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Includes bibliographical references. ; The Cape of Good Hope was rocked by a period of political turmoil at the end of the 1770s and beginning of 1780s. Coenraad Beyers published an extensive study about this period and labelled the protesters: Cape Patriots ("Die Kaapse Patriotte"). In his view they were pre-Afrikaner burghers who, driven by ideological arguments, opposed a colonial VOC tyranny. This thesis aims to revise this analysis, while seeking to demonstrate that late eighteenth century Cape society was marked by a complex and intertwined network of status groups. The burgher protests are used as a case study to illustrate that the Cape settlement was part and parcel of the Dutch empire. The protesters emphasised that their burgerschap was on par with that in cities in the Dutch Republic. The first part of the thesis compares Cape and Dutch burgerschap and argues that the Cape burghers were justified in stating that they were burghers of a city belonging to the United Netherlands. It furthermore becomes clear that the Cape burghers had developed a robust burgher identity. This certainly contributed to the outbreak of the conflict, but was not the determining factor. Because the Cape settlement was essentially a Dutch city, many elements many elements of political and social life derived from the Dutch Republic. One of these was that at the Cape a ruling elite consisting of higher VOC officials and prominent burghers had developed with close familial and entrepreneurial links between them.

The story of Sara Baartman, who was brought to Europe in 1810 to be exhibited as the erotic-exotic freak 'Hottentot Venus', is arguably the most famous case study of the scientific validation of (gendered) racism. Her scientific examination and post-mortem dissection by Georges Cuvier, who looked for an alleged connection between the Khoisan and the orangutan, have been the object of famous critical works (Gilman, 1985; Haraway, 1989; Fausto-Sterling, 1995), but also exposed her to the unpalatable fate of becoming the 'quintessential' figure of intersecting gender and racial oppressions. This paper deals with Abdellatif Kechiche's film Venus Noire (2010), which interestingly rearticulates the (in)famous narrative in unexpected ways. Shot by a male director who is also a postcolonial subject, the film exposes the performativity not only of gender and racial identities, but also of science theorisation, while at the same time raising the issue of whether exposing a violent male colonial gaze on a heavily exhibited woman can contribute to a counter-knowledge of her experience or rather risks reiterating the historical violence. The startling dynamic between the portrayed abuse and Kechiche's peculiar filmic strategies is the crucial focus of this paper. While Sara's body is continually exposed and violated, Venus Noire relies on her face, shot in recurrent extreme close ups, as a haunting presence potentially exceeding violence. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's (1987 [1980]) account of the close up, I explore how Kechiche's take on Sara's face builds a strong connection with the spectator's extra-filmic dimension. As a case of what Deleuze and Guattari call a 'reflective face', such close ups invest the viewer with the ethical responsibility of being complicit in the othering practices of (post)colonial times. Vénus Noire thus manages to engage the spectator's own corporeal awareness of violence, and calls attention to the persisting exploitation of sexual and racial colonial tropes in the contemporary world.

In this thesis, I interrogate the discourses through which colonial stereotypes of race, gender and sexuality are uncritically invoked to serve new purposes, particularly in the service of postapartheid nationalist narratives. I argue not only that contemporary South African nationalism is imagined through gendered tropes, but also that the intersecting tropes of gender, race and sexuality which underlie postapartheid nation-building discourses propagate many of the same stereotypes about black women's sexuality first entrenched through colonial representations. More specifically, I argue that these tropes are repeatedly invoked through an uncritical deployment of what I term the "Baartman trope". With this term, I aim to signal the problematic discourses and systems of representation that have reduced Sara Baartman's embodied specificity to that of a generalised, stereotypical symbol, either as the archetypal hypersexualised victim of colonial exploitation and humiliation, or as the symbolic mother of the "new" South African nation. Throughout this thesis, I not only offer a critique of the "Baartman trope" itself, but also aim to disrupt the decidedly reductive mode of representation which makes an essentialist stereotype such as the "Baartman trope" possible. To this end, I draw on performativity theory and the representational category of intimacy as ethical scholarly approaches to the politics of representation. I interrogate a wide range of literary texts, as well as a number of different scenes of representation that simultaneously challenge, perpetuate, refute and complicate essentialist and stereotypical representations of the black female body. Ranging from early South African proto-nationalist narratives to current postapartheid nationalist discourses, these different scenes of representation show that the same problematic tropes underlying colonial representations of gendered, racialised and sexualised black female bodies are more often than not re-imagined and reconstituted in the postcolonial imaginary. Furthermore, the fact that colonial systems of signification still underpin and influence postcolonial representations, albeit in new ways and to different purposes, highlights the inevitably ambiguous, unstable and hybridised nature of representing race, gender and sexuality in the South African postcolony.

The parading of the nude body of Sarah Baartman by the British colonisers led England and France to racially categorise her as a subhuman. Her Black body was viewed as something that can be violated, exploited, destructed, penetrated, and subjugated to various inhumane conditions. According to Fanon, there is a world order that determines who fits where and how: "The colonial world is a world cut in two". The militaristic response by the state to the people's protest point to the fact that technology, the regimes, and the targets still remain. In this article, I will argue that the use of violence by the colonial, imperial system against Sarah Baartman (Black people) has its origins in colonialism and slavery. I maintain that there is a distinction between "a body" and "the Body". The paper will use as basis the intersectionality theory. Conclusions will be drawn.

COVID-19 significantly impacted the delivery of education with widespread disruptions, particularly disadvantaging racialized and low-income families. Our research project explored how community-based programming can be adapted and mobilized to mitigate opportunity and achievement gaps for Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPOC), and those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The project as a case study examined an afternoon and weekend supplementary academic program called the Community School Initiative (CSI), offered from September 2020 to May 2021 to members of the Jane and Finch community in Toronto, Canada at a subsidized cost. CSI is a partnership between the non-profit organization Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education (YAAACE) and the for-profit enterprise Spirit of Math. It delivers a structured math curriculum to students in grades two to eight aged 8 to 14 years, old supported by a team of caring adults including parents, coaches, and Ontario certified teachers. The efficacy and outcomes of the CSI was assessed through surveys with parents (n=33), students (n=33), and teachers (n=4), and a focus group with seven teachers delivering the curriculum in the CSI. We also discuss the significance of how the research was conducted in the wake of COVID-19. Hence, this article is about the findings from the data, but just as much about the community-driven approach to how the research was conducted, by the community and for the community.

Quality control policies towards Dutch vocational schools have changed dramatically because the government questioned examination quality. Schools must now demonstrate assessment quality to a new Examination Quality Center. Since teachers often design assessments, they must be involved in quality issues. This study therefore explores teachers' opinions on assessment quality evaluation criteria. Pre-vocational and vocational teachers (N = 211) responded to a questionnaire. Contrary to expectations, results show that teachers deem classical and competency-based quality criteria equally important. Vocational teachers gave higher importance scores than pre-vocational teachers, possibly due to the pressure they experience to improve the quality of their assessments.

Quality control policies towards Dutch vocational schools have changed dramatically because the government questioned examination quality. Schools must now demonstrate assessment quality to a new Examination Quality Center. Since teachers often design assessments, they must be involved in quality issues. This study therefore explores teachers' opinions on assessment quality evaluation criteria. Pre-vocational and vocational teachers (N=211) responded to a questionnaire. Contrary to expectations, results show that teachers deem classical and competency-based quality criteria equally important. Vocational teachers gave higher importance scores than pre-vocational teachers, possibly due to the pressure they experience to improve the quality of their assessments.