Africa, Southern: Deaf Community

A community is a group of people who identify with each other because of shared experiences and a sense of belonging. Much has been written about how the Deaf community is born; however, the true complexity of what this means within Southern Africa, beyond the monocultural Western cultures (where much of the literature on Deaf culture and community originates), has been explored insufficiently to date. What is agreed upon is that membership in the Deaf community is seldom achieved through birth or right. Rather, it is ascribed once a set of criteria has been achieved. In relation to the Deaf community, we make use of the now widely accepted Baker-Shenk and Cokely and Schein models of the Deaf community. According to these models, the hearing ...