*Photo credit: A grave marker, Zaramo peoples, Tanzania. Photo by Diane Pelrine.

Course Rationale

This course was developed to look at interventions at end-of-life and bereavement care from a South African perspective and is more than just death education. It is an exercise in “the study of life – but with death left in” according to Robert Kastenbaum (2012, p. xv). There is empirical evidence to support the perceived value of courses on death and dying (Corr C. A., 2016), in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, but not so in South Africa. Most of the literature available on this topic thus stems from European and American research and, although research has been done in South Africa, it tends to follow the European and American thinking. During this course, you will get the opportunity to reflect on these American and European models, but we will also get the opportunity to critically debate, analyse and think of the cultures in South Africa and Africa and, if and how, these models can be adapted to fit the specific end-of-life and bereavement needs of the local people.