The South African Context/General Terminology and Thematic Entries

Introductory note

Most of the people, institutions and works discussed in this encyclopaedia developed in the context of the South African cultural, social, political and economic system(s) (or poly-system), a multicultural and multilingual society which, over the years, has evolved a number of concepts, ideas, practices and terms which are in their way unique or are uniquely used by the citizens. In view of this, this section presents a number of terms and expressions specifically relating to influential social, cultural, economic and political practices peculiar to South Africa, to help readers and researchers contextualize theatrical matters. Naturally readers are warned that terms may change radically in meaning over time.

However, please note that this encyclopaedia does not set out to define general political, social, economic and other terms. This is done excellently in a number of well–known companions, encyclopaedias and dictionaries and on the internet. What is offered here are certain terms that have specific relevance to, or meaning in, South Africa and they will be discussed as required, where they are of relevance to the performing arts and media. (And they should perhaps be read in conjunction with the applicable Introductions to Theatre, Film and the Media).

The links

To search manually, click on the appropriate letter of the alphabet below to obtain an alphabetical listing of links to entries on themes, terms and definitions in the encyclopaedia. To search the whole encyclopaedia for other occurrences of an item or term, you may also use the Search function in the upper right corner of the page.

Some items are listed under dates or numbers. To see the list (arranged numerically), click on #Numbers or dates. (Please note: This is one integrated list for theatre, film and media entries using a numeral as first "word" in the title.)

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z #Numbers or dates