This thesis offers an analysis of the official discourse of two post-apartheid commissions of inquiry investigating state violence – the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Marikana Commission of Inquiry.

Salt-Water-Bodies: From an Atlas of Loss is a response, through photomedia(tions) and live art, to material-affective encounters with/in littoral death zones along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean of the South African West Coast and seven adjacent islands – sites haunted by violent legacies and unchecked exploitation, where heightened precarity marks the lives of earth others.

In this study, an artistic research methodology is employed to identify principles of clowning as they are practiced in contemporary clown training workshops, to then offer applications of these within a South African theatre context. Autoethnographic accounts and fictional narratives offer an exploration of the practice of clowning from a personal perspective in multiple roles as clown performer, student, educator and observer, supplemented by an interpretive analysis of existing literature.

Mental health is a crucial part of the overall wellbeing of persons. Recovery is increasingly recognised worldwide as an essential approach to mental health. In this study recovery is regarded as personal recovery, a multidimensional construct differing from remission. In high-income countries, the study of recovery has developed and expanded to raise individuals' awareness of, and involvement in, their own recovery and to change mental health services to have a recovery orientation.

South African research has paid scant attention to the role of psychological strengths in coping with stress and the impact these have on the overall mental health of adolescents living low-income communities. However, an understanding of the role of psychological strengths in mediating the impact of stress on the mental health of adolescents is necessary as it could indicate those factors that may be pivotal to interventions targeting mental-health promotion and mental-illness prevention for vulnerable adolescents.

Since 1998 a collection of 238 classical antiquities, many of which were previously on display for over a century, has been in storage in the Iziko Social History Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. These artefacts are of a low priority for display in the museum and the skills necessary to conserve them are at present unavailable to the museum staff.

The study investigated the feasibility of disseminating and implementing brief prolonged exposure therapy (PE) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in South Africa. I used a mixed method design to investigate and explore the broad aim, which was to implement PE in a South African context, and to explore whether PE is feasible and acceptable in a South African context. The study had three aims

Mental health is a crucial part of the overall wellbeing of persons. Recovery is increasingly recognised worldwide as an essential approach to mental health. In this study recovery is regarded as personal recovery, a multidimensional construct differing from remission. In high-income countries, the study of recovery has developed and expanded to raise individuals’ awareness of, and involvement in, their own recovery and to change mental health services to have a recovery orientation.

Mental health is a crucial part of the overall wellbeing of persons. Recovery is increasingly recognised worldwide as an essential approach to mental health. In this study recovery is regarded as personal recovery, a multidimensional construct differing from remission. In high-income countries, the study of recovery has developed and expanded to raise individuals awareness of, and involvement in, their own recovery and to change mental health services to have a recovery orientation.