*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.
