power relations between men and women are very common in traditional popular music and gender studies. Women are often portrayed as silenced in the public spheres, such as the political, economic and sociocultural spheres. However, this paper aims to destabilize some of the gendered cultural stereotypes through the masculine identities that are depicted in music, and proposes that women are able to criticize and ridicule their male counterparts with impunity in these songs, sometimes through performing masculine subjectivities.

When this special issue was conceptualised in 2018, no one could have guessed that 2020 would usher in a new era and be dominated by the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (see Jandrić 2020; Meng, Hua, and Bian 2020). As a global pandemic, COVID-19 has disrupted world communities, schools, and higher education institutions (HEIs) (Chaka 2020), which are multicultural and multilingual in nature.